1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 45

Grantville, March 4, 1635

"I called Ron and told him."

"Missy, this is one thing at least that we could have done on our own. You don't have to tell Ron everything. Do you phone him at bedtime and tell him you're brushing your teeth?"

"No. The upstairs extension is out in the hall, so it's not really handy for pillow talk."

Pam stared. As she often did, Missy had taken a purely hypothetical query at face value. If someone asked her a question, she would provide an answer. Or try her best, at least. Born to be a reference librarian. She'd found her niche. "Okay. Why did you tell Ron?"

"So somebody would know where we were going. I couldn't very well tell Mom and Dad that we intended to go digging around in Veda Mae's garage this morning, and you're always supposed to check in before you go somewhere, so people can find you if an emergency comes up. Just to say where you're going, who you're with, and when you'll be back."

Pam nodded. In spite of their genuine friendship, the chasm, the abyss, between the way Chad and Debbie had brought up Missy and the way Velma had brought her up yawned very wide at times.

"Ron thought it was sensible," Missy said a little defensively. "He and his brothers were always expected to check in with their dad before they went off somewhere, too."

Pam stopped pulling on her boots. It… it actually hurt a little, somewhere, to realize that for all the reputation Tom Stone had as a hippie before the Ring of Fire, that even his kids had been more protected and sheltered and cared about than she and Cory Joe had been. Much less Tina and Susan.

She shouldn't have left home when she did. At the time, all she was interested in was self-preservation. She had to get out, she had to get out, she had to get out. Maybe-maybe if she had stayed, Tina wouldn't have turned into the kind of risk taker that the little sister who had drowned at the quarry last spring had been.

"Pam," Missy said. "Pam, what's the matter?"

She blinked back the tears. "Nothing, really. I was thinking about Tina, for some reason."

Missy gave her a quick hug.

Pam stood up. "Let's get going."

Missy stopped, her boots squeaking on the packed snow. "There are people in there!"

"There can't be. Why would anyone be there?"

"I don't know. But there are. Lots of them. Well, four or five, at least. One of them has a handcart out in the driveway and they're loading things into it." Missy braced one hand on Veda Mae's back fence.

"Blake did say that his father stores stuff there, for the Garbage Guys. Is it Gary?"

"I can't tell from here. We're going to have to get a little closer."

"Why don't I go out and walk on the street? That way, I can look down the driveway with a curious expression on my face. Sneaking closer from an alley is the kind of thing that's suspicious by definition, but walking down the street is something that anyone can do." Pam turned back the way they had come.

Missy stood there, wishing that she wasn't by herself. She thought of sitting down on one of the piles of snow, but the sun was warm enough that it was starting to melt on top. Ugh.

The men were still loading the cart.

It seemed to be taking an awfully long time for Pam to walk around the block. The blocks in this part of town weren't all that big. She looked at her watch. After a while, she looked again. It was taking way too long for Pam to walk around the block.

Jacques-Pierre Dumais was feeling a certain amount of distress.

It was very unfortunate that Mademoiselle Pam, the daughter of that appalling Madame Hardesty, had come along just as Leon Boucher dropped an armload of the placards prepared for use at the demonstration against the hospital. She had paused, looked at the slogans, and said, "What on earth?"

Luckily she had not seen him, he thought. He had still been well within the garage. Compared to the sunlight on the snow, it was dark there. It was particularly fortunate since Boucher had panicked, run to the end of the driveway, and grabbed her, pulling the navy blue knit hat she was wearing down over her face. She had tried to jerk away, but her feet had slipped on the wet snow. Fortunately, she had not screamed. She had opened her mouth, but Leon, an experienced street fighter if not very bright, had jammed part of the knit hat into it with his fist as he dragged her into the garage.

Dumais dropped into the Rochellais patois of their childhood. No one else in this town would understand a word of it. "Fool. Idiot," he mouthed under his breath. "Her mother is a friend of the woman who owns this house. What did you think you were doing? You could have ignored her. Or said something casual and she would have gone on. You will be out of town by this afternoon. It wouldn't have mattered that she saw you."

"I do not believe in coincidences," Boucher answered.

"That is because you make them impossible. What could she have done? Now we must gag her and leave her here, because we have brought attention to ourselves." He gestured impatiently to the other three men. Turpin and a couple of the hired Germans. They had picked up the signs that Boucher had dropped and put them on the cart, but since then had been standing there like fish with their mouths open. Common day laborers, men with no initiative. "Finish loading the placards. I will be with you in a moment."

"We can start without you. At the end of the street, which way should we turn?"

"Toward the right."

He bound Mademoiselle Hardesty's hands firmly, placed an additional blindfold over her eyes on top of the ski mask, and pushed a rag into her mouth, leaving the knit hat in place over her mouth first. Then he dropped her on a pile of lumber and tied her feet. She would be secure enough until the day's activities were over.

Releasing her without either harming her or having her identify him would be… more complex. He would deal with that problem when the time came. If all was to go smoothly today, the demonstration planned for Leahy Medical Center needed to start very soon. He pulled the garage door shut and put the padlock back on as Boucher turned to follow the men with the handcart.

Missy looked at her watch again. The men were gone. She had seen the handcart and some men cross the far end of the alley, headed toward Route 250. Pam hadn't come back. Missy hoped that she hadn't slipped and fallen. The thin layer of melt that was developing on top of the packed snow was pretty treacherous.

She had better go around and see. Pam was more important than crawling into Veda Mae's garage in pursuit of some probably imaginary espionage papers. If she'd sprained her ankle or something, they'd have to get help. She started back up the alley, the way Pam had gone.

Nothing. No sign of her.

Pam wouldn't have had any reason to go beyond Veda Mae's driveway. Missy stopped and looked just as Dumais started to turn.

"Excuse me," she asked. "Have either of you gentlemen seen another girl? She was coming down this way and got ahead of me."

As quickly as possible, Jacques-Pierre faced back to the garage door and pulled down the ski mask he was wearing. Involuntarily, he closed his eyes and placed his fingers against his temples. Such a headache, la migraine, to have on an important occasion, the sun glaring on the snow and the day scarcely begun! He should have realized that where one of the girls was, it was only likely that the other would not be far away. He turned.

Leon, you fool! Don't go dashing at her like that! Don't make threatening gestures!

Too late.

Missy opened her mouth and prepared to shriek at the top of her lungs.

Jacques-Pierre could tell exactly what the girl was planning to do. Among other things he had done in the course of his time in Grantville, in an effort to understand these up-timers, he had attended recreational league sports events. He had observed Mademoiselle Jenkins' coaching. Her voice had carrying power.

"Leon, you idiot, stop it," he exploded, keeping his voice down in so far as he could. "We're going to be late." Embellished with considerable profanity. He dashed after the other man, grabbed his shoulder, and dragged him down the street in the direction the men had taken the handcart.

Missy stood there, feeling a little silly for having almost screamed. But she still didn't see Pam anywhere. She stood there for a moment, undecided. Then she walked up Veda Mae's driveway, cupped her hands on either side of her eyes, and waited a moment for her pupils to adjust so she could see inside the garage through the dirty windowpane in the door.

That was what she was doing when Ron came up behind her. She jumped about a foot when he asked, "Missy? What's going on?".

"I have never been so glad to see anybody in my whole entire life," she answered. "I think I'm a damsel in distress. Or, at least, Pam is. Help me rescue her. There's something really weird going on this morning."

Ron felt distinctly relieved. He had felt very foolish all the way as he ran from Lothlorien into town after she had phoned him, with every footstep that slogged through the snow suspecting that he would be greeted with, "What do you think I am, anyway? Some kind of an incompetent ditz?"

They looked at the padlock, decided it was substantial, and reverted to Plan A, which involved crawling into the garage from the back. Except Ron decided that by this time there wasn't much point in pretending to be a raccoon. He simply grabbed a couple of the old boards and yanked them off by main force, stripping the rusty nails.

"Pam," Missy was saying. "Are you okay?"

Pam swung her feet to the floor and sat up. "I have a mouth full of acrylic fuzz that tastes like hair, that's how I am. What in hell was going on here?"

"I don't have any idea, but I think we ought to tell the police."

There weren't any police to be had. The dispatcher took the information when they phoned from Pam's apartment, but said that this was going to be very low priority. Probably somebody would get back to them tomorrow.