Girl In The Water Part 25

As Henry disappeared inside, girls ran from the building to pile their crafts in the back of the pickup.

Pierre used up the last of his cement and stood, then stepped toward Daniela. "Want to come with me to the shops to drop off the goodies?"

She glanced at Ian.

He did his best not to grind his teeth. No way to tell her no without looking like an idiot. "Fine with me."

He wanted to canva.s.s the neighborhood again anyway. He could do that alone. Daniela deserved a couple of hours off. It wasn't as if they were joined at the hip.

So she went, with Pierre the French Casanova, while Ian stayed behind.

Mrs. Frieseke invited him to lunch with her. She was alone at the staff table, the others already having finished. The older girls were back in their workshop, the younger girls in their cla.s.ses.

"Oh, your poor face," the woman cooed, her plate of rice and fish nearly empty. "It hurts to look at you. Those thugs in Rio did a number. I was a nurse back home. Did I tell you that? In San Francisco. Nurse for a while, then when my back gave out, I became a social worker. Are you sure you don't want a b.u.t.terfly bandage for that eyebrow? You'll have a scar there."

"My own stupidity," he said. "When they asked for money, I shouldn't have resisted."

"They didn't know you were the law. They don't respect the law anyway. Not in Rio and not Manaus. With the economy slipping, crime is going through the roof. I worry that, if it gets worse, we won't be able to get enough volunteers to come here." She sighed. "Where did you and Daniela go this morning in such a hurry?"

"Police station." Ian dug into the rice, cooked in coconut milk and flavored with a spice he couldn't name.

The woman brightened. "Do they have anything?"

"Thought they did, but it didn't pan out."

She stared into her soup, guilt filling her eyes. "I hope you find that child."

"We'll do our best, ma'am."

She looked up. "Is Daniela still out?"

"She's gone to the shops with Pierre."

Mrs. Frieseke raised a spa.r.s.e eyebrow. "Heather won't like it."

Ian stopped eating. "Why is that?"

"They're an item, as they used to say in my day. Heather is already plenty jealous of Hannah. Pierre had a fling with Hannah last year. He's a handsome young man. The women enjoy him."

And it sounded like he'd enjoyed half the staff.

And he was out with Daniela.

A dark mood enveloped Ian and turned him off his food. He didn't even touch his fish. He waited politely until Mrs. Frieseke finished her lunch, then said good-bye and moved on. He went to see the few neighbors who hadn't been home the first time he'd checked out the small wooden houses out back.

He went from home to home, asked his questions, got plenty of answers, but nothing that helped. All the while, he kept an eye on the window of the room he shared with Daniela, but he didn't see any movement. She wasn't back yet.

Three hours had pa.s.sed. How could going to the shops to drop off a load of souvenirs take three d.a.m.ned hours?

They were going to have a talk about the French Boy Wonder when she got back.

Chapter Sixteen.

Daniela Pierre took Daniela to lunch after the shops, so they didn't return to See-Love-Aid until midafternoon. The time hadn't been wasted either. Pierre seemed to know everything about everyone and wasn't afraid of sharing.

He was twenty-two, her age, fun, entertaining, handsome. And still, for most of the time they spent together, Daniela had been thinking about Ian. She was glad when they were finally returning to See-Love-Aid.

Pierre looped his arm around her shoulders as they walked inside, and she let him, as an experiment. But neither Pierre's nearness nor his touch made her feel like Ian did. Her heart didn't race; her skin didn't tingle.

She was about to move away from him when she spotted Ian in the rec room, talking intently with Carol, the pregnant staffer, on the sofa in the corner.

"We're back," Pierre said. "Did we miss any fun?"

Carol and Ian turned toward them at the same time.

A quick look of annoyance flashed across Carol's face.

What's that about? Does she like Pierre?

Her husband had died seven months ago. Maybe Carol was lonely. If she was ready to move on, Daniela wasn't going to blame her.

But while Carol was annoyed at Pierre's hand on Daniela's shoulder, Ian's gaze was completely emotionless and flat.

Nudged by some little devil, Daniela stepped closer to Pierre.

Ian's expression grew tighter.

And even though Daniela knew she was being juvenile, she couldn't resist whispering to Pierre, "Hey, let's go tell the girls how much money they just made."

Pierre winked at her and steered her out of the room.

She didn't look back at Ian, but she hoped he was having a stroke. He deserved it. If he refused to admit that he wanted her, why shouldn't she have fun with someone else?

But as they found the girls out back and delivered the good news, Daniela soon became tired of Pierre's joking and messing around. He did a French mime imitation, then demonstrated some break-dancing moves to the girls' great amus.e.m.e.nt.

He was like a kid. He was immeasurably immature compared to Ian. Honestly, Pierre was even immature compared to Daniela.

She used the opportunity to chat with some of the teenagers she hadn't talked to before.

"Do people who don't work at See-Love-Aid ever come here?" she asked a sweetly dispositioned sibling pair, Gabriela and Fernanda, who took the initiative to show her the vegetable garden.

"Of course," Gabriela, the older sister, said. "We have foreign visitors, donors. Some of the shop owners come to negotiate with Mrs. Frieseke. Lots of people come here. Some girls have relatives who visit."

"Does anyone ever go upstairs?"

The girls shook their heads simultaneously, ear-length brown hair swinging around their tanned cheeks. "Visitors aren't allowed to go upstairs."

But then the younger girl, Fernanda, giggled.

The older sister, Gabriela, flashed her a warning look.

Daniela got an idea. "Has a boy ever snuck up?"

The girls took great interest in their matching red rubber sandals.

"It must be hard that there're only girls here," Daniela said, although it seemed pretty good to her.

Fernanda bit her lip, then asked, "Did you go to school with boys in America?"

"I went to college with boys, yes."

"Did you have a boyfriend?" The girl's eyes sparkled with mischievous curiosity. Both sisters watched her with rapt attention.

"I had friends who were boys."

The younger girl giggled again. "Gabriela has a boyfriend," she whispered.

Her sister shoved her. "Fernanda!"

And Daniela said, "I won't tell."

Gabriela shot a warning look at her sister. To Daniela, she said, "He only came upstairs once. When I was sick and I couldn't go down to work. He brought me fried piranhas."

Daniela remembered fried piranhas fondly. "Seems like a good guy."

Gabriela allowed a shy smile. "He is. He wants to marry me when I graduate from here."

Daniela smiled back, grateful beyond words that places like this existed.

She fanned herself with her hand as they stood out under the sun. She'd gotten used to the cooler climate in DC. Manaus was even hotter than the jungle village she'd grown up in. In the village, they had the tree canopy above to cast shade. The city was little more than streets and buildings. The blacktop radiated back the sun's heat, and the buildings trapped the sweltering air, kept it from moving.

Earlier, during the un-air-conditioned truck ride to the shops and back, sweat had dampened Daniela's shirt, and she was even hotter now, standing in the garden. The combination of heat and humidity was too much.

"So just one boy?" she asked. "No other outsider has ever been upstairs?"

But the girls just shook their heads earnestly, and as Daniela looked into their open and honest gazes, she believed them.

After she finished the garden tour with the sisters, she decided to go upstairs and wash off, put on a clean dress.

As she reached Carol's room, she slowed. Then, on impulse, she knocked.

She couldn't shake off the image of Carol so cozy with Ian on the couch downstairs earlier. What had they been talking about? Daniela wanted to chat with the woman, even if only for ten minutes, wanted to get a feel for whether or not Carol was maybe interested in Ian.

Because when Daniela had turned to leave with Pierre earlier, Carol hadn't been upset. She looked relieved. As if maybe she'd been upset not because Daniela had been out with Pierre, but because they'd come back and interrupted Carol's little chitchat in the rec room with Ian.

The thought made Daniela mad enough to choke a caiman.

She had no trouble seeing Carol being attracted to Ian. Who wouldn't be? And Ian...

Carol was older than Daniela. Ian had a hang-up about age. Carol had lost her husband. Ian had lost his wife. They had that in common. Carol was having a baby. Ian missed his sons, even if he refused to talk about them.

Is Carol what Ian looks for in a woman?

Daniela clenched her teeth.

As she knocked again, the door pushed open. It hadn't been properly closed.

She stuck her head in. "Carol?"

But Carol wasn't in there.

A printout on the small table just inside the door caught Daniela's eyes. A plane ticket confirmation for the day after tomorrow. Then she noted the half-packed suitcase in the corner.

Daniela pulled the door closed and walked toward her own room. Carol was leaving? Was that what she'd been talking to Ian about earlier?

n.o.body could blame the woman if she'd changed her mind about having her baby here. Daniela was sure Manaus's hospitals were great and very modern, but she'd bet hospitals in the US were still better.

She washed, changed, then went back downstairs. Ian and Carol were gone from the couch. Daniela looked around, but when she didn't find him, she hopped on a bus, then another and another, and rode around the neighborhood. With Ian off somewhere, she was free to follow up on an idea she'd had earlier.

The Heyerdahls worked and lived at See-Love-Aid. Most likely the kidnapper would have first noticed them somewhere around here. That meant that the kidnapper lived somewhere around here.

Daniela wasn't sure what she was looking for. But she did look at every baby she spotted. Even the ones who weren't blond. Hair could be colored. She was pretty sure she would recognize baby Lila. And if she needed a reminder of the little girl's face, all she needed to do was look at one of the MISSING CHILD posters that seemed to be everywhere.

She didn't see Ian until that evening, back in their room.

Her bus trip netted nothing, but she told him what she'd learned from Fernanda and Gabriela about visiting boyfriends.

"So people we didn't previously know about do sometimes go upstairs," she said. "Except, there's no pa.s.sage between the girls' dorms and the staff housing, not with that door always locked. The key had been at the ER with Mrs. Frieseke. So I don't think a boy sneaking in could have taken the baby."

Ian watched her thoughtfully. He'd already taken his shower. Water glistened in his hair. His clean T-shirt clung to his wet skin, outlining his muscles. "But if boys sneak up to the girls," he said, "it's possible that a man might sneak up to one of the female staff in the adult dorms."

She lifted her gaze to his eyes. "It's possible."

"So maybe somebody has a boyfriend on the outside. A boyfriend she's hiding from the others for some reason."

"Or," Daniela added, "someone has a girlfriend that he's hiding."

"First thing tomorrow morning, we're going to start looking into this. Talk to people one-on-one, discreetly. I'll start with Carol. She's been here for two years. She knows a lot about everyone."

Hating a pregnant woman felt wrong, but if someone decided to kidnap Carol, Daniela would have been only mildly anguished. This trip was supposed to bring her and Ian closer together. Not Ian and another woman.

Thank G.o.d, Carol was leaving.