Marie Ferrarella - In Broad Daylight

Brenda slipped her arm around the woman’s shoulders in mute comfort. It was the same thought that kept crossing and recrossing her own mind ever since she realized Annie wasn’t out on the lawn with the rest of the class. Chillingly, she’d known that something was very, very wrong right from the first.

“The important thing is that we’re going to get her back,” Brenda assured the woman who sobbed into her handkerchief. The doorbell rang and Brenda’s head bobbed up, alert.

“That’s going to be the tech team,” Dax told the housekeeper. He’d placed a call, giving them the Tylers’ address, while he and Nathan had waited for Brenda.

Motioning to the housekeeper not to trouble herself, Nathan fell back and opened the front door. Two men and one woman, all carrying large black bags that looked like suitcases, walked in.

Dax approached the housekeeper. “We’re going to need to place bugs on all your phone lines.”

“Yes, of course,” Martha whispered, her voice cracking.

She was still shaking, Brenda noted. Again she slipped her arm around the woman’s thin shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

“Why don’t you show them where all the phones are?” she suggested gently.

Like a marionette whose string had been pulled, Martha nodded, her head bobbing up and down.

But before she could leave the foyer, Dax moved in front of her. “There hasn’t been a ransom call yet, has there?”

“No.” She swallowed hard, renewed panic entering her eyes as she looked from one detective to the other, and then at Brenda. “At least, I don’t think so. I was out at the store until just a little while ago, when Mrs. Tyler called me. There are no message on the answering machine,” she tagged on as if to cover her absence.

Dax didn’t know if the woman was simpleminded or just addled by the situation. “Kidnappers don’t generally leave messages on answering machines.”

“Oh.” She seemed completely deflated as she looked to Brenda for help.

“You have caller ID, don’t you?” Brenda asked. It seemed a safe enough assumption. A power couple like Annie’s parents would want the service to help them avoid people they didn’t want to talk to.

Again, Martha bobbed her head up and down. Brenda saw a phone in the living room and crossed to it. She spun the dial located in the upper right-hand corner. No calls other than the one with a 212 area code had registered in the last three hours. That would have been Annie’s mother, calling from New York with instructions for the housekeeper.

Brenda looked at Dax and shook her head. He turned toward the team Nathan had just admitted. “Let’s get those taps set up. The kidnappers might be calling any minute now.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the telephone began to ring.

Everyone froze.

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