True-Life Adventure

almost screaming.
    “I didn’t say I did.”
    “She’s just gone away, that’s all.”
    “Where?”
    She looked completely stricken and then she started sobbing.
    “Joan, what’s wrong? What did I say?”
    She sobbed some more and didn’t answer. This was getting to be a habit— about this time yesterday I’d been with Brissette’s sobbing assistant, Janet.
    “You sound like him,” Joan said. “He kept asking me where she was.”
    “Who? Blick?”
    She shook her head.
    “Birnbaum!”
    “He said he’d ruin me if I didn’t tell him. I swear to God I’d have told him if I knew. I just didn’t know; that’s all there was to it. I don’t.”
    “I believe you. But Lindsay did call the Saturday she left, didn’t she? Were you surprised when she told you what she was doing?”
    Joan dried her eyes; she was calming down a bit. “No. She’d been talking about it for a long time.”
    “But why? Why would she do it?”
    “She wanted to be with Terry, that’s all.”
    “It seems out of character. Lindsay isn’t exactly the maternal type, from what I can gather.”
    “Have you talked with Jacob?”
    “A little, yes.”
    “Did he tell you anything about Terry?”
    “Nothing that impressed me, no. Sardis says she’s a smart little kid.”
    “She’s very exceptional. But that isn’t what I mean. Jacob didn’t happen to mention that she has about six months to live?”

CHAPTER 12
    If that didn’t explain why Lindsay should get a sudden maternal urge, I didn’t know what would.
    “No,” I said when I’d caught my breath. “He didn’t mention it.”
    “She has leukemia.”
    “I don’t get it. Sardis and Susanna are her best friends and they don’t seem to know a thing about it.”
    “She couldn’t talk about it with them. She might have told Sardis, but— well, Sardis had her own problems. She was barely hanging on herself and Lindsay didn’t want to make things worse for her. She may not have told her anyway. Lindsay’s a very private person. She doesn’t like people feeling sorry for her. She likes to think she can work things out herself.”
    “Is that why she didn’t tell Susanna?”
    “Partly. But remember, Susanna is her boss. She didn’t want Susanna worrying about her and worrying what would happen to the show when Terry went into the hospital and things like that. Also, she always knew there was a possibility she would kidnap Terry and leave Susanna pretty well in the lurch. She’d been desperately trying to get Jacob to give her some time with Terry and she always planned to take it if that was the only way she could get it— if Jacob wouldn’t agree, I mean. She didn’t want to involve Susanna.”
    “Did she ever mention trying any ‘alternative’ treatments for Terry?”
    “You mean like Laetrile or something? God, no. Jacob would shit a brick.”
    I could just bet Jacob would. If there was one thing an establishment scientist would hate, it would be cancer quacks— especially within several thousand miles of his sick daughter.
    Here was what I imagined had happened: Lindsay had suggested the cancer quack show because, in her desperation, she hoped to find out about something that might help Terry. She did in fact see something she thought was worth trying. She put it to Jacob; he shat a brick; and she figured her last chance to save the daughter she hardly knew was to kidnap her and take her to the quack. All I had to do was figure out which quack it was.
    I asked Joan one more question: “Did you tell the police about Terry’s illness?”
    “No. They didn’t ask why Lindsay left, just where she went.”
    My lack of confidence in Blick remained unshaken.
    I said good-bye to Joan and walked back to Susanna’s station. I figured she might know which of the quacks Lindsay had liked. At least she could run the show for me and I could look over the candidates. As I walked, I turned things over in my head.
    Little Terry’s illness explained an awful lot. Why Lindsay’d been depressed lately, for openers, and why she’d been withdrawing from her friends. Why she did a bizarre thing like kidnap her own daughter and leave her job. And if my hunch was right, why she did it when she did it.
    But it didn’t come close to explaining why three people had been killed. It also didn’t explain why the Koehlers had reneged on our interview. If Jacob was worried that his precious daughter was in the hands of some quack, why wouldn’t he do anything he could to