Free Cockatiels at Seven by Donna Andrews Page A

trouble reading it. Nadine, I suspected.
    When I’d finished copying the names and numbers, I glanced under the desk.
    “What are you doing, Timmy?” I said.
    “Nothing,” he said. He was almost telling the truth. He was just sitting under the desk, clutching Kiki and gently poking at my ankles with his foot. But as I bent down, pretending to check on him, I turned the notebook page I’d been writing in so I’d have a clean sheet.
    “We’re leaving in a second,” I said. I quickly scribbled a note to Karen:
Karen—hi! Dropped by with Timmy. Please call me to let me know where I should bring him.
    I added my home and cell phone numbers and underlined the word “please” several times. Then I ripped the sheet out of the spiral notebook and set it on top of the “While-you-were-out” notes.
    “Okay, Timmy,” I said. “Mommy’s not here yet. We’ll come back later when she’s here.”
    Nadine frowned and opened her mouth, then closed it again, apparently realizing that any mention of a return visit was only intended to expedite Timmy’s exit. She returned to the door of her office to watch us go.
    “Sorry,” I said, glancing down as we passed Sandie’s now denuded desk.
    Sandie’s back was to Nadine. She didn’t move her head, or smile, but she made some sort of frantic, incomprehensible gesture with her hands. I paused.
    “Do you need any help putting stuff back on your desk?” I said.
    “No thanks,” she said, looking up and still gesturing. As a mime, she was a dismal failure. If she was trying to tell me something, it wasn’t working. Maybe she wasn’t signaling. Maybe she was just having some kind of stress-induced arm spasms.
    I gave up trying to interpret her signals and reached down to take Timmy’s hand. He shifted his sippy cup into his other hand to take mine and its top fell off, spilling the tiny amount of milk that he hadn’t finished—maybe a tablespoon’s worth.
    “Oh, no!” Sandie whispered. A little melodramatically, if you asked me. It was milk, not blood.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. I stooped down and began mopping at the spill with a tissues from my purse. “Do you have any paper towels? Because I could run to the ladies room if—”
    “This is one of the reasons we cannot allow children here,” Nadine said. She squatted down and began to spray Windex on the remnants of the spill and mop around with giant wads of paper towel. “Apart from thepotential damage to the facility, it constitutes a serious safety hazard.”
    Damage to the facility? The floor was linoleum. And yes, spills could be a safety hazard, but so was knocking people down in your haste to clean up spills. My ribs still smarted where she’d elbowed me out of the way.
    “I’m so sorry,” I said aloud. “I’ll take him away right now.”
    Nadine didn’t answer. By this time, she’d sprayed Windex on an area at least five times larger than the original spill, and showed no signs of slowing down. I grabbed Timmy’s hand, made sure his sippy cup was upright, and tiptoed out.
    Outside in the hall, I stopped to adjust the Velcro on one of Timmy’s shoes. It didn’t really need adjusting, but it put me out of Nadine’s sight and still visible to Sandie. I was hoping Sandie would notice me, and wondering if I should try to contact her to find out why she was signaling me so urgently. Should I call her up? Lie in wait until Nadine left and then return?
    At first, Sandie didn’t see me—presumably because she was focusing on Nadine’s cleanup efforts. I could tell when Nadine had finished because Sandie relaxed slightly, took a deep breath, and glanced out the doorway as if contemplating escape. She saw me crouching outside and luckily she got the hint.
    “Nadine, I’m going over to the cafeteria as soon as I finish this batch of receipts,” she said. “Can I bring you back something?”
    Apart from the initial no, I didn’t quite catch Nadine’s answer, but the tone of polite contempt came