Free Entranced by Nora Roberts Page B

might have wondered why he was just sitting down there. Sometimes your mind wanders when you’re working, and I was thinking he might have been visiting someone, waiting for them to get home. Then I was figuring he hadn’t come all that far ’cause he had state plates.”
    Mel banked down her excitement and mentally crossed her fingers. “I always used to play this game when I was a kid. My mom and I traveled a lot, and she tried to give me things to do. I guess you know how car trips are with kids.”
    Mrs. O’Dell rolled her eyes. For the first time, there was a trace of humor in them. “Oh, do I.”
    “I always tried to make words out of the letters on plates. Or come up with funny names for what the initials stood for.”
    “We do the same thing with Billy. He’s old enough. But the baby …”
    “Maybe you noticed the license number, casually, while you were working. Without even thinking about it, if you know what I mean.”
    And Mel could see that she did try for a minute. Her lips pursed, her eyes narrowed. Then she made an impatient movement with her dust rag and closed down. “I’ve got a lot of more important things on my mind. I saw it was a California plate, like I said, but I didn’t stand there and play games with it.”
    “No, of course not, but sometimes you pick up things without even knowing it. Then, when you think back—”
    “Miss—”
    “Sutherland,” Mel told her.
    “I’d like to help you. Really. My heart goes out to that poor woman and her husband. But I make a habit of minding my own business and keeping to my own. Now there’s nothing else I can tell you, and I’m falling behind schedule.”
    Recognizing the wall she’d just hit, Mel took out a business card. “If you remember anything about the plate, anything at all, would you call me?”
    Billy piped up. “Said cat.”
    “Billy, don’t interrupt when people are talking.”
    He shrugged and drove his fire truck up his sister’s leg to make her giggle.
    “What said cat?” Mel asked.
    “The car did.” Billy made engine noises. “
K-a-t
, that spells
cat
,” he chanted, and had his mother sighing.
    “You don’t spell
cat
with a
k
. It’s
c-a-t
. I can’t believe you’ll be going into the second grade and—”
    Mel put a hand on Mrs. O’Dell’s arm. “Please,” she murmured, then squatted down in front of Billy. “Did you see the car down there Billy, the dirty brown car?”
    “Sure. When I came home from school it was there. Freddy’s mom had the pool.”
    “Car pool,” Mrs. O’Dell said quietly.
    “She let me off right behind it. I don’t like riding with Freddy, ’cause he pinches.”
    “Did you play the license-plate game with the brown car?” Mel asked.
    “I like it when they make words. Like
cat
.”
    “You’re sure it was that brown car? Not some other car you saw on the drive home from school?”
    “No, ’cause it was parked just out front the whole week Freddy’s mom drove me. Sometimes it was on the other side of the street. Then it wasn’t there anymore when Mom had the pool.”
    “Do you remember the numbers, Billy?”
    “I don’t like numbers. Letters are better.
K-a-t
,” he repeated. Then he looked up at his mother. “If it doesn’t spell
cat
, what does it spell?”
    With a grin, Mel kissed him right on the chocolate-smeared mouth. “This time it spells
thanks
. Thanks a lot.”
    *  *  *
    Mel was practically singing when she walked back into Sutherland Investigations. She had something. Maybe it was only half of a license plate, and maybe the information had come from a six-year-old, but she had something.
    She switched her answering machine to playback, then nipped into the kitchen for a soft drink. Her self-satisfied smile remained as she jotted down the messages.
    Good solid investigative work, she told herself. That was the way you got things done. Persistence didn’t hurt. She didn’t imagine the police had managed to get anywhere near Billy O’Dell, or