Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(56)

While Olivia was still commiserating over thoughts of the boy huddled alongside a garbage can in some freezing alleyway, the telephone rang. In two long strides, she crossed the room and jerked the receiver to her ear, “Ethan?” she asked.

“Ethan?” Clara echoed, “isn’t he in bed?”

“Oh,” Olivia moaned, “it’s you.”

“Yeah, it’s me! How come you asked if I was Ethan Allen?”

“I thought maybe it was him calling.”

“Him calling…at twelve o’clock midnight? Why, a boy his age ought to be in bed! Why in the world would you let him—”

“I didn’t let him. He got his dander up and went flying out the door.”

“For no reason?”

“Well,” Olivia stammered, “I might’ve pushed a bit too much in asking about his mama.”

“You of all people,” Clara grumbled with an air of annoyance, “…should realize that Ethan Allen ain’t ready to talk about such a tragedy. Right now he just needs comforting, somebody to reach out…”

As the words settled on Olivia’s ears, she could feel herself start to shrink. With every word she seemed to grow smaller and smaller. She was five feet tall, then four…

“You surely know how it feels to…”

She slipped down to three feet, the size of a toddler with a world that revolves around me’s; which somehow seemed appropriate considering her behavior.

“Have you no sense of compassion?” Clara chided, “Why, that poor motherless boy…”

By the time Clara finished, Olivia envisioned herself only inches high, small enough swallowed up by the dog searching for his master. She breathed a heavy sigh and said, “You’re right.”

Clara abruptly hung up the telephone and Olivia was left with her thoughts—thoughts of how she’d not been the least bit Christian in her treatment of the boy. Sure, she’d bought him some clothes and a few games, but the whole while she’d been wishing he’d hurry up and leave, taking his dog with him. “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” she whispered into a flood of tears, “please come home.”

A stream of tears was still rolling down her face when the front door banged open, and in walked a gathering of neighbors. “We’ve gotta find that boy,” Clara, who was apparently the person in charge, announced. Fred McGinty nodded, but with his hair standing on end and his right eye partway closed he had the look of a man not fully roused from sleep. Harry Hornsby, although he’d had the presence of mind to grab hold of a flashlight, had missed the fact that a cuff of striped pajama was poking out from beneath the sleeve of his jacket. Barbara Conklin and Maggie both had a trail of nightgown hanging from the hem of their coat. With the exception of Clara, an acknowledged night owl, they were all red-eyed, but anxious to join in the hunt for Ethan Allen.

“Which way was he headed?” Ed Vaughn, a man from the third floor, asked.

Olivia brushed back a few last tears and shrugged.

Fred stepped forward and started organizing the operation. “Vaughn,” he said, “you check down at the movie house. “Paul,” he pointed to the thin-faced man standing at the back of the crowd, a man Olivia had never before seen, “you check the all night burger stand. Pete and me are gonna head over to the park.”

“We ladies will search up and down the street,” Clara volunteered, “…check the courtyards, behind buildings.”

Maggie, a woman known for toting along her umbrella on even the sunniest of days, wrinkled her brow. “Cold as it is,” she sighed, “we gotta hope he’s dressed warm.”

“He isn’t,” Olivia stammered, her voice faltering and falling into another rush of tears, “he left here in shirtsleeves, no sweater or jacket.”

“No jacket?” Clara screeched, but by then Olivia was sobbing so furiously it would have been unfair to expect an answer.

“Let’s go,” Fred commanded, thrusting his right arm forward, “we’re gonna have to move fast!” As the others started out the door he turned back to Olivia. “Put a leash on that dog,” he said, “try and get him to sniff the boy out.”

Olivia did as she was told. With a firm lock on the leash, she trudged up one walkway and down the next, urging the dog to find his master. “Find Ethan,” she begged, “please, find him. Find him and I’ll buy you a gigantic steak bone.”

The residents of Wyattsville Arms worked throughout the night; poking their heads down alleyways, crisscrossing the park behind narrow flashlight beams, and hollering out for Ethan Allen to come home. As the hours crept by, the call of his name grew more urgent and other people joined in the search. “Ethan Allen, can you hear me?” they’d shout, flashing a circle of light onto the wall behind a row of garbage cans, or beneath the branches of an overgrown hedge. By morning, a drizzle of rain started to fall, not hard enough to send the searchers running for cover, but hard enough to soak them through to their underwear and set their teeth to chattering. They still had not found Ethan Allen.

“A boy as resourceful as he is could be miles from here by now,” Olivia said, even though she doubted Ethan Allen had anyplace else to go. She mournfully suggested the searchers go home, before they caught their death of cold. “I’ll have to call the police station and report him missing,” she sobbed, “what else can I do?” With her shoulders rounded and her chin drooping down into the collar of her coat, she and the dog walked through the front door of the apartment building.