1
CLARICE
It was very like Veronica Chase to volunteer for charitable acts and have Clarice actually do them.
Clarice reminded herself that it was her own fault; she was awful at saying no to anyone and had the terrible habit of offering to do things she didn’t want to do to ingratiate herself. She told herself she didn’t mind the extra work, she didn’t actually care if it was her name on the thank you certificate that Veronica would hang up later, and it wasn’t like Clarice had a lot of personal life to work around.
Besides, it was a good cause! A clothing and toy drive helped parents clear out their closets before Christmas and gave their outgrown goods to someone who needed them. Clarice had been the recipient of plenty of hand-me-downs of her own, mostly from her older sister and cousins, and the pre-holiday purges sometimes dredged up things that were more appreciated than the actual Christmas presents she received. (Her mother always insisted on buying her fashion dolls that she had no interestin and her grandparents gave her moralizing books that were well below her reading level.)
She drove methodically down the streets of downtown, double-parking to load up the donation boxes from each of the businesses that had signed up, hurrying so she wouldn’t get a parking ticket. The second to the last place, an accountant’s office, gave her a sugar-crusted cookie and thanked her for organizing the drive.
“I’ll be sure to tell Veronica,” Clarice said, licking the sugar from her fingers.
The receptionist winced and Clarice wondered if she should apologize, but she wasn’t sure what to apologizefor.She knew that Veronica hadn’t really endeared herself to all of the people she leased to. It wasn’t that she was a bad landlord, and she certainly wasn’t a slumlord or anything awful like that, but she could sometimes snap when she was under a lot of stress, and she didn’t tolerate fools or delinquency lightly.
An aging pickup racing by on the road gave a massive backfire as she brought the bag of clothing out to her car, and Clarice clutched the bag and nearly dropped it. Her heart was still racing when she closed her trunk and walked to the next business.
It was the last stop, a day care called Tiny Paws, and they had left a bulging box outside the door. Clarice didn’t want to believe some of Veronica’s more wild accusations about cults and witchcraft that centered around the day care, but they certainly wereunfriendly. Everything about them saidgo away, right down to making her collect a donation box out of a snowbank instead of letting her come inside where it was warm to get it from an actual person.
There was some clothing and a pair of boots nearby, like someone had tossed them onto it at the last momentwithout bothering to open the box and they’d fallen or blown off. Clarice opened the box flaps and stuffed the clothing into it as best she could, along with a leathery ball tangled in the shirt. Her trunk was full, so she squeezed the box into the back seat and got into the driver’s seat. She had to take off her mittens to drive, and the steering wheel was painfully cold. The heater didn’t work well, and it wasn’t warm in the car until she finally got to the donation center…which had closed early.
Clarice parked in front with a sigh and considered her options. They had an after hours drop box, but she wasn’t sure if all of her boxes would fit in it. Besides, Veronica was going to want a receipt. Clarice would have to come back again during her lunch hour on the following day.
She put the car in reverse, looked into the rear view mirror, and gave a shriek as she found that there was a person in her back seat.
It was, fortunately, not a man with a knife trying to carjack her ten-year-old Toyota, but a small boy wearing absolutely nothing.
Which was nearly as alarming.
“What are you doing in my car?!” Clarice demanded. “Why are you naked?!”
“YOU HAVE MY CLOTHES!” the boy protested. He was struggling to extract clothing from the open box, but he was half on top of it, which complicated the operation considerably.
Clarice slammed her foot on the brake when she realized that the car was still rolling backwards, and she put it into park so she could collect her shattered nerves.
How had she not noticed him? Why was henakedin December in Montana? “Did you ride all the way here without a seatbelt? I could get a fine for that!”
“FIND WHAT?” the boy demanded.
“Not find, a FINE. They’d make me pay a FINE.”
“I’M FINE!” The boy had gotten a shirt from the box and was pulling over his head. “I can dress myself!”
“Please do!” Clarice took a determined breath. She had to be logical about this. There was a stray kid in her car. She should probably call…who? Child services? The police? “Where are your parents?”
The boy poked his head out of the neck hole following a few futile attempts. “Tiny PAWS.”
Tiny Paws. “The day care?”
“Yeah! I go to DAY CARE there with TARA and FRANZI and AMY and JACKSON and…” He continued to list children while Clarice made herself breathe slowly in and slowly back out. He had slipped into her car while she was at Tiny Paws picking up the box. That was the only explanation. She wasn’t surehow, but he had crawled into her back seat after the box and Clarice had driven him unwittingly to the donation center. She wasn’t going to be charged with kidnapping, and kids his age were always running off without their clothes, weren’t they? She looked at him in the mirror. He looked a little old for doing the strip and streak.
Andit was below freezing.
But nothing else made any sense.
“Okay, I’m going to drive you back to Tiny Paws now, okay? But you have to get dressed and put on a seat belt.” He was probably small enough to require a carseat. A booster seat, at least. Did she remember that back seats were safer for kids? “Hang on, I’ll have to move that box.”
He’d found underwear and pants, thank heavens, and was rifling through the box when Clarice got to the back door. “I CAN’T FIND one of my SOCKS.”
