Chap­ter 11

“Mil­lie!” Nina’s voice sounds fran­tic on the oth­er line. “I need you to pick up Cecelia from school!”

I’ve got a pile of laun­dry bal­anced in my arms, and my cell phone is between my shoul­der and my ear. I always pick up imme­di­ate­ly when Nina calls, no mat­ter what I’m doing. Because if I don’t, she will call over and over (and over) until I do.

“Sure, no prob­lem,” I say.

“Oh, thank you!” Nina gush­es. “You’re such a dear! Just grab her from the Win­ter Acad­e­my at 2:45! You’re the best, Mil­lie!”

Before I can ask any oth­er ques­tions, like where I’m sup­posed to meet Cecelia or the address of the Win­ter Acad­e­my, Nina has hung up. As I remove the phone wedged under my ear, I feel a jolt of pan­ic when I see the time. I’ve got less than fif­teen min­utes to fig­ure out where this school is and retrieve my employer’s daugh­ter. Laun­dry is going to have to wait.

I type the name of the school into Google as I sprint down the stairs. Noth­ing comes up. The clos­est school by that name is in Wis­con­sin, and even though Nina makes some odd requests, I doubt she expects me to pick her daugh­ter up in Wis­con­sin in fif­teen min­utes. I call Nina back, but nat­u­ral­ly, she doesn’t pick up. Nei­ther does Andy when I try him.

Great.

While I pace across the kitchen, try­ing to fig­ure out what to do next, I notice a piece of paper stuck to the refrig­er­a­tor with a mag­net. It’s a school hol­i­day sched­ule. From the Wind­sor Acad­e­my.

She said Win­ter. Win­ter Acad­e­my. I’m sure of it. Didn’t she?

I don’t have time to won­der if Nina told me the wrong name or if she doesn’t know the name of the school her daugh­ter attends, where she is also vice pres­i­dent of the PTA. Thank­ful­ly, there’s an address on the fli­er, so I know exact­ly where to go. And I’ve only got ten min­utes to get there.

The Win­ches­ters live in a town that boasts some of the best pub­lic schools in the coun­try, but Cecelia goes to pri­vate school, because of course she does. The Wind­sor Acad­e­my is a huge ele­gant struc­ture with lots of ivory columns, dark brown bricks, and ivy run­ning along the walls that makes me feel like I’m pick­ing Cecelia up at Hog­warts or some­thing unre­al like that.

One oth­er thing I wish Nina had warned me about was the park­ing sit­u­a­tion at pick-up time. It is an absolute night­mare. I have to dri­ve around for sev­er­al min­utes search­ing for a spot, and I final­ly squeeze in between a Mer­cedes and a Rolls-Royce. I’m scared some­body might tow my dent­ed Nis­san just on prin­ci­ple.

Giv­en how lit­tle time I had to get to the school, I’m huff­ing and puff­ing as I sprint to the entrance. And nat­u­ral­ly, there are five sep­a­rate entrances. Which one will Cecelia be com­ing out of? There’s no indi­ca­tion where I should go. I try call­ing Nina again, but once more, the call goes to voice­mail. Where is she? It’s none of my busi­ness, but the woman doesn’t have a job and I do all the chores. What could she be doing with her­self?

After ques­tion­ing sev­er­al irri­ta­ble par­ents, I ascer­tain that Cecelia will be com­ing out of the very last entrance on the right side of the school. But just because I am deter­mined not to screw this up, I approach two immac­u­late­ly dressed women chat­ting by the door and ask, “Is this the exit for the fourth graders?”

“Yes, it is.” The thin­ner of the two women—a brunette with the most per­fect­ly shaped eye­brows I’ve ever seen—looks me up and down. “Who are you look­ing for?”

I squirm under her gaze. “Cecelia Win­ches­ter.”

The two women exchange know­ing looks. “You must be the new maid Nina hired,” the short­er woman—a redhead—says.

“House­keep­er,” I cor­rect her, although I don’t know why. Nina can call me what­ev­er she wants.

The brunette snick­ers at my com­ment but doesn’t say any­thing about it. “So how is it so far work­ing there?”

She’s dig­ging for dirt. Good luck with that—I’m not going to give her any. “It’s great.”

The women exchange looks again. “So Nina isn’t dri­ving you crazy?” the red­head asks me.

“What do you mean?” I say care­ful­ly. I don’t want to gos­sip with these harpies, but at the same time, I’m curi­ous about Nina.

“Nina is just a bit… high strung,” the brunette says.

“Nina is nuts,” the red­head pipes up. “Lit­er­al­ly.”

I suck in a breath. “What?”

The brunette elbows the red­head hard enough to make her gasp. “Noth­ing. She’s just jok­ing around.”

At that moment, the doors to the school swing open and chil­dren pour out. If there were any chance to get more infor­ma­tion out of these two women, the chance is gone as they both move in the direc­tion of their own fourth graders. But I can’t stop think­ing about what they said.

I spot Cecelia’s pale blond hair near the entrance. Even though most of the oth­er kids are wear­ing jeans and T‑shirts, she’s wear­ing anoth­er lacy dress, this one a pale sea green. She sticks out like a sore thumb. I have no prob­lem keep­ing her in my sight as I move toward her.

“Cecelia!” I wave my arm fran­ti­cal­ly as I get clos­er. “I’m here to pick you up!”

Cecelia looks at me like she would much rather get into the back of the van of some beard­ed home­less man than go home with me. She shakes her head and turns away from me.

“Cecelia!” I say, more sharply. “Come on. Your mom said I should pick you up.”

She turns back to look at me, and her eyes say she thinks I’m a moron. “No, she didn’t. Sophia’s moth­er is pick­ing me up and tak­ing me to karate.”

Before I can protest, a woman in her for­ties wear­ing yoga pants and a pullover comes over and rests her hand on Cecelia’s shoul­der. “Ready for karate, girls?”

I blink up at the woman. She does not appear to be a kid­nap­per. But there’s obvi­ous­ly been some mis­un­der­stand­ing. Nina called me and told me to pick up Cecelia. She was very clear about it. Well, except for the part where she told me the wrong school. But oth­er than that, she was very clear.

“Excuse me,” I say to the woman. “I work for the Win­ches­ters and Nina asked me to pick up Cecelia today.”

The woman arch­es an eye­brow and places a recent­ly man­i­cured hand on her hip. “I don’t think so. I pick up Cecelia every sin­gle Wednes­day and…”