The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) by Jessie Bishop Powell Page B

seen Natalie blushing. But Sara was right. Whatever else happened, Sara and William
would
be leaving Natalie and Adam’s house soon. And the child deserved the truth. “But I’m not. I’ve missed you for too long. I’ll
always
find you from now until forever. Pinkie swear.” Warily, Sara met Natasha’s outstretched pinkie with her own. “I also know,” Natasha went on, “that you’re right about this being the weirdest playdate ever. You know I’ll always tell you the truth, right? And I absolutely promise you we’re here to play, and you’ll see me again soon.”
    “How soon?”
    “Later this month.” Natasha stared at Sara. “Maybe even at Natty and Adam’s house. I was worried about you the other day, and so were Lance and Noel here. It’s upsetting when a child is missing . . .”
    “Yes, because I know all about stranger-danger, and I didn’t talk to anybody at all when I—”
    Sara would have gone on longer in this vein, but Natasha cut her off. The folder had this right, then. It said she was easily distracted and would hone in on unexpected portions of a conversation as if those things were central to the discussion. Natasha repeated the first part of her statement. “I was worried about you,” she said, “and so were Lance and Noel here. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
    Sara’s nose started twitching like a rabbit’s, and she creased her brow and poked her tongue out of her mouth, deep in thought. “Maybe you’ll see us at Natty and Adam’s, and maybe . . . somewhere else?” she guessed.
    “Right,” said Tasha, before the adults could shush her.
    Suddenly, Sara’s expression lifted, the furrowed brow smoothed, and the eyes grew wide. “Oh!” she said, looking straight at Natasha now. “Okay. Got it. Let’s play.”
    The folder warned she struggled to understand cause-and-effect relationships, had trouble connecting the dots between points A and B in any given conversation. But I thought I had seen quite a few dots light up on her face right then. She wasn’t all the way to point C yet. She hadn’t figured out we wanted to adopt them, but she knew we planned to foster them if this meeting went well. And that was enough.
    Sara grabbed her brother’s shoulders. “Do you got it?” she asked.
    “You got trucks,” William said.
His
folder had identified him as practically nonverbal. It sounded like he had a few more words than Meredith Frasier was letting on. Also, he was stating a fact. While the rest of us had been so focused on Sara, he had emptied two small backpacks onto the floor. He and Sara both had cars and trucks he had stretched end to end in a small line of traffic between the table and a wall. The vehicles were arranged largest to smallest, with like colors together. Each time he picked up a new one from the pile, he adjusted the line to place the newcomer in the right spot.
    “Noel,” Lance breathed. “Look. He’s
classifying.
” His tone said,
See? Our little scientist
, as if he and I had somehow had a hand in William’s skill with putting trucks in a row. “Hey, buddy, I love the way you’ve got these organized.” Lance sat down beside William. “Can I maybe try a few?”
    William went on picking up and placing. He did not answer.
    Natalie warned, “Nobody is allowed to touch William’s trucks.”
    Before the sentence was half out of her mouth, though, Lance had plucked a car out of the pile William was drawing from. William looked up sharply and watched Lance, but he didn’t say anything or take the vehicle back.
    “Let’s see. This one is yellow, and it’s kind of little. I’m going to put it here.” Lance moved two other cars to place his in the line.
    “No!” William flicked Lance’s out to the side, then sat back and watched.
    “Okay, sorry.”
    “He does them by number of doors, too,” Sara explained. “That one’s got four and the rest of those have two. It should have gone all the way in back of the