J.M.J.

Thank you for reading and also thank you all for the reviews! I hope you enjoy this chapter! God bless!

Chapter 9

Callie nervously twisted one of her rings as she waited for Nancy and Ned to arrive with Iola. It was the one Marty had given her for their six-month anniversary. It was a cheap ring, of course—they hadn't had much money. That hadn't seemed like such a problem, for a while, at least. She wished Marty was here. He would have helped her through this. But no. If he was here, she would have faced this already. He would have encouraged her to go back home and stop hiding away, and everything would have been all right.

While she was waiting, Martin came and crawled into her lap. The hotel room chairs were big enough that he could have sat next to her in it. "Mommy, when are we going home?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," Callie told him. "Soon, I hope."

Martin was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, almost crying, "I don't want you to go to jail, Mommy."

Callie hugged him close to her. "I'm not going to jail, honey. I didn't do anything."

"Why do they think you did?"

"They don't really. They're just trying to figure out what happened. They will, probably soon."

There was a knock on the door, and Callie jumped. Martin, seeing his mother's fright, grabbed onto her shirt.

However, it was Nancy's voice that called through the door. "Callie? Are you in there?"

Callie took a deep breath to try to recollect herself. This was it; the moment of truth. Iola had been her best friend for years, but after cutting her off completely, who knew how she felt about Callie now? It had been such an immature way to handle things. Iola had every right to be furious with her. But there was no more time to change anything now. Iola was on the other side of that door, and if Callie ever wanted to have any self-respect again, she would simply have to open it and face whatever happened. "Yeah, I'm coming!" she called, her voice trembling despite her best efforts.

She asked Martin to stay where he was and then she went to the door. She found Nancy and Iola standing there. Callie hadn't thought what to say when she answered the door, and now she found that she couldn't find anything to say at all. Iola also didn't look like she knew what to say, and Nancy glanced between the two of them, perhaps wondering whether or how to break the uncomfortable silence.

However, Iola was the one to rise to the occasion. "Hi," she said, still sounding awkward. Then she held her hands out. "Oh, come on. After all this time, let's not waste even more being all awkward."

Callie smiled softly. "Okay." She also held out her hands and hugged her friend.

"Are you okay?" Iola asked her.

"I think so," Callie replied. "I guess we've got a lot to talk about."

"Yeah," Iola said. "But only when you're ready. I'm just glad to see you. You don't know…Well, you probably do."

Callie shook her head. "I at least knew—or thought I knew—that you and the others were all safe back in Bayport. But it looks like things weren't quite the way I pictured it."

"No, probably not," Iola agreed.

"I can go if you'd like me to," Nancy offered.

"Just a second, please," Callie requested quickly. Then she turned back toward the room. "Martin!"

Martin came shyly to the door and looked questioningly at Iola, but Iola smiled at him as Callie introduced the two of them.

"It's nice to meet you," Martin said, holding out his hand.

Iola grinned again and shook his hand. "It's nice to meet you, too. You've got very good manners."

"Martin, would you like to go and spend some time with Nancy?" Callie asked. She quickly looked at Nancy. "That is, if Nancy doesn't mind."

"Of course not," Nancy replied. "Come on, Martin."

Although he was obviously curious about what was going on, Martin followed Nancy, and then Callie and Iola went into the room.

"I'm sorry I don't have anywhere more comfortable to talk," Callie said. "I'm just not up to talking anywhere public. To be fair, my apartment isn't much better than this."

"It's fine with me," Iola assured her, sitting down in one of the two chairs in the room. She took in a long breath. "So…I do have a lot of questions, but you don't need to tell me anything you don't want to or aren't ready to. I'll admit, I'm hurt that you've hardly even talked to me since you left. I wanted to be able to tell you that everything was fine, but…I mean, I do understand that you've been through a lot of hard times."

Callie shook her head. "Out of all the people who have gone out of my life, at least none of them just picked up and left without ever telling me why. I don't have the corner on hard times."

"I don't know about that…"

"I do," Callie interrupted, "but let's not fight about it. Please. I just want to apologize, and I do owe it to you to tell you why. I'm not sure if I can, though. I've never had anyone to talk to about all this, except for Marty, and obviously I couldn't talk to him about all of it."

"Marty?" Iola repeated. "You mean, Martin?"

"No. My husband." Callie sighed. "I'd probably better just start from the beginning. I was angry when my parents died, and I already felt alone. We didn't live near any relatives, and I felt like all my friends were angry with me for breaking up with Frank."

"We weren't…" Iola started to interrupt. Then she stopped herself. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's fine. I shouldn't have just assumed that." Callie looked down at her hands. "It was stupid of me. But it's how I felt, and it seemed to me that I'd lost everything. I didn't want to be around anyone or anything that reminded me of that, so that's why I left. I really did mean to just take a little time and then come back, but the longer I was gone, the harder it seemed to even so much as call. And I guess it was silly of me, but I sort of expected Frank to come and find me, and when he never did, I just took it as a sign that no one even really cared." She saw that Iola was about to interject again and she raised her hand to stop her. "I know that's not true, but it's what I thought and it's why I acted the way I did. Anyway, I dropped out of college and got a job and didn't like it, so I moved and got a different job, and the whole repeated a couple of times. Finally, I ended up in western Washington. That's where I met Marty. I was working as a waitress for a little while, and he was a regular. He'd talk to me when he came in, and it was such a relief to talk to someone, so it wasn't long before we started going out together. He'd had similar problems to me and he was alone, but in spite of that, he was all the things I wished I could be: he was brave and caring and still saw the good in life and in other people." Callie cleared her throat as she felt her emotions building up. "I fell for him hard, and somehow, he fell for me. We'd only known each other for six months before we got married. He thought we should go back to Bayport so I could get some closure, and let my friends there have some, too, but I kept pushing it off. We hadn't been married very long before I found out I was pregnant. It was all happening very fast, but I thought that finally, maybe, things were going to work out after all. But that didn't last for long."

She looked up at Iola and saw only empathy in her face. She didn't try to prod Callie to go on, but it was clear that she really did care and want to hear the rest of the story.

Callie toyed with her ring once again. "A few months later, we found out that Marty had very advanced cancer. We went from planning the rest of our lives to not knowing if he would live to see his son. He didn't, by the way." She took in a long breath as tears finally overwhelmed her.

Iola jumped up from her chair and came to put her arms around Callie. "I'm so sorry," she said, beginning to weep herself.

For a long while, neither one of them said anything. It was almost indescribable how much of a relief it was to Callie just to not have to be strong and to know that her troubles mattered to a single other human being. Yet, sooner than Callie might have expected, she wiped the tears away and asked Iola about herself.

Iola dabbed at her eyes. "I haven't done anything very interesting. Just went to college and graduated and have a boring job. That's it."

"What happened to you and Joe? I mean, if it's none of my business…"

"No, no. It's just a long story and…well, I'm not sure how to tell it."

"It isn't somehow my fault is it?" Callie asked suddenly.

"No," Iola quickly said, but from the way that she looked away and shifted her weight, Callie had the impression that that was not strictly true.

"I understand if you really would rather not tell me."

Iola sighed. "No, it's okay. It's just that Joe and Frank started getting more and more involved in cases for the government. You remember that one where they brought in Nancy?"

"Barely. Frank and I were already broken up by then."

"It was bad. I don't know all the details. Joe couldn't tell me because they were classified, but I know that they all nearly died and some people did die. I don't know if it was agents or innocent bystanders or some of both. But I know it was hard on them. And that made it hard on our relationship, to have something that big that we couldn't even talk about. I pleaded with Joe not to take cases like that anymore. He didn't want to, but Frank was determined that he had to do something he felt was worthwhile, and Joe couldn't let him do it alone. We fought about it a lot, but that wasn't why we broke up. We were still planning on getting married, but it just didn't seem like the right time, so we were waiting for things to settle down. Then about three years ago, there was another government case, so I don't know the details of it all. I just know that they were undercover and they both had to do things that they didn't want to. I don't know how bad it was, but it was obviously pretty bad. Joe…he couldn't really face me after that. They couldn't face anyone. They moved to New York City, and Joe and I decided to take a break. So far, it's been a very permanent break." She swiped at the tears in her eyes. "Sorry I'm such a mess. It might have been better to have this conversation when I haven't been flying all over and trying to make connections all night." She laughed weakly.

A ghost of a smile also made an appearance on Callie's face, but she didn't feel much like laughing about anything right now. "You still came all the way out here at the drop of a hat for Joe."

"Of course. So did you."

"It takes an hour to drive her from my apartment."

Iola shrugged. 'Maybe, but I think you had a greater distance to travel than me."

NDNDNDNDND

Sam Radley's plane came in early afternoon, and Nancy and Ned once again went to the airport, this time to pick him up. They then went to police headquarters to talk to Griffon. The police officer first asked for Sam to fill him in on everything he knew so far, even though it turned out to be mostly repetition for him.

"Everything has been at a standstill today," Griffon reported. "The police in Clay Ford haven't found anything yet, Serene White is still insisting that she was working alone, Frank Hardy still hasn't been able to give us a coherent account of what's going on. I wish I had better news for you."

"What about the vandal who painted that message on the hotel window?" Nancy asked. "Have you learned anything about them?"

"No. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, nothing." Griffon shook his head. "It does mean that Ms. White definitely has an accomplice here in the city and that they're very capable when it comes to keeping both tabs on people and a low profile."

"That's provided that Serene White really is the one who tried to kill Frank," Sam pointed out.

"I'm confident about that," Griffon said. "One of the other nurses has remembered seeing her next to where Mrs. Dalton left her purse. It would have been easy for Ms. White to slip that bottle into it. Moreover, I've looked into everyone else on the staff who was in that room. The timeframe doesn't work as well for any of them as it does for Ms. White and I haven't turned up a plausible motive for any of them."

"Except that you don't have any kind of motive for Serene either," Ned pointed out.

Griffon sighed. "True. But this business about it possibly being related to one of Fenton Hardy's cases might show a connection. You haven't turned up anything, eh, Mr. Radley?"

Sam shook his head. "Fenton wasn't working on a case when he went missing. He hasn't had many cases that have taken him up into Canada, especially western Canada, and the White family doesn't come up in any of them. That was a dead end."

"What about Callie? Is she still a suspect?" Nancy asked.

"Personally, I don't think she was involved," Griffon said. "However, I do like playing things safe. I still would rather she didn't leave town. Besides, the better she cooperates, the less likely it looks that she could be involved."

"That's good, but actually I wanted to ask if she could be allowed to visit Frank yet," Nancy said.

"Ah." Griffon clicked his tongue. "No. As I said, I like playing it safe. That would not fall under that description. I also could never convince Dr. Rogate to go along with it. I think he still suspects that this entire thing might be a case of two American former lovers dragging their quarrels into our territory, and he doesn't appreciate it. But even if he could be convinced otherwise, there is still the very real problem that it might not be in Mr. Hardy's best interests to go through the stress of having his ex-girlfriend visit him. Since he does seem to be out of danger and since she already had a chance to see him, it's not too likely that Dr. Rogate will see a point in repeating that, eh?"

"That's fair," Nancy agreed.

"What are you thinking about?" Ned asked her, guessing that there was something more behind her questions.

"One of the main reasons you want us to stay in Vancouver, Sergeant, is for Frank's sake, so he's not alone while he's trying to recover and to help keep an eye on Callie," Nancy said. "Iola is here now, and George and Burt are here, at least, and some more of Frank's friends will be arriving as soon as they can. I don't think it's quite so necessary that Ned and I stay here."

"You want to go to Clay Ford after all?" Griffon asked.

"It seems like the best lead we have. Both the 'white horse' and Serene have connections there," Nancy said. "I know the police there are searching, but we could help, at least, and maybe with an outside perspective, we'd be able to see something they're missing."

"I think you're right," Sam agreed.

Griffon nodded. "Probably. If do decide to go, just keep in touch with me."