Blood Orange. Drusilla Campbell

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      Chapter 1

      September

      Dana Cabot stood in the doorway to the undercroft holding a pastry box full of twenty-six dollars’ worth of still-warm croissants. How typically Episcopalian to use the medieval word undercroft to designate what was essentially a basement consisting of one large room and five smaller ones connected by a narrow hallway. The walls of the undercroft were covered with Sunday school bulletin boards and pictures of Jesus as infant, boy, and man. And photos of Bailey Cabot.

      HAVE YOU SEEN THIS LITTLE GIRL?

      Seven-year-old Bailey Cabot was abducted from her home on May 29, 2004. At the time she wore a pink and lime green dotted Swiss dress. Bailey’s hair is light brown, her eyes are brown, and she’s four feet, one inch tall.

      Red and green sticky circles dotted the maps of southern California and western Arizona that were stuck to the walls with strips of masking tape. Green meant the county had been leafleted; red indicated a Bailey task force had been started in one or more church congregations. Lutherans and Presbyterians, Methodists and Unitarians had all become involved. Yellow circles showed that thousands of ID photos of Bailey had been distributed all over California, Arizona, and Nevada. On a map of the United States blue circles indicated an e-mail campaign underway from San Diego to Vermont.

      A three-page article had appeared in People magazine: “HAVE YOU SEEN BAILEY CABOT?”

      There could be no one left in the United States who had not heard that Bailey Cabot had been stolen from behind her own front door. If it were propaganda, СКАЧАТЬ