“You must like being married,” Dad said, with a fake chuckle. He was a thin, short man with a pale complexion and an inexplicable allure to women. Dad’s hair was still mostly brown, I noticed. Good. I hoped mine stayed brown for many more years. I had last seen Dad when Martin and I had been in California—I’d felt I should visit with him, if only to see Phillip. I had been hurt that he hadn’t even come to my first wedding. Now he seemed diminished.
“If you’re hinting that I’ve put on weight, you’re absolutely right,” I said. “I’ll be putting on weight for the next six months.” Might as well break the news.
It took him a minute to process that. “My Lord,” he said. “I’m really glad for you, honey.” That sounded just as artificial as the laugh.
“Thanks,” I said. “I was going to call you and tell you but all this happened. And you were so angry with me on the phone.”
“So what’s the update on Phillip?” Dad asked. From the corner of my eye, I saw Robin shoot my father a look of intense dislike.
In all fairness, I couldn’t blame Dad for being more concerned about my brother’s absence, rather than my safe pregnancy, under the circumstances. While Robin stowed Dad’s bag in the guest bedroom, I told him everything we knew about Phillip’s disappearance. As I talked, I poured drinks for everyone and put out paper plates and napkins for the sandwiches. I didn’t like eating off wrappers.
Robin came back looking more relaxed. Evidently he’d taken a few deep breaths while he was out of the room. As he distributed the order from Hero Heaven, I texted my mother to warn her that her first husband was in town.
It was good I’d done this, since they were on their way over. After ten minutes, Mom and John were ringing the doorbell.
My mother hugged me, smelling as she always did: linen-clean crisp, expensive, not overwhelming. John was with her, and I hugged him, too. Since John’s heart attack, I never saw him without mentally evaluating how he looked. He seemed well today, and calm about meeting his wife’s ex. Good.
Here, I have to say something about my father. It had broken my heart when he’d left my mother, or rather, when she’d told him to leave. But I had known, always, that it had been his mistakes that had caused his banishment, though my mother had never trash-talked him to me. I’d been old enough to understand what “unfaithful” meant. I had also been old enough to understand how deeply he had hurt and offended my mother. It must have been an odd marriage all along; my dad, aside from his inexplicable magnetism for women who should have known better, was so ordinary that marrying a standout like my mother must have surprised even him.
The woman he’d married next, Phillip’s mother, had been a sharp contrast to the former Aida Brattle. Betty Jo had been plainer, shorter, less ambitious, more content; but he hadn’t been able to stay faithful to her, either. My dad couldn’t keep it in his pants, and though I hated to think such a vulgar thing about my own father, it was quite simply true. It wasn’t a big surprise that when I’d dated Arthur Smith, the first man I’d gone with after college, he had turned out to be the same way.
I’d done some deep thought.
After that, I’d become very careful about my own judgment.
“Where is Betty Jo?” my mother asked, after she’d said hello and commiserated with my dad on the missing Phillip.
“Aurora didn’t tell you?” My dad gave me an unreadable look.
“She doesn’t talk about you,” Mother said, with no expression.
“Betty Jo is taking a break from the marriage,” my dad said. He smiled wryly.
“But she knows about this, right? I can’t believe she’s not here,” Mother said.
“She’s … actually, I don’t know where she is,” Dad said. “She might have gone off with another man.” Hmm. He’d told me that was for sure. The truth and my father weren’t best friends.
“I think you ought to tell the police,” Mother said. “In case somehow she’s asked Phillip to come to her. I know it doesn’t seem likely.” She held up a hand to forestall his protests, which I could see stacking up in his mouth.
“But it’s possible,” John said. He was doing his best to keep out of interchanges between my mother and her ex-husband, but he did have an opinion.
Dad shrugged, a martyr bearing up under unreasonable requests. “All right, I’ll tell the cops,” he said. “I want to go talk to them anyway.” He turned to me. “Can I borrow your car, honey? I don’t guess the police station has moved since I left.”
“Actually, it has. They’re out at the law enforcement complex, now.” I told him how to get there, and rather reluctantly gave him my key ring.
“Pretty neat that we’re going to be grandparents, huh?” Dad said to Mom on his way out the door. “But it’s going to be a while before I can think about it.”
“I understand,” she said coldly.
And then he was gone. It was like I’d taken off a bra that was too tight. Everyone seemed to heave a silent sigh of relief.
“How are you feeling, Aurora?” my mother asked, and I knew that from now until the delivery, those were always going to be the first words out of her mouth.
And I was fine with that. “After I had a nap, I felt better,” I said. “You know that Robin and I went to see the body in the alley?”
“You should not have done that,” she said.
“We had to know if it was Phillip. And from the back, for a minute, I thought it might be. But it was Tammy Ribble, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
“I know her grandfather,” John said. “He’s devastated. His son, Tammy’s father, and his wife had taken a weekend vacation with no media—phones or Internet. So he had to drive to the lake to tell them.”
“I am glad it wasn’t Phillip,” I said. “But I’m really just sorry it’s anyone. Mom, have you heard anything about Liza Scott getting bullied at school?”
“I did hear something about that,” she said. Surprise, surprise.
“I haven’t,” John said. “Tell me.”
My mother sighed. “Oh, honey, there’s this little clique of girls, led by the daughter of that dance teacher, Tiffany Andrews. This Andrews girl is a—well, excuse me, all of you—she’s a bitch in training, and her mom has given her some good lessons. Tiffany’s child, Sienna, has these two buddies who think she’s hot stuff. Anyway, Liza crossed them in some way. Since then, they’ve had it in for her. They’ve made her life hell, I hear, both at school and on the Internet. I told Emily how sorry I was and asked if there was anything I could do. I know some of the grandmothers.” My mother’s shoulders were squared in a way that said she would do her unpleasant duty if she was called upon to do so.
“I take it Emily and Aubrey said no.” Robin had gathered up all the trash from lunch and deposited it in the garbage below the sink.
“They did. They were going to talk to the parents themselves.”
I made a face. “That sounds absolutely horrible.”
My mother nodded. “Yes, it does. I don’t know if children have gotten crueler since you were growing up, or if parents don’t have the control over them they used to have. A little of both, I expect.”
If I found out our child was behaving like a savage, I would take steps. I wasn’t sure what those steps would be, but I’d take ’em. I wondered if cruelty like that had to be sparked by some terrible parenting, or if some kids were just born that mean. I would ask Robin what he thought when we were alone and had no pressing crisis. If those two things ever happened at the same time.
And for a reason I can’t fathom, at that moment I thought of something very important.
“The backpack,” I said.
I became aware that there were three pairs of eyes examining me with varying degrees of curiosity and doubt.
“Where’s his backpack? He always took it with him everywhere,” I said.
“Why would Phillip carry a backpack?” my mother asked. “He didn’t have to carry schoolbooks since he was home-schooled, and his cell phone
would fit in his pocket.”
“Phillip always carries that small backpack. He likes to sketch, and it holds his sketchpad, his pencils, his billfold, his phone, a bottle of water, a bag of raisins and some beef jerky, sometimes a pocketknife.”
“He didn’t like his pockets to be full,” Robin said. “That’s what he told me.”
“And you don’t think he has it with him?” Mother asked.
Why had I started picturing the backpack? “No. Josh would have come by after school let out to pick up Philip.” Phillip was definitely looking forward to a new semester, being in a classroom with other kids. He’d felt very left out since he’d come to live with me. “I saw it after that. I saw it on the bench when I came home.”
“It wasn’t in his room when Detective Trumble searched it,” Robin said.
“I have to go through that room myself,” I said. “Otherwise, I’m just going to worry about it. But the backpack is here somewhere, I know.”
So for the next ten minutes, we all searched the house. As it happened, Robin found it. Right inside our front door in the broad entrance hall was a coat stand mounted over a bench. In the summer, I hung decorations from the hooks, but in the winter, the hooks held useful stuff … like actual coats. The bench opened for storage. The backpack wasn’t in the bench, but it was effectively hidden on the floor in a shadow between the bench and the front wall.
We surrounded it as though it were the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” my mother said.
“I’m going to see what’s inside right now,” I said, and no one tried to talk me out of it. “Robin, if you would, please? Call them and tell them it’s here.”
When I had been a teen, there would still have been written notes in any teen’s backpack. But in this age of cell phones, such things had fallen by the wayside. I sighed. No handy clues there, written on torn slips of paper. I pulled out a bottle of water, a paperback Jim Butcher novel, a sketchpad, and a small box of pencils. “He has his cell phone,” I said.
There were some phone numbers in the backpack, written on odd things like a test schedule and a receipt. But I knew that most often Phillip entered numbers directly into his Contacts list. However, I’d check them out later. I flipped open the sketchpad.
Since the first drawing was me, I understood right away that this pad had been initiated since he’d moved here. Seeing my own face stopped me dead, and I felt tears flood my eyes. I looked prettier, smarter, and more skeptical than I’d ever imagined, at least in my own head. And I was smiling.
I’d never realized Phillip was so talented.
Everyone he’d met was recorded in the sketchpad. He hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but he’d never volunteered to show me his work. I’d been waiting until we were really used to each other to ask him. I asked myself if I felt bad about invading his privacy.
No. I was sorry for the necessity, but it was a necessity, not a whim. I had to know who Phillip knew, what he’d been thinking. This sketchpad was the only clue I had. I examined each picture, hoping to derive some information from it. I learned that he thought Joss was strong and lovely. The dead girl, Tammy Ribble, was in one sketch with Joss. There was a drawing of them looking at each other, and it was almost romantic. Now it made my heart ache.
Phillip had done a sketch of Josh, too: Josh looked careless, happy, bold. There was even a drawing of Liza facing three other girls her age. It was clear whose side Phillip was on and what he thought of the girls. Phillip had studied Macbeth as a tragedy and All’s Well That Ends Well for a comedy, when his class had had Shakespeare. I could see that Phillip had drawn the girls as the three witches from Macbeth, if I was interpreting correctly.
I knew one of the girls, though her face was distorted by meanness. Sienna Andrews, daughter of Tiffany. Then I recognized the other two: One was Marlea Harrison, whose family was very well off. The other was Kesha Windham. Her father was a dentist, and her mother did a lot of volunteer work and was a frequent library patron.
Identifying Marlea as one of Liza’s tormentors was no surprise; I had never been impressed favorably by her manners while she was in the library, or the sly way she conducted herself. Sienna, I could take or leave. It seemed she had turned to the Dark Side. But Kesha Windham’s inclusion in the group astonished me. Her mother was in the library all the time because she liked to read cookbooks, and the library had a huge collection of them. That seemed like such a wholesome hobby that I couldn’t fathom her daughter’s association with the other two girls.
“No doubt how he felt about the bullying,” I muttered.
My mother and John recognized the girls, too. “Can this be true?” Mother said. “Can Sandra and Webster Windham know about this and still let it be going on?”
“I thought better of Kesha, too,” I said. “The Windhams have always been so nice.”
“If the police don’t know about Liza’s situation, they need to,” Robin said. “I’m glad they’re coming.”
“But I don’t see what the bullying could have to do with the kids missing,” John said. “Three twelve- or thirteen-year-old girls aren’t going to be kidnapping big kids.”
“No,” I said. “They aren’t. But it’s the only other extraordinary thing—at least, that I know of—happening in the lives of these kids. And it’s only part of Josh and Joss’s lives because Liza had—has—such a crush on Phillip, and she takes lessons from Joss. It’s easy to see that Phillip likes the child, or at least sympathizes with her.”
“Maybe we should remove the picture of Joss and Tammy together?” My husband asked this, but he sounded very uncertain of his ground. That was not like Robin.
“Why? Because it implies they were a real couple?” I let my astonishment show.
“I don’t care what they were,” he said immediately. “But what I care about is the willingness of the police to go every extra inch in finding them. I hate to say this, but do you think they might not care quite as much if they know Joss is gay?”
“That’s horrible,” Mom said. One of the realtors who worked for my mother was gay, but I hadn’t known Mom knew that. Of course she had. My mother wasn’t naive.
“It is horrible, but it may be realistic,” I said. After a moment’s hesitation, I removed that page. I put it in a folder and tucked it away in a drawer. I might be maligning our police, and I hoped I wasn’t, but I did it anyway.
Surely the police knew all about the bullying situation by now. Aubrey and Emily must have told the police about it. What would Tiffany Andrews say if I asked her why her daughter was persecuting Liza Scott? Any parent would get defensive, even a very fair-minded parent; and I couldn’t say that Tiffany Andrews was a very pleasant person even when you weren’t saying hard, but true, things about her daughter. I knew Marlea Harrison’s parents, but only in a superficial way. I’d always thought of Kesha Windham as a pleasant child, and Sandra and Webster were good people. Maybe I could talk to them, see if they had any insight.
I had to start somewhere. I wanted Phillip back, I wanted to know Liza was safe—and if I was scared for my brother, I couldn’t even imagine how the Finstermeyers felt, missing two precious children.
While we waited for the police, I called Beth. “No news, but I wondered if you’d talked to Jessamyn yet?”
Beth said, “That’s coming up next. You want to sit in?”
I realized the generosity of the offer. “Yes, I do,” I said. “I have a couple of ideas that may steer us in the right direction.”
“Then come on over,” Beth said. “We’re getting out the thumbscrews and the bamboo slivers.” God bless her, she was tough.
I had to explain to my family where I was going and why. Robin wanted to go, but I asked him to stay at the house to answer the phone and give the sketchpad and backpack to the police. He nodded, reluctantly. Mom and John said good-bye and went home, but not until I’d asked my mother to put her real-estate brain to thinking of properties any of the families involv
ed might own. I know, that was looking for the old hunting cabin again, the one everyone in mysteries seemed to have tucked away. But the kids had to be somewhere.
If they’d been in a car accident, the car would have been found by the road now, with all the people out searching.
I left Robin sitting on the couch with a book, the phone beside him and Moosie on his lap.
If it hadn’t been so cold and miserable, I could have walked to the Finstermeyers’ house, which was only a couple of blocks away. It was very much like my house: thirty or forty years old, renovated, sitting on a quarter-acre lot with large trees. There were lots of cars in the driveway, because the Finstermeyers belonged to a large family through Beth, who’d been a Coggins. George was an import—Beth (or Bethany; her family always called her by her christened name) was a local girl. She’d met George while they were in college, and though at first George’s job had taken him to the North, after a few years the family had gotten transferred back to Atlanta.
I finally found a parking space on the street, and walked back. It was misting, and the wind picked up. I thought of how careful I would have to be if we had ice this year. What if I fell and hurt the baby? Even this reminder of my pregnancy made me happy for a moment, until I had to knock on the Finstermeyers’ door to deal with more sadness.
Chapter Seven
It was warm inside. I felt almost claustrophobic in a couple of minutes. The Finstermeyer house was crowded, and all of the people were talking at once. There was a golden retriever padding through the maze of well-wishers, and a miniature poodle who liked to bark. It was kind of overwhelming. And it bore an unpleasant resemblance to a wake.
“Let me tell Bethany you’re here,” said a tiny gray-haired lady. “You probably don’t remember me, Aurora, but I’m Bethany’s mother Martha.”
“It’s good to see you,” I said automatically. “How are you holding up, Miss Martha?”