Alex believed her. Not just because he wanted to, but because his gut instinct had kicked in. He had looked a lot of criminals in the eyes while he asked them questions and they very seldom fooled him. They very seldom told the truth, too. They’d lie about their name, where they got the car, who they were with, where they were going, whether they had any warrants. Most of the time, just an honest answer would cut them a break.
Her eyes were honest and earnest. She was hiding from someone, very likely the abusive ex like she said, and she hadn’t broken any laws. It certainly was not against the law for an adult to be missing.
He hadn’t particularly liked the looks of the man who’d handed him the flyers outside the barber shop, however.
He went to work a little early that afternoon and began a search of both Jennifer Chaise and Doris Bailey. He had a couple of hours before his shift and a real need to know.
There were lots of winners, lots of outstanding warrants, but luckily for Jennifer she didn’t fit any of the descriptions. There was one match—Jennifer Chaise of Fort Lauderdale, missing. No wants or warrants. If Jennifer was hiding now, it appeared to be for the first time. She had a Florida residence, two previous residences, Florida driver’s license, social, no priors, and a good job with a commercial real estate firm. Clean as a whistle. So far. The next thing he’d do is check out her place of employment and see if she could afford her address and car on her income.
Then he did a search on the man who had reported her missing. Nick Noble. He ran an out-of-state check—bingo! The guy had an arrest record about ten miles long—fraud, conspiracy, trafficking. And no convictions. He was not currently wanted or indicted, and could go to the police fearlessly.
“Whatcha doing?”
He looked over his shoulder at his partner, Paula. He lifted the flyers with Jennifer’s picture on it. “Someone was handing out these flyers all over Boulder City, so I was checking her out. Actually, she checks out just fine, but the guy who reported her missing doesn’t check that well. He’s had quite a few brushes with the law.”
She studied it. “Have you seen her?”
He hated that, when she could nail it like that. She was just about as good at detecting a lie as he was, so he tried to avoid telling one. “I was curious about why someone would be looking for her in Boulder City. She’s from Florida and disappeared from the MGM Grand, according to the report.”
“Maybe whoever put out the flyers left them in a lot of small towns around Las Vegas.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“What’s your interest in her, Alex? Really?”
“I think maybe she’s missing on purpose. And I think it’s possible the guy has accused her of stealing to get the police to help him find her. And I think he might know where she’s been hiding out. Now what I’d like to know is why he wants her so bad.”
“Well. She’s very beautiful,” Paula said, looking at the flyer.
“There’s that.” Hmm, he thought, she still is beautiful and doesn’t look very much like that anymore. But there was no denying she was sexy, alluring and unconventional.
Paula picked up the report filed when Noble notified the police of the theft. “We have bigger fish to fry than this,” she said. “She was his squeeze. She took a few souvenirs with her when she left him. He’s been in lots of trouble with the Florida police—he’s probably a sleazeball.”
“Right,” Alex said, gathering up the papers he’d printed out and putting them in a file, which went right into his desk drawer. “But if she took souvenirs, it’s the first time on her record. I’m just saying.”
“Uh-huh. And we have a string of home invasions in Northeast. Are we going to work?”
“Yeah, yeah. We have a target team to sit surveillance with us. Let’s go.”
Paula began to whistle. The tune was Alex has a girlfriend, Alex has a girlfriend.
“Drop it,” he said, his voice threatening.
She continued to whistle until it became difficult to whistle and smile at the same time.
Dear Louise,
Every day here gets more interesting than the one before. Did you know that Buzz delivers meals to people he knows are hungry? I haven’t been able to figure out if he has a set schedule, but yesterday I took lunch to a little old lady just a couple of blocks from here, and she lives in abject poverty. Someone should be taking care of her. Someone should do something about that house. And another thing that happened—I got right in the middle of a knockdown fight between Sylvia and some guy she picked up and I was decked. Poor Hedda!
Oh, and here’s one for you. I just found out that Alex is a cop. You might’ve warned me.
Love,
Doris
Dear Doris,
Buzz has been doing that for years. He’s very careful. He does exactly the right amount because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s pride. He knows that even those destitute little old people are fiercely independent and don’t want to give up their homes, however humble, to be caged up in some kind of government-run facility. Yet, there comes a time when it’s necessary.
That Sylvia. Poor Hedda indeed. Watch out for her.
As for Alex—I had hoped you’d begin to like him before you found out. I don’t think you have anything to fear from him.
Love,
Louise
Jennifer was rested and ready to go back to work just twenty-four hours later. She had only a slight discoloration along her jawline and, remarkably, no headache at all. The only thing that threatened to give her one was the way Buzz kept apologizing, as if it was his fault. Apparently he’d felt such guilt about the incident, he’d talked about it the whole day while she was home napping off the assault, but in deference to Hedda, he played it up as an accident. He said Sylvia came in for a cup of coffee, slipped and her flying arm accidentally made contact with Doris’s jaw, but Jennifer’s regulars had a comment or two.
“Heard you got decked,” said Marty, the used-book-store owner.
“I knew I shouldn’t have stayed home,” she answered. “It’s nothing.”
“You get one off or just go down?” asked Terry from the dog-grooming shop.
“Hey, it was just an accident,” Jennifer insisted.
“I bet Sylvia was wasted,” Terry said.
Jennifer slid into Terry’s booth. “Do you know Sylvia?”
“I’ve seen her a time or two, that’s all. But Hedda’s boyfriend works for me. Max. He isn’t too crazy about his girlfriend’s mom.”
Hedda could have complained to Max, but somehow Jennifer doubted it. Max probably knew more than he let on to Hedda. He probably complained to Terry.
A little while later Ryan rode his mountain bike up to the diner. Judging by the pudgy looks of him, the policeman had been spending a little too much time in there. He was a sweet guy, and maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he seemed to do a decent job of helping to keep peace in a peaceable town. She recalled how nervous his police uniform had made her at first, but she got used to seeing the town’s officers at the diner, especially Ryan, who was there at least once, sometimes several, times a day. None of the local cops looked at her as if anything was out of the ordinary.
“Hey, Doris,” he weighed in. “I heard you took a punch.” He stared at her face, looking for damage, but it was very slight. He squinted. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“It was an accident, Ryan. Nothing to get excited about. You want coffee? Eggs? The usual?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Thanks, Doris,” he said, and found a table of guys he knew. He was just that easy to turn off the path. Jennifer hoped he never had to look for any real criminals.
After work she went to the computer before even taking Alice for her afternoon walk. She wrote a long e-mail to Louise, giving her an update. She told how everyone in the diner seemed to know what had happened and asked if she was all right. She confessed that Alex had taken good care of her. It was the first time in her memory that so many people seemed
to be involved in her life—and at a time she was wishing to be invisible.
She hit Send and leashed Alice up to take her to the park. They had a nice long walk and sat for a while under a tree. When they got home she turned on the computer to do her usual Internet search for any new mentions of herself or the Nobles. The computer told her she had mail. Louise had answered right away.
Dear Doris,
It sounds like you may have found a home. A family, however oddly gathered. Think about trusting. It might be the way to go. You’ve held your breath just about long enough. I think you’re safe. At any rate, I can vouch for them.
Love,
Louise.
The next morning after the breakfast rush, while Jennifer was taking a break with Adolfo’s morning newspaper, she looked up to see Sylvia standing in the doorway of the diner. She just stood there, looking uncertain. She should have had a contrite look on her face, but she didn’t. Not even under these circumstances.
“Come on in, Sylvia. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Jennifer said.
Once invited, she stomped into the diner quickly, sliding into Jennifer’s booth. She had attempted to cover her blackened eyes, but it didn’t take a very close inspection to see the purple lurking there.
“You okay?” Jennifer asked.
“Fine. You didn’t say anything to Hedda, did you?”
She shrugged. “Everyone here played it off as an accident—”
“It was an accident!”
“In the middle of a brawl.” Jennifer hadn’t thought about any of this in advance. In fact, she never expected to see Sylvia. But once the confrontation was here, she wasn’t going to play dumb. Sylvia should be apologizing rather than defending herself.
“Just so you didn’t say anything.”
“She’s pretty smart, your Hedda.”
“I don’t need her giving me that look, like I’ve been a bad girl. I’m the mother.”
I would beg to differ, came instantly to Jennifer’s mind, but she held her tongue for Hedda’s sake.
“Does it hurt? Your nose?”
“Yes, if you must know.”
“It doesn’t look broken. But your eyes—”
“I’m okay. I’m, you know…That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often. Bad judgment.”
“Sure.”
“I mean it!”
“I’m not arguing! Jesus!” Jennifer took a breath. “Do you have some makeup in your purse?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah.”
“Come here,” she said, sliding out of the booth and heading for the bathroom. “Let me see what you have.”
Sylvia followed, but slowly.
“Come on—let’s see what you have for makeup. Maybe I can help?”
“You?”
“Yes, funny as it sounds. Come on now, don’t play shy.”
Sylvia cautiously pulled out a makeup bag, making sure Jennifer couldn’t see any of the other contents of her purse. Jennifer poked through the makeup for a moment. She was pretty well stocked with eraser, base, powder, shadow, liner. “We’d be in better shape if Gloria were here—she has a veritable cosmetic counter in her purse. But I can work with this.”
She moistened a paper towel and dabbed gently at Sylvia’s bruises so she could start from scratch. She dotted the area with white eraser, covered that with flesh-colored concealer, topped it with base, repeated that process again, and then finished it off with powder. Then, to put the focus elsewhere on the woman’s face, she lined her eyes and lips and applied liberal shadow, mascara and lipstick. In just a few moments, the black eyes were barely visible.
“Yeah. Better. I wondered how I was going to explain this at work.”
“You can always go with the accident story.”
Not only was Sylvia apparently not big on apologies, she was also not given to thanks. She nodded and said, “I’d better get going. I’ll be late.”
“Sure. Take it easy.”
Sylvia left the bathroom, head down, and was out of the diner in seconds.
Phew, Jennifer thought. She must be a dream to live with.
When her shift was over, Jennifer went to the supermarket at the far edge of town, a place she’d only been once before. She preferred the small corner market where everything seemed to be fresh and there was no waiting. But, for what she had in mind, she needed a larger store. She bought several magazines—all spring editions for teenage girls.
High school had changed a lot in the past couple of decades. It used to be 8:00 a.m. to three, no matter what. Now there were split shifts, releases, early outs and all kinds of different schedules in the same school. Hedda went to school from 7:00 a.m. till 1:00 p.m., took six straight classes without a lunch break, then went to her job at the diner.
When Jennifer got to the diner at three in the afternoon, Buzz had gone on an errand. Adolfo was at the grill, Hedda was behind the counter and there were three girls in a booth, drinking Cokes, sharing a large order of fries and laughing. Jennifer hadn’t even noticed that Hedda was grimacing. “Hey,” Jennifer said, fanning out the magazines. “I brought us something fun.”
“What’s that?”
“I thought we could look through them, get some ideas for prom dresses.”
The diner grew suddenly quiet.
Hedda grabbed the magazines quickly and said, “Shh.” She took the stack to the far booth, the one that Adolfo favored when he wasn’t at the grill and where Jennifer liked to read her morning paper. She slid in, her back to the counter, so she could keep an eye on the only customers in the diner.
Jennifer slid in across from her. “Is it a secret?” she asked in a whisper.
“From them,” she whispered back.
“Why?”
Hedda leaned across the table. “Those would be the mean girls.”
Jennifer straightened sharply, then looked over her shoulder cautiously. Though they all had different hairstyles, they still seemed to have more in common than unique traits. One had short, spiky blond hair, one had long, straight blond hair and the third had her medium-length blond hair pulled up and clipped on the top of her head.
Why are the mean girls always beautiful blondes? Jennifer found herself wondering.
And then she wondered if the fact that the most popular girls in high school always seemed to have that enviable mane of golden hair had anything to do with her choice to color her hair that way for so long. “I was blond for years,” she confessed. “Are they mean to you?”
“Me and everyone,” she said with a shrug. “Well…Not everyone.”
“Why are they mean to you?”
“It’s not personal,” she said. “It’s about always being the new kid. You know—you have to earn your entrée.” She took one magazine off the stack and opened it on the tabletop. “But I don’t think I want into that little group.”
No sooner did she say that than there was a series of noises—the clink of dishes, a gasp, a splash, giggles. A Coke was tipped and spilled off the tabletop and onto the floor. Hedda sprang out of her booth and went for a rag to clean it up.
The girls in the booth sat idle, a snicker here and there. Usually when there was a spill at a table, people would scramble to grab napkins and start mopping up themselves before the waitress could even get there, but not these girls. Clearly the Coke had been spilled on purpose and they were getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of watching Hedda clean up.
“So, Cinderella, you going to the prom?” one of them asked while the other two covered their snotty smiles with their hands.
Hedda just cleaned up; she didn’t answer.
“Hedda,” the girl demanded. “Are you going to the prom? I asked!”
Hedda looked up from where she crouched to wipe the floor. “I haven’t decided.”
“Sure,” one of them said.
“Yeah, right,” said another.
It took everything Jennifer had not to get up and intervene in both the cleanup and the snide remarks. By the time sh
e thought her willpower was almost spent, Hedda had already schlepped her wet rags back behind the counter, and the girls were left to whisper among themselves. Thankfully, inaudibly.
Always being the new kid, Hedda had said. They must move around a lot. And they’d been in the motel until their little house came up for rent.
Jennifer had not had girlfriends for much the same reason. She was always new at the school, plus Cherie, being crazy as a loon, wasn’t someone Jennifer wanted people to know. And she had to stay pretty close to home to look after Cherie, because who knew what state she was in? She never let anyone get very close. When she was teased because her clothing was shabby, or she was in want of a shower, she closed her ears. Since she couldn’t change anything, she made herself impenetrable.
She remembered herself as a shy and morose kid, but Hedda, for all she went through, was cheerful and open. She didn’t play up to these girls with her happy spirit, but among people who were nice to her, she was every bit the extrovert.
As Hedda was coming around the counter, the girls got out of the booth and sauntered toward the door. In confusion, Jennifer watched them leave. They didn’t stop at the cash register and Hedda didn’t stop them. Instead, Hedda simply cleaned up their dishes and put them in the kitchen.
At that moment Buzz returned, holding the front door open for the girls.
“Hedda, they didn’t pay. And they sure didn’t leave a tip.”
“It was only a couple of Cokes,” she said. “I can cover it. Don’t say anything.”
“Why not? If Buzz knew what they were up to, they wouldn’t be allowed in here. He has that sign. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”
“Oh, that would make school so much nicer for me,” she said.
“I see,” she said. She was seeing far more than she liked.
Jennifer touched Hedda’s cheek. “You know, you don’t have to be that tough. It’s okay to get a little help sometimes.”
“It’s okay.”
“How long have you been here, Hedda? In Boulder City?”