“We didn’t. Scott did,” Chase said eagerly, finding something for which he couldn’t possibly be blamed. “Teenage loyalty, whatever. He came to us just five days ago. We went to Kitteredge.”
“Who did Scott call? You or Mrs. Chase?”
“Me,” said Liz Chase.
“Was he a boyfriend?”
“Just a friend.”
Neal picked a stem of grapes from the plate and popped one in his mouth. Something was screwy here. “And he just happened to run into Allie in London? Why was he there?”
“A trip with his school.”
Nice school, thought Neal, whose own class trip had been to Ossining.
“Anything unusual happen just before Allie took off?” Neal asked, feeling stupid. It was a stupid, pat question, and usually the kind of information parents volunteered.
Nobody answered. Neal chewed on another grape to kill time. Two grapes later, he said, “Shall I take that to mean that nothing unusual happened, or that something unusual did happen and we don’t want to talk about it?”
“Allie was home for the weekend,” Liz said. “She just hung around, really.”
“No, Mrs. Chase, she didn’t just hang around, really. She flew to Paris. You see, in most runaways, there is what we like to call a ‘precipitating factor.’ A fight with the parents, a fight between the parents… maybe the kid had been grounded, forbidden to see a boyfriend… had her allowance cut-”
“Nothing like that,” said Chase. He sounded really sure about it.
“Too bad. It helps if there was. If you know what a kid is running from, you have a jump on what she’s running to. But just business as usual?”
More grapes.
“When did you last see Allie?” Another stupid, pat question.
“Saturday night I went to a party, a fund-raiser,” Liz Chase said. “John was in Washington. He got home… when, darling?”
“Ten, I suppose.”
“I didn’t get in till late. I imagine it was after one. I looked in on Allie in her room. She was asleep.”
“Asleep or passed out?”
Chase said, “I don’t particularly care for your attitude.”
“Neither do I,” Neal answered, “but we’re both stuck with it.”
Liz jumped in. “When we got up Sunday… late… Allie was gone. She’d told Marie-Christine-”
“Who?”
“One of the staff. Allie told her that she was going for a walk.”
“Which she did.”
“Which she did.”
For a second, Neal felt that he should stand up and pace around the room. One of those “nobody leaves until” numbers. Instead, he sank back into the sofa and said, “All right, so after you have your coffee and omelets and read the Sunday Times, you notice that Allie hasn’t come home yet. Then what?”
“I drove around looking for her,” Liz said.
The Senator didn’t say anything.
“And you didn’t find her.”
“But I did find the car, parked downtown by the bus station, so right away I thought…”
She let her thought drop off as if she was trying to think up a new ending. From the looks on everyone’s faces in the ensuing silence, Neal thought this one could be a four- or five-graper. He couldn’t take it.
“You thought that Allie had taken off again.”
Liz nodded. She hit him with those brown eyes flecked with green and filled with sadness. What are you trying to tell me, Mrs. Chase? “How many times has Allie run away?” Neal asked. He flipped through the report. No mention of previous times. Swell.
“Four, maybe five times,” said Lombardi, doing his job.
“Overseas?”
“No, no,” Lombardi said quickly. “Twice to New York. Fort Lauderdale once. L.A.”
“One time to her grandparents in Raleigh,” Liz said. “That was when we were in Washington.”
“Is Allie close to her grandparents?”
“Allie is not close to anybody, Mr. Carey,” said Mrs. Chase.
The sun was calling it a day. Neal watched the ocean turning a slate gray.
“So then you called the cops and the FBI and the state patrol and the National Guard?”
“I called her school,” Lombardi said as Chase turned a deep red, “and asked to speak to her-”
“Slick.”
“And they said she hadn’t come back from her weekend home.”
“So then you called the cops and the FBI and the state patrol and the National Guard.”
This was called “baiting the client” and was the kind of thing that got you canned. Or it could get the client jazzed up enough to drop his guard and tell you something juicy. Or it could do both.
“Or did you call the Gallup poll?”
Set the hook and yank the line. Chase came out of his chair like a trout out of a stream.
“Listen, you little bastard-”
Why is everyone calling me a little bastard today?
“Darling-”
“It’s all our fault, right? All the parents’ fault! We gave that kid everything! Now I’m supposed to destroy my future for her? She doesn’t want to be here, fine!”
“Yeah, it’s okay with me, too, Senator, but now you want her back in the picture.”
“You don’t work for me anymore!”
Neal stood up. “I don’t work for you, period. I work for the bank. They tell me to go after your kid, I go after your kid. They tell me to forget it, I forget it.”
Lombardi got up. Then Liz got up. “Find my daughter.”
It wasn’t a plea, it was a command. It was the kind of command that comes from a beautiful woman, the kind of command that comes from a mother. It was the kind of command that comes from a wife who doesn’t need Hubby’s okay. Neal heard it all three ways.
Good old Marie-Christine brought in coffee and they started again.
No, Allie had not used the AmEx card since buying the air ticket. Yes, she had trust funds from both sets of grandparents but no way of touching the funds without her parents’ signatures. She had her own bank account as well, but she hadn’t drawn anything from that, either. So she was on her own financially, which was very bad news. It meant that she could either beg, steal, or sell herself. Begging wasn’t very lucrative, and you usually had to buy your begging spot from the local thug. Stealing takes considerable skill. Selling yourself doesn’t.
And little Allie would need a lot of money, because drugs aren’t cheap and the people who sell them are.
“If it was strictly up to me,” Neal said, “I’d advise you to clean out Allie’s closets, make yourself a nice album, and get on with the business of mourning. Because the girl you knew probably doesn’t exist anymore.”
Because sometimes it’s just too late, folks. The streets take the child you know and turn that child into someone you don’t even recognize. Neal flashed on the Halperin kid, on that goofy look he had on his face all the time, even after…
“May I see Allie’s room now, please?” he asked.
Liz and lombardi took him there.
It looked like a hotel room: elegant, sleek, comfortable but nobody lived there. No pictures, souvenirs, no posters of rock stars on the wall.
Walk-in closet, private bath, of course. Bay window, view of the ocean. “This is going to take a while,” Neal said.
“If we’re not in the way…” Liz answered.
Neal gestured to the bed. Liz and Lombardi sat down and put their hands in their laps.
Neal searched the room. It was a relief to be doing something practical, something quiet, something he was good at. He went through the drawers and the closets carefully, slowly.
“Are you in the habit of searching Allie’s room, Mrs. Chase?”
“Wouldn’t you be, Mr. Carey?”
“But you haven’t removed anything.”
“No.”
Neal opened the top drawer of Allie’s dresser and ran his hand along the inside top. He felt the edge of the tape and gently pulled it off. He smelled the two joints.
“Emergency stash,” he said. “Expensive stuff, too.”
“Money is not Allie’s particular problem in life,” Liz said.
Didn’t used to be, Mrs. C.