And even with all the pain, I kept this picture in my head while I lay there and waited and wondered why, back there in the cell, I had one time thought it might be nice to be as smart as Ed.
Hide and Seek
by Melissa Milich
When I was nine years old, I read my first Nancy Drew book, The Clue of the Broken Locket, and for some time after that the only thing I wanted to do in my life was solve a mystery, preferably one that had stumped the police. I even carried a magnifying glass from a Cracker Jack box around with me in case I stumbled upon some clues. Just like Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. I ached for her spunk, her courage, her moral fiber, and most of all her interesting life because I grew up in a small town where nothing ever happened.
But as I got older (approximately four times as old if you’re counting), the thought of a mystery in my life was something I wanted to avoid, kind of like a flat tire, an inconvenience.
I’m a person who likes to find her keys in the morning. I like to know where my purse is, how much money is in it, and what I’m having for dinner. An ordered life. I have been working at the same job for the last ten years, society editor at the local newspaper. I wear white blouses to work, and to me it’s a personal accomplishment to get through the day without getting ink marks all over them.
I thought my Nancy Drew days were gone forever, but then Naomi Ray, a dead body, came into my life.
It’s probably more accurate to call Naomi Ray a missing person because nobody had actually located her body. She simply disappeared one day, vanished it seems, off the face of the earth. She could have been snatched by a UFO, but more than a few people suspected her husband, Cyrus. Trouble is, Cyrus Ray was a member of the Rotary club and a church volunteer, what you call a pillar of the community, and pillars don’t go around knocking off their wives. He let the police come in the house and go through everything just like you would expect a pillar of the community to do. He said he had nothing to hide.
And you can’t convict somebody without a body. So then Cyrus started getting all this sympathy from the community because the sheriff decided Naomi simply woke up one day wondering why she had married Cyrus in the first place and walked away from her old life. He said she was probably living in another state with a new haircut.
Naomi’s side of the family didn’t believe it for a minute. They said Naomi would never have abandoned them, her parents and sisters. Plus, Naomi supposedly disappeared with nothing, not even her most valuable emerald necklace that she could have sold if she’d wanted to start a new life somewhere else. They were sure she was murdered, and Naomi’s family continued to harrass Cyrus Ray until finally a judge ordered them to stop.
Then one day Naomi’s sister Elaine asked me to help them put Cyrus Ray behind bars. I think originally she just dropped by the newspaper to ask me to run an announcement from her church, but instead she brought up Naomi, and I had to tell her what everybody’d been telling the family for the past three years. “They have closed the case, Elaine.”
“But if we could only find her body! I just can’t stand the thought of him walking around a free man while Naomi...” Her voice trailed off, and I handed her a box of tissues.
At that point I started thinking about Naomi Ray so hard that I got distracted and careless with my ink pen and made a big line right across the front of my blouse.
Elaine continued crying. “Please. Please.”
So there she was squeezing this crumpled tissue, and before I got a grip on myself, I promised. Something got into me that afternoon. In fact, I gave her my Girl Scout promise which was something else left over from being nine years old. But I still couldn’t figure out why she had asked me and exactly what I had promised.
“I’m not really sure,” Elaine said, “except you’re wearing red.”
That I was. A red skirt with my now inkstained white blouse, but what did this have to do—
“Naomi was wearing her red dress when she disappeared.”
Naomi Ray was standing in a grove of frightening looking trees. I thought she had the look of a lost little girl on her face — in the painting.
Cyrus Ray had won a prize at the county fair for this artistic rendition of his wife. It was hanging in his kitchen over the butcher block where Cyrus was going chop chop chop with a huge meat cleaver.
“Now, why am I a celebrity, Candace Sue?” He moved from around the table, that cleaver in his hand.
We have this feature in the newspaper called Celebrity Chef. I came up with the idea myself, where members of the community, “celebrities,” which just means somebody like the fire chief or the district attorney, since we don’t have any of the Current Affair type of celebrities around, share a special recipe.
“Well, because of your painting talent,” I said.
Boy, could I lie. You would think all those years at Catholic school would have made me at least blush a little bit when I lied that tremendously. But maybe he did have some kind of twisted talent. I could hardly take my eyes off Naomi’s portrait.
Cyrus was busy making a Chinese chicken salad. This Celebrity Chef thing had gone to his head. I could tell. I personally thought he was using way too much mayonnaise.
“That’s a pretty skirt you’re wearing, Candace Sue.”
“You must like red, Cyrus.”
He chuckled and looked very pleased. “Why, how did you know?”
“Naomi’s wearing a red dress in that picture.”
I’m never going to get very far in this detecting stuff, especially if I give all my prime clues away to the prime suspect. I got out of there as soon as I could think of an excuse to leave, even though Cyrus wanted me to stay and eat some of his mayonnaise-heavy Chinese chicken salad. He didn’t act like he suspected anything.
I returned to the newspaper office and sat down at my desk and tried to draw the portrait of Naomi as best I could from memory, but it wasn’t good enough. All I could remember were those frightening looking trees, but I thought there might have been something else in the picture besides trees and Naomi in that unlucky red dress.
Big Tim McCallister, the sheriff’s deputy, was walking my way. He always stopped at my desk when he was at the newspaper for other business. I was getting tired of being single, but me and Big Tim McCallister? I wasn’t so sure that would work. He seemed kind of slow and awkward and didn’t talk more than he needed to. Where was Ned Nickerson — Nancy Drew’s shining boyfriend — when you needed him?
“Tim, have there been any new developments on the Naomi Ray case?”
So much for easing up to the subject.
“Come on, Candace Sue. She took her jewelry and left town.”
“She didn’t take her emerald necklace.”
Tim shook his head. “Naomi’s relatives been by, haven’t they? Those people just won’t give up.”
That took care of my asking for his help on this case, so instead I asked Deputy McCallister for his pork rind recipe for the Celebrity Chef column. I set up an appointment to interview him and dropped the subject of Naomi Ray.
But as soon as he left, I pulled out my drawing again and tried to remember more, because I knew there was something else in Naomi’s portrait, something I had left out.
“Well, you know, Cyrus, I would like someone to go to a movie with once in a while. Interview with the Vampire’s coming to town soon.”