“Hmm. Wow,” he said, and made a humming noise of condolence and befuddlement. He had no idea what to say to her.
For her part, she was instantly sorry she'd called him. He seemed irritated that she'd bothered him with her problem after all these years—and he seemed rather ... dirty. Or perhaps she'd built him up in her mind. Royce had been a big jock in school, but he'd gone down the junk road. She was wary of him, and he could read it on her face.
“I'm really glad you thought to call, Mary.” He felt scuzzy and in need of personal grooming. God—he hadn't thought of being “well groomed” in a long time. She was looking at his roughshod appearance, and he knew he wasn't measuring up.
“It's just that I'd heard something—” she looked down “—some gossip about you doing detective work or something. You know—when you were away from town those years. Sam said you had joined the CIA...” She trailed off.
“No!” He smiled, coldly, instantly on guard. “I heard that bullshit too. CIA. Jeezus!” He laughed humorlessly. “Not me, kid."
“So that was why, you know, I thought about calling you...” She let it drop. It felt like it was pointless for them to waste any more of each other's time. She looked tired, but Royce's maleness reacted to her, as he always had. She was a lovely woman, even without makeup, and she was clearly out of it.
“I'll help any way I can, Mary. I thought when I got the note that Bobby was gone.” They were now uncomfortable as strangers.
“Bobby?” She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Bobby Bartel. Didn't you know he has cancer?"
“You're kidding,” she said, dumbly.
“Uh-uh. Heard it a couple months ago from Lyle Garner. You remember Lyle?"
“Sure.” She nodded. Sam and Mary had been married for nearly fifteen years, and it had been sixteen years since she'd been involved with any part of Royce Hawthorne's world.
When Sam Perkins left Waterton to go to college out East, he'd made a new set of friends and locked on to the business track. When he returned, the kids who'd stayed around their hometown were still involved with one another's lives, the Waterton-Maysburg sports rivalry, and Friday night brew parties. Sam told her early in the resumption of their dating that he'd left all of that behind. He didn't mean it in an unkind way; it was merely a fact of maturing. Mary agreed, and had been pleased to grow along with her childhood beau.
Royce typified the kids they'd hung out with in high school. He hadn't changed much: a rugged Marlboro man sort of party guy. He'd been stuck back in his Waterton letter-sweater days, memorizing Coach John's playbook, and pretending he was going to be drafted by the Cowboys.
“JoAnne James is dead, you know?” she heard him say, and she shook her head.
“My God. I hadn't heard."
“She and her husband and two or three kids, living down in Florida. I believe she was shot and they never solved the case.” They sat quietly for a moment. “Do you know about Hal Stahly?” he asked, after a bit. She looked blank. “He's in Vegas. Struck it rich in the auto parts business. Gale Strickland told me he'd lost about a hundred pounds and was married to Helen Swoboda. Used to be a cheerleader at Maysburg."
She smiled and listened to him run down the catalog of their onetime classmates. Royce was tall, rangy, his looks spoiled by a nose that had run up against a number of hard objects over the years. He still had all his hair (though it needed washing), and a jock's flat stomach, but his eyes were cloudy, squinting against the light, and he seemed to have acquired a few nervous habits, like he had a dozen itches at once and couldn't decide which to scratch first.
He was something of a shock to her system after so many years. One of the strange components at work was the strong attraction she'd always felt when she was in Royce's company. Who can explain these things? Her subconscious gave her a guilty nudge as she recalled their silly nicknames for each other. She called him “Buns,” and he called her “L.D.,” for Legs Diamond.
The notion that she might in some way even identify those kinds of feelings was such anathema to her that Mary felt a momentary stab of irritation as it drifted through to the surface of her awareness. She pushed it away, concentrating on Sam, and trying to decide what she should do next in searching for him.
Sam and Mary had grown up in the same block, one of the classic next-door romances that blossomed at puberty, and there'd never been any question that one day they'd be married. They were steadies from eighth grade through senior high, and would have wed then, but Mary stayed in Waterton when Sam was attending the University of Maryland.
While Sam was away getting his B.A., she and Royce had become close. He was spontaneous, carefree, funny—and in some off-the-wall ways he was tremendously appealing. Women probably wanted to mother him, or thought they could change his ways. Men, of course, considered Royce the ideal buddy. She knew that he was a great deal more complex than he appeared to be. But that was old news.
Sam Perkins had become more than a husband to Mary—as their marriage became, perhaps, overly comfortable. He'd become like a brother. Royce, bless his damn heart, had made her take a subconscious glance at that.
“What's the deal?” he asked her, in his most serious and quiet tone. She remembered how he could be.
“How do you mean?"
“I mean Sam. Was there trouble between you?"
“No."
“No money problems? Health problems?"
“Absolutely none. He was very happy.” She was suddenly defensive. “Good health. We both worked at it. He was great. His business was wonderful."
“You guys weren't having, you know, personal problems?"
“Uh-uh.” She was surprised he'd even ask her.
“From what you say, he just ceased to exist one Friday morning, Mary. People don't vanish like that—the parked car and all. Unless he was kidnapped—and who'd want to do that? Or ... he decided to leave."
“I would have known. Something happened to him."
“Okay."
“He parked the car at the office—in back. When he got out, somebody probably pulled up beside him or honked at him. That's what I think. He got in the car with them. And then something happened to him. That's the way he disappeared."
“Mm."
“The one who kidnapped him might be waiting for some reason before they ask for money. Waiting to see if the police or FBI can ... you know, uncover their tracks."
“So you think he was kidnapped?"
“That's the way it looks to me."
“Pretty soon you'll get a demand for ransom money if that's what happened."
“Right.” It had been a big mistake to call him. “That's what the cops and FBI think, too."
“You called the Feds?"
She nodded. “Yeah."
“Well—” He wanted to tell her about himself and that he was one of the good guys. At that moment he felt very sad for her, and without thinking, he took one of her hands and held it in his. He had big, rough hands. Laborer's fingers. But he was no laborer, sitting there at the kitchen table in his beat-up leather bomber's jacket and faded jeans, looking as if no time at all had gone by. She took her hand away and got up to put coffee water on, wondering if he'd done lines. “So—if the FBI is on the case, that's good. Right?” He was trying to reassure her, she supposed.
“I guess. They didn't act very interested. These two guys came to town and talked to me here at the house, and they tape-recorded me and asked a bunch of stuff. The same things I'd told Marty Kerns. They said, ‘We'll be in touch,’ and that was the last I heard from them. I've called a couple of times since. The last time I had to call back three times to get an agent on the phone, that's how they returned my calls."
He just looked at her. She supposed he'd had to get half-stoned to come talk to her. She thought of Sam's name for him. “The Junkie,” he'd always called Royce if his name came up, and not unkindly. Now here he sat: her old junkie lover of once upon a time.