“I don’t know. Up here somewhere, I think. Do you know where my mother is?”
“I was going to ask you. She brought you up here?”
“Yes. On Friday.”
“How long did she stay?”
“Just a few minutes. She and Aunt Karen went outside to talk so I couldn’t hear them.”
“So it was late Friday afternoon when she left. Did she tell you where she was going?”
Nod. “Back home. She was supposed to come pick me up Saturday night or Sunday morning, but she didn’t. At first I was glad because I knew you’d come when you got my letter. But now I’m worried. She hasn’t called and she doesn’t answer the phone. Aunt Karen’s called home a dozen times. She’s really upset.”
So am I, I thought. “Where were you going after she picked you up?”
“Someplace new to live. She wouldn’t say where.”
“Emily, was anyone with you and your mom when you drove up here?”
“No. Just us.”
“And you came in your mother’s car?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say why she needed to go back home right away?”
“Some things she had to take care of.”
“Meet someone? Trevor Smith?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t want to see him anymore.”
I ran it around inside my head. Some things to take care of. The money kind, maybe; and the loose ends kind. Close out bank accounts, clean out safe-deposit boxes — banks are open on Saturdays now. Make sure there was nothing incriminating or revealing left in the house. Tasks she hadn’t had time to do or to finish doing on Friday. Her first priority, or one of the first, had been to stash Emily with her sister, keep her away from me. But what had happened after her return to Greenwood? Why was her car still parked in the garage and where was she? And how did Dale Cooney’s death connect with her disappearance, if it did?
Emily asked, “What’re we going to do now?”
“Wait for your aunt to get back so I can talk to her.”
“About what’s making everybody so scared.”
“That’s right. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“No. Nobody will tell me anything. It must be something really awful if a man wants to kill my mom.”
“Did she say his name, even his first name?”
“No.”
“Your aunt knows who he is.”
“Yes, and I want to know, too.”
“She won’t talk about it in front of you.”
“I know,” Emily said. “Will you tell me if you can make her tell you?”
Difficult question. She had a right to know; it involved her parents, her aunt, and it was having an immediate and chaotic effect on her life. Mature for her age, but still a kid, with a kid’s emotions, and she had already suffered a devastating blow with the death of her father. “Something really awful” might open wounds that would never heal.
I hedged by saying, “Maybe it’s best if you don’t know everything, at least not right away.”
“That means you won’t tell me anything.”
“Emily, do you trust me?”
“...Yes.”
“Then believe this. I won’t keep anything really important from you, but I have to know all the facts first. That means talking to other people besides your aunt.”
“I’m not a baby,” she said.
“I know you’re not. And I’m not treating you like one. I’m telling you the same thing I’d tell an adult.” Which was the truth, and to prove it to her I held her gaze, let her see it in my eyes.
“All right,” she said slowly. “But I hate not knowing. I hate being afraid.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Always.”
A jay began squalling in one of the pines. The racket turned my head for a few seconds. When I looked down at Emily again, she said, “Is it okay if I go with you?”
“With me?”
“When you leave. After you talk to Aunt Karen.”
It caught me off guard; I didn’t have an immediate answer.
“Please? You’re going to look for my mother, aren’t you? In Greenwood? I don’t want to stay here anymore. Aunt Karen... she doesn’t want me and she makes me more afraid. Please let me go with you.”
Christ. What can you say?
“Please,” she said again.
“I wish I could.” Also the truth, gently. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’re in your aunt’s care. I can’t just take you away.”
“Even if I say it’s what I want?”
“You’re a minor. Emily. I’d have to have written permission, and when your aunt finds out who I am she’ll never give it. Besides, your mom expects you to be here. Suppose she’s on her way right now? She’d be frantic if she found you gone.”
“I don’t think she’s on her way.” Now it was her eyes, big and dark and tragic, holding mine. “I don’t think she’s going to come at all.”
Another sound saved me from having to fumble up a response to that. This one was the thrum and whine of an approaching car. I swung around to look along the access lane.
“That’s Aunt Karen’s van,” Emily said.
14
I caught Emily’s hand and drew her with me around to the side of the house opposite the carport. I did not want Karen Meineke to see the two of us standing in plain view; it was liable to panic her. We got into heavy tree shadow just before a beat-up yellow Volkswagen van rattled into sight, polluting the air with blackish smoke from a defective exhaust. If the driver noticed my car parked on the turnaround, it didn’t alarm her; the van came up the driveway and into the carport without slowing. The noisy engine and the defective pipe combined to produce an explosive farting sound when the ignition was switched off.
The woman who stepped out and came around to open the rear doors weighed at least forty pounds more than she had on her wedding day, a lot of the extra poundage in bulging hips that rolled and wobbled inside a pair of jogger’s sweatpants. Her hair was a hennaed red now, long and stringy under a dark-green stocking cap. While she unloaded a couple of grocery bags, her back to the house, I whispered to Emily, “Stay here until I call you.” She nodded and I moved out into the open, walked slowly toward the carport.
I was halfway there, adjacent to the stairs again, when Karen Meineke turned and saw me. She had a grocery hag in each arm; she almost dropped one, recovered just in time, and then came up on the halls of her feet and swiveled her head left and right like a trapped animal looking for an escape route. That initial reaction lasted four or five seconds, as long as it took her to realize I was alone and not particularly menacing — empty hands, casual movements. Then she seemed to suck in a breath, gain control of herself. She came forward jerkily to meet me.
“Who are you?” Thin, shaky voice. Deep-sunk eyes wary and hiding things. “What’re you doing on my property?”
“Waiting for you, Mrs. Meineke.”
“Why? What d’you want?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“You and your sister.”
“My — I don’t have a sister.”
“Sure you do. Ellen. Ellen and Lynn, sisters.”
The hidden things crawled into the light of her eyes, and they were the naked shapes of terror. “Jesus,” she said in a sick voice, “oh, Jesus, you... you’re...”
“That’s right. The detective Ellen told you about.”
She backed up a step, and for a second I thought the fear might goad her into flight. That might have happened if the one bag hadn’t slipped again, this time free of her clutch. The sound of it splitting on the hard ground seemed to freeze her in place. She glanced down at the scatter of canned goods, cookie packages, a burst quart of milk. When her eyes came up to mine again they had a stunned sheen. Her face was as white as the spilled milk.