Christ.
At whatever ungodly hour Mike arrived home last night, I was knocked out in a dark, dreamless sleep. I briefly remembered warm lips brushing my cheek, his hand tracing over my belly.
By some miracle of God, a Clairmont towing company named Hooker Services Inc. dropped the Volvo at a local service center long before Mike slipped into bed. Joe Ray Hooker was also a lay preacher at Sunset First Baptist. He asked for $219.23 and took my credit card over the phone. I told him to tip himself another $50 but to please not tell anyone where he picked up my car. He told me that was between “you and the Lord.”
I pulled off the towel, shook loose my hair, and picked up my purse from the couch. The cell phone was in the front left pocket.
It was 10:30 a.m. here, and in Lawrence, Kansas. A perfectly respectable time to call. Cereal had been eaten, coffee had kicked in. If Brad wasn’t lying, Renata Tadynski was expecting me. The first ring sent me to voicemail.
“Hi. It’s Miss T. If you’re a parent calling about a student, please remember that middle-schoolers are certifiably crazy, that grades don’t really count until high school, and that Colin Powell was a C student in college. Then let me know when and where I can reach you and a brief message about why you’re calling. Everyone else just leave a name and number.”
Breezy. Confident. Funny. She was a teacher. Not at all like the frightened girl rubbing the varnish off her rosary beads.
“Hello.” Then I babbled. “This is an old acquaintance of yours from Windsor. Emily Page. Well, I used to be Emily Waters-but then, I’m not sure you even knew my last name. Or remember my first. I think we both experienced something… terrible.”
Now, why, why did I say that? I readjusted, trying to sound more professional. “Brad Hellenberger gave me your number. I need to speak with you. Please call me at this number as soon as possible.”
I clicked off without saying goodbye and sank into the couch. Belmont hopped onto what was left of my lap and stretched out comfortably, purring like an idling Harley, doing his part to hatch our egg. Love was a bit much to ask of him, but he was making more of an effort. Once a day, I’d smash his obnoxiously cute furry face up to mine, and say, “Please love me, Belmont.” He would suffer through it. This morning, he lapped milk and I sipped coffee. We weighed together. I stood on the scale while he hung from my arms like a lazy dead thing, then stood on it without him. I subtracted from my large number to determine his large number. We needed to rethink the wet cat food and the red Doritos.
“Belmont, I think I’m going crazy.” I whispered it and scratched him behind one ear, wondering whether the cat could hear the baby’s heartbeat and Baby could feel the vibration of Belmont’s purring, if they enjoyed some private connection I couldn’t share.
The phone rang, shrill and loud, shattering the peace, and I banged my shins on the coffee table.
“Shit,” I said aloud, rubbing my legs. “Get it together, Emily. Stop cussing.”
The phone rang again, and again, as grating to me as a crying baby who didn’t share my DNA. Maybe like one who did.
I walked slowly toward the kitchen, praying that someone sane would be on the other end. That seemed a lot to ask.
Four rings. Five rings. Six rings. Seven rings.
I was in the kitchen now, staring at the machine.
PRIVATE CALLER.
My hand rested on the receiver.
Please let it be Aunt Tilda in Minnesota, complaining that her retirement center’s cafeteria had switched from cream cheese to cream cheese spread and that she sure as heck wasn’t paying $3,000 a month for cream cheese spread, now, was she?
Please, let it be her.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” he said.
Not a voice synthesized by a computer device, so easy to do in the comfort of your own home these days. Apparently, he wasn’t worried about me recognizing it.
I didn’t.
He cleared his throat.
It sounded like he had a cold. Or that he smoked a lot.
He clicked off.
He said hello.
My mind was light, like it was flying off into the field of daisies on the wall.
But it whispered one more thing.
X marks the spot.
I imagined brute hands holding a child’s treasure map.
A red line that ran straight to the X that was me, and my baby.
27
“That’s it,” Mike said grimly. “I’m putting a private tail on you when I’m not around. One of the guys is going to do it off the books. I’ll pay for it myself.”
We sat across from each other in a booth at a small, family-owned barbecue joint on the outskirts of the town, waiting for a woman named Wanda to yell out our order. We met for a late lunch around two, plenty of time for me to buck up. Our only companions were a couple of farmers in dirty overalls sucking down freshly brewed Lipton tea chunked with ice. Unlimited refills for seventy-nine cents meant the tip would likely be more than the bill.
Charred air, French fry grease, and the sweet smell of sauce churned my stomach, but not enough to stop me from ordering up the Combo Chopped Beef Sandwich Plate with extra onions and dill pickles.
“You didn’t recognize the voice.”
“Mike, we’ve been over this. I can’t recognize a person based on the word hello and the sound of him clearing his throat.” I knew that he wanted me to mimic it. No chance in hell was that happening.
“I’m nowhere good on this. No discernible prints on anything we sent to the lab except for the thumbprint on your easel. Billie’s running it in another database, but I don’t have much hope on getting a hit.”
“What about the cigar?” I asked.
Mike hesitated.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“Made in Kentucky. The brand’s been around for at least a hundred and fifty years. Artesian springs. Dark, fertile soil. It all adds up to a damn fine cigar but not much else. You can buy them online.”
“So you are somewhere on this,” I said slowly. “Caroline was from Kentucky.”
I was officially linked to Caroline’s psycho. Mike had it right all along.
“Here’s your lunch, honey.”
The honey was directed at Mike, although Wanda plopped a loaded plate in front of me, too. Crinkled French fries hung off three sides like suicide jumpers who’d changed their minds. The two onion rings perched on top were surprise bonus points. Eyeing the quarter-inch of breading, I was betting 600-calories-plus bonus points.
Wanda was pretty in a brittle kind of way, with a messy bleached-blond ponytail and a lot of Maybelline eyeliner. Tight Levi’s, and an even tighter red T-shirt with BUBBA’S BARBE-Q stitched in white over her right breast. I estimated her age somewhere between thirty and fifty. A great body and a lot of years in the sun confused things. In the dark, two-stepping across some scarred honky-tonk floor, she could pass for twenty-five.
She nervously rearranged the ketchup bottle and salt and pepper shakers to the middle of the table.
“Y’all need anything else? Extra Bubba’s sauce?”
“No, I think we’re good,” I said. “Thanks.”
But Wanda wasn’t so easily dismissed.
“You’re the new chief, right?” Before Mike could speak, she continued. “I heard that rich lady was raped and cut real bad. There hasn’t been something like this in Clairmont since that girl was found way back in pieces on the highway, her head stuffed into one of those jumbo Ziploc bags. My ten-year-old and her friends scare the bejesus out of each other telling that story in bed with the lights off. It’s like legend. Do you think it’s related? Do you think that a serial killer has been living in our mist all along, like the TV is saying? Should my boyfriend be spending the night?”