Michael drew in a breath, let it out as he took in the room. “How did she sneak the stuff out of the house?”
“I don’t know! She says we patrol her like Nazis, but it’s not really true. I’ve left her here alone lots of times, when I’ve gone to the store or whatever.”
He moved closer to Pat. “Do we think that girl across the street helped? Cindy?”
She shrugged helplessly, saying, “Maybe. Cindy told her parents the same lie Anna told us.”
“What about Cindy? Is she gone?”
Eyes flared again. “Well, she’s not home!”
“No, honey, I mean — has Cindy run off, too?”
Pat threw up her hands. “I don’t know... I don’t know. I only know the Parhams are pretty upset.”
“Let’s go talk to them.”
They did.
Sid Parham was in life insurance, and his wife was a substitute grade school teacher; they were solid citizens, and wonderful, generous parents, whose daughter hated them.
But Cindy’s clothes were all present and accounted for, as well as her suitcase. The Parham girl did not seem to have taken off with Anna, though probably had aided and abetted the getaway.
The two sets of parents sat in the Parham kitchen, which was much like the Smiths’, looking out on a familiar fenced-in backyard with pool.
“They took off together yesterday afternoon,” said Mrs. Parham, a slender, not particularly attractive strawberry blonde in a blue-and-white floral-print-shorts outfit, “in Cindy’s new little red Mustang.”
“We bought Cindy a Mustang,” Sid Parham said pointlessly, a bald heavyset Uncle Fester — ish fellow, dressed for yardwork. “For graduation.”
“She hasn’t graduated yet,” Michael pointed out.
“Well, there are a lot of things going on this time of year,” Parham said defensively. Suddenly Cindy having a car seemed to be the problem. “Her having it early made sense. Senior parties and prom and—”
“Prom,” Pat said.
Michael looked at her, and their eyes locked. He said, “Tomorrow night’s the prom, back at—”
But he stopped. He’d come very close to saying Crystal Bay.
“Back where you used to live?” Sid said, finishing Michael’s statement with a question. “St. Paul, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “St. Paul... If you hear from Cindy, let us know right away. Right away!”
“You’ll be the first,” Sid said.
“Don’t be worried,” Mrs. Parham said. “Cindy does this kind of thing all the time.”
Back in their own kitchen, Michael and Pat sat and held hands, tightly.
“You think she’s gone back home for prom?” Pat asked, shaking and on the verge of tears. Hope and despair fought for control of her voice as she said, “She’s gone back for prom, hasn’t she?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Where else could she have gone?”
“It is a real possibility.” He sighed and shrugged. “But it’s a long damn drive... twelve, thirteen hours.”
Shaking her head, Pat said absurdly, “She doesn’t have that kind of driving experience!”
“Easy, Pat — remember, she doesn’t have a car. If Cindy didn’t drive her, she’d have to take a bus or plane. A girl her age can’t rent a vehicle... unless she has fake ID, which I suppose—”
Pat squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. “What are we going to do? Oh my God, Michael — what in hell can we do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“That panic button!” Her eyebrows climbed her forehead. “We’ll call the federal panic button, and they’ll go get her!”
“We could do that. Are you prepared to move again?”
Pat, half out of the chair, froze. “What?”
“If I call our friend Assistant Director Shore, he’ll help us out — send marshals to Lake Tahoe to grab her up... if our assumption is right... but in any case, they will consider our cover blown.”
Still frozen, she asked, “So what?”
“So... it means another name change. Another move. Another city. Another new life — for all of us.”
She sat heavily down. Her eyes stared at nothing. “Oh, Christ... but what else can we do?”
“If we’re right about where Anna’s gone, we retrieve her. I’ll drive or fly back home, and get her. The prom isn’t till tomorrow night.”
Pat was looking at him now, guardedly hopeful. “We’ll go together?”
“No. I think... I think the first thing we do is call some people back home.”
Nodding decisively, Pat said, “I can do that.”
“No.” He held out a cautionary palm. “I don’t want those calls on our long-distance charges. Hell, for all I know, the feds have our phone tapped.”
Indignation tweaked her expression. “I thought we were the good guys!”
“No — we’re not the good guys, and we’re not the bad guys. We’re the poor bastards getting squeezed between... I’ll go to a phone booth, and call every neighbor back there I can think of, to see if anyone’s seen Anna.”
Nodding again, frantically, she said, “Start with the Grace house! She’s gone back to be with that Gary, I just know she has!”
He nodded, too, but slowly, reassuringly. “That’s where I’ll start. Can you think of anyone who lives next door to the Graces? Or even in their neighborhood?”
Her eyes tightened. “No... No, his family lives in Incline Village. That Pineview development, but I don’t know anybody there. Damn!”
He held his palm up again. “Pat, it’ll be all right. Do we have a picture of Anna since we moved here?”
Turning her head toward the hallway, she said, “There are some snapshots on her mirror, from when she and her wonderful-great-good-friend-that-little-bitch-of-a-brat Cindy went horseback riding.”
“Get me one, will you?”
“All right.” She stood, then hovered. “...What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to hit the bus stations, train depots, and the airport.”
“You make it sound like... like she’s a runaway.”
“She is, sort of. But just for the weekend, I think. This is just about prom.”
Again her eyes tightened, in confusion this time. “But didn’t Cindy drive her...?”
“We don’t know that. And that’s a long way to drive, whether Cindy’s along or not. The picture?”
“All right.”
Rising, he said, “I’ll be in my study.”
She eyed him with mild suspicion. “Doing what?”
“Getting something.”
“Getting what, Michael?”
“Pat — just fetch the picture, okay? And stay calm. Stay steady.”
She went off to Anna’s room, and he slipped into his study and from a locked desk drawer got the .45 automatic — the gun his father had taken on the road, the gun he had taken to Bataan, the gun he’d used as an Outfit enforcer — and slipped it in his waistband, in the small of his back, covering it. He wasn’t sure he would need it; he wasn’t even really sure why instinct said to take it with him.
But that’s what instinct said.
And he listened.
He’d just finished snugging the gun away when he heard Pat in the hall. Then she was standing framed in the doorway, holding up the snapshot.
“Everything else we have of Anna,” she said glumly, “didn’t make the trip from Crystal Bay.”
She stepped into the study, and he took the snapshot, dropped it into his suitcoat pocket, then wrapped her up in his arms and looked earnestly at her.