2.5 feet tall
30 pounds
Red hair, green eyes
They’d used the snapshot that I kept in my wallet, and added a second one of Timmy in three-quarter profile, cuddling Lamby under his dimpled chin.
“Excuse me.” Hand pressed to my mouth, I fled the room. I made it to the bathroom just in time.
When the tapping began, I ignored it. I was sitting on the chenille toilet lid cover, using both hands to press a cold, wet washcloth over my face.
“Hannah?” The tapping turned to knocking. “Are you all right in there?”
“I’ll be out in a minute, Connie.”
I hung the washcloth on the towel rack to dry, and examined my face in the mirror. I’d aged ten years in a few short days. I needed a haircut, badly. My tongue tasted like I’d been licking dirt off the sidewalk.
I slid the door to the medicine cabinet to one side, hoping to find some mouthwash to rinse the taste of bile out of my mouth. I rummaged unsuccessfully through the bottles-rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover, cough syrup (expired)-then turned my attention to the plastic bins Emily used to organize her odds and ends. Plastic razors, sample packets of shampoo, cotton balls, a comb with the American Airlines logo AA stamped on it, and-ah-ha!-a similarly marked cellophane packet containing a toothbrush and a miniature tube of toothpaste.
As I was sliding the door shut, I noticed another container on the top shelf filled with random packets of pills-pills in blister packs, pills in foil, pills and capsules sorted by color into mini-plastic Ziploc bags. Curious, I pulled the container down and dumped it out on the Formica counter. Among the cold tablets and remedies for diarrhea and acid indigestion, I counted four pink pills marked Paxil 20 and six yellow pills marked Amitrip 25.
Jeeze Lahweeze!
I pawed through the pile, sorting as I went. Valium, Percocet, Oxycodone, Efexor, Zoloft, Wellbutrin. Emily was stockpiling painkillers and antidepressants. That plus the “Rema-something” she’d just swallowed in the kitchen made six. I wondered if her doctor knew. I wondered if Dante knew.
Ten years ago I would have had a knockdown-drag-out confrontation with my daughter, then tossed the pills one by one down the garbage disposal.
Now? I wanted to bring it up with her, but Emily was no doubt too stressed for anything I could say to register. Knowing how she would feel about my snooping around in her medicine cabinet, I returned the pills to the container and put it back where I’d found it. Eventually I’d end up speaking to Dante about them, especially in light of Emily’s temper tantrums on Monday night. Overwrought and over-medicated, a volatile combination.
I ran the airline comb through my hair, brushed my teeth, and returned to the kitchen, where I found everyone except Emily talking into their cell phones. I poured myself a cup of coffee, trying to pick up the gist of the three one-sided conversations going on around me.
Amanda Crisp was giving directions to someone in Quantico who was going to speak at the press conference at two if he could navigate his way around the ongoing construction on I-95 North.
Connie was issuing instructions to an associate at Kinkos about making “Timmy” buttons. From the deliberate way she spoke, I gathered that English was a second language for the hapless associate. Either that or Kinkos was hiring six-year-olds these days.
Meanwhile, Erika stood at the window, staring into the backyard, cell phone pressed to her right ear, hand covering her left, going-um, ah, no way, my God, you’re shitting me, right?-until I was wild to know what the party on the other end of her cell phone was telling her. Erika had just exploded with a particularly vigorous Oh my God! when my own cell phone burst into the opening bars of Mozart’s Symphony No.40.
That would be Paul.
I took the call in the living room. “What’s up?”
“Just checking in, sweetheart. I’m with Ruth.”
“Where?”
“At Safeway, out near Best Buy. We’ve just finished postering the mall. Dennis is doing south county, and I was thinking if you’d meet us here and pick up some posters, maybe you and Ruth could take care of the grocery stores in Crofton so I can get back to the house in time for the press conference.”
The posters. I swallowed hard. How could I not agree to hang up posters, plaster the whole world with posters if it came to that, for Timmy’s sake?
I must have been quiet for a long time because I heard Paul say, “Hannah? You there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Good. We’ll be waiting in Safeway at the Starbucks counter. I’ll order you a mocha frappaccino for the road,” Paul said, not doubting for a moment that my answer would be yes.
In the time it took me to finish my conversation with Paul, press the End button, and rejoin the other women in the kitchen, Agent Crisp had pulled up a chair and was sitting next to Emily at the computer. Connie stood just behind, sipping from a bottle of springwater. Erika still stood at the window, cell phone glued to her ear.
Agent Crisp glanced up as I entered the room. “Come, take a look at this.”
I’d made it halfway across the kitchen when whatever curiosity I might have had about what Amanda Crisp was looking at was driven straight out of my head by the shrieks of Ms. Erika Rose, Attorney-at-Law. “Why are you just now telling me this, Andrew?”
Four heads swiveled Erika’s way.
“What do you mean you had to keep it under wraps?”
Connie poked my arm and mouthed, What?
I shrugged.
“Ohmahgawd!” said Erika Rose. “Oh. My. God.”
Erika must have sensed four pairs of eyes staring at her, boring into her back, because she turned around about then, wide-eyed, and flapped her free hand in our direction. “That is so fanfuckingtastic!” she said into the phone. “I am so psyched.” And then, “Yeah, yeah. I got it.”
“What?” I said aloud.
“Yeah, what? What?” echoed Connie.
Erika held up her hand, palm out, signaling patience. I didn’t know about the others, but the suspense was killing me. There could have been a breakthrough in the search for Timmy, George Bush could have resigned his presidency, or maybe one of her girlfriends had just gotten engaged. It was impossible to tell.
“Okay,” Erika said, wrapping up the conversation at last. “I’ll be right over.”
With her thumb, Erika pressed down on the End button of her cell phone, a self-satisfied grin spreading across her face. She puffed air out through her mouth. “Sorry, girls, but I have to go.”
Emily leapt to her feet. “Is it Timmy?”
“No, sorry, Em. I would have told you if it were Timmy, you know that.”
“Then, what?” I repeated.
Erika scanned the room until she located her handbag in the corner where she’d tossed it, shouldered the bag, tucked her cell phone into an outside pocket and headed for the kitchen door. “Well, ladies. Something I’ve been working on for quite some time is about to hit the fan big-time, but in a very good way.” She disappeared into the hallway.
We stood there like statues, our mouths slack, staring at the empty space where Erika’s back had just been. “Does that mean we’ve just got one less volunteer?” I asked of no one in particular.
Suddenly, Erika’s face reappeared around the door frame. “You can’t get rid of me that easily, Hannah Ives.” Her teeth flashed white in the dim light. “Watch Cross Current tonight. NBC. Ten o’clock. You will not be sorry.”
CHAPTER 13
In the bleak reality of day after endless day, at least Erika’s breezy announcement gave me something to look forward to. Cross Current had been a highly hyped addition to NBC’s fall lineup, successfully challenging CBS’s popular prime-time news program, 60 Minutes, in the television ratings wars. I couldn’t imagine what connection Erika Rose might have to the show, but it had to be something controversial. If Cross Current’s host, Mitch Harmon, ever showed up on your doorstep, it would be prudent to keep your mouth shut and duck out the back way, speed dialing your attorney as you went.