Woman in Blue

by Eileen Goudge

  Everyone roared with laughter, Miss Honi loudest of all.

  Bella was beaming when they all sat down to supper, and throughout the meal, the smile never left her face. She ate everything on her plate and seemed to revel in being part of such a large group, one that included Chester and the cats, to whom she kept sneaking scraps when she thought no one was looking. Kerrie Ann hadn’t seen her look this happy since before …

  She pushed away the thought. Things were going to be different from now on.

  “So there I was, standing knee-deep in mud, looking at a dead alligator, of all things …”

  Grant was telling a story about the time he’d traveled to a swamp in the Florida Keys to investigate an alleged case of toxic-waste dumping. Kerrie Ann tuned out the rest. Dinner hadn’t set too well with her, and she was feeling queasy. All the excitement of the day, coupled with a lack of sleep, must be catching up with her. Or perhaps she was coming down with something. She couldn’t even look at dessert, a vanilla cake with fudge icing. She excused herself from the table, barely making it to the bathroom before puking up the contents of her stomach. Afterward she staggered into her room and fell onto the bed with a moan.

  Of all the times to get sick! If there were any way she could have dragged herself through the rest of the evening, she’d have done so, but she couldn’t so much as sit up without her stomach threatening to capsize.

  Miss Honi fussed over her, and Lindsay fetched her some Alka-Seltzer while the men kept Bella occupied in the next room. Kerrie Ann closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. When she awoke, Jeremiah was standing over her. “You don’t look too good,” he said, peering at her with concern. “Why don’t I take Bella to the movie while you get some rest?”

  “But …” She started to sit up, and he gently pushed her back down.

  “It’s just for a couple of hours. We’ll be back before you know it.”

  She felt a feather-brush of unease, but she didn’t want to disappoint her daughter. It might be better if Bella weren’t around her right now; whatever she had might be catching. Besides, what could go wrong? “You’ll come straight home as soon as the movie’s out?”

  “You bet,” he said.

  She groaned, rolling away from him. She had so looked forward to this visit! It doesn’t matter what I do, she thought, the deck is always stacked against me.

  She drifted back to sleep, and this time it was the sleep of the dead. Hours later, when she was woken by a not-so-gentle shake, it was as if she were being dredged up from the bottom of a pond. She pried open her eyelids to find her sister standing over her, wearing a worried look. The room was dark except for the light spilling in from the hallway. Kerrie Ann’s head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton balls, and her mouth tasted like something had crawled down her throat and died. “What time is it?” she muttered groggily.

  “Almost eleven,” Lindsay informed her.

  “Where’s Bella?”

  “They’re not back yet.”

  Kerrie Ann quickly calculated that it had been more than two hours since the movie had let out. She felt a pulse of alarm as she struggled into an upright position. “Did you try Jeremiah’s cell?”

  “At least a dozen times. I keep getting his voice mail.”

  “He must’ve forgotten to recharge it.”

  “Even so, you’d think he could’ve gotten to a phone by now.”

  “Maybe his car broke down.” She didn’t want to think about what else might be keeping him.

  “I checked with the highway patrol. Nothing’s been reported.” Lindsay sank down on the mattress. “I didn’t want to worry you. I know you’re not feeling well. But frankly, I’m worried.”

  Kerrie Ann was worried as well, but some of the old obstinance kicked in nonetheless. “Why? Don’t you trust Jeremiah?”

  Lindsay gave her a searching look. “Do you?”

  Kerrie Ann’s first impulse was to defend him. Would she have sent her daughter off with a man she didn’t trust, even if he was her father? Of course not. She did trust Jeremiah … or at least she had until now. At the moment, she didn’t know what to think.

  The alarm now clanging in her head sent her lurching off the bed. For a minute she thought she might throw up again, but she fought back the waves of nausea. She couldn’t afford to be sick right now.

  She reached for the phone, punching in Jeremiah’s number, but, like Lindsay, all she got was his voice mail. “Damn!” She turned to Lindsay. “Can I borrow your car?” If nothing else, she could cruise the streets looking for them. Jeremiah’s pimpmobile would be hard to miss.

  “You’re in no shape to be driving,” Lindsay told her. “I’ll go.”

  “No! She’s my kid. I’m the one who let her go off with that … that fuckup.” She felt a sudden surge of anger toward Jeremiah. He might have a perfectly good excuse for the delay, but couldn’t he at least have made sure his cell phone battery was charged?

  “All right. We’ll both go,” Lindsay said, seeing that Kerrie Ann wasn’t going to back down.

  Kerrie Ann grabbed her jacket and cell phone and met Lindsay at the door. Grant had long since gone home. Only Miss Honi was there to see them off. The old woman stood in the entryway, in her pink dressing gown and hairnet, her lined face etched with concern. “Call if there’s any news,” she said as they raced out the door.

  Soon the sisters were cruising the streets downtown in Lindsay’s Volvo. At the Rialto, they asked the elderly ticket taker if he’d seen a man and a little girl who fitted Jeremiah’s and Bella’s descriptions. He hadn’t.

  Heading back to the highway, they drove south all the way to Davenport before turning back. The only abandoned vehicle they spotted along the way was a pickup truck with a blown tire down by Lighthouse Point. Nowhere did they spy Jeremiah’s white Caddie.

  Lindsay phoned the police as soon as they got back to the house, this time to report a missing child. By the time the cops arrived, Kerrie Ann was barely keeping it together.

  “Ma’am, do you have reason to believe your daughter might’ve been kidnapped?” inquired the older of the two cops, a Hispanic man with a coal-black mustache and cropped gray hair.

  Kerrie Ann shook her head, fighting back the waves of nausea rolling through her. She must have looked unsure because he exchanged a glance with his partner, a younger, skinnier guy with longish hair.

  “So to the best of your knowledge, your husband—excuse me, ex-boyfriend—wasn’t unhappy with whatever custody arrangements you two have?” asked the skinny cop.

  “No.” She wondered if she ought to inform them that she had no more legal rights than Jeremiah at this point but decided that would only complicate matters. “He … he had some personal problems, but he was getting his life together. Things were going good.”

  Lindsay put it more bluntly. “What she’s trying to say is that he’s a recovering addict.”

  Kerrie Ann gave her a sharp look, but Lindsay didn’t flinch. This is too important to mess around, her eyes communicated. And she was right, of course.

  The officers’ expressions became even more grave, and they exchanged another look. The older cop scribbled something in his notepad. “That’s helpful to know,” he said.

  “I don’t think he—” Kerrie Ann started to say she didn’t think Jeremiah was using again but quickly shut her mouth. She knew better than anyone how insidious the disease was, how it could fool you into thinking everything was fine when it wasn’t. Could she truly vouch for him? The other night, when he’d talked her out of going to the meeting, she’d wondered if he was headed for a fall. They warned about it in the program: the tendency to think the worst was behind you once you were over the hump. Sometimes that was all it took.

  “We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything,” said the older cop as they were getting ready to leave. He gave Kerrie Ann a clumsy pat on the shoulder. “You’ll get your little girl back, don’t worry. Nine times out of ten, they turn up before we can even put out an A
mber Alert.”

  Kerrie Ann wished she felt as confident. But she nodded, even mustering a tiny smile. She didn’t want the cops to see her as some sort of hysteric. It might lead to more questions, ones for which there was no good answer. It wasn’t until she’d closed the door behind them that she collapsed into her sister’s arms, clutching her as she sobbed her heart out.

  Ollie usually went to bed as soon as he was finished with the night’s baking. But tonight he was restless, so he switched on the TV in the living room instead. It was past midnight, and his parents had long since retired for the night; even so, he kept the volume down. His dad could snooze through a category 5 hurricane, but his mother was a light sleeper—the legacy of all those kids. Besides, there was nothing on that interested him; it was just something to keep him occupied. Otherwise he’d he awake all night thinking about Kerrie Ann.

  He flipped on the local all-night news channel with its reports of murder and mayhem, and storms brewing offshore—the perfect match for his present mood. His eyelids were growing heavy when he saw something that jolted him awake: an Amber Alert for a six-year-old girl named Annabella. A photo of a dark-haired, dusky-skinned little girl flashed across the screen. He recognized her at once: Kerrie Ann’s kid.

  He stared in disbelief at the TV screen as the newscaster rattled on, “last seen wearing … if you have any information …” He was aware of a tingling in his hands and feet, like some sort of itch. He felt an urge to do something—anything. But what? Nothing would be accomplished by going over to Lindsay’s. He’d only be in the way.

  He switched off the TV and bolted upstairs to his room. He found what he was looking for on the Channel 4 web site: the same photo that had been shown on TV, along with the pertinent information. Kerrie Ann’s little girl was last seen with her father, though it was unclear whether they were simply missing or if it was a kidnapping. There was a photo of Jeremiah as well, culled from some police file along with a record of his arrests through the years on various drug charges. Ollie felt a flash of anger. How could Kerrie Ann have chosen that loser over him? Not just a loser—a criminal. Possibly even a kidnapper.

  He thought hard, his normally expressive face set in grim lines, his hands, knotted into fists, planted at either end of his keyboard like a pair of stone lions flanking the entrance to a castle keep. Gradually his face relaxed as an idea came to him.

  He was getting up to throw on his jacket when he happened to glance at the digital time readout on his computer screen: five past one. He hesitated, then thought, To hell with it. As he made his way down the stairs, he heard a creaking noise on the landing above. He looked up as his mother stepped into the light, tying the sash on her robe and blinking at him sleepily.

  “Ollie, is that you?”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” he called up to her softly.

  She moved closer to the banister, peering down at him, her sleep-blurred face growing alert when she noticed that he was wearing his jacket. “Where on earth are you going at this hour?”

  He flashed her a mirthless grin. “Dragon hunting,” he said.

  Kerrie Ann paced by the phone, snatching up the handset every so often just to be reassured by the dial tone that it was still in working order. “Why is it taking so long?” she cried. “Shouldn’t they have found her by now?”

  “It’s only been a couple of hours.” Lindsay was curled on the sofa with her head resting on the throw pillows, but she looked tense, her face pale with dark circles under her eyes.

  “Reminds me of the time you wandered off,” piped Miss Honi from the easy chair by the fireplace. “Your sister and me, we was tearing our hair out looking for you. Mercy, what a scare! And all that time there you was, sound asleep, curled up like a kitten in the back of a pickup truck.”

  Kerrie Ann knew she was only trying to put a hopeful spin on the situation, but it had the opposite effect. “Maybe I should’ve stayed lost,” she muttered darkly. “None of this would be happening now.”

  Miss Honi, seeing that she was getting nowhere, rose to her feet with a sigh. “Why don’t I make another pot of coffee?”

  Kerrie Ann silently cursed Jeremiah. She’d run out of excuses for him, and a white-hot rage had settled in, fueled mainly by anger at herself. What had she been thinking? Had she been thinking at all? Even if Bella was returned safe and sound, what were Kerrie Ann’s chances of regaining custody after a fuckup of this dimension?

  Her thoughts drifted to Ollie. Kind, decent Ollie, who’d made her feel special and encouraged her to believe she could accomplish anything she set her mind to. She recalled how he’d calmed her fears the last time she’d felt in danger of losing her daughter and the infinite tenderness with which he’d held her. She clung to that memory as to a life preserver while she reached for the phone to make the call she’d been putting off. “Hello?” she said when a sleepy voice came on the line. “George, it’s me, Kerrie Ann …”

  The area known as the Flats had gotten its name from the long-abandoned railroad that ran through it like a stuck zipper; in the old days, before the highway had made the railroad obsolete, flats of transported goods had been regularly offloaded from the trains that had been the lifeblood of the community. Nowadays it was the closest Blue Moon Bay had to a slum, with its rundown houses and vacant lots, stray animals and motley assortment of stray humans.

  Ollie couldn’t recall the name of the street he was looking for, but after circling through the neighborhood, he came across a familiar-looking cul-de-sac that butted up against the old train yard. He cruised along slowly, his headlights washing over rows of small, flat-roofed houses in various stages of disrepair before he pulled up in front of the one at the end.

  Moments later he was picking his way over the uneven concrete path to the door, wondering if this might be the stupidest idea he’d ever had. Who knew if the guy even still lived here? It had been nine years since Ollie had last paid a visit to this address, and it hadn’t been to form a lasting friendship. He knocked on the door with a sour feeling in his gut, reminded of a period in his life he’d just as soon forget. When after several minutes no one answered, he almost gave up and walked away. Only the thought of Kerrie Ann and her missing kid kept him hammering away until finally the porch light snapped on and a gruff male voice barked from inside, “What the fuck?”

  There was the rattle of a door chain, followed by the door easing open a crack. A gimlet eye set in a grizzled face, which didn’t look too happy at the moment, peered through the opening. “Do you know what time it is?” the guy growled. “It’s two the fuck o’clock in the morning!”

  “Sorry, man, but it couldn’t wait. It’s, um, kind of an emergency.”

  “What the—hey, don’t I know you?” The eye peering out at him narrowed.

  Ollie hadn’t expected the dealer to recognize him after so long. He himself had only a dim recollection of that time—probably because he’d been stoned during most of it. “It’s been a while,” he answered cautiously, deciding the less said, the better.

  The man’s expression relaxed. “No shit. So what is it, kid? You running low on stash?”

  “Nah. I’m looking for someone—guy by the name of Jeremiah. I wondered if you knew where I might find him. Light-skinned black, thirtyish, dark hair, brown eyes.”

  “The name don’t ring a bell. But I see a lot of people. I can’t keep track of them all.”

  “There’s a missing kid involved.”

  That did the trick. The chain rattled, and the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged man with a pot belly and gray hair in a ponytail. Oddly, he appeared unchanged since Ollie’s last visit, maybe because he’d seemed old to Ollie back then. “What d’you want from me? I told you, I don’t know nothing.” The dealer’s voice took on a wheedling edge.

  “Can I come in?” Ollie asked, and after a moment the man stepped aside to let him in. As soon as Ollie entered, the stinky-sweet smell of marijuana brought back a wave of unpleasant memories. Well, this wouldn’t take l
ong. “If you turn on the news, you’ll see what I’m talking about,” he said, gesturing toward the forty-inch flat-screen TV on the wall, an incongruous touch amid the ratty furnishings and scattered belongings.

  The dealer didn’t budge. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “The guy I’m looking for, the cops think he might’ve had something to do with it.”

  “Yeah? And what’s that got to do with me?”

  “Where would a guy like that go if he was looking to score crack?”

  The dealer recoiled, throwing up his hands. “Hey, I don’t deal in the hard stuff. That’s ten to twenty, easy. Even if it’s your first offense.”

  “But you know who does.”

  “Maybe.” The man hesitated just long enough for Ollie to know he was on to something. “There’s a guy, lives over in that new development—Heritage Acres? Heritage Oaks?—on Foothill Drive. Don’t know him personally, but word gets around. He’s new in town from what I’m told. Some of my customers, that’s where they go when they’re looking to expand their portfolio, if you know what I mean.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have an address?”

  Ollie expected the dealer to scoff, but instead he disappeared into the next room, reappearing a minute or so later with a scrap of paper on which an address and phone number were scribbled. He thrust it at Ollie. “It’s all I’ve got. Now, will you clear out so I can get some shut-eye?”

  It was supposed to be just a quick stop along the way, no different from ducking into a 7-Eleven for a six-pack, Jeremiah reasoned. He wouldn’t leave her waiting in the car any longer than five minutes, tops. And it was a quiet residential street—the last place you’d expect to find your friendly neighborhood drug dealer—so she’d be safe. No harm done, and no one the wiser.

  Only it didn’t quite work out that way.

  For starters, Bella put up some resistance. “You’re not supposed to leave little kids alone in cars. George and Carol said so,” she scolded, sounding like a little adult—a pissed-off little adult—as she sat in the passenger seat scowling at him with her arms crossed over her chest.