by Tracy Sharp
I tilted my head. Something white peeked out from beneath the back seat. I pulled the garment out and inspected it. It was a cardigan I’d worn on my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Callahan had taken me out to dinner and I’d actually worn a skirt. I felt a twinge in my chest, but I shoved the memory aside and focused on the matter at hand. The cardigan was a bit wrinkled but otherwise clean and in good condition. “Peachy.”
I slipped it on. Glancing at myself in the rearview mirror, I opened the dash and searched until I found a tube of lipstick. Wineberry. It would work. I applied the lipstick, then pressed my lips together a few times and blew myself a kiss in the mirror.
After I climbed out of the Jeep and shut the door, I studied myself in the window, smoothing the cardigan as best I could with my hands. It was a huge improvement. ‘What Not to Wear’ would be impressed. Or not.
I walked up the stone driveway of pretty pink, blue and gray stones strategically placed to look natural yet decorated, and swore under my breath, hoping they wouldn’t shred my boots. When I got to the door it opened before I could ring the bell. The man who stood in the doorway looked surprised. He appeared to be in his early sixties, a full head of wavy steel-gray hair gelled perfectly into place. His blue eyes were wide and took me in within a split second.
“You startled me!” he said, breathless, patting his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him.
He bent over a little, catching his breath. “Goodness! You gave me quite a fright. The old ticker can’t take too many more frights, you know.” He winked and smiled widely.
I smiled back. “I do have that effect on most people.”
He tipped his head back, his laughter robust and natural.
I was beginning to like the old guy.
“Well, now that my manners have completely left me. Can I help you, young lady?”
“I sure hope so, sir. I’m looking for Chloe Nolan.”
The color drained from his face, and the space between his eyebrows closed.
I went on. “I’m a friend of hers and I’ve lost touch with her. Are you a relation?”
He hesitated a moment, looking down at my boots, as if deciding whether to close the door in my face or talk to me. After a long moment he stepped outside and motioned to a wicker chair on the patio. “Have a seat. Muriel will be along in a minute with iced tea. You do like iced tea?”
“Who doesn’t?”
He nodded, pleased, then grew silent for awhile, gazing out at the manicured lawn and colorful flower beds. I decided to wait him out, not push him. My bold tact with the last Nolan hadn’t exactly scored me any brownie points.
Finally he took a deep breath and sighed. “So you’re a friend of Chloe’s.”
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh, Martin, please.”
I started, realizing I hadn’t introduced myself. “Okay, Martin. I’m Leah Ryan.” I offered him my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
He nodded once and smiled weakly. This was a man who was accustomed to smiling because it was the polite thing to do. He was very agreeable.
Just then a tall, thin woman appeared in the doorway. She had chin length red hair, streaked gray, and held back with decorative combs at the sides of her head. When she saw me she did a bit of a double take, and an “Oh” escaped her lips.
Martin motioned her out with his hand. “Muriel, this is Leah Ryan. She’s a friend of Chloe’s.”
Muriel seemed to stiffen. “Oh,” she said again. “I see.” She offered me her hand and a frozen smile, then handed a tall glass of iced tea to Martin. Ice tinkled as she offered me the glass in her other hand, which had clearly been meant for herself.
I accepted the glass. “Thank you.”
She bobbed her head, not looking at me, then she disappeared back into the house without another word.
When the screen door closed Martin said, “I haven’t seen Chloe in over a year.”
I nodded but stayed quiet, giving him the room to continue.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” He turned his face to me, his eyes looking straight into mine. “I would appreciate it if you’d tell me who you really are.”
My mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.
He shook his head. “Chloe doesn’t have friends, Ms. Ryan. At least not the straight arrows. She never has. She’s always chosen the worst possible people to keep company with. It was her way of rebelling, I suppose.” He looked back at the yard, his eyes distant, picturing another time, perhaps. “We always thought she’d come to her senses.” He shrugged, the movement revealing a sense of helplessness in him. “She never did. Then we lost her.”
If only he knew how crooked of an arrow I’d been myself in my younger years. I remained silent, not wanting him to stop telling me about Chloe.
He turned back toward me, the glass of iced tea held so loosely in his hand, hanging between his bent knees, that I was sure he’d drop it. “So who are you really, Ms. Ryan?”
I decided to come clean. The jig was up, anyway, and it seemed that my only hope of getting any more information about Chloe Nolan would be to be straight with the man. “Call me Leah. I’m just an auto recovery agent who helped some people last year. Word got around on the streets, I guess, and a few days ago a friend of Chloe’s came to me asking me to find her.”
“A friend?”
A recovering drug addict.”
He nodded. “That I can believe.”
“He told me she’d vanished while he was drying out in a facility somewhere. He’s worried about her.”
His face was troubled. “She could be anywhere. She’s disappeared many times before. I’ve brought her back home many times before. She always disappears again. It’s been too much for Muriel and I. Her health isn’t good. It’s taken a toll on her.”
“Martin, this time she’s disappeared from the streets. This is not a good sign. It doesn’t look like she took off of her own free will.”
He rubbed his hand over his jaw. This was clearly a painful subject for him. “Maybe if we ... if I hadn’t pushed her so much.” When he looked at me again his eyes were regretful. “If I’d given her more space. More trust. Let her be who she wanted to be.”
“Maybe she would’ve done the same thing. Who can say?”
He shook his head a little, as if he wasn’t buying it. Then he said, “You helped some people?”
I nodded. “Yes. Some friends and I helped rescue several illegal Chinese immigrant women from forced prostitution.” I paused. My mouth dry. “We weren’t able to save them all. Some were murdered.”
“You didn’t give up.”
“No, sir, we didn’t.”
“Were you paid to do this?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He looked intrigued. “Why did you do it?”
“Because nobody else would.”
He smiled a little. Suddenly he was all business. “Leah. I’m going to write you a check. I want you to put everything else aside to find my daughter. If you need more money, you just come to me.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, digging a card out and handing it to me. “That card has all my numbers on it. You can reach me any time.”
I looked at the card. Black with silver embossed lettering. Judge Martin Nolan. It had never occurred to me that judges would have business cards. I never thought they would really need them.
He was bent over the small, round white table writing out a check. He handed it to me and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Ten thousand dollars.
“Find my daughter, Leah.”
I opened my mouth to protest because now this was going to be more than just poking around and looking into it. Now I was actually being hired, for a very large wad of cash, to find a missing person. Then it wasn’t like I was really dying to go back to the world of auto recovery since Callahan dumped me anyway.
So I didn’t protest.
“I’ll do my best, Martin.”
“I know you will.”
He patted me on the hand, then sat down to sip his iced tea.
I sat and talked with Martin for a long time while he told me everything he thought might be relevant to Chloe’s leaving home. He took me through the house, showing me her many photographs. Chloe had been in beauty pageants since she was literally an infant. She’d won many of them. Almost all the pictures of her displayed on the walls and on the fireplace mantle were pageant photographs. They even led the way up the stairs to her bedroom. Photos of Chloe over the years. She was crowned queen of several local festivals. She’d been in commercials as a toddler. She’d won Miss Albany and had gone on to compete for Miss New York, but hadn’t won. I didn’t see a single candid shot of her.
“Muriel took it hard,” Martin said as we entered Chloe’s old bedroom. “When Chloe didn’t win Miss New York. It meant she couldn’t run for Miss America.”
“Muriel did?”
Martin nodded. “Yes. I know she took it harder than Chloe did. She’d been grooming her to be Miss America since she was a baby. When it didn’t happen,” he shrugged, “she went into a depression for months.”
I tried not to show the disgust in my face. “Wow. How did Chloe take it?”
“I don’t think Chloe’s heart had really been in it, to tell you the truth. It had all become old hat to her. She did want to be an actress or a model, and winning Miss America would’ve helped her to do that. So the pageants became just stepping stones for her.”
I nodded, looking at more photos of Chloe which decorated her room. She certainly was gorgeous enough to become a model or an actress. The camera loved her. I looked at a photo of her that sat on her make-up table.
“That was the last photo taken of her before she ... left,” Martin said. “That’s her high school graduation picture.”
It was nice to see Chloe in a photograph which wasn’t a glamour shot. Long, red hair, the color of autumn, fell over her shoulders in soft curls, framing a heart-shaped face. Large, brown eyes smiled out at the camera. Chloe was a truly beautiful young woman.
“Right after graduation she left.” Martin opened a drawer in her make-up table and pulled out a single sheet of paper. “She left this.”
I read the single line scrolled neatly across the page. It read: Going to find my own way.
“She hasn’t called or written anything else?”
Martin shook his head. “No. That’s the last we heard of her.”
“Did you get along, Martin?”
He pulled a face. “What teenager really gets along with their parents?”
“What was the thing that ticked her off the most?”
He thought for a moment. “I told her that if she wanted to continue living under our roof, spending our money, she’d have to follow our rules. Simple as that.”
“So she left.”
“Yes. She left.”
“With no money?”
“Whatever money she had, I guess. I hadn’t given her any for awhile. She hadn’t asked.”
I could see why she wouldn’t have. She’d consider the money a string that kept her from being independent. She would’ve sought money elsewhere.
“Did she have a job?”
“She was waiting tables part-time at a local diner downtown. Eddie’s. It’s a bad area. We argued about that, too. She was so stubborn.”
I nodded slowly. The next question I was going to ask him was touchy. I didn’t know how to approach it gently. “One more thing, Martin. Before I arrived here I went to a house little further down the road. I believe it was the home of your daughter-in-law.”
He nodded, looking down at his shoes. “Ah. Yes. Susan.”
“She mentioned that her husband, your son, is deceased.”
“He is.” His eyes remained downcast.
Tension was thick in the air. “I’m sorry. Can I ask what happened to him?”
He glanced up at me. “Well, we’re not really sure how it happened. Michael had an allergy to tree nuts. He was found in his car, out in the woods, with an empty chocolate bar wrapper next to him. The chocolate bar had almonds and hazelnuts in it.
“I’m so sorry.”
“He was always so careful.” He shook his head. “I just don’t understand it.”
There were no words that could make him feel better. Only empty ones he’d already heard over and over again. So I said nothing.
I knew what it felt like to have everything be normal and happy one minute, and your life be turned upside down the next. An event happened in my childhood that ended up tearing my family apart and changing the course of every one of our lives in directions they never should have taken. It’s true. It only takes a few seconds to shake your universe, hurling you into a chaotic abyss that you may never find your way back from. Sometimes you can take a right turn somewhere, and find a road to anchor you again. And then you can start over.
So this man lost his son and his daughter vanishes in the same year. It explained why Muriel was such a nervous wreck. I admired Martin’s strength. He had to be hanging on by a thread.
Still, I had to ask. “Michael Nolan. Was your son the city Alderman?”
“Yes. For Ward One. He loved his job. He was very dedicated.”
He hadn’t mentioned the news reports. I suppose when your son dies you don’t want to bring up any doubt about his character to a complete stranger. I placed a hand on his arm. “Okay, I’m going to go down to Eddie’s and see what I can find out.”
He suddenly stood straighter, becoming the man in control again. “I already did that. You may have better luck than I had.”
“Let me give it a whirl. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something.” I paused. “I’m going to do my best to find her, Martin. I won’t give up. I promise.”
“I know you won’t, sweetheart. You know where to find me.”
He was probably the only man on the planet that I’d ever allow to call me “sweetheart” since my father died.
When he turned away I thought I saw something dangerous flicker across his face.
Hope.
* * *
Martin was right. Eddie’s Diner was located in a questionable part of town, sitting on the corner of Elm and Pine streets. I knew the area. It wasn’t the very worst part of town, but there were definitely characters of dubious repute that hung around on that corner. There were a few strip clubs dotting both Elm and Pine, and there were usually a line of motorcycles sitting in front of several of the bars. If a person hadn’t grown up in the area, they would be inclined to avoid it. If you grew up in the area or in one similar to it, you didn’t feel all that uncomfortable.
Given that my father owned a pub located on the corner of the street I grew up on, I was used to all sorts of characters. My past career as a car thief, and my subsequent stints in various youth correctional facilities, helped to familiarize me with the more shady side of humanity. So I felt pretty much at home as I parked my Jeep across the street from Eddie’s Diner. I’d made sure as I was driving there that I took my hair out of the pretty French braid and pulled off the cream colored cardigan. I made sure that I put my leather blazer back on before I climbed out of the Jeep and made my way across the street to Eddie’s.
I checked my watch before I pushed the door open. It was five o’clock. The dinner rush would start soon.
A scrawny young girl with an inch of dark roots above platinum blonde hair greeted me. Her name tag read ‘Trisha’.
“Just one?”
“Yes.”
“Right this way.” She led me to a booth by the window. The place was thick with smoke. Obviously they didn’t care much about the no smoking law recently enacted in the state of New York.
“Can I start you off with anything to drink?” She handed me a menu.
“Coffee please.”
“Okay.” She hurried away.
I waited for her to get the coffee, looking over the menu. I was planning on only getting coffee, but my stomach was growling. I decided on a clubhouse sandwich
.
She came back and placed a cup of steaming coffee in front of me. “Cream and sugar’s right there.” She nodded to a bowl next to the salt and pepper shakers.
“Thanks.”
“Are you ready to order?”
I told her I wanted a clubhouse, then casually slipped in, “Did you know a Chloe Nolan?”
She looked at me strangely. “She doesn’t work here anymore. Hasn’t worked here in months.”
“Yeah, I know. Nobody seems to know where she is anymore. It looks like something bad might’ve happened to her. Did you know her?”
“Are you a friend or something?”
This was getting tiring. “A friend of her’s asked me to look into her disappearance.”
Her eyes veiled over. “You a cop?”
“No. I’m a...” What was I exactly? I had been hired to look for her. “Recovery agent. I find things. Cars, sometimes people.” I thought it was best to leave her family out of it for now. “A friend of hers came to me and asked me to look for her. She’s gone missing. It doesn’t look good.”
She bit her lower lip. “Last I heard, she was answering an ad in the paper for models and actresses. One of those open call type things. You know? She was real pretty. She had a shot.” Resentment flickered across her face. “We get a lot of dancers in here. Chloe worked the late shift a lot. The strippers came in during her shift, flashing their money around. I heard one of them telling her how much money she could make.”
“No kidding.” I kept my voice level and my face neutral.
“Yeah. She was on tour, doing the circuit. She gave Chloe a number and told her to call it, and to mention her name.”
“Did Chloe say she’d call?”
“She just said ‘thanks’. I don’t know if she ever called. She wasn’t getting any money from her parents and tips aren’t that great around here, you know? Seeing all the money being flashed in her face, it had to be tempting.”
