Where She Went (ARC)

by Kelly Simmons

“I don’t think I’ve ever said that word in my life,” she said quietly.

  “Well, you’re young,” he said. “Sorry for getting testy. I guess, see, the whole thing is, most of the guys there have convinced themselves what words like ‘pimp’ and ‘prostitute’ and even ‘escort’ do not apply to their situation.”

  “I know, it’s just friends introducing friends,” she said.

  “That’s what it says on their business card.”

  “Actually, not anymore.”

  “Well, maybe Sam has knocked some sense into his brother.”

  “Sam Beck?”

  “Yeah, he’s trying to get his brother to run a legitimate restaurant with good food and beautiful hostesses, but not, you know.”

  “Friends seeking friends.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you know both of the brothers?”

  “Just casually. Not well.”

  “Then how do you know of their business plan?”

  “I know someone who plays squash with Sam.”

  “Have you seen any evidence of tension between them, disagreements?”

  “Not personally.”

  “But your squash partner has?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Are you a customer of the store?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Although you’re supposed to know that from my stylish, understated clothes.”

  “Sorry,” she said and smiled. “I’m not really up on men’s fashion. Or…fashion. So, were there materials advertising the club at the store? Brochures, flyers—”

  “Yes, in the bathrooms, but look, if you don’t mind me saying this…this is not how I expected the interview to go.”

  “Really? What did you expect?”

  “I expected you to ask if I fell in love, if I had regrets. But you’re very focused on facts.”

  Concrete, she thought to herself with a smile.

  “Well, facts anchor a news story,” she said. “And feelings make it more of a feature story.”

  “That’s a good way to put it.”

  She nodded. She had to admit that she liked this man. She imagined meeting him again on his turf. Seeing his home, the pictures of his wife, his bedroom, still showing the feminine touch. And she could see the bedroom of one of the girls, too, filled with Mardi Gras beads and shot glasses as she perched in a chair in a short skirt. Wow, she thought. You’re seeing it now. You’re envisioning the photos accompanying the story, bold and graphic, award-winning.

  “Okay, I need to say something off the record and slightly crazy.”

  Her eyes widened. “Okay.”

  “I think someone is following us.”

  She turned around. Behind them, a white SUV, maybe an Acura? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t good with cars or clothes or things.

  “Not him,” he said. “A few cars back. A silver sedan.”

  “How long?”

  “I think he’s been there since Chestnut Street, and he keeps speeding up and slowing down.”

  “Maybe it’s an unmarked cop car? Patrolling?” It was a little desolate on these river-hugging roads once you went under the bridge. Like a lot of frontage roads, these were less populated, darker, and the business above the water tending toward the industrial.

  “I don’t think so. The car is too nice. An Audi, I think, not sure.”

  “Did you see who was driving it?”

  “A man, no passenger. Looked like he was balding or had a high forehead.”

  The breath tightened in Emma’s throat. A silver Audi in the driveway on Google Earth. Balding just a little, at the hairline.

  “Was he wearing a beige coat by chance?”

  “Well, it was definitely light, not dark. I know that much. Pretty observant for an old guy, huh?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Okay, so you have a jealous ex-boyfriend? Something like that? Should we call the poli—”

  “No. I wish it was that simple.”

  “Well, I could pull over, see if we’re right or not.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Is this guy you’re worried about armed?”

  “I doubt it, but I don’t know, actually. I just think he’s trying to intimidate me.”

  “A gun is certainly intimidating.”

  “So is following someone.”

  “Well, I could just speed up,” he said. “Following a Maserati in an Audi is not quite a fair fight. I’m a good driver, but this is a very tight road. Might be scary.”

  “I’d rather get a better look at the car,” she said.

  He said he’d wait until there was shoulder, up ahead. He put on his flashers and pulled to the right. They waited in tense silence, as if they were being overheard, not just watched. The white SUV passed. A second car, black, two-door. The gray car slowed, as if it was thinking. The car approached slowly, and the slower it went, the faster Emma’s heart beat.

  “Maybe this was a mistake. I never thought he’d actually—”

  “Duck down,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Get close to the floor.”

  Just as they crouched down, the other car lurched, brakes screeching. U-turn.

  He lifted his head. “Dammit! That was so strange! Should we follow?” he said.

  “No,” she said, pulling herself up on her seat. “I can’t make out the license plate.”

  “Me either. All I saw was a Semper sticker in the rear window.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m an alum.”

  Emma felt her heart thumping too loud in the cage of her ribs. So loud you could mistake it for something even worse. Like footsteps. Like all of it, catching up to her.

  Thirty-Five

  Maggie

  Maggie had handled so much hair in her life—smooth, matted, tangled, snipped, discarded—that it settled into her, into all the open places. Ears, mouth. Sometimes, when she wore a low-cut shirt, she’d find a dusting of small blond clippings nestled in the bottom of her bra cups. It always snuck its way in. It was probably in her lungs, her kidneys, her stomach. It was part of the background of her life, like crumbs were for chefs. But that didn’t diminish the potential for hair to still hold power. It came from the top, after all, the head. Everyone always said it was “just hair”—diminished it, took its importance away just because it could regenerate, keep going. They weren’t looking at it the right way. A hairstyle could change everything. The way the light caught it, making it shine? That could blind you, change you. Still, she had to look at the flip side. That hair was changed and thrown away every day. That people blithely hacked off their own bangs, plucked the errant grays, twisted it into taut braids to get it out of their way. Hair was nothing and everything. It meant the world, or it was just a coincidence.

  For that reason, it was easy to stay strong and focused and not to break down. It could mean nothing, right?

  But when Sarah Franco ran up breathlessly, saying she’d talked to Chloe and finished the Facebook videos, Maggie was not prepared. She didn’t imagine she’d have two people next to her as witnesses, two people she hardly knew. But she was glad they were there. Glad because they grabbed her arms before her knees buckled.

  “I did a couple of them,” Sarah said.

  The video had white bars across it with words that matched the voice-over. She told them she’d done that intentionally, because so many people watch on mute. This way, she said, they won’t miss critical information.

  Do you know Emma O’Farrell?

  Could you be the key to finding her?

  Emma is from Semper University, and formerly Lower Merion High School.

  5 feet 4 inches, 110 pounds. Brown hair and green eyes.

  Last seen on campus, leavin
g the library.

  Wednesday October 15.

  If you have any information, please call Philadelphia Police.

  But none of those things made Maggie feel faint. No. It was the video footage of Emma leaving the library. The footage that showed her alone, in the dark. The footage that showed her shoulders slumping under her backpack. The footage of her face in shadow, a hoodie pulled over her head, obscuring her hair, which may or may not have been there. Where was Emma’s hair?

  Suddenly, her legs failed her. Crumpled like two badly designed buildings, and it was only Salt and Kaplan that kept her from hitting concrete, hard.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said. “I’m so sorry. I thought it was a good thing. I thought—”

  “It is a good thing,” Salt said. “They’re very professionally done. I’m sure they’ll help. The photograph at the end is very clear.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said softly. “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “You know what?” Salt said. “You’ve had a helluva day. I live close by, near the Inquirer building. How about we go there and rest for a few hours?”

  Maggie closed her eyes and nodded. It was finally catching up to her. They walked to Salt’s car, and she buckled Maggie in, like a child, and Maggie let her.

  The apartment building was old and grand and enormous, with rococo trim, Philadelphia by way of Florida. Maggie remembered reading about the renovations and the amenities. She was surprised Salt could afford it, but when she saw how small it was, she decided it couldn’t be that much.

  Very little furniture, all modern. No animals, no plants. Typical of a cop, nothing that needed tending. Salt told her to lie down on the couch and covered her feet with an afghan. Salt told her she’d set the alarm for an hour and a half, if that was okay? Did it seem like enough time? Maggie nodded. She fell into a dreamless sleep and didn’t think about all the time her husband might have spent in that apartment, whether he’d sat in the very same spot, drank from the glass, done god knows what. She didn’t think about those things because she was finally, at last, too damned tired to think. Her legs shook, as if they had to let it out, and that’s the last thing she remembered before she fell asleep, her legs shaking like they were rocking the rest of her body to sleep.

  The chime of the alarm woke her before she knew it. She blinked her eyes open, turned it off, and took a sip of water from the glass she’d had earlier. Salt wasn’t in the room. Maggie didn’t hear her, so she stood, stretched, and took a few steps down the hallway to listen. Had Salt left? Was she alone? She assumed she was and started down the hallway toward the bathroom, passing two doors, one shut, one ajar.

  She peered into the first one, open a few inches.

  “Hello?” she called. No answer.

  The master bedroom. Clothes hung on a mahogany valet by the bed. Jacket, shirt, empty holster. Like a man, she thought. Bed made, smooth and flat, a dark printed bedspread with no extraneous pillows, no extra comforter folded at the foot of the bed. Pale-blue walls, no shelves or artwork. Twin lamps mounted on either side of the bed. She blinked. Was that where they slept? Did Frank sleep on the right, nearest the door, like he did at home? Or did he flip it around, do the opposite? She walked over and sat on the right side of the bed. She didn’t feel him here; she’d been raised to believe in the afterlife and that the energy of a soul could remain. But she didn’t feel Frank here. Not his scent, of lime soap and astringent shaving cream. Not his energy, either, the way his certainty and strength changed the air, taking up more than his share of space. No, Frank was not lingering here.

  Like the living room, there was nothing fancy or decorative; everything had a use. Neat. Militaristic. She had a feeling if she opened the closet, she’d find shoe trees, cedar panels. But no Frank. Because Salt didn’t need him, didn’t mourn him like Maggie did. She was pretty certain of that.

  Back in the hallway, she thought she heard something outside in the corridor, perhaps in another apartment. She called out, “Gina?” No answer, no Salt. Had she gone out for a walk or errand?

  She knocked lightly on the second door, listened for a response, got none. She pushed open the door, expecting to find clutter or closet, but inside saw neither. A second room, windowless, set up like a small office. Less streamlined, less tidy than the rest of the apartment, but not by much. A few papers scattered. A stack of books on the floor. Photographs by Ansel Adams. A biography of Margaret Thatcher. Mindy Kaling’s memoir. Field guide to butterflies. No fiction. That was extra, she supposed, not needed. She had a feeling Gina Colletti didn’t watch television either.

  A shelf of diplomas, high school, community college, the police academy. And one faded photo, unframed, curling. Salt’s family? As she leaned over to pick it up, she was struck by two things. One, it was dusty and darker around the edges, like it used to be in a frame. And two, it wasn’t Gina’s family; it was Maggie’s. Frank and Emma, standing in front of a tree. Emma looked to be around nine or ten. There was more foliage in the background and a tall kiosk. A historical park? The Philadelphia Zoo? Maggie’s heart felt heavier in her chest. What this could mean. What this couldn’t possibly mean. A piece of evidence that could prove someone’s guilt of another crime, a worse one.

  Salt’s footsteps in her own hallway weren’t particularly light, but Maggie heard them too late.

  “Maggie, are you—”

  “Am I what?” Maggie said, turning around. “Am I snooping?”

  “No, that’s not—”

  The room was too quiet now. There was nothing to hear, no ticking clock, no open window letting in the traffic on the street, no heater turning on and off. Just two women breathing hard, weighing the moment. Just eyes landing on the same photograph.

  “You knew her,” Maggie said simply. “You knew Emma.”

  “I was his partner. There were work picnics. There were—”

  “You weren’t his partner then.”

  “Frank and I…knew each other a long time, Maggie,” she said quietly.

  “How long?”

  “It wasn’t like that. We were friends in the beginning. We—”

  “Friends? Take my daughter to the zoo kind of friends?”

  “I liked the photo. It was from his desk. I took it when he died. I’m sorry—”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Okay, I knew her. Not like you know her, but—”

  “Not like I know her?! Not like I know her? Of course you fucking don’t know her like I know her. I’m her mother! I gave birth to her, twenty-eight hours of torture, and I walked the floors with her when she had colic, and I worked two jobs to pay for her Catholic school, me. Not you. Me.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t believe,” she said, sniffing back tears, anger, snot, fury, “how stupid I am. How blind.”

  “Maggie, you didn’t really think—”

  “What? What didn’t I really think?”

  “You didn’t really think I was doing all this for you?”

  She said it gently, but it fell like a sucker punch. Maggie felt her bones breaking, blood moving, the way she looked and felt forever changed. Yes, she believed that when push came to shove, one woman would help another. One woman would rise above the crowd of men who didn’t get it and men who didn’t see and help another woman.

  She believed it, stupidly, and she supposed Emma had, too. And that was where they’d both gone wrong.

  “I have to go,” she said, and Salt didn’t argue. Maggie handed her the photo back. “You can have him,” she said simply. “You can keep him.”

  Thirty-Six

  Emma

  As they drove back to Michael’s valet, Mr. Maserati answered a few more questions, and the Audi didn’t show up again. If he was following them still, he was doing a better job of it. She didn’t share her concerns with Mr. Maserati; she didn’t share them with Michael, either. The only p
erson she shared them with was Cara Stevens, who she called from the cab on the way home. She’d picked up her backpack and gone to the lobby of the Latham Hotel and gotten into a good old-fashioned cab, with a privacy screen and a hinged window for money and change. As if anyone used money anymore.

  Her mother would be so happy about this. Her mother, who was always railing against the idiocy of Uber and Lyft, who thought riding with strangers was the stupidest thing a young girl could do, was always defending cab drivers, with their unions and medallions. “Cabs are dirty,” Emma would say. “And they’re scary.” They are guaranteed to have no criminal records, and their cars are licensed and inspected, her mother would parry. They are the opposite of scary.

  “Are you sure?” Cara Stevens had asked, and that was where Emma had faltered. She felt like an idiot when she said she was pretty sure. Grady was the professor on Cara’s list. He was her professor. She’d seen a similar car in the driveway when she’d checked Google Earth. And there was a university decal on the car. Cara had told her to back off, to lie low. She said Emma was in a classic conundrum on an investigative story: there were too many people who didn’t want their involvement made public and not enough people who did. Cara said she needed a few more who did, who supported the truth coming out, to balance those who didn’t.

  “Like who?” Emma asked.

  “Like a teacher who knows what Grady is up to. Like a disgruntled sugar baby, not just a daddy. Hey, was Fiona in his class?”

  “She was originally,” she said. “She transferred out.”

  “Maybe you should quietly look for other girls in his class, then. Or other girls in your dorm. She didn’t turn Taylor, but maybe she reached out to others?”

  Emma thought about this. She’d totally forgotten about her revelation that the girls in her dorm seemed hotter than others. She’d dismissed that as paranoia, coincidence. What about the other girls in Grady’s classes?

  “None of the girls I’ve met seem unhappy about anything. People are just a little too happy. Also, Sam Beck, who runs the club, is actually super nice.”

  “All pimps are nice, Emma. Their charm is what separates them from common criminals.”