Where She Went

by Kelly Simmons

  Emma had stood in the doorway, stunned. How had she been so insensitive, so unaware? How her mom must have been in pain, real pain, so many times and she had never noticed. Her mom, who noticed every sigh, every groan. Who kissed her forehead, checking for fever at the slightest flush in her cheeks, who smoothed every stray hair on her head. Her mom who noticed everything. Emma, who noticed nothing.

  She thought of all these things as she tore through Fiona’s half of the room. Opening drawers, rifling through clothes, looking for…what, exactly? Mementoes? Love letters from the men? That was ridiculous. No one kept those things anymore. Or did they? She had no sisters, so she didn’t really know what girls held on to and what they threw away. What was normal? What wasn’t?

  In addition to these deficits, Emma wasn’t very good at being deceitful, at sneaking, at hiding. She had no small witness, no companion who could turn on her. And that was probably the reason she’d forgotten to lock the door. So she didn’t hear the cue of a key turning. She missed the soft sweep of an unlocked door opening and the tiptoe of Fiona walking down to her room, high heels in her hand, because at last, her feet were killing her.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Fiona said calmly, a little too calmly, from the doorway.

  “I…lost my necklace,” Emma said dumbly.

  “And you thought I would steal your necklace?”

  Fiona touched her own neck as she said it, which was adorned by an elaborate gold bib, studded with colorful stones that picked up the aqua of her dress.

  Emma’s only necklaces were a cross and a small pearl pendant.

  “No, I thought it got mixed in. By accident.”

  “Uh huh. Sure. You know, Emma, if you want to borrow my clothes for a special occasion or something, you could have tried asking instead of stealing.”

  “I’m not stealing.” Emma felt her skin going pink, hot.

  “Oh, you’re not? So then you’re one of those girls who gets off on other girls’ underwear?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you could have asked. If that’s your thing, then that’s your thing. I’m not judging you. Not like you constantly judge me.”

  “I don’t judge you.”

  “Please. All your condescending innocent questions at night. Not all of us grow up with silver spoons in our mouths like Taylor. Some of us need to earn money.”

  “I’m not, I mean—”

  “There’s no shame in needing to earn money, Emma.”

  “I never said there was.”

  “And just because I don’t want to wash people’s fucking hair all day only to end up so poor, I need a scholarship for my daughter—”

  “Wait,” Emma said. “Are you kidding me right now? Now who’s being judgmental?”

  “Well, at least I’m not a thief. What would your mommy think about you stealing? You planning to sell something on eBay, huh, thief?”

  The shove to her shoulder caught her by surprise. Fiona was surprisingly strong, and Emma nearly fell back against the bed. The look on Fiona’s face was different than she’d ever seen, contorted.

  “Fiona, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched your dresser. I should have asked. I—”

  “Woulda shoulda coulda. Well, it’s too late now. You broke the dorm code. And you have to pay the price.”

  Fiona picked up the phone and started to text.

  “No, please, I’m sorry. Please don’t call the RA. I—”

  Fiona laughed and shook her head like she was a dog, shaking off unwanted water. Quickly, easily, instinctively.

  “Oh, Emma,” she said. “I would never trust our dipshit RA with this information. I am summoning a more appropriate tribunal to try to decide what to do.”

  “Tribunal?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant your other roommates. I didn’t mean to use such a big word. I guess Jason hasn’t taught you that one yet?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Maggie

  When Valet to the Stars was finally available to speak, it was five o’clock. Maggie had asked to meet him in person, and he was reluctant, said he only had an hour break. But she needed to look him in the eye. She needed to make sure he had all his fingers. Maggie knew better than to try to drive downtown at rush hour, so she took the subway and walked. It had been years, five at least, since she’d been on public transportation. She’d almost forgotten the damp, warm cloud that always enveloped you while waiting on the platform. The weird combination of smells—sweat and urine, perfume and oil—that melded in the air. That it could still be so warm belowground in the fall that your scalp could throw sweat and your knees could buckle if you didn’t sit down. The lights on the cars so bright, they could be used to torture prisoners. Maggie had grown soft. This was what living in the suburbs could do to you. The comfort of her own vehicle parked outside her door. All her walking now confined to her salon. Weeks would go by before she even remembered the world outside her door, much less the world she used to inhabit downtown.

  She walked, swaying, toward a seat near the middle of the car. But as she was about to sit, she realized the car was filled with students, and she had a clutch of posters in her purse. She jostled between all the young people who were standing, asking if they’d seen Emma, forcing them to pull their earbuds out and answer, most of them shaking their heads. A few said she looked familiar. A few took the poster and said they’d ask around. There were kind people in the world, Maggie reminded herself. There were observant people, too, she knew, nosy people, people who worried and noticed and worried some more. In South Philly, where she’d grown up, there were plenty of people like that, keeping watch on the block. Where were those people now? All I need is one, she thought. Just one.

  Mr. Valet had asked to meet at a pizza place near Chestnut Street. It was the kind of hole-in-the-wall that sold slices and sodas and nothing else. How they could afford their rent at those prices was an equation Maggie couldn’t solve without a conspiracy theory involving drugs or the mafia. When she went inside, she was relieved to see that the men making pies spoke Greek, but less relieved when she saw that Michael looked to be Italian. An Italian kid from South Philly who loves cars, she thought immediately. Here’s hoping he also loves his mother.

  “Thank you for meeting with me,” she said and sank into a red plastic chair.

  “Thank you for being patient.” Two pizza crusts lingered on a paper plate in front of him, and he wiped his hands on a tiny napkin, then extended one to shake. All his fingers completely intact.

  She shook his hand, looked into his large, doe-like eyes, and told the story she’d practiced in her head, just to see what he’d do.

  “My daughter is missing, and I need to create a fund-raiser for the reward,” she said in a rush.

  “Oh gosh,” he said. “Do you need me to donate my services, then? Because depending on the day, I can work it myself and do that.”

  The tears sprang to her eyes. This unexpected kindness. This earnestness. His mouth dropped open a tiny bit at the sight of her tears, and he hastily offered her a napkin. She took it, dabbing her eyes, breathing in its lingering, familiar scent of oregano and tomato. This boy could not be a suspect. Not a psychopath, not a stranger, not part of a car theft ring Emma had uncovered on campus. No. No, no, no. She knew it in her bones. And she knew, just as suddenly, that she couldn’t lie to him. Not him. Not today.

  “I’m very sorry, Michael,” she continued. “There actually may or may not be a fund-raiser, I’m not precisely sure. I just, um…”

  He waited, nodded. Didn’t leave, didn’t demand an answer, didn’t ask why she was wasting his time on the only break he got between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.

  “There’s just a lot of confusion around her disappearance, and I found some names I didn’t recognize in her phone. And yours was one of them. And I wondered if you worked together somehow or how you might have c
rossed paths. Or if you might have seen her heading somewhere.”

  She trailed off, blew her nose into the napkin.

  “What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Emma,” she said. “Emma O’Farrell.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know her.”

  “Maybe you met at a bar, forgot her name?”

  “No, no, I don’t drink.”

  “You don’t drink?”

  “Well, sometimes I’ll toast at a wedding, but otherwise, no. She probably was planning an event and called the company? Or intended to. That’s probably why.”

  “She was a college student.”

  “I do plenty of college events. Lots of colleges in the area with high-rolling donors. They tip really well.”

  “I bet they do,” she said, smiling. He was one of those young men who still had the little boy in him—eager, wide eyes shining through. Easy to imagine him playing with Matchbox cars, pretending to rev their engines, running them up and down the kitchen counter to his mother’s chagrin.

  “Could you just take a look?” she said as she fumbled in her purse for the envelope of posters. “Maybe it’ll jog something?”

  She held the paper out toward him, just as he’d offered her the napkin, but he didn’t take it. It was still in the air, moving, when he whispered, “Mary. Oh no.”

  “Mary?”

  “She didn’t tell me her real name. She was trying to be all cool, and then she confessed that it wasn’t her real name, but she never told me. Emma? It’s Emma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, that fits her totally. Better than Mary.”

  “Mary is my mother’s name,” Maggie said.

  “Oh, no offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “She, um… We met up a few times. We had dinner the last time.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday,” she repeated. “Okay. You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, because that’s the day I work late at the store.”

  “Store?”

  “Beck’s, on Chestnut,” he said. “I have a regular contract with them,” he added proudly.

  Maggie had never been to the store but knew it by reputation. An expensive men’s store with a small women’s department, too. They were known for impeccable service and tailoring that catered to Philadelphia’s elite. And apparently provided valet parking.

  “Did she work there? At the store?”

  Maggie was embarrassed that she didn’t know. Had her daughter taken a job? Needed money? Wanted clothes? She thought of Emma’s roommates, the casual way they dressed, with shirts tucked in the front just so and designer flannel shirts tied around their skinny jeans. Those clothes could cost a fortune, she knew. Once, she’d complimented a girl at the salon on her plaid shirt, and she’d said she bought it at a boutique around the corner. Maggie went there to try it on, and it was $189. Soft, beautiful, perfectly draped, but still. She’d taken it off quickly, before she got used to it.

  “No, she was doing research.”

  “For a class?”

  “No, for a story.”

  There it was again. The goddamned story. The story that hadn’t been written. The story with notes in a backpack that wasn’t in her room. The story only Emma knew.

  “Please, Michael,” she said with a sigh, “do you know what the story was about?”

  “Yes. It was a secret, though, so you can’t tell anyone.”

  “Well, I might have to tell the police,” she said.

  “But they won’t tell, like, the public, right? Or the school?”

  “No. I highly doubt it. But why? Why does that matter?”

  “Well, at first, I thought it was because it’s a scoop.”

  “A scoop?”

  “Yeah, an exclusive? She didn’t want anyone else at school to write it.”

  “Well, that hardly seems important now.”

  “I agree. But then I saw that she didn’t trust the school. She thought maybe they were in on it.”

  “Whoa,” Maggie said. “You’ve got to back up a bit.”

  “Okay,” he said. He told her everything he knew—about the private club, the escorts, the comings and goings of cars that arrived with men and left with men and girls. That Emma had wanted to interview the girls but was having trouble finding one to go on the record. That she had tried to get a job there as a hostess, that she liked the manager and trusted him, but that Michael had told her he thought that was a bad idea, too dangerous. But that her editor thought it was a good idea. Maggie had nodded her assent; Michael had a good head on his shoulders. And she thought, once again, that she wanted to murder the editor with her bare hands.

  “So, where did you come in?” she asked when he took a break. “How did you help her?”

  “Well, first, she wanted to use our cars for surveillance.”

  “Surveillance?” Maggie took in a sharp breath. She thought of Frank, of his brothers and father, of the long history of police work in his family. And she thought that if, at the end of all this, Emma got the crime-solving bug and left school to join the force, she might actually become physically ill. She said a prayer not just for her daughter’s safety but for her sanity. She’d seen firsthand how the chase was a kind of drug. The adrenaline of the first hunch, then the slow gathering, the momentum, leading to the shining, throbbing confidence of knowing. Then it came again, the cherry on top—the swagger of justice. That’s what fed a cop. Not donuts. Being right. Knowing, proving, solving.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I talked her out of that. I wasn’t sure what it would prove except identifying people. And what was she going to do then, run their license plates, track them down, and blackmail them until they talked to her? It sounded like a bad strategy.”

  “Well, it’s a good strategy for a cop with a gun and force behind him, but a bad strategy for a kid with a pen.”

  “Agree, one hundred percent. So I found a guy for her to interview. Former member. Nice guy. Thought he’d give her all the detail she needed.”

  “Did your guy have all ten fingers?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The cops want to interview someone who might be missing a finger.”

  “Whoa,” he said. “Like The Fugitive. The one-armed man. ‘I did not kill my wife.’ ‘I don’t care!’”

  Maggie smiled back. Her skin almost cracked going into position; it felt like the first time she had smiled in a year.

  “My husband always said Tommy Lee Jones’s character did care. He was just tired, and it didn’t matter at that moment. It was his job to capture him.”

  “I agree with that assessment.”

  “You like movies,” she said.

  He nodded. “I do. That’s the first thing I thought when your daughter approached me, that it sounded like a movie.”

  It was a relief to be sitting in a warm diner, the scent of dough bubbling in a hot oven, talking about movies with someone. She felt her shoulders soften downward, settling in like resting wings. Maybe she didn’t have to be charging ahead every second to find Emma, not resting, not eating. Maybe Maggie would find her by what happened here, in the in-between.

  “So,” he said, “fingers. Yes. I can picture his hands on his steering wheel. All ten of them. I remember now because he had a deep tan and a little white stripe where he’d taken his wedding ring off.”

  “Oh boy,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t like that. He was a widow. He was lonely. It was his friend’s idea.”

  “Every bad idea is always someone’s friend’s idea, isn’t it?”

  “You sound like my mother,” he said and smiled. “But I know Mary—I mean Emma? She came up with this idea herself. She put the pieces together. No one handed it to her.”

  �
�Yeah, the part of me that isn’t angry and isn’t terrified? That part of me is a little proud,” Maggie said ruefully.

  “Here’s the guy’s name and phone number,” Michael said, digging out his phone. “You ready?”

  “Wait, did he drive a Maserati by chance?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have that number already, I think. Unless there’s another guy with that car.”

  “There’s only two other people you might want to talk to,” he said. “The guy who manages the place? Sam? She interviewed with him as a hostess. He didn’t have any openings, but get this—she actually liked him.”

  “Great,” she said. “A charming pimp finds out she’s onto him.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I sensed she had pretty good taste in people. Also there was one of her professors she thought was involved. She wasn’t sure. She just was worried about it. I don’t know his name, though.”

  “Okay. What about—did you get the sense she had a boyfriend? She didn’t tell me, and I’ve gotten conflicting reports. Maybe it was just someone she was hooking up with? Maybe it was casual, and she didn’t want to say.”

  “I…don’t think she’s the hooking-up type, to be honest.”

  “Look, we raised her in the church, but I’m a realist, a modern woman. Also, she had an appointment at the health clinic she didn’t keep. She could be pregnant and afraid to tell me, and—”

  “No. That is not what is happening.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a little weird, and I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me? Trust me, Michael, the things I’ve done in the last few days? What I’ve stooped to? I’m miles beyond embarrassment.”

  “When we were talking about trying to go undercover and, you know, act like one of those sugar babies, like her editor wanted her to?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, she thought it would be weird for her because she was, you know, a virgin.”