by Lois Greiman
“I’m leaving all the details to Jeen.”
“Aren’t the details pretty well set?”
“He said he’s sorry I’ve gotten so stressed. He’s going to make some changes.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. He’s going to find a place where the paparazzi won’t figure out the location of the ceremony, for one thing.”
“He’s going to change the venue?”
“Not sure,” she said. She was busy pouring Green Goo into a Klean Kanteen. Apparently, she’d learned to make do without her recipe.
“Didn’t you pay an arm and a couple vital organs as a deposit for the Pavilion?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“Can you get it back?”
“Maybe a gallbladder.” She was already making a beeline for the front door, but stopped halfway there and turned with a scowl. “Shoot! Do you think the cops can convince Nadine to give my jacket back?”
“She probably sold it on eBay for an arm and a spleen.”
She gave me a look. “Any chance that joke’s going to get old anytime soon?”
“Doubtful,” I said, munching a mouthful of the captain’s finest.
She sighed. “Can I use your jean jacket?”
“It’s nine hundred degrees out there.”
“But it’ll only be eight seventy-five this evening.”
“If you’d gain a couple ounces of fat maybe your body could regulate its own temperature instead—”
“Mac—”
“Sorry.” For one shuddering second I contemplated the idea that I was beginning to sound like my mother. But I would not consider suicide. Not until I started scrubbing my counters with Hi-lex. “It’s in the closet.”
“Thanks,” she said, and pacing over, snapped the jacket from its hanger before striding, long-legged and cool, toward the door. “Oh, Mac?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re nothing like your mother,” she said, and disappeared.
My workday went pretty smoothly until three o’clock when Shirley buzzed me, saying I had a call from a Courtney Paxton. I picked it up in a moment.
“Christina McMullen,” I said. I sounded confident and intelligent. Role-playing—highly recommend by leading psychologists and certified nut cases.
“Yes, Ms. McMullen, I’m the therapist at Northmont High School. I had a message to call you regarding Emily Christianson.”
My mind clicked into gear with little more than an audible groan. “Oh, yes. Thanks for returning my call. I was hoping to get a little more information about Ms. Christianson.”
“Such as?” She sounded a little wary.
“Any pertinent findings regarding her emotional and physical health.”
“As you probably know, she’s an excellent student.” She paused a second. “We had no warning that she was troubled until she was found bleeding on the tile in the girls’ restroom.”
“So you had no prior sessions with her?”
“There was no reason to,” she said. Did I sense a shadow of guilt in her voice? “She exhibited no prior behavior that would suggest self-destructive tendencies, and when I did speak to her, she said her parents were insisting that she see someone …” She paused as if checking her notes. “… more qualified to handle her specific issues.”
And they had chosen me? How? Why? “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter who she’s seeing. The important thing is that she’s getting help. I’ll continue sending you updates to keep you apprised.”
“Updates?”
“The emails,” I said. “Regarding her progress.”
“I haven’t received any updates from you.”
I frowned and read off her cyber address to make sure I’d sent my missives to the right location.
“That’s right, but I didn’t get them.”
“That’s funny.” My brain was clicking along a little faster now. Apparently, my churning system had realized it wasn’t going to get its mid-afternoon nap and had decided to function anyway. “I can’t seem to contact her parents either.”
“Her mother is a celebrated cellist for the L.A. Philharmonic.”
“So I’m told. Ioan Banica.”
“She’s never come to a parent/teacher conference.”
“Have you called her to find out why?”
“We have three thousand and forty-three students in a facility built to house half that many, Ms. McMullen.”
I kind of thought that might be a no.
“And I believe Ms. Banica is currently on tour with an elite string quartet.”
“Do you know the name of the group?”
“I work at three different schools every week and review a dozen cases every day.”
I stifled a sigh, thanked her, and didn’t voice the opinion that she had been little more than catatonic. After hanging up, I immediately began Googling Ioan Banica.
By the time Emily arrived on Monday morning, I had gathered an arsenal of knowledge. But my smugness dehydrated a little when I saw her eyes. They looked sharp-edged and jaded beyond her years. But her motions were as prim and cautious as usual.
We spared less than two minutes on salutations. Emily wasn’t a small talk kind of girl.
“I was wondering if you had a chance to speak to your parents about accompanying you here,” I said.
She pursed her lips and adjusted a fold in her skirt. “I’m afraid it’s a busy time for them. Mother is on tour, and Dad’s picked up a second shift.”
“Oh, where is your mom now?”
“Helsinki, I believe.”
“Really? Because I thought I heard she was performing in New York,” I said, and watched her like a hawk on a field mouse, but her expression didn’t even flicker.
“Did you find that on the Internet?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Misinformation. It’s becoming increasingly problematic.”
“It was on the quartet’s official website.”
“I’ll have to inform Mother of the error.”
Her prim certainty made me falter for a second, but I regrouped. “I saw a picture of your mother.”
If she was increasingly tense, I couldn’t tell. But then, one could say the same thing about pressed steel. “Some people think I look like her. But I don’t see it.”
“Romanian, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Born in Craiova. They have a very strong work ethic there.”
I nodded. “She’s quite beautiful.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
“I tried to call her.”
“I told you she wasn’t home much.”
“There was no answer.”
“She won’t have a cell phone. Thinks they’re invasive to the creative …”
“So I went to your house.”
I literally watched her face pale. Heard her catch her breath. Felt the tension tighten. “What?” Her voice was small, as if she were very young.
I let the seconds tick away, not because of any sort of ploy, but because for a moment I couldn’t bear to shatter the scenario she had so carefully crafted. But there was no skirting the issue. Not if there was any hope for her.
“Lots of people are ashamed of their families, Emily.”
It took her an instant to respond, but finally she breathed a laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not ashamed of my family. My parents may be strict, but only because they want what’s best for me.”
I ignored her lies. “My mother wouldn’t allow me to shave my legs until I was fifteen.”
“They insist that I make something of my life.”
“I was as hairy as a gorilla at my freshman dance.”
“When Mother was my age, she had already played for Gorbachev.”
“Dad told my first boyfriend he’d cut off his wiener if he touched my tits. Those are the exact words he used. In front of me. I thought I was going to die.”
“Dad’s ancestors were slaves. It’s docume
nted. Some plantation in West Virginia. I believe that’s why he’s so determined to see his progeny succeed. Were you aware that slaves were forced to marry against their will so that the owner would have new blood?”
“I was fifty pounds overweight. With acne. I played the tuba, which I could barely fit into. My father called me Pork Chop. I’m not sure—”
“Pork Chop!” She was on her feet suddenly, fists clenched, face florid. “And you’re angry? Because of some pet name your father called you? My father gave me this!” Ripping the binder from her ponytail, she turned, clawing at her scalp. Against her dark hair I could see a jagged scar. “He dropped me … when I was six months old. Dropped me down the stairs! It might have been an accident. But we’ll never know. He was killed in San Quentin three years ago. They think it was a drug deal gone …”
Her voice paled to nothing. She was breathing hard.
“Your mother’s an alcoholic.” I dropped the words softly into the quiet.
She pursed her lips and glanced toward the window.
“You’re working two jobs to pay the rent,” I added.
“My mother is performing in Helsinki,” she said, but a tear had collected in the corner of her right eye and rolled with soulful sadness down her hollow cheek.
“You’re getting home at midnight, then staying up till four so you can ace your tests and keep up the charade.” Some of this I had learned through phone calls and research. Some I had surmised. Her mother had been all but comatose when I’d spoken to her. “It’s got to be hard to keep track of all the lies.”
“She’s a consummate artist,” Emily whispered. “The critics say her music makes the nightingales hang their heads in shame.”
“You don’t want to be like them,” I said. “That’s why you came to see me.”
Another tear fell softly after its mate, swelling along the same course. “I’d be lucky to be half so talented—”
“You won’t be like them,” I said. “Unless you’re unable to face reality.”
She looked at me suddenly, eyes blazing with anger and frustration and a world full of fear. “You don’t want to hear the reality.”
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. “I think you’re right,” I said. “But try me anyway.”
32
I’d rather be schizophrenic than alone during school lunches.
—Emily Christianson,
Chrissy’s favorite psychotic
As it turned out, Emily Christianson was right. I didn’t want to hear her reality. Because it made it almost impossible to feel sorry for myself. I considered that as I stood in my kitchen making an abbreviated chef’s salad and trying to talk myself out of drinking the French dressing as an appetizer.
True, my parents may have had the instincts of killer bees, but at least they hadn’t abandoned me to the world at the ripe old age of thirteen. Well, actually, her father who had vacillated between neglectful and horrifying, had left her long before that. By comparison her mother was a virtual saint, but her weaknesses had finally destroyed any hope of the two of them forging a meaningful family unit. In fact, Emily, whose real name wasn’t Emily at all, had, over the course of the past three years, created an entirely fictional universe for herself. Her ability with computers had enabled her to make that fiction seem real to nearly everyone she met. Not to mention allowing her to deflect the emails I had sent to her school therapist. Two years ago she had gone through a great deal of trouble to change her identity and she had no intention of allowing me to ruin things.
Her ploy had worked shockingly well, until the stress of an unlivable life had become too much to bear. It all left me baffled and melancholy. In the end I had promised to tell no one of her duplicity if she began seeing me twice a week, at least until I could figure out what to do.
The entire situation had me feeling out of sync. I had always believed that people were basically who they were. They could change their situations, their surroundings, and their actions. But eventually their true colors would show through. For instance, Nadine Gruber seemed as though she had her shit together, like she was content with her circumstances, but in the end, she had acted on her frustrations. In fact, she had gone so far as to trash my house just to score the Green Goo recipe and Laney’s jean jacket.
Which seemed strange, because the Goo tasted like the devil’s nectar and jean jackets are a dime a dozen. Of course, that had nothing to do with a neurotic’s reasoning. Then again, the letters Nadine had sent didn’t exactly seem like the work of a whack job. They were too well composed, too neat. Too—
My front door opened just as I was ruminating. I jerked toward it, still jumpy even though my troubles were behind me. But it turned out my problems were bigger than I’d expected; Solberg still had a key to my house.
“Hey, Angel.” His voice scraped down the hallway, followed by his footsteps. “You ready?” He appeared in the doorway of the kitchen like a grinning nightmare. “Where’s Laney?”
I scowled. Something had soured in my stomach. “I thought she was with you.”
“No-kay doke,” he said. “I was arranging a little surprise for her, but I told her I’d pick her up at seven. We’re meeting my parents in less than an hour.”
“Your parents?” If I had been informed of this eventuality, I had forgotten about it entirely, but regardless, Laney would dress up for a rendezvous with Solberg’s family. So why hadn’t she returned home?
It was in that moment, that tiny flicker of time, that a number of thoughts collided in my mind: The disarray of my house after the breakin juxtaposed against Nadine’s perfectly formed letters. The memory of Laney’s stolen jacket … so like mine. The jacket I hadn’t worn since pulling it over my pj’s and careening to Glendale following Micky’s call for help. Lavonn’s dilated eyes. Jackson’s dreamy, drawled warning. Blood dripping on rosewood. Missing recipes. Clean toxicology reports. Intensity!
I was scrambling for my phone in a matter of seconds, but Solberg’s cell rang before I ever touched mine. It jangled out the wedding march as I straightened, breath held, premonition skittering along the arches of my feet.
“Probably someone regarding the new venue,” he said, grinning as he answered. “’Ello.”
“Hello…. Solberg?” I could only hear a few of the caller’s words.
Solberg was still grinning at me. “That’s right. The future Mr. Butterfield.”
There was a pause from the caller. I was holding my breath.
“I hate to … but I’m afraid your fiancée has fallen … bad luck.”
Watching Solberg’s face, it was as if the world had suddenly ended. His expression went from unfettered glee to blank nothingness in a shattered heartbeat of time. His lips parted, but for a moment no sound came out.
“Who is it?” My own voice sounded raspy over the harsh beat of my heart.
Solberg shook his head, trembling and pale.
“Who is it?” I asked again, but he didn’t respond. I snatched the phone from him.
“What have you done to her?” My tone sounded abrasive now, high-pitched with terror and dread.
“Ms. McMullen, I presume?” The man on the other end of the line sounded amused.
My stomach twisted into a hard knot of dread. “What do you want?”
“Me?” He laughed. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. “I simply wanted what was mine, Ms. McMullen. But now I’m thinking I might want what was Mr. Solberg’s, too.”
There was something in his tone that made me want to curl into a fetal ball, but I kept myself upright, barely breathing. “If you hurt her you won’t get anything.”
“Hurt her? Why would I do something so vile?”
“I’ll give him whatever he wants.” Solberg’s voice was little more than a croak. Two patches of red flamed in his cheeks, and his eyes looked manic.
“How much do you want?” I asked and the kidnapper chuckled.
“That’s the spirit.”
“How much?” I asked, again
.
“Twenty million.”
I felt the air rush from my lungs. Felt the floor give way beneath me. “Are you out—”
“I can do that.” Solberg’s voice was clear now. He straightened slightly. “I’ll just need a little time.”
I turned my attention back to the phone, repeated his words.
The line went quiet for a moment, then, “If you go to the cops there will be retribution.”
Retribution! The word rang like a death knell.
“No cops,” I said. “But I want to talk to Elaine.”
“Perhaps you’re not aware, Ms. McMullen, but we don’t always get what we want.”
I felt calmer now, almost numb. “So I’ve heard,” I said. “But you’ll get twenty million. Guaranteed. If she’s safe.”
“You’re so distrustful.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I have no desire to allow you to speak—”
“There’ll be an extra million if you put her on the phone,” I said.
There was a moment of breathless anticipation, then a huffed laugh. “Ahh, capitalism at it’s finest,” he said, then paused for a moment. “You get one second for every million I’m to receive,” he said, then aside, “I must warn you, Ms. Butterfield, people have been underestimating me since my conception. I hope you will not be so foolish.”
In a moment she was on the phone.
“Mac?” Her voice was soft but steady.
“Laney!” Relief sluiced through me, but I funneled it away, focusing on her words, her inflections. We had twenty-one seconds. I concentrated on using every one of them, on keeping my voice low. “Where are you?”
“I’m worried about my cat.” Her voice sounded strange. Dreamy. Shocky.
My mind was racing. Laney didn’t have a cat. Never had. “What’s going on? Are you drugged?”
“She’s so old.”
My mind clicked into gear. I scrambled for a pencil. Drugged or not, Laney wouldn’t waste this time. “How old?”
“The same age as Jeen.”
No pen. No pencil. Not even a chunk of charcoal. Desperate, I stuck my finger in the French dressing and wrote Solberg’s age on a nearby piece of junk mail.
“You know Muffy,” she added.
I scribbled down the name, barely legible.
“Who is he?” I was all but whispering.
