Gone for Good

by Harlan Coben

  Possibility two" Squares raised another finger, paused, looked up in the air "hell, I'm lost here."

  "Right."

  We ate. He mulled it over some more. "Okay, let's assume that Sheila knew exactly who you were from the beginning."

  "Let's."

  "I still don't get it, man. What are we left with here?"

  "Styling," I replied.

  The shower stopped. I picked up a poppy-seed bagel. The seeds stuck to my hand.

  "I've been thinking about it all night," I said.

  "And?"

  "And I keep coming back to New Mexico."

  "How so?"

  "The FBI wanted to question Sheila about an unsolved double murder in Albuquerque."

  "So?"

  "Years earlier, Julie Miller was also murdered."

  "Also unsolved," Squares said, "though they suspect your brother."

  "Yes."

  "You see a connection between the two," Squares said. "There has to be."

  Squares nodded. "Okay, I see point A and I see point B. But I don't see how you get from one to the other."

  "Neither,"Isaid, "doI."

  We grew silent. Katy peeked her head through the doorway. Her face had that morning-after pallor. She groaned and said, "I just upchucked again."

  "Appreciate the update," I said.

  "Where's my clothes?"

  "The bedroom closet," I said.

  She gestured an in-pain thank-you and closed the door. I looked at the right side of the couch, the spot where Sheila liked to read. How could this be happening? The old adage "Better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all" came to me. I wondered about that.

  But more than that, I wondered what was worse to lose the love of a lifetime or to realize that maybe she never loved you at all.

  Some choice.

  The phone rang. This time I did not wait for the machine. I lifted the receiver and said hello.

  "Will?"

  "Yes?"

  "It's Yvonne Sterno," she said. "Albuquerque's answer to Jimmy Olsen."

  "What have you got?"

  "I've been up all night working on this."

  "And?"

  "And it keeps getting weirder."

  "I'm listening."

  "Okay, I got my contact to go through the deeds and tax records. Now understand that my contact is a government employee, and I got her to go in during her off hours. You usually have a better chance of turning water into wine or having my uncle pick up a check than getting a government employee to show up "

  "Yvonne?" I interrupted.

  "Yeah?"

  "Assume that I'm already impressed by your resourcefulness. Tell me what you got."

  "Yeah, okay, you're right," she said. I heard papers being shuffled.

  "The murder-scene house was leased by a corporation called Cripco."

  "And they are?"

  "Untraceable. It's a shell. They don't seem to do anything."

  I thought about that.

  "Owen Enfield also had a car. A gray Honda Accord. Also leased by the fine folks at Cripco."

  "Maybe he worked for them."

  "Maybe. I'm trying to check that now."

  "Where'sthecarnow?"

  "That's another interesting thing," Yvonne said. "The police found it abandoned in a mall in Lacida. That's about two hundred miles east of here."

  "So where is Owen Enfield?"

  "My guess? He's dead. For all we know, he was one of the victims."

  "And the woman and little girl? Where are they?"

  "No clue. Hell, I don't even know who they are."

  "Did you talk to the neighbors?"

  "Yes. It's like I said before: No one knew much about them."

  "How about a physical description?"

  "Ah."

  "Ah what?"

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  Squares kept eating, but I could tell he was listening. Katy was still in my room, either dressing or making another offering to the porcelain gods.

  "The descriptions were pretty vague," Yvonne continued. "The woman was in her mid-thirties, attractive, and a brunette. That's about as much as any of the neighbors could tell me. No one knew the little girl's name. She was around eleven or twelve with sandy-brown hair. One neighbor described her as cute as a button, but what kid that age isn't? Mr. Enfield was described as six feet with a gray crew cut and goatee. Forty years old, more or less."

  "Then he wasn't one of the victims," I said.

  "How do you know?"

  "I saw a photo of the crime scene."

  "When?"

  "When I was questioned by the FBI about my girlfriend's whereabouts."

  "You could see the victims?"

  "Not clearly, but enough to know that neither had a crew cut."

  "Hmm. Then the whole family has up and vanished."

  "Yes."

  "There's one other thing, Will."

  "What's that?"

  "Stonepointe is a new community. Everything is fairly self-contained."

  "Meaning?"

  "Are you familiar with Quick Go the convenience store chain?"

  "Sure," I said. "We have QuickGos out here too."

  Squares took off his sunglasses and looked a question at me. I shrugged and he moved toward me.

  "Well, there's a big Quick Go at the edge of the complex," Yvonne said.

  "Almost all the residents use it."

  "So?"

  "One of the neighbors swore she saw Owen Enfield there at three o'clock on the day of the murders."

  "I'm not following you, Yvonne."

  "Well," she said, "the thing is, all the QuickGos have security cameras." She paused. "You following me now?"

  "Yeah, I think so."

  "I already checked," she went on. "They keep them for a month before they tape over them."

  "So if we can get that tape," I began, "we might be able to get a good view of Mr. Enfield."

  "Big if, though. The store manager was firm. There was no way he was going to turn anything over to me."

  "There has to be a way," I said.

  "I'm open to ideas, Will."

  Squares put his hand on my shoulder. "What?"

  I covered the mouthpiece and filled him in. "You know anybody connected to Quick Go I said.

  "Incredible as this might sound, the answer is nope."

  Damn. We mulled it over for a bit. Yvonne started humming the Quick Go jingle, one of those torturous tunes that enters through the ear canal and proceeds to ricochet around the skull in search of an escape route it will never find. I remembered the new commercial campaign, the one where they updated the old jingle by adding an electric guitar and a synthesizer and bass, and fronting the band with a big-time pop star simply known as Sonay.

  Hold the phone. Sonay. Squares looked at me. "What?"

  "I think you may be able to help after all," I said.

  Chapter Thirty-Three.

  Sheila and Julie had been members of Chi Gamma sorority. I still had the rent-a-car from my late-night sojourn to Livingston, so Katy and I decided to take the two-hour drive up to Haverton College in Connecticut and see what we could learn.

  Earlier in the day, I called the Haverton registrar's office to do a little fact-checking. I'd learned that the sorority's housemother back then had been one Rose Baker. Ms. Baker had retired three years ago and moved into a campus house directly across the street. She was to be the main target of our pseudo-investigation.

  We pulled in front of the Chi Gamma house. I remembered it from my too-infrequent visits during my Amherst College days. You could tell right off that it was a sorority house. It had that antebellum, faux Greco-Roman-columns-thing going on, all in white, and with soft ruffled edges that gave the whole edifice a feminine feel. Something about it reminded me of a wedding cake.

  Rose Baker's residence was, to speak kindly, more modest. The house had started life as a small Cape Cod, but somewhere along the way the lines had been ironed f
lat. The one-time red color was now a dull clay. The window lace looked cat-shredded. Shingles had flaked off as if the house had an acute case of seborrhea.

  Under normal circumstances, I would have made an appointment of some kind. On TV, they never do that. The detective shows up and the person is always home. I always found that both unrealistic and unwieldy, yet perhaps now I understood a little better. First off, the chatty lady in the registrar's office informed me that Rose Baker rarely left home, and when she did, she rarely strayed far. Second and I think, more important if I called Rose Baker and she asked me why I wanted to see her, what would I say? Hi, let's talk murder? No, better just to show up with Katy and see where that got us. If she was not in, we could always explore the archives in the library or visit the sorority house. I had no idea what good any of this would do, but hey, we were just flying blind here.

  As we approached Rose Baker's door, I could not help but feel a pang of envy for the knapsack-laden students I saw walking to and fro. I'd loved college. I loved everything about it. I loved hanging out with sloppy slacker friends. I loved living on my own, doing laundry too rarely, eating pepperoni pizza at midnight. I loved chatting with the accessible, hippie like professors. I loved debating lofty issues and harsh realities that never, ever, penetrated the green of our campus.

  When we reached the overly cheerful welcome mat, I heard a familiar song wafting through the wooden portal. I made a face and listened closer. The sound was muffled, but it sounded like Elton John more specifically, his song "Candle in the Wind" from the classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road double album. I knocked on the door.

  A woman's voice chimed, "Just a minute."

  A few seconds later, the door opened. Rose Baker was probably in her seventies and dressed, I was surprised to see, for a funeral. Her wardrobe, from the big-brimmed hat with matching veil to the sensible shoes, was black. Her rouge looked as if it'd been liberally applied via an aerosol can. Her mouth formed a nearly perfect "O" and her eyes were big red saucers, as if her face had frozen immediately after being startled.

  "Mrs. Baker? "I said.

  She lifted the veil. "Yes?"

  "My name is Will Klein. This is Katy Miller."

  The saucer eyes swiveled toward Katy and locked into position.

  "Is this a bad time?" I asked.

  She seemed surprised by the question. "Not at all."

  I said, "We'd like to speak with you, if that's okay."

  "Katy Miller," she repeated, her eyes still on her.

  "Yes, ma'am," I said.

  "Julie's sister."

  It was not a question, but Katy nodded anyway. Rose Baker pushed open the screen door. "Please come in."

  We followed her into the living room. Katy and I stopped short, taken aback by what we saw.

  It was Princess Di.

  She was everywhere. The entire room was sheathed, blanketed, overrun with Princess Di paraphernalia. There were photographs, of course, but also tea sets, commemorative plates, embroidered pillows, lamps, figurines, books, thimbles, shot glasses (how respectful), a toothbrush (eeuw!), a night-light, sunglasses, salt-'n-pepper shakers, you name it. I realized that the song I was hearing was not the original Elton John-Bernie Taupin classic, but the more recent Princess Di tribute version, the lyrics now offering a good-bye to our "English rose." I had read somewhere that the Di-tribute version was the biggest-selling single in world history. That said something, though I was not sure I wanted to know what.

  Rose Baker said, "Do you remember when Princess Diana died?"

  I looked at Katy. She looked at me. We both nodded yes.

  "Do you remember the way the world mourned?"

  She looked at us some more. And we nodded again.

  "For most people, the grief, the mourning, it was just a fad. They did it for a few days, maybe a week or two. And then" she snapped her fingers, magician style, her saucer eyes bigger than ever "it was over for them. Like she never existed at all."

  She looked at us and waited for clucks of agreement. I tried not to make a face.

  "But for some of us, Diana, Princess of Wales, well, she really was an angel. Too good for this world maybe. We won't ever forget her. We keep the light burning."

  She dabbed her eye. A sarcastic rejoinder came to my lips, but I bit it back.

  "Please," she said. "Have a seat. Would you care for. some tea?"

  Katy and I both politely declined.

  "A biscuit, then?"

  She produced a plate with cookies in the shape of, yup, Princess Diana's profile. Sprinkles formed the crown. We begged off, neither of us much in the mood to nibble on dead Di. I decided to start right in.

  "Mrs. Baker," I said, "you remember Katy's sister, Julie?"

  "Yes, of course." She put down the plate of cookies. "I remember all of the girls. My husband, Frank he taught English here died in 1969.

  We had no children. My family had all passed away. That sorority house, those girls, for twenty-six years they were my life."

  "I see," I said.

  "And Julie, well, late at night, when I lay in bed in the dark, her face comes to me more than most. Not just because she was a special child oh, and she was but of course, because of what happened to her."

  "You mean her murder?" It was a dumb thing to say, but I was new at this. I just wanted to keep her talking.

  "Yes." Rose Baker reached out and took Katy's hand. "Such a tragedy.

  I'm so sorry for your loss."

  Katy said, "Thank you."

  Uncharitable as this might sound, my mind could not help but think:

  Tragedy, yes, but where was Julie's image or the image of Rose Baker's husband or family, for that matter in this swirling potpourri of royal grief ?

  "Mrs. Baker, do you remember another sorority sister named Sheila Rogers?" I asked.

  Her face pinched up and her voice was short. "Yes." She shifted primly. "Yes, I do."

  From her reaction, it was pretty obvious that she had not heard about the murder. I decided not to tell her yet. She clearly had a problem with Sheila, and I wanted to know what it was. We needed honesty here.

  If I were to tell her that Sheila was dead now, she might sugarcoat her answers. Before I could follow up, Mrs. Baker held up her hand. "May I ask you a question?"

  "Of course."

  "Why are you asking me all this now?" She looked at Katy. "It all happened so long ago."

  Katy took that one. "I'm trying to find the truth."

  "The truth about what?"

  "My sister changed while she was here."

  Rose Baker closed her eyes. "You don't need to hear this, child."

  "Yes," Katy said, and the desperation in her voice was palpable enough to knock out a window. "Please. We need to know."

  Rose Baker kept her eyes closed for another moment or two. Then she nodded to herself and opened them. She folded her hands and put them in her lap. "How old are you?"

  "Eighteen."

  "About the age Julie was when she first came here." Rose Baker smiled.

  "You look like her."

  "So I've been told."

  "It's a compliment. Julie lit up a room. In many ways she reminds me of Diana herself. Both of them were beautiful. Both of them were special almost divine." She smiled and wagged a finger. "Ah, and both had a wild streak. Both were inordinately stubborn. Julie was a good person. Kind, smart as a whip. She was an excellent student."

  " Yet," I said, " she dropped out."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  She turned her eyes on me. "Princess Di tried to be firm. But no one can control the winds of fate. They blow as they may."

  Katy said, "I'm not following you."

  A Princess Di clock chimed the hour, the sound a hollow imitation of Big Ben. Rose Baker waited for it to grow silent again. Then she said, "College changes people. Your first time away, your first time on your own ..." She drifted off, and for a moment I thought I'd have to nudge her into continuing. "I'm not saying this right
. Julie was fine at first, but then she, well, she started to withdraw. From all of us. She cut classes. She broke up with her hometown boyfriend. Not that that was unusual. Almost all the girls do first year. But in her case, it came so late. Junior year, I think. I thought she really loved him."

  I swallowed, kept still.

  "Earlier," Rose Baker said, "you asked me about Sheila Rogers."

  Katy said, "Yes."

  "She was a bad influence."

  "How so?"

  "When Sheila joined us that same year" Rose put a finger to her chin and tilted her head as if a new idea had just forced its way in "well, maybe she was the winds of fate. Like the paparazzi that made Diana's limousine speed up. Or that awful driver, Henri Paul. Did you know that his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit?"

  "Sheila and Julie became friends?" I tried.

  "Yes."

  "Roommates, right?"

  "For a time, yes." Her eyes were moist now. "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but Sheila Rogers brought something bad to Chi Gamma. I should have thrown her out. I know that now. But I had no proof of wrongdoing."

  "What did she do?"

  She shook her head again.

  I thought about it for a moment. Junior year, Julie had visited me at Amherst. I, on the other hand, had been discouraged from coming down to Haverton, which was a little strange. I flashed back to the last time Julie and I had been together. She had set up a quiet getaway at a bed and breakfast in Mystic instead of having us stay on campus. At the time, I'd thought it romantic. Now, of course, I knew better.

  Three weeks later, Julie called and broke it off with me. But looking back on it now, I remembered that she had been acting both lethargic and strange during that visit. We were in Mystic only one night and even as we made love, I could feel her fading away from me. She blamed it on her studies, said that she'd been cramming big-time. I bought it because, in hindsight, I wanted to.

  When I now added it all together, the solution was fairly obvious.

  Sheila had come here straight from the abuse of Louis Castman and drugs and the streets. That life is not so easy to leave behind. My guess was, she dragged some of that decay with her. It does not take much to poison the well. Sheila arrives at the start of Julie's junior year, Julie begins to act erratically.

  It made sense.

  I tried another tack. "Did Sheila Rogers graduate?"

  "No, she dropped out too."

  "The same time as Julie?"

  "I'm not even sure either of them officially dropped out. Julie just stopped going to class toward the end of the year. She stayed in her room a lot. She slept past noon. When I confronted her" her voice caught "she moved out."

  "Where did she move to?"