Windy looked around the jewel-box room and Nadene laughed. “No, you can’t support yourself on wings alone. I used to model, and then, years ago, I designed the costumes for the big shows on the Strip. Those feather headdresses and huge peacock skirts. But after a while every feathered and sequined can-can outfit begins to look just like every other feathered and sequined sailor outfit, or shepherdess outfit, or—the worst—swan outfit, and I wanted something with more clarity. So I turned to wings. I do tails, too, but only on special commission.”
“And you and Eve became friends? While you were designing the outfits for her waitstaff?”
“Eve is an intensely private person with an intensely needy soul. I loved her instantly, and she confides in me.”
“Do you know anything about Eve’s past? Where she grew up?”
“Eve wanted to live in the here and now. It is an admirable goal, don’t you think?”
Windy decided Nadene was not the only one who could play Dodge That Question. She said, “I know that you have been out of town. When was the last time you saw Eve?”
“It has to be about a month ago. She was very happy. In fact, she asked me if I would go wedding-dress shopping with her.”
Windy sat forward. “Did you?”
“I didn’t have time that week. We had to put it off.”
“Was she marrying Harry? Harold Williams?”
“Of course.”
The tone was wrong. Windy sat forward. “What happened between Eve and Harry?”
Nadene looked beyond Windy out the window toward her swimming pool, where green vines trailed up white lattice work over a cabana.
Windy’s cell phone began to ring. She said, “Please, Nadene. Anything you can tell me can help Eve.”
“Don’t you mean help you? Don’t confuse the two, Chicago. They may not be the same thing.” Windy’s phone rang again and Nadene said, “Do you need to answer that?”
After the railing she had given Ash, Windy knew she had no choice. She pulled the phone out of her bag, saw from the caller ID it was Brandon’s, and answered. “Hello?”
Cate’s voice screamed, “Mommy!”
Windy stood up. “Cate? Is that you?”
“I WANT MY MOMMY. WHERE IS MY MOMMY?”
“Cate! I’m right here. What’s—”
“MOMMY!”
The line went dead.
“Is something wrong?” Nadene asked, but Windy couldn’t hear her. She hit redial to Brandon’s phone and got bounced into his voice mail. Think, she told herself. Don’t panic, think. She dialed again.
“Ash Laughton.”
“Ash.” She gulped air.
“Windy, are you okay?”
“Someone has Cate. Someone took Cate. I have to find Cate.” Think. Explain. Don’t waste time. “My phone rang. It was Brandon’s number. When I answered Cate screamed ‘I want my—my mommy.’ Like she was scared. Like someone was hurting her. Then the phone cut out. Now there is no answer. Ash, you have got to help me get her back.”
“We’re on it.”
“Anything. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to her—”
“Jonah is already on the radio, scrambling all units. Brandon drives a blue VW bug, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get a helicopter up. We’ll find her, Windy. And I’m sending someone to pick you up.”
“No. I’m going to help look.”
“Windy, you could be in as much danger as Cate is.”
“NO! I am helping. I am—”
“The best way for you to help would be to go home. Right now. We’ll set up a command post at your house.”
“I want to—”
“I don’t have time to waste. Go home. That is an order. Just do it.”
“Okay I—” She was about to hang up when she said, “Thank you. I’m sorry I yelled at you—”
“Windy, get to your house.”
CHAPTER 69
Windy wished she had kept Ash on the phone with her, reassuring her, as she sped home, because all she could think about was that Eve had her daughter and was going to hurt her, going to make her play with tape, going to punish her, use her as a pawn.
She was going to quit her job, she was going to move with Cate into a monastery, please if Cate is alive, please just let Cate be alive.
She heard the sound of a helicopter overhead, approaching from the other side of town but converging with her toward her house. Don’t let that mean they didn’t find them. Don’t let it mean that Brandon had an accident, that Eve hurt Brandon that—
She screeched past the patrol cars parked in front of her house into her driveway as the helicopter hovered over her roof. Brandon’s car was at the curb. Brandon was standing at the door talking to two uniformed police officers and Ash.
Oh God, that meant he wasn’t with Cate.
“Where is she?” She stood in front of them shaking. “Brandon, what happened to her?”
Brandon looked at Ash, who put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was calm and he held her eyes. “She is inside. Nothing happened. She and Brandon were home for an hour when this—” He gestured to the police cars and helicopter. “—happened. Brandon put in a video when the doorbell rang and she hasn’t looked outside so she has no idea something is going on. Do you understand?”
Windy blinked at him. “Nothing? They are both fine?”
“Yes, and there is no reason to scare Cate.”
Someone had been trying to manipulate her, playing a game with her, Windy realized, and that was worse. Because they had used her daughter.
Think about that later, she told herself. Ash was right. There was no reason Cate had to know what happened. No reason to frighten her.
“Thank you.”
“Go inside. I’ll take care of things out here and send Brandon in to you in a few minutes.”
Windy nodded, not really listening, her mind repeating, don’t scare Cate. Don’t let on. She made herself walk calmly into her house, drop her bag in the middle of the entry hall like normal, and call out, “I’m home.”
Cate rushed out of the living room to her, saying, “Mommy you should have seen it, you should have been there.”
Windy got down on her knees and hugged her tight. Too tight, too long, but she couldn’t stop it.
“Mom, you’re squashing me.”
Windy loosened her hold. “Sorry.” She said, “Did you call me, sweetie? On Brandon’s phone a little while ago?”
“No. I wanted to, but we couldn’t find his phone. Why didn’t you come?”
“Come where?”
“My game.”
It was Tuesday. She had forgotten Cate’s Tuesday soccer match. She had blown it. “How—how was it? Did you kick?”
Cate stepped away from her and Windy realized she was still wearing her soccer clothes. “Sort of,” Cate said. A pause, then, “I scored two goals!”
Two goals. Cate had scored twice and she had missed it, off tracking a psychotic killer instead of being there to watch the biggest moment of her daughter’s life. Great choice. “Oh honey, that is great. That is really great,” Windy said, swallowing back a lump in her throat.
“Brandon had Mrs. Carlyle tape it for you, so you can see it.”
“Thank you.”
“But it won’t be the same as if you were there.”
“No. I’m so proud of you.”
“I thought you were going to be there,” Cate said and her voice was tense now.
“I’m sorry. I had to work, honey.”
“Everyone else’s mom was there. How come you work and everyone else’s mom doesn’t?”
“Someone else in their family works.”
“Does that mean when you and Bill get married you won’t work any more?”
Windy felt like a fist had hit her in the stomach. “No.”
“Why not?” Cate asked, getting mad.
Windy shifted from kneeling to sitting on the floor. “I have to work. I have t
o catch the bad guys. It’s my job.”
“Why can’t someone else’s mom catch the bad guys? Why can’t you just be a mom like the other moms?” Cate’s little face got tight and she swatted a tear. “How come you work all the time and dress different than them and look different than them?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t look like a real mom. You don’t look like a grown-up. I want a real mom. I want a real mom and a real dad.”
Cate stormed up to her room and slammed the door, then opened it, then slammed it again. Windy stared after her, frozen, her hand over her mouth. Then she went numbly to the couch, put the tape marked “Game” in the video recorder, watched the soccer game come on. And began to sob for the first time in over three years.
There was Cate, doing beautifully, kicking, working with the team, clapping for the other girls. And there were the moms in the stands, all wearing pastel-colored polo shirts with their sweaters tied over their shoulders and their perfect hair and nails. Windy didn’t even own a pastel item of clothing. None of them talking on cell phones. None of them having bitten their nails down until they bled. None of them responsible for endangering the life of their own daughter. And missing her soccer game.
How had she let her life get so fucked up? How had she lost track of what was important?
The screen blurred in front of her as she cried harder. She heard Brandon’s footsteps, felt his arm come around and hand her a white linen handkerchief. Brandon, probably the only person in Las Vegas to have cloth handkerchiefs, certainly the only one wearing Diesel jeans, Doc Martens, and a Clash T-shirt, his “punk” outfit. The idea made her smile through her tears.
“Thanks,” she said, looking up.
“You need to remember that the Minx is six,” he told her, rubbing her shoulder. “Six-year-olds are sadists.”
Windy sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I know. It just hurts because she is right.”
“About what?”
“I’m not a real mom. Not like the moms of her friends.”
Brandon frowned. “You could look just like them if you wanted to.” Casting a glance at the screen and wincing before adding, “Although I don’t see why you would.”
But Windy knew that wasn’t the problem. She could maybe look like them, but she could never be like them. She could never be a real mom. A good enough mom. She was failing hard at everything.
Brandon said, “She doesn’t mean it, honey. She’s just being six.”
Windy nodded and headed for the stairs, saying, “But maybe she has a point.”
She knocked on Cate’s door, ignored the DO NOT BUG ME sign hanging on the knob, and went in. Cate was sitting on her bed with The Little Prince open in front of her. Windy sat down across from her.
“I watched the tape. You were so good, Cate. The way you kicked, but also the way you worked with the other girls on your team. The way you cheered Lutece on even when she let a goal slip through. You made me feel so proud.”
Cate didn’t look up from her book but Windy knew she wasn’t reading. She said, “Thanks. You can’t catch every goal. Even professional goalies miss sometimes.” Sounding so wise, so cool.
“I could tell you’ve been working really hard on your kicking.”
Cate shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. I just did what Ash said.”
“I think he would be impressed. Could I show him the tape?”
Cate shook her head. “He would just be bored. Soccer games are boring.”
“No way. That didn’t look boring at all. Besides, he could fast-forward through all the other parts, of all the people he didn’t care about, and just watch the good part with you in it.”
Cate almost looked up from the book, but remembered at the last minute she was giving Windy the cold treatment and kept her eyes down as she said, “You think he would like that?”
“You bet.”
Still without looking at her mom, Cate slid off her bed and went to the easel that stood in the corner of her room. “I made this for Ash. It’s a thank-you card.” She held it out and Windy saw a crayon drawing of him and Cate holding hands, with a soccer ball between them. Below it, the word “TanK you” was written hesitantly in pencil. “I couldn’t remember how to spell thank you. Could you help me?”
Windy went over to the easel and they sounded the word out together, then practiced writing the letter h in the right direction, and finally had it perfect.
Windy was kneeling next to Cate. She said, “I’m very sorry I missed your game, honey. I wish I could have been there.”
“I made you this,” Cate said, pulling out another sheet of paper. It had flowers drawn on the top, and lots of uneven squares. “It is a calendar. I thought we could fill it in with all the times of my soccer games and you could carry it with you and then you could come to them.” She looked at Windy. “Please, Mommy.”
For the first time Windy understood how scared Cate still was of being left behind, how deep-down insecure. She pulled her to her and said, “I will try, sweetheart. And if I can’t come, I will call you and wish you good luck, so you will know that I am thinking about you.”
“You mean like if there are bad guys to catch.”
“Yes.”
“Where do the bad guys come from?”
“Different places. But mostly I think it’s because they never had anyone to love them. To pay attention to them.”
“Don’t they have moms?” Cate asked.
How to answer that? “Not really.”
“Oh,” Cate said. She thought about it for a long time. “That must be really lonely.” Then she touched Windy’s cheek. “You’re crying, mom!”
“Yes. Because I’m sad that I missed your game. And I’m sorry I made you worry.”
Cate tilted her head to one side. “You look funny when you cry.”
Windy started to laugh. “Thanks.”
Brandon tapped at the door then and put his head around. “There are some cookies just out of the oven in the kitchen for anyone who wants them.”
Before he finished Cate and Windy were already racing each other out the bedroom.
“No running in the house, ladies,” he called after them, shaking his head.
When they’d each burned the tops of their mouth devouring cookies too fast and sprayed crumbs laughing at how stupid they each looked with their mouths open going “hot hot hot,” Cate leaned over to Windy and said, “I’m glad you aren’t like a real mom.”
Windy knew it was a compliment, but she still couldn’t help feeling like she had failed.
CHAPTER 70
At nine thirty Windy was trying to decide between hot chocolate and her pajamas when the doorbell rang.
She opened it and saw Ash standing on the front stoop. “Hi,” he said.
Her heart rate picked up. “Hi. Will you come in?”
“Are you up for visitors?”
“Yes.” She closed the door behind him. “Can I offer you a drink?”
“I have to work tonight.”
“Coffee? Hot chocolate? It’s only instant, but it has mini marshmallows in it.”
“Mini marshmallows. That I can’t resist.”
He followed her into the kitchen and leaned against the counter while she filled the kettle. “Is Cate all right?”
“Yes.” She had been staring at the kettle but now her eyes came to him. “I’m mortified that I had you call out the National Guard for nothing.”
“Not nothing. It was a clever manipulation. Someone was trying to scare you.”
“They succeeded.” She rubbed her upper arms with her palms. “What do you think happened?”
“I think someone recorded Cate asking for you, then lifted Brandon’s cell phone and used it to call you when it was convenient.”
“Convenient. Then you think someone didn’t want me talking to Nadene.”
“That is my guess.”
“We’ve got to warn her. Protect her. Let’s—”
“I’ve already
got two officers at her house. No one gets in without us knowing.”
“Good. I want to interview her again. She is fascinating although she has a bit of a problem answering questions.”
“Did you learn anything talking to her?”
“Only that she and Eve had planned to go wedding dress shopping a month ago.” The water started to boil and as she spoke she poured it into two mugs, mixing them with a Cinderella spoon. “Do you want the Evil Bunny mug—” Windy held up a mug with a fairly basic rendering of a rabbit with large pointy teeth. “—or Snappy the Happy Turtle?” A mug with a turtle wearing a feather boa and a tiara.
“Did Cate and Brandon make these?”
“Yes. Can you tell who did which?”
“I want the Evil Bunny.”
She motioned for him to take one of the chairs at the light blue kitchen table and put the mug in front of him, seating herself opposite. “I’ll let you have her, although she is my favorite, to atone for telling you how to do your job so many times today. I’m really sorry. You would think by now I would just get out of your way.”
“I like the back-up.” He slipped the toothpick out of his mouth, put it in his pocket, and took a sip from his mug. “Speaking of which, I also have two cars outside your house. I’m sorry, I know it will feel like an intrusion but—”
“No, I’m glad. Thank you.” Windy blew on her hot chocolate for a while. “If the call was purposely timed to distract me from Nadene, that means it was Eve.”
“Between the timing and using that MO again, taping someone and playing it back later, I’m thinking yes.”
“So Nadene must know something important. Maybe I should go over there now.”
“She is asleep. And you aren’t leaving the house tonight.”
“Is that an order?”
Ash sipped his hot chocolate. “Yep.”
“If she taped Cate at her soccer game, someone might have seen her.”
“We have asked around and come up with nothing. But Brandon said you have a tape. She might be on it.”
“Of course. That’s why you came,” Windy said. “Just to get the tape. And I waylaid you with hot chocolate. I’ll go get it.” She had gotten up and was moving past him when he reached for her wrist. He gently pulled her into the chair close to him.
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