Last Seen Alive

by Carlene Thompson

  “I’ll bet,” Ned leered.

  “Ned Greer, you keep your salacious thoughts to yourself!” Beverly chastised, pushing him out the door. “Honestly, Chyna, he’s terrible!”

  “You don’t think a woman who looks like Chyna studies all the time, do you?”

  Chyna smiled with relief that her brother seemed to be acting more naturally. She watched fondly as the couple walked to their car, still quarreling yet holding hands the whole way. Beverly, four years younger than Ned, had drooled over him hopelessly for years. Then one day, blinders seemed to drop from Ned’s eyes and he discovered the pretty blonde. They’d been together ever since and seemed to have as close to a perfect union as marriage could get. Chyna envied them, but she didn’t see the same kind of relationship ahead for herself—another of those certainties she hated but couldn’t shake. She knew her own life would never be like Ned’s.

  Chyna watched the red taillights of Ned’s car crawl down the asphalt drive to the main road running beside Lake Manicora. Then she gathered up the coffee cups and saucers, carried them to the kitchen, and rinsed them before she put them in the dishwasher. The strain and lack of sleep she’d suffered the last two days caught up with her and she finally felt tired enough to fall on the floor. She turned on the dishwasher and had her hand on the kitchen light switch, wishing she didn’t have to climb all those stairs to her bedroom on the second floor, when the phone rang.

  She groaned, but habit would not allow her to ignore the call. She automatically hurried to the phone on the kitchen

  counter and glanced at Caller ID. No number was listed— simply the words “Unknown Name.” Chyna was mildly puzzled and hoped this wasn’t a sympathy call as she picked up the receiver. “Greer here.” She caught herself. “I mean, hello.”

  The sound of wind blowing in the distance seemed to tingle against her ear for a moment. Long ago, that sound wasn’t unusual for a long-distance call, but this was the twenty-first century. Calls hadn’t made that sound for over fifty years. “Hello?” she said again.

  The sound grew louder. Chyna glanced at the window, wondering if she really was hearing wind, only coming from her end of the connection. The tree limbs she saw through the kitchen windows, though, remained perfectly still. After one more attempt at a greeting, Chyna was ready to hang up when a faraway voice asked, “Zoey?”

  Chyna went completely still. Her hand clamped on the receiver. “Zoey?” A female voice was clearer this time, but still sounded unlike a voice on a modern phone.

  A joke, Chyna thought. Someone was playing a cruel joke on her at night, thinking they could rattle her nerves. After all, there were still people in this town who thought she’d had something to do with Zoey Simms’s disappearance.

  “This is Chyna Greer,” she said in a loud, firm tone, trying to sound as though she wasn’t frightened. “No one by the name of Zoey lives at this number.”

  “Zoey?” This time the voice was even clearer. And familiar. “Zoey, darling, is that you? It’s Mom!”

  Chyna’s hand began to shake. Caller ID had said “ Unknown Name,” but the woman sounded exactly like Anita Simms, Zoey’s mother, whose voice Chyna would never forget even if the woman had refused to see or speak to the family after Zoey’s disappearance. “Mrs. Simms?” Chyna asked, then could have kicked herself. If someone was playing a joke, she was giving them their money’s worth.

  “Chyna? Is that you, honey? My, you sound so grown up!” Chyna’s mind spun back twelve years to the last time

  she’d talked to Anita Simms on the phone. She’d said that very thing: “My, you sound so grown-up!”

  “I… Mrs. Simms?”

  “Yes, Chyna.” Chyna stiffened as she heard Anita Simms’ tinkling laughter that had sounded just like her daughter’s. “Are you girls having a good time this visit?”

  A chill ran down Chyna’s spine and her hand stiffened on the receiver. Michelle sat vigilantly at her feet. Once again, the hair on the dog’s back was raised, her ears perked to attention.

  All right, calm down, Chyna thought. There’s something wrong with Mrs. Simms. She’d refused to talk to the Greers for twelve years. Anything could have happened to her. They did know she’d suffered a nervous breakdown after Zoey disappeared. Maybe she was having another one. Did she believe it was twelve years ago and her daughter was here?

  “Mrs. Simms, if this really is Mrs. Simms—”

  Again that all-too-familiar laugh. “Bubble Gum?” Chyna’s old nickname from when she was four and had gotten bubble gum so badly tangled in her hair, it had to be cut short “Bubble Gum, of course it’s Anita Simms. What kind of game are you girls playing?”

  “No … we’re not playing a game. I just don’t understand why you’re calling.”

  Asking for your daughter who’s probably been dead for twelve years.

  “I think you are playing a game, Chyna.” Still good humor in the voice, but the laughter was gone. “Is my daughter nearby?”

  “Zoey?”

  “I only have one child!” A bit of laughter. Then a pause. Next Anita spoke in a voice edged with suspicion. “Chyna, Zoey is there with you, isn’t she? You’re not covering for her, are you?”

  “Covering?”

  “She hasn’t gone out late at night to meet some boy, has she?” The voice was beginning to grow fainter, the sound of wind coming back. “I strictly forbade her to do any single dat

  ing on this trip. A double date with you and your boyfriend was allowed, as long as you were home at a decent hour, but no going out alone. You don’t know what might happen to a young girl going out at night alone. I’ve told her that a hundred times. There are dangers young innocent girls like Zoey have never thought of, but I’m sure you know better. Chyna, you know I count on you to look out for my little girl when she’s visiting you….”

  By now Chyna’s entire body felt like a column of ice and she couldn’t hide the shaking of her voice. “Mrs. Simms…”

  “Where is Zoey?” The voice grew alarmed just as the windy sound grew louder. “Chyna, has something happened to her?”

  Chyna stood with her dry mouth slightly open. The room started to spin as the voice on the other end of the line cried in hysteria over the wind, “Chyna, where is my little girl? Something’s wrong; I know it! Oh God, where is she?”

  The line went dead.

  Chyna closed her eyes. Then, slowly, she nearly pried her hand from the receiver and hung up the phone. She turned and, placing her back against the wall for support, sank to a sitting position on the floor. Michelle, only a step away from Chyna, placed a big blond paw on her thigh and licked her face.

  “It’s all right, Michie,” Chyna said. “It’s all…” She fell silent, then began to vibrate all over. It was not all right. Nothing about that call was right.

  3

  Chyna sat on the cool vinyl floor for what seemed an endless time until finally she felt she’d calmed down enough to stand. She put her hand on the dog’s strong back, using the strength of her legs and a bit of the dog’s steady weight to raise herself to a standing position.

  All right, what do I do now? Chyna thought. Call the po-

  lice and tell them Zoey Simms’s mother had just called asking for her daughter who’d been missing for twelve years? They’d think she was drunk. Or nuts. She already knew many of the local law enforcement officers thought she’d had something to do with Zoey’s disappearance and maybe her probable death.

  Ned. She’d call Ned. He was the only family she had left, and he’d never laughed at her, even when she was a little girl claiming to know things from the past, have premonitions, even occasionally read minds. He’d always taken her seriously, even when she’d lied and told him she never had “visions” anymore, a lie she’d never retracted.

  She dialed Ned’s number and was relieved when he picked up, obviously reading the number on Caller ID. “Hey, Sis,” he said teasingly before she’d uttered a word, “I’m not gone half an hour and you can’t wait
to hear my voice again.”

  “Something happened—” Chyna burst into tears.

  Immediately Ned’s voice turned serious. “Sis, what is it?”

  “N-Ned, I’m scared.”

  “I was afraid you might be, there in the house all alone.”

  “That’s not it.” She grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and wiped her wet face. “Ned, Anita Simms just called here asking for Zoey.”

  Ned went silent for a moment. Then he said with forced calm, “Chyna, someone was playing a bad joke on you.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but the Caller ID read: ’Unknown’ and the woman called me Bubble Gum and there was this sound of wind blowing in the background and then she got hysterical and …” Chyna drew a deep breath. “Ned, did anyone let Anita know Mom just died? Has Anita had another breakdown? She sounded so weird….”

  After a moment, Ned said, “Chyna, I think you’re really tired or, like I said, someone is playing a joke—”

  “I’m not that tired and it wasn’t a joke!” she snapped, torn between frustration and fright. “Ned, I remember Anita Simms’s voice. Her laugh. It was just like Zoey’s. And she knew my nickname and …” She drew a deep breath. “Ned, I know you. You’re keeping something from me. What is it?”

  After about three beats of silence, Ned said gently, “Chyna, it couldn’t have been Anita Simms on the phone. Mom and I didn’t want to tell you because we knew you’d blame yourself, but Anita couldn’t accept that Zoey was gone. She kept having breakdowns.”

  “So she’s had another one and thinks Zoey is alive? Has she called before? Recently?”

  “No, Sis.” She heard Ned draw a deep breath. “Last year Anita’s sister finally called Mom, but it was to tell her that Anita had another breakdown, only this time she slit her wrists. They found her too late….”

  Chyna’s hand began to shake violently. “No, it couldn’t have been too late. There was a mistake. Ned, she called me—

  “No, she didn’t,” Ned said firmly. “There was no mistake—Mom went to Anita’s funeral in Washington last year without ever telling you.” His tone softened. “I’m sorry, Chyna, but Anita Simms is dead.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  1

  Chyna jerked awake, bitterly cold although she lay under a down comforter. She’d even pulled it over her head. She struggled out of the tangle of silky sheets, the comforter, and a duvet that had come unfastened. After she’d crawled from the nest she’d made for herself, Chyna went to the window and looked at the day. Sun. She could actually see the sun trying to pierce through gunmetal gray clouds. Thank God, she thought. She didn’t believe she could have endured another day as desolate as yesterday.

  And she certainly couldn’t endure another phone call like the one from Anita Simms.

  Except the call couldn’t have come from Anita Simms. If Chyna hadn’t drunk two glasses of brandy, she would never have relaxed enough to go to sleep. This bright morning, it seemed easier for her to believe the whole thing had been a macabre joke and she would expose the prankster by looking at the numbers from which the Greers had received calls yesterday. If she hadn’t been so shaken, she would have thought to do so last night. Instead, she’d checked locks on all the doors and windows and turned to booze, she thought. Her father would have disapproved. Her uncle Rex would have probably emptied the decanter and become boisterous, telling jokes, making her laugh in spite of

  everything. She certainly wished he had been able to get here yesterday.

  Still, she’d finally slept deeply and felt normal, or as close to normal as she could under the circumstances. Thank goodness, she thought. She had a lot to do today. She couldn’t wallow in the fear struck deep into her by someone’s cruel prank.

  Michelle thundered down the stairs behind her toward the kitchen, obviously deciding she was starving. Chyna fixed coffee and cinnamon toast for herself, and, unusually hungry just like last night, she felt like she couldn’t get everything down fast enough. Michelle was another matter. She looked at her bowl of Gravy Train with disdain, then stepped away from it and stared up at her mistress with an expression Chyna could only interpret as insult.

  “You can’t have T-bone steak every day,” Chyna told the dog. “Just eat this now, and I’ll get something you like better for dinner. Deal?”

  Michelle took three sips from her water bowl, gave Chyna one last reproachful glance, and walked out of the kitchen with stiff dignity. Her behavior and posture were so much like Vivian Greer’s would have been, Chyna was torn between laughter and tears. “Mom might not have been a dog lover, but she would have liked you,” Chyna called to a sullen Michelle.

  Chyna guiltily fixed two more pieces of toast, wondering what had triggered her voracious appetite of the last two days, then decided to check out the telephone as she should have done last night. She picked up the handset and scrolled back to see the latest calls made to the number.

  The last number recorded was Ned’s. Chyna frowned, thinking. Had Ned or Beverly called her back after her hysterical call to them last night? No. Ned had talked to her for about twenty minutes, trying to calm her down, urging her to let him pick her up to stay with them, but when she’d refused, pretending to be getting herself under control, he’d given up and said good night. She’d then drunk the brandy and gone to bed.

  The secret of the caller’s identity must lie in the next

  number. Chyna’s heart hammered, both because she wanted to know who’d called and because she didn’t want to think that someone out there was trying to frighten her. But if she had an enemy, even a harmless one who took pranks no further than phone calls, she needed to know. The next name and number came up. Her uncle Rex. She’d already listened to his message on the answering machine saying he would be here today. Before that, a call had come from a telemar-keter. The telemarketer was preceded by an elderly lady who lived close by asking no one in particular if there were any way she could help after dear Vivian’s “passing.” That was the last call listed.

  Chyna sat down at the kitchen table and rested her forehead on her hands. During the last four years, her episodes of what most people called ESP had lessened. She didn’t know if it was because of her tremendous workload, the change of scenery, or simply a matter of “growing out” of it. Whatever the reason, she’d been unutterably relieved. But now it seemed to have kicked into gear again. First, there had come the voice at the lake. Next, she’d gotten the strange, windy phone call from someone sounding remarkably like Anita Simms. Chyna could put both down to heightened imagination caused by grief over her mother if Michelle hadn’t acted so strangely, too. But Chyna had to admit that the dog was deeply attached to her. Perhaps Michelle had been reacting to her heightened adrenaline levels. Maybe the dog’s two bouts of alarm yesterday were the result of Chyna’s fear, not Zoey speaking to her from the lake or Anita calling her on the phone.

  Chyna shook her head, deciding not to dwell on the subject further right now. At eleven, she had an appointment at the funeral home. She took a shower and washed her hair, then rooted through her suitcase to find she’d forgotten to pack her blow dryer. She went into her mother’s room to find another. At the time of Chyna’s father’s death, the room had been decorated in beige, light brown, and fern green. Over the years, Vivian had added some saffron yellow, pale apricot, and watermelon pink—small touches that had both enlivened the room and made it more feminine.

  Last Christmas when Chyna had come home, her mother had insisted on doing “my little girl’s hair” for the annual Christmas party. Chyna hadn’t looked in the mirror as she felt her mother whipping through her long strands of hair with hot rollers and curling irons. She’s making me look like a twelve-year-old with ringlets, Chyna had thought with dread. Then Vivian had chirped, “All done!” Slowly Chyna had forced herself to look in the mirror to find that her mother had indeed added curls to the hair, but big, loose curls. She’d pulled the top part to the back of Chyna’s head, teasing it a bit for h
eight and using an antique gold and pearl clasp to hold it in place, then draped the lower part seductively over Chyna’s right shoulder.

  “You look like a Greek goddess,” Vivian had said with complete love and admiration, not with a tinge of jealousy over the fact that lovely as she was, she dimmed in comparison with her daughter. “Now go out there and socialize. Don’t hover in a shadowy corner like you usually do,” Vivian had instructed. “You seem to feel like you should hide if you’re not wearing those horrible scrubs from the hospital. You have a fabulous figure. Show it off. By the way, Scott Kendrick might be here tonight.”

  Chyna’s heart had beat faster at that thought, and throughout the evening her spirits had drooped along with her curls when he hadn’t shown up. “Weather got my Scott hung up in New York,” Mrs. Kendrick told her around ten o’clock, her voice slightly slurry from too much spiked eggnog. “He should be here tomorrow and I’m sure he’ll be sorry he missed the party. He’s probably stuck alone in some shabby motel room watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the thirtieth time.”

  Chyna had smiled stiffly. She had no doubt Scott was in a motel room. She was totally certain he was not alone watching It’s a Wonderful Life. That night she’d vowed she’d get over this ludicrous crush she’d had on him since she was a teenager.

  But seeing him at the lake yesterday convinced her that she hadn’t really made much progress since last Christmas.

  She still thought he was the most charming, handsome— downright sexy—man she’d ever seen and her heart had beaten just as fast eighteen hours ago at the sight of him as it had when she was sixteen.

  “Oh, Chyna, you’re hopeless when it come to Scott,” she said aloud as she pulled herself from her reverie and headed for her mother’s bathroom, stubbing her toe on something barely sticking out from under the bed. Chyna bent down and pulled out an album, once white, now ivory with age. She opened the cover and on the first page saw a cut-out newspaper article titled “Sixteen-year-old Girl Goes Missing.”