Table for five

by Susan Wiggs

  “I was hoping you’d be Crystal,” he said, holding open the door.

  How gracious of him.

  “Lily Robinson,” she said in her most prim tone. She always sounded insufferably prim when she felt defensive, and she always felt defensive around devastating men. She definitely felt that way now, as she stood dripping on the doormat. Her Totes rain hat was functional though hardly attractive, with its deep brim currently serving as a rain gutter. A steady drip trickled down, right between her eyes, splashing on the mat.

  She took off the hat and hung it on a hook behind the door, admonishing herself not to feel self-conscious as she surrendered her coat. He towered over her, even taller than his older brother. Against her will, Lily felt a brief, subtle spasm of reaction to his nearness. He was just a guy, she reminded herself. If not for the kids, they’d have nothing to do with each other.

  “Where are the kids?” she asked, removing her fogged-up glasses.

  “Upstairs. I told them there’s probably some mix-up in the plans. The girls are watching a video and Cameron’s watching them.”

  Or more likely, thought Lily, he was watching instant messages on the Internet. Clearly this man knew nothing about children.

  “Any word from Crystal or Derek?” She finished polishing her glasses and put them back on.

  “None.” He shot a glance at the stairs. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”

  That was all. No “thanks for coming.” He was worried, she conceded. So was she.

  As Lily followed him, she couldn’t help but notice the absolute perfection of his butt. Crystal had mentioned his golf career was on the skids. With that butt, he could always turn into a Levi’s model.

  A moment later, she realized he’d turned around and caught her staring. Mortified, she shifted her gaze to a stack of three pizza boxes on the cluttered table.

  “Want some?” he asked.

  For a moment she felt disoriented and a bit flustered. “No, no thanks.”

  “So here’s a rundown,” he said, hooking his thumbs into his rear pockets and pacing. “Derek’s fiancée, Jane, has no idea where he is.”

  “She’s his fiancée?” Lily felt her stomach lurch. Crystal didn’t know that. If she did, Lily would have been the first to hear of it. Actually, the whole town probably would have heard the screams.

  “I guess. As of last weekend, they made it official.”

  “When was he planning to tell Crystal?” Lily sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar. She eyed the pizza boxes again, but felt too nervous to eat. Especially pizza. She hadn’t eaten pizza in ages. It was a nutritional nightmare, and stuffing herself with carbs and fats wouldn’t help anything.

  Over the years, she’d spent countless hours in this kitchen, sipping herbal tea with organic honey and a slice of orange, savoring the company of her best friend. It felt weird being here with a stranger, speculating.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “I bet he told her today. Maybe that’s why they didn’t come home.”

  “Why would they disappear with their cell phones turned off?”

  “They probably drove somewhere out of range.”

  He turned and looked at her, one eyebrow lowered in skepticism. How did he do that with just one? she wondered.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  He wouldn’t.

  “Think about it. If Derek remarries, these kids’ lives are going to change drastically. Crystal and Derek have got a lot to talk about.” She didn’t elaborate. Maybe Maguire knew more about the situation, maybe he didn’t. Lily didn’t see it as her place to enlighten him.

  “I can’t believe they’d just take off without checking in with the kids,” he said quietly, as though talking to himself.

  She drummed her fingers on the counter. An unexplained disappearance wasn’t impossible. In the final years of their marriage, Derek and Crystal had been known as the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald of the PGA, with a reputation for partying, passion and public rows. They had a way of focusing on each other with total absorption, letting the world fall away as they went at each other. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine them so caught up that they temporarily forgot the kids.

  Love did strange things to people, Lily reflected, then shivered with the next thought. Had they harmed each other?

  She forced herself to ask the hardest question of the night. “Have you called the police?”

  He winced. “Yes. I told them the make and model of both cars. There hasn’t been any report of an accident from the highway patrol.”

  A small measure of relief seeped through her. “I’m glad to hear that. So are they out searching?”

  He shook his head. “No. Once they established that Derek and Crystal are adults with no medical conditions, they put me off. Twenty-four hours seems to be the magic number.”

  “This is not going to take twenty-four hours,” Lily said, pushing her hand into her pocket to keep from biting her nail.

  “So now what?” Sean asked.

  Before she could reply, a crash sounded upstairs, followed by a loud, angry cry from Ashley.

  Both Sean and Lily ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time and she followed close behind.

  Crystal had remodeled the upstairs some years ago, creating a common playroom for the kids’ toys, plus a nook for a TV and their own computer. Now Lily found Ashley sitting beside a broken bean-pot lamp and howling while Charlie looked on with a tight-lipped disapproval that eerily resembled Crystal. At the computer, Cameron ignored them both as colorful instant-messaging boxes cluttered the screen. They didn’t completely manage to mask the browser window with the ominous title, “Porn Ponies.”

  Lily took this all in with a glance. She reached down and scooped Ashley into her arms. She’d always felt proprietary toward Crystal’s children. “Hiya, sweetie,” she said in a soothing whisper. “Are you all right?”

  The child’s sobbing subsided. Then she looked at Sean and howled again. “Don’t like you,” she wailed.

  He turned his hands palms up. “I never did a thing to her,” he said.

  “I like you, Uncle Sean,” Charlie said, climbing him like a tree. “Hello, Lily.” Outside of school, she was allowed to call her teacher Lily. She hung upside down on Sean’s arm and offered a gap-toothed grin.

  “How’s my big girl?” Lily patted the baby’s back.

  “We’re waiting for Mom,” Charlie said.

  “I know.” Lily sidled over to Cameron. “Lose the Porn Ponies,” she murmured. “Now.”

  “Porn Ponies?” Sean scowled. “You were looking at porn on the Internet?”

  “He always looks at porn,” Charlie said, dropping to the floor.

  “Do not,” Cameron said.

  “Do so.” She stuck out her tongue at him. “You look at it so much, I bet your pornograph machine’s going to break.”

  “Moron.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went black. Ashley stopped crying and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

  Note to self, thought Lily. Check parental controls on the computer.

  “What are you doing here, Lily?” Charlie asked. “If you came to see my mom, she’s not home yet.”

  “Tell you what,” Lily said. “You and Cameron get that lamp cleaned up. Your uncle will help you. I’m going to get our little friend here ready for bed.”

  Ashley’s mouth made a popping sound as she removed her thumb. “No bed,” she said, and put her thumb back.

  “You’re right. You need a bath first, you smelly little thing.”

  As she carried the baby to the bathroom, Lily buried her concern behind a smile. She chattered cheerfully away as she ran a shallow bath and peeled off Ashley’s clothes and diaper. The bathroom was cluttered with brightly colored plastic toys and bottles of shampoo and bubble bath, combs and toothbrushes, barrettes and mismatched towels.

  Crystal always made this look so easy, Lily reflected, trying to keep hold of the squirming child while opening a bottle of baby shampoo. Lily couldn’t
abide the thought of letting go of Ashley or looking away for a single second, so she opened the cap with her teeth. The taste of baby shampoo filled her mouth.

  “Ptooey,” she said, wiping her mouth on her shoulder.

  Ashley laughed at her and splashed her hands on the surface of the water.

  And to think the evening had started out with Italy, wine and Kevin Costner in his prime, thought Lily. Now, with every moment that passed, her conviction that her best friend was missing tightened in her chest.

  Missing. There could be no other explanation. Something was terribly wrong.

  chapter 9

  Friday

  9:00 p.m.

  Sean stood in the kitchen and contemplated the empty pizza boxes. Nearly empty. He picked up the last piece of hamburger-black olive and stuffed it in his mouth. Whoever heard of hamburger-black olive? That had been Charlie’s suggestion. It wasn’t half bad, he thought, wiping his hand on his pants.

  Upstairs, it was quiet at last. Lily Robinson had taken charge. The baby was asleep, and Lily and Charlie were reading a book together in Charlie’s bed.

  Miss Lily Robinson to the rescue. She was not the heavyset, blue-haired schoolmarm he’d expected. She just had the personality of one. Still, Sean was grateful that she’d come to help out.

  Cameron was back on the Internet, probably surfing for porn even though Sean had warned him not to. Sean had come downstairs to dispose of the broken lamp and clean up the kitchen.

  Pizza boxes had been designed, he decided, by someone who had never taken out the trash. There was no way to fit one into a receptacle. He set it on the floor, stepped on it and then folded it in half once, twice, then crammed the cardboard into the kitchen trash can, shoving it down with his foot. He repeated the process for the second box, then the third.

  When Lily walked into the kitchen, Sean had one foot in the trash can and his mouth full of pizza. She eyed him as though he were one of the kids in her schoolroom, not with dislike or disapproval, but with a kind of bemused tolerance that made him want to misbehave.

  This was the gift of a schoolmarm, he thought. With one look, she could make a grown man feel an inch tall.

  He managed to swallow the last of the pizza and extract his foot with a tug, hopping backward and grabbing a chair to keep from falling.

  “Hey,” he said, acting casual, crossing his foot at the ankle. “The kids in bed?”

  “The girls are. Charlie just fell asleep. Cameron’s doing homework.”

  “I’m calling the police again,” Sean said.

  “I think you should.” Her face was pale, and she kept worrying a silver-and-turquoise ring around her finger.

  She wasn’t bad-looking behind those thick glasses, Sean reflected as he picked up the phone. For a marm.

  He hit Redial and got the now-familiar recorded menu of options, pressing three before the falsely soothing canned voice finished the instructions.

  “This is Officer Brad Henley.”

  “I’m calling for Officer…” Sean consulted the name he’d jotted down. Unable to find a piece of paper, he’d written it in ballpoint pen on the palm of his hand. Lily said nothing but frowned at the hand.

  “Nordquist,” Sean said.

  “Gone for the day,” Henley said in a bored voice.

  Great, they’d changed shifts.

  “This is in regard to a matter I called about earlier,” Sean said. “My name is Sean Maguire.”

  “Uh-huh. What can I do for you?”

  “I called about my brother, Derek Holloway, and his ex-wife, Crystal.” Sean listened to the silence for a few seconds.

  “Yeah, okay. I see it in the call log here. What can I do for you, Mr. Maguire?”

  Find them, he wanted to scream into the phone. Find them and bring them home so I can get back to my life. My sorry-ass life. Which, if things go okay at the tournament next week, I might just have a shot at getting back on track.

  “I still don’t know where they are. There’s been no word of them.” Sean glanced over at Lily, who watched him with a furrow of worry on her brow. The conversation felt slightly surreal as he said, “My brother’s missing and so is his ex. You ought to be out searching for them.”

  Another pause. Sean could hear the tap of a keyboard. “Do either of them have any type of medical problem or impairment that—”

  “I answered all this before,” Sean said, fighting to keep his voice down. “They’re both in perfect health, sound of mind and body. Which is why it’s completely unlike them to disappear.”

  “Sir, at this time, it’s not an emergent situation and we can’t give it airtime or attempt to locate missing adults.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re never missing,” the cop said wryly. “I’ll put the info out on the city channel for now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Dispatchers’ network.”

  “There are three children involved,” Sean reminded him. “Do you have that in your notes?”

  “Are they in any danger?” the cop asked.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Then I can’t—” There was a pause on the line. “Is your brother Derek Holloway, the golfer?”

  Celebrity had its perks, Sean thought. “The very same.”

  “Well, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate at this time, but I’ll send someone out,” said Henley. “What’s the address?”

  Sean looked up at Lily. “Address?” he mouthed.

  She handed him an envelope from the pile of mail on the table.

  Good thinking. At least one of them could still think. He read the address into the phone.

  “Someone will be right out,” he reported to Lily after he hung up.

  “When?”

  “He said right away. I assume that means immediately.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  Sean felt a tic leap in his jaw. “Look, right away means right away. Like now.”

  “You don’t have to snap at me.”

  “I didn’t snap at you.”

  “Yes, you did. And you’re still doing it.”

  “Hey, I don’t need a scolding here.”

  “I wasn’t scolding.” She sniffed. “I just don’t like being snapped at.”

  “I didn’t—” Sean forced himself to stop. It was idiotic, bickering with this woman while Derek was God-knows-where. “Okay,” he said, getting up to pace some more. “All right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

  She turned to the sink and started rinsing the dishes. “I’m every bit as worried as you are, Mr. Maguire.”

  “Sean. Call me Sean.”

  She opened the dishwasher and rolled out the rack. “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I’m sure as hell not going to call you Miss Robinson, Lily.”

  She pivoted away sharply and began to load the dishwasher. He checked messages on his cell phone, finding nothing new there. Lily lined up the plates in the rack and separated the silverware into baskets according to category—all the forks in one, the spoons in another. She was stymied by a spatula until she laid it carefully in the top rack. Then she put in the glasses, upending each one according to height. Finally she picked up the box of soap powder and appeared to be reading the directions.

  “You need some help with that?” he asked, putting away his phone.

  “No. It’s just that I’ve never used this brand before. It says ‘super concentrated’ so I think I might need less. Ah, here we go. Two ounces for the normal cycle.” She opened a drawer and rummaged around inside it. “Now, two ounces. I believe that’s the equivalent of two level tablespoons….”

  Sean couldn’t help it. He snatched the box of detergent from her, dumped some of it into the trap until it overflowed, then snapped the thing shut. Finally, he closed the dishwasher and gave the knob a twist until he heard the shudder of running water.

  When he straightened up, he saw her staring at him as though he’d crossed some line with her. Hell,
maybe he had.

  He spied a stray coffee mug on the counter. Its rim bore a half moon of lipstick. Without taking his eyes off her, he opened the dishwasher and stuck it in haphazardly, then shut the machine again, pushing the door with his hip.

  “There,” he said. “That’s done.”

  “Thank you,” she said faintly.

  “I guess I could take out the trash,” he said, gesturing at the overflowing receptacle.

  “I believe the cans are in the garage. You’ll want to make sure the lid’s on tight to discourage raccoons.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated courtesy. He picked up the kitchen garbage and headed out the back door. When he turned to close it, he saw Lily Robinson open the dishwasher and carefully put the coffee mug in its proper place.

  chapter 10

  Friday

  9:25 p.m.

  In a way, thought Lily, Sean Maguire was a blessing. He was so incredibly obnoxious that he distracted her from worrying herself to the point of despair. So she supposed he was good for something.

  When he came in from taking out the trash, she didn’t acknowledge him. She was busy clearing off the countertops in order to give them a good cleaning.

  It wasn’t like this was a social situation, anyway, she thought, feeling unaccountably defensive. They wouldn’t have a thing to do with each other if not for the bizarre situation they found themselves in.

  “I’m going to go check on Cameron,” he said.

  “That’s probably a good idea.” She set down the bottle of Windex. “So how worried is he?”

  “Plenty. It’s completely unlike Derek to just take off without explanation.”

  “Crystal would never do that, either.”

  “Oh, no?” He lifted one eyebrow. “She left them overnight at Derek’s two weeks ago.”