Making Her Way Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Beth shook her head. “We only brought one towel. It’s right here.”

  Mike glanced down at the towel, folded neatly and apparently unused. It was a sea foam-green and more of a bath sheet than a beach towel.

  But this woman wasn’t Sicily’s mother. No surprise that she had to improvise for an outing.

  The ranger hurried away to talk to the people excited by the abandoned towel. Mike looked at Ms. Greenway.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “Tell me what happened.”

  He knew the basics of what she had to say and didn’t listen so much to the words as to her intonation, the way she paused over certain words and hurried over others. He hoped to see emotions and failed. She’d battened down the hatches with a ruthless hand. The only giveaway at all was the way she clutched herself, seemingly unaware that she was doing so.

  “So then I talked to these teenagers.” She turned her head, looking for them. “They’re still here, helping search. They said they’d watch for her while I…”

  As she spoke, he had the uncomfortable realization that anger wasn’t the only reason his belly was churning.

  He was attracted to her. Extremely, inappropriately attracted.

  Beth Greenway wasn’t a beautiful woman, exactly. She should have been too thin for his tastes, for one thing. The bones were startlingly prominent in her face, like a runway model. That was it exactly, he decided; her face was all cheekbones, eyes and lips. Those lips might be pouty and sultry in other circumstances, but were being held tightly together between sentences, as if she were thinning them deliberately.

  Her hair was brown, but that was an inadequate description for a rich, deep color that was really made up of dozens of shades. Chin-length, it was straight and thick and expertly cut to curve behind her ears. Her eyes were brown, too, but lighter than her hair. Caramel, maybe, flecked with gold.

  Fortunately, he was good at compartmentalizing. In the couple of minutes that passed while she talked, he’d assessed her appearance, decided his reaction to it was one hell of a stupid thing he could ignore and begun to question whether a single word coming out of her mouth was the truth.

  “Will any of these folks looking for your niece be able to recognize her?” he asked.

  She stared at him. Her eyes dilated at the instant she understood what he was really asking. Did any of these people ever actually see your niece?

  “I…I don’t know.” It was the first time she’d faltered. She rotated 360 degrees, her eyes so wide and fixed he wondered if she would even recognize a familiar face. “There was a family sitting near us. They had four kids.” Her forehead creased briefly. “Or maybe a couple of the kids were friends. I don’t know. But they were all close enough to Sicily’s age, they latched right onto her. They were looking at tide pools when I—” her pause was infinitesimal “—fell asleep.”

  Rage came close to choking him. Instead of sleeping, Ellen had been busy chatting with her friend; that had been her excuse. She thought Nate was napping. Well, yes, the sliding door was open but she could have sworn the screen door was closed and latched. “It was only for a few minutes,” she’d whispered. Then screamed, “That’s all! A few minutes!”

  A few minutes was all it took.

  Beth Greenway had brought her ten-year-old niece to a crowded public beach and then settled down for a nap, contentedly believing the kid was completely safe because she was playing with some other children.

  “Did you talk to the parents?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “We smiled.”

  “You smiled.”

  “My niece was studying crabs in a tide pool with their children. There was no need for me to interview the parents for suitability.”

  Her voice and expression were marble cool. He kept waiting for her to shiver or something, but it wasn’t happening.

  “But these people are gone.”

  “Yes.”

  He could see the first people from search-and-rescue arriving in the parking lot. He excused himself from Beth Greenway and went to talk to them about where to start. Nobody suggested that the beach had been adequately searched; these men and women knew as well as he did how easy it would be for an adult who’d raped and murdered a child to pretend to examine the spot where the body had been stowed. No one wanted to believe yet that this was anything other than a case in which a kid had thoughtlessly wandered away. Maybe she had gone for a hike with someone, maybe gotten lost, maybe gone to sulk and hide from the aunt if the two of them were fighting.

  “I need to ask the aunt some more questions,” he said, and they proceeded to organize themselves.

  When he returned, Beth had her back to him. Purposely, or was she truly engrossed in what the cluster of people way down the beach was doing? He looked to see if there was a flurry of activity, but there wasn’t.

  “Ms. Greenway.”

  Maybe she was hiding tears. But when she turned, her eyes were dry and curiously blank.

  “Does your niece have a habit of wandering or hiding?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What can you tell you me about her?” His voice had sharpened.

  She blinked a couple of times. “Well…she’s a good student.”

  “There’s not much to read down here.”

  Her sharp chin was one of the features that kept her from true beauty. She lifted it now. “Was that meant to be sarcastic?”

  “I apologize,” he said expressionlessly. “Tell me whatever occurs to you.”

  “I think she does like science. That’s why I checked out the nature trail right away.”

  “Can she swim?”

  Both of them cast involuntary looks toward the choppy blue water of the Sound. Until now he’d been too preoccupied to notice the salty sea air and the faint scent of rot that was usual during a low tide.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Nobody swims here anyway, so the subject didn’t come up. She didn’t wear a bathing suit.”

  “Ms. Greenway—” civility was becoming harder to maintain “—perhaps we should call Sicily’s parents.”

  Those beautiful eyes met his. “She doesn’t have any. I have custody.”

  Every instinct he had went on red alert. Did this kid even exist? This whole thing could be a hoax, an attention-grabber. Worse possibilities jumped to mind and if Sicily Marks didn’t materialize pretty damn quickly, he was going to have to take those possibilities seriously.

  “Her mother died a month ago.” Ms. Greenway sounded stiff. “Sicily came to live with me then. We’re still feeling our way.”

  He shoved his fingers through his hair and resisted the urge to give it a yank. Could this whole situation get any more unsettling?

  “I take it you hadn’t spent much time with your niece.”

  Was it possible the arms wrapping her had tightened? “My sister and I were estranged. I sent Sicily birthday cards and the like, but she tells me that Rachel—her mother—never gave them to her.”

  Mike digested the fact that this family was—or at least had been—majorly screwed up. Which meant the kid likely was, too. “Her father?” he asked.

  “Hasn’t been in the picture since Sicily was a toddler. She doesn’t remember him.”

  Good. Great.

  “Grandparents?”

  “She has them,” Ms. Greenway said tersely.

  “Do they know her any better than you do?”

  “I…don’t think so.”

  She didn’t think so. If she didn’t know what kind of relationship her own parents had with her sister and niece, that meant she had no relationship to speak of with them, either. That poor kid’s family was a mess.

  He kept asking questions. Had she and Sicily quarreled today? No. Yesterday? No. Recently? No. In the month since her mother d
ied, had the girl tried to run away or otherwise alarmed Ms. Greenway? No, nothing like that. Does she carry a cell phone?

  She gave him a startled look. “She’s ten years old! Of course not.”

  He’d have pursued the subject, except that even kids who did have a phone might not carry it to the beach.

  Had Ms. Greenway noticed anyone else close by today? Seeming to pay attention to them? Maybe watching Sicily or pausing to talk to her?

  No. Ms. Greenway was reading and only glancing up occasionally before she nodded off.

  She was one hundred percent no help. The whole time he questioned her, she held on to that astonishing poise. Literally, since she never once uncrossed her arms. He kind of wished she would, since the tightness of her grip pushed her breasts up and created a distractingly deep cleavage above the white tank top that also revealed a fragile collarbone and long, slim arms. At least her legs weren’t equally bared; she wore khaki pants that ended midcalf and the kind of sandals sturdy enough to be running shoes except somebody had decided to add cutouts for extra ventilation.

  He let the silence spin out, thinking maybe that would shake her. As if to punctuate it, a seagull swooped low overhead and let out a strident cry. She jumped and gave a wild look around. Mike waited, but that was it.

  Finally, he conceded defeat. “Ms. Greenway, is there anyone at all Sicily might go to or call if she got scared or separated from you?”

  For the first time, he saw despair in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered, and he knew she was ashamed to have to admit it.

  Or, like that landscaper John Sullivan, she was playing him.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said abruptly. “I need to speak to some other people.”

  By this time, nearly two dozen members of the search-and-rescue organization had arrived and were spread out, combing the park for one little girl in red shorts. He spoke to a couple of the people in charge, then phoned another detective with whom he often worked. Eddie Ruliczkowski answered on the third ring and listened in silence to Mike’s request.

  “Yeah, hold on and I’ll do a quick internet search.” With his big, beefy fingers, Eddie had a heavy hand on a keyboard. The keys clattered and he grunted a couple of times before finally saying, “I’m finding an Elizabeth Greenway who owns some kind of event planning company.”

  “Event planning? You mean, like weddings?”

  “No. Uh, looks like mostly auctions, big corporate shindigs, product launches, sports tournaments.” He was clearly reading off a list. “Team building,” he said with a snort. “Holiday parties.”

  “Huh. Anything personal about her?”

  “Nothing. All I’m seeing are mentions of her in her professional capacity. She’s a member of Rotary, some women-in-business group… Give me a minute.”

  Mike did. Aside from the basic stat that Ms. Greenway was thirty-two years old—only two years younger than Mike—Eddie came up with zip. Elizabeth Greenway had no record of trouble with the law, not so much as a parking ticket.

  “Okay,” Mike finally said. “If you have time, keep digging. This whole thing stinks.”

  Under any other circumstance, Eddie would have grumbled about having plenty of his own stuff to do. But he’d been around when Nate died. He knew what Mike had gone through and how sensitive he’d be to any case with a child in peril.

  Mike looked at his watch—he’d been at the park for an hour. Sicily Marks had now been missing for two hours. The odds that she’d been abducted were increasing by the minute, unless something else odd was going on.

  Back to talk to Ms. Greenway, he decided grimly. It might not have been the father’s decision not to be involved in his daughter’s life. It was interesting, if true, that Ms. Greenway had acquired custody only a month ago. Somebody might not have been pleased, whether it was the child’s father or the grandparents. Or were there other family members? He cursed himself for not asking and retraced his steps to the beach.

  She stood exactly where he’d left her. He felt a pang of something strange when he saw her planted there, stiffer and less graceful than any of the madrona trees on the bluff above her. He wondered if she’d moved a muscle beyond those required to breathe.

  When he reached her, he saw something else. There were goose bumps on her arms and she was quivering. No, shivering. In alarm, he laid one of his hands over hers, clasped the other on her upper arm, and found it icy. She jumped and swung to face him. “What…?”

  “You’re freezing,” he said brusquely. This time he wrapped his hands around both her upper arms and began rubbing. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  She looked at him with unshaken poise and said, “I’m perfectly…” Fine. That’s what she meant to say, but it didn’t come out because her teeth chattered.

  “You’re not.” She was in shock and either hadn’t recognized it or refused to acknowledge her own vulnerability. He urged her backward and said, “Sit.”

  “No! I…”

  He all but picked her up and sat her butt down on the blanket, which he then gathered up and wrapped around her. Her teeth chattered again and she seemed to shrink. After a moment, she clutched the edges of the blanket and tucked in her chin, turtlelike. Squatting on his haunches next to her, all he could see was her hair, which had swung forward to veil her face.

  “Better?” He was trying for gentle, but his voice came out gruff.

  Her head bobbed, and after a minute she said, “Thank you.”

  “I’m afraid I have more questions.”

  She didn’t so much as sigh. She was the toughest read of anyone he’d ever met. After a moment she lifted her head. “You think somebody took her,” she said steadily.

  Or that she was never here at all, but he wasn’t going to say that.

  “I don’t think anything yet. I’m leaving the search to the experts and preparing for the possibility we won’t find her here.”

  A shudder wracked her. The cold again, or a ghost had walked over her grave.

  “Dear God.”

  “Sicily’s father. Is there any chance he wanted custody?”

  “No. He walked out on Rachel and Sicily and never so much as paid child support. I thought… I don’t know what I thought, but after Rachel died I tried to find him and failed. He might even be dead.”

  “What’s his name?” Mike produced the small notebook he always carried in a hip pocket and flipped past the pages of notes he’d made earlier at the Sullivan place.

  “Chad Marks. I don’t know his middle name. I…never met him.”

  “Were they divorced?”

  “I don’t know.” Her three favorite words in the world. This time she sounded uncertain, though. “I’m not sure if Rachel ever bothered. She kept the last name. It’s on her death certificate.”

  “Okay. What about your parents?”

  “Their names are Laurence and Rowena Greenway. They live in Seattle.” He sensed a reserve so deep he doubted she could swim up through it.

  He nodded. “Do you have other siblings? Step or biological?”

  “No. There’s no one else.”

  “Aunts? Uncles?”

  “My father has a brother, but he lives in Dallas. I don’t know him well. I doubt Sicily has ever met him. My mother had a brother, too, but he was killed in a small plane crash when I was a child.”

  “Was your sister involved with anyone recently?”

  “I think,” she said carefully, “men came and went. My impression from Sicily is that none of them stayed long.”

  “How did your sister die?”

  “It was…an accident.”

  His knees were beginning to protest his squatting position, but he didn’t move. He was looking right into those caramel eyes, watching for every deeper swirl, however subtle. “What kind?”
>
  “They think she fell from the ferry.”

  “From the ferry? Wait. I remember that,” he said slowly. It had dominated local news recently. He thought it had been the Kingston-to-Edmonds run. The ferry had arrived and no driver showed up to claim one of the cars, which of course created a godawful tangle in trying to unload in an orderly way. Apparently this happened regularly, but usually the missing driver had fallen asleep on one of the bench seats on the passenger deck. This time, workers scoured the ferry from end to end and the woman never turned up.

  “Her body washed ashore, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. She had some barbiturates in her system.”

  “Did she have a drug problem?”

  Her lips compressed before she said, “Since she was a teenager. Alcohol and downers. I understand from Sicily that Rachel mostly managed to hold a job, but I suspect Sicily had been handling many of the practicalities of their life for some time. She admitted she was used to being left alone for two or three days at a time.”

  He stared at her in exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”

  She blinked. “What does it matter?”

  “You don’t think that increases the likelihood that she didn’t hesitate to take off without consulting you?”

  “No.” Ms. Greenway bit the word off. “No, I don’t. She’s not like that. I did think about it when I couldn’t find her, because she does do things without asking, but not like this. She’s too sensible. Sicily is everything Rachel wasn’t. She looks ten, but inside she’s more like a thirty-year-old who has been on her own for years. She’s not impulsive. Today I was pleasantly surprised that she was willing to join the other kids. I thought of it as her playing with them, but she doesn’t. I don’t think she knows how to play.”

  He digested her burst of speech. Her voice had risen toward the end, a hint of passion or even outrage infusing it. For a minute there, she’d almost seemed like a real person. Some pink showed in her cheeks. He’d have liked her the better for it, if he’d totally believed in it.

  “Okay. Do you have a phone with you?”

  “Yes.” Her head turned. “In my bag.”