Making Her Way Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Beth became aware that one person in the room had moved. Mike. He had stepped so close to her, she felt his warmth at her back. His unspoken support made tears prickle in her eyes, but she refused to cry. A part of her wanted him to stay near, a part of her wished he’d back off. The less she felt, the stronger she was.

  “I will not allow you to abuse Sicily the way you did Rachel and me.”

  Fury made her mother’s face momentarily ugly. “How dare you make such an absurd allegation!”

  “Not absurd. Do you know how many broken bones I had, Mom?” She looked pointedly at the fireplace. “Do you remember the way my arm cracked when you threw me against the tile there?”

  “So that’s your game,” her mother whispered. “Turn your clumsiness into accusations against your own parents to counteract your clear negligence.”

  She had never expected to feel so calm when this confrontation came. Had never really believed it would come.

  She was calm, she realized, because she’d already told Mike. Because instead of the expected pity and disbelief, he’d offered her anger and belief. He had helped her erase vestiges of the childhood fear that it was somehow her fault.

  “Proof of life.” The term popped into her head and she suddenly laughed out loud. Then she looked around the circle of staring faces. “Isn’t that funny. I have proof of my life. Not Rachel’s, I’m sorry to say, but I suppose she could be exhumed.”

  Nobody else was laughing. She saw shock on every face except her father’s, where horror superseded anything else. What are you doing to me? his expression said. It was always about him.

  “This isn’t the time or place for us to talk about family issues,” he said, grasping his wife’s arm. “I know you and Elizabeth have some bitter feelings between you….”

  “Oh, I think it’s a perfect time,” Beth told them all. “When better? In court?” She pretended to think. “Well, I might enjoy that. But if you expect I’m going to let Sicily spend a single night under your roof in the meantime, you’re wrong.”

  “It’s ridiculous to claim you have proof of anything,” her mother sputtered.

  Mike laid a big hand on Beth’s shoulder and gently squeezed. Okay, now he’ll butt in, Detective Domineering. But no, he stayed silent. She remembered what he’d said about hoping he’d be watching when she deployed her armament. That’s what he was doing: watching. And keeping that warm, reassuring hand on her.

  “I have copies of doctors’ notes. X-rays.” It was her voice that filled the room. Confident, determined. “A dozen or more.” She told them all how many bones she’d had broken. About being burned. About the broken wine bottle raking her side and back, her blood mixing with the red wine on the floor to make slippery crimson pools studded with lethal shards of glass. A part of her saw that shock had begun to show on her father’s face, that his gaze shifted from her to his wife and back.

  “You bitch!” her mother screamed. “How dare you…?” Beth’s father gripped her when it seemed she might leap forward.

  “Is any of this true?” Laurence Greenway asked, staring at his daughter. “Or are you attempting to destroy your mother and me out of some twisted motivation I don’t understand?”

  “You know it’s true, don’t you, Dad? Because I told you. I cried. You saw the medical bills, didn’t you?”

  “You were clumsy…” he began.

  “Nobody is that clumsy.” Mike’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “I saw Ms. Greenway’s medical files. If it wasn’t fifteen years too late, I would have taken great pleasure in placing you and your wife under arrest, Mr. Greenway. I can assure you, and everyone here—” his glance took in their audience “—that your daughter suffered unspeakable abuse from the time she was barely a toddler until she left home. I think it’s safe to assume your younger daughter did, as well. I would not permit Sicily to stay under your care.”

  Beth consciously stored the memory of this moment in her mental files for later retrieval. The way her mother’s true self was displayed for everyone to see in twisted rage and fiery color, in the quivering tension of her body. The humiliation on her father’s face, his utter disbelief that this could be happening. His…doubt? Could it be that he hadn’t believed her as a child and then teenager when she tried to talk to him? Eight—count ’em, eight—law enforcement officers witnessing the first salvo of Beth’s big guns.

  I did it, she thought, astounded and…something. Not proud. What was there to be proud about? And she didn’t feel the satisfaction she’d expected she would, if it ever came to this. Instead, she realized her legs wobbled as if they were al dente and her hands had acquired a tremor.

  Mike may have felt a quiver all the way up her shoulder, because he said abruptly, “Excuse us.” He turned Beth and started her toward the foyer and front door, but paused long enough to fix Agent Trenor with a hard look. “You’ll keep me informed?”

  Her eyebrows flickered, but she nodded. “Of course.”

  * * *

  SOMEWHERE NEAR NUMB, BETH allowed herself to be propelled out to Mike’s black Tahoe and boosted into the passenger seat. The earlier departures made it possible for him to drive right out of her parents’ estate with no lengthy maneuvering. Beth sat quiet beside him, a new fear appearing as the tiniest of seeds that swelled until it filled her.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “What if Dad won’t pay now?”

  * * *

  MIKE WATCHED BETH PRETENDING she was absolutely fine. He’d spent the entire drive to her house working to convince her that there was no way her father could back out of ransoming Sicily now.

  “What’s he going to say? ‘My daughter is right. My wife and I are scum of the earth, and I’ve only been pretending to give a damn whether my granddaughter lives or dies’?” She winced, but he didn’t let that stop him. “Hell, no. He’s back there shaking his head and saying you’ve always had mental problems, and Carol is patting his hand and saying, ‘Don’t worry, this kind of stress always gets people to saying things they don’t mean. Now here’s what we’re going to do next.’”

  “Carol?”

  “Carol Trenor. The agent in charge.”

  “Does she believe what she’s telling him? That I’ve gone a little crazy?”

  “Nope,” he assured her. “Didn’t you see her expression? No, she looked as disgusted as everyone else there felt, but she’s going to do her job, which is to keep your father cooperating.”

  Beth had mumbled something he’d interpreted as “Please, God, see he does.” So he’d kept talking, and eventually she seemed to believe him. That she hadn’t blown Sicily’s possible rescue sky-high by taking on her parents then and there, at a moment when her father could decide to withhold his million dollars.

  Or two million. Nobody had said it, but Mike’s best guess was that the kidnapper would punish Greenway by upping the ante.

  Once he’d delivered Beth home, he ignored her polite “thanks and so long,” stepped past her into her house and said, “I can make phone calls from here as well as I can from the station,” and then added, “Would you mind if I order a pizza?”

  Of course, that set her to bustling in the kitchen making pizzas mostly from scratch—turned out she had some crusts frozen. All, he diagnosed, in the interests of proving to him that she was fine and dandy.

  He was locked on the memory of that blue maybe-Ford, rusting left back fender, dent in the trunk, watching it turn the corner. He had glimpsed dishwater-blond hair, long and pulled into a ponytail. LU. What else could that second letter have been? A V, maybe, or half of a W although he didn’t think so. He wanted to find that car.

  While she was cooking, he asked to use her computer and she turned it on for him. He started browsing car models—1970s? 1980s?—starting with Ford. He couldn’t remember seeing the insignia of the maker, but maybe he had. Taurus? No, even the
early ones were too sleek. Tempo? Still not right. The car had been real boxy. Not twenty minutes into his hunt, he saw it. The Ford Fairmont. Yeah, yeah. He knew why he’d identified it, if only subliminally, right away. Wide receiver and class clown Curt Osborne had driven one all through high school. Kind of a gas guzzler, but not as bad as the Oldsmobile Robby Relnick drove.

  Now it was time to start a search. How many Ford Fairmonts with Washington State license plates starting with LU—or possible LV or LW—would still be on the road, given that they hadn’t been made after the early eighties?

  And he was betting he could find some other models shaped similar enough to also be possibilities.

  His mouth lifted in a wry grin. He was going to be popular somewhere when he asked for this list.

  The pizza was damn good. All veggie with at least a couple of different cheeses on it including feta. Beth had made two, both bigger than personal-size. He ate his and finished off hers when she claimed to be done.

  “Whole-wheat crust?” he asked, examining it at one point.

  She looked surprised that he’d even asked. “Better for you.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” He didn’t think of pizza as a health food, but, come to think of it, this one could qualify.

  “I eat out a lot. Lately I seem to have trouble even getting to the grocery store,” he explained.

  She gave him a strange look. “Me, too. Lately.”

  Uh-oh. “I suppose you haven’t felt like shopping this week, have you?”

  “There was always the possibility of a reporter materializing in the canned food aisle.” After pausing long enough for him to wince, she added, “I’d loaded up Friday evening. I usually shop on Saturday, but since we were planning to go to the beach…”

  He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I’m sorry to remind you.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” she said with dignity.

  He took his hand back. “I haven’t seen any reporters hanging around.”

  “No, they stayed for a few hours that first day, then gave up. They haven’t been able to get my cell phone number, but they’re driving my assistant at work crazy.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Beth shook her head. “Why did I hear you talking about a Ford? Is it a different investigation of yours?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to give her false hope—his first instinct said that would be cruel. But maybe hope of any kind would be better than none. She might be claiming to be “fine,” but she wasn’t. For all that she wasn’t falling apart, he thought she was as close to complete despair as he’d seen her.

  Making up his mind, he said, “No. This morning, right after fifty cops descended on that poor sucker who grabbed the money, a car that was parked conveniently close to the corner pulled out and drove away. There was something about it.”

  She stared at him. “But…weren’t there lots of cars around?”

  “Yes, of course. It was where this one was situated—close to the corner for a quick getaway. Good visual on the drop-off. And it was heap of junk—late seventies, early eighties, I think, rusting.”

  “The kind of car Chad would be driving,” she said slowly.

  “Exactly. The driver could have been female, but I don’t think so.” He’d give anything to have seen the face. “Dirty blond hair, ponytail.”

  “You must have checked to see if Chad is registered as owner of any kind of vehicle, haven’t you?”

  “Sure, and he’s not, but he’s bound to have friends. Maybe the tags on this one have even expired, although that would be stupid if you’re carrying a kidnap victim around or extorting a million dollars.”

  “Haven’t I read that criminals most often get arrested because they do something stupid, like getting pulled over for expired tags?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled at her. “Thank providence, it’s true. And from what we’ve learned, Chad hasn’t run his life like he’s any genius.”

  “No.” Was there a spark of renewed life in her eyes? “Why are you and not the FBI looking into it?”

  “Right now, it’s nothing but a hunch. I can find out where it leads as well as anyone.”

  “And you feel like you’re doing something.”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I guess you’ve nailed me.”

  She was quiet for a long time, her eyes searching his in a way that was unexpectedly disconcerting. “I wish,” she said finally, her voice low and bleak, “there was anything at all I could do.”

  “Waiting is hard,” he said gently.

  Her lashes swept down, veiling her eyes, and then she surged to her feet and said, “I’ll clean up and let you get to whatever it is you need to do.”

  He took over her office for the rest of the afternoon, following up on DMV records. For now he ignored Fairmonts registered to owners not in the immediate Puget Sound area, although he couldn’t rule out Tacoma, hell, down to Olympia and north to Bellingham, even Bremerton although it was a ferry ride across the Sound. He kept doubting himself and going back to browsing other makes, other models, then looking again at the Fairmont online and thinking, Damn it, I know that’s it.

  Late afternoon, Carol Trenor called. “He’s pissed,” she said.

  “Greenway?”

  “No. Well, yeah, he is, too. But I mean our kidnapper.”

  “So he got in touch,” Mike said, his mood lightening.

  “Hopping mad. Said he’s going to have to think about whether he’ll let Greenway have another shot at it.”

  “Which means he is.”

  She made a sound of agreement. “To his credit, when he got the phone call Greenway stayed cool and did his part.”

  “Demanded proof of life.”

  “Quite a scene this morning,” she observed.

  “Long overdue,” Mike said.

  “I had that impression. Ms. Greenway had told us she was abused, but this sounds like KGB torture techniques.”

  Tension rode him even thinking about it. “I’d say her mother is crazy, except the way Beth describes it she was careful most of the time to make sure the damage stayed hidden. Sometimes she totally lost it, but more often she was calculating what she could get away with even while she was walloping her four-year-old kid.” He found he was squeezing the back of his neck, keeping an eye on the open doorway to be sure Beth didn’t approach and hear him talking about her. “I think it’s the father that gets me most.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that it was to his credit that he stayed cool.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have,” Mike agreed.

  They signed off a minute later and he went looking for Beth to tell her the good news.

  In her sphinx mode, she listened. She’d expended whatever emotional leakage she dared allow this morning. “What if he thinks about it and decides not to give my father another shot?”

  “If he wasn’t going to, he wouldn’t have called at all.”

  After a minute, she nodded. “Are you, um, going to be here for dinner, too?”

  Mike took that for an invitation. “If it’s okay with you. You don’t have to cook, though. I can go out and get us something.”

  “Cooking gives me something to do.”

  It was a little bit of a letdown to suspect that was the only reason she’d decided he could stay. Probably she wouldn’t have bothered to cook at all—or eat, for that matter—if she’d had only herself to think about.

  So hanging around is my good deed, he thought virtuously.

  Back to work. He ended up with more possibilities than he’d expected. In theory, licenses beginning with LU—or any combination, for that matter—should have registered owners clustered geographically, but in the long run it didn’t end up that way what with people moving so often
. Especially people who drove a thirty-year-old car that hadn’t been restored. They tended to be drifters. Addresses and phone numbers out of date.

  Beth made a really excellent veggie lasagna for dinner complete with crusty garlic bread she claimed she’d had in the freezer. Conversation while they ate was sporadic. Her tension was climbing, as was his. It had now been five days and counting since Sicily had been snatched. Time was not on that little girl’s side.

  * * *

  HE BROUGHT HER PIZZA THAT night, although he was in a really bad mood. He said, “Your grandfather must not give a shit about you.”

  Sicily knew it was night, because he had let her out to use the bathroom and she could see it was dark outside.

  “What do you mean?” she asked as she crossed the room.

  “He screwed me over today. I guess he thinks I’m stupid or something. He dropped off the money, but there were cops all over the place.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw them, what do you think?” he snarled.

  “Oh.” That made her feel breathless. “Then…then you didn’t get your money?”

  He said a lot of bad words that meant “no.”

  “So, um, what are you going to do?” she asked apprehensively.

  “He’s going to pay for not keeping his promise. I’m going to ask for two million this time or he doesn’t get you back. Tomorrow you’re going to talk to him on the phone, and you’re not going to try anything if you know what’s good for you.”

  She slid into the bathroom and closed and locked the door, her heart pounding hard.

  Would her grandfather be willing to pay that much? Did he even have that much? Why would he?

  She stood there shaking, until she thought, Tomorrow. I’ve got to get away tomorrow.

  She dawdled in the bathroom just to see what would happen. It didn’t surprise her that he pounded on the bathroom door and yelled, “Hurry up in there!”

  “I have to…you know,” she called back. “You’re making me nervous.”

  He growled something and paced back and forth in the hall. She could hear his footsteps. She strained to track him by sound. Toward the door at the end of the hall, then back, and he kept going. He must be down to the kitchen, maybe the living room…. Would he go sit down, or start doing something else? No. His footsteps came back, heavier. He sounded even more impatient this time when he slammed a hand against the door and told her to get her ass out of there or he was coming in.