by P J Parrish
She unfolded it. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Was she in Miami? Then she noticed the headline—“Robbers Stab Lauderdale Valet.”
Fort Lauderdale. Was this place her home? Did she and Alex Tobias live here? She glanced at the date at the top of the front page: “Sunday November 16, 2014.”
The date triggered nothing, but it made her feel better somehow. It was something tangible she could grab onto, something that anchored her in time at least.
The taxi pulled up to the Greyhound station, an old low-slung building in a rundown neighborhood. The lot reeked of exhaust fumes and urine. Inside the station, the only smell was of the disinfectant being used by a cleaning man mopping the tile floor. An old woman in rags, her arms looped with bulging plastic shopping bags, was banging on a candy machine, yelling profanities.
Clutching the fake Vuitton duffel, Amelia went to the window. The woman behind the glass didn’t look up.
“Do I need ID to buy a ticket?” she asked.
“Not if you pay cash.”
“Okay, one ticket, please,” Amelia said.
“Where to?”
Amelia hesitated. She felt the press of someone behind her and looked back into the face of an old black man holding a little boy’s hand. The man was wearing an old Army fatigue coat and he looked tired, yet he gave her a small smile. Amelia’s eyes moved beyond the man to the bus parked outside the doors. She looked back at the woman behind the glass.
“Is that bus leaving soon?” she asked.
“Ten minutes.”
“Where is it going?”
“Charlotte, North Carolina.”
“One way to Charlotte, please.”
“One fifty-six fifty.”
Amelia dug in the duffel and handed over eight twenties. Pocketing her change, she moved away from the ticket window and took a seat on a hard metal bench. She unwrapped the chicken sandwich. It was dry and hard, but she ate it anyway, washing it down with the bottled water and three Aleves.
The clock on the terminal wall read seven thirty when the call came to board. Amelia found a seat in the back and leaned against the window. The old black man and the little boy took seats on the aisle across from her.
The bus pulled out, and Amelia watched the lights of the downtown high-rises disappear as they headed away. She caught sight of the street sign—BROWARD BOULEVARD—as the bus swung onto a busy street lined with check cashing stores, auto repair shops, Laundromats, and liquor stores. When the bus passed the sprawling complex of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, she turned away from the window.
It had begun to rain by the time the bus turned onto the freeway, and then there was nothing to see but the blur of billboards and white headlights and red taillights.
She closed her eyes. Did she sleep? For how long? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure what made her open her eyes. But when she did, she turned her head and looked into the face of the old man.
He was holding a thermos and pouring something carefully into a small paper cup. He looked over at her, and then held out the cup to her across the aisle.
“Would you like a sip, miss?” he asked.
“What?” She was so tired she could barely speak.
“You look like you could use a little of this,” he said.
In the dim beam of the overhead light she could barely make out his face. It was sad and deeply lined, like one of those old drama masks, the ones that represented tragedy and comedy.
What had made her think of that?
“What is it?” she asked.
“A little courage for the journey ahead,” he said. The mask creased up into a smile. “Go ahead. I’ve got more cups.”
She accepted the cup and took a sip.
It took a moment but then the taste registered on her tongue. Red wine. Sweet. The taste triggered something in her head, someone speaking a foreign language. And she could see a big open window with two oranges and a bottle of wine on the sill and a view of blue water beyond. She took another drink and let the wine flood down through her body. She finished the wine and passed the cup back to the man.
“Thank you,” she said.
He screwed the top back on the thermos and set it under the seat. Then he tucked the Army fatigue jacket over the shoulders of the sleeping boy. He leaned his head back against the seat and slanted his eyes toward her.
“Where you headed, miss?” he asked.
“North Carolina,” she said.
“Got family there?”
The feeling of floating in the blue-green bubble came back to her again, and she remembered that she had someone who had saved her from drowning and a mother who had told her about it. Was her mother still alive?
“Yes,” she said softly. I hope so.
Her eyes went beyond the old man to the sleeping boy. With a start she realized she didn’t even know if she had children. If she had a child, how could she possibly be running away like this? How could she leave a child?
She shut her eyes and desperately tried to summon up a child’s face, a name, a smell, but there was nothing there, there was no one there. She felt that in her soul. She let out a long breath of relief.
“You all right, miss?”
She turned her head and gave the old man a nod. She looked again at the boy. “How old is your boy?” she asked softly.
“He’s seven,” the man said. “It’s been a long day for him. We started out in Miami this morning, but the bus broke down twenty minutes out and we had to wait two hours for the other bus to come, which took us backward instead of forward. So then we finally got on this bus in Fort Lauderdale and here we are.”
She nodded. It was getting hard to keep her eyes open. The rain had turned into heavy pelting drops that smacked against the window and turned the car lights beyond into red streaks in the black.
“Would you like a cookie, miss?”
When she turned back to the old man, he was holding out an open package of Fig Newtons. She started to reach across to take one but then drew her hand back. Another voice was there in her head.
You don’t need that. Put that back, Jelly-Belly.
“Go ahead. We got plenty,” the old man said.
She took a cookie but didn’t eat it, instead looking back out the window. She saw a flash of a sign in the darkness, an exit to some place called “Stuart.”
“My great-grandson loves his Fig Newtons,” the old man said.
The sudden sadness in the man’s voice made her turn back toward him.
“It was all there was in the kitchen—Fig Newtons,” he said. “My granddaughter, she didn’t know how to take care of him right. He was alone and living on cookies and water when I got there.”
His voice had gone soft and distant. “The drugs destroyed her brain. It was like she wasn’t even there anymore. So I had to go down there and take the boy and now we’re just trying to disappear.” He paused. “There was no choice, you see. I had to give him a new life. I just hope he don’t remember much of the old one.”
His eyes were liquid in the dim light. He carefully wrapped up the cookies and stowed them away. Then he reached up and turned out the overhead light.
“’Night, miss,” he whispered.
Amelia settled down into the seat and leaned her head against the window. The glass felt cool on her cheek, and the whirring of the bus’s tires was lulling. She closed her eyes, almost drifting off into sleep until she realized she was still holding the Fig Newton.
The cookie was soft and sticky in her hand. Slowly, she brought it to her lips and took a bite.
It started on her tongue, a rush of sensation—soft crumbling crust, molasses-sweet fruit, and the soft grit of the seeds—and it flooded through her whole body. And with it came a memory so sharp her heart ached.
A warm kitchen on a snowy day. Green wallpaper with weeping willows. A c
at curling around her ankles. A plate of Fig Newtons and a glass of milk. The touch of a mother’s hand on her hair. Her mother’s hand . . .
She still couldn’t see her mother’s face. But she was filled with a rush of soft sadness that felt like it was coming from the very walls of the kitchen, from those willow trees.
I know this is very frightening for you, but you will get better. Your memory has been temporarily erased. But it will come back.
She wanted to believe that, wanted to believe what the doctor had told her. She took another bite of the cookie and waited for another memory.
CHAPTER FIVE
Alex jumped to his feet. The police were back, two officers in black uniforms coming toward him. He had been sitting here in the open area by the elevators, waiting for the cops to return, waiting for two hours while they looked for Mel.
There was a third man with them, a fat guy in a security guard uniform. The faces of the cops were neutral, but the security guard looked upset.
“Did you find her?” Alex asked.
“No, sir,” the short cop said.
“No? What do you mean no?”
“I mean that there seems to be no sign of your wife, Mr. Tobias.”
Alex’s eyes flicked from the short cop to the tall one and finally to the security guard. The first thing the nurse had done when she realized Mel was missing was to call hospital security. It’s common for patients to wander off, she had told Alex, and your wife couldn’t have gotten very far.
But he had been in a big county hospital before. Ten years ago, he had spent a week in a Houston hospital waiting for his mother to die, and during those awful days he had paced the corridors for hours, so he knew that Broward General, spread over four city blocks, was a sprawling labyrinth of tunnels, twisting hallways, and dark rooms where a person could get lost.
“Have you looked everywhere?” he asked the guard.
“I’ve had four men looking ever since the call came in,” the guard said.
“What about outside? Have you searched the neighborhood?”
The short cop turned to the security guard. “Mr. Bennett, could you give us a moment with Mr. Tobias here?”
“No problem. I’ve got to check in with my men.” He started down the hallway, pulling a radio from his belt.
“Sit down, please, Mr. Tobias,” the short cop said.
Alex looked at the cop’s name tag—SPECK—and dropped down onto the chair. Speck perched on the edge of the other chair; the second officer stood over him, holding a small notebook and pen.
“What about the guy who brought her here?” Alex asked. “He might know something.”
“We have a partial plate on his truck,” Speck said. “Plus there’s a bumper sticker shaped like a tomato that says un centavo más. It’s a slogan of the migrant workers. We’re thinking he was on his way up to Immokalee when he found your wife and brought her here. But he bolted because he’s probably an illegal and didn’t want to get busted.”
“Any chance of finding him?” Alex asked.
“Not much.”
“What are you doing then to find my wife?”
“We’re canvassing the neighborhood around the hospital,” Speck said. “We also put out an alert with your wife’s description. But the nurse told me that your wife dressed herself, removed her IV and left her room. We also have a videotape from the ambulance bay of her leaving the grounds. She didn’t seem disoriented. If anything, she seemed scared.”
He paused. “What would your wife be scared of, Mr. Tobias?”
“Scared?” Alex’s eyes moved from one cop to the other. “She has fucking amnesia. Of course she’s scared. Jesus, I can’t believe this . . .”
“Calm down, sir.”
“No! Don’t tell me to calm down, goddamn it.” Alex stopped, feeling the weight of the cop’s eyes on him.
Stay cool. Don’t lose it.
“I need to ask you some questions, Mr. Tobias.”
“Yes, yes . . .”
“Where were you Friday afternoon and evening?”
“What does this—”
“Just answer the question, sir.”
Alex drew a deep breath. “Friday afternoon I was in my office until about five and—”
“Where is that, sir?”
“What?”
“Your office.”
“On Las Olas, in the New River Center Building.”
“Where did you go after you left your office?”
“I went home, picked up my bag and drove to Palm Beach.”
“Palm Beach? Why did you go there?”
“I had a golf date with a client. What does this have—”
“You said you picked up a bag?”
“Our tee time was seven Saturday morning so I went up the night before. I stayed at the Ritz-Carlton.”
“What’s your client’s name?”
“Dan . . . Dan Nesbit.”
“What about your wife?” Speck asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Was your wife at home when you left?”
Alex hesitated. “Yes, I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I . . . I was in a bit of a hurry and didn’t talk to her before I left.”
“Why didn’t your wife go with you to Palm Beach?”
“It was just a golf thing with a client. She doesn’t play golf.”
“Did she have any plans Friday evening?”
Alex hesitated again. “I don’t know. She didn’t mention anything.”
The taller cop was scribbling away in his notebook.
“What time did you check in to your hotel?”
Alex looked back at Speck. When the cops had first arrived at the hospital, their attitude had been solicitous, respectful. Now it was different. It was as if the short cop had grown five inches in two hours. And he was looking down at Alex as if Alex were . . .
It hit him like a punch in the gut—they were treating him like a suspect. For what?
“Mr. Tobias? What time did you check in at the hotel?”
“Between seven and seven thirty.”
A clap of thunder rattled the window. Speck’s radio spat out some static and a message, but Alex couldn’t make it out. Speck turned down the volume.
“Did you call your wife Friday night from Palm Beach?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I . . . I was pretty tied up with the client. We had dinner and drinks.” He paused. “Dan’s a big drinker. It was a late night.”
“When did you return to Fort Lauderdale?”
Alex had been looking at the window, and it took a moment for him to realize Speck had spoken again.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“When did you get home, sir?”
Alex felt his stomach churning again. Why the fuck had he drunk that second vodka earlier? Why the fuck hadn’t he eaten anything?
“Ah . . . I got home around three.”
“You mean yesterday, sir, Saturday?”
Alex nodded.
“So when you got home, at what point did you get concerned that your wife wasn’t there?”
Alex hesitated.
“Mr. Tobias?”
“We were supposed to go to the Heat game that night,” he said. “My law firm has a center court suite, and Mel always comes along, you know, to entertain the client’s wife. So when she wasn’t home by five, that’s when I figured . . .”
“Figured what?” Speck prodded.
“I figured she had stayed with her friend.”
“Friend? What friend?”
“Mel had mentioned that she might go visit a friend of hers. The friend, she just had a miscarriage, and Mel was worried about her.”
Speck exchanged looks wi
th the other cop who was still taking notes. “You said you didn’t talk to your wife before you left on Friday. How did you know about this friend?”
Alex stared at Speck. “I forgot about it until just now.”
“What’s this friend’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
Speck cocked his head to the side. “So you think your wife was planning to visit this friend. And when you got home Saturday afternoon and realized she wasn’t there, you still didn’t get worried, even though you had planned to go to the Heat game together?”
Alex stared at Speck. “Okay, I thought she was just pissed at me.”
“About what, sir?”
“About having to go to the damn game. I thought maybe it was her way of sending me a message that she was tired of babysitting bored wives at basketball games.”
“Did you call her?”
Alex nodded. “It kept going to voice mail.”
“So you went to the Heat game alone?”
Alex nodded. His mind was spinning.
“And this morning?” Speck asked. “Your wife had been gone two nights and wasn’t answering her phone. When did you intend to get concerned?”
Alex pushed out of the chair and went to the window. He stood staring out at the blur of lights below. A palm frond slapped against the glass.
“Mr. Tobias?”
The elevator pinged and Alex turned. He was surprised to see Owen McCall get out. Owen stopped abruptly when he spotted Alex and then came forward slowly, his eyes taking in the cops before settling back on Alex. His blue suit was spotted with rain and his mane of white hair was plastered to his head. Alex had the thought that in their twelve years together, he had never seen his partner look so upset.
The tall cop’s cell rang and he turned away. A second later, he motioned for Speck to join him near the elevator. Owen came over to the window.
“Why are the police here?” he asked.
“Mel’s missing,” Alex said.
“Missing? What do you mean?”
“She walked out, Owen. She just walked out of here.”
“Jesus, Alex. Did she . . . ?” Owen ran a hand over his wet face. “Did you talk to her? Did she say anything?”
Alex shook his head slowly. “She just left.”
