“You are what you eat,” the fat kid said and all four boys guffawed lewdly. I kept a straight face out of professional courtesy to my client.
“When did you see her last?” I asked Hank.
“I dunno. Saturday. We went out.” He shrugged.
“What parts of her did you see, Hank?” The redhead was grinning maniacally.
“Shut up, shithead,” Hank said without looking at him. The redhead's grin faded. “I talked to her Tuesday. On the phone.” He shrugged again. “We didn't talk about anything.”
“You have any idea where she might go. A friend's house maybe?”
“Naw.” Hank took a few steps away from his friends. I followed. The other boys seemed to get the message and drifted noisily toward the back of the lot.
“Naw,” Hank said again. “Jess is kind of a… a loner, I guess. Celia, Celia Baines, is about her only friend and if she was over there, Celia's old man would kick her ass out into the street. He thinks Jess is a bad influence on her. Shit, Celia don't need any influence to be bad. The other girls, they think Jess is kinda stuck up, thinks she's better than them, you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“She isn't really like that. She's kinda shy really, but she tries to act like she isn't, so people think she's snotty. She's kinda funny. Different.” Hank grinned suddenly, dropping the blank mask of an adolescent talking to an authority figure. He had big dimples that he had probably hated before discovering their effect on nubile young girls.
“She wants to be an actress,” he said. “One time she had this book of plays she got out of the library. Not like Shakespeare, you know, modern stuff. Anyway, she was reading out of it to me and it was like she turned into someone else, into the person in the play, you know what I mean? Shit, she's probably hitching down to Hollywood.” His expression became anxious. “You think you'll find her?”
“That's hard to say,” I said easily enough.
“Yeah. Well, if you find her… well, anyway, I wish she'd come back. Her folks are shitty but it isn't like they beat her or something.” Hank shot a quick look over to the porch was his dad was puffing on another cigarette. He looked back at me with a guilty expression.
“If you hear from her, give me a call. The number's on the card.”
Hank smoothed out my card, which he had rolled into a tiny tube. “Yeah, sure. Listen, Jess isn't like people think. She's just, I don't know, lonely. I wish she'd come back.” He watched his hands roll my card up again. “Hey, are you going to talk at the school this year? Most of that drug stuff is boring but you tell funny stories.”
I said I probably was and thanked him. I walked back to my car, nodding at the man on the porch steps, whose son was going to be a whole lot bigger than he was in a couple of years.
I drove over to the Baines's house, wondering whether the kids got anything but a few laughs out of the talk I gave every year for the drug abuse prevention program.
Funny stories. I had while away my early teens becoming addicted to just about every illegal substance short of heroin and had spent most of my sophomore year of high school in a residential drug treatment center. When I was released, drug-free and sworn to remain so, we moved from Los Angeles to Mackie. My parents had a sincere belief that drugs would be less readily available to tempt me in the small town where they'd both been raised. They were wrong, but I stayed clean anyway, mostly because of Carrie but also because I was afraid that if I screwed up again I'd be living in a tent in the Yukon. Moving from L.A. to the back end of Oregon had resulted in major culture shock. Carrie never would have forgiven me if she hadn't felt so guilty about helping me conceal my addiction. We had both sworn, loudly and repeatedly, that we were leaving Mackie the day we turned eighteen.
We did leave, just before our eighteenth birthday in fact, but we only went as far as Portland State and we both returned four years later. I came back because Mackie's was the only police department in the state that was hiring at the time. Carrie came back because home is where the heart is and Tom Harry was in Mackie. Now our thirtieth birthday was just a few weeks away and Carrie's heart was still in Mackie. Mine wasn't but I didn't have the energy or the good sense to pack up and leave.
I cut short my musings as I pulled up in front of the Baines' house. No one was home. I decided to go look for clues in Jessica's bedroom.
Chapter Four
The Finneys lived in Mackie's new-money section, where most of the streets are cul-de-sacs and most of the houses are custom-built ranches. Theirs was a sprawling gray stone structure on a big wedge-shaped lot. Lily let me in without a welcoming smile.
The main rooms of the house opened into one another through wide squared-off arches. The furnishings were ultra-modern to the point of being futuristic, with glass and chrome predominating. The walls that didn't have huge windows had huge mirrors. The effect was of endless space. I'd seen display rooms at Levitz that looked more lived-in.
Lily led me through what I guessed was a family room, although it had none of the coziness that term implies. Jason was on the phone. He smiled and waved as we passed. Maybe he was accustomed to his wife sexually harassing the hired help.
After a trek down a long hall, Lily opened a door and stood aside for me to enter. I took a quick look and asked if she had straightened up since Jessica left.
“No,” she said. “She's responsible for her own room. I'm sure you don't need me.” She walked away. Lily was still mad at me but I was too amazed by her daughter's bedroom to worry about it. When Carrie was Jessica's age, her bedroom's decor had consisted largely of discarded pantyhose, empty record jackets, and posters of current idols. My room was the same except I had sweat socks instead of pantyhose and, since I couldn't open the closet door without moving the rowing machine, my wardrobe tended to accumulate in piles on every flat surface.
Jessica's room was large and airy, full of sunshine streaming through filmy pink curtains. The furniture was white wood, the carpet was deep rose, the bedspread was a rose and white print that matched the wallpaper. The only wall decorations were two oil paintings of pink flowers in white vases. The bed was made, the dresser top held only a few decorative items; there was nothing tossed casually on the floor, nothing anywhere to indicate the room had been occupied within the past few days. It looked like guest room. A seldom-used guest room. I couldn't picture a rebellious fourteen-year-old in it. I shrugged at myself in the mirrored closet door. At least it would be easy to search.
I started at the door and went clockwise around the room. I found a diary in the back of a drawer full of neatly folded panties and thought “Ah-ha.” Prematurely, as it turned out. She had made entries for six consecutive days. The first one, dated November 12, consisted of a list of birthday presents, including the diary I was reading. The remaining entries read like an appointment calendar, “movies with Celia” being the only one that didn't involve a school assignment. I put the little book back and moved on.
In her sock drawer, I found a pack of Zig-Zags and a small amount of marijuana in an otherwise empty Tampax box. I unrolled each of the three dozen or so pairs of knee socks and anklets, looking for more drugs. I didn't find any. I moved on again.
My last stop was the small bookcase next to the door. I was tempted to skip it. I had found nothing in the room that gave any real clue to Jessica's personality, let alone her whereabouts. There were at least fifty books, most of them matched sets of book club classics. I began pulling them out one by one, checking behind them and riffling the pages. I was about halfway through when I fanned the pages of a volume of Twentieth-Century American poetry and two envelopes fell out. One was from the Rose City School of Performing Arts. The other was from the Northwest Acting and Modeling School. Both schools were in Portland. Both envelopes were addressed to Jessica. Both had July postmarks. And both were empty.
I put them aside and went quickly through the rest of the books. The envelopes were the closest thing to a clue I found. I took them with me and found Jaso
n and Lily in the family room, apparently doing nothing but waiting for me.
With enough sarcasm to make Jason look embarrassed, Lily said, “Well, did you find any clues?”
“Do you know anything about these?”
She took the envelopes and glanced at them. “No. I don't read her mail. I don't remember these coming.” She handed them to Jason, who shook his head.
“Hank said she's interested in acting. She must have sent away for information. If she makes it to Portland, she might go by these places. Do you know if she made any long distance calls?”
Lily explained that Jason made a lot of business calls from home so she always checked the bill carefully for tax purposes. There had been no unaccounted-for long distance calls. She agreed to check with the phone company in the morning to see if Jessica had made any calls since the last bill had come.
“There's some marijuana in her sock drawer,” I said.
Jason looked blank. Lily shrugged. I told them I still needed to talk to Celia Baines and found my own way out, walking through cold rooms brilliant with reflected sunlight. There's more than one kind of house that isn't a home.
I drove the short distance to Celia's house. No one was home again. I stopped by my office to pick up my gun and Tom's bike and drove over to see what the Harrys had in their refrigerator.
Tom and Carrie were necking in the backyard hammock when I arrived. They came inside and stood around exchanging meaningful looks for a couple of minutes then disappeared upstairs, leaving me with Melissa, who was demanding every other bite of my potato salad.
I called the Baines' house every twenty minutes and listened to their phone ring. At five-thirty, I finally got a busy signal. Just in time, too. Melissa had been playing horsie for an hour and the horsie's knees were about to give out. I gave a loud dog-calling whistle at the foot of the stairs and after a couple of minutes Carrie came down, sleepy-eyed and wrapped in a blue terrycloth robe.
“Have a nice nap?” I asked.
“Mm,” she said. “You should drop by more often. What are you working on?”
“Runaway girl. Fourteen.”
“Think you'll find her?”
“I think if I don't, she'll be peddling her cute little ass all over Portland before long.”
“Why'd she run away?”
“The usual. Mommy and Daddy are too busy fucking up their own lives to keep her from fucking up hers.”
“It isn't always the parents' fault, Zachariah.” Carrie brushed her fingers lightly through her daughter's soft dark hair.
“No, but the parents are always several years older. That should put a little of the burden of responsibility on them. They should at least be able to recognize a problem when it's staring them in the face.”
“Mom and Dad never knew what you were doing.”
“I never gave them any clues. If I'd had the good sense to flunk out of school like any self-respecting dope fiend, they'd have figured it out soon enough. Besides, they never know what the hell's going on. They're always too busy trying to stop a war, or save a whale, or shut down a nuclear power plant, or paint a baby animal green. They never know what's going on right under their noses. Jesus, if you tell them you're hungry, you get a lecture on Ethiopia.”
Carrie had stopped listening. She'd heard it all before anyway. She was standing with her head bowed, one hand pressed against her stomach, a look of complete inward concentration on her face. She grabbed my hand suddenly and pressed it to what used to be her waist. There was a rolling swell of flesh against my palm. I felt myself grinning idiotically. It didn't matter. Carrie was grinning the same grin.
“Six more weeks,” she said. “If you go to Portland, bring me a present.”
“I will,” I said and swung Melissa up to still her frantic “me, me” with a kiss. “I wouldn't forget you, punkin. A present for Missy and a present for Sissy and that should just about take care of my profit.”
I kissed them both goodbye and drove back over to the Baines' house. They lived in a middle-income subdivision adjacent to the Finneys' ritzier neighborhood. Donna Baines, a vaguely pretty, easily rattled brunette, answered my knock and became confused.
“Oh, dear. Well,” she said. “It hasn't fallen off the walls.” She laughed uncertainly.
“That's good,” I said. I had hung all the wallpaper in the house during Donna's frenzied remodeling two years ago. I handed her a business card to remind her that hanging paper was only my sideline, and explained what I wanted.
“Oh, dear. Well. You want to talk to Celia?” She solved the problem the way I suspected she solved all life's problems. “You'll have to talk to Joe,” she said.
She motioned for me to follow her. The house was a cluttery hodge-podge of styles and colors that I liked much better than the Finneys' showcase. Donna's burly husband was in the kitchen, drinking a Bud Light and reading the Mackie Mirror. Yesterday's, I assumed, since the paper was only published on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Donna busied herself with the brown bags of groceries that were sitting on the counter without explaining my presence to Joe. It didn't matter. Joe Baines was not easily rattled and knew exactly why I was there.
“Celia doesn't know where Jessica is,” he said, without wasting words on a greeting.
“I'd like to talk to her anyway.”
He mulled it over for a bit then said, “She's out back.” I followed him out the sliding glass door. Behind me, Donna said, “Oh, dear, dear.”
Celia was indeed out back and most of her was visible. Like her mother, she was pretty in a vague way. Her face was childish and was light years behind her body, development-wise. The tiny coral bikini served only to call attention to what it was supposed to conceal. Joe stood behind her the whole time we talked, looking at me look at his daughter. I worked very hard at keeping my eyes on her face.
If Celia recognized me as the nice man who had pasted pastel rainbows all over her bedroom walls, she gave no sign of it. She stared at the grass between our feet and denied knowing anything about Jessica. Few people are good liars and Celia wasn't one of them. She was lying through the braces glinting on her teeth.
I considered her father briefly, then said, “If Jessica's out on her own someplace, she could be in big trouble. She could be raped. Or murdered.”
Joe glowered and took a step closer to his daughter. Celia, true to her heritage, said, “Oh, dear.” She chewed on her lower lip and shot a quick look over her shoulder at Joe. “Wait a minute,” she said to me and headed for the house.
Joe said, “Shit,” and spit into the grass.
We stood silently until Celia returned with an envelope in her hand and a completely non-functional white lace cover-up over her bikini. She handed the envelope to Joe, who pulled a sheet of notebook paper out of it. He read it quickly then handed it to me, saying, “When the hell did this come?”
“Yesterday.” Celia was pouting prettily.
“Goddammit, her dad's called here a dozen times.”
The note was brief: “Dear Celia, I couldn't stand it anymore. I hate my parents and I hate Mackie. I'm never coming back. Don't tell anyone you heard from me. Love, Jessica.” The I in the signature was dotted with a tiny star.
The letter was typical of runaways, a pointless contact with home, serving no purpose other than reaffirming the writer's existence. The envelope was postmarked Thursday. The zip code on the cancellation was for Portland's main post office. There was no return address.
“I'd like to show this to her parents,” I said.
“Sure.” The looks Joe was giving his daughter boded ill for a peaceful Sunday evening at the Baines'. I thanked them both and left by the side gate to avoid Donna, who was probably “oh dear”-ing herself into hysterics in the kitchen.
Five minutes later I was back at the Finneys' house. Jason was obviously shaken by the evidence that Jessica had actually left town. For the first time, Lily seemed to take her daughter's disappearance seriously. I embarrassed her by catching her staring acr
oss the room at a portrait of a much younger Jessica. With very little discussion, we agreed that I would leave for Portland in the morning.
I went back to my office, where I unlocked the heavy fire door behind the desk. The back room was much larger than the front room but not nearly as neat or clean and smelled faintly of old paper. One of the battered file cabinets against the left wall contained current records. The rest were full of thirty years' worth of Jake Matthews' records. At the rear of the room, two closed doors concealed a bathroom with a shower stall and a storage closet I had stopped using the second time I found a black widow in it.
Beneath a barred opaque window on the right wall, a long work table was cluttered with three or four telephones, a guitar with two broken strings, a wadded-up Taco Bell bag, an electric typewriter, and a two-year-old computer that I was going to learn to use someday. I tossed the Taco Bell bag into a wastebasket and sat down to type Jessica's description on a missing person form that discreetly mentioned a reward in two-inch-high letters. Beneath a space for a picture were the words “Arrow Investigations” followed by my post office box address and telephone number. Beneath the phone number, in bold letters, were the words “CALL COLLECT.” Mackie is a toll call from everywhere but Mackie. People could watch Amelia Earhart make an overdue landing on an interstate in rush hour and wouldn't report it if it ran up their phone bills. I taped the three-by-five photo of Jessica into place and walked down to the print shop to get copies made.
By seven o'clock I was home. I tucked the Nova into the space next to the four-wheel drive that summered in the garage and earned its keep getting me through Mackie's miserable winters. I checked the Nova's oil and water, kicked a couple of tires, opened the trunk and checked the tool box. Everything was in order for my trip to Portland.
I wandered around the garage, straightening a few tools on the pegboard and peering into the freezer. Then I pulled the tarp off Carrie's birthday present and ran my hand along the smooth wood. I had found the carousel horse in the back lot of a junk store. I had cleaned it up and sanded it down and painted it a gleaming sky-blue and gold. All I needed to do was get a pole and cement it into Carrie's back yard.
Cat's-Paw, Inc. Page 3
