Without Trace

by Rae Richen

  “Including grandsons who speed?” Henry said. Glyn glanced up at him. He saw that Henry was smiling at him, so figured he was just teasing.

  “You ever speed?” Glyn asked.

  “In my youth. But you get a speeding ticket as an old man, and people offer to yank your license, so no more of that fun.”

  Glyn laughed.

  **

  Two floors above the library, Grandma Willie talked to her reader friends. “I see that some of you wrote ideas about Little Britches on the question sheet.”

  “What question?” a woman asked her neighbor.

  The neighbor said, “You know. What’s the Britches kid got that we all need.”

  “I answered,” said the lady who had brought up the question. “He had grit.”

  Grandma Willie nodded. “He did indeed. And so did his dad and mom.”

  “You need grit to live in this place,” the same lady said, waving around the room at her neighbors.

  “We do,” her neighbor said. “We need persistence and pluck to live a good life.”

  Mr. Corrigan had joined the edges of the group. He sat there watching others, but not saying anything.

  “Britches family didn’t have money,” another said.

  “But he had family,” chimed in another.

  “But too many sisters,” said one lady, who Willie knew had been youngest in a family of twelve.

  Willie asked, “What did his sisters do during the day?”

  “They helped Mom.”

  “They took up space and ate too much.”

  “We all eat too much,” one said.

  Willie looked around at the well-fed and the under-eating members of the group. Some ate to pass time. Some didn’t eat because it didn’t taste good to them anymore. Some didn’t eat enough, under the impression that they could put off death if they were thin.

  She... she herself had always had a negative relationship to food. Late in life she had learned that her frying and baking habits were good only for those who worked hard in the fields as her grandparents once had done.

  “Britches’ dad is dying,” a man said. “That’s pretty obvious.”

  “Yeah,” another said, “but the guy loves Britches, and that cowboy named Hi loves him like an uncle.”

  Willie asked, “Is love going to be enough?”

  “Naw. Family and friends aren’t enough. You gotta eat.”

  “Aren’t you going to read. How we gonna know if you don’t read?”

  So, Willie said, “Little Britches, by Ralph Moody, chapter ten,” And she began reading.

  **

  Getting ready to go to Holly Hill for work, Violeta knew that family and friends were not going to be enough.

  Glyn’s mother, Susan, had been helping her mother, Camelia, as they drove everywhere between George Fox College and Portland. They’d checked out all the motels along the way, hoping for a hint that Rosaria might be held in one of them. They found a good deal of sleaze in some, and reported those to Captain Reese.

  In others, they found what appeared to be very careful and honest people with nothing to hide. At one of those motels, Glyn’s mom asked if there was an association of motel owners along that highway.

  The motel owner had said, “Yes, there are many in the group. It helps us advertise and hire good workers.”

  “Well,” Susan said, “What do you know of other motel owners along the highway?”

  “Oh, we meet monthly at a restaurant in Newberg. Why?”

  Susan glanced at Camelia and said, “Here is what we are looking for . . .”

  Half an hour later, she had a list of motels that never joined the association and had questionable practices in renting.

  When Violeta heard this news, she shuddered and cried with her mamá. What was happening to their Rosaria?

  Her papá and Glyn’s father had gone the other way, checking out the bus route and possible places between the bus station in Newberg and the college, and all along the bus route.

  Violeta despaired of figuring out what had happened, and cried herself to sleep each night. Her papa steamed with anger, but Violeta knew that was his cover for fear.

  Merlyn, Glyn’s father showed the fear in fiddling with his car keys every morning until they were on their way to the next place they suspected of harboring people who used children.

  And every day, Merlyn asked Grandma Willie, “How many police are on this? We can’t let these children vanish.”

  Grandma Willie answered, “Captain Reese and Sergeant Seneca are bringing in as many as can be spared.”

  **

  As far as Glyn could tell, family and friends were not going to be enough. He couldn’t concentrate on United States’ history when Trace and Rosaria desperately needed his mind to help them.

  He realized they really would have to call in even more than the two policemen who knew Grandma Willie. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have any chance of finding Trace or Rosaria.

  Violeta’s mother had taken a leave from her job as a nurse-practitioner to hunt for her daughter. Her colleagues were all on the lookout for any hint that Rosaria had come through the hospitals of the area.

  Violeta had become dejected. Glyn’s dad, Merlyn, had interviewed the bus driver of the LeapFrog bus that Rosaria had taken in Portland. The man remembered that two girls got on the bus with tickets to Newberg, but they had gotten off early in Tualitin, saying they had a ride directly to the college.

  When Merlyn and Glyn told her family this, Violeta said, “Tualitin? From there they could have gone any direction and never be noticed.”

  Her father had put his head into his hands and said, “My Rosaria lied to me. She did know someone on the bus.”

  “Papá,” Violeta said, “perhaps Liza wasn’t on the bus when Rosaria got on. Maybe she didn’t know that Liza would come, too.”

  “Si, Augusto,” Mrs. Aguirre said, “is not certain she lied. Rosaria no es una mentirosa.”

  So, after that discussion, Glyn came into the library late at night. He wanted to see more about the stops of the LeapFrog bus system. Did it always stop in Tualitin? Where might Liza have gotten on the bus? And why? Her parents believed she had ridden to school with the boyfriend.

  Liza’s parents had no qualms about getting the police involved in searching, but until Captain Reese and Officer Seneca picked up the drug seller, the other police had no idea that Trace and Rosaria as well as Liza might be missing.

  Glyn saw that bad people got away with bad things when whole groups of citizens didn’t trust the law to work for them.

  As he fingered down the usual routes of the bus, he realized that Liza could have gotten on in Tigard, but the bus didn’t usually stop in Tualitin, so maybe they asked the bus driver to make that stop. Did Dad ask that question?

  Glyn knew his dad filtered stuff. He may have told what he thought was critical, but not realized the detail of why they stopped in Tualitin could be important. And where did Liza get on the bus?

  “I hope Dad has the phone number of that bus driver,” Glyn muttered to himself.

  Outside the library, Glyn saw a police car whip into the circular drive and park in front of the front door. The police were back, investigating something.

  And here he was with evidence of Geneva’s thoughts, and maybe ideas about her supposed enemies. He clicked out of the LeapFrog bus routes and into Outlook, typed Geneva’s password and returned to her inbox.

  Immigration history of Leah Müller. He found the subject line. Who sent this information?

  The sender was a search program for people who had been adopted. Hmmm, Thought Glyn, Geneva searched creatively.

  According to the program. Leah Müller was born in Argentina to an Anna Maria Müller and a Gervasio Halley, a musician. Anna Müller had died in 2002, but Halley still lived in Argentina.

  Glyn got back into the internet and looked up Gervasio Halley. Up came a lot of references to music, including some YouTube videos. Glyn clicked on the first video
. The beats and the instrumentation showed that Halley wrote modern tango in the style of Piazzolla, and used primitive instruments like a very old guitar, something called a bandonion, and drums. Glyn saw references to Afro-Tango.

  That puzzled him. In an interview, Gervasio Halley referred to the drums as Tangó, saying that tangó was what the drums were called in African Bantu.

  And then Glyn saw a small photo of a band playing Gervasio’s most famous piece, Tango Sylphide. Glyn enlarged the photo of the band Los Cometas de Halley.

  And there he stopped, felt his eyes widen and his spine straighten. In front of the band stood Leah Müller, her arms raised, her face suffused with light and her body clearly swaying. She was the band’s singer. Glyn’s arm jerked and the mouse ran across Leah’s face. Auto recognition labeled her Anna Maria Müller. And then the auto recognition ran across the man who stood slightly to her right, holding an acoustic guitar. Gervasio Halley was dark black, smiling at Anna and clearly proud of what she did as she sang.

  Glyn sat there a moment, stunned. Leah Müller was the daughter of these two people. A Rhine Maiden, indeed.

  No wonder she ran all the time. No wonder she put on the Germanic façade. No wonder ...

  Glyn backed off. His hands dropped into his lap.

  Did Geneva know this?

  Glyn realized that finding Gervasio Halley had not been easy. He’d been on page two of the Afro-Tango choices when he discovered this band photo.

  So, this computer had not been to this site before. So, Geneva had probably not been to this site either.

  Unless someone else had discovered this on another computer and shown it to Geneva. And who might that be?

  He looked back at her emails.

  And there sat an email from Gervasio Halley.

  I believe you have found the wrong Gervasio Halley. I’m sorry not to be able to identify the person in your photo.

  Glyn stared at that and then went right to the sent file in Geneva’s email. There it was. Did she know how to do an attachment? Where did she file the photo? What he found was a photo of Leah, but were there other photos? Where would she put them? Who else did she suspect?

  Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean no one is after you.

  And was this reply the truth?

  Did Gervasio Halley tell Leah Müller that Geneva was asking about her?

  Did Leah threaten Geneva? Was that the real reason Geneva left with her friend on a ‘vacation’?

  Glyn felt guilty about getting into Geneva’s email. She clearly was not right in her mind, asking about all these people. Was that a good enough excuse?

  He didn’t even have that flimsy an excuse for invading Leah’s privacy. He hovered the mouse over thinking it would be pretty easy to guess her password, then he stopped himself.

  Instead, he downloaded several Afro-Tangos of Halley’s onto his thumb drive.

  At that moment, Rolly Goforth charged into the library.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What are you doing in here?” Goforth asked.

  “My homework,” Glyn said, closing Geneva’s email and sliding back into his research on tango.

  Goforth came and looked at the screen, as Glyn knew he might do. Glyn enlarged the page on how to dance tango salon, clicked on the sample steps and said, “Learning about historic ballroom dances.”

  “What kind of study is that?”

  “World music.”

  “A fluff class you can pass without working?”

  “Want to try this dance with me?”

  “I don’t dance. For sure not with some guy.”

  Glyn laughed. “It’ll make you work up a sweat, that’s for sure, but I’m writing about its history, so only researching at the moment.”

  Goforth harrumphed into the sofa and put his feet up on a coffee table. It was then that Glyn realized neither of them had turned on the library lights. He’d been here since dusk and had not really noticed, but he figured maybe Goforth was just lazy. He got up and walked to the light switch.

  “Turn that off,” Goforth said.

  Glyn remembered the police car. Was Rolly Goforth hiding?

  “If you want to sleep, why do it here and not in your room?”

  “Just turn it off, I tell you. You want the management to fire you for being insolent?”

  “I doubt they will. Hard to find help as diligent as me. But you could sleep somewhere else while I finish my homework.”

  Goforth got up from the couch and hulked toward Glyn, but Glyn stood his six feet and puffed out his arms, the way he had when he startled a bear at the family tree farm.

  And just like the bear, Goforth backed down, marched out the swinging door and huffed down the hall to another hiding place in the gift shop where he turned out the lights.

  Glyn turned off the computer, and the library lights. He took his thumb drive down the hall past the gift shop where Rolly hid. He thought Rolly Goforth probably owed money to the state or the feds. His reputation as a careless accountant made that easy to imagine.

  Glyn walked into the room next to the kitchen – the room where the musack machines were stored.

  He got into the preprogrammed, slurpy old-time and innocuous low-value stuff and upped the well-known classical music. In that music, he copied the Tangos, spreading them amongst the choices around breakfast and dinner time.

  He planned to watch Leah Müller’s face when her father’s tangos came on. If she grew angry, he would know something. Not certain what, but something.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Leah Müller sat with one of her bleached blond friends at the table nearest the outside windows and directly under the speakers for the dinner music. She exchanged stiff pleasantries with Glyn as he took her order, then turned to her friend and brought up their next volkwalk which Glyn gathered was a passel of German-like Americans hiking somewhere in Portland. As he moved toward the next table, an overture from Wagner came on the musack. Glyn recognized it from his dad’s collection – Merlyn Jones, Welshman, a Wagner fan. Hard to explain taste.

  Leah didn’t seem to notice the Germanic muscle in the music, just kept talking to her friends about their plans to pack a light lunch for the hike.

  Glyn moved to the next table and took orders, then retired to the kitchen to put in the orders for two tables.

  A half an hour later, he heard the Richard Rogers’ Victory at Sea which he knew was just before the Afro-Tango Dienstag, by Gervasio Halley. So, Glyn began refilling water glasses closer and closer to Leah.

  The last waves washed over the Richard Rogers piece. The rhythm of Afro drums began softly.

  Báahn, kĭn Bahn Bahn,

  Báahn, kĭn Bahn Bahn

  Kĭn Bahn, kĭn Bahn Bahn

  Báahn, kĭn Bahn Bahn

  The background drums kept up an insistent eight beats. And then the bandoneon began the tune.

  Leah’s hand stopped in mid-air. Her eyes opened wide as she turned toward the speaker in the ceiling.

  Even her friend noticed the sudden change in Leah.

  “What?” the friend asked.

  Leah shook her head and pointed upwards.

  “What?” the friend persisted, but Leah stood and moved away from the distraction. The friend stopped and merely watched.

  And so did Glyn. Leah Müller danced. She held one hand out as if part of a pair and slightly moved her feet, then caught herself and stood still until the end of the piece, hand still suspended.

  By that time, her friend had stood, waiting to help if anything had gone wrong with Leah’s mind. At the last beat, Leah smiled and seemed to come from a trance. She returned to her table, leaned over and said, “Did you hear that?”

  “That music?”

  “Isn’t it fun? Isn’t it great?”

  “Umm ... was it Mexican? I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Argentina, Gervas...” and there she caught herself. “A great composer.”

  Her friend smiled, bland and non-committal. So, Glyn
moved in. “I like that music, too,” he said. “We should have more of that.”

  Leah smiled up at him. “Yes, we should.”

  “I’ll ask the supplier,” he said.

  “Thank you, young man ... um...”

  “Glyn Jones,” he supplied. “May I bring you dessert, now?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Leah, thin and careful, never said yes to dessert.

  **

  Later, Glyn hiked up the stairs to Grandma Willie’s. As he hiked, he thought.

  Leah Müller hides her father’s identity. She was happy to hear his music, though reluctant to say why.

  After puzzling fruitlessly over the human heart, Glyn sank into his bed in the room next to Grandma Willie’s room and her troubled sleep.

  He thought about Arwain, living with her friend Claudia, and Mom and Dad hiding from the gangsters as guests of the Aguirre’s, Violeta’s parents. And all four of them hunting for Rosaria.

  He thought of his band members, those who had visits from the drug gang and were now hiding out with other gang members that might not be known. He thought about Felipe and Anita and all the guys at the Chevron station.

  All these people hiding and in danger because of Trace’s need for drugs, and the people who made money off that need.

  Why couldn’t Trace take medicine to kill his need for medicine? Had such medicine even been invented?

  And what about Rosaria? Was she just a medicine to feed some guy’s need to feel powerful?

  Glyn hardly slept all night, wondering about what might be happening to Trace and Rosaria.

  **

  In her bedroom, Willie didn’t sleep at all. She attempted to decipher what Geneva told her.

  “Please make sure no one goes in my rooms,” Geneva had said. “But you go water plants, and you can read my books, too.”

  Willie had realized that Geneva had lost track of something and couldn’t bring it up. She feared whoever threatened, but she couldn’t seem to explain why anyone would make the threat. Her doctor assured Willie and Geneva that Geneva was free to leave any time she felt was right, but Geneva had shivered at the idea, then bristled at Willie for asking the question.

  “Of course, I could leave. Is that what you want? You want me to be a target of these people?”