Mrs. Ortiz screwed her face up. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said. “Patti was the one who wanted to come home. After the dance, all the kids were going to park somewhere on the edge of town. But Patti had promised me and her father she wouldn’t do that. So she came home. She left to come home.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re telling me the other three girls just let her walk home on her own in the dark while they took the car off to park somewhere and keep the party going?”
“Not on her own,” Mrs. Ortiz said. “Someone offered to escort her.”
“Thomas Shatner,” said Todd.
She shook her head. “John Worth,” she said. “He swore on his Bible that he walked her to the stop sign at the end of that street.” She pointed with a jabbing motion. “And watched her walk up the path and onto the porch. He swore.”
“And Tam?” I said. “Was he with the others? Parked up somewhere, partying?”
“They said no,” Mrs. Ortiz told us. “They said he left the dance at nine o’clock. He was drunk and the teachers threw him out. No one saw him later.”
I considered this while I finished off the last of the pink cake and grey coffee. Todd looked at me as if I was eating worms. My theory that Patti and Tam ran away to Florida together had taken a bit of a hit from this news of him disappearing early on and Patti making it to her front porch with John Worth watching. Still, since we were here, I was going to check.
“And in the time since, Mrs. Ortiz,” I began, “have you ever had any sense of where Patti might be? Has anyone ever thought they’d seen her? Anywhere? Have you ever had anyone else look for her?”
“Have I ever had anyone look for her?” The woman was glaring at me, but I honestly did not know what she was reacting to. Was it stupid to doubt that she’d turned the earth upside down looking for her little girl, or was I being Marie Antoinette to think this woman in her modest little house could afford to employ private detectives? “I spent every penny I earned on posters and radio ads,” she said. “I hired people. I wrote to every cousin and cousin of cousin in the country, sent pictures … then later the internet. Such sadness. You would not believe the sadness of the mamás and papis looking for their niños.”
“And did you ever hear anything?” I said. Todd was dumbstruck. But then he’s an anaesthetist, not used to asking tough questions of people.
“A few photographs of pretty girls,” said Mrs. Ortiz. “None of them my Patti.”
“And how about Florida?” I said. “Do you have cousins there?”
“I have cousins who moved there,” she said. “But it’s a big place. Why?”
“That’s where Tam Shatner went after he left Cuento,” I told her. “That’s where he’s been all these years until he came back here last week for the high school reunion. Well, not for the reunion exactly. But while it was on.”
Todd took a sharp breath in then, making both of us look at him.
“This place,” he said, “where all the kids went to park after the dance. You said it was on the edge of town. Do you know exactly where?”
Mrs. Ortiz nodded and pointed. “Out that way,” she said, pointing. “There’s nothing there now. Back then the old house was still standing. But it wasn’t the house they cared about. They liked … oh, now what was it? I’m getting old. I’m not so sharp. There was a story.”
“An Indian—” Todd began.
“—burial ground!” she finished for him. “That’s it. An Indian burial ground at an old farm out there. I don’t see why a cemetery is a good place to go with a sweetheart, do you? When we were young, Joe and me, we used to sit on the edge of a cliff looking out at the sea, breathing in flowers and listening to birds. Not looking at graves and hearing ghost stories.”
“You were the wise ones,” I said. “When did he die?”
“Only last year,” she said. “He couldn’t wait any longer. I can’t wait forever. If you can tell me what happened to my Patti, maybe I will just lie down on my soft bed and go home.”
“Or,” I said, “if we find her, you can stay right here and catch up with all her news.”
Mrs. Ortiz shook her head. “My Patti wasn’t a cruel girl,” she said. “She would never do this to me. When I go home, soon, I will join her like I will join Joe.”
“Do you think she believes it?” I said to Todd out on the doorstep. “That she’ll be seeing Patti again on the other side?”
“No doubt.”
“Hmph,” I said.
“You don’t?” said Todd.
I shrugged. “You’re the expert. Speaking of which, what’s the explanation for those fairycakes?”
“Don’t say fairycakes!”
“Cupcakes, rock cakes, scones, cookies.”
“Tres leches,” Todd said. “Delicious.” I snorted. “Okay, better than the coffee at least,” he said instead.
“She loved having someone to feed,” I said. “Fifty years, Todd.”
We drove off in silence. But he didn’t take me home. Instead we went back to the old Armour homestead and got out of the Jeep and stood there on the mound and stared at where the cutty sark had lain and thought of Patti.
After five minutes, Todd punched me lightly on the arm. “Let’s go,” he said. “Tomorrow we take this to Mike. Agreed?”
“Deffo.”
Twenty-One
Damn my Presbyterian work ethic! Or maybe, more honestly, damn my lack of belief that I could make a living as one of the therapists in such a therapist-stuffed town as Cuento! When a woman had phoned in sobs asking if I could do an eight o’clock appointment on Monday morning, I should have told her I kept banker’s hours and could squeeze her in at ten for a consideration. I shouldn’t even have had to call them banker’s hours. They were just civilised hours, in my opinion. Eight o’clock was breakfast time. But here, where everyone hit the gym before five, eight o’clock on a Monday morning saw the week already curling up round the edges.
Here she was, wringing a hanky in her hands on my back porch. I was on the phone to Todd, so I lowered my voice.
“You can go without me,” I said. “I can’t stop you. On the other hand, if you take me, I’ll soak up some of Mike’s … ”
“Bile?” said Todd. “Why are you whispering?”
“There’s a client outside waiting.”
“And what’s that clacking noise?”
“I’m peeking through the blinds at her. She’s crying.”
“So? You’re used to that, aren’t you?”
“I was,” I said. “I’ve forgotten, these last few months, what it’s like to talk to people in acute distress. But this is some acutely acute distress. She’s not just weeping. She’s blowing snot bubbles and honking like a goose. I better go.”
“Tell her she should have started therapy back when you’d have laughed at her and she might have avoided this,” Todd said. “I’ll see you at lunchtime.”
“What are you going to do this morning if you’re saving Mike to share with me?”
“I’m going up to the hospital.”
“Great!” I said, loud enough to let the snottery woman on my porch know I was there. I waved in case she could see me.
“Not to work,” said Todd coldly. “Not even to take a meeting about work. To see John Worth, in case he’s conscious again and feeling chatty.”
“Good idea,” I said. “You could always stop by, though.”
Todd hung up without saying more. I was on his side about the whole work thing, much as he never seemed to see it that way. He was an anaesthetist with cleptoparasitosis, a big scary word, but one that rendered him equal to a clown who was scared of needles or a teacher who didn’t like airports. In other words, absolutely fine. Operating theatres were famously insect-free. And Todd wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t know that. The trouble was, cleptoparasitosis was a psychiatric diagnosis, and when th
e hospital’s lawyers had heard those two big scary words, Todd was out on his bum sooner than they could say mad bug dude who’ll ruin us all. Words of one syllable each, but terrifying.
I switched my phone to silent and went out the back door where my eight o’clock—this country!—was waiting.
“Hiya,” I said, with a big smile on my face. “Dorian?”
“Lexy, right?” she said. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Of course,” I said. “Come in. Make yourself comfortable. We’ve got some stuff I need to do, I’m afraid, but it won’t take long.”
It took longer than a therapeutic hour (aka fifty minutes) had to spare, mind you. I got her signature on a sheaf of papers, told her all about how I wasn’t affiliated with any HMOs or insurance companies but she should check her own policy for possible reimbursements, and finished up with the required spiel about why and when I’d suspend confidentiality and call the cops on her. That bit’s usually no more than awkward but this woman paled, swallowed, stopped crying, which was a bright side, and said in a wavery voice, “What do you mean by harm?”
I blinked. No one had asked me what past incidents of harm to a child, elder, or vulnerable adult or threat of future harm to self or others meant. I assumed they all knew better than me.
I glanced at my phone all the way over there on the windowsill out of the way and wished it was closer.
“But what counts as a child?” she said. “Or a vulnerable adult? Is it eighteen? Twenty-one? Vulnerable how?”
I stared at her, trying not to make it seem like I was staring at her. Which was it? Had she hurt a child? Or was she planning to shove someone off a bridge? Or, much more likely, was she simply very anxious and trying to parse my words for no pressing reason.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?” I said. “And then we can take it from there.”
She folded her mangled hanky into a tiny little square, then pressed it into her palm and made a fist around it. “But if I tell you what’s wrong and you decide it’s harm and it’s a child, you’ll report me.”
“Have you assaulted a minor?” I said.
“No.”
“Or a senior? Have you withheld food, drink, warmth, or shelter from a frail relative?”
“No!”
“Well, that’s that sorted out then at least. Are you planning to kill yourself?”
“No.”
“Or someone else?”
“Probably not,” she said. “But I see what you mean. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I can talk now?”
“You can talk now.”
She took a huge heave-ho of a breath. “I think my daughter’s turning tricks.”
“That is not where I thought we were going,” I said. “That must be terribly upsetting. But it’s not something that triggers the suspension of confidentiality. You can rest assured on that score. Tell me about it, if you’d like to.”
“You see, I thought when you said child that she is my child, and when you said harm well I think that is harm. Serious harm. I can hardly believe it and I can’t tell my husband. It would kill him. That’s what I meant about not being sure if I was going to kill someone, you know? Because if I told him, this would surely kill him. She’s his little girl. His baby girl. He adores her. And now she’s … selling herself like some low-life.”
I nodded and kept my thoughts to myself. Thoughts like: all that daddy’s girl crap didn’t strike me as adorable or even that much at odds with the kid’s plunge into poor choices. Thoughts like: low-life was subjective.
“So what makes you suspicious?” I said.
“She’s hiding something,” Dorian told me. “And she has all this money.”
“But she might not be a tom—tart—pros—sex worker,” I said. “It could be … all sorts of things.” Drugs, I was thinking. Or a bank heist.
“I suppose she might have knocked over a bank,” said Dorian. “She’s a bold girl. But she’s not tech-savvy. She couldn’t run an online scam to save her life.”
I was going to have to say it. “Drugs?”
“No way. She’s outdoorsy. Ever since she was a little girl. That’s why she came back to Cuento for college. Because of the mountains. And the lakes. And all the facilities. She’s a bit of a health nut, if I’m honest. If my husband and I have a bottle of wine on a Friday night she’s on the phone to Al-Anon. Practically.”
“Well, but if she is such a health nut,” I said. I was warming to Dorian. That was my kind of talk. Most people round here would have said honours herself through her choices. “I mean, sex work isn’t the healthiest way to live, by and large.”
But saying it right out like that had tipped Dorian over the edge again. She shook out the wadded up hanky—which I could tell had no absorbency left from the way it flapped like a damp flannel—and buried her face in it.
“How long has it been going on?” I said. “Does she live with you? Or how did your suspicions first get raised?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Dorian said. “I come from Cuento, but I moved to Colorado when I married. I still have family here. When my daughter came back here, I was happy! I thought she’d have relatives to look out for her! But then I saw this big deposit in her account and when I asked her about it, she wouldn’t tell me where it had come from.”
“Hang on,” I said. “You saw a transaction in her account? How did you manage that? Are you a guarantor?”
“She’s my daughter!” Dorian said. “We have no secrets.”
“Right,” I said. “Okay. So you have the passwords to each other’s accounts. Okay. That’s nice.”
She was squirming. “She can’t get into my account,” she said. “Why would she need to?”
“Right,” I said again. “But in a way it’s good that she dumped the cash in her account, isn’t it? I mean, if she had anything to hide, she would have hidden it.”
“Well,” Dorian said. She was squirming even harder now. She got up and went to put her hanky in the bin. Then she went all the way over to the other side of the room to get a fresh one, even though there are boxes of the things everywhere. “She didn’t know I could see in there. She found out when I called her to ask where the five hundred dollars came from.”
“Five hundred?” I said, briefly thinking I was in the wrong business.
“Twice,” her mother said. “And she wouldn’t tell me where it came from. All she said was that I would regret knowing and she didn’t want to see the way I would look at her if she told me. So I got on a plane and came right out here. As anyone would. But face-to-face it was even worse. She was crying and begging me to stop asking. She said she was ashamed and she didn’t know what had gotten into her. But she won’t tell me!”
“Right,” I said. “Okay. Well now, Dorian, I’m going to say something now you might not like. But it’s absolutely what I believe and I think it will help you.”
Telling her to calm down, back off, apologise to her daughter for invasion of privacy, and learn some relaxation techniques went down about as well as a shot of lye in a latte. I had never before tried to ground a helicopter parent and confiscate her licence to fly. It was interesting, but by the time I was finished, I was nearly looking forward to Mike in comparison.
“When are you going back to Colorado?” I said.
“When this is straightened out!” she told me. “I bought an open ticket and rented a car on a renewable daily deal.”
Where did these people get all their money? Not from working, presumably, or else where did they get all their time? Cutting to the chase, I agreed to see her again, with her daughter in tow, in the middle of the week.
“You are all crazy,” I said to Todd, as we headed down the street to the cop shop. We were on foot. You have to make the most of the days that aren’t too hot to bear in Cuento. Today was a pleasant sort of a light jumper and cleverly wound scarf ki
nd of a day, maybe shading into a cute wooly cap and mittens later when the sun went down. Needless to say, Todd had a quilted coat on that reached from his neck to his knees and had put down the earflaps on his skiing hat. But he agreed that a stealthy approach was best.
“Who all?” he said.
“Who do you think? Americans.”
“Ah, the honeymoon’s over,” said Todd. “I remember when you loved us.”
“Win me back,” I said. “Apply some of that can-do spirit and entrepreneurial vim and win me back again.”
“Meh, maybe later,” said Todd. He knew I didn’t mean it. And to be fair, offering counselling and therapy isn’t the classic way to meet the balanced portion of any population. I cast my mind over the people I knew best. Noleen was Mrs. Average apart from the aggression. Roger was as normal as they come. Della and Diego could have starred in adverts for breakfast cereal. Mike was … Nah, Mike was nuts. And here we were asking the dispatcher if she was available for us to talk to. Who knew where this would end?
Mike came out to the front reception area and stood chewing her lip and treating first me, then Todd, then me again to long speculative looks.
“Come on back,” she said at last, buzzing us through to where the interview rooms lay. “Get you anything from the machine?”
I snorted. I had exhausted the menu of drinks from the Cuento cop shop long ago and they all tasted like they’d been swallowed once already. The chicken soup, twice.
“No really,” Mike said. “We’ve got a matcha and a chai in there now. Not bad as far as vending machines go.”
We chose one each, for research purposes. Mike edged back in with two cups and handed them over. I took a sip.
The closest I can get to describing it is to say if someone boiled spinach, then used the water to wash out those bootees dogs wear in icy weather, let it cool to tepid, then poured it into a cup with some cheese, they’d end up with a treat compared to the Cuento City Police instant matcha.
“It’s something else, isn’t it?” Mike said. “It’s the eighth wonder of the world. So what can I do for you?”
Scot & Soda Page 20
