The Night My Sister Went Missing

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  Lutz didn't answer her. But she didn't look like she was waiting for an answer. "How can people be bad when they're nice? We're nice people! At least ... I feel like we're okay. I really have to, um, step outside myself to say this. I have to step outside of me and pretend I'm reading about a bunch of kids in a magazine or something, kids who sneak up on a pier and get all looped, and someone brings a gun, and everyone thinks it's funny until some ... pretty girl gets shot and goes over the side. If you switched the dilapidated old pier for an abandoned old building, do you know what? If I read that I would think, 'Wow, they're probably on the skanky side.' Seriously. I would think, Maybe they're somewhat cool, but they're also skanks, and they just can't smell themselves anymore. The Mystic Marvels—ha. We're like low tide. You can't smell the low tide if you've been breathing the island air long enough."

  True scratched her forehead nervously, then raised her head, like she was looking right at us. "I think ... I hate my friends."

  I backed away instinctively, but Drew didn't, though he smiled uncomfortably as I turned my back on them. "My dad and I played around with this room right after it was finished," he said softly. "She can't see you. She's seeing a reflection of herself. But it sure is weird, isn't it? Hearing what people will say when they don't know their friends are listening?"

  "Why didn't she ever tell us she felt stressed like this?" I managed to whisper. "She trusts a cop more than us."

  "Lutz is magic," he murmured back. "That's why he's here, and everyone else is out searching. He'll take his measly time, with her and everybody else, and he'll end up with more goop than a tube of Crest."

  I tried to fight a feeling of betrayal, what with True saying to Lutz things she'd never said to us. It seemed hypocritical to feel betrayed, being that I hadn't said anything to her about the Naval Academy. I hadn't trusted her to understand. She trusted a cop; I trusted a blog board. And I suddenly wondered if Billy Nast trusted his friends. And I wondered what your relationships are based on if trust doesn't come into it. I felt empty—empty enough to pull back from fretting about friendship and remind myself of the most important problem.

  "Let's hope Lutz doesn't take forever finding out his goop." I looked at my watch. 2:01. "It's all very interesting, but excuse me, my sister's missing."

  "Every other cop on the force and the entire coast guard are responsible for finding Casey." Drew yawned, but with sympathy. "He's responsible for finding out what happened to Casey. He can take weeks. But if his timing isn't gelling with your gut right now, we can go back out—" He sounded kind of pleading, and I supposed he was worried about his dad catching him back here. But he was already dead for holding the gun, and your dad can only totally kill you once.

  "No." Who could pass this up?

  "I want to ... to move down to the Jesus House," True finally got out. "You know those kids who are here in the summers that rent the house up Bayberry Road, and they go to the beach and drive everyone crazy while giving out religious tracts? I wanna go with them."

  Lutz cleared his throat and muttered something I couldn't hear, but it had the word escapism in it.

  "You don't understand!" she said. "I want to be good! I am sick of my life!"

  "What'd she ever do that was so awful?" Drew grumbled beside me.

  My mom always says that my dad's study of psychology, just to build his characters, makes him a better shrink than Cecilly's dad. He can keep me hypnotized at the dinner table for an hour, blathering on about how families act strange, just because they're families, and how family weirdness is all tied up together. I pulled instinctively from what I figured he would say. "Someone in the family has to pay for Melanie's sins."

  Drew stared at me sleepily. Again he muttered the word profound, which made me raise my usual smirk. But maybe being "profound" all the time was why I couldn't talk to Drew about the Naval Academy. Maybe I liked the way he admired most of the stuff I said. Maybe I didn't want to sound like an idiot and have to watch his face seize up for once when I opened my mouth.

  Maybe all this stuff about me holding my tongue on the island was about having a big head. Maybe I'd walk out of here tonight feeling like a conceited jerk, along with feeling irresponsible and like a horrible big brother.

  Lutz was giving True some spiel about how it might be good for her to try practicing the Golden Rule before moving into the Jesus House, and seeing how that went.

  "Like you could tell me everything you know now. That would be golden."

  She shifted around uncomfortably in her chair, threw her head back, and stared up at the ceiling. "I'll tell you anything you want! Problem is, I didn't see anything. I was sitting there with Todd Barnes, who was trying to whisper in my ear, and all I could think about was Alisa over by the rail watching. They just broke up. I thought the pistol crack came from the stars! I thought it was, like, fireworks that never burst open ... something. I didn't see Casey fall, and I didn't see where Stacy Kearney was, before or after."

  He wrote all that down but looked like he was taking his time about it, deliberating over something. He finally said, "You mention Stacy. Do you have some reason to think she was involved?"

  I almost laughed at how he could take things right back to the bare beginnings and play totally innocent so well. At two in the morning.

  "Yeah ... but..." True's swallowing reminded me of Stacy's swallowing. True was the middle child in a very flamboyant family, almost like a pigeon in with a bunch of seagulls, despite her being pretty cute—cuter than her sister Melanie by far. Maybe she couldn't get a word in edgewise around that family and decided her thoughts didn't matter. I could tell by her bobbing jaw that this was agonizing for her.

  "Golden Rule," Lutz reminded her, and though she didn't move from that ceiling-staring, sprawled-out, gangly way, she started to talk. It was low. I had to breathe silently to catch it all.

  "A few nights back, Mark told Cecilly that he thought Stacy was cheating on him. He said that the last month they were going out he couldn't find her a lot of nights. Cecilly just ... had to know. That's Cecilly's way. I'm used to her nosiness. Maybe I shouldn't be."

  "Okay," Lutz said.

  "The other day we were on the beach and Stacy got mad because Cecilly was dominating the radio. A lot of the girls really hate this thing about Cecilly. She doesn't exactly have good, um, boundaries? No matter whose radio it is on the beach, she'll just act like it's hers and turn the station whenever she doesn't like a song." True took a big breath, let it out, and then talked on to the ceiling. "Stacy was in the mood from hell anyway. She went down to the water's edge to get away from everyone, I guess. So Cecilly reaches in Stacy's bag, pulls out her cell phone, and starts to look at the phone log."

  True cast her eyes down to Lutz. I recalled Cecilly talking about that day on the beach. She'd mentioned Stacy's bad mood but nothing about grabbing her cell phone. I listened closely, feeling a little betrayed.

  "She wanted to see who Stacy had called..." Lutz encouraged True.

  "Yeah. Cecilly had her beach chair facing the dunes just in case Stacy turned around, and she kept saying to me, 'Keep an eye out and tell me if she starts to come.' I don't know ... Here's one reason I don't like the Marvels anymore. I think that is really a raunchy thing to do. I'm, like, up to my neck in raunch. Stacy's being a jerk, Mark's gossiping, Cecilly's investigating ... and here's the worst. I was laughing. While Cecilly was looking in that phone log? I couldn't help it. I simply could not tell her to put that phone down! There's this evil witch part of me, too, that wanted to know if Stacy was cheating."

  True stopped, and I wondered if Lutz felt like he ought to be wearing two hats—an investigator hat and a shrink hat. He didn't try to pull her back to the main topic or anything. I don't think he said much more than "Cecilly find any intrigue?"

  "Too much! Not only did she look at the numbers. I thought that was crass enough. But she came across three numbers in a row she didn't recognize. You know ... we all know each other's phone numbers. So
she hits CALL to see who the first one was"

  "To see if it was another guy?" Lutz asked.

  "Yeah. But it wasn't. It was ... a shrink."

  "A what?" Lutz asked, though I suppose he'd heard as well as I had.

  "A shrink. It was a psychotherapy office of some sort—the Mainland Center for Mental Health, or something like that. And Cecilly's dad is a shrink, and it wasn't her dad's office, so that set Cecilly off. She figured Stacy must have some totally wild problem up her butt if she wouldn't trust an islander."

  Lutz wrote a couple of things. "So Cecilly hung up after hearing it was a doctor's office?"

  "Yeah. Then she called the other two numbers she didn't recognize."

  "And?"

  "Both shrinks. Two more shrinks. It looked to me like Stacy was shopping around for a shrink. At that point even I was like, 'Cecilly, put the damn thing away—that is so not your business.' But who ever listens to me around here?" She let out a tired laugh. "Nobody, that's who."

  "So ... I guess we could say that Stacy felt like she needed to see a psychiatrist," Lutz said, and wrote a note.

  "Yeah, I guess you could say Stacy is messed up. Especially now. I suppose you heard about the pregnancy."

  Lutz nodded.

  "So Stacy's pregnant and wanting to see a shrink, probably because she has to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy, and it's making her crazy. She really loves babies. She's the only one who seems really happy when I bring little Matthew to the beach to give Mel a break. But she wouldn't want to hurt her grandparents. Everybody has hurt Mr. and Mrs. DeWinter. I think Stacy wants to be the only one who doesn't."

  "Sounds like a lot to cope with. A therapist could help her sort it out."

  "Maybe. But maybe it's too late. That's what Cecilly says. You probably know by now it was Stacy's little gun up on the pier. She bought it last month, yada, yada, yada."

  Lutz grunted, indicating he knew.

  Yeah, this looked horrible for Stacy. Something stubborn inside of me just didn't want it to be her who shot at my sister. Maybe I would have barely questioned it a year ago, but now it seemed like a major leap from Stacy bought a gun and we don't know why, to Stacy brought the gun to the pier and pointed it at my sister and fired. It gave me the creeps how easily people seemed to be able to make that leap—about somebody who was supposedly their friend. It was almost like they wanted it to be true.

  And I wondered again why Cecilly hadn't told Lutz about the phone-log search on the beach. It was either because she'd told him so much that she couldn't fit in everything, or because it was inconvenient to her to make herself look bad. She'd been on a mission to make Stacy look bad. The truth wouldn't have fit the goal.

  Lutz asked, "Did Cecilly ever mention the phone log to Stacy? Confront her, maybe? Add to the girl's woes?"

  "No," True said. "But she probably did worse. Cecilly's mom is this total gossip hag. I mean, Mrs. Holst can be really fun and everything, but she's got this thing about psychoanalyzing everyone on the island and doing it with her mouth open. I don't think she means anything by it, but, still. And she does this one other thing I hate, which is play tennis with Mrs. Kearney as if they're friends. I think Mrs. Holst likes to look rich, too. But then she'll go around and rag on the woman all the time. Truth? I don't think the kids on the island would know about Mrs. Kearney running around with other men if it weren't for Cecilly's mom."

  I wondered about that for a moment. It's not like we've made it our life's ambition to know what grown-ups on our island are up to. I had heard about Stacy's mom from kids, not grown-ups. But Cecilly's house was a hub. It was a big roomy house on the bay, with a great family room, so we were always over there, looking at the big-screen TV and eating whatever great stuff Cecilly's mom whipped up for us.

  "Anyway, Cecilly told her mom about the shrinks, knowing that her mom wouldn't be able to stand it and would say something to Mrs. Kearney. Did you hear a story tonight about Mrs. Kearney having her eyes scratched out?"

  Lutz pretended, I think, to look at his notes and then said, "Yes"

  "Well, I'd imagine Stacy's mom brought up to Stacy a few pretty private phone calls to shrinks, which would have outraged anybody. Not that you should scratch your mother's eyes out, but I don't want to be so quick to judge Stacy. I haven't lived with her mom and dad, and I haven't been pregnant."

  "But you heard Cecilly tell her mother this? Hoping she would tell Mrs. Kearney?" Lutz asked while writing.

  True stared at the ceiling so long, I felt my stomach bottoming out. She finally said, "No. I heard Cecilly tell me that she was going to tell her mother ... just because she knew it would get back to Mrs. Kearney, and that ought to be a classic blowup."

  There was a long silence that was covered by Lutz's writing and my stomach gurgling a lot.

  "So ... Cecilly told her own mother just to stir up the water." Lutz repeated this unbelievable news.

  True's eyes had turned glassy again. She wiped a tear off her face. "Thank god we didn't know about the pregnancy at that point! But I already told Cecilly tonight ... I said, 'Listen to me, for once. If you tell your mother about something like a pregnancy, just to stir up a shit storm, consider me no longer your friend.' But you know what?"

  "What?" Lutz asked.

  "I don't think I want her as my friend anymore, anyway. I need to find new friends. All new friends. I am so tired. I'm, like, so, so tired.... "

  7

  I was expecting to see Alisa come in next, but there were a bunch of kids out in the back lobby whose parents were not as close to Chief Aikerman as Alisa's were. Their parents were wanting to take them home, complaining mildly about it being the middle of the night. So those kids came in, one after another. I was in some sort of exhausted-but-hypnotic trance. I stood there for the next hour and a half, watching person after person give a five- or ten-minute statement. They'd all heard Stacy Kearney was pregnant, that the father was Mark Stern, who had been going out with Casey Carmody. They hadn't been able to see whether Casey had been hit, but everyone presumed she had been. Some saw her stumble and go over backward; some saw her stumble and turn and fall forward. Some saw blood gushing from somewhere; some saw no blood. Some heard a scream; some heard a laugh.

  They'd all heard that Stacy had bought a gun and felt that was weird beyond reasoning. Because they all wanted to focus on Stacy, they ended up answering a question that was becoming a habit for Lutz: "Aside from this gun, what is it about Stacy Kearney that you don't like?" I guess, like me, he was trying to weed out truth from jealousy, truth from follow the leader.

  For one junior girl the problem was how Stacy would mention her tennis lesson in school, "just to remind people that hers was the house with the tennis court." For another it was that she gunned her Audi in the school parking lot, "just so that people would turn and be reminded that she drove a more expensive car than half the teachers." When asked how they could know her motives, the answer always was, "You can just tell."

  One guy in Casey's grade decided Stacy was "a tease" who would "bang on any guy so long as he was from New York or Martha's Vineyard, and not from around here." I wondered how he would know that, being that he was too young to have a chance in hell of finding out personally.

  I knew that all of these complaints, though different, shared something. But at 3:30 I couldn't exactly think of what it was. Finally Alisa came in the little room, and I decided to stay, to hear what Stacy's only friend had to say in her defense. She had defenses so obvious that I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of them. And yet having not thought of them, some astonished me.

  8

  "Thank you for staying until this ungodly hour," Lutz muttered as Alisa came through the door. His eyes had started to look swollen and red like everyone else's.

  "I'm missing my beauty rest." Alisa sat down in the chair and folded her hands with slightly too much drama. She was known as our "girlie girl" in the Mystic Marvels and was always doing stuff like putting one finger under her nos
e and raising her pinkie to sneeze, "Chewwww!"

  But she had a nice wit, too—the type that could make you laugh when she kept a deadpan face. She'd just done it with the "beauty rest" remark, but before Lutz could decide whether she was serious, she went on with her toned-down sarcasm. "I can't understand what you need me for. I suppose you've heard it all. Stacy bought a gun. Stacy's a meanie. A bitch-queen, a bitch-hag, a bitch-tease, a bitch on wheels, a killer bitch, a—"

  "I got it without the graphic synopsis. I'm more interested in hearing what you think about tonight"

  Alisa went for the facts, but there weren't too many. She had started to walk to the climbing mounts to go back to the dunes so she wouldn't have to look at Todd flirt with True Blueman. She didn't see anything, didn't hear the shot, didn't hear Casey hit the water, didn't hear anything but people screaming after Casey fell. I wondered why she'd waited until after three in the morning to report only that. She could have gone home and come back after she woke up. Whatever her reasoning, Lutz took advantage of a good op. "I'll be honest with you. A lot of people are suspicious of your best friend. I thought maybe you could give me a new thesis to work with"

  Alisa blinked at him a couple times in her dramatic way and said, "I know Stacy can be moody. I know she bought a gun. I know..."She raised her hand like a kid in class, but with her pinkie falling away. "Everyone on the island now knows about her pregnancy, and it was I who told. I am responsible for that. I was stupid. That's our crime, Stacy's and mine. Our only crime ... is that I was stupid."