“Come on, sit down,” I whispered to Mom.
She looked flustered and eased herself in on Mike’s side of the booth, then rose and sat down next to me.
Verna filled her coffee cup wordlessly and returned to the counter.
Mom gripped my hand and twined her fingers between mine. “Oh, my God. How do I know where to begin?” she asked.
I giggled nervously. “I don’t know where to begin either.”
“Well,” said Mike, “I’m going to college this fall. I got into Rutgers. I’m going to study math. And science. I might go into engineering.”
Mom’s hand returned to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said again. “When I—the last time I saw you, you were … so little. I can’t believe … ”
I couldn’t think of anything to tell my mother that was as exciting as Mike’s news. At last I whispered, “I have a boyfriend. His name is David. Have I mentioned him in my letters? He’s really nice.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetheart,” said Mom, but she was frowning slightly. I wasn’t sure what was wrong.
Verna approached us again, menus in hand. “You folks like anything to eat?” she asked.
We looked around at each other, shaking our heads.
“I guess not,” said Mom. “Thanks.”
Verna topped off our coffee cups, then left again.
“Mom, what about you?” I asked. “How’s the pottery? Are you going to enter shows or something? I mean, what have you been doing?”
Mom had raised her cup halfway to her lips, but returned it to the saucer untouched, then massaged her forehead, her eyes closed. “Kids, listen. I did ask you to meet me here because I wanted to see you after all these years.”
Mike and I nodded.
“But,” she continued, “there’s more to it.” She stopped speaking. Mike and I glanced at each other. “I don’t know what your father has told you about the reasons for our divorce, but I suspect you haven’t heard very good things. …Am I right?”
I shrugged. Mike stared into his coffee.
“I thought as much.” Mom’s right eye began to twitch. “Well,” she said, “to hell with him. I’ll tell you something, babes. Your father’s a dirty player. Do you hear me?” Her voice was rising slightly. I tried to pull my hand out of hers, but she gripped it tighter. “A dirty player,” she repeated, more to herself than to us. “Yessir. … He always was, too. You ought to be aware of that if you’re going to live with him. His little Leigh ought to know that, too. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.
“Your father thinks that just because he earns a big salary he can throw his weight around, step on the little people.”
“That is not true,” I exclaimed.
“So you’re on his side,” said Mom quietly.
I tried again to wrestle my hand away. “I’m—I’m not taking sides,” I replied, confused.
“Well, you always did love him more than me, anyway.” Mom didn’t just let go of my hand then, she practically threw it away.
I rubbed my wrist.
“So this is why you asked us here?” said Mike tightly. “To slander our father? You could have done that in one of your postcards.”
“No, young man, that is not why I asked you here.” Mom mimicked his tone of voice.
“Why, then?” I demanded.
“Because I have a present for you. Your crazy old mother is not as bad a person as you think. Believe it or not, I know what you’ve been going through the last few weeks and I cared enough to do something about it.”
“The last few weeks?” I repeated in a whisper.
“Of course. You’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know that Courtenay Louise Ellis is missing.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” I said.
Mike dropped his head into his hands.
“What are you kids, crazy? I didn’t take her,” cried Mom.
“Shhh,” I hissed, looking over at the counter. Verna was scrubbing one of the grills vigorously. The boy had left. The two older men had their backs to us and were concentrating on a game of chess. The middle-aged man was wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. Then he slapped two dollar bills on the counter and strode out of the diner, his newspaper tucked under his arm.
“What are you talking about?” I said through clenched teeth.
“I found her, that’s all. I conducted my own little search and I found her—a lot faster than all your cops and private detectives.”
“Where is she?” said Mike at the same time I asked, “Why?”
Mom ignored Mike’s question. “What do you mean, ‘why’? What kind of gratitude is that?”
“If you’re so mad at Dad, why would you go to all the trouble of searching for the child he had by another wife?”
“I didn’t do it for him, I did it for you. I know how you two love that kid.”
“How’d you find her?” Mike wanted to know.
Under the table, Mom’s foot was tapping incessantly. Her right eye was twitching away a mile a minute. “What is this, the Inquisition?” She gave a little laugh. “I found her, that’s all. I saw her on the street—with some woman.”
Mike was getting to his feet. “Well, where is she?”
“Mike,” I said, “I don’t think Mom—”
“I don’t care how she found her,” said Mike. “If Courtie’s here somewhere, we have to get her home. Now.” He turned to our mother. “Where is she?”
The door to the diner opened and I glanced up. I realized Verna was looking at us.
“Keep your voices down,” I said. “We’re creating a scene.”
Mom’s foot stopped tapping. Mike lowered himself back into the booth.
I watched the person who was entering the diner. It was the man with the newspaper again. I wondered what he’d forgotten. But this time he didn’t head for the counter. He strode briskly toward our booth. When he reached it, he withdrew a leather holder from his breast pocket and snapped it open in Mom’s face.
She jumped back.
“Detective Harris,” said the man. “State police. You’re under arrest, Mrs. Ellis, charged with kidnapping.”
I stopped listening and buried my head in my arms.
I sat that way while the detective read my mother her rights, and while he led her out of the diner. I sat that way until someone touched my shoulder and said, “Come on, Maggie. Let’s go home.”
Slowly I raised my head. It was Lamberton.
“She didn’t do it,” I said. My throat was dry and I took a swallow of cold coffee. “She didn’t do it. She found Courtie for us. That’s what she said.”
“No,” said Lamberton gently. “We’ve got Courtenay. We’ve had her ever since your mother walked into the diner. She told us everything.”
I nodded numbly.
“Come on,” said Lamberton again. “Mike’s in your car. The police will worry about your mother. It’s time to take your sister home.”
18
Together Again
THEY TOOK OUR MOTHER away in a police car. The car pulled out of Annie’s parking lot, eased onto the highway, and disappeared around a corner a few moments later.
The parking lot looked like a scene from a movie. Apparently, the police had staked us out. Cop cars were everywhere, as well as unmarked cars. Officers in uniform milled around, and FBI agents talked in low voices.
I stood in the bright sunlight, shielding my eyes from the glare, until Lamberton took me by the elbow. “Don’t you want to see your sister?” he asked. “Why don’t you ride home with me? I’ll have Detective Becker drive Mike home in the Rabbit.”
I allowed myself to be led to Lamberton’s car. He opened one of the back doors and helped me inside. Becker was there, holding Courtenay in her lap. “Okay, sweetie,” she said to Courtie. She placed her on the seat, gave me a long look, then left through the other door.
When I saw Courtenay, I managed to forget my mother. Courtenay was a mess. She was dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearin
g the day she disappeared, her hair was tangled and unwashed, her dirty face was tear-stained, and she smelled awful.
I didn’t care. I pulled her onto my own lap, hugging her fiercely, and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, while Lamberton started the car, signaled to Becker, and drove off.
We left Annie’s far behind.
“Courtie,” I said finally. “I am so sorry.”
“Where were you, Maggie?” Courtie’s arms were around my neck. She was gripping me as if it were impossible for her to let go.
“I was looking for you. We all were. We’ve been searching and searching.”
Courtie began to sob. She buried her face in my neck.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.”
Courtie clung to me. I asked her a couple of questions, still unable to believe my mother had taken her, but she wouldn’t answer, so we sat in silence.
Lamberton kept glancing at us in the rearview mirror. Finally I asked him a question. “How did you know where to find us?”
Lamberton carefully passed a car in front of him on the highway. Then he replied, “Let’s wait until we’re at your house. Your father and stepmother are expecting you. We’ll discuss everything then.”
I let my eyes drift to the window. Billboards and stoplights whizzed by at an alarming speed. Courtie had fallen asleep, her arms around my neck, her head resting on my shoulder. One grimy thumb hung limply from her mouth.
When we pulled into our driveway, I could see Dad and Leigh standing impatiently by the garage. They ran out to meet Lamberton’s car. Leigh flung the back door open before Lamberton had turned off the motor, and grabbed Courtenay out of my arms.
“Careful,” I said. “She just woke up.”
Leigh nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Mommy?” asked Courtie disbelievingly.
“It’s me, sweetheart,” Leigh replied, choking on the words.
Courtie greeted her in the same way she had greeted me. A fierce hug, followed by a confused, accusing “Where were you?”
As I had done, Leigh replied, “We were looking for you, baby. We didn’t know where you were. We’ve been looking for days.”
Courtie held her arms out to my father, an old baby gesture meaning, “I want you to hold me now.”
Dad folded her against his chest and rocked her.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Looking.” It was the first time I had ever seen my father cry.
Lamberton followed us into the house. A moment later, Becker and Mike arrived. Becker, Lamberton, Mike, and I sat around in the living room, waiting for questions to be asked and answered, but the first order of business was Courtenay. Dad and Leigh took her upstairs to bathe her and change her clothes. Then Leigh fixed her a sandwich, which she barely touched.
“Do you want to take a nap, honey?” Leigh asked her, looking with concern at her pinched white face.
Courtie shook her head. “I want to stay with you.”
So Courtie, safely wrapped in Leigh’s arms, joined the rest of us in the living room.
I asked the first question. “How did you know?” I said to Lamberton. “What tipped you off about Annie’s?”
“You did,” answered my father quietly from across the room.
“I did?”
“Sorry, Maggie. I did something I’ve taught you and Mike not to do. I listened in on the phone conversation you had with your mother.”
“Dad!”
“I hadn’t intended to, but I was waiting for three or four people to call me back this morning, so when the phone rang, I assumed it was for me. I picked it up upstairs and realized you had already answered it. I was about to hang up when I recognized Jessica’s voice. Since we’d been trying so hard to track her down, I didn’t want to let her get away. If she hadn’t given you directions to meet her, I think I would have broken in on the conversation and asked her flatly if she had taken Courtenay. But she told you where she was. As soon as you hung up, I called Detective Lamberton and gave him Jessica’s directions. I told him you and Mike were going to meet her.”
I nodded numbly and looked guiltily at Mike.
Lamberton picked up the story. “Becker and I left immediately to try to follow you, just in case there was any trouble.”
“We alerted the FBI, the state police, and the police up in Ridgewood,” added Becker. “And another detective here called Annie’s to find out if either a Jessica Ellis or a Jean Farmer was registered there. Jean Farmer was. The woman who answered the phone told him which room she was staying in, and the detective radioed the information to us in the car as we were leaving Princeton. We reached Annie’s just after you did, and met the state policeman who later arrested your mother.”
“The guy who’d been in the diner? Eating at the counter?” I asked.
Becker nodded. “He’d been watching your mother’s room from the parking lot. Annie’s was already staked out. The police were around back. When your mom left to meet you, Harris followed her inside, and Lamberton and I went to her motel room and found Courtenay. We signaled to Harris on a transistor he was wearing. He and two FBI agents joined us in asking Courtenay a few questions, she told us that Jessica was the person who had taken her, and Harris returned to the diner. That was when he arrested your mother.”
“Had Jessica and Courtenay been at the motel all along?” asked Dad.
“No,” replied Lamberton. “Jessica talked to us briefly in the parking lot. Apparently they’d been staying in a hotel in New York City, some old place near the bus terminal. They just arrived at Annie’s this morning.”
“But I don’t get it,” I said. “Mom told us Courtenay was a present. She said she’d found her for us. Obviously, she was lying. I guess she really did take Courtenay if she confessed to it, but why did she return her to Mike and me? Didn’t she think something like this would happen? Why didn’t she just du—just leave her somewhere if she wanted to get rid of her? And if she didn’t want to keep her, why did she take her in the first place? None of this makes any sense to me.”
“Well,” said Lamberton thoughtfully, “let me answer your first question first. Forget about the reasons your mother took Courtenay, okay?”
I nodded.
“All right. So she has your sister but doesn’t want her anymore. I think she really did want to give you and Mike a gift. She’s felt terribly guilty about not being granted even partial custody of you and about not being able to be with you all these years. Remember the green car that followed you through Hopewell? That was your mother. She just wanted to see you.”
“She was in Hopewell that day? Not in New York?”
“Apparently,” replied Lamberton. “She’d been keeping an eye on you for a while. I think she was using the hotel in New York as sort of a base.”
“Where was Courtenay?” I asked. “I don’t think she was in the car.”
“Probably in New York. We’re not sure. Jessica couldn’t risk taking her out in public.”
“Alone in New York?” cried Leigh. “Sweetheart,” she said, brushing Courtenay’s hair from her forehead, “did the lady who took you ever leave you alone?”
Courtenay nodded. “She said, ‘I’ll be back,’ and she locked the door. I was scared.”
“Well, of course you were. Did she leave you food when she was gone?”
“Sometimes. I ate Twinkies. And candy.”
Leigh grimaced.
“Anyway,” Lamberton went on, “your mother trusted that you and Mike wouldn’t even suspect that she had Courtenay. She’d been following the news accounts of the disappearance, and there’d been no mention of her whatsoever. She thought she could not only get rid of Courtenay safely, but make herself look like a good, concerned, worthwhile mother to you and Mike at the same time. She just wanted to please you. She wanted your respect.”
“Oh, brother,” said Mike. “And now she thinks that we brought the police along to have her arrested. We loo
k like really terrific kids.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Dad.
“She doesn’t know that,” Mike snapped.
“But why did she take her?” I asked again.
“To hurt your family,” said Becker simply. “Not so much you and Mike, but your father, since he wouldn’t grant her visitation rights. And she was jealous and angry that you—all of you—had what she hadn’t been able to have when she was living with you—a real family. I suppose she saw Courtenay’s very existence as an insult added to injury. Not only could your father have another marriage after she left, and a happy one at that, but he and Leigh were able to have a child, one that they treated well and didn’t battle over. Jessica’s ultimate failure was in not being able to care for her children. What better way to break up your home than to take Courtenay?”
“But she gave her back,” said Mike.
“Yes,” replied Becker. “And only Jessica knows the real reasons for doing that, but I suspect that, past the actual kidnapping, she hadn’t really thought about what she was going to do. And there she was, stuck with a child who had needs and gave Jessica all sorts of responsibility she didn’t want. She had to feed Courtenay, find bathrooms for her when they were traveling in the car. … Imagine being cooped up together in a little hotel room for nineteen days. She simply didn’t know what to do with Courtenay. When she came up with the idea of returning her to her family and looking like a heroine to her children at the same time, it must have seemed like a dream come true.”
I glanced at Courtenay, who was resting in Leigh’s lap, looking much more relaxed. One hand was holding Dad’s and the other was at her mouth as she continued to suck her thumb. But when she saw me looking at her, she removed her thumb and smiled at me.
I smiled back. “Hey, Courtie,” I said lightly. “Tell me something. How did the—the lady take you? I put you on the school bus the day you disappeared, and Birdie said you rode all the way to school.”
Leigh adjusted her position and began to stroke Courtenay’s hair. “Can you tell us what happened?” she asked.
Missing Since Monday Page 11