by Anni Taylor
“I don’t know. I mean, that’s a pretty strange letter.”
“Agreed. Well, could you let Phoebe know that we’ve had someone look at it and we couldn’t find any fingerprints, apart from her own? We’ll keep looking into this. I wasn’t able to get her on the phone.”
As I ended the phone call I reflected that it was unusual for Phoebe not to be contactable. She always had her mobile phone with her, like a security blanket, waiting for a call. Waiting for the call.
I dialled her number.
11.
PHOEBE
Wednesday morning
I TOYED WITH THE THOUGHT OF dropping in to Nan’s townhouse as I passed by. To tell her about the letter. She’d want to know. But it was hard to even speak about Tommy with her. She still couldn’t understand how someone was able to snatch Tommy away on my watch. She fixed me with that vaguely unforgiving look whenever I mentioned his name. I couldn’t shoulder that right now. I’d wait a couple of days, until I was stronger.
I kept walking.
Next door to Nan’s, Mrs Wick trod down her garden path, her cat winding itself around her frail, stick-like legs. She and Nan had been friends ever since they were children themselves, growing up in the same houses they lived in now. To me, it seemed their friendship was based on their mutual disapproval for just about everything in existence. Most of their conversation circled around cuts to pensioner benefits, how useless doctors were, and the general downfall of society.
Mrs Wick sped up a little, which was unusual for her. Especially with the cat threatening to trip her up at any step. She reached her mailbox just as I was about to walk past.
“Is everything all right?” Her eyes were bright beneath her glasses.
“Everything’s . . . yes, fine, thank you.”
“It isn’t your nan is it, that had you running down the street earlier? I saw you from the living room.”
Yes, you old busybody. Of course you saw me. Well, I’m not going to hand you the latest tasty morsel of gossip on our street.
“No, it wasn’t Nan. I was just late for an appointment.”
“Oh. I guess you have lots of appointments, you people from the high end of the street.”
Luke and I had become you people ever since we’d bought the very expensive high-end-of-the-street property. Before then, she’d called us you young people.
Mrs Wick’s daughter—Bernice—peered through the blinds, her eyes squinty in her pudgy face.
Bernice broke off her engagement to a man twelve years ago and had come back home to stay with her mother. Since then, she’d never been out with another man (as far as I knew.) And she’d barely worked. She’d studied at a technical college to become a safety officer, and she’d worked as a combined yacht hand/safety officer in the yacht races for less than two years before throwing it in. I had no idea what she did with her time now. I remembered her as a kid, hanging on the fringes of the Southern Sails Street gang—Sass, Pria, Kate, Luke, and me. She was skinny then and awkward. She’d been at least two years older than Sass and three years older than the rest of us. From the time she was thirteen, she started ditching school—she’d hang around the streets and talk to the boys when they got out of class. She’d been anxious for a boyfriend and anxiously trying to hide the fact that she wanted one.
When Luke was twelve and she fifteen, he made up a terrible rhyme about her:
Bernice Wick
Sittin’ in a tree
Waitin’ for the boys
’Til half past three
Couldn’t catch a dick
’Cos she made ’em all sick
’Cos she got hit
By the ugly stick
A couple of times, I knew she overheard him chanting that. I’d like to say that Kate, Pria, and I didn’t giggle at it. But we did.
Luke made up stuff like that about everyone, only usually not quite so insulting. Despite his rhyme, Bernice was never ugly. She was gangly, but lots of kids that age were. She’d kept her blonde hair long and half-hiding her face.
But there was something about Bernice that was ugly. It was Bernice that had carried out the terrible thing next door at number 29, back when she was a teenager. It was one of those things that you couldn’t explain, no matter which way you tried to look at it. In the darkest moments of Luke and me, our suspicions about the abduction of our son had turned to her. We’d told Detective Gilroy of our uncertainty about her, and he’d done his best to check her out. But every painstaking study of the videos that day showed no trace of Bernice Wick. She was a tall woman and beefy. There was no hiding her.
Mrs Wick had given birth to Bernice when she was forty-six—a surprise child seeing as Bernice was her first (and only, as it turned out).
Bernice’s father had died when she was ten, of a heart attack in the yard where Mrs Wick was standing. He died five days after he retired from his job as a government clerk, the job he said he’d been waiting all his adult life to leave.
Bernice backed away when she saw me looking her way.
“Well, I’d better get home,” I told Mrs Wick. “I have a lot to do today.”
“Oh yes, it never ends. I have to deadhead the roses today. They’re not looking their best.”
Giving her a tight smile, I walked away as quickly as I could without being impolite. I wished I did have a long list of things to do today. But I had nothing with which to occupy myself. I’d sit in the too-quiet house counting the hours until Detective Gilroy called me. Or I’d pace again.
No curtain shifted at the next house—number 29—as I stepped past it. Had I just imagined it before?
I kept walking.
As I reached my own house, my gaze fell squarely on the mailbox, half-expecting there to be another letter.
I remembered then the aroma of coffee that the envelope had carried when I’d first taken it out. That smell had disappeared later in the morning.
Coffee.
The person who delivered the letter had been drinking coffee just beforehand. The coffee scent had come from the café at the end of my street. I’d been certain of it. I’d forgotten to tell Detective Gilroy about the coffee. I needed to go inside and call him, now. I didn’t know how much battery power I had left on my mobile phone—I knew it was low—so I’d switched it off.
I opened the gate then stopped, reconsidering. Trent had seemed dubious that the letter even meant anything. Even though the letter was the first and only tangible thing in relation to Tommy that had come our way. I made the decision to go down to the café myself.
I retraced my steps to the harbour end of the street. Mrs Wick seemed to have forgotten all about deadheading her roses because she was nowhere in sight. Her roses stood like rotting zombies in her garden.
The café was busy when I arrived there. Stepping into the warm interior and over to the counter, I ordered a caramel mochaccino.
“I’ve never had one of these,” I told the girl behind the serving counter. “But someone walked past me in the street early this morning, and it just smelled wonderful. I knew the coffee had to be from here.”
The girl—in her late teens with a freshly scrubbed look—smiled, looking pleased I’d started a conversation with her. “They don’t get ordered as much as the others, but they’re great.”
“Do you get regulars in here who only order the caramel?”
“Not often. People usually have them just for a change. It’s good to try something new, and we have so many varieties that I mean, well, why wouldn’t you?”
Her enthusiasm and company spiel made me guess that this was her first job. I hadn’t seen her here before.
I wanted to ask every detail of every person who’d ordered a caramel mochaccino between four and five in the morning. I wanted to pull out a notepad and pencil from thin air and ask her to draw each person in intricate detail.
Instead, I nodded as if my questions were done.
Moving to a seat that gave me the best view of the patrons, I tasted the cof
fee, allowing its aroma to saturate my sinuses. It was too overly sweet for my taste buds, but it carried the same scent as from the envelope. Unmistakeable.
People sat reading newspapers, tapping and swiping at electronic devices. Older women sipped their milky coffees and teas and looked out at the harbour from the broad window.
Taking out my phone, I navigated to today’s news. I had to pretend to be engrossed in my tiny screen, too. Reports of terrorism and counter-terrorism and various wars dominated the headlines. In my darkest moments, I used to comfort myself that if Tommy was really dead, then he’d never have to know the ongoing horrors of the world. All the labels these horrors carried seemed meaningless. It was just all people hurting people. Every day brought another feast of headlines, like seven-course meals, neatly styled on plates. We were all fat on the suffering of others.
I stole furtive glances around the café in between screen swipes, briefly scanning and studying each person who was within my view.
If the person was here, they could be watching me right now.
Who’d sent the note? They were sure to be a key tapper or screen swiper, too. Except the note had been written on a typewriter. Could it be an elderly person? The words were centred on the page, both vertically and horizontally. Someone who cared about presentation. No spelling mistakes either, though the words used were so simple they’d be hard to misspell. It had be someone who lived close—close enough to walk to my house.
My screen went dead.
A momentary sense of panic raced through me. I never let my phone run out of charge. If the police ever found the tiniest piece of evidence in relation to Tommy’s disappearance, I wanted to know in that instant.
I calmed myself. I was just a fifteen-minute walk away from my house. I’d call Trent Gilroy when I returned home and see if there was any news.
Pretending to keep reading my blank phone screen, I looked up every few seconds.
Was anyone else only pretending to look at their device, like I was? Was the person a man or a woman? Then another thought: did they work here?
My coffee went lukewarm, and I headed across the café to order a plain coffee. I studied the faces of the staff behind the counter. Was anyone purposely looking away from me? No, the letter-writer couldn’t be someone who worked here because none of them could have left behind the scent of only one type of coffee.
Not knowing what else to do, I headed back through the café.
A three-quarter wall divided the café in two, running about a third of the length of the cafe, covered in framed paintings. A large noticeboard occupied the middle of one side of the wall, littered with flyers and handwritten notes.
The noticeboard caught my eye. Large lettering on one of the notes asked, WHERE IS HE?
My throat tightened at the question. Probably a missing dog. But still, I stepped towards the board like a moth towards a flame.
My eyes swept the notices and pamphlets about lost pets, book club meetings, mother-and-baby groups, vaginas-as-flowers painting classes, men-after-divorce groups, and psychic readings. (Something for everyone.)
I sipped the coffee, making a show of looking interested in the notices. Again, my gaze was drawn to the question that asked, where is he? There was nothing to explain the message. The note it was written on was too small to say anything more. Was it someone just putting a message out to the universe? A lament for a husband who’d run off with a work colleague maybe?
The message was typewritten, on an envelope-sized note. Blue.
A chill sped along my back.
Setting my coffee down on a nearby table, I stripped the note from the board. It was an envelope. The same kind of envelope as the one from my mailbox. I no longer cared if anyone was watching me. I was going to open this.
Now.
My heart felt as though it were locking up as I tore the envelope open and took out the letter:
Little Boy Blue
Why don’t you grieve
for the mother you leave
and the life you knew?
I couldn’t control the tremors that passed through my arms.
A second letter.
Another cryptic message.
This person was trying to turn my mind inside out.
How did they know I’d find this letter here?
What were they trying to do to me?
Other, deeper thoughts slipped through: Tommy didn’t cry for me after he was taken? He didn’t grieve me like I grieved him? Did he forget me straight away?
Pain speared deep inside my chest.
Wait . . .
The only person who could possibly know that Tommy didn’t remember me was the person who took him. This was proof that the letters were from the abductor.
Wait . . .
This was proof that Tommy was alive. The letter was written as though it was something that was happening now. Not at the time of the abduction. Tommy was starting to forget me and his old life now.
I whirled around.
The abductor wanted to see my suffering first hand.
Well, here I am. See my suffering.
People caught my eye and quickly looked away. My breaths were shallow, too quick.
Who are you?
Who are you?
Who are you?
I pushed the envelope and letter into my pocket, remembering too late I wasn’t meant to touch the stationery.
Ten minutes later, I was walking into Detective Gilroy’s office for the second time that morning.
His dark eyes showed a faint look of bewilderment as he looked up from his paperwork. “I’m afraid I don’t have anything much to tell you. We didn’t get any fingerprints. I called your husband and told him as much.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“It isn’t?”
“I found another letter. At the Southern Sails Café.”
“You found a second letter? There? How—?”
“It was pinned to the noticeboard, with a message on the front of the envelope. They wanted to get my attention . . . and it worked.”
“So, you stopped off for a coffee after leaving here?”
“Not exactly. I got all the way home, and then I remembered something. The letter I gave you had the scent of coffee on it. Caramel mochaccino. I knew where that smell had come from. So I went there.”
“I know the café. Where’s the letter? Is it still there?”
“It’s here.” Carefully, I slid the crumpled letter and envelope from my jeans pocket and smoothed them both out.
“You’ve already held them, so just put them down on the desk,” he instructed. “I won’t touch them.” I sensed a reprimanding tone in his voice.
He moved from his desk to walk around to the letter, expelling a long breath of air as he read the message on the envelope and the letter. “It certainly seems to be from the same person.”
My hands curled into fists on my lap. “If they’re saying that Tommy doesn’t remember me, then that means that he’s alive . . . right?”
The words that had sounded feasible inside my head sounded like a fairy tale when they left my lips. Like I was asking if an evil wizard might be keeping Tommy in a tower. And by the cloud that entered the detective’s eyes, I knew he wasn’t buying into the fairy tale.
“We still can’t say for sure that this is the person who took Tommy,” he told me noncommittally.
“But you can’t say that it isn’t.”
“No. But I’ll be honest, Phoebe.” Leaning his hip against the desk, he folded his arms. “The odds of the actual kidnapper contacting you are very, very low. After you left, I spent some time looking up child kidnapping cases. Just to see if there’s something I’m missing. I didn’t find any instance of this happening before. Look, we’ll certainly cover all bases. How about we start with the most likely scenario? There could be someone who wants to cause you emotional pain. Is there anyone in your life at the moment that you’re having issues with?”
“No.
I barely see anyone. Apart from Nan. And Luke’s parents on occasion.”
“What about in the past few years? These could be small issues that seem tiny to you . . .” He trailed off, looking at me expectantly, like I was going to produce some obscure person from out of my hat. “Hang on, didn’t you have a problem with a neighbour at some point? Bernice, wasn’t it?”
“Bernice Wick, yes.”
“Okay. It might help if you tell me what the grudge was all about.”
I twisted my fingers together. I couldn’t tell him what happened back then. He was the police. I couldn’t tell the police. I couldn’t tell them what Bernice Wick had done at house number 29, not even after all this time. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Could give us some insight.”
“It was just kids’ stuff. I don’t really remember what it was all about.”
“Okay, well, remember that these letters could be from someone you don’t expect. Think on it overnight. Someone’s name might come to you. Just write their name down so you don’t forget.”
“I will.” I took a breath. “But I just need to know . . . that you’ll be treating this seriously.”
“Absolutely. I assure you it has priority. The first thing we’ll do is put your house and the café under surveillance. If this person is planning any more of these notes, we’ll catch them. If not, we still might notice some unusual activity. We’ll also contact the shop owners to see if they have any surveillance footage, to see if we can find out who pinned the envelope. And I’ll send this note off to the lab.” He paused. “You say the original letter smelled of caramel macchiato?”
“Mochaccino. Yes.”
“Okay, I didn’t notice any scent. I’ll check that with the lab.”
“Thank you.” I nodded, closing my eyes briefly, relieved that he was going to investigate this properly. Things were going to happen.
He was staring at me fixedly when I opened my eyes again. “Phoebe, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look really beat.”