by Pamela Tracy
The only Jamison daughter not caught in a crucial time of life where weeks and months made a difference was Annie. She’d bypassed college, to her parents’ chagrin, and gone right into the business world. She and her best friend, Rachel, had started their own business, OhSoClean, cleaning houses.
Cathy wanted to hire her; Beth wanted to hide her.
Annie shook her head. “I can’t. Our business is still new. We’re making a profit, but if we have to hire a temporary replacement for me, then we’ll go in the hole. Plus, Jamison Jewelry has shows coming up soon. It’s too late to get a refund and I need the exposure. Besides, I think you’re overreacting just a little. Maybe we could each take a weekend—”
The phone rang.
“She needs more,” Beth insisted.
“I can help with the shows,” Cathy offered. “You can pay me a percentage like you did last time. I’ll just bring my books so I can study during the downtime.”
Annie shook her head. She knew Cathy tried, but it wasn’t a very good option.
The answering machine clicked on. “Yes,” came a raspy, hesitant voice, “I saw your advertisement in the newspaper. I’d like to meet. You see, I’m convinced my husband didn’t die of natural causes, and I can’t find the will. You can call me back at 555-3745.”
Chapter Two
A week later, Annie pulled into her mother’s driveway with two suitcases, her jewelry supplies, and a backpack full of paperwork she’d been meaning to do for OhSoClean. She was temporarily returning to the nest. Mom kept insisting it wasn’t necessary and even spouted the statistic. Nineteen percent of today’s youth return home to live. Well, this bird wasn’t returning home for free rent or free food. This bird was returning home to make sure Mom wasn’t going cuckoo.
Beth had wanted Annie to move back home the same day they’d all visited. Cathy, of course, didn’t see a need at all. And Annie, as usual, decided on the sensible route. She’d cut her hours, drive back and forth from home to work, and in a few weeks everything would be back to normal. Her business partner, Rachel, claimed she didn’t mind shouldering more during the two weeks Annie was part-time. As a matter of fact, she wanted more responsibility.
“You do way too much,” Rachel had said.
Annie had her doubts. Rachel was a good worker and dependable, but she wasn’t organized. She couldn’t do things the way Annie did. Rachel hadn’t grown up with Beth as a big sister. Of course, Rachel had grown up seeing what all three sisters were like. She’d lived five houses away and had been Annie’s best friend since third grade.
Rachel wasn’t tough at all. She felt helpless when employees called in sick, didn’t know how to field complaints, and was too understanding when customer payments came in late or short.
With any luck, two weeks would be enough time. After all, surely Mom just needed company, just needed to know her daughters loved her and wanted to spend time with her. When all was said and done, Annie knew she was the logical choice. Beth would tie Mom up in knots and make things worse. Cathy would probably start dating the laptop guy and want her name added to the business cards.
“Mom!” Annie unlocked the door and entered an eerily quiet kitchen. The air conditioner was off, that was the first clue. The coffeemaker was unplugged, that was the next. And in her mom’s bedroom, a huge empty space in the closet was the biggest clue. Either Mom had had a garage sale, or…
Annie heard the doorbell. “Tell me you’re moving your mother in with you,” Burt said when Annie flung open the door.
“No.”
“She’s not with you?”
Annie felt the first nudge of concern. “Burt, what are you trying to say?”
“That I made a mistake. She left two days ago. One of her friends arrived, they loaded two suitcases into the trunk, and off she went big as you please. I didn’t call because I thought maybe you girls had insisted she come stay with one of you.”
Annie shook her head, a helpless feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. “I’m sure we’ll figure this out. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”
After Burt left, Annie checked her phone. Sure enough, it was on vibrate—she’d forgotten to return it to sound. The message from her mother, left hours ago, said for Annie not to come because Mom was away on business. Annie listened to it twice, hoping for more, but all her mother said was: We actually have a client from out of town. I’ve gone to help him locate some missing items. I should be back, hopefully, within the week. Her mother’s “Don’t worry; I’ll be fine” didn’t help matters at all.
Annie felt her mouth go dry. She couldn’t imagine her mother acting like a detective. What would she be looking for? Where did she go?
Immediately, Annie hit speed-dial and called her mother. The pre-recorded message “I am currently unavailable…. Thank you for calling…” was the only response. Next, Annie sent a text but didn’t get back a response even though she sat on the hard kitchen chair and stared at her phone for five minutes.
Great, just great.
A few hours later, Beth and Cathy arrived. Beth was looking for any hint that Mother might have left behind.
At a glance, there was none.
Then Cathy and Annie got to work calling Mom’s friends—the ones they knew, at least. All were somewhat concerned, but most were not surprised. “She’s been thinking about getting a part-time job,” more than one said. “Good,” another said. “I told her she needed to get away.”
Ten unanswered phone calls to Mom later, the girls started systematically going through the house looking for anything that might tell them where their mother had gone.
“I can’t believe they put their number on a business card and then all we get is an answering machine,” Beth complained. “We’re going to have to search harder. Somewhere, Mom’s left a clue.”
“They’ll call us back,” Cathy soothed.
Cathy wasn’t fooling anybody. Annie had caught Cathy standing in the doorway of their mother’s room with her head bowed, praying. Annie thought about joining in, but her sister had looked so, well, so enveloped that Annie didn’t want to intrude.
And somehow Annie had lost the ability to pray spontaneously. When she tried, she usually only got as far as “help” and “please.”
So far the only hint of their mother’s whereabouts was the word “Max” written on the tablet by the phone. Of course, Max could be the new lawn care man.
“Remember, you’re not cleaning,” Beth reminded Annie more than once. “You’re searching for clues. This isn’t the time to make beds and straighten shoes. And make sure your phone is set to ring.”
“Sometimes it’s when you clean, really clean, that you find the unexpected.”
Beth snorted but didn’t argue. Cathy looked sympathetic. That is, until Beth focused on her. “And there’s no time for getting all melancholy over old pictures of Daddy or the feel of his favorite chair. You’re searching.”
“Mom will call eventually,” Cathy said. “She’s avoiding us right now because she doesn’t want to hear what we have to say.”
Annie shook her head. “That’s not like Mom. She’d never make us worry.”
Cathy disagreed. “She feels strongly about this. We didn’t respond like she hoped. We weren’t encouraging at all.”
“When someone goes missing, the first twenty-four hours are crucial.” Beth probably didn’t realize how much like Mom she sounded.
Beth divided up the house. Annie wound up with the master bedroom. No way would Cathy have made it in this room with its memories and smells.
Dad’s dresser was right inside the door. A family photo sat on top. Next to it was a bowl containing a set of car keys, a few pens, and a pocketknife. All nice and neat, the way Daddy liked.
Dad’s stuff still waiting.
A clothes hamper and a blue chair, both piled with Mom’s clothes, came next. For the first time, Annie thought about the changes in her mother’s life. Mom usually straightened things up immediately.
She might have changed the way she dressed, for now, but she hadn’t gotten rid of her old clothes. Besides the clothes stacked on the chair and hamper, there were two green garbage bags in the back of the closet, stuffed with old T-shirts, jeans, and even some of Mom’s nice church outfits. Funny, Annie hadn’t realized how many clothes her mother had.
Also in the back of the closet were the paintings, almost a dozen, covered with a blanket. Annie didn’t take the time to go through them. They were her mom’s past.
“I thought I wanted to paint,” she said, “but then I discovered I wanted to be a wife and mother.”
Beth had asked, “Why can’t you be both?”
Annie had been little that long ago day and didn’t remember her mother’s answer, just that it apparently hadn’t satisfied Beth.
Mom’s towering stack of books—and, yes, Edgar Allan Poe was in the mix—leaned against a dresser with not one but two working clocks. The biggest had been a gift from Cathy one Christmas. The other had been a wedding gift more than thirty years ago. Jewelry, most of it made by Annie, was scattered across the dresser top as well as receipts and a collection of pens that read ARMCHAIR DETECTIVES: WE FIND LOST THINGS.
Clothes were folded neatly in the drawers.
Last time Annie sat on her mother’s bed rummaging through old papers was when Dad died.
Okay, that was something to discuss with her sisters. It was better to have an armchair detective for a mother than no mother or a really unhappy mother. Annie hesitated. She and her sisters had marched in here like prison guards, intent on making their mother see the error of her ways.
What if they were the ones who were wrong?
Before Annie could take that thought too far, she pulled what looked like a magazine from the drawer of the nightstand by her mother’s bed. It was a newspaper, tabloid layout, very small.
The little newspaper, called the Chieftain, was maybe eighteen pages in all, and the banner on the front proclaimed BONNER SPRINGS, KANSAS. It was full of brief summaries from the town’s politicians, human interest stories, and community announcements: a wedding, some birthdays. The last page contained advertisements. Somebody named Molly was willing to babysit. Another person offered piano lessons. The biggest advertisement, right smack in the middle of the page, highlighted the armchair detectives with a contact number in bold, capital letters.
“Beth! Cathy!”
Before they could answer, the phone rang. “I’ll get it!” Beth yelled. Annie and Cathy made it to the kitchen just as Beth said, “Look, Wendy, we need to know where Mother is. We’re hoping you can help us.”
Beth’s frown let Annie know that whatever Wendy replied wasn’t much help.
“This makes no sense,” Beth finally said. “Why would she go to Sunflower, Kansas?”
Annie held up the newspaper and pointed to the word Kansas. Beth sat down at the kitchen table, clutching the phone tightly, quickly perusing the paper and saying crisply, “We have a newspaper from Bonner Springs. Is that near Sunflower? Did someone there hire her? What was their name? Was it Max? She wrote the name Max on a tablet. How do I find them?”
Judging by the pursed lips and shake of Beth’s head, someone had hired their mother.
“What do you mean you can’t give out the client’s name? She’s our mother. No, no, please don’t hang up.” Beth knew how to work a jury, but she obviously didn’t know how to work an armchair detective.
Annie took the phone and identified herself. Keeping her voice calm, she asked, “Are you sure she went to Sunflower, Kansas, and not Bonner Springs?”
“I really don’t remember,” Wendy said, “but we sent her off two days ago. I can’t believe we have our first case. This is so exciting. Don’t you think?”
“Thanks for giving us the information. It certainly is exciting,” Annie agreed. She doubted Wendy realized that in this case, the Jamison girls didn’t think “exciting” was good. After a few more minutes on the phone, she hung up. Wendy honestly didn’t remember much of anything except the name Sunflower, Kansas.
“No, no way,” Beth said, after reading the ad. “This must be one of those fake newspapers you buy at the mall. My boss has one in his office with his face on the cover of Newsweek. Mom—”
“It looks real to me,” Cathy observed.
“No way, Mom would not go off to the middle of nowhere, especially without letting us know. And, she’d answer her phone!” Beth pulled out her phone. “I’ll find Sunflower, Kansas.”
Annie again tried her Mom’s cell phone. No answer. No surprise.
Stop worrying, she told herself. Half the time, Mom forgot to keep the thing charged. Plus, Mom believed her cell phone was only for emergencies, and on her end, this wasn’t an emergency.
“You’d think since she’s heading off on a business venture, and her associates would need to get a hold of her, she’d answer,” Beth muttered. Then she said, “Got it!” and held up her phone so her sisters could see.
Bonner Springs was there. A place so small it didn’t even rate a decent-sized period on the map, more a micro-dot, a mere nano of a spot. Sunflower didn’t rate a mention. While her sisters looked over her shoulder, Beth googled Sunflower. Again, she could find Bonner Springs, plenty of info about Bonner Springs, but every link to Sunflower came with a Bonner Springs address.
“Could there really be a place so small it’s not on a map?” Cathy asked.
“Bet you’ve never heard of Why, Arizona,” Beth said. “But it exists, just not on many maps. Bonner Springs has plenty of listings, including the sheriff’s number.”
Once she got a hold of someone in law enforcement, she hit the speaker button, and they all listened to Sheriff Steven Webber. He was to the point. No, he couldn’t give any information about Willa Jamison, although he did admit he had no one by that name in his jail. Yes, if he saw Mrs. Jamison, he’d pass on that her daughters were looking for her and that she needed to call them.
Next, Beth placed a call to a church too small to have a secretary but with a friendly minister who answered and informed them that Willa was working for the former minister of the congregation and yes, that man’s name was Max.
“Thank God,” Beth breathed.
The minister wasn’t willing to give out the man’s last name or phone number, nor was he willing to share the reason behind their mom’s “business” venture, but he’d pass on that her daughters were looking for her. The look on Beth’s face said it all. She wanted to throw the phone, yell at the preacher, or at least threaten him with contempt if he didn’t cough up the information. Instead, she asked in a no-nonsense voice, “Where’s the nearest airport?”
“Near is relative, ma’am.” The minister chuckled. “You’ll have to fly into Kansas City International, rent a car, and make the drive. We don’t have an airport.”
Chapter Three
While waiting for the airline to call her plane’s departure, Annie called Rachel to let her know that instead of going part-time for two weeks, she was taking two weeks completely off.
Rachel did what she always did. Offered to pray.
Annie laughed. “I think I’m going to need more than prayer.”
There had once been a time when Annie prayed, but the habit was gone. For the last year, at OhSoClean, instead of praying, Annie just got busy trying to fix whatever needed fixing, soothe whatever needed soothing, and recover whatever needing recovering. Praying took valuable time.
“I’ll pray anyway,” Rachel promised. “And I’ll call my dad and see if he can come into the office and help a bit.”
Rachel’s dad had moved to Casa Grande a year before the girls. He’d raised Rachel after her mother walked out on them when Rachel was just six. In Casa Grande, he’d been responsible for securing their first few clients.
“I appreciate that,” Annie said. “Be sure to pray not only for my mom, but for OhSoClean.”
Then finally, Annie heard her flight called, got on the plane, and spent the flight thinking ab
out what she and her sisters had discovered.
It wasn’t much.
Thanks to Burt Renfro, they knew their mother had left on Friday morning. Wendy saying Willa had been in Kansas for two days confirmed that. None of Willa’s church friends were aware she was leaving, and as she’d not signed up to help prepare communion, help in the nursery, or be a greeter for the month of May, there was nothing for her to cancel. Beth had called the number on the Armchair Detective business card again, wanting to talk to either Alice or laptop guy—what was his name? Something with an L— but it seemed the Armchair Detective Agency appreciated their call, was away on a case, and would return the call as soon as possible.
Beth decided that in order to speak to a “live” armchair detective, she needed to be at the local community college Tuesday evening when their class met.
Annie almost wished she could be there. The instructor wouldn’t know what hit him. Beth might just take over the class.
Annie’s plane finally taxied onto the Kansas City airport runway. She, the sister who rarely took risks and never acted rashly, had booked a last-minute flight. With no time to think twice, she’d taken her two suitcases, her jewelry supplies, and the backpack and made it to the airport on time.
A few hours later, after waiting for her luggage and grabbing something to eat, Annie drove down a dark and lonely Kansas highway.
Time had really gotten away from her.
Annie figured the biggest headache she faced was the GPS system. It made the roads leading to Bonner Springs look like they should be straight. They weren’t. As if realizing the mistake, the GPS began sputtering “recalculating” every few minutes. The roads taunted the GPS. They curved to the right, swayed to the left, and once a lonely cow stood in the road, unperturbed by the honking of Annie’s horn.
The GPS recalculated the cow.
The gas gauge trembled lower as the sun dipped. She had a dozen text messages from Beth. Rachel also called. Seemed two of their clients had cancelled because they only wanted Annie to clean their homes. If they couldn’t have Annie, they’d wait for her return.