“Wait at home. That’s best.”
“She’s off somewhere doing her own thing. Isn’t she?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t really think she’s in trouble.”
“Nah.”
But Emily’s mind was off in a heartbeat, imagining all sorts of trouble at the mere mention of the word.
“Em?” Brian asked softly.
Her eyes flew to his. She wrapped her arms around her middle and propped her upper body on them. “I’m okay.”
“Sure?”
She nodded. When Brian asked Celeste for a recent picture of Dawn, she said, “I have one on the cork-board in my kitchen.”
Brian looked at his pad, frowned, then, diplomatically, asked Celeste, “If her roommate is right and the closet at the dorm is intact, and if she’s been running around somewhere for three days now, what might she be wearing?”
“When I dropped her back on Sunday night, she had on jeans and two sweaters, layered, with flats, but she had a dufflebag full of clean things. She could have put any of them on—the short skirt she was wearing at the Davies’s, the shirts and vests, the black stirrups, the Doc Martens.”
Brian made the appropriate notations, then dropped his pen on the pad and rose. “Let’s assume she’s gone of her own volition. If we continue to strike out tomorrow, we’ll rethink things.”
Emily walked Celeste to her car. “Dawn will be fine,” she said in an attempt to be encouraging.
But Celeste was past encouragement, into fury. “No, she won’t. She’s in deep shit. She’ll catch hell for this one, Emily. That’s a promise.”
Emily supposed that anger was easier to bear than the awful thoughts that kept flitting through her mind, fragmented images of bits of clothing, of Susan Demery’s finger, of Daniel’s empty car seat.
Brian was just hanging up the phone when she returned.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“The campus police. I want them to know I’m on the case.”
“You asked them to search the campus, didn’t you?”
He folded her in his arms. With her head pressed to his chest, things didn’t look quite so bleak. “It doesn’t hurt to cover the bases,” his voice said. “Not that I’m expecting a problem. I’m really not, Emily. This isn’t the case of a two-year-old who can’t talk or fight or recognize danger when he confronts it, and it isn’t the case of an eighteen-year-old heiress. There are lots of credible reasons why Dawn isn’t where she’s supposed to be.” He turned his wrist to see his watch. “It’s after ten. Think Myra’s asleep?”
“Her light’s still on.” Emily had made a point of noticing, because therein lay another immediate source of worry. “Why?”
“Think she’d come over and sit with Julia while we run down to the station?”
“I’ll stay with Julia.” It was a safer idea.
“But I want you with me,” he said. Beautifully intense silver eyes drove home his earnestness. “You know Dawn. You know how investigations work. I want you helping.”
“Helping, as opposed to sitting here, growing depressed.”
“That, too, and I won’t apologize for it. Will Myra stay? Julia is sound asleep. She’ll sleep through ’til morning, not that we’ll be nearly that long. An hour, maybe two. Can she handle it?”
“Yes. I think. She’s been subdued lately. Listless. Her family is thinking of forceably moving her, if she won’t move to a nursing home herself.”
“They’d actually go to court?”
“No. They’ll just sell the house, pack everything up, and move her. They won’t win in court. When she wants to be, she’s fully lucid.”
Brian released her with a squeeze. “I’ll go get her.”
It was a full ten minutes before he returned, and Emily could see why. Myra was moving slowly, seeming to lack the strength that she’d had several weeks before.
“Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?” Emily asked.
“I don’t sleep lately anyway,” Myra said and allowed her coat to be slipped from her arms. “The detective says your friend can’t find her daughter.”
“Dawn. That’s right. But she’s probably off with friends.”
“I’ve written the number of the station over there by the phone,” Brian told Myra. “If there’s any problem, call us. Better still, I’ll call you. I’ll let you know what’s happening.” He moved toward the door.
Emily moved with him. “If Julia wakes up, check for the rabbit. It falls out of the crib sometimes.”
“Help yourself to food and drink.”
“If you can’t find Brian’s number, dial nine-one-one.”
“The furnace clangs twice when it fires up. Don’t be alarmed.”
Myra followed them to the top of the stairs. Glancing back every few steps, Emily felt a twinge of uneasiness. Then the door closed, and they were on their way.
• • •
Brian put out Dawn’s description over the Boston area network, putting sixty different departments in Massachusetts, plus the state police, on the lookout. He faxed her photograph to the same departments. The reproduction wouldn’t be great. But five-five, one-twenty, eighteen-year-old blonds weren’t unique. Something was better than nothing. He could improve on it if she remained at large for long.
On his way to the computer, he called Myra. It took five rings and several weeks off his life before she answered. “How’s my Julia?” he asked on a deliberately light note.
“Did you find the girl?”
“No. We won’t find her tonight. I’m just establishing the basis for a search. Is Julia all right?”
“She’s fine. I keep peeking in. She hasn’t woken up.”
There was a lift to her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. Brian found it a comfort. “Ahhh,” he said. “Good.”
“Where are you looking?”
“Locally. We don’t think she’s gone far.”
“You have to look under the willow.”
He might have known it would come, and while he was uncomfortable with Myra talking nonsense at the same time that she babysat Julia, he did believe she was harmless. So, appeasingly, he said, “Well, that’s an idea for tomorrow. Can’t see much in the dark. Call me, now, if Julia gives you trouble.”
“She won’t,” Myra said.
“How is she?” Emily asked when he hung up the phone.
“Julia? Sleeping. Myra? Awake and aware.” Actually, quite jaunty, in that last parting note.
His confidence in Julia’s safety restored for the time being, he plugged CARTER DEMMING into the computer.
Emily was at his shoulder. “You didn’t like him, huh?”
“I liked him okay. But she doesn’t know him real well, and he and Dawn were nearly as chummy as he and Celeste at the Davies’s that day. I keep asking myself if it’s pure coincidence that they left Celeste’s one after the other last Sunday.”
“But Celeste dropped Dawn at school herself. She watched her walk into that dorm.”
His eyes were busy on the screen while he talked. “Then she came back home, spent less than an hour with Carter, and kissed him goodbye. He drove off. She didn’t see where he went.”
“You’re thinking he may have circled back and picked up Dawn.”
“Can’t rule it out.”
“Would he have harmed her?”
He couldn’t rule that out, either. He had known some Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes in his day. But he didn’t want to alarm Emily unnecessarily, and he really didn’t think Carter was manic. “I just think the two of them may have decided to play around a little.”
“But if he’s in Paris now, wouldn’t she be back at school?”
“Do we know for sure he’s in Paris?” He hit escape with a twack. “He doesn’t have a criminal record, at least, not in Massachusetts.” He hooked into the federal system, but found no sign of Carter there, either. Nor when he plugged into individual state police files for the entire New England and Midatlantic
regions.
He had a thought, but it was a while and several phone calls before he had what he needed to gain computer access to the files he wanted.
“Taxpayers?” Emily asked when the list came up.
“Real Estate. Celeste said he lived in Cambridge.” He scrolled through the alphabetical listing until he reached the ds, then the des, then the demms. “If he does, he doesn’t own the place, at least not under his own name.”
“I don’t like this, Brian.”
He reached for the phone and called information. “For Cambridge. I’d like a listing for Demming, that’s D as in David, first name Carter.” He waited.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I have no such listing.”
“Is there an unlisted number under that name?”
“No.”
He hung up. “Something stinks.”
“We warned her when she placed that ad,” Emily cried, “but she was determined. She said she could sort out the good ones from the bad.”
Brian sensed her growing upset. “Don’t assume the worst. He may be more shady than bad. Dawn may be perfectly fine.”
“Should we call Celeste now?”
“Nah. Won’t do any good. Come morning, she’ll try to track Carter down. We’ll see if she has any luck.” He reached for the phone and called home. “Hey, Myra. How’s it going?”
“Did you find her?”
“No. Really, we won’t have a chance of that until morning.”
“Well, that’s good. Then you’ll look under the willow.”
“I told you I would. How’s my little girl?”
“She’s such a sweet little thing, sleeping so soundly. I was just standing there looking at her, and she turned over and made the cutest little sucking sounds, like she was drinking from a bottle. She still drinks from one, doesn’t she? I could give her milk, if she wakes up. I did it before, do you remember, the time she was sleeping in the car when you got home, and you didn’t want to wake her up, so you left her there, and I sat with her. She’s just a darling little girl. I almost wish she would wake up so that I could play with her. But I won’t wake her. No, I won’t do that. You will look under the willow tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Sure will, Myra. Give us another twenty minutes?”
“Take your time. Take as long as you want. I don’t think I could sleep anyway if I had to go home now. This is too exciting. No, I couldn’t sleep. You do everything you have to do there. And keep Emily with you. If I know her, she’s thinking she has to run back here so that I can go to bed, but you tell her what I just told you. I’m not tired at all. I’ll stay here all night and into tomorrow, if you need. Take your time, detective. Please. You’re a good man. Take your time.”
Emily sat cross-legged on top of the covers. Beneath them, from the waist down, was Brian. His head was propped on the pillows, his body, like hers, shower-damp. Their fingers touched, quiet, soft.
He gave hers a squeeze.
She smiled.
“We’ll find her,” he whispered.
She nodded. She brought his hand to her lap, measured her fingers against his, stroked his palm.
He said, “I hate it that you have to relive this again.”
Her smiled was crooked. “It’s my fate in life, I think.” The smile faded, because none of those other cases—no, not even Dawn—meant to her what Daniel did, and Daniel’s case was the one that wouldn’t be solved. “Has Doug called you?”
“Me? No.”
“He threatened to. He said he wanted to ask you about Daniel. After all this time, he wants to know what happened to him.”
“It’s hard, not knowing.”
Emily knew that. Oh, she did. “That’s why I tell myself that he’s gone.” She studied Brian’s arm, tawny hair on a roping of flesh. She brushed the hair one way, then the other. “What if Doug calls you? What would you do?”
“About Daniel?”
“Would you reactivate the case?”
He was so quiet that she raised her eyes to his face. The angst there made her heart pound. “I did it,” he said without pride. “I took the case apart and studied everything that wasn’t studied the first time around. I haven’t come up with a clue, Em.”
Her breath came out in a shaky wisp.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to do it for you.”
She nodded. She should have known he would try.
His fingers circled hers, then carried her hand to his chest and anchored it there. “If I could do anything I wanted, anything at all, I’d take you someplace where you wouldn’t have to stare that pain in the face all the time.”
“Pain is part of life,” she said. “So is loss. The better the life, the greater the pain of the loss. Daniel was special.” She looked up at the window over the bed. The moon was there, in the woods, rimming leafless trees with silver tracings, as delicate as they were eerie, almost surreal. “He’s out there,” she whispered with a sudden fierce yearning. “Dead or alive, he’s out there, and maybe I want to know, too. Maybe then there wouldn’t be the pain.”
Brian kissed her fingers and returned them to his chest.
“I thought I had come to terms with him, really I had, but he’s suddenly coming back. Why now?” But she knew. Jill’s leaving home had set off a chain reaction of emotional happenings that had led Emily to a fork in the road. Daniel was there, unfinished business from the road behind her, standing in the way of the road she wanted to take. “I’m locked in here, Brian. I want to grow, but I can’t, because things that happened nineteen years ago are holding me back. Nineteen years. I should be past it. Something’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you. You just love long and hard.”
“It’s a curse.”
“No, a strength.”
“I don’t feel strong.”
“You are. You’re one of the strongest women I know.”
“So, why does it hurt so much?”
It didn’t take more than a tiny tug to bring her forward. Lying across him, she put her cheek to his shoulder. Her hands found a needed warmth between their bodies.
He didn’t speak, didn’t try to explain things for which there weren’t good explanations. He didn’t offer platitudes or pollute the night with diversionary talk. He simply held her, allowing her to feel the pain that she had suppressed too often, and she let it go, let it go in great gasps and keening wails that were the soul-deep expression of a mother’s worst fears and most dreaded grief.
Drained then, finally, she slept.
twenty-four
BRIAN WAS PUTTING JULIA INTO HER CAR SEAT the next morning when Myra scurried across the cul-de-sac. Her eyes were bright, her voice a breathless flutter carrying easily into the car. “I’ve been counting the minutes since dawn. Will you come now?”
It was barely seven, earlier than Brian usually left, but he wanted to get Julia settled in at Janice’s, pick up coffee at Nell’s, and hit the station in time to work with the computer before he went to Celeste’s.
“This isn’t the best time,” he said and fastened Julia in.
“But you promised,” Myra said.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You haven’t found the girl, have you?”
“Not yet.”
“Then you have to come look in my yard!”
He backed out of the car and closed the door. “First things first. Now, the station. Later, the yard.” He took Myra gently by the arm and walked her down the driveway. “Besides, it’s freezing. There’s no need to look under the willow until it warms up a bit.”
“Good Lord, you can’t wait until spring, if she’s missing now!”
“Not until spring,” he guided her toward her house, “just until later this morning, maybe noonish. It’ll be warmer once the sun breaks through.”
“What if it doesn’t break through?”
“Then I’ll look anyway. Give me a few hours. I promise, I’ll be back.”
“But what if you find her first?” Myra
asked with such horror that Brian had to wonder if her obsession hadn’t gone bad.
He opened her door and saw her inside. Then he gave her his strongest, most reassuring look. “I’ll be back. I’ll go out to the willow with you, whether we find Dawn or not. But I can’t do it unless you stay warm. Will you stay inside here until I get back?”
Myra looked up at him without blinking. Slowly, obediently, she nodded.
It struck Brian that his own mother wasn’t much younger than Myra, that she could deteriorate in the future, that he might have to grapple, as Myra’s children were doing, with painful decisions.
Saddened, he put a gentle kiss on Myra’s brow, before closing her door and heading back across the street.
Celeste started calling Carter’s office at eight the next morning. Carter often called her that early from there, and he wasn’t working alone. More than once he had put her on hold while he gave instructions to one of his people.
Today no one answered the phone. She tried every five minutes, pacing between calls, impatient beyond belief, wanting things cleared up. It was bad enough that she didn’t know where her daughter was, but the shadow that Brian and Emily cast over Carter made things worse. She couldn’t believe that he was anything but wonderful, she just couldn’t.
Shortly before eight-thirty, Kay breezed through her door. “I just heard about Dawn! Why didn’t you call me last night?”
“There didn’t seem any point. I had already talked with Marilee, and she didn’t know anything. I’m very confused, Kay. Is Dawn off somewhere, pulling a Dawn? Or am I supposed to worry?”
“Have you reached Carter?”
Celeste grew wary. “How did you know I was trying?”
“Brian stopped by. He’ll be over in a little while. He had to do a few things at the station. Did you reach him?”
Celeste knew what Brian was thinking, but he was dead wrong. She intended to prove it. “No one’s at his office yet. Someone should be in by nine.”
“Carter told you he was going to Paris?”
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