Eileen grabbed my hand.
“Don’t go!” she said, urgently. “Stay with me. Please.”
No one had cut Mom’s toenails. I could see the yellow nubs poking from the end of her mules. Fearing that this might be the case, I had come armed.
Cutting your own parent’s toenails is not a pleasant task. I gripped her sole tightly and forced the metal blades of a pair of scissors onto the calcified horn. Her skin was thin as parchment and cold as ice.
When I was younger, Mom used to sit me on the edge of the bath, wrapped in a towel, and she would take each of my piggies in turn and clip the nail. It would be a game, and she would make the piggies talk to each other – each with a different voice - and I would squeal along with them, my laughter echoing around the steaming bathroom.
Back in pre-school, life was simple. I even had a best friend – Bree Jordan. Yes, that Bree. She had a big house where I’d go and play, and Mom would pick me up in her Daewoo. I’d be embarrassed about the car, because it was so crappy compared to Bree’s Lexus. That was when Eileen could still drive and we could afford a car. Back when Brianna Jordan wasn’t a complete bitch.
Once I’d started on Mom’s makeover, there was no stopping me. I took her to the bathroom and washed her hair. None of the nurses tried to stop me, relieved that they had one less chore to accomplish. We were back in the warm steam of my childhood, the citrus smell of Mom’s favourite shampoo filling the air.
“Close your eyes and relax,” I told her.
“Relax,” she repeated, sitting on the floor and resting her shoulders against the side of the bath. I took her head in my hand and gently lowered it so that I could wet her hair with the shower.
“Not too hot?” I asked.
With eyes closed, she shook her head. There was a smile there, I think. A look of contentment, as I slowly rubbed in the citrus shampoo. She purred like a cat.
Here’s the paradox of my relationship: I only saw my mother when she was not looking at me. In those rare moments, I could gaze on her face and see the woman who had given birth to me. A strong face - intelligent and proud.
She trusted me like a child, and was just as innocent. Not as affectionate, that is true, but she was as much in need of protection as any youngster.
If I went to college, I would be abandoning her.
Chapter 32
Mr Dinkel sent a postcard from Boca Raton, Florida. I stuck it above the Gaggia machine, because the picture of sunshine let me forget about the blast of cold that accompanied each customer through the door. Mr Dinkel was not one for small talk, and on the back there were no details of the holiday, or of Mrs Dinkel. Instead, in his meticulous handwriting, were instructions on how to clean the oven, which wire brush to use and which brand of cleaning fluid. He ended on an upbeat note by telling us that there was no income tax in Florida.
“Perhaps he’ll stay down there,” mumbled Sol hopefully.
He could hardly believe that Mr Dinkel had relinquished his grip on the bakery. And yet here he was, with me and Moy, like lunatics in charge of the asylum. Every evening, Mr Dinkel’s sister, Doris, came to balance the till. She had none of her brother’s congeniality, and strutted about the kitchen raising her voice in complaint if she spotted the slightest speck of dirt. When I caught her glowering at the postcard, I guessed that her ill humour came from being denied the same escape route her brother had taken. Doris only cheered up on a Friday, when she paid herself a wage before bagging up the takings and depositing them with the Village Bank.
Working front of house, there was no avoiding Mike. I knew that sooner or later he would track me down. I saw the Prius glide to a halt on the compacted ice outside.
I was about to bolt for the back room when Moyheddin grabbed my arm.
“You gotta face him,” he said.
It was too late to run. The bell jangled as the door swung open, and Mike walked in. If some of that Arctic chill accompanied him I didn’t feel it because my face was on fire.
“Hi Scout,” he said, walking past the booths. It was the lunch rush, though for Dinkel’s that meant ten customers. There was no radio because Mr Dinkel was a purist, and so everyone could hear every word of everyone else’s conversation.
It wasn’t exactly the place to confront someone you had been avoiding.
“Hi Scout,” he said, his face working through emotions that I couldn’t quite read. “You well?”
“I’m fine. What’ll it be?”
“Salt beef.”
“On a bagel?”
“Three please.”
Moyheddin got to work, his hand in one of those disposable plastic gloves. It made a crinkling noise as he sawed away at the bread.
“With mustard, please,” said Mike.
“And to drink?” I asked him. “Will you have a coffee?”
He wanted hot chocolate, and I was glad of the excuse to turn away and steam the milk. Moyheddin nudged me in the kidneys as he passed behind.
“Ain’t seen you around much,” said Mike.
“Been busy.”
“Uh-huh. How’s that going? You speak to that attorney?”
The milk frothed in the jug.
“It’s gonna cost me fifteen hundred dollars,” I said, stirring in the chocolate syrup. “She doesn’t reckon there’ll be a hearing before the holiday.”
“That’s too bad.”
I slapped the cup down on the counter in front of him.
“You want cream on that?” I asked.
He didn’t. What was the point of hot chocolate without cream? The contrast between the scorching chocolate and the cold foam of the cream was what made it so special. Mike was in training, so it was low-cal all the way.
What did I care?
I snapped on a plastic lid. At Dinkel’s we do that for you, even if you’ve been a rat.
Mike leant across the counter.
“I just wondered if you wanted to do a training session this weekend? I thought we were getting somewhere.”
“I can’t train in the snow.”
“Right. So – the snow, what does it do? Obscures the trail? Makes it impossible – like a Faraday cage?”
“I haven’t really thought about it, Mike. It’s kind of the last thing on my mind right now.”
“And ‘haven’t really’ means that you have thought about training but have decided not to bother?”
“No. It means that I haven’t thought about it. At all.”
“Okay, okay,” he backed off as if stung.
Mike knew that I could follow his every move, so he should have suspected that I’d seen him in the plutonium Beetle with the equally toxic Brianna. But he must have been simpler than I gave him credit for, because the emotion he left in his wake was not of guilt but of hurt.
I know, because I checked it out later.
I followed Mike’s trail out of the bagel bakery and onto the avenue. Even if I had not been able to see the tracks where the Prius crushed the grey ice, I could sense Mike’s presence in the cold air.
Sat in the car, he’d hesitated. He wasn’t angry, which was disappointing. I’d wanted to make him angry. But Mike had sat there, locked in indecision. I’d hurt him, and he couldn’t understand why.
Mike was confused because he didn’t realise he was guilty of anything. ‘Woody’, the star of the varsity soccer team, could never be wrong. Jocks played girls off against each other, and we fell for it. That was the natural state of affairs for ‘Woody’, and he didn’t understand the result of toying with my feelings.
It was hunger that won in the end.
It’s always the same with teenage boys.
Mike dismissed me from his mind, slipped the hybrid into ‘drive’ and headed for Main Street. I could see the Christmas lights twinkling at the intersection.
He’d driven back to the club
room, to josh with the guys and eat his bagels.
I hoped he’d choke on them.
Chapter 33
That night it started snowing again. From the kitchen I could see into the carport where Moyheddin had parked his bike. Snow flurries caked the thin wheels. I knew I should bring it inside, but I stood by the window, watching the bike slowly lose its shape.
I should have been out in the storm, helping the police find Marcus, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything anymore.
I told you that teenagers are selfish.
*
At 4am I stood in the warm embrace of the kitchen. It was Sol’s first day as pastry chef.
“I’ve been practising at home,” he said, rolling pastry until it was paper-thin, layering it with butter, and then folding. “Had to get the method off the internet.”
“I wouldn’t trust everything on the internet, Sol. You sure this isn’t going to explode?”
“Not with this much butter.”
The only damage from this pastry would be to the lining of your arteries. Sol layered the butter, and then layered some more. I roasted the coffee and watched his skilled hands tear off the finished dough and roll it into crescents.
All three of us peered through the smoked glass of the oven as the pastries turned into golden new moons.
“They’re Muslim, eh?” asked Moyheddin.
“Whaddya mean?” asked Sol, the Star of David hanging from a chain around his neck.
“The crescent is a symbol of the Islamic faith.”
“Are you allowed to eat it?” asked Sol.
“Does it contain pork?”
“C’mon! Think about it.”
“Then I don’t see why not.”
When Sol opened the oven, the aroma of French patisserie filled the kitchen. Sol scooped a croissant from the tray and held it out to me.
“You first.”
It was so hot that I had to hold it with a towel. The croissant broke in half, the insides a soft network of buttery yellow. Crisp, but not flaky. I let it melt in my mouth.
“Well?” asked Sol.
Moyheddin and Sol gazed at me expectantly.
“You’re going to make Mr Dinkel a fortune.”
*
Sol’s pastries sold out before the breakfast rush was over. I told him to stay on and make more for the Grace Street Moms. But that morning, no parents appeared. The bakery fell quiet at nine o’clock and remained so until lunch. At mid-morning recess there was no cacophony of screaming children, even though there was fresh snow and the sun shone from a clear blue sky.
Maybe it’s an institute day? I wondered. We sat on the stoop, and Moy proudly told me how Riley had landed a job in the mail room at Condé Nast – a foothold, of sorts, in the fashion business.
“It’s not The Devil Wears Prada, but it’s not a bad start,” he said. I imagined that with his muscles and good looks, Riley would go far in the fashion business.
I spent the empty minutes lining up Sol’s croissants in the glass case. But lunchtimers don’t want fancy pastry – they want bagels. It looked like the three of us would be taking croissants home for supper.
By two in the afternoon, Dinkel’s was deserted.
“Maybe we should close up early?” suggested Moy.
“Are you kidding?” I replied. “Mr Dinkel hasn’t closed early for fifty years!”
It wasn’t until the police cruiser pulled up that it all fell into place. Late afternoon sunlight slanted into the windows, but Molly was in too much of a hurry to notice how beautiful it was.
“I’ve been calling you.”
“I’ve been busy.”
She looked at me sharply, as if she didn’t know me. As if she doubted me.
“This isn’t about Mike,” she snapped. “I don’t know what’s happened between you two, and I’m not going to get into it. Not my business. But don’t you know what’s been going on at Grace Street?”
Everything sank, not just my heart. My soul shrivelled. I’d been too self-absorbed to notice the signs.
“What is it?” I asked, though I already knew.
“A boy went missing last night. Snatched from the schoolyard.”
Chapter 34
Twenty-four hours. That was the golden time after a child had been taken, and I’d let it slip through my fingers as if it were dust.
His name was Daniel Taber, and he was six years old.
Grace Street Elementary gave way to a larger field, where the children often played after school. There was a slight dip in the ground, not exactly a hill, but in this prairie country any opportunity to ride a toboggan was seized upon. Grace Streeters called it Hickory Hill, for no other reason than it alliterated. I once slid down it, with Bree Jordan riding behind me.
Hickory Hill was sealed with police tape. The ground was churned by the passage of feet and vehicles. The slope itself was scarred with a thousand grooves. But fresh snow had fallen, covering the ruts, the footprints and any traces of the boy.
The search had spread out from the school to the streets beyond. Patrol cars were strung in a line along the road, and the local TV station had sent its truck. As we drove past, I saw the reporter from ‘WXRK-TV’ recording a piece to camera.
*
We stood at the top of the hill on duckboards placed by the forensic team so as not to trample evidence. They’d arrived too late.
“It was a mess,” said Molly. “First the parents and teachers mounted a search, and all the while kids were sliding down the hill. By the time they called us, it had started snowing, and it was dark. Local moms and dads were trying to help. They meant well, but they’d compromised the scene. K-9 got nothing.”
When I blew out my breath, it hung in the air.
“You want me to take your shoes?” asked Molly.
“No need,” I said. “Not anymore.”
It was exciting. But it’s not what you think. I wasn’t thrilled to be working with the police. In fact, I felt self-conscious and stupid, afraid that I would disappoint Molly. The adrenalin that pumped through my veins was the excitement of the children.
I was feeling what they felt.
In my head, I heard their shrieks of laughter from the previous afternoon.
There wasn’t anything bad at the top of the hill. It was all fun. There was a residue of mad excitement, an explosion of release. The children had been cooped up since lunch, staring out the windows at the white-coated field, watching the flakes drift down. And fresh snow made the best tobogganing.
Molly followed as I crunched my way down the hill. I leant into the slope so that I could trail my hand in the soft powder. The expectant buzz that clustered at the top of the hill was now replaced by a great open-mouthed scream of another emotion:
Fear!
It was so strong that I stumbled.
“What is it?” Molly asked.
“Oh, it’s so wonderful,” I said, as the thrill of a hundred plummeting rides coursed through my fingertips. I could feel the children’s terror and excitement. I think I was laughing, which is not really etiquette for a crime scene.
Molly glanced up at the crest of the hill, worried that we might have been spotted.
“Sorry,” I said, pulling myself upright, trying to lose the smile that made my mouth spread from ear to ear.
Molly had brought me here without permission. There had been no time to concoct an explanation for the captain, and if she had told the truth she wouldn’t have been believed.
“Oh shit,” she said.
The bright light on top of a TV camera popped into view. We had been discovered by ‘WXRK’.
Molly hurried me down to the base of the hill, where the tracks from the speeding sleds petered out and the air was full of the relief of the children who had reached safety. The ground thrummed wit
h the joy of being alive. I could feel the children’s impatience as they hurried back to the top where they would start it all again.
The cameraman and the reporter trudged towards us, keeping wide of the police tape.
“I won’t be able to hold them off for long,” Molly said. “They’ll kick up a fuss, and pretty soon they’ll be down here and in your face.”
“I can handle it,” I said.
“I know you can, sweetie. It’s me I’m worried about. I hate that reporter. She’s been after me ever since we found Skyler Franklin.”
I turned my back on the camera crew and made a wide circle around the bottom of Hickory Hill. This was perhaps the worst of locations for tracing a single voice. Too many children had been here, and the noise of their passing filled my head. It was like listening to an orchestra tuning up, the high strings of excitement clashing with the deep bass of disappointment as parents dragged their children home.
Molly waded through the snow to intercept the reporter from ‘WXRK’, whilst I stood at the base of the hill. If I had been here the day before I would have seen the faces of the youngsters speeding towards me, their mouths stretched wide in a never-ending scream.
And that is when I stumbled upon the most unpleasant discovery. I imagined that I would find Daniel’s trail. I knew that he would be scared, but I was willing to experience his fear if it meant that I could save him.
But it wasn’t the boy’s trail that I found. It was that of the man who had abducted him.
By chance, or maybe steered by that unconscious ability of mine, I found myself at the exact spot where he had come to stalk his prey. And it was a ‘he’, for a man had stood here, selecting his victim as you would a ripe piece of fruit at the stall.
I tasted his appetite, and his excitement. There was heaviness in his loins, which made me want to crawl out of my skin.
I had never expected this!
His emotions were so strong that I could not help but latch on to them.
I wanted to yell to Molly to drag me away, to save me from drowning, but she was talking to the TV crew. For the boy’s sake, I had to continue. I had to allow myself to bathe in the stream of this man’s desires.
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