by Tami Hoag
“Please, Ms. Rosen, it could be very important. Erin is missing.”
She pretended to be stubborn for a moment, then tipped her head on one side and shrugged. “Sid is a special friend, if you know what I mean. I didn’t get home until Monday. Noon, maybe.”
Ample time for Erin to have packed up her own stuff, or for someone to have done it for her.
“She’s run off with a boy, that’s what,” Eva said, finishing off her smoke and adding it to the heap in the ashtray. “No offense to your family, but she had that look with the tight shirts and the bare belly button.”
This from a seventy-year-old in a bikini.
“What can you tell me about her boyfriend?” I asked. “Do you know what kind of car he drives?”
“Sixty-seven years I lived in Queens. I should know from cars?”
I tried to breathe slowly. Another of my shortcomings as a cop: lack of diplomacy with the general public. “Color? Size? Anything I could give to the police?”
“Black, maybe. Or dark blue. I only saw it the one time, and it was night.”
“What about the boy? What does he look like?”
“What’s with the third degree?” she asked, pretending indignation. “I’m on Law and Order now? You’re Miss District Attorney or something? Is Sam Waterston going to come out of the closet now?”
“I’m just concerned about my niece, Ms. Rosen. I’m afraid something might have happened to her. She didn’t tell anyone she was moving. Her family doesn’t know anything about this boyfriend. How can we be sure she went with him willingly?”
Eva thought about that, her eyes brightening for a second at the possibility of intrigue, then she waved a hand, pretending indifference. “I didn’t get a good look. I heard arguing, I looked through the blinds, I saw the back of a head.”
“Could you tell if he was tall or short? Younger or older?”
She shrugged. “He was average. His back was to me.”
“Have you ever met the man Erin worked for?” I asked.
“What man? I thought she worked for Paris.”
“Don Jade. Middle-aged, on the slight side, very good-looking.”
“Don’t know him. I only know Paris. She’s such a nice person. Always takes the time to ask after my babies. I have to think she doesn’t know Erin ran off, or she would have spoken to me about it.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” I said. “Did you notice anything at all about the boyfriend, Ms. Rosen? Anything.”
Eva Rosen shook her head. “I’m sorry, darling. I would help if I could. I’m a mother too, you know. Do you have children of your own?” she asked, looking suspiciously at my haircut.
“No, I don’t.”
“They drive you crazy with worry. And then there’s the disappointment. It’s a trial.”
“Did you ever hear Erin call the boyfriend by name?” I asked.
She searched her memory. “Maybe. I might have heard her mention a name that night. Yes. It was something like it was from a soap opera. Brad? Tad?”
“Chad?”
“That’s it.”
Chad Seabright.
F orbidden love. I wondered if that Shakespearean story line had contributed to Erin’s defection from the Seabright home. I couldn’t imagine Bruce Seabright would have approved of his son and his stepdaughter dating, regardless of the fact they weren’t blood relatives. And if Bruce didn’t like it, Krystal wouldn’t like it.
I wondered why Molly hadn’t told me about Erin and Chad, why she hadn’t told me about Chad at all. Maybe she believed I would disapprove too. If that was the case, she overestimated me. I didn’t care enough to have an opinion on her sister’s morality. My only interest in Erin’s love life was as motive in her disappearance.
I drove back to the Seabright home. Chad the Invalid was in the driveway, washing his black Toyota pickup. The all-American boy in khakis and a white T-shirt. He glanced up at me through a pair of mirrored Oakley shades as he rinsed the soap off his wheel rims.
“Nice ride,” I said as I walked up the driveway. “Eva Rosen told me about it.”
“Who’s Eva Rosen?”
“Erin’s landlady. She doesn’t miss a trick, old Eva.”
Chad stood up, the hose and the wheels forgotten. “I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Elena Estes. I’m looking for your stepsister.”
“Like I told you this morning, Ms. Estes: I haven’t seen her.”
“That’s funny, because Eva tells me you were in her yard just the other night. She seems to know some pretty interesting things about you,” I said. “About you and Erin.”
He shrugged and shook his head, then added a boyish grin to complete the whole Matt Damon look. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come on, Chad,” I cajoled. “I’ve been around the block a few times. It doesn’t matter to me if you and Erin are involved. A boy fucking his stepsister isn’t going to make me turn a hair.”
He frowned at the accusation.
“That’s why Erin left the house, isn’t it?” I said. “Your father wouldn’t put up with the two of you doing it under his nose.”
“We’re not involved,” he insisted.
“Eva tells me the two of you had a fight the other night in her driveway. What happened, Chad? Did Erin dump you? Let me guess: you weren’t nearly so interesting as a boyfriend once her Mommy and Stepdaddy weren’t watching anymore.”
He looked away from me, trying to decide how to play this. Respond with the truth, with outrage, stick with denial, stay calm? He had chosen the latter tack to start, but my bluntness was beginning to irritate him.
“I’m not sure who you are, ma’am,” he said, still trying to hang on to the false good humor, “but you’re crazy.”
I found a dry patch along the front fender of the pickup, leaned back against it, and crossed my arms. “Who’d she dump you for, Chad? An older man? Her boss, maybe?”
“I don’t know who Erin is seeing,” he said curtly. “And I don’t care.”
He dumped the wash water on the driveway and carried the bucket into the garage. I followed.
“Okay. Maybe I’m way off base. Maybe the fight was about something else altogether,” I offered. “If that hangover you had this morning is anything to go by, you’re a guy who likes to party. From what I’ve heard, Erin might like a wild time. And there she is at the equestrian center, a whole new world of drug dealers and users. Maybe that’s what you fought about in Eva Rosen’s driveway: drugs.”
Chad slammed the bucket onto a shelf where car care products were arranged like a display at Pep Boys. “You’re way out of line, lady.”
“She try to cut you out of a deal, Chad? Is that why you came back later and keyed her car?”
“What’s with you?” he demanded. “Why are you here? Do you have a warrant or something?”
I was standing too close to him. He wanted to back away. “I don’t need a warrant, Chad,” I said quietly, my eyes steady on his. “I’m not that kind of a cop.”
He didn’t know quite what that meant, but it made him nervous. He put his hands on his hips, shuffled his feet, crossed his arms over his chest, looked out at the street.
“Where’s Erin?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”
“Since when? Since Friday? The night you fought with her? The night you keyed her car?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Talk to that fat cow she works with,” he said. “Jill Moron. She’s nuts. Ask her where Erin is. She probably killed her and ate her.”
“How do you know Jill Morone?” I asked. “How would you know anything about the people Erin works with if you haven’t been in touch with Erin?”
He went still and looked out the door.
Gotcha. It was nice to know I still had the touch.
“What did you fight about Friday night, Chad?” I asked again, then waited patiently while he struggled to
decide on an answer.
“I dumped her,” he said, turning toward the shelves again. He selected a white cotton towel from a stack of white cotton towels, all neatly folded. “I don’t need the trouble.”
“Uh-huh. Bullshit. You don’t dump a girl, then come back and key her car. There’s no point if you’re not the dumpee.”
“I didn’t key her car!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“I don’t see you dumping her, Chad. Erin might have been off the hook with Krystal and Bruce because she moved out, but you could still pull your old man’s chain by staying involved with her.”
“You don’t know anything about my family.”
“Don’t I?” I looked around the garage with its place for everything and everything in its place. “Your old man is a tight-ass control freak. His way is the only way. His opinion is the only opinion. Everyone else in the house is there to serve his needs and validate his superiority. How am I doing so far?”
Chad went to his truck in a huff and started trying to towel off the water spots that had already dried on the finish.
“He’ll ride you if you don’t get those spots out, won’t he, Chad?” I said, following him around the truck. “Can’t have spots on the cars. What would the neighbors think? And imagine if they found out about you and Erin. What a disgrace, doing it with your stepsister. It’s practically incest. You really found Dad’s hot button, didn’t you?”
“Lady, you’re pissing me off.”
I didn’t tell him that was the idea. I followed him around the hood to the other side of the truck. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll leave.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know where Erin is, and I don’t give a shit.”
“I bet you’ll give a shit when you’ve got a cop tailing you. Because maybe there’s a drug angle to Erin’s disappearance. I can tell you from experience, there are few things a narc likes better than getting his hooks into a kid with money and connections. And how about when your father gets questioned about your involvement? I guess you might enjoy that—”
He turned on me, hands up, as if I was holding him at gunpoint. “All right! All right. Jesus, you’re something, lady,” he said, shaking his head.
I waited.
“All right,” he said again, letting out a sigh. “Erin and I used to be together. I thought it meant something, but it didn’t mean anything to her. She dumped me. That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s nothing to do with drugs or deals or anything else. That’s it. She dumped me.”
He shrugged and his arms fell back to his sides, limp, the admission taking all the starch out of him. The male ego is a fragile thing at seventeen or seventy.
“Did she give you a reason?” I asked quietly. “I wouldn’t ask,” I added as his tension level came back up. “But something has happened where Erin was working, and now she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought about that for a minute. “She said there was someone else. ‘A man,’ she said. Like I’m twelve or something.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Did she say who?”
“I didn’t ask. I mean, why should I care? I know she had a thing for her boss, but he’s like fifty or something . . .”
“Did she tell you she was going anywhere? Did she say anything about changing jobs or moving?”
He shook his head.
“She never said anything about going to Ocala?”
“Ocala? Why would she go there?”
“Her boss says she quit her job and moved to Ocala to take another.”
“That’s news to me,” he said. “No. She wouldn’t do that. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Thanks for the info.” I pulled a card from my pocket, my phone number scribbled on it. “If you hear from her, would you call this number and leave a message?”
Chad took the card and stared at it.
I went back to my car and sat at the end of the Seabright driveway for a moment. I looked around the neighborhood. Quiet, lovely, expensive; golfers lining up a tee shot beyond the backyard. The American dream.
I thought about the Seabrights. Well-off, successful; neurotic, contentious, seething with secret resentments. The American dream in a fun house mirror.
I parked on the street in front of the school, the soccer moms and me. I would have felt less out of place in a chorus line. Kids began to pour out the doors and head for the buses or the car-pool line.
There was no sign of Krystal Seabright, not that I had expected to see her. It seemed quite clear to me that Molly was just a small person who happened to live in the same house as Krystal. Molly had turned out the way she had turned out by luck or self-preservation or watching A&E. She had probably watched all the drama and rebellion and parental conflict of Erin’s life, and consciously turned in the other direction in order to win approval.
Funny, I thought, Molly Seabright was probably exactly who my little sister would have been, had I had a little sister. My parents had adopted me and called it quits. I was more than enough to handle. Too bad for them. The child learning from my mistakes might have been exactly the daughter they had wanted in the first place.
I got out of the car as I saw Molly come out of the school. She didn’t spot me right away. She walked with her head down, pulling her little black case behind her. Though she was surrounded by other children, she seemed alone, deep in thought. I called out to her as she turned and started down the sidewalk. When she saw me, her face brightened with a carefully tempered expectation.
“Did you find her already?” she asked.
“No, not yet. I’ve spent the day asking a lot of questions. She may be in Ocala,” I said.
Molly shook her head. “She wouldn’t have moved without telling me, without calling me.”
“Erin tells you everything?” I asked, opening the car door for her. I glanced around to see if anyone had me pegged as a child molester. No one was paying any attention at all.
“Yes.”
I went around to the driver’s side, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. “Did she tell you she and Chad were involved with each other?”
Her gaze glanced off of mine and she seemed to shrink a little in the seat.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Chad?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I would rather not acknowledge Chad’s existence.”
Or that Erin had shifted from sister to sexual being, I thought as I drove back toward the cul-de-sac where Molly lived. Erin had been her idol and protector. If Erin abandoned her, then Molly was all alone in the land of dysfunctional Seabrights.
“Chad was at Erin’s apartment Friday night,” I said. “They had an argument. Do you know anything about that?”
Molly shrugged. “Maybe they broke up.”
“Why would you think that? Was Erin interested in someone else?”
“She had a crush on her boss, but he’s too old for her.”
That was a matter of opinion. From what I had learned about Erin so far, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out she had her sights set on a man old enough to be her father. And if past history was anything to go by, Jade wouldn’t draw that line for her.
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know,” Molly said irritably. “Erin liked flirting with guys. I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t want to hear about it.”
“Molly, this is very important,” I said as I pulled to the curb at the end of her street. “When I ask you questions about Erin, or about anything, anyone, you have to tell me the absolute truth as you know it. No glossing over details you don’t like. Got it?”
She frowned, but nodded.
“You have to trust me,” I said, and a bolt of white-cold fear ran through me.
Molly looked at me in that steady, too-wise way and said, “I already told you I do.”
This time I didn’t ask her why.
Chapter 7
I stand at the side of the Golam brothers’ trailer. I’ve been told to stay put, to wait, but I know that’s not the right decision. If I go in first, if I go in now, I’ve got the brothers dead-bang. They think they know me. I’ve worked this case three months. I know what I’m doing. I know I’m right. I know the Golam brothers are already twitching. I know I want this bust and deserve it. I know Lieutenant Sikes is here for the show, to put a feather in his cap. He wants to look good when the news vans arrive. He wants to make the public think they should vote for him in the next election for sheriff.