“I don’t know, Fred. She doesn’t seem to have any to pick right now.”
“I’m a patient man. Look how long I’ve been waiting for you.” He smiled and stroked her cheek.
She leaned over for a quick kiss while he started the motor. “You’re a prince, Fred Lundquist, and I’m lucky to have you.”
“Even the way I’ve been acting?”
“That’s not you. That’s—I don’t know what that is.”
“A temporary aberration, I hope. This business with Pruitt is driving us all a little nuts.”
“And now we’re dumping Camila on you.”
“Yeah. But finding her alive sure as hell beats finding Pruitt dying.”
When they pulled up in front of the house, the Mozart pouring through the open window promised a lot of brain to pick.
“Listen to her!” Joan said. Whatever had happened to Camila obviously hadn’t harmed her playing. But when they went in, it was Bruce who met them with violin and bow in hand and Camila who was sitting empty-handed on the sofa. She still looked almost as blank as she had in the park.
Bruce introduced them to her as if they’d never met.
Taking her cue from him, Joan said, “Fred is a policeman, Camila, and our good friend.” She sat down beside her. “He’s here to help you.”
Fred showed her his badge. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?” he asked gently.
Her eyes turned to Bruce.
“It’s all right, Camila,” Bruce said. “I’m right here.” He laid the violin and bow in their case and sat down on her other side, taking her hand. She nodded hesitantly.
Joan was glad to see Fred take the chair across from Camila. No need to loom over her, as scared as she looked.
“Tell me your name, please,” he said.
“Camila Pereira,” she said softly, and looked relieved, as if she’d passed a test.
“And where do you come from?”
The wide smile broke forth. Wherever she’d been since Monday, she’d had a toothbrush. She didn’t stink, and her face was clean, but her clothing smelled stale, as if she hadn’t changed it. She seemed not to notice. “From Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil. It is a beautiful city.”
“I believe you,” Fred said. “Do you have a family?”
“Oh yes. I live with my mother and father.” With each response, she seemed more confident and natural.
“What do you do in Brazil?”
“I am a violinist.” No hesitation there. She tossed her head, but the hair that had rippled merely flopped.
“That’s wonderful. And what brings you here?” She looked blank again. “To America,” he added quickly.
“I came to play in the violin competition. With Bruce”—she looked up at him—“and the others.” Her eyebrows puckered. “But I don’t know where I am. I need to go back. I need to play my next concert.” Her agitation increased. “My violin! My violin is missing! I must find it!”
“When is your next concert?” Fred asked.
She relaxed. “Not until Wednesday night. Isn’t that right, Bruce? If I make the finals, I play the Mozart on Wednesday. Then the Sibelius on Saturday.”
Bruce nodded. “That’s the schedule. And, Camila, you did make the finals.”
She showed no surprise. What day did she think it was? Would she panic if they told her she’d already missed Wednesday? Careful, Fred, Joan thought.
“Do you know how you got here?” he asked instead. “Who brought you here?”
“I came here with Bruce,” she said. “From the park.”
“Uh-huh. And how did you get to the park?”
Her eyes clouded over, and she shook her head.
“What’s the last thing you remember before the park?”
“A car. I was looking for my violin. But I don’t know where I was. Why can’t I remember where I was?” Her voice rose, and her eyes begged them.
Fred leaned forward. “Camila,” he said carefully, “I’d like for a doctor to check you. I think something has happened to you. I think that’s why you can’t remember.”
“I know you,” she said suddenly, and smiled at him. “You were at the picnic.”
“That’s right.” He returned her smile. “Joan brought me.”
“Yes,” she said, and turned to Joan. “And your son was there, too. Andrew. A cute guy.”
On cue, the front door flew open and Andrew burst into the room, his hair wild. Breathing hard and perspiring, he might have been running. He stopped short and gaped at them. “Camila! What—what are you doing here?”
“Hello, Andrew,” she said, with some of her old manner back. “We were just talking about you.”
“You—you were?” he croaked, his voice not quite breaking. His eyes focused on Camila. “How did you get here?”
“I walked here from the park, with Bruce. But what are you doing here? Come, sit here and tell me.” She patted the sofa next to her, not noticing, or maybe not caring, that Joan was already occupying that space. Whatever was wrong with Camila, her personality seemed intact.
“No, I can’t. I—I just came back for my lab notes. I’m late for class.” They watched him race up the stairs. He reappeared almost immediately with a backpack over his shoulder. In those few moments, he had mopped his face and generally pulled himself together.
“Is she okay?” he murmured to Joan.
“Looks like it.”
“That’s great! Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t miss this lab. Tell me all about it tonight, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, and followed him to the door. He flung himself onto his bike and pedaled off furiously.
Fred raised an eyebrow. Joan shrugged.
“Such a big hurry,” Camila said, and laughed. “In Brazil, my boyfriend would not leave without a kiss. But Andrew is a little shy. He’s very young, no?”
“Some days he seems about ten,” Joan said.
“Oh no,” Camila said seriously. “He is much older than ten.” Intact in some ways, but damaged in others, Joan thought. She wouldn’t have missed that little joke before.
Bruce laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “Andrew is almost twenty.”
“I knew it!”
Fred leaned forward again. “Camila, would you like to see your family?”
“They’re in Brazil. They had to miss this competition.”
“I have good news for you.”
“Good news?” Her eyes weren’t quite focusing.
“Yes. They’re coming here to see you.”
“Here?” She looked around the room, frowning as if trying to recognize it.
“Very near here. Will you come with me? I’ll take you to them.”
“I don’t understand. My father had important business. He couldn’t leave Brazil.”
“You’re more important to your father than his business. Camila, listen to me. We want you to see a doctor. I will take you to the hospital. Your family will meet you there, at the hospital. They want to be sure you’re all right.”
She turned to Bruce, still frowning. “Can I trust him? Is he telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come, too?”
“If you want me to.”
“Then I will come.” She stood up, and swayed slightly. The two men stood quickly and reached out to her. She took Bruce’s arm. “I feel a little dizzy. I think it is good if I see a doctor.” Then her smile lit her face. “And I will love to see my family!”
Fred sent her to the car with Bruce and hung back for a moment with Joan. “Can we drop you at work?”
“Please, and I hope you’ll rescue Bruce. He came here to get away, not to play nursemaid.”
“Her folks will be here before long.”
“But, Fred, don’t you see? That’s exactly the stressful situation he was trying to avoid until after tomorrow night, especially if the Indianapolis police already have filled their minds with Bruce as the bad guy.”
“He’s a grown man, Joan.�
� He brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead.
“I know.” She shook her head. “It’s just so unfair! Bad enough that Camila loses out, but why should Bruce have to?”
“Crime is like that. I’ll do what I can.”
She hugged him. “I knew you would.”
Bruce and Camila were already sitting together in the back. Fred tucked Joan into the front and drove off. She didn’t say much in the car, but waved to them when they dropped her off at the center. Wouldn’t her old ladies have a field day if they knew what was going on?
18
Annie Jordan was waiting for her, looking mock fierce. “When they said you’d be in late, some of us worried about you. I told ’em you were probably just out gallivanting with your man.” She followed Joan into her small office.
“I’ll never put anything past you, will I, Annie?”
“So who was the redhead in the back with the girl?”
Couldn’t be any harm in telling her that much. “That’s Rebecca’s Bruce. He’s spending a day or two at my house before his final concert—just getting away from it all.”
“With another girl?” Count on Annie not to miss much, but she obviously hadn’t recognized Camila, even though her picture had been in the papers and on the TV news. Not that the girl in the car much resembled that picture.
“Fred was giving her a ride.” Keep it casual, she told herself, and stood flipping through the mail on her desk.
“So why was Rebecca’s young man with her?” Annie wasn’t giving up.
“Bruce runs in the morning before he practices. Fred will drop him off somewhere, and he’ll run home. Honestly, Annie, if he were messing around with another woman, you can’t believe he’d be doing it in Fred’s car!”
“Not that she was much to look at. Couldn’t hold a candle to Rebecca.”
You should see her when she’s herself, Joan thought, remembering her own first reaction to Camila. “There you go. And Bruce isn’t looking at anyone else.”
“Uh-huh. All men look.”
“He’s going to meet women all his life, you know. What kind of marriage would it be if she couldn’t trust him?”
“Like most of ’em, I expect. You gonna bring him around to see us?”
“Maybe next time. It’s up to him.”
“I want you to introduce me.”
“I will,” Joan promised, and settled down to work.
At noon, she took her tuna salad sandwich and joined the people eating the government-sponsored nutritious food served at the center—what Annie called “eats for old folks.” Today’s heavenly smelling chicken pot pie was more than Joan needed before a full supper, but she accepted a cup of coffee.
“Now they’re blaming the fraternities again,” a man was grumbling when she sat down. “Seems to me, whenever folks don’t know who did something, they lay it on the Greeks.”
“Most times, they’re right,” another man said. “Those kids have too much time and too much money for their own good.”
“And some of ’em don’t have the sense God gave a goose,” a woman said. “My grandson’s fraternity got him so drunk it most killed him.”
“I’ll grant you it was probably a drunk,” the first man said. “But there’s no more reason to think a fraternity kid hit Kyle than someone who stopped off after work for happy hour.”
Ah, so Kyle Pruitt was the topic. Somehow, Camila’s sudden appearance had wiped him from Joan’s memory. Since finding her in the park, she’d been trying to imagine how Camila had turned up in Oliver, of all places. She was such a flirt—was it possible that Oliver College students had lured her away, and then somehow kept her here in their fraternity house since Monday?
Could it have been a prank, or even an initiation stunt? She was a pretty girl, and she’d had enough publicity. Every once in a while some stunt that got out of hand made the news and a local chapter would be disciplined, but this was serious business. Not that Joan knew much about such things from her own college days; there had been no fraternities or sororities at Oberlin.
For sex? Some of those stories concerned parties and date rapes, in which the victims knew their assailants at least casually, and the men claimed that the women sent ambiguous signals, meaning yes when they said no, and that they’d been justified in acting on what they were sure the women meant. That might fit with Camila’s personality, except that she was so intent on the competition. It was hard to imagine her leaving Indianapolis for a flirtation, much less voluntarily staying in Oliver that long.
“What does your friend on the police force say?” the first man asked. “They find those kids yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Joan said. “But I don’t think they know for sure that the kids saw anything that would help. Only that they spotted Sergeant Pruitt in the street and called 911.”
“I’d like to shake some sense into their heads,” said the woman whose grandson had almost died.
“Wouldn’t help,” Annie said. “They’re probably scared to death as it is.”
Probably, Joan thought, and wondered whether Uwe’s encouragement would reach them. Even if they hadn’t been at his talk, the word might get around the school.
“Why do people act that way?” the woman said, as if she hadn’t heard Annie. “Even kids.”
Right. Why would Camila leave with someone? She didn’t seem to remember a gun, or any other kind of force.
Joan thought back to the last time she herself had made such a mistake. She’d thought Andrew was in danger and hadn’t hesitated. What if Camila had thought she was being taken to rescue her missing violin? Wouldn’t she have gone anywhere for that? Or what if she’d heard something that made her think she could find it on her own? She hadn’t mentioned another person, though, only a car. Could she have heard something that made her think the violin was in Oliver, and rented a car to drive there herself? What if someone had sent her a ransom note, for the violin, and said she had to drive somewhere alone to deliver the money? Maybe she hadn’t been headed for Oliver at all, but somewhere else, and had had an accident on the way and hit her head? She’d been lying by the side of the road, like Kyle Pruitt, only nobody had seen her, and she’d finally come to by herself and wandered into town. That would explain her confusion, and why she’d been gone so long.
Well, yes, Joan thought, but she’s too clean, and she doesn’t act hungry. Maybe Bruce fed her and found her a toothbrush while I went after Fred, but how did she wash her face before we saw her in the park?
So what did happen to leave her so blank? And where has she been since Monday? Her family must be wild—I know I would be. What will they say when they find her in this shape?
“Is anybody going to the calling hours this afternoon?” Annie Jordan asked.
Joan hadn’t even scanned the paper. “When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow at ten. You might as well go. Nobody will be here tomorrow morning.”
Joan looked around the table. Heads were nodding. “Then I should see whether anyone from adult day care wants to attend it. Their staff can’t just take off.” She crumpled her sandwich bag and flipped it neatly into the wastebasket. “I’d better go tell them I’ll sub.”
“She’s quite a girl,” she heard Annie announce to the others as she left.
The entrance to the adult day care was around the corner. Except when the staff was locking or unlocking the building, the connecting door to the senior center was used only in emergency situations, so as not to add to the confusion of the already confused day-care clients, who were not free to come and go without staff supervision. But the same fragrance of chicken pot pie teased her nostrils when she walked in.
As always, the folks seated at the homey-looking dining room table needed varying degrees of help. Some had finished alone, some were being coaxed to eat a few last bites, and one man was being spoon-fed by a thirty-something woman who glanced at her watch while she held another spoonful of pot pie at the ready.
“C
ome on, Charlie,” she said in a kindly enough voice. “Have another bite. It’s awfully good today.” She checked her watch again, as if it could have changed in those few moments.
Uh-huh, Joan thought. “You need to be somewhere? I could do that for you.”
“Oh, would you mind? I really wanted to go to the calling hours at Snarr’s this afternoon. The Pruitts live down the block from the house I grew up in. Kyle used to walk me home from school. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I thought the service was at First Methodist.”
“It is, but the visitation is at Snarr’s. I can’t go to the service, because I have to work, but I thought I’d have time to speak to his folks once I was done with lunch today.” She slipped the spoon out of Charlie’s mouth and laid it on his plate.
“Sure, go ahead.” Sitting down opposite Charlie, a tall, rawboned man with gray hair fringing his mostly bald head, Joan looked into his cloudy blue eyes. He was staring off into space and chewing intermittently.
Blanker than Camila, she thought, and reloaded the spoon. At least Camila seemed to be coming out of whatever had messed her up. Charlie, she knew, would never come out of it. He still had occasional windows of lucidity, but he’d gone downhill considerably since she first visited the day care. Back then, he could be helped to carry on a conversation, and enjoyed his food.
“Good, huh, Charlie?” she tried, but he seemed to have dozed off. She nudged him gently. No response.
“Anybody ever sing to you, Charlie?”
He opened his eyes.
“Take a bite, and I’ll sing to you.”
He opened his mouth, and she spooned in more pot pie.
“Charlie, my boy, oh, Charlie, my boy,” she sang to the old tune, and he chewed the chicken. Aha. “This chicken’s delicious,” she improvised, spooning in more. “It fills you with joy.” He smiled with his mouth still full, and dozed off again.
“Charlie, wake up, oh, Charlie, wake up,” she sang, and nudged him again. But after he chewed that bite, his head immediately dropped, and he snored gently. She was afraid to persuade him to take more for fear he’d end up choking on it. Gently, she wiped his mouth and untied his bib. Chin on his chest, he slept on.
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