The Night She Won Miss America

by Michael Callahan

“I’ll get a message to them, somehow. For now I just want us to get as far away from Atlantic City as we can.”

  He smiles, bends down to kiss her softly. “You’re a helluva girl, you know that, Betty Jane Welch?” He swivels into a sitting position, begins unbuckling his trousers. “Now turn the other way. I need to finish getting changed.”

  “Why? I saw everything last night.”

  “It was dark and you saw nothin’ last night. The next time is going to be slower, more . . . romantic.”

  “Last night was romantic.”

  “You know what I mean. Romantic like you deserve. Now c’mon.”

  She flips onto the opposite side, listens as he slips into a fresh shirt and pants. When he’s finished, he slides back next to her, pulling the blanket over both of them as he spoons her. “We can only do this for two minutes,” he whispers, “then we have to go to the car and get out of here.”

  She takes his right arm, wraps it tightly around her. “Where are we going?”

  “New York. I have a friend who’ll put us up for a little while until we figure out what to do. It’s a city of eight million people. No one will find us.”

  She caresses his arm, plays with the soft hairs. She has just done the most rash, outrageous, un-Betty thing in her entire life. She should feel terrified, apprehensive, subsumed in doubt and regret. And yet she has never felt happier, more joyful, more . . . loved. More alive. “I just need to make one change to the plan,” she says.

  “What’s that?”

  She pulls him tighter. “I need three minutes.”

  Sixteen

  Eddie scoops up the remnants of his eggs with his piece of rye toast, seemingly ravenous. Ciji sips her coffee, studying him over the rim of the cup. How did I get myself in the middle of this mess? she muses. She wonders whether he can read her mind. You never knew with reporters.

  They’re in a back booth inside Lou’s, a delicatessen in Ventnor, the next town over from Atlantic City; the waitress spent a good two minutes trying to talk Ciji into pancakes, to no avail. Ciji only agreed to come with Eddie because she was afraid a confrontation would attract attention in the Claridge lobby, and the last thing she needed right now was a horde of newspaper men following her down the Boardwalk, barking questions about Betty and where she might be. She just wants to go home to Newport, get back behind the desk at the Cliff Lawn, figure out how much cash she needs to add to her scholarship money before she can get on a train for the West Coast.

  “You should really eat something,” he says, pushing the plate away. “The food here is pretty good.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Look. It’s like I told you on the ride over. I don’t know anything. I don’t know where she went. I don’t know if someone took her.”

  “You mean you don’t know whether she’s with Griffin McAllister willingly or unwillingly.”

  “How do you know they’re even together?”

  “Because nobody’s seen him since he left the Steel Pier ballroom. Although I suspect if we hit enough of the bars around town, eventually someone’s going to remember seeing him. And who he was there with. That’s if the cops don’t already know.”

  She folds her hands on the table, looks him square in the eye. “What exactly is it you want from me, Mr. Tate?”

  “What any reporter wants. The story.”

  “I have no story to offer. Now if you will kindly take me back to my hotel, I need to check out. I have to be on a train at four.”

  “And I have to tell you that train is going to leave without you. Because I guarantee you that at this very moment there are two detectives from Atlantic County who are sitting in the lobby of the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, waiting for you to come back.”

  She says nothing, looks at her hands.

  “The Press is putting out a special afternoon edition. It’s been a few years since we’ve done that. V-J Day, I think. You know what the headline’s going to say? ‘MISS AMERICA MISSING.’ And underneath: ‘Newly crowned beauty queen feared kidnapped.’ ” He leans across the table. “That kind of thing sells papers. But you and me, we know that’s not the real story, is it, Miss Moore?”

  “If that’s the theory, why aren’t you out there trying to find her?”

  “I am.” He eyes her evenly. “It’s time for the truth, Miss Moore. I know she’s with him. The question is, was it her choice or not?”

  “What would make you believe he would have taken her against her will?”

  “Because I was one of the last people to be alone with her before she disappeared. And she seemed . . . vulnerable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  So he tells her: about the stilted interview in the room at Convention Hall after the pageant, about forgetting his hat and going back to retrieve it, about how anxious Betty appeared.

  He leaves out the kiss.

  “She’d just won Miss America, for Pete’s sake,” Ciji remarks, buying time as she debates what, if anything, to tell him. “Of course she was going to be a bit flustered.”

  “You were her roommate—”

  “For a total of six days. We were hardly sisters.”

  “You knew she was keen on McAllister.”

  “So did you.” She catches the mild look of surprise in his eyes. “You want honesty, Mr. Tate, how about you go first? Your interest in this story isn’t strictly professional, is it?”

  He leans back in the booth. “They should have picked you, Miss Moore. Miss America would have been a lot more than a once-a-year story if they had.”

  She has to tell him something. And it has to be truthful—she can’t afford to tell lies, have her stories inconsistent between him and the police, who will surely question her. It won’t be long—hours, a day at most—before somebody talks to the bartender at Weekes’ Tavern, knows that she tracked down Griff, arranged the reunion. She pictures her scholarship, floating away with the evening tide.

  “Betty called me late. She was extremely upset. Griff had broken it off right there at the ball. She begged me to go find him, talk to him.”

  She swears she sees relief sweep briefly across his eyes. “Why did he break it off?” he asks.

  “He’d evidently told her earlier that if she won he was taking off. He didn’t want to be known as Miss America’s boyfriend.”

  “Well, that’s ironic. Because that’s exactly what every paper in town is calling him. Go on.”

  Ciji talks about tracking him down, bringing him back to the Claridge. She does not mention Jerry. There is no way the bartender will remember him, and there is no point getting him into hot water for doing something chivalrous and noble, if, in retrospect, extremely misguided.

  “You took Griff to Betty’s room?”

  “No,” she blurts out, before she even has a chance to think about it. But it appears she has already thought about it. Her last hope of retaining the scholarship money is to end her involvement in the Claridge lobby. The night desk clerk will not remember her and Griff breezing by as Jerry asked his inane questions to give them cover. Though he may remember Jerry’s prominent mole. She can’t think about that now. Some risks you’ve got to take.

  She squares her shoulders. “I left Griff in the lobby, suggested he call up to Betty’s room and arrange for her to come down so they could talk. Then I left. I had done my duty.”

  “And you just wandered back to your hotel, unescorted, in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s the Boardwalk, not the slums, Mr. Tate. I am perfectly capable of walking a few blocks in the moonlight by myself.” He mulls this for a moment as the waitress clears the dishes, slaps the check down on the table. “Now, you are finished with your meal, and I have answered your questions,” Ciji says. “I would like you to drive me back to my hotel. Or else I will have the cashier phone for a taxi.”

  “All right, Miss Moore. I’ll take you back to Atlantic City. But I just have one more question, off the record. I give you my wor
d I won’t print any of what you’re about to tell me. But I need to know: Do you think Betty went with Griffin McAllister of her own accord?”

  Ciji thinks about it for a minute, verbalizing, for the first time, the argument she has been having with herself since she overheard Miss Slaughter in the Claridge lobby. “She told me she would see me this morning, and I believed her,” she says. “But she was also cuckoo for him. And if he was adamant about only wanting her if she was not Miss America . . . I don’t know. As I said, we were roommates for six days. But you get to know a girl when you live with her in one room and go through something like this together. She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would have just ditched her family, left her clothes, not even left a note. It just doesn’t seem like . . . Betty.

  “But now,” she says, “I’m not sure I knew her at all.”

  ༶

  Honor McAllister paces the living room of her soigné Longport home like a caged animal. Still in her aqua quilted bed jacket and flowing pajama pants, she takes another drag on her cigarette to calm her nerves. Her husband is with his golf foursome, no doubt merrily chipping somewhere off of the eighth fairway at this very moment, oblivious. Which is for the best. He is weak and feckless in the face of these types of things. Actually, in the face of everything.

  The two men sitting in her living room, looking at her stonily as she continues her uncontrollable walking side to side, are jotting notes in their respective pads. Honor notices belatedly that the burly one has tracked in mud on his shoes.

  She has more pressing problems.

  “We should have a good head start on the police,” she says finally, “because they are not equipped for this kind of situation, and there are all sorts of rules and regulations that have to be accorded before anyone in law enforcement actually does anything. Those men are not nimble. If the FBI gets involved that may change, but it will take a day or two before that would happen, I think. They will also assume that they went south, because Delaware is south of Atlantic City, but I know my son and he will go to a city where he knows people—either Philadelphia or maybe Newark: he has a cousin there. He was briefly a student at NYU, so there may be someone there. Unless, of course, they go to a place where she has acquaintances. But I don’t think so. Griff will want to be comfortable with his own friends. I’ve given you the list. You’ll have to find the addresses for the ones I don’t have. You have his license plate and make of car, his picture. And of course hers will be all over every newspaper in the country by tonight.”

  She takes a final drag, stubs out the cigarette in a ceramic ashtray on a side table. “I cannot emphasize strongly enough how imperative it is that you find them before the authorities do. Are there any final questions?”

  The slender one speaks up. “I understand you don’t want the cops involved. But what if we find him and he won’t come with us willingly? What do you want us to do?”

  He’s right. Griff will not go with them willingly. Far from it. Especially if he’s . . . She presses her eyes shut, blocks the memory of the last time—that last, awful, horrible time, two years ago, when she was faced with a son she didn’t even recognize. “When you find him,” she says carefully, “and I am paying you handsomely to make sure you do—you are to call me immediately with your location. Once I know where they are, I can decide on the best way to proceed.”

  “We can take him,” the burly one says, “if that’s what you want. We know how to do it.”

  She might consider it if he were alone, even as the memory of seeing him strung up like a prize steer two years ago rushes back to her, slices her through the heart. But there is Betty to consider. Betty’s presence complicates things. Especially since she is clearly the reason he has done this in the first place. “No. My son is . . . unwell. And delicate. He needs to be handled carefully in a situation such as this.”

  The two men give each other a tacit side-eye. They know the code.

  God help this kid if the cops find him first.

  ༶

  The first thing they have to do when they reach New York, he figures, is ditch the car.

  Reeve will be able to help. Maybe he has a car to swap or knows someone who does. Reeve knows all sorts of shifty folk. Griff’s automobile—technically, it’s his father’s automobile—is a brand-new black Mercury two-door coupe, the latest in a long line of trinkets and toys his mother has badgered his father into buying for him under the guise of keeping him calm and happy, of keeping the voices out of his head.

  The voices do not care what he’s driving.

  They’ll switch cars in New York, hunker down with Reeve until they can figure out where to go next. His mother thinks she knows all of his friends, all about his life. But she never met Reeve during Griff’s ill-advised turn as a student at NYU; he was the replacement roommate for a guy who ended up transferring. Which means she’ll have no idea where they are. And neither will anyone else.

  Griff has taken the back roads, zigzagging through the thicket of the Pine Barrens as they head north. He looks over at Betty, sleeping in the passenger seat, her head rocking in concert with the hum of the engine. He looks at his watch. Four o’clock. They should stop somewhere, pick up something to eat. But he’ll need to go in, bring it back to the car. God knows Betty’s disappearance is probably already big news. He thinks of her parents, no doubt worried out of their minds. He wishes he’d thought of making Betty write a note. Maybe they can get to a pay phone, call them, tell them she’s okay.

  He tries to think of the last time he did anything this brash, this brazen. He has always been impulsive, even as a child. But aside from his episodes—which were not his fault—he has never been the kind of guy who went off half-cocked. He has always enjoyed a good time, but he’s not the type to pull anything like this. But then, he loves her. He thinks he loved her from the moment she threw his penny into the wishing well. It feels so good to love someone. The girls he’s known in Atlantic City have been nice, fun, but more often than not also deadly dull. He has only felt this way about one other person in his life.

  Helen.

  I can’t think about her right now. I need to think about Betty. Betty is here.

  Betty has spirit, verve. She won the title every girl in America dreams of, then discarded it for him. For him! Their love is stronger than anything he could have imagined. She is not Helen. She is better than Helen. Much, much better.

  Betty can silence the voices. The two of them just need to find a place to let their love grow in peace.

  A little music for the ride. He clicks on the radio, careful not to make it too loud; he doesn’t want to wake her. It’s hard to find a signal in the depths of the more than million acres of towering trees and brush that make up the Pine Barrens. He remembers the legend of the Jersey Devil, the spawn of a witch named Mother Leeds, who in the 1700s was born as her thirteenth child, fathered by the devil himself. Folklore said that the child soon developed hooves and wings and roamed the Pine Barrens in bloodthirsty search for victims to terrorize and feast upon.

  Just let him try to come for us. Because nothing in the world can hurt me today.

  Still nothing but static. He fiddles with the dial some more. A faint melody of Tommy Dorsey underneath the crackling. More turning back and forth, searching for anything clear. Finally, a male voice, talking about the weather. He goes on to deliver the news that the Yankees have routed the Washington Senators, 20–5; the Senators set a record for bases on balls in the third inning. The Reds have won the first game of their doubleheader against the Dodgers and are on their way to taking both, Stan Musial continuing his home-run streak.

  “And now we return to our top story of the day: the stunning disappearance of the newly crowned Miss America in Atlantic City. Authorities are still trying to sort out what has happened to Delaware beauty Betty Jane Welch, who was toasted at a ball in her honor on the Steel Pier last night after she won the coveted title but has not been seen since. Atlantic County detectives have asked fo
r assistance from other local police forces to locate Miss Welch, who vanished from her suite at the Claridge Hotel sometime between last night and this morning, when officials became alarmed after she failed to appear for the winner’s traditional splash in the ocean for news photographers. No other details have yet been released about her possible whereabouts, or the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. But county sheriff William T. Mackey told reporters this morning that, and I quote, ‘No stone will be unturned until we find this young lady and bring her abductors to justice.’ Stay tuned for more details on this story as they develop—”

  He snaps off the radio.

  Kidnapped. They think I kidnapped her.

  How could he have been so stupid? He knew the pageant people would look for them; that Betty’s parents and certainly his own would be livid. But the police? He should have known. Betty left no note. She packed almost nothing. The room was in complete disarray. No one knows that he had broken it off at the ball, that Betty was disconsolate, that she had decided that she wanted out of the whole Miss America mess.

  But Ciji does. Won’t Ciji tell them? But then, what can she tell them? She only knows that Betty and he were reunited at the hotel. She may guess that Betty left willingly, but she can’t swear to it. And she may say nothing. Saying anything can only implicate her in their escape.

  He hears the rumbling inside his head, wishes and wills it away, but he knows it’s useless. Softly, softly, then a bit louder they come, seeping into his brain like invaders pouring over the castle walls, until their noise is so loud, he feels like he is going to explode, right there inside the car. He begins muttering, talking back to them, trying to reason with them, answer them, explain to them, but it is not enough. It is never enough.

  “Stop it!” he screams.

  Betty startles awake, grabs ahold of him. “What is it?” she yells, looking out the windshield, trying to make sense of what’s happening.

  He pulls over near a thicket of towering green pines, cuts the engine. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, baby. I just need to take a break, that’s all. I think we need to get something to eat.”