by Jean Martino
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I understand, Linda. I’d do the same if I was in your position. I’ll call you back tomorrow or sooner if I find out anything.”
She gulped back her tears. “Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate all you are doing.”
“Take care,” he said. ”Talk later.”
They said goodbyes and she hung up and stared for a long time at Cindy and Michael’s wedding photograph sitting on the cabinet across from her. Cindy was pulling her back to California again in circumstances that neither of them would have wanted. And now she would meet Scott face to face and that thought increased her nervousness also. But she had to do it; she had to find out what had happened to Cindy and Michael. Perhaps it was a goose chase and they would suddenly call her and tell her they were sorry, that something had stopped Cindy from contacting her. Bullshit! Cindy could have contacted her through the internet or phone. Something was wrong, seriously wrong, and she had no intention of sitting there and doing nothing.
* *
LAX California…Tuesday June 17:
The flight had been long and tedious and Linda was grateful it was over and she could get off the cramped plane. It was nine am and still June 17, she thought ironically. She had gained a day over on the flight and was now on California time. But in Australia it would be the 18 and four days since Cindy was supposed to have arrived there.
When Jessica had arrived the day before as she was packing her suitcase, she was feeling dazed and confused. “I don’t know what to pack,” she said, staring into the closet. “I just want to get on the plane and fly there and not worry about what to wear or what to take.”
“I know,” said Jessica, taking her arm and forcing her to sit down on the side of the bed. “But, Linda, you have to somehow pull yourself together. It’s not like you to give in like this. You’re a strong woman. You will somehow get through this and somehow find Cindy and Michael. But the first thing you have to do is start thinking constructively.”
“How do I do that?” asked Linda, staring at her sister with eyes swollen from crying. “I am trying, sis. I just have never faced anything as frustrating as this before. How are you supposed to feel when your child suddenly disappears from the face of the earth? And I can’t seem to get through to anyone. Even Michael’s boss was out of town when I called last night. What in God’s name is happening?”
“You’re supposed to feel exactly as you’re feeling now,” said Jessica, looking in the closet and selecting clothes. She took two tops off their hangers and walked back to the suitcase. “I know I would be a cot case if it happened to me. But you can’t afford that luxury right now. You’re about to fly to the other side of the world to find out what happened to your daughter. So you have to pull yourself together right now, right this minute. Start thinking positive like Scott told you to, and just take one step at a time.” She folded the tops then returned to look in Linda’s closet. “Now let’s see what else you’ll need. You have to have something nice to wear when you meet Scott. Here, this should do,” she took a royal blue blouse off a hanger and laid it on the bed, adding a black straight skirt to it. “You always look good in royal blue.”
Linda forced a weak smile. Then she stood up and hugged her sister. “Thanks, sis,” she said, then turned back to her closet, selecting black high heeled shoes. “Do you think these will be okay?”
Gulping back her own emotions, Jessica laughed. “They’ll be fine but you’re going to be kicking them off the first chance you get. You know how you hate high heels and you haven’t even broken them in yet.” Both sisters laughed as they continued to select clothes Linda would need.
By the time Jessica and Bill had driven her to the Adelaide airport, Linda had shown Jessica how to log onto the internet and check her emails, just in case Cindy had opened another account with another internet provider and would be trying to contact her, made an online hotel reservation in Los Angeles, and driven to the bank to buy US traveler’s checks, not knowing how long she would be in LA and prepared for any emergency.
* *
The taxi deposited her and her one suitcase and overnight bag at the entrance to the Sheraton Gateway Hotel on Century Boulevard, where a young man quickly transferred them onto a trolley and wheeled them into the lobby for her. She had booked a room for one night, but all she needed was just a few hours to get herself together again, rent a car and drive across the freeway to Newport Beach. She had declined Scott’s offer to meet her at the airport, not wanting him to see her for the first time all bedraggled and tired looking. As she signed the register, she remembered ironically how twenty nine years before she had arrived in Los Angeles on the Super Chief train and stayed at the YWCA in downtown Los Angeles.
Inside the luxury room she sat on the bed and repeated Scott and Jessica’s advice. “One step at a time,” she said aloud as she found her phone address book in her purse. For now she was here, what happened next she would deal with as logically as she possibly could.
Finding Dan’s phone number she quickly dialed it, her hand trembling. Scott and she were now in the same city, she thought, listening to the ringing. The thousands of miles that had once separated them had diminished considerably.
She heard Scott’s voice answer, knowing he was expecting the call. “It’s me,” she said. “Linda.”
“Hi honey,” he said, his voice tender. “Good flight?”
“It was okay,” she said. “I’m at the Sheraton. Have you heard anything more?”
“Yes,” he answered then went quiet.
“What?” she asked quickly.
“Now don’t go jumping to any conclusions,” he said firmly. “They found Michael’s Camaro, abandoned in a factory parking lot on the outer fringes of San Diego. No one was in it and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. It was locked as if it had been deliberately left there. They didn’t find any luggage in it or cell phones.”
“My God!” she whispered. “What has happened to them? Scott, I need to see the car. I don’t know why. I just need to. It’s the only link I have with my daughter right now.”
“I know,” he said. “But you also need to rest a few hours first after that flight. How about I come to get you and we can drive to San Diego together this afternoon.”
“No,” she said, “I have a better idea. I’m renting a car to drive over there. I know the area. I lived in Costa Mesa for 28 years. Could you meet me at the Newporter Inn near Fashion Island Shopping Center?”
He was quiet for a minute. She knew he was thinking the same as she was. This would be the first time they had ever met in person and the enormity of it considering the circumstances of what had brought them together was mind boggling. “I’ll be there,” he finally said. “How about 3 pm, in the lobby?”
After she hung up, she tried calling Cindy and Michael’s numbers again, but got no answer. One step at a time, she kept repeating in her mind, over and over, showering then calling the desk to ask them to call her back in four hours. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes, forcing her mind to shut down.
* *
While Linda was recovering from her flight, Scott had stopped at the Newport Beach Police Department and spoken to the detective in the Missing Person’s division, Detective Grant, a tall, well built, fair haired man in his thirties.
“I’m Detective Walker, retired from the Sacramento Police Department,” he said, taking out his ID and opening it to show his badge and identification. “I’m also a close friend of Mrs. Rossi’s, and I’d like to talk to you regarding the investigation into the disappearance of her daughter and her daughter’s husband, Cindy and Michael Brampton. Mrs. Rossi arrived this morning from Australia and is extremely worried.”
“We haven’t been able to find out anymore than what we told her three days ago,” Grant said. “At this point we haven’t had a formal Missing Person’s Report filed so there’s not a lot we can do until that happens.”
Scott nodded. “It’s been over 72 hours now
so I’ll have Mrs. Rossi do that as soon as she recovers from her flight.”
“We do know now that their car was found abandoned outside San Diego,” said Grant. “But at this point we aren’t treating it as suspicious because there was no indication in the car that foul play had occurred. In fact there was no damage at all. It was locked from the outside and seemed to have just been left there for some reason.”
Scott had already learned that by contacting Max in the Sacramento division. “I realize you are at a standstill on all this, but the daughter was to have flown to Australia four days ago and never notified her mother she wasn’t coming. There has to be an explanation to all this. They are very close and it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a daughter would do to her mother.”
Grant shrugged. “I have to agree with you there but our hands are tied at the moment. We have a police car checking on the house every now and then and if the officers see lights on they will investigate. But so far the house doesn’t appear to have been broken into either. Their neighbor also said he saw them leaving early in the morning last week, packing suitcases into the trunk and taking off.”
“And he’s sure it was them?” asked Scott.
“He said he was outside collecting his newspaper and it was not broad daylight then but he could see them from the street lights. It’s possible he was wrong but we don’t have much to go on right now.”
“Has anyone tried to get inside the house?”
“The officers said they tried all the doors and windows and they were locked so they didn’t pursue it any further. Until Mrs. Rossi files an official Missing Person’s Report we can’t go any further with the investigation.”
Scott didn’t tell Grant he had driven to the house that morning and been a little surprised that Linda’s daughter and son-in-law lived in such a wealthy residential suburb. He had walked around it curiously and saw it had a security alarm. He knew the security company would not give him the alarm’s shutoff code even if Linda was with him. And the police would not enter the house without the owner’s permission, unless they had a search warrant, and to get that they had to be convinced a crime had been committed. For now he decided not to push it. First he had to meet Linda and discuss it with her.
When he left the police station, the thought of meeting Linda now for the first time filled him with emotions. He had almost accepted that they would never meet in real life, and now to do so under these troubling circumstances seemed awkward. Fate had twisted everything and brought them together for a purpose. He believed everything in life had a purpose. Just what it was in this case though he still didn’t know.
Usually when he went online and talked to Linda on video, he wore his tracksuit pants and a sweatshirt or tee shirt. She had never seen him dressed in slacks and a jacket and tie like he was today, but he had wanted to look nice for their first meeting despite the circumstances. The weather was perfect too, if one could ignore the smog, the sky was blue and cloudless and he had chosen charcoal gray slacks, a white shirt with a navy tie and dark gray jacket.
He wasn’t one to preen, but that morning, as he shaved, he had looked closer at his face in the mirror, studying his wide firm lips above his square jaw line. His skin was darker now; tanned from his camping and fishing trips, and there were gathering lines at the corners of his brown eyes and his mouth; laughter lines his daughter, Maggie, called them. “They give you character, Dad,” she had told him. Well, character or not, they were no big concern to him, he decided, rubbing after shave lotion over his chin and neck. Ageing was part of the process of living, no one escaped it. And he sure didn’t expect to. Picking up a hair brush, he brushed his gray hair back off his face, the way he had always worn it, with the sides just below the tops of his ears. Then he stopped and looked hard at it. It had not thinned over the years, but it was almost white now, more white actually than gray, and it was hard for him to remember anymore the brown color it had once been.
Turning from the mirror, he had shaken his head, smiling at his vanity. Linda had seen his face on the video screen so she knew what he looked like. But this time it would be different. They would be seeing each other in the flesh and for a year now he had wondered what it would feel like to touch her face, smell her hair, to feel her lips on his.
He had fantasized many times about it, but when he had mentioned his feelings to her she had seemed embarrassed about it so he had not pursued that line of thought with her. He had heard the jokes about having cyber sex online and hadn’t wanted to push her into anything that would cause her discomfit. Sex was not something he couldn’t get in real life if he wanted it. When he did it was more of a physical thing than emotional. Their conversations had been sprinkled with adult curiosity even so. She had told him her breasts were a size 36C, and when he saw her on the video screen he could see her cleavage above the tops she wore. She had also told him she was a size 12, and stood up once and moved back a few feet to let him see her full length; which had excited him no end seeing her long legs in the calf length black track pants, the way her hips curved and the way her white top clung to her full breasts. He had had trouble trying to keep his mind focused on other topics after that.
When she had asked him to stand up also so she could see all of him, he laughed as he did, feeling no embarrassment as he had kept himself in good shape with his exercising and bike riding. “You look great,” she had said, and he had sat down quickly to hide any evidence of the turn on he was feeling at that moment. Cyber sex? Wow, he thought, it was beginning to make sense to him now.
* *
Arriving at the Newporter Inn, he parked his car, checking his watch to see how much time he had. It was almost 3:00 pm. She would be on her way there now.
* *
Linda had rented a Ford sedan and at that moment was driving along the 405 freeway on her way to Newport Beach. It was a good hour and a half freeway drive from the hotel to Newport Beach and she had no idea what she would find down there regarding Cindy and Michael’s disappearance, or how long it would take, but she was prepared to get a hotel room and stay as long as it took. Her first thought had been to drive directly to Cindy and Michael’s house, but something about the whole situation was making her feel very uneasy. She decided to meet Scott first and hope he would go with her.
She had studied her body critically in the full length mirror in the hotel room’s closet after showering again, and before dressing. All the walking she had done had kept her thighs firm, but her stomach was not quite as flat as it used to be, although all things considered she felt it was not bad for a woman almost fifty. Her breasts were still full and firm; had to be the weight lifting exercises she had done religiously every morning she thought with a smile.
After applying her makeup carefully, she blow dried her blond hair, grateful she had had it colored a week ago with lighter streaks in it. She was even beginning to like the windblown look she had hated at first, the ends just below her ears and bangs spraying across her forehead above her arched eyebrows.
Dressed in the black skirt and royal blue blouse that Jessica had chosen for her, she wriggled her feet into the black high heels, and screwed up her face. Her feet had spread a little from wearing her hiking boots and going barefoot around the house. She didn’t like dressing up much either, preferring the sporty look in track suits or shorts and tee shirts. Jewelry was not something she normally bothered much with either, just her gold hoop earrings, a very fine gold chain around her neck, and the solitaire diamond engagement ring that Vito had bought her and which she now wore on the third finger of her right hand, her wedding band long ago removed and placed in her jewellery box at home.
As she exited the 405 freeway at MacArthur Boulevard, her mind was suddenly swamped with memories. The suburb of Costa Mesa adjoined Newport Beach, where the home she and Vito had shared for so many years was only a mile from where she was driving now. She had a sudden urge to drive over there and see it again, but stopped herself. It was almost three o’clock
and she didn’t want to be late and have Scott thinking she wasn’t coming or something had happened to her.
Turning right on Jamboree Road, she headed down towards the ocean and the Newporter Inn and suddenly she was feeling very nervous. In a few minutes she would meet Scott in person for the first time. She wanted to pinch herself to make sure it was happening. She had never thought she would ever meet him in real life. At times she had wanted to ask him did he want to meet her but had felt uncomfortable with that thought, wanting him to be the one to suggest it. When he didn’t she had finally accepted that it would never happen. But now it was about to happen because of circumstances that had almost devastated her.
Driving into the parking lot, she sat for a few moments trying to compose herself. What was she so nervous about anyway? Scott was just a very dear friend and hadn’t they talked up a storm on the internet when they touched through video? It had been hard to explain to Jessica how it was between her and Scott.