“Technically, it’s stepfatherhood,” Carl said. “How did you know about that?”
I peeked up and saw my father shrug. He loves it when people ask him that question, usually in an awestruck tone of voice. He prides himself on knowing all kinds of things and loves to ambush people with his knowledge.
“So, how is stepfatherhood?” my father amended.
“Only about a million times harder than I ever imagined it could be,” Carl said. “My stepdaughter is, well. . . let’s just say she’s a challenging kid. Temperamental. I’d be lying if I said we hit if off immediately. Even though we’ve managed to find some common ground, she still drives me crazy sometimes. But the hardest thing to put up with is the way she treats her mother.” He shook his head. “Denise’s first husband died under tragic circumstances. Of course, the girl was devastated. I understand that. She was very close to her father, so I get that she wasn’t exactly thrilled when Denise started seeing me. But we got along at least on some level—until Denise and I decided to get married.”
“She didn’t take it well?” my father said.
“It’s been nearly two years and she still hasn’t forgiven her mother. If you ask me, she goes out of her way to punish Denise.”
“Must be rough,” my father said. “Maybe things will improve as she gets older.” Carl didn’t look convinced. “So, what made you decide to look me up after all of these years?”
Carl slumped in his chair. He said, “Well, that’s the thing, Mac. She’s the reason I’m here. My stepdaughter.”
“What’s the problem?”
“She’s gone,” Carl said.
“Gone?”
“Ran away. We have no idea where she is.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“She went to school Wednesday morning. We haven’t seen her since.”
I glanced over at Carl Hanover. Wednesday? Talk about a coincidence.
My father frowned. “That’s five days. Have you contacted the police?”
“When she didn’t show up by the end of the week, Denise called them—not that it will do much good. The thing is, Mac. . . .” He hesitated and gave my father a sorrowful, almost beaten, look. “This isn’t the first time she’s run away. She does it whenever she’s upset about something or whenever she’s angry with her mother. The first time, the cops found her within twenty-four hours and brought her back home.” He shook his head. “I thought they were going to arrest Denise and me. You wouldn’t believe the crazy stories that girl told the police about how she was treated at home. It was terrible. The child protection people got involved. They didn’t open a case, of course.”
“Must have been a nightmare,” my father said.
“You don’t know the half of it. The next couple of times she ran away, Denise insisted on calling the police. But I have to tell you, every time, I was afraid what the police would think. Since then, well, I guess a chronic runaway isn’t high priority for the police. We’ve mostly just waited her out.”
“And she’s always come back?” my father said.
“Yes. It’s always the same. She makes us sweat it out for one night, occasionally two. She always calls after the first night. Always. She and Denise talk. If all goes well, they have a good cry over the phone, and then she comes home. If it doesn’t go well, she’s gone for another night. But she always comes home.”
“If she’s been gone since Wednesday morning, then she’s been gone a lot longer than usual,” my father said. He studied his old friend. “What happened, Carl? What set her off?”
“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure,” Carl said. “I know she was upset about Denise, but it could have been something else too. It’s hard to tell, Mac.”
“And you’re worried?”
“We both are. When she still wasn’t home by Friday morning, Denise called the school. You know, to see if she was at least attending classes. She even asked them to put the word out to students.”
Called the school? Put the word out?
“I drove around downtown all day Friday and again yesterday to see if I could spot her. While I was out, Denise called the police.”
“You don’t suspect foul play, do you, Carl?”
Carl hesitated. “The police asked Denise the same thing.” He stared down at my father’s coffee table. Finally, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, we don’t suspect foul play. But there are all kinds of people out there—you know that, Mac—and, like you said, this is the longest she’s been gone, and so far she hasn’t called home even once. We haven’t heard a word.”
“What did the police say?”
“That they’d keep an eye open. But they know her history. They said that she’s sixteen, which means that she can live wherever she wants. They also said that girls that age are complicated. According to Denise, the police officer she spoke to said, ‘Maybe she has issues.’ I mean, I have issues. My stepdaughter has run away and all we get from the cops is, ‘Be patient; she’ll probably call; she’s done this before, she knows what she’s doing.’”
“Have you checked with her friends?” my father said.
“She doesn’t have any that we know of,” Carl said. He seemed embarrassed to have to admit it.
I glanced at my father, who was still sitting forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees.
“Denise is afraid that Trisha’s gone for good this time,” Carl said.
And there it was: Trisha. Carl Hanover’s stepdaughter was named Trisha. That clinched it. What were the chances that two 16-year-old loners named Trisha had run away last Wednesday?
“Why would Denise think that?” my father said.
“Denise is sick. Cancer.” Carl said. “This is her second bout with it, Mac, and it doesn’t look good. Denise thinks that’s why she ran. Trisha was traumatized by her father’s death. She was in therapy for years. She took it really hard the first time Denise was sick. We were afraid she was going to have a complete breakdown. Now Denise thinks that Trisha has run away so that she won’t have to go through another death. Denise always feels responsible when Trisha runs away. She feels more responsible this time, even though it’s not her fault that she’s sick. She’s worried about how Trisha is handling her illness.”
Carl sounded totally defeated. “I told her it could have been something else that set Trisha off this time. Maybe something happened at school. She’s an odd kid, Mac. I don’t think school is easy for her. If things were different, I’d say let her go. Let her try to fend for herself out there for a week or two. Maybe it would make her grateful for what she has. Maybe she’d appreciate her mother more. But with Denise the way she is. . . . Maybe Trisha really does resent her for being sick. Or maybe she’s afraid of being abandoned, I don’t know. All I know is that Denise needs Trisha back. She needs to know she’s safe. I thought maybe you could help.”
“You want me to try to find her?” my father said.
“You do that kind of work, don’t you? I’ll pay you. Please, Mac. The police said if they see her, they’ll approach her. But if she’s managed to stay out of sight for this long, that could mean she’s gotten smart about ducking the cops. I’ve driven all over the city and I’ve got nothing. All I need is a lead on her whereabouts and I can take it from there. I won’t pretend that Trisha and I always see eye to eye, but I’m pretty sure that if I could just talk to her, I could make her see how much she’s hurting her mother. I love Denise, Mac. I can’t stand to see her so worried, not in her condition.”
My father was silent for a moment. He was probably thinking it over, balancing an old friend’s request against whatever jobs he was already working on. Finally, he said, “Why don’t you tell me a little more about Trisha?”
When Carl said what school Trisha went to, my father glanced at me. There was no way he didn’t notice the look on my face.
. . .
“Since when do we chase down runaway kids who don’t want to be found in the first place?” Vernon Deloitt
e said about an hour later—after Carl Hanover had left my father’s place, after my father had made a call to the police officer Mrs. Hanover had talked to, and after we had rushed downstairs to where Vern had been waiting for nearly half an hour.“And what about this Doig thing? I thought we were going to take that one.”
The three of us were sitting in La Folie, the restaurant on the ground floor of my father’s building. We were having dinner before my mother came to pick me up. My father had just told Vern what he’d agreed to do. Vern seemed less than thrilled.
“Teenage girls are always running away,” he said. “Who can even guess what they’re thinking half the time? If you ask me, they’re the real mystery of the universe.”
I cleared my throat. Vern glanced at me. His face reddened a little and he mumbled, “Present company excepted, of course.”
“The girl who’s missing is Carl Hanover’s stepdaughter,” my father said. Vern gave him an odd look before he continued—and my father gave Vern a similar look in return. “He’s worried about her. Anyway, it’ll probably turn out just like the police said — she’ll show up at home in another day or two.”
“Carl Hanover,” Vern said. He glanced at me again. “Your old friend Carl Hanover, the insurance adjuster?”
My father nodded.
“You think it’s related?” Vern said.
“Related to what?” I said.
“No, I don’t,” my father said to Vern. “I checked with Cecile.” Cecile, the police officer Mrs. Hanover had spoken to about Trisha. “She’s got a record of four runaways for this kid over the past eighteen months, and those are just the ones her mother reported. Apparently, when Denise Hanover called the police this time, she told them that Trisha has run away maybe a dozen times. Whenever the girl gets upset or angry with her mother, she takes off.”
“Related to what?” I said again.
“Nothing important,” my father said.
I could have pressed them for an answer, but my father and Vern are ex-police officers. That means they’re both one hundred percent committed to not talking about their work with outsiders, which, to a cop, includes everybody who doesn’t carry a badge and a gun. I’m used to it. My mother is just as bad. She’s a criminal lawyer. She doesn’t open up much about what her day at the office, or court, was like either. But that doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless. My guess was they meant related to the “Doig thing” Vern had mentioned. I’d read about Carmine Doig in the newspaper. He was a millionaire horse breeder who was rumored to have some unsavory acquaintances. A couple of months ago, there had been a fire at his stables. A man and several horses had died. The fire had been ruled accidental. But if my father and Vern were interested in what had happened, there was more to it than what I had read in the paper. “We’re going to take the Doig job,” my father said. “But I’m going to look into this too. Carl’s an old friend.”
Vern still didn’t look happy, but he said okay and pulled a small notebook out of his jacket pocket. “I’m out there as much as you are. I can keep an eye open, ask a few questions. Give me a rundown on Trisha Hanover.”
“Actually,” my father said, “she goes by the name Trisha Carnegie. She kept her father’s name when her mother remarried. Isn’t that right, Robbie?”
Vern looked across the table at me, one eyebrow raised.
“She goes to my school,” I explained.
“So you know her?” Vern said. My father watched me a little too intently.
“Not really,” I said.
“But you’ve seen her around, right?” Vern said. “You probably know who she hangs out with.”
I shook my head.
My father studied me. “You might be surprised what you know about someone you think you don’t know,” he said.
I said maybe. What I was thinking was, my father would have been surprised how little he knew about someone he thought he knew extremely well.
Like me.
Iwas pretty sure my father was going to start asking me about Trisha Carnegie when his cell phone rang. Saved by the bell. He checked the display and smiled an all-too-familiar smile.
“Patti,” he said fondly.
I checked my watch and was surprised at how late it was. Normally my mother would have picked me up way earlier. The way it usually happened: She called me when she was leaving the house (or her office) to tell me she was on her way. When she arrived, she stayed outside in her car and called again to tell me she was waiting. But today she’d called my father. That had to mean that something was wrong.
Uh-oh. I pulled out my cell phone. There was one new message.
Because of Morgan’s teasing me about the ring tone my father had chosen for me, I had put my phone on vibrate. That wouldn’t have been a problem if I had remembered that I’d done it and if my cell phone had been in my pocket instead of in my backpack. As it was, my mother had no choice but to try to reach me on my father’s home phone and then, when that didn’t work, on his cell phone. Usually she tries to have as little direct contact with him as possible, not because she hates him or anything, but because, despite being divorced, he still acts like he has a shot at winning her back. I don’t know if he really believes that or if he just acts that way to drive her crazy. If it’s the latter, he’s doing a terrific job.
“Your mother is waiting for you outside,” my father said when he finished his call. “She is not happy.”
I shut my phone off, wriggled into my jacket, and hurried for the door. My father was right behind me when I got to the curb, where my mother was pacing. She looked stern and lawyerly, even on a Sunday evening, in navy blue slacks and a pale blue blouse. Her mouth was turned down in annoyance. She said she’d been worried when I didn’t answer my phone. When I lied and told her that I’d switched it off (I didn’t want to hurt my father’s feelings), she scolded me. But, if you ask me, the real reason she was annoyed was that my father was leaning against her car, grinning.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, which seemed to catch my mother off guard. She stared at him as if he had just apologized for every meal he had ever missed while they were married, every anniversary he had ever forgotten (which, according to my mother, was most of them), and every Christmas that he’d left all the shopping up to her. She told me later that she couldn’t recall him ever saying those exact three words to her before.
“That was inconsiderate,” my father said. “I’m sure she’s sorry for worrying you, aren’t you, Robbie? We got a late start on dinner and Robbie lost track of the time. Isn’t that right, Robbie?”
“You’re wearing a watch, Mac,” my mother pointed out. “And you know I always call Robyn before I leave the house. Didn’t you think that maybe something was wrong?”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said again. “I should have paid more attention to the time myself.”
My mother eyed him suspiciously, as if she suspected that he was trying to hide something from her. Finally she said, “Get in the car, Robyn.” She started for the driver’s side.
“Wait a minute, Patti,” my father said.
“Patricia,” my mother corrected. She hates to be called Patti. She says it makes her sound as if she’s five years old. My father, on the other hand, loves the name. He loves it so much that he persists in using it despite my mother’s preference.
“You remember Carl Hanover?” my father said.“You met him a few times when Robbie was a baby.”
My mother nodded. She still had a suspicious look on her face.
“He came to see me today. His stepdaughter is missing. He wants me to help him find her. The girl goes to Robbie’s school. I thought we could all go upstairs for a few minutes and I could ask Robbie some questions.”
I tensed up at the thought of my father grilling me. My mother tensed up at the thought of entering my father’s place.
“Forget it, Mac,” she said.
“But Patti, a girl is missing.”
“Does Carl think she’s in danger?
” she said.
“No,” my father admitted. “She’s run away before. But he is worried.”
My mother turned to me. “Do you know this girl, Robyn?”
“Not really. She’s in one of my classes, but she’s not a friend or anything.”
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
“No.” And that was the truth, so help me.
My mother looked at my father. “I don’t see how Robyn is going to be able to help you,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on the girl’s friends?”
“But—”
“Get in the car, Robyn.”
I climbed obediently into the passenger seat. It took all of two minutes from the time we pulled away from the curb in front of La Folie for my mother’s cell phone to ring. She pulled over and answered it. She listened for a moment. Then she said, “I am not her receptionist,” and hung up. She glanced at me.
“Do me a favor, Robyn,” she said. “Turn on your phone.”
I did. My phone rang—well, it played “My Girl”— almost immediately. My mother shook her head as she pulled back into traffic.
“Hi, Dad.”
“She’s mad at me, huh?” he said.
“You have to ask?”
“Call me when you get home, okay? I want to talk to you.”
“What about?” I said, as if I didn’t already know.
“Please, Robbie?”
“It’s late, Dad. I haven’t finished my homework.”
My mother shot me a disapproving glance.
“It won’t take long,” my father said. He hung up.
“Well,” my mother said, “what does he want now?”
“Nothing important.”
My mother didn’t push. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all, which wasn’t normal. Before my mother went to law school, she took so much of an interest in every detail of every day of my life that Morgan used to tease me about it. Morgan’s mother was much better than my mother at separation, according to Morgan. Morgan’s mother felt no need to live vicariously through Morgan the way Morgan thought my mother did with me, at least until she started law school. Then, I guess because she felt bad about being away so much and having to bury herself in her books when she was home, she put aside what she called “talk time”—time to discuss my day. It’s a regular part of life now. If she’s home for dinner, we talk while we cook and while we eat (but never with our mouths full; my mother has a rule against that). If she isn’t home for dinner, we talk when she gets home. If I’ve been staying with my father, we talk when she picks me up. Always.
You Can Run Page 3