Time and Trouble

by Gillian Roberts

  “She never said…” Sophia stopped and reconsidered. “I don’t think he could have. I mean he could have graduated a while back, but I don’t think she would know him from school. He’s older. He has a car. He pays rent. So he must have a job. Must be older than she is. Or a dropout with some criminal way of making his money.”

  “What kind of car did he drive?” Billie asked.

  “Yellow.”

  “What kind of answer is that?” her husband asked, still not looking at her.

  “I don’t know cars. It’s silly, big, and it looked yellow in the rain. Not a normal car color, either, not even taxicab yellow, more like—”

  “Sophia!”

  “No,” Emma said, “this could be important. Not taxi yellow, so what kind of yellow did it seem?”

  “Butter,” Sophia said. “Something between a lemon and butter. Maybe margarine.”

  “Sophia!”

  “It was raining and that’s all I know.”

  “Her Social Security number?” Emma asked.

  “Why?” Arthur Redmond this time. “She’s not applying for a pension.”

  “If she looks for work, even under an assumed name…” Emma kept her voice flat.

  “I don’t…I’m sorry. I must have it at home,” Sophia said. “I’ll look.”

  “A photo?” Billie asked.

  In their own way, Emma thought—possibly the way of a blind youngster and his seeing-eye dog—they were working in sync. So far.

  “Uh—not with me,” Sophia said. Arthur’s expression made it clear that was a ridiculous question to ask him.

  Billie nodded. “I’ll come pick one up, then,” she said. “You do have one at home, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Sophia said. “Her graduation photos just arrived, in fact. Not that she’s going to graduate if she doesn’t get back to school soon.”

  “Did she have money with her?” Emma asked.

  The Redmonds looked at each other this time, but both shook their heads. “Just what she’s saved from the sitting and summer job,” Arthur finally said. “But baby-sitting doesn’t exactly set you up for the long-term, and neither can we. We aren’t rich. Which reminds me. About your fee?”

  *

  The Redmonds were gone and Billie was in a state of panic. “Listen,” she said, “about being part of this—I mean, finding somebody. I don’t know how. She’s a teenager. I don’t know what you’d do in that—”

  “Aren’t you the one who found your son?”

  She was a snot, that Emma Howe. Billie’d bet the woman had thrown her kids, screaming, into pools, saying that would make them learn to swim. If they drowned instead, that was their choice. On the other hand, she was giving Billie more work, not firing her, despite the rotten video. “But you said—”

  “—that there were easier ways than calling every Baptist church in the U.S.A. So you’re learning them. That’s what we were doing at the computer. But mostly, it’s common sense, it’s paying attention, it’s figuring out the logic of the girl. Think of yourself as an archaeologist—looking not for a lost civilization, but for a lost girl. Reconstruct her and you’ll find her.”

  It was a setup. It was strike two, baby. Throw you to the wolves. “The computer—”

  “—isn’t going to be an enormous help in this case. She doesn’t have a job. If she has to pay for her bed and board wherever this house is, she isn’t doing it directly to a landlord. She isn’t married, doesn’t have kids. You’ll have to find her through him.”

  “The nameless one? The addressless one?”

  Emma shrugged. “The one with the big yellow car that Sophia Redmond couldn’t ID.”

  “It’s an old hearse.” Billie knew that Emma had watched the tape enough times to draw the hearse in minute detail. She’d heard her own voice come through the thin wall over and over and over again. Was Emma actually being discreet in not saying so? Kind? “But the DMV won’t give out information.”

  Emma shrugged again. “To most people. I have an account. But I’d need a license number. Something. And if we had it, that’d be too easy, anyway. Where would the sport be?”

  “Will you really be working on it as well?” Billie didn’t know why she asked. No matter what Emma said—or even might, momentarily, mean—she would sure as hell be elsewhere when needed.

  “Think of me as a consultant,” Emma said, “or a coach. In close contact and as needed. The truth is, the girl has to resurface, hopefully not on the streets of San Francisco. I don’t know which’ll run out on her first—her funds or her boyfriend. Besides, the theory behind having both of us on the payroll is that the company could handle more work than I could all alone.”

  Sarcasm was uncalled-for. Was Billie supposed to feel guilty for having expected actual training? Something more than a boring rule book and a so-called one-hour introductory blitz to the computer? The good news had been that Emma had been interrupted by a phone call shortly after beginning her unsettling voyage through Billie’s life. The bad news was that she’d never finished whatever it was she thought she’d taught Billie.

  “Any ideas?” Emma asked.

  Tips on tracking people not likely to be in the computer’s databases would be a kindness, but Emma did not specialize in sensitivity. Finding a teenage stranger was nothing like finding a son her ex-husband had taken. Penny Redmond could be anywhere in the country three days after she’d zoomed off with a young man whose name wasn’t even known. Why would Billie have ideas on finding the girl? Why had Mrs. Redmond read the damn article and come here? “There’s a chance the hearse’s license plate is visible on the video. But I guess the tape’s already gone,” she said.

  “Hmm,” was all Emma said.

  “Then I should…” Billie murmured, waiting for divine intervention, or at least a cue from Emma.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “What precisely are your plans?”

  Plans? The ones she’d gleaned from the other successful searches she had done for missing teenagers?

  “How do you plan to find her?”

  And she was going to pay Billie next to nothing while she billed her services out as if an experienced, knowledgeable PI was on the job. Instead, the client had got an indentured servant who literally didn’t have a clue. “I think…” She had lost the ability to think. Sterile sand filled her skull. A desert without so much as a mirage.

  Well, not quite. This open-ended questioning, this noninstruction was Emma’s method of instruction, and the lesson was that it was up to Billie, and nobody else, to produce a theory, a plan of attack.

  Okay, who’d know about a boyfriend? “Her girlfriends at school. The counselor, if she’ll talk to me. The people she baby-sat for. I’ll get their names when I pick up the photo.” She looked at Emma. Would it kill her to crack a smile, nod approval?

  “The hearse, too,” she added. “It’s unusual. Maybe there’s an interest group on the Internet, maybe he’s part of it.” She felt downright inspired now. The possibilities were endless. “Maybe—”

  “Wesley,” Emma interrupted. “Little brothers know a whole lot more than anybody wants them to. Maybe more than Mom heard or was told. Penny supposedly confided in him. Bet that means he keeps secrets well.”

  Billie cursed herself for mentally dismissing Wesley as soon as she heard of him—the way one was supposed to, the way she once dismissed her own younger brother. According to him, she still did. “And Wesley,” she said. “Sure.”

  “Write everything down or tape-record it for your report,” Emma said. “Stay in touch. Where you are. Keep me up-to-date.”

  Billie nodded, resenting the way Emma, when actually offering practical advice, adopted a patronizing tone. Take good notes. Wow. Maybe that was Billie’s delayed punishment for shooting off her mouth at her interview, about how intelligent she was, how she could tell what was important from what was not.

  “And another thing,” Emma said. “Clients lie.”

  “People who hire us?”

>   “Always. Ah, they don’t necessarily do it on purpose and sometimes they even think it’s the truth, but it isn’t. They want us to love them, to think they’re the goodies. It would make our job easier if they’d tell the truth, but they don’t.”

  “Like about her being crippled,” Billie said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Well, that one isn’t exactly subtle. But in general, about anything. There’s undoubtedly more. Always think about what they didn’t say, see what other possibilities there are.”

  Great. This was less patronizing, but unhelpful and downright confusing. It was enough to think about what had been said, but of what hadn’t been?

  “That about it for ideas?” Emma asked.

  It shouldn’t be, Billie was sure. Other diabolically ingenious approaches should be springing from her lips and brain—but guess what?

  Emma nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “There’s hope for you yet.”

  Eight

  The Redmonds’ house looked a lot more inviting than it had on the rainy day. Today, encapsulated in scrubbed air that had the texture and shine of a bubble, everything about the Victorian pulled the viewer close: its flowering shrubs, the green-and-white pillows on the white wicker porch furniture, the white clapboard, the shutters and trim painted two shades of gray. As much as wood and pigment could sparkle, they did.

  Until you were inside, Billie thought. There, despite the chintz and crisscross curtains, despite the sun reflecting on waxed oak floors and area rugs, tension leached the color. Everything was too perfect and set in place. In a room trying for hominess, nothing was personal, mussed, tossed, casual, or used-looking. A home for show, not for use.

  She and Arthur Redmond had passed through a narrow center hall with its obligatory gilt-edged mirror over a small table where mail would be thrown. Or, more fittingly, carefully placed. Into the living room, where Sophia sat on a cushioned chair next to a table set out with cups and saucers. Her folded wheelchair leaned against the wall behind her.

  Billie had checked the hallway staircase en route. No lift. No bed visible in the living room. How and where did poor, incapacitated Sophia catch her z’s? If, as Emma suspected, she was scamming her husband, too, what did she do? Crawl up the stairs? Sleep on the dining-room table? Sit upright all night long, martyr to a false insurance claim?

  “Coffee?” Sophia asked as soon as Billie was halfway into the room. “Or tea? We can make either. No problem. I can get into the wheelchair with just the littlest bit of help and make my way around the kitchen. You adapt, you know. I’ve been practicing short distances with a four-legged cane. Exhausting. Very hard.”

  “Stop babbling,” Arthur grumbled. “She does that all the time. Stick to the point. She’s here about Penelope.” He was presumably addressing first his wife, then Billie, then his wife again, but he never tried for eye contact with either of them.

  Nonetheless, his rebuke found its mark on Sophia who went blank at the moment of impact. Then she regathered her forces and plugged on. “Thank you for being so prompt. To drop everything and start on this the very same day, that’s quite impressive, isn’t it, Arthur?”

  Arthur sighed. With no more going for him than being tidy-looking, employed, and male, he assumed the role of emperor.

  “Important to get on a case right away,” Billie said. “Don’t want the trail to get too cold.” Thank God for TV and radio dramas. Generations spouting dialogue like that had given it the gloss of authenticity.

  The Redmonds nodded agreement with her sentiments. Or somebody’s.

  “Did Penelope drive?” Billie asked.

  “Knew how. But she didn’t have her own car. We aren’t made of money. Rode her bike a lot.”

  “She was a great help to me since the accident, since I couldn’t drive. She drove me around. Although I’m trying to do it myself again, now that I’m working with the cane, you see.”

  “Sophie!”

  “Were you able to find Penelope’s Social Security number?” Billie asked.

  Sophia pushed a piece of paper toward Billie, who seated herself on the sofa.

  “And a photo I could use?”

  Sophia nodded again, but this time, her lips were pursed. “Showing a photo of my daughter to people… That makes me feel so… That ‘Do you know this person? Have you seen her anywhere?’ thing. It’s SO…”

  “Yes, of course, I understand.” It was unsettling, suggesting that Penelope Redmond had not simply gone off for a long joyride with the object of her raging hormones but had, indeed, disappeared. Possibly permanently. She thought of the skeletons in the meadow, of somebody, somewhere, going door-to-door with their photos years ago.

  “I have her high-school graduation photo. The one that will be in the yearbook,” Sophia said. “She had so many copies made. Here. She looks too serious, though, and she has such a nice smile.”

  Billie picked up the photo. Baby-faced, people used to call that look. She bet it annoyed the hell out of Penelope Redmond, and no amount of older people telling her to enjoy it would change her mind. It was the portrait of a girl who was hell-bent on becoming someone else. She had refused to smile for the camera. Her cheeks were sucked in and her eyes focused on a grand horizon far beyond San Rafael High.

  Billie recognized herself in the photo. The fantasies she’d had at that point. The expectations. To be Somebody or die. “She’s quite pretty,” she said. A mane of curls spiked the air around Penny’s face and tumbled onto her shoulders. “Her hair is lovely. Is it brown?”

  “It photographed dark. It’s more red,” her mother said. “But there’s also lots of blonde highlights, more in the summertime, and all of them natural, may I add. But she won’t do a thing about those curls. Won’t cut them or use a straightener or pull them back or anything.”

  Arthur grunted. Billie couldn’t tell if he resented the idea of doing anything to Penelope’s curls, or that Sophia was veering off-course again. Or perhaps he had indigestion.

  “Her eyes are hazel,” Sophia said. “And she’s five foot six and a half. Slender. A decent student. Until this year.” She pursed her lips and retreated somewhere inside herself.

  Billie felt much more urgency than the girl’s mother seemed to. “It would save time if you could give me the names of her friends at school and of the people she baby-sat for.”

  Sophia came out of her twilight sleep and nodded. “Friends,” she echoed. “Well, there’s— Oh, look at me! I’m so embarrassed! I asked what you wanted and never did another thing about it! Coffee or tea, Miss August? They’re both easy, one or the other, so don’t be bashful. Arthur will help, won’t you, Arthur? And I have a little tray of cookies—store bought, I’m afraid, and not even from the good bakery, but it is hard reaching everything while I’m in this—”

  “Tea, please,” Billie said. Maybe with Arthur out of the room, Sophia would speak less and say more. “And those names?”

  But first, Sophia had to give excessive directions about water temperatures and the box of teabags and the small jar of sugar—or would Billie prefer honey?—or maybe lemon?—to Arthur, who was, according to her, a man who actually, literally, couldn’t boil water until this accident turned them all upside down, could Billie believe that? She was so grateful to him, so impressed at how quickly he’d stepped in to help.…

  And with a glare and a grunt, he escaped from the room.

  “Now let’s see,” Sophia said. “There are so many friends. She attracted people. Some folks have that gift, and she was one. But their names have just—I’m in such a dither these days between my accident and then this, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. Even the names of my daughter’s friends. You must think I’m a—”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll come to you.” What came to Billie was that perhaps this woman didn’t know her daughter at all. Zilch.

  But a name and then another slowly emerged. “I don’t want you to think I’d ever let her sit for anybody unless I know their name and the hours
and their phone numbers,” Sophia said. “She knew that, and she was good about it. She tried, you know? She isn’t a bad girl, whatever you might think, given this…situation. I think if she hadn’t met this man…” She shook her head. “Anyway, there’s a blackboard in our kitchen for writing things like the name of the people she’ll be sitting for, and she never once to my knowledge went out on a job without writing all that information on the board.” Except. Billie heard that word waiting to be said, to negate the promising sentence.

  “Except that of course, every time she’d come home from a job, she’d erase the blackboard.” Sophia smiled wanly. “Who could have known it might be of any relevance? Is it?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Billie leaned forward and patted Sophia Redmond’s subtly patterned floral skirt. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It might just speed up things. Incidentally, could I speak with your son, too?”

  Sophia looked terribly sorry. “He’s not home from school yet. But don’t worry about that. Wesley’s only eight—a baby. An innocent. What would he know about things like cults and kidnapping and boy-girl things? Except the little we’ve already told you. He doesn’t know where she is—we asked, of course. And the kidnapper never came here socially, so he couldn’t have met him.”

  Billie nodded acknowledgment and tried to get Sophia back on track. “The people she sat for.” They would know. Or the girlfriends would. She had to meet him somewhere, didn’t she? It might be after school or after a baby-sitting job.

  “I know a few. The regulars,” Sophia said. “The Feldspars, of course. Mimi and Joe. She’s worked there off and on since their older child was born. And Sally O’Neall. She’s divorced now, a working mother with three children, and her ex-husband is no help at all. It’s so hard in that situation.”

  Billie felt a flash of resentment. As if she needed Sophia Redmond in her poufed-up house to remind her of what it was like to be set adrift with a child in an expensive world.

  “I was like that,” Sophia said, her voice lost in the past. “Such a bitter struggle to keep Penelope and myself alive. That’s why—Arthur might be a little…but he saved me.” She nodded emphasis for her words. “I don’t know what would have become of us, otherwise. I don’t know whether you’re married or not or have a child or not, but if you were and then you weren’t, and you…were left with a child to raise—it would be easier for you. You have a trade, a profession. You have special knowledge and skills. I don’t.”