Don't Look Back (10 page)

“I miss you too, Little. Just five more days.”

His face softened, his shoulders curling in, and for an instant he was a toddler again. She pictured his bow-backed waddle, all potbelly and sagging diaper, and that big round face that combined her demure chin with Rick’s knock-you-over green eyes.

“Mom?”

“What, Little?”

“Why isn’t Daddy here? I mean, if you’re gone?”

A charcoal-colored gecko inched across the ceiling. A cicada perched like a giant fly on the screen, and she flicked it away. It fluttered around, tapping walls, and settled invisibly. She was reeling, still, from the question, her answer overdue.

Because he’s selfish.

“He’s … he’s far away, Little. I’m sure he wants to be with you, but it’s a long flight. And he did come back when I had that job training.”

“That was like
five months
ago.”

His expression tugged at her. She moistened her lips. “Yes, it was.”

“He hasn’t even called.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Since I finished my book report, can I spend the night at Zach’s?”

Just like that. A seven-year-old’s haphazard transition or a deliberation manipulation?

“Uh,
no.
”

“But you said!”

“I never said you could.”

“Fine. Okay, fine. I won’t spend the night. I’ll just stay here with you gone and Daddy not calling.”

Mercifully, Lanie leaned into the frame. “What am I, chopped liver?” She mussed his hair roughly. “Go set the table. Soon we feast on chicken dinosaurs.”

“There was no such thing as chicken dinosaurs.” Nicolas rolled his eyes. “See ya, Big.”

“See ya, Little.”

He padded off-screen, and Lanie fell back into the couch, letting her legs rock up after impact. “No such thing as chicken dinosaurs. Who’ll he target next? The Easter Bunny?”

“Lanie? Am I one of those awful helicopter parents?”

“No?”

“With a question mark?”

“I don’t know what a helicopter parent is.”

“Why’d you answer?”

“I was trying for polite.”

“Your technique is lacking.”

“Uh, hel-
lo
—out of practice.”

“Helicopter parents, always hovering, worrying.”

“No! Look, Mizz H. If my parents were half as cool as you are, I’d be out there having a life instead of studying molecular biology. I don’t think you’re uptight at all. I’m no parent, but I’ve seen him when there’s been a gluten slip, and it’s SFB.”

“SFB?”

Lanie lowered her voice, tilted her face forward so she could gaze with gravitas through her purple-streaked hair. “Serious fucking business. What with the bloating and the cramping and the rashes. So no—you’re normal. At least as normal as anyone is. So enjoy yourself. Have fun. Meet a guy named Enrique with swivelly hips.”

“Thanks, Lanie.”

Lanie clicked off, and Eve sat a moment, staring at the blank screen. Behind her the cicada screeched, the sound piercing off the close walls. She rose, took a step toward the door, then hesitated, seized by an impulse.

Reversing, she sat again, brought up Google, and typed in

Theresa Hamilton.

Waiting for the search results to load, she nibbled a fingernail.

The first link froze her in the cheap office chair.

May 16, Mexico City — Thirty-nine-year-old Chicago journalist Theresa Hamilton has been reported missing.

Chapter 14

Eve scanned the article, grabbing the story in chunks, the unseen cicada shrilling like the string accompaniment to Janet Leigh’s shower stabbing.

After earning a master’s in journalism at Columbia, Theresa Hamilton had scored a job for her hometown paper, the
Chicago Tribune.
She’d worked her way up to the political beat, covering K Street before taking a personal leave of absence about a year ago. The explanation, in the next paragraph, stopped the breath in Eve’s throat.

Theresa’s son, Grady, was killed last April by the building manager in her apartment complex, a registered sex offender. She was a single mother. “The trip to Mexico was supposed to be a fresh start for her,” said friend and fellow reporter Maureen Sugden. “It makes this even more tragic. I keep praying that she’ll turn up and it’ll all just be some big misunderstanding.”

The last eyewitness reports had Theresa Hamilton boarding a small plane for Mexico City, where she’d presumably disappeared. A few additional links, mostly from the
Tribune,
gave brief updates: Dearth of fresh leads in Hamilton disappearance … No ransom demands … Authorities fear worst.

A tribute picture of Theresa from a Facebook memorial page showed her at a lake somewhere, laughing, wearing a black fitted tank top and cut-off jeans. One arm was slung across her young son, who leaned against her legs, squinting through a scattering of freckles. She looked younger, fresher, her face not yet lined with grief and stress. Whereas her son peered at the lens, Theresa gazed out toward the water, her straight, beautiful teeth even whiter against the slate-colored lake. Her smile, effortless—a joke had caught her off guard.

Theresa had come to Oaxaca, like Eve, to reclaim herself. She’d lost her child a year ago and had journeyed to the jungle, combating depression, determined to find a way back from the edge. By chance she’d come upon a man in the canyon menacing a local woman. Perhaps she’d gone to Neto with her concerns and he’d dismissed her the way he’d dismissed Eve. But that hadn’t stopped Theresa. She’d stolen back under cover of darkness to …
what?
Gather evidence? Build a case? Check that the
indígena
was no longer captive? It had been brave, but foolish, too, and it might have cost her her life. Lying restlessly in the same bed Eve slept in, under the same tented roof of the same hut, Theresa Hamilton had made a choice. She’d decided that she wasn’t going to stand idly by while an abuser roamed free. Maybe her will was fired by her son’s death at the hands of a pedophile. Maybe her intrepid-reporter skills had kicked into overdrive. Or maybe she was simply a woman of conviction and courage.

Eve looked again at the candid snapshot of Theresa, that spontaneous laugh, the curve of her biceps across her son’s chest. She stared until the photo grew blurry.

She realized that she wished she were a bit more like Theresa Hamilton.

So then: What would Theresa do?

Investigate?

Eve stared at the screen for a long time. Closed her eyes, picturing those time stamps on the photographs in Theresa’s digital camera. The first had been May 7.

A simple click brought up the Web browser’s History tab. A panel appeared, showing the URL for every Web site visited, organized by date and time, in reverse chronological order. Entries seemed sparse, probably due to the fact that Lulu and Neto discouraged Internet activity, but there were at least a few for every day. Eve scrolled through the dates, rewinding the calendar, until she reached the month of Theresa’s trip.

May 7 through 14 had been deleted.

Nothing showed for those dates, not even the ecolodge’s Gmail or reservation site, which came up every other day at a minimum.

Eve felt the grind of her teeth in her skull. The cicada shrilled and shrilled.

She rose and moved swiftly outside. Neto and Lulu bustled among the workers next door in the cantina, overseeing dinner preparation. Skillets of queso fundido. Pork cecina, thin slices doused in garlic sauce. Arrachera—skirt steak—sizzling on the grill. Lulu drizzled red guajillo sauce over thin strips of tortillas while Neto ladled frijoles charros into white bowls.

Eve knifed through the commotion, stopping before Neto. “Why didn’t you tell me Theresa Hamilton vanished?”

Neto paused, his brow twisting. “Vanished?”

“When she got to Mexico City. She disappeared.”

Lulu came over, wiping her hands on a dish towel stuffed into her waistband. “What’s this?”

“Theresa Hamilton never made it back to America,” Eve said.

“I didn’t know. Last we saw her, she was rushing off to a plane.” Neto’s eyes ticked over to the admin shack, back to Eve. “I don’t run Google searches on people once they leave here.”

“Wait a minute,” Lulu said, concerned. “She
disappeared
?”

“Yes,” Eve said. “She was never found.”

Eve kept her gaze on Neto, his normally affable features furrowed, focused. A bead of sweat tracked down from his left sideburn. And Eve understood—he was lying, sure, but he wasn’t dangerous. He was
scared.

This gave her the extra blip of courage to press. “And the history on the Web browser has been deleted for the days Theresa was here,” Eve said.

“We don’t always use—”

“Seven days. Not a single entry.

Lulu was looking at Neto with concern. “Why would that be?”

Neto half turned, now talking to them both. “Why would I have any idea? You think I go there
deleting
things? You think I’m lying?”

Yes. Yes.

Lulu kept a cool stare on the side of her husband’s face, a look of marital distrust that Eve recognized all too well. By the grill, Fortunato struck the dinner bell, two brisk clangs that rang through the lodge, but Lulu didn’t so much as blink. It was clear she wasn’t buying her husband’s story either.

“Why are you doing all this?” Neto said to Eve. “Why don’t you relax and have fun? That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

Lulu regained her composure and took Eve’s hand. “Come, it’s dinnertime.”

The others appeared on the paths, heading for the laden picnic tables.

“Thanks,” Eve said, pulling away, “but I lost my appetite.”

*   *   *

Jay laced his fingers, flipped his palms outward, and cracked his knuckles as a set. “I hate to say it, but people go missing in Mexico City a
lot.
”

They sat in a circle in Jay and Will’s hut around a bottle of gold-colored mezcal, various shot glasses, and a plate holding sliced oranges and a tiny mound of sal de gusano that Will had liberated from the kitchen. The worm salt was made not in fact from worm but from ground-up caterpillar, seasoned with salt crystals and dried chili flakes.

Claire was there, too. She’d tagged along for the liquor and through the course of conversation had been looped in on the intrigue of Theresa Hamilton. Eve realized with some relief that she was building a mini-contingent, enlisting allies.

“You think Scarface followed her to Mexico City and killed her there?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know,” Eve said. “Sounds unlikely, I know, but
something
happened.”

Jay tossed back another shot, touched his pinkie to an orange slice, then his tongue, then pressed his wet print into the mound of worm salt and popped the finger into his mouth again. A variation on the tequila salt-and-lime routine.

“Look,” Claire said, “your girl Theresa was pretty messed up and freaked out, had a lot of shit going on. Maybe she got into some other trouble in Mexico City.”

“Maybe she went
looking
for trouble there,” Jay added, aiming a shot glass at Eve to accentuate the point.

Eve felt a pull to defend Theresa Hamilton, an instinct she didn’t entirely understand. A strange-looking beetle scuttled beneath the bed, and it occurred to her that somewhere along the way she’d stopped paying insects any mind.

Will sipped his mezcal, closed his eyes with pleasure. “You can really taste the flame.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Eve said.

“It tastes like diesel,” Claire said. “And the worm salt tastes like dirt.” She wet her thumb, pressed it to the plate, and brought more grains to her mouth. “
Good
dirt.”

“Okay,” Eve said. “So what’s up with Neto? He’s lying.
I
know he’s lying.
Lulu
knows he’s lying. I can see it in her face.”

“Not sure,” Will said. “But the guy’s a goofball. No way he’s a threat.”

“How do you know?” Claire asked, her words slightly slurred.

“I just do. I can tell.”

Eve prided herself on reading people, and the vibe she got from Neto matched Will’s take on him. Neto wasn’t menacing. He seemed more like a boy nervous about getting caught. But caught at what?

“Come on, Carry Nation,” Will thrust a shot of mezcal in Eve’s face. “One taste.”

“There is
no
way I’m drinking that,” she said.

*   *   *

Eve tossed back her fourth shot, felt the alcoholic flush lighting her cheeks, reddening her neck. “And we were barely even having sex anymore. Whoops, sorry—TMI.” The words felt loose in her mouth, and the others were watching, cracking up. It was the most she could remember talking at one time, and yet the sentences kept coming, tumbling out one after another. She reached for the bottle, noticed it was almost empty.

Will started to speak, but she waved her shot glass, silencing him. “And then
she
came along.” She mimed a European hair flip. “‘I weel ensnare you with my magical vageen.’”

“Vageen!”
Claire doubled over with laughter.

Jay’s broad shoulders shook. “What accent is
that
?”

“I thought she was Dutch,” Will said. “When did she become
French
?”

“Sorry, boys, dunno how to do a Dutch accent.” Eve popped a sal de gusano–dusted finger into her mouth. The taste, she’d found, was rapidly acquired over the course of a few shots. Or maybe she was too buzzed to tell that she still didn’t like it.

“What is it with men?” Claire asked, grabbing the bottle and accidentally sloshing a bit onto her wrist. “Like you’re some rare bird that all womenfolk want to ensnare. Someone gave you a dick and you think everyone’s panting to tend house for you. And you sit back, always looking for the next in line, the next one off the conveyer belt who’ll take another five years to catch up to what a useless little boy you are.”

“Don’t look at me,” Jay said. “I’m a ’mo. And this month? I agree with you.”

Claire swiveled her gaze to Will, the token straight male, who held up his hands in surrender. “I come in peace. Besides, just because we
look
at other women doesn’t mean we want to
sleep
with them. It’s like crashing open houses on weekends. You want to peruse the merchandise, admire the architecture. But at the end of the day, if you’ve got a good house, you still want to go home to it.”