Embers (92 page)

Sam's nod was grim. "I never said otherwise."

"She offered to take the engraving to
New York
and have it appraised," Millie continued, wincing from the stress of telling her tale. "She said she knew people. Oh, we said, she shouldn't go to the trouble. We said, maybe Sam would know someone, too. After all, he's a professional photographer, we said. She said, 'If you tell Sam about the Durer, he's bound to insist that you hold on to it and take money from him instead.' Well, we couldn't argue with that, could we?"

"When did she take it?"

"Three weeks ago."

"Three
weeks
—? And you're first telling me now? This is unbelievable," Sam moaned.
"
Damn
."
He slammed his hand on the tabletop and stood up so suddenly that the chair fell over backward on the shag carpeting.

"Oh, you're not going to get the way you get, are you, Sam? Oh, please don't. This is hard enough—"

"
Unbelievable
!" Sam paced the small room in self-absorbed fury. Of all the low-life scams that
Eden
had pulled, this had to be the lowest.
Eden
could spot a mark a mile away, and his parents were as naive and trusting as they came.

Which didn't go far to explain how he, the savvy and cynical Sa
m
Steadman, could have fallen for her like a clown with big feet. What a fool he'd been! Fool, fool, asshole fool! If it hadn't been for him, his parents wouldn't be sitting at their dining room table in a state of financial terror.

Fool!

He got himself under control enough to ask, "How long had she planned the appraisal to take?"

His mother shrugged. "She said she'd be in touch."

"You don't have an address or phone number, of course."

Both parents shook their heads. Millie said softly, "The number on the card she gave us isn't in service."

"Do you have any idea where she's been living? City? State?
Country,
for chrissake?" He couldn't help it; anger was flowing like hot lava from him, scorching his bystander parents in the process.

Millie bowed her head and murmured, "Jim remembers something about
Miami
. I thought she said
Memphis
. Is that any help?"

Sam sighed. "What about her car? What was she driving? Where were the plates from?"

"Jim didn't walk outside at the end, but her car was blue. It had a big carpeted trunk, I know that," said Millie. "I was nervous about the engraving getting damaged or stolen, but it looked real safe there."

Not pausing to observe the irony, Sam asked, "Did you see any evidence of luggage in her car? Trunks, suitcases, clothes on hangers?"

"No, not r—oh, wait. There was a duffel bag on the back seat. You know, like a sailor would use? I thought it looked a little sporty for
Eden
, because she's so very feminine. Maybe it belonged to someone else."

Just what we need; an accomplice.
Sam said, "Did
Eden
allude to anyone else? Maybe a man she's seeing?"

Surprising, how it smarted to ask that.

His mother said, "No. She didn't talk about anyone. We were commenting on that afterward. We think maybe she still has feelings
....
Well, anyway. No."

"Okay, apparently we're at a dead end, then," Sam decided, disgusted by the realization.

Amazingly, his mother seemed determined to believe the best instead of facing the worst. "It's probably taking longer than she thought to get the appraisal, that's all. She said it was a very important piece of art and that appraisals take a little while, you know. I wouldn't have raised all this hullabaloo at all, except Jim insisted we tell you."

She threw an accusing look at her husband, who said slowly, plaintively, "One of them mortgage people come by yesterday, Sam. How do the bastards know?"

"Dad, don't you dare take out a loan from those shysters," said Sam angrily. "Don't you dare. I'll take care of the bills until this gets cleared up."

"We have enough money," his mother insisted.

Yeah, right.

"I'd like to stay here tonight," he said, surprising his
parents. "Maybe you'll remember something."

Sam's plan was to canvas the neighbors the next morning and question them about
Eden
's car. The working-class neighborhood was fairly close-knit, full of porch-sitters with easy views through chain-link fences. Maybe someone had been sitting on a stoop and had recognized
Eden
from the old days; maybe they'd be able to recall a license. It was going to be humiliating, going door to door in search of
Eden
. Sam dreaded it, and yet he was flat out of any other ideas.

Until three
a.m
. That's when he bolted upright in the spindle bed that his father had painted Superman-blue shortly after they had taken him in.

Phone calls.

He clung to the possibility until he dropped off to sleep, and in the morning, over waffles and O.J., he said to his parents, "Did
Eden
make any long-distance phone calls while she was here?"

His mother, misinterpreting, said, "Well, yes. She would have used her calling card,
normally
, only there was some kind of problem with it. She said that she'd square up
w
ith us after we got the phone bill."

"All
right,"
he said, making a victory fist. "Now we're getting somewhere." It wasn't like
Eden
to be so careless; but then, the risk of a call being remembered was relatively small. "Has the bill come in?"

"Yesterday." Picking up on his enthusiasm, his mother hurried over to the Formica counter and brought the unopened bill to him. "I haven't even—"

Sam took his knife, still all buttery, and slid it under the flap. Heart hammering, he scanned the toll calls on it. There were half a dozen made to the same number—his mother's sister—and one to
Martha's Vineyard
.

Sam punched in the number and reached someone at a gallery called the Flying Horses.

He hung up. A faint glimmer of a smile, the first in twelve hours or so, hovered at the edges of his lips. He got up from the breakfast table and dropped a kiss on top of his mother's gray hair. "She didn't take off for
Germany
with it," he said. "That's something, at least."

Next stop:
Martha's Vineyard
.

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Safe Harbor

This is a work of fiction.
 
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Embers
Copyright
©
1994 by Antoinette Stockenberg
ISBN: 978-0-9834167-
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