The Summer Bones (9 page)

“None.” The word was short, swift, final. Gail's mouth, complete with pale pink lipstick, was pulled downward in disapproval. “Or why either.”

“But surely, with the two of you working together every day, you might have some idea of what was going on in her life?”

“I know nothing about what she was thinking last Monday. I guess I only know about the mess I've been stuck with ever since.” The pink mouth twisted with obvious bitterness.

“So you think she made a decision to disappear?”

“I think Emily might do whatever Emily wanted to do.”

Victoria felt a glimmer of discomfort. Gail was a shade beyond uncooperative. She was downright chilly. While a touch of animosity might be natural for the way she had been abandoned to shoulder all the responsibility for the office and client load, she might have shown more concern.

Victoria said carefully, “I have always gotten the impression you were friends.”

“We're business partners,” Gail said. “We don't sit around discussing our personal lives much. Frankly, there isn't time.”

Victoria remembered conversations with her sister. “Gail is here, got to run … Gail came for dinner last night … Gail and I were shopping and I found the most darling dress …” There had been much mention of Gail—as a friend, not just a business partner. The woman was lying.

“Nothing unusual was going on?”

“Going on?” Gail asked evenly. “What do you mean by going on? Nothing was ‘going on' with Em, as you put it, as far as I know. Business is good, better than good, in fact. Ron's career is established. They have a nice home and a nice life. Why she's decided to take off is beyond me.”

“You think she left then? On purpose? With no word to anyone.” It was a statement, no longer a question.

“Emily,” Gail said, smiling thinly, “is one of the most singularly selfish individuals I have ever met. No offense, but you're her sister, don't tell me you don't know what I mean. She might have left for any number of reasons, none of which would make sense to the average person. And if she didn't see fit to tell anyone, she wouldn't. Damn to the rest of us.”

“Even to the extent of leaving her car behind in some field?”

“I never have been able to follow Emily's thought processes.”

It was a little too close to the truth for comfort. Victoria could feel the leather seat of the chair sticking to her bare legs and she shifted her position slightly.

“What about that morning?” she asked, switching tactics. “Did you see Em that Monday?”

Gail let out a small breath. “I saw her briefly. She was going to see a potential new client. An important client.”

“How did she seem?”

“Seem?”

“Upset? Unhappy?”

“No.” It was said in a positive tone. “She was fine. Dressed to the teeth for her interview in a new red suit, red pumps, flaunting the tennis bracelet Ronald had just given her. She looked great. Like I said, she has a nice life.” It was there again, a flare of irritation and disapproval.

“Interview?”

Gail waved an impatient hand. “She was going to take notes on what they wanted done. Measure the room. Discuss fabrics and colors. Talk about style and furniture. See if a contractor was needed for minor remodeling. It's the only way we can work up a cost estimate.”

“And did she do that?” Victoria knew Emily had reportedly turned up for this assignment. It was the last thing anyone knew about her movements that day.

“She turned up all right,” Gail said sharply, mouth tightening. “She did the interview, for all the good that does me. Her notes are with her, wherever that is. I even called the police. Her briefcase was not in the car. I'm going to have to start over.”

Her purse had been left behind, but not her briefcase.
Victoria frowned at that odd bit of information, rubbing her bare knee with her hand. “What's the name of the client? Maybe there's some sort of connection.”

“Forget it,” Gail said flatly. “I won't give it to you. He's already annoyed at having to go through the interview again and I'm having to kiss ass to hold on to his business. The police have talked to him, so they should know anything there is to know.”

Again, it was there—the obvious lack of worry over Emily's personal well-being, a twinge of actual dislike … or was that her imagination?

Victoria looked out the big window at the disembodied stream of traffic flowing past. The sun was baking a fine patina into the afternoon landscape.

One last try. She'd ask one last question.

“Were she and Ron having any marital problems, Gail?”

“As far as I know they were happy as clams.” Gail leaned back in her chair, face devoid of expression.

Defeated, Victoria unpeeled herself from the chair and stood. “Leather is really not that comfortable, is it?” she remarked.

* * * *

The Mayville police station was a pale green, square building that sat half a block off of Main Street, with the fire station on one side and the local tavern on the other. Inside, the walls had gone from whatever original color they had been painted to a dirty yellowish hue and the cracked linoleum floor stretched from corner to corner.

There was a functional desk of simulated wood and black metal, three tall, gray filing cabinets, a corkboard hung with curling notices, various radios and phones, and a wheezing air-conditioner in the window facing the street. Only the fax machine and the computer on the desk didn't smack of old and worn, thought Danny as he wearily thumbed through the file on the desk in front of him. He included himself in the “old and worn” category.

“I don't understand,” the woman said dully again. She was sitting in one of the old rickety chairs, her hands limply on the arms, her face crumpled with worry. “She's sixteen. Where could she go? Three months is a long time. I just don't understand.”

Sixteen, Danny could have said, was not that young anymore—unfortunate, but the truth. When he'd worked at IPD, he'd plucked prostitutes off the streets of downtown Indianapolis that were younger than sixteen. Arrested them, sent them to juvenile, shown up at their hearings, and arrested them again a month later for the same thing. He wished he could offer the mother of Hallie Helms more than platitudes, but the truth was, no sign of her daughter had been found. He pulled out dozens of faxes and shuffled them in his hands, as if offering her physical proof of his efforts would pacify her need and loss.

“We're trying,” he said finally, inadequately. “You know that.”

She lifted her hands, an eloquent sign of despair. Nearly fifty, Mrs. Helms had been a stout, matronly woman given to doing volunteer work at the library and helping at church functions, not to mention caring for her four children and husband. Now, gray had crept insidious threads into her short brownish hair, and worry had taken the sweetness from her face. She'd lost weight; her upper arms sagged below the sleeveless, yellow blouse she wore and her shorts revealed folds of tanned skin that lapped above the knees in unattractive waves.

Her red-rimmed eyes met his in desperation. “What about this new thing? What about Emily Paulsen? I read the paper, Danny. You can't keep me from reading the paper.”

He winced. God knew he didn't want to seem like the enemy, because he sure as hell wasn't. He was just an ordinary police officer working with what tools he had.

“There's no reason to believe there's a connection.” His tone was patient and soft. He wanted to reassure her. He wanted to promise her. “Hallie left your house at night. She'd packed some clothes in a bag. She said she was going to stay with a friend, but didn't do so. She lied to you. Teenagers do run away, Margaret.”

“Not my Hallie.” She shook her head. The flesh quivered in her arms. Her throat worked. “Maybe she told a fib, but she didn't run away.”

He sighed.
The alternative is worse
, he wanted to tell her.
Believe she's run away. Believe it.

“We've checked. We keep checking with the local police in Indianapolis and Chicago and Cincinnati. If she gets arrested, or if she wants to contact you, we'll know immediately.”

The best he could do. It felt miserably like not enough.

“I see Randy Knox all the time.” Margaret Helms kneaded the chair arm with her fingers. “I always ask about Hallie. He says she hasn't called him.”

“We've talked to Randy, too.” Hallie's seventeen-year-old boyfriend had nothing to offer the police as far as help. Danny wasn't sure the boy was telling the truth, but maybe it was simply the sullen attitude and adolescent defiance that rubbed him the wrong way. He'd dealt with plenty of boys that age when he was in Vice—too many. They all had that half-bravado, half-frightened child in their eyes.

“Yes, I guess you've done your part.” Margaret got up.

He tried to summon some kind of reassuring smile but was pretty sure all he managed was a ghastly grimace.

“If my Hallie ran away,” Mrs. Helms asked listlessly, “what's happened to the Paulsen girl? Mildred told me she's going to be a reporter, or something. Surely you don't think she's run away from home.”

“I believe her sister is going be a reporter. Emily Paulsen is married to a man named Sims and is an interior decorator in Indianapolis.”

“Oh.”

“And we don't know what's happened to her. Maybe nothing. Maybe she has
,
” he offered another false smile, “run away from home, in a manner of speaking. At this point, I just don't have enough to go on.”

Margaret Helms blinked at him before turning to leave.

The words “I don't know” are beginning to have a hollow ring,
Danny thought as the door opened and her squat figure blended into the street.

He fingered the file again. He hadn't told the complete truth. There was one small link between Hallie Helms and Emily Sims. A common thread that would probably unravel the minute he investigated.

He was pretty sure it meant nothing.

But he wasn't a great believer in coincidence.

The air conditioner whined, huffing out lukewarm air. Danny opened the file and sifted through the contents, looking for the information he wanted. He found it, scanning the words he had written three months before with a dispassionate eye. It hadn't meant much then to him, but now that Emily was missing, well … the game had changed a bit and it wasn't a possible link he could ignore.
Hallie Helms
, he had jotted down,
had been seen in town getting into Damon Paulsen's truck two days before she had disappeared.

There was a regular fleet of cars parked in the lane when Victoria pulled in. She recognized her uncle's black Jeep, her father's blue sedan, the big Buick her grandfather referred to as the “good car,” and of course, Damon's rusting truck. But there was also a sporty, red foreign compact edged in by the oak tree, triumphantly securing the block of late afternoon shade.

Victoria parked her car behind the Buick. She got out slowly and walked toward the house, listlessly swinging her keys. The farm had always been a busy place, so all the cars weren't a surprise. People came and went regularly, from relatives to neighbors. She wasn't sure how she felt about her father's presence. Aunt Kate and Uncle Jim she would be glad to see. The owner of the jaunty red car was a mystery.

Maybe … it
has
something to do with Emily
. She felt the blood beat faster into her heart with renewed hope.
Don't get your hopes up
, her mind told her, while her body quickened each step toward the porch and the back door.

There were voices inside, conversation that reached beyond the screen. Voices, but no laughter. Levity had become a sudden stranger.

The kitchen was the usual arena. Her grandmother was by the sink, nearly everyone else at the table, except Kate, who was chopping onions on an old wooden cutting board by the stove. She looked up as Victoria came through the door and smiled through a glassy threat of tears. “Hi, honey. Damon said you'd gone to Indianapolis. We were beginning to worry.”

“I'm fine. Good to see you, Aunt Kate.” Victoria smiled, doing her best to not look how she really felt, which was worried and unhappy. The drive back from Indianapolis had been an hour-long contemplation of her conversations with both Ronald and Gail Benedict—two of the people in this world who knew Emily best, two people who seemed to believe that she had voluntarily left for reasons unknown. Their similar reactions had shaken Victoria.

A deluge of childhood memories rained into her consciousness—Emily urging her to jump off the roof of the barn, and then hiding in the attic when Victoria had broken her arm; Emily lying to their parents and going off to Chicago with friends when she was supposed to be on a school field trip. And as an adult, she hadn't done much better. There had been Emily arriving on her sister's doorstep in April with a load of bruises and no explanations.

“Did you see Ronald?” her father asked. “What did he say?”

Her father and Uncle Jim were sitting next to each other at the table. Jim had gained weight since Easter, giving his cheeks and chin a comfortable wobble and thickening his waist. But his hair was thinning exactly in the same spot as his brother's, along the temples and forehead, and the thin-fingered hands so appropriate to his profession were a shared trait. The resemblance between Damon's father and her own was as astonishing as the resemblance between her and Emily. Twins were a Paulsen generational phenomena.

“Yes, I saw him briefly,” Victoria replied. “No news.”

“That's too bad,” Jim murmured. Her father said nothing, but his hands cradled a coffee cup with concentration. There were deep creases around his mouth that Victoria didn't remember.

The other person at the table was a stranger—female, young, blond, and pretty, wearing a summer dress in a blue floral print, with thin straps over browned shoulders. Damon and her grandfather were nowhere in sight.