A Cold Christmas (20 page)

“He can help me if he wants,” Adam said.

She sighed again. Hadn't she been doing that a lot lately?

“When you get the place cleaned up like this,” Mat said, “it doesn't look half bad.”

She started to sigh and rubbed a hand over her face instead. “Okay, brush teeth. Right now.” She pointed a finger. They scurried off to the bathroom. She called up the stairs. “Zach?”

She trudged up. His bedroom door was closed. Sleeping? The Littles had made enough noise coming in that they should have woken even Sleeping Beauty. She tapped on the door. “Zach?”

He didn't respond and she knocked louder. “
Zach?
”

When he still didn't answer, she tried the knob. Locked. She wiggled it and knocked again. “Zach!”

She ran downstairs. In the kitchen, she rummaged through the drawer filled with odds and ends, searching for a key. There were three, and any one fit all the inside locks.

She closed her fingers around one and went back up to his room. She opened the door and snapped on the ceiling light. The room was empty. She raced down the stairs and ran into the kitchen.

“Caley, what—”

Ignoring Mat, she picked up the phone and punched in the number. “Ettie, is Zach there? Have you seen him? He didn't call?”

She hung up and looked around for a note he might have left.

“Caley, what's the matter?”

“Zach isn't here.”

“Maybe he snuck out to see a friend.”

She pulled the address book from under the phone and looked up a number. “Mrs. Smith? This is Caley James. Is Zach over there? Have you seen him this evening?”

She asked Sam's mother to call her if Sam heard from him and went through the same thing with Jo Dandermadden. She replaced the receiver and ran her hands through her hair.

“Do you check on him at nights? Maybe—”

“Shut up, Mat.”

“Maybe it's a regular habit. Goes to bed and when you think he's asleep, crawls out the window. He's only a kid. Kids do stupid things.”

“Not this kid.”

“Every kid—”

“You've hardly seen him the last three years. You don't know what a great kid he is. You don't know how reliable. You don't know—”

Mat went out the kitchen door.

She called the police.

When she hung up she hugged her arms across her chest. She'd known there was something bothering Zach. She should have stayed with him. She shouldn't have let Mat talk her into going out. She shouldn't have—

Mat came back. “Zach's bike isn't in the garage.”

*   *   *

Susan asked Hazel to track down Demarco and have him meet her at Caley's house. His squad car was waiting at the curb when she got there. Leaving him with Mat and Ettie in the living room, she took Caley into the kitchen. In fits and starts, Caley told her about Zack being out with friends, going for dinner without him, coming back and finding Zack still not home.

The tap dripped. Susan got up to twist it off. It still dripped.

Caley, face a grayish color, scraped a fingernail at the rip in the vinyl tablecloth, red with white snowflakes and white Christmas trees. A misshapen mug with a stick figure drawn on it sat full of cooling coffee in front of her. A child's project, no doubt.

“Why aren't you out looking?” Caley's voice was frail and hollow, without heat.

“He's a twelve-year-old, very bright child, and he's gone someplace on his bicycle. Does he often go out at night on his own?”

“There was a murder in this house and now my son is missing, and you think I'm just a hysterical mom!”

“We're looking. We'll find him. He's only been gone a few hours and—”

“He's such a special kid.” Caley blew her nose and blotted her face. “Oh God, please don't let anything happen to him.” Her hands squeezed the mug until its jagged edges cut into her palm and blood seeped around her fingers.

“He said he wasn't feeling well.” She grasped Susan's arm with bloody fingers. “Do you think he's sick? Collapsed somewhere? Too sick to tell anybody who he is? Delirious?”

Susan tore a paper towel from the roll by the sink and held it under the tap to get it damp. “Someone would call and let us know.”

She pried Caley's fingers loose from the mug and wiped her hands. “Why did you go out? Are you feeling better?”

“Oh, Lord.” Caley sighed wearily. “Sometimes it's easier just to go along with Mat. I didn't have the energy to say no.”

Caley scrubbed her face with her hands, as though trying to rub away numbness. “If only I hadn't gone. I'd have known he didn't come home and I could have called sooner.”

Eyes brimming with tears, Caley rose and pulled open a cabinet door. She pushed around cups and glasses and plucked out a small bottle. At the table, she twisted it open and tried to shake tablets into her hand. They spilled across the table.

Susan picked up one. “What is it you're taking?”

“Advil.”

They didn't look like Advil.

Caley showed her the bottle.

Susan took it and scooped all the tablets back inside. “I'll get you some more.”

Caley picked at a small rip in the tablecloth. “He had something on his mind.”

“Zach did? What?”

“He's not a real talky kid, but if there was something on his mind and I asked, he'd tell me. If he didn't want to tell me, he'd just say so.”

“He'd tell you something was bothering him, but that he didn't want to tell you what it was?”

“Yeah.”

“You'd accept that? You didn't try to find out what it was?”

“I figure a kid has things come up in his life he doesn't want to discuss just like there are things in my life I wouldn't want to talk about. He's an intelligent person and entitled to be treated like one.”

Susan thought not many parents had that attitude.

“Maybe he was hit by a car!”

“No one answering Zach's description has been taken to Emergency.”

“Maybe he hasn't been spotted yet.”

“Patrols are looking. We'll find him.”

“That's what cops always tell hysterical mothers. ‘We'll find him.' I've seen the TV shows. Months or years from now some pathetic little bones are found and—” Caley burst into sobs.

“Oh God, oh God, people go missing all the time. How many are found? It's so cold. He'll freeze. He could be lying somewhere. Like that poor old—” She jumped up. “The Littles!”

Susan took her hands. “The Littles are fine. Please, sit down. We're looking for Zach. We'll find him.” She was thinking maybe she should call Dr. Cunningham for a sedative when Caley took a breath, blew her nose forcefully, and straightened her back.

“I have to go to the Littles. They'll be scared, and Mat isn't too used to the parenting thing.”

“Sure,” Susan said. “Ask Mat to come in here.”

*   *   *

Mat James came in immediately. “Any word?” His face was pale and the lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper, and exaggerated even more by the harsh ceiling light. He looked defeated, a man standing on the mountaintop of middle age and seeing before him nothing but the same grayness of his life day after day.

“Not yet, Mr. James, but a lot of people are looking,” she said. “Please sit down.”

Mat got a mug from the cabinet, looked at the empty coffee carafe, and rummaged in the cabinet for instant coffee. He spooned crystals into the mug and filled the teakettle with water before he sat down.

“Zach is the child of your first wife,” Susan said.

“Yes. That have anything to do with him taking off on his bike?”

“Does he know her family? Would he get in touch with any of them?”

Mat pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kathleen—his mother, biological mother—died.”

Susan nodded.

“She didn't have any family. She was an only child. Both her parents died in a plane crash. They were going on a vacation to—” He put his hand on his forehead, then slid it down until it covered his eyes. After a moment, he brought it down to his chin. “I can't remember where. Somewhere in Mexico. She had a couple of aunts somewhere, but Zach doesn't know them.”

“Where might he have gone?”

“To see a friend would be my guess.”

“What friend?”

The teakettle shrieked, and he filled the mug with hot water, then held it out with a questioning look.

“No thanks,” Susan said.

Mat took a sip, winced, set the mug down, and rubbed his lip.

“You never told Caley,” Susan said, “about the death of Deirdre Noel, or your long friendship with Branner?”

Mat took in a breath and murmured, almost to himself, “Bran and I were going to get rich together.”

“How?” She was hoping, with the stress of his son missing, he'd let something slip.

He shook his head. “Long in the past. The murder of his wife was a tragedy. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. It happened twelve years ago. What does it have to do with Zach?”

Maybe nothing, she thought. A cop asked questions. “Why would Noel want information about Caley?”

“He didn't know her.”

“Would he be looking for revenge? Felt all his years in jail were your fault?”

“Haven't we gone over this already?”

“The prosecution at the trial claimed you were the motive for the homicide. You were having an affair with his wife.”

“It wasn't true. What does any of this have to do with Zach?” he said again, with more impatience.

What indeed? She had a homicide and a missing child. How were they connected? She asked more questions. Nothing came from any of them.

Finally, she said, “Ask your mother to come in here, please.”

He rose, for a moment looked like he was going to say something, but simply nodded and left.

*   *   *

Ettie Trowbridge looked ten years older than when Susan first saw her. Nothing like adversity to take years off your life. Her face was drawn, her eyes red and bloodshot from crying. A lace-edged handkerchief was crushed in her hand.

“I am so irritated with Caley. If that child is hurt or lost—”

“Please try not to worry, Mrs. Trowbridge,” Susan said. “We'll find him.”

“If Caley watched these children like she should, this wouldn't have happened. She's negligent. Always has been. More concerned with her own goings-on than with the children.”

“How is she negligent?” Susan asked sympathetically, implying that Ettie herself would never be anything of the sort.

“She lets them do whatever they want, go all over the place by themselves, and doesn't make sure responsible adults are present. She has men in the house.” Ettie's breath caught on a sob. “If anything happens to that child, I'll—I'll just die, that's all.”

“What men?”

“First a man in the basement and now that Devereau man and God knows who else.”

“Evan Devereau, you mean? The music director at the church?”

“Yes, well, he shouldn't be here. She should know better. She should think of the children.”

“And the man in the basement; Caley claimed he was only here twice and that was to repair the furnace.”

Ettie waved that away and daintily blew her nose. “I'm sorry, pay no mind. I didn't mean it. Even Caley wouldn't take up with a man who has a tattoo. I'm just so upset—”

Susan's cell phone rang and she dug it from her shoulder bag.

“A bicycle's been found,” Hazel said.

27

“Where?” Susan took pen and notebook from the shoulder bag at her feet and scribbled down the address Hazel gave her. Ettie watched with a fearful questioning expression.

“Is it Zach?” Caley stood in the doorway with Mat behind her. “Where is he?”

“A bicycle's been found,” Susan said.

Caley sagged. Mat caught her and, when he pulled her into his arms, she didn't resist. She desperately needed someone to lean on right now; even an ex-husband would be better than nothing.

Susan gave Demarco a short nod and he followed her out. As they hurried toward the pickup, she pulled on gloves. He didn't even have his coat buttoned. Probably ate nails for breakfast.

“Learn anything?” Cold air clawed painfully at her throat.

He shook his head. “Mat needs money. That was apparent from a conversation his mother started. Mat shut her up. He's guilty of something. I don't know if it's the homicide.”

It confirmed her own feeling, but didn't get them any further. “Dig into the man,” she said. “His job, his extracurricular activities, his playmates. What he buys. How he gets his money, drives the car he drives, and lives where he does.”

Demarco nodded. A man of a thousand words with nine hundred left. She got into the pickup and he headed for the squad car.

“And Demarco?”

He didn't click his heels, but he did spin on one.

“This isn't the military. Watch yourself.”

A smile flashed across his face.

What had she unleashed by setting him on Mat James?

The bicycle had been located on Brooks Street, near the 4-H fairgrounds, but before she'd gone two blocks the radio stuttered at her.

“Yes, Hazel.”

“Crenshaw found the James boy.”

A rigid tension in her neck and shoulders that she'd been barely aware of slowly eased as she let out a long breath. “Can you patch me through to him?”

“Sure, hold on.”

A series of clicks and then Crenshaw said, “Ma'am?”

“Is the child all right?”

“Mostly. He was trying to get himself and his bicycle home with maybe a broken ankle when he figured he better leave the bike and just get himself home. Marshall found the bike. I spotted the kid just around the corner. Paramedics took him to ER.”