Come and Find Me (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

“W
hat’s wrong?” her mother said the minute she heard Diana’s voice on the phone.

“Why should there be something wrong?”

“Because you never call me. I call you. Your sister calls me. That’s the way things work in this family.”

“So has she?”

“Why is it always a contest?”

Diana took a breath. “Let’s start over. Hi, Ma. How are you?”

For the last five years, her mother had lived in Jensen Beach, Florida, in a condo surrounded by golf courses. “Men golf,” she’d explained to Diana, forever hopeful that she’d find a better partner than Diana’s father, who’d disappeared from their lives long before he’d taken off with the woman whom Diana and Ashley referred to as Tiffany because that was her favorite place to shop. She had not long after been replaced by Tiffany II.

“Sorry. Do I sound cranky? I can’t complain. A few creaky joints. I always thought that was a figure of speech but it turns out they do creak. And click. It’s unnerving. I mean, I make a fist and the knuckles . . . make this sound. And my back. Doctor tells me to walk more. Says it’s normal for my age. Do you think he’s just telling me that because there’s nothing for it? Like I say, can’t complain.”

Her mother snorted a laugh. “Guess I
can
. Ha ha! In fact, I’m really good at complaining. But actually, on the whole and considering everything, I’m good. Hey, I beat the Big C. What else can He throw at me? Carpe diem, that’s what I say. Carpe diem every single goddamn day. How about you, sweetie pie?”

Her mother actually paused. Diana waited until she was certain her mother wasn’t going to answer the question herself.

“I’m good.”

“Good? Just good? That’s nice. I guess. You getting out of the—”

“Some.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re getting out. And if you’re not, take a vitamin D supplement. You don’t want osteoporosis to get you when you’re my age. My friend Barbara just broke her radius getting up out of a beach chair.”

“It’s too cold here to go to the beach.”

There was a moment of silence. “You know, all I want is for you to be happy. Your sister tells me—”

“So she did call?”

“Last week. She was supposed to call this morning. Monday morning she usually calls.”

Monday morning Ashley usually answered her messages and showed up at work, too.

“Has something happened to your sister?” her mother asked. “Because all weekend I felt like something was off. I thought it was me. Then today she doesn’t call and you do. Dee Dee, is something up?”

Diana cringed at the nickname she’d so outgrown. “Nothing’s up with me, and I don’t think anything’s up with Ashley, but I haven’t actually talked to her either.”

“Since?”

“Friday.”

“Ah.” A longish pause. “Did you check her apartment?”

“She’s not answering her phone.”

“Because she’s not there? Or . . .”

The silence that followed felt laden with accusation, and an image of Ashley, lying on her kitchen floor, paralyzed and unable to reach the phone, floated into Diana’s head.

“If I don’t hear from her soon, I’ll get someone to check,” Diana said.

“When you find her, would you tell her to call me?”

“I will, as soon as I hear.” Diana’s voice sounded tiny and deflated.

“I’m sure she’ll turn up, hon, she always does. Try not to worry too much,” her mother said. Two years ago, Diana would have been the one trying to reassure her mother.

“Good advice.”

“I’m full of good advice. Don’t you know that?”

“Thanks, Ma. I’ll tell her to call. Bye—”

“Shh!” Her mother cut her off. From the day she had been diagnosed with cancer, Diana’s mother insisted that they never end a conversation with any version of “good-bye.”

“Sorry. I meant talk to you soon,” Diana said.

“Knock wood.”

B
y midday, Diana had worked her way through most of the items on her to-do list plus three loads of laundry and a weekend’s worth of dishes. She’d also polished off the pint of rum raisin ice cream. Ashley still hadn’t called, and as far as Diana could tell, she hadn’t shown up at work either.

If Diana had been a normal person, she’d have driven over to Ashley’s apartment. She got as far as her garage, where she pulled the old shower curtain off the car, a three-year-old, gunmetal-gray Hummer. Daniel’s car. He’d hacked the city’s telephone network to ensure that he’d be a radio station’s 198th caller to win it. It still looked like your average muscle car, but Daniel had had it tricked out with hydraulic lifts that could raise the truck bed and added custom, oversize wheels and tires. The special hubcaps were like black rubber starfish, each chrome tentacle outlined in black. She had no memory of backing it into the garage for the last time, though she must have been the one to do it.

Diana touched the hood, then jerked away as if the thing had thrown off a spark. Just thinking about driving made her nauseous. She would do it one day. Really she would when it became absolutely necessary. But not until she’d exhausted all other avenues.

Maybe one of Ashley’s friends knew something. Diana went back inside and started writing a list of friends she’d heard Ashley mention. The list was pathetic, all first names or, even worse, nicknames. She had no idea how to reach any of them. They’d all be in Ashley’s BlackBerry, which was presumably wherever Ashley was. That’s when she remembered. Ashley’s laptop. It was still sitting on the floor beneath the coatrack.

She carried Ashley’s computer into her office, booted it up, and waited until the icons materialized. If Ashley was like most people, she’d have backed up her address book on her laptop. Sure enough, there was the BlackBerry icon. Diana opened it and navigated through the menus until she found Ashley’s contacts. She made a list of about twenty-five names she thought sounded familiar, then started writing an e-mail message.

In the subject line she typed:

Desperately seeking Ashley Highsmith!

That ought to get their attention. The rest of the message she wrote with a light touch, saying she had needed to talk to Ashley, and if anyone had seen her around in the last few days, please let her know.

She blasted the message to the entire list. Seconds later, she heard
ding, ding, ding
as responses piled into her queue. A glance told her they were error messages for invalid addresses plus a pair of “Out of the Office” automated replies. She watched the message queue but nothing new popped up.

Move on,
she told herself. Next, track down other tenants in her building.

That was easier still. She used a reverse-address search to find people whose address was the Wharf View condo complex, where Ashley had lived for the last two years. With a dozen names and phone numbers, she reached for the prepaid cell phone, now fully charged. There was no answer at the first number. Second, third, fourth tenant, no answer either.

On the fifth try, the line had barely rung once when someone picked up. “Hello?” A woman’s voice.

“Uh . . .” Diana had no idea what to say, how to explain without sounding crazy.

“Who’s there?” the woman demanded, her voice was frail and quavering. A hang-up call would probably freak her out completely.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Diana started. “You don’t know me but my sister lives at Wharf View, and you live at Wharf View, and . . . I know this might sound a little bit bizarre, but I’m just trying to find out if she’s okay.”

“Who are you? And how did you get my number?”

“I”—Diana was about to say “Googled you” but stopped herself. Instead she said, “I found your name in the phone book.” Before the woman could think about how unlikely that was, Diana rushed on. “I’m sorry. Did I catch you at a bad time? I’m not selling anything. Really I’m not. It’s just that I need someone to—” Her voice broke and a sob escaped. There was silence on the line as she covered the mouthpiece, getting herself back under control.

“Oh dear, is your sister in some kind of trouble?”

The overwhelming relief that Diana felt at this tiny bit of sympathy gave her back her voice. “I . . . I honestly don’t know.”

There was a little gasp on the other end of the line.

Uh-oh. She didn’t want this lovely woman going into a panic—one of them in that mode was plenty. “She’s a little flaky, you know? And it’s probably nothing, but . . .”

“But you’re worried. Of course you are. Younger or older?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your sister.”

“Younger.”

“Mmmm.” The sound was pregnant with meaning. “Which apartment is she in?”

“Eighty-eight N.”

“River view.”

“Do you have a nice view, too?”

The woman sniffed. “Parking lot.”

Diana’s pulse quickened. “You can see the parking lot? Maybe you can see her car. She drives a gold Mini Cooper.”

“Oh dear. I’m afraid all cars look pretty much the same to me. Though I do remember when it was easy to tell them apart. Cadillacs had fins. Buicks had those funny little holes in the side. And Thunderbirds—”

“You’d be able to tell this car, Mrs.—” Diana paused.

“Fiddler.”

“Mrs. Fiddler. Her car is teeny, and it looks like a miniature bus. Oh, and the body is gold but the roof is black.”

“Goodness. Let me see.” There was a grunt, like Mrs. Fiddler was getting herself up out of a chair. “I’m looking out the window right now.”

Diana crossed her fingers as she waited, though she didn’t know whether to hope that the car was there or not.

“The lot’s pretty empty. Weekday, you know,” Mrs. Fiddler said. “So many people work. But I don’t see a car that looks like a little bus. Nothing gold with a black roof. That would stand out, even from up here. Of course I can’t see all the cars.”

“You can’t?”

“There’s underground parking too. But I can take a walk down there and look around. I can even pay a visit to your sister’s apartment, if you like.”

“Mrs. Fiddler, I’d be so grateful if you would.”

“You said 88N? I’ll call you back—”

“I don’t mind waiting,” Diana said, afraid that if she lost the connection she might never get Mrs. Fiddler back.

“It might take a while.”

“Take your time.”

Diana heard the phone being set down and, a little while later, what sounded like a door closing. While she waited she checked for new messages and then started a game of solitaire.

Finally, after three rounds: “Hello?” That same quavery voice. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“I’m Diana. Diana Highsmith.”

“Your sister’s Ashley Highsmith?”

“Yes, yes! Did you find her?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t find a car like that. And I knocked on your sister’s door but no one answered.”

Don’t panic,
Diana told herself. No car and no one answering to a knock on the door were exactly what she would have expected midmorning on a Monday.

“One thing, though,” Mrs. Fiddler went on. “The mailman left some mail for her on the table in the lobby.”

Diana knew that the mailboxes were small—oversize items typically got left on the table for tenants. “Magazines?”

“
Vogue.
And also what looked like bills and a bank statement.” She hesitated. “I hope it was okay to snoop. I hate people who do.”

Diana swallowed. “Did you look in her mailbox?”

“From what I could see, it looked pretty full. And another thing. There were a couple of menus in her door. You know how they stick them in the doorjambs? I get those too, and I think these came Saturday.” Mrs. Fiddler sounded as devastated as Diana felt.

Menus left stuck in the door? Mail overflowing onto the table? It didn’t sound as if Ashley had gone into or out of her apartment building in days. The queen of hearts, the last card she’d turned over in solitaire, stared placidly back at her.

“Hello? Are you still there?” Mrs. Fiddler said.

“Thank you so much,” Diana said, trying to sound calm. “If you notice anything else, could you give me a call?” She gave Mrs. Fiddler her phone number and disconnected the call.

What in the hell was she supposed to do next? Damn Ashley. It was so inconsiderate of her to take off like that. And so typical . . . But when Diana tried to remember other instances when Ashley had disappeared without a word, she could come up with none.

Ding!
A message popped into her queue.

RE: Desperately seeking Ashley Highsmith!

Surely here were the answers she’d been aching for.

Ding! Ding!
Two more replies to her e-mail asking about Ashley popped in.

Diana whipped through the responses, but excitement quickly faded. No one had seen or heard from Ashley. Not since Friday.

Diana pushed herself away from the computer. She needed to think. What was she missing? Maybe Ashley’s supposedly soon-to-be former boyfriend hadn’t given up. Maybe pulling the bar stool out from under her and leaving her to pay the tab wasn’t enough. Maybe—a possibility Diana could barely contemplate—he’d followed her and turned violent.

Aaron. At least Diana remembered the jerk’s first name. Should have thought of him earlier. She went back to Ashley’s contacts list and checked that she hadn’t missed him. She hadn’t. Diana knew that Ashley had at least two e-mail addresses, and she wouldn’t be using her corporate account to communicate with Aaron.

She opened a browser window on Ashley’s laptop and clicked to drop down the list of most frequent Web sites visited. Near the top was
GMAIL
. She picked it and the welcome screen appeared. AHIGH88 was in the user name box and a series of dots in the password field on the opening screen.
Yes!
Diana pressed enter and she was in.

181 unread messages

Ashley was addicted to her e-mail. She would have been incapable of going even a single day without checking it. Three days? Couldn’t happen.

Chapter Thirteen

“S
-M-I-T-H.” Diana finished spelling her sister’s name to the operator at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.

“Sorry, we have no one here by that name,” the answer came back.

Diana hung up the phone and checked off the last of a dozen hospitals within a twenty-mile radius where she’d called. There was nothing left to do but contact the police.

She dialed 911. Her call was routed to an officer with a gravelly voice.

“I want to report”—her voice caught—“a missing person. My sister. Ashley Highsmith.”

“And you are—?” His Boston accent turned “are” into “ah.”

“Diana. Her sister.” Haltingly she managed to explain the situation to the officer.

“So you last saw your sister downtown at—”

“I wasn’t there. She was. I saw her in video footage that was on the Internet. And she called me from Copley Square at six.”

“Okay. Friday. That’s—”

“Three days ago. I wasn’t worried at first. I mean, I know she’s a grown-up. She lives alone. Owns her own condo. Has a great job. But she’s supposed to be at work and she’s not in her office. They don’t know where she is.”

“Was she—?”

“Sure, at times she’s a little flaky but she wouldn’t just disappear like that.” Diana knew she probably sounded hysterical but she couldn’t stop herself. “And she left her laptop at my house and she hasn’t come back for it. And she’s not at work or”—she cleared her throat and tightened her fingers around the phone—“I don’t know where she is. None of her friends know where she is. It’s been three days without a word.” Finally she took a breath.

The officer made conciliatory noises. Then: “Could you come down here and file a report? Bring a photograph of your sister?”

Briefly Diana envisioned herself at the wheel of the Hummer. Crashing.

“Wouldn’t it be faster if I e-mailed you a picture?”

“That works too. But there are forms, and questions—”

Diana rushed on. “I asked one of her neighbors to look for her car. It wasn’t in the parking lot. And she said there are flyers stuck in her door. Flyers that came days ago. Days ago!” She choked up and her vision blurred.

“You have keys to her apartment?” the officer asked.

Diana gulped. “Yes.”

“But you haven’t gone there and checked for her?”

“I . . .” Panic welled up in her. “I can’t find the key.”

There was a long pause. “And you can’t come in person and file a report?”

Diana wiped a skim of cold sweat from her forehead. “I’m laid up with a stomach virus.”

There was longer silence on the other end of the line.

Finally Diana said, “Listen, I can’t come. I just can’t. What difference does it make why? This isn’t about me. My sister is missing. Something’s wrong. I know it.” She hiccuped a sob, snagged a tissue, and blew her nose.

“Tell you what,” the officer said. “We’ll send a patrol car over to your sister’s place. Check things out. Talk to the neighbors. Ascertain whether there’s anything to be concerned about.”

If she could, she would have reached through the phone and hugged the guy. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I’ll call you as soon as we know something. But depending on what we find, you may have to come in.”

Diana couldn’t come up with a reply to that.

D
iana paced her house while she waited for the police to call back. She straightened. Washed the dishes that were in the sink. Finally she sat down at her computer and scrolled through header after header of Ashley’s unread e-mail messages.

There she found the most recent message that Ashley had actually opened. It was from APRITCHARD, it was dated Friday at 4:33
P.M.
—just before Ashley would have left to meet Aaron at the bar. Diana opened it.

C U @BOUCHEE—LVG WORK NOW

That would be the jerk himself. Aaron, looked like his last name was Pritchard.

He’s been weirding me out,
Ashley had said
. Checking up like he’s some kind of control freak.

Diana looked up Mr. Control Freak on Google. Back came links to a bunch of social and business networking Web sites. She clicked on the Facebook link. There were three Aaron Pritchards on Facebook. One in Bend, Oregon. The second one had a photo of what looked like an eight-year-old boy. The third one had to be him. His public profile pegged him as an investment banker. Single. Interested in dating. The photo was of a handsome guy with a well-tended beard. He was shirtless, on his back, bench-pressing what looked like fifty-pound dumbbells.
Ick.

She’d send him a message, but what to say? She wanted to find out what he knew, not scare him away. She typed:

Hi, Aaron –

I’m Diana, Ashley’s sister. A friend of mine just came into some money and Ash said you’d be a good person for her to talk to. She wants to make the right decision. Needs to decide soon.

She ended with the number of her prepaid cell phone and hit send. She set the cell phone down on the desk. Beside it, her landline sat mute.

She checked the time. Did
We’ll send a patrol car over
mean right this very second? Even if it did, fifteen minutes was too soon to hear back. She hoped that an officer was at least on the way over to Ashley’s apartment.

Diana turned her attention back to Ashley’s e-mail. She sifted through the unread messages. There were Facebook and LinkedIn updates. A party invitation. A reply to a back-and-forth about a friend’s wedding shower that Ashley was helping to organize. Lots of ads and travel offers.

Diana stopped when she got to a message dated Sunday with the subject line “Everything okay?” Opened it. It was from Janine Gagne, a friend Diana vaguely remembered Ashley mentioning.

Guess you must have forgotten all about me. Sunday brunch at the Centre Street Cafe, your fave??? Hope he’s cute.

;-(

Diana stared out into space. Even if there was a new man in her life, Ashley would never have stood up a friend.

Were the police at Ashley’s apartment yet? Were they talking to the super? Diana imagined them trying Ashley’s door and finding it unlocked. As they opened the door, the menus that Mrs. Fiddler had said were stuck in the jamb fluttered to the ground . . .

A
n hour later, Diana was holding Ashley’s lipstick and staring at the phone, willing it to ring when her intruder alarm went off. She bashed the button that silenced the Klaxon. Echoey silence followed. She felt a stone drop into her belly when she saw, in the front video monitors, a police cruiser parked in front of the house. A uniformed officer was striding up her walk. The doorbell rang.

Why come and not telephone? Diana pushed away the obvious answer. As she made her way to the door, she felt as if she were moving through sludge.

The doorbell rang again.

Hands shaking, she fumbled opening the dead bolts, pinched her finger removing the security bar, and finally punched the security pass code. She pulled the door open.

The officer filled the doorway—not so much with bulk as with uniformed presence. Before she could say anything, he said, “Diana Highsmith?”

Diana recognized the gravelly voice. “You’re the officer I talked to on the phone?”

He nodded. “Officer Wayne Gruder. Your sister doesn’t appear to be in her apartment.”

Appear to be?
Was that good news or bad?

“But her mailbox has been emptied,” he added.

Only Ashley had the key to her mailbox. Diana’s hand flew to her throat. “Thank God, she’s back!”

From the way his sharp eyes probed her reaction, she knew there was more than just an all clear. “So why the hell hasn’t she returned my calls?”

He suppressed a smile, then his look turned somber again. “The thing is, she’s not answering her door. I knocked. Rang the bell three or four times. I haven’t got probable cause to bust down the door.”

“Maybe she came and rushed out again?” Diana said.

“That’s possible,” Officer Gruder said, giving her a long level look.

A chill passed through her. “You think she could be there? Inside? And won’t . . . or can’t answer the door?”

“I have no way of knowing. But you seemed so concerned. And you said you have a key.”

“I do. Of course I do. And that would be the wise thing to do, wouldn’t it?” Her voice sounded robotic. “Go over and let myself in and just see what’s up.”

“Seems wise. ” He seemed infinitely patient. Diana couldn’t help thinking it sounded as if he were talking to a child. “But if it was my sister, I’d want to check to be sure. In person. It’s a reasonable thing to do.”

He stood to one side, as if he were waiting for her to come with him.

Diana took a step back, even though she knew she had to go. She had no choice. She looked past him to the police cruiser parked at the curb.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

All she had to do was get from here to there. Beyond her electronic fence, but just a few steps beyond, barely farther than she pushed herself every day. This was the moment that she’d been training for. First she needed to find the key to Ashley’s apartment.

“Just give me a minute,” she said.

She forced herself to slow down, to move deliberately and breathe evenly as she walked into her bedroom. She found her wallet in the top drawer of her bureau and stuffed it into her pants pocket. Scooped her key ring from a bowl. Checked that the key to Ashley’s apartment was still on it.

Stay in control.

Then she continued into her office. From there, she armed all the doors and punched in the code that would activate the inside security system. Thirty seconds. That was how long she had to get out and lock the front door.

“Quite a setup.” The voice came from behind her.

Raw panic surged through her and she spun around. Officer Gruder had followed her into her office. Diana clapped her hand over her mouth and the scream she hadn’t realized she was making stopped.

Gruder’s eyes widened and his hands flew up in a gesture of surrender. He stumbled, tripping over his own feet in his haste to back out of the room and down the hall toward the front of the house.

Diana sat in her desk chair, gasping for breath.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he called.

Sorry?
What the hell was the matter with him, violating her space? Had she invited him in? Surely it wasn’t standard procedure to follow a citizen, deep into her home.

“I’m going outside. I’ll wait for you by the car,” he added.

She steadied herself against the desk. She had to stop overreacting to every unexpected thing that happened. She couldn’t afford for this police officer to dismiss her as a nutcase.

“That sound okay?” Gruder’s voice came from farther away.

“Okay,” she managed to call out, her voice hoarse. “I’ll be right there. I just have to . . .” She remembered the alarm. It would go off any second. She raced to the keypad. What the hell was the code to cancel? Her mind had gone blank.

When the eight-digit code finally came to her, her fingers felt like fat sausages. Twice she keyed it in wrong and had to start over. Again she tried. Just as she was about to press in the final number, a deafening Klaxon started, blaring from speakers both inside and outside the house.

Moments later, her phone rang. She grabbed it. “Ashley?” She had to hold her hand over her ear to block out the clanging. “Ashley?”

“Twenty-three Linden Place?” said a woman’s voice.

“Yes?” Diana shouted.

“This is Metro Security. Verifying an alarm.”

Of course. This was what they were supposed to do. “It’s a false alarm. Can you turn the damned thing off?”

“I need your name and verbal password?”

“What?”

“The name on the account?”

Diana gulped for air. “Diana Highsmith.”

“Password?”

She cupped her hand over the receiver. “Daniel.”

“Thank you. Verified.”

An instant later, the alarm fell silent.

“Thank God,” Diana whispered.

She hung up the phone and lifted the shade to look out the front window. Officer Gruder was out front by the patrol car, waiting for her as promised, apparently unfazed by the alarm. She slipped the pill bottle from her pocket, took out a pill, and rolled it between her fingers. But that didn’t help. She still felt jumpy, on the verge of a meltdown.

Another whole pill would knock her out. She broke the pill and swallowed half of it dry.
Automatic pilot,
she told herself.
Don’t think, just do.

She set the alarm again. At the last moment, she remembered to grab Ashley’s laptop.