Heartstopper (7 page)

“She’s missing,” John told her, as he’d told her boss just moments before. “Can you do me a favor? Show this picture to the other waitresses, ask if anybody’s seen her around lately.”

“Sure thing.” The waitress took the picture and disappeared into the general throng.

A few minutes later, he saw her showing Liana’s photograph to the bartender and watched as the young man shook his head no. “This ain’t going to be easy,” John muttered into his beer. As promised, the drink was nice and cold. A man of his word, he thought, watching Cal chat up a pretty, young woman standing at the bar. Cal’s hand rested provocatively on the woman’s substantial derriere, and despite the wedding band on the appropriate finger of her left hand, John noticed the woman made no attempt to brush Cal’s hand away. While John had never considered himself a prude and was certainly no poster boy for fidelity, he disliked the casual way Cal Hamilton flaunted his prowess with women. It was one thing to be unfaithful. It was another thing to trumpet your indiscretions, to wave your infidelities in other people’s faces.

John took a long sip of his beer. He’d never understood women. His mother had been a study in contradictions, quiet and withdrawn one minute, loud and boisterous the next. Bipolar, they called it today, although when he was growing up, they just called it crazy. Certainly his father had lost patience early on with her erratic mood swings and unpredictable behavior. He buried himself in his work, and when she died of breast cancer in her early forties, everyone said it was a blessing in disguise. But John still missed his mother’s wonderful sense of humor and biting wit. His father had remarried within a year of his mother’s death, this time to a woman with no sense of humor whatsoever, at least not one that John had ever been able to detect. But she seemed to make his father happy. Another of life’s mysteries. John took a prolonged sip of his beer, emptied half the glass. It seemed he didn’t understand men very well either. Maybe he was in the wrong line of work.

“Nobody’s seen her,” the waitress said when she returned to John’s table about ten minutes later. “I even asked some of the customers,” she added, shaking her head, as if to say, No luck there either.

“Thanks.” John finished the last of his beer, returned the tall, empty glass to the waitress’s tray. She promptly replaced it with a full one.

“They’re on the house,” she told him before he could object.

What the hell, he thought. Why not? Two beers simply meant he’d have to sit here a little longer before he got back behind the wheel of his cruiser. He checked his watch. It was already after nine o’clock. He could probably stay and nurse this beer for another half hour at least, and then he’d check in again with the Martins—he’d already dropped over to their house to give them an update after talking to Liana’s friends—before heading home. With any luck, Pauline would be asleep. The thought of having to make idle conversation, or worse, of having to make love to his wife, was simply too depressing.

He picked up the second glass of beer, raised it to his lips. When had the thought of making love become depressing? When had sex ceased to be a release and become yet another chore, another burden to bear? It hadn’t always been that way. There was a time, and not all that long ago, when just the thought of sex was enough to get him through the day. That he didn’t love his wife, had
never
loved her, had never really loved anyone, for that matter, was irrelevant. He’d never been one to confuse sex with love. And for a long time, sex with Pauline had been enough to sustain him. When had it stopped being enough?

He was still relatively young. The waitress tonight had proved he was still capable of being easily, even indiscriminately, aroused. So what was his problem? Why did he find
it so difficult to get, let alone sustain, an erection where his wife was concerned?

He knew he couldn’t pin all the blame on Pauline. When she’d first sensed his eye wandering and his interest waning, she’d done her best to spice things up. She’d bought some sexy lingerie and sprinkled scented candles around their bed and bath, suggested they try new positions, even hinted he bring his handcuffs into the bedroom. These things worked for a while, and then they didn’t.

He doubted Pauline was any happier than he was at what had happened to their sex life, but at least she could pretend. He wished he could fake arousal and orgasm, but it was much more difficult for a man than a woman. Fantasies would take you only so far, and you couldn’t bully a limp dick into action. Pauline had it much easier. Hell, all she had to do was lie there.

“Excuse me, Sheriff Weber?”

The cold glass of beer almost slipped through John’s fingers.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

John turned toward the little-girl whisper, saw Kerri Franklin’s daughter, Delilah, looking down at him, earnest brown eyes as big as saucers. He twisted around in his seat to see if her mother was behind her. She wasn’t. “Delilah,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “How are you?”

“Okay.” She stood on her toes, peered through the dark room. “You haven’t seen my mother, have you?”

“Your mother? No. Why? Is she here?” John pulled in his stomach, looked toward the back room.

“No. That’s the problem. I don’t know where she is. She went out late this afternoon to refill a prescription for Grandma Rose’s heart medication, and she didn’t come home. Grandma Rose is starting to get a little antsy, so I said I’d go look for her. You haven’t seen her?”
Alarm bells began clanging inside John’s head. First the runaway from Hendry County, then Liana Martin, and now Kerri Franklin?

No, he told himself, offering Delilah his most reassuring smile. The runaway from Hendry County was just that—a runaway. As was, in all probability, Liana Martin. As for Kerri Franklin, she had a contentious relationship with her mother at the best of times, and the woman’s heart condition had been stable for years. Kerri had probably run into a friend at the drugstore and, not feeling any great urgency to return home, gone for a cup of coffee. Coffee had stretched into dinner, and maybe even a movie. She’d resurface when she was ready. As would Liana Martin and that other girl. What was her name?

Candy
, he heard the girl’s mother remind him, as she held out the picture of a petite, young woman with haunted, dark eyes.
Actually, her real name is Harlene. Harlene Abbot. But she always hated that name. She called herself Candy. Said it suited her much better than Harlene. And, yes, I know, she’s disappeared before, and I know about the drugs and the men, but this time is different, Sheriff Weber. I know it’s different.

Why is it different this time?

Because no matter where she goes or how long she’s been away, she always calls me on my birthday. And this time, she didn’t. My birthday was the first of March, and I stayed home all day and waited, but she didn’t call.

Mrs. Abbot….

Something’s happened to her, Sheriff Weber. And nobody wants to help me ….

“Sheriff Weber?”

“What? Sorry?” John Weber jumped back into the present tense. Delilah Franklin was looking at him expectantly.

“I heard you’ve been asking questions about Liana Martin.”

“Have you seen her?”

Delilah shook her head. “Not since yesterday. You think something bad’s happened to her?”

“I hope not. How well do you know her?”

“Well, we’ve been in the same class ever since we were kids, but we’re not exactly friends. You know how it is. Liana’s really popular. And really nice. Not like some of the others. She’s always been very nice to me. I like her,” Delilah concluded with an emphatic nod of her head.

“Did she ever say anything to you about any problems she might be having at home or with her boyfriend?”

“Oh, she wouldn’t tell me anything like that. You’d have to ask Ginger or Tanya about stuff like that.”

I already have, he said silently, deciding it was definitely time to go home.

“Sheriff Weber?” Delilah asked again in that incongruous little voice, as her worried eyes made the obvious connection. “You don’t think anything’s happened to my mother, do you?”

“I think your mother’s probably at home right now, worried half to death about you,” John told her, downing the remainder of his beer and leaving a tip for the waitress on the table. “Come on. You need a lift home?”

“That’d be great. Thanks. It’s a long walk. Especially in the dark.” Delilah smiled timidly.

John Weber took her elbow, led her toward the front door.

“Oh,” she said, stopping abruptly, turning away and blushing visibly, even in the dark.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Mr. Peterson.”

“Mr. Peterson?”

“My science teacher.” She pointed with her chin toward a man hunched over in a corner booth. His arm was draped possessively around the shoulders of a girl who looked several decades his junior. The girl looked noticeably upset.

“Who’s he with?”

Delilah shook her head. “I’ve never seen her before, but there are all these rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“That he likes younger women,” she whispered conspiratorially as they stepped out into the night.

They were almost at Delilah’s house when John realized he’d forgotten his burgers. His stomach rumbled its displeasure as he watched Delilah open the front door of her modest two-story home, then turn back, telling him with a shake of her head that her mother had yet to return. “Not a good sign,” John said as he pulled the car away from the curb and headed for home.

D
elilah watched the sheriff’s car pull away from the curb with a mixture of gratitude and regret. Gratitude because she hadn’t had to walk the fifteen blocks home from Chester’s—she was tired enough from the long walk over—and regret because she hated to see the sheriff drive away. She’d always liked Sheriff Weber. Unlike a lot of the people in Torrance, he’d shown her nothing but kindness, and she always enjoyed talking to him. He looked her right in the eye when he asked a question, listened respectfully as she answered, and never told her she’d be such a pretty girl if only she’d lose a few pounds. Probably because he’d packed on more than a few pounds himself since he’d stopped seeing her mother, she thought, closing the front door behind her and wondering where her mother could be.

Officially, she wasn’t supposed to know about their affair. Kerri, as her mother preferred Delilah to call her—she said it made her feel younger, although Delilah always suspected it was more because she was embarrassed at having produced so ungainly an offspring—had never directly acknowledged her relationship with the married policeman, although it had been pretty much an open secret around Torrance while it was going on. She’d dropped a few broad hints—something about liking men in uniforms, and not
having to worry about speeding tickets for a while—but that was it. Whenever Sheriff Weber had dropped over to the house, Kerri had explained he was there on official business. Delilah never questioned her, even when the kids at school started making none-too-veiled comments about their affair, and even after her grandmother pointedly questioned the logic of throwing away money on cosmetic surgery for her daughter if the stupid girl was going to waste it on a married man. Since Kerri had already decided it was better to look good than feel good, her affair with John Weber had come to an abrupt end. Soon afterward, Kerri had left for Miami to have her already enlarged, “bee-stung” lips “stung” again.

Delilah had lost track of the number of surgical procedures her mother had had over the years. Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, she made a game of trying to count them—her own, more modern version of counting sheep. Aside from the regular injections of Botox and Restylane, she remembered the nose job, the brow lift, the tummy tuck, the liposuction on her thighs, the several eye jobs, the two breast augmentations—the first time they weren’t big enough—and the face-lift. The face-lift was the worst because her mother had come home from the clinic looking as if she’d been run over by a Mack truck. Bruises blackened her eyes and covered virtually every inch of her swollen face, although within a few weeks the swelling had gone down, and the bruises had faded, and Kerri was pretty much back to normal. Whatever normal was, the words
normal
and
Kerri Franklin
in the same sentence being somewhat of an oxymoron. If that was the right word for it. Delilah made a mental note to ask Mrs. Crosbie about it.

Delilah liked Mrs. Crosbie. Not only was she a good teacher and a kind person, she looked the way mothers were supposed to look. The sad truth was that Delilah barely recalled what her mother really looked like. The
naturally beautiful young woman proudly holding her new baby in old family photographs was a complete stranger to her.

Delilah enjoyed looking through the old family albums as much as her mother and grandmother despised it. She liked seeing her grandmother sitting imperiously on her folding chair at the beach, as if it were a throne, her fleshy knees up around her chin; she got a kick out of her grandfather clowning around in her grandmother’s big straw hat, and Kerri and her two sisters happily riding the ocean waves.

Now her grandfather was dead, as was her mother’s oldest sister, Lorraine. Her other sister, Ruthie, had moved to California a decade ago and rarely kept in touch anymore. Which left just the three of them—Delilah, her mother, and her grandmother. The unholy trinity, her mother liked to joke. Where was her mother anyway?

“Kerri, is that you?” her grandmother called from the living room.

“No, Grandma Rose. It’s me.”

“Oh.”

There was no disguising the disappointment in her grandmother’s voice, although in truth, her grandmother had never tried to mask her disappointment in her only granddaughter. Delilah entered the cluttered living room. It was hard to say what exactly it was cluttered with. There weren’t any books or old newspapers lying around—neither her mother nor her grandmother ever read anything other than fashion magazines—and the room was certainly clean enough. It was just full of
stuff.
Lace doilies were everywhere—on top of the tan sofa, the brown leather chair, the television, the end tables on either side of the sofa. The latest issue of
Vogue
lay beside a small stack of
In Shape
magazines across the glass coffee table in the middle of the room. A glass-doored, mahogany cabinet stood
in one corner of the room, next to a grandfather clock that hadn’t worked in years. The cabinet was filled with dishes made of Depression glass in translucent pink and green, as well as Grandma Rose’s collection of old china figurines. Her grandmother called them antiques; her mother called them garbage. She confided to Delilah she was going to throw everything out—“the whole kit and caboodle,” she liked to say—as soon as Grandma Rose passed on.