Looking for Laura (12 page)

“Especially in the winter,” she went on. “I don't think we could make chowder this good, but maybe a nice hearty vegetable soup. I'll have to think about it.” Her smile waned. “I used to ask Paul stuff like that. He had good ideas sometimes.”

“He also had bad ideas,” Paul pointed out, because it made him uncomfortable to hear her say nice things about the son of a bitch.

“Screwing around with Laura was a bad idea,” Sally agreed somberly. “Giving her my knife was an even worse idea. I want to get my knife back, Todd. That's one of the main reasons I want to see Laura—to get my knife back.”

He grimaced. He hadn't counted on her confronting
The Other Woman and demanding her knife. God knew, it could turn into a fight. Weapons might be drawn—a tacky pocketknife, a sharp hairpin. Blood might be shed.
His
blood, if he wasn't careful.

Why had he wanted to come on this stupid trip? He was going to wind up trapped between Paul's two women, at least one of them armed with a cheap knife. He visualized his obit as it would appear in the
Valley News
. Front page, above the fold, given that he was the newspaper's head honcho: Brilliant Editor Cut Down in His Prime: Winfield's Favorite Son Mortally Wounded in Battle of Bitches.

“So what's the plan?” he asked. “We eat, we hike ten miles, you get your knife back and then we head back to Winfield?”

“It's not ten miles.”

“We don't know how far Mount Vernon Street is from here.”

“We can walk to the Public Garden. It'll be pretty. Don't they have those bird boats there?”

“The Swan Boats,” he said. They were paddleboats with large carved swans decorating them. Tourists took rides in them. Bad enough he and the Drivers were wasting time at Quincy Market; he didn't want to waste time on the Swan Boats, too.

“Rosie would love a ride on one of those boats. Oh, let's do that, Todd.”

“Sally, we're here on a mission—”

“And that mission will be accomplished, whether or not we take a boat ride. How often do any of us get to Boston? Rosie's never been on a Swan Boat. If her father had ever taken her to Boston, he would have made sure she took a boat ride. She doesn't have a father anymore, so it's my job to make sure she gets a boat ride.”

Despite her smile, he saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes. Grief over her loss? A widow's despair? More likely the flash of sorrow was on her daughter's behalf.

Todd downed the last of his pizza crust and washed away the starchy flavor with a swig of Coke. “If you're really serious about yachting around the Public Garden, let's get moving. We've got a long trek ahead of us.” He sounded gentler than he'd expected, but he couldn't seem to force impatience into his voice.

“I'm sure it's not that long a trek. Maybe a mile at most. Probably less.” She crumpled her napkin and stuffed it into the empty tub from her chowder. He glanced toward the crowd where the juggler on the unicycle was performing.

Rosie was gone.

“T
odd, calm down,” she said, moving in easy strides toward the mass of onlookers who stood in a tight circle around the clown. Rosie was inside that circle. She'd wormed her way to the front so she could see the clown better. Sally knew her daughter liked to be as close to the action as possible. She could easily see the bright purple of Rosie's hat in the throng.

But Todd was frantic. The instant he'd glanced toward the crowd and gasped, all the color seeping from his face as he vaulted to his feet, she'd realized that nothing she said would reassure him. He wouldn't stop panicking until she had Rosie in her arms.

“She just disappeared,” he ranted. “Just like that! What if she…? What if someone…?”

“Don't worry. I can see her,” Sally murmured, deftly threading a path through the crowd to where the pintsize girl in the purple hat was standing, her head tilted back and her eyes round with rapture as she watched the clown. “She's right there, Todd.” He was worrying that Rosie had gotten lost or been snatched by a kidnapper; Sally was worrying only that Rosie would become so obsessed with juggling clowns on unicycles she'd want to become one herself. She would pester Sally relentlessly about getting a unicycle. When Sally refused to buy her one, she would sneak into the garage one week
end morning while Sally was sleeping late and break her old tricycle into pieces so she could convert it into a unicycle. She would cut up her pajamas in an attempt to fashion a clown costume. She would take to tossing apples in the air, trying to juggle them, and they'd drop to the floor and get bruised, and then she'd refuse to eat them.

Not that Sally had anything against her daughter's becoming a clown, or a juggler, or both. When she was a little older, though. Maybe after she had a year of first grade under her belt.

“Sally—Sally, she's…” Todd continued to babble, his voice somehow reaching her ears through the dense swirl of city sounds—traffic, chatter, footsteps against the patterned brick and cement expanse of the square. “What if she's gone? Boston is a huge city. She could be—”

She could be on Mars for all the attention she paid her mother or Todd or anyone else besides the clown. Just as Rosie filtered out everyone else, Sally filtered out everyone other than her daughter up ahead of her and Todd behind her, his anxious words reaching her as if he was connected to her on a private phone line.

At last she got close enough to snag Rosie's hand and tear her from her reverie. Rosie turned, her expression a mixture of awe at the performance and vexation that her mother was interrupting. “We have to go now,” Sally said briskly, hauling her through the crowd and catching Todd's arm with her free hand as she met up with him. She pulled them both clear of the congregated spectators, then loosened her hold on Todd.

“See? She's fine,” she said.

“I thought—” He let out a long breath. His eyes still had a wild fear in them, dark yet gleaming, like black
patent leather. He swallowed a few times and his shoulders relaxed. Through his forest-green shirt and tweedy brown blazer she could see the shift in his body, the easing of his muscles as tension lost its grip on him.

She wanted to laugh at him for becoming so unnecessarily frightened. But more than amused, she was touched by his concern. She had a clear sense that he wasn't exactly infatuated with Rosie, yet he'd been as upset by her presumed disappearance as a doting relative might have been.

That he cared so deeply for her safety was really sweet. If Sally ever called him sweet, though, she suspected he would consider it an insult. So she kept her thoughts to herself.

Rosie seemed unaware that she'd caused alarm. “I'm hungry,” she announced. “Can I get an ice cream?”

“Maybe later. You just ate all that tempura. And anyway—” Sally glimpsed Todd's tight mouth, his still-glinting eyes “—we've got to go someplace now.”

“Where? I wanna see the one-man band.”

“He's not here today,” Sally said. “Let's take a walk.”

“Can I eat ice cream while we walk?”

“No.” Still gripping Rosie's hand, Sally nodded at Todd. “Shall we?”

A little more tension seemed to leave him, but his lips remained taut, his jaw set. He should have worn a hat; the sun was glaring bright and he didn't even have any sunglasses. What if he got a sunburn? She knew Mount Vernon Street wasn't ten miles away—ten miles would take them well out into Boston's suburbs—but even a mile's walk under such a bright sun could leave a person with a pink, peeling nose.

Sally wasn't his mother. She could make sure Rosie
wore sunblock and a hat, but Todd was responsible for his own health. If he burned, he burned.

Festive kiosks lined the plaza on one side. Rosie's head swiveled toward them and remained in that position, her eyes taking in all the offerings. One kiosk was devoted entirely to Red Sox paraphernalia, another to bonsai plants, another to stained-glass-window ornaments. Sally's attention skewed to that one. She had eight ornaments suctioned onto her kitchen windows. She couldn't really add more without making the room resemble a secular cathedral, but why limit the stained-glass ornaments to the kitchen? Paul was dead. Who was going to complain if she stuck a few ornaments on the living-room window?

Before she could stop to study the kiosk's offerings, Rosie gave her arm a yank and headed for another kiosk. “Look, Mommy! Look, Daddy's Friend!”

Sally looked. The kiosk was draped with beaded necklaces, each holding a small pendant of clear glass. Inside the glass was something small.

“Rice,” Rosie said.

Sally lifted a necklace and scrutinized the glass bubble. Inside it was a grain of rice with writing on it. The curve of the glass container magnified the writing: “Betty.”

“I want one!” Rosie demanded.

“You want a necklace that says Betty?”

“I want one that says Rosie.”

The fellow manning the booth was short, and his snug T-shirt clung to muscles that would have looked more proportional on someone twice as tall. “I can make one that says Rosie,” he said.

“Make one?”

“I write on rice. You want one that says Rosie?”

He wrote on rice. Sally was momentarily distracted by the understanding that this man had actually trained himself to master such a bizarre skill. What sort of intelligence would inspire a person to take up the craft? Had he once been looking for something to doodle on and a grain of rice had been lying in front of him, beckoning? Or had he consciously plotted a course that would lead to virtuosity in rice inscription? Had he started out on lima beans, and then moved on to kernels of corn, and then flakes of oatmeal?

“Sally,” Todd murmured from behind her.

She peered over her shoulder. “I know. You want to get to Mount Vernon Street.”

“It's not just that. It's…” He gestured toward the rows of beaded necklaces hanging from hooks beneath the kiosk's roof. “It's rice.”

“He actually writes on the rice. Here, look.” She handed him the necklace that said Betty.

“And some people see the Virgin Mary in a cheese Danish. Let's not waste time on this.”

“Please, Mommy?” Rosie begged from Sally's other side. “He'll make me one that says Rosie.”

“I might even have a Rosie one already made,” the muscleman said helpfully, pawing through the strands of necklaces in search of a grain of rice with Rosie written on it.

“I want you to make one special for me,” Rosie asked. “Okay? Okay, Mommy?”

She wasn't whining, wasn't wheedling. Rosie didn't whine or wheedle. When she wanted something, she asked for it directly, simply. Sally admired that about her. “How long will it take?” she asked the muscleman.

“A few minutes. I work fast.” He used a pair of
tweezers to pluck a single grain of rice from a jar on the kiosk shelf.

Sally gave Todd an ingratiating smile. The sun was directly overhead, and he lowered his lids against the glare. The skin at the outer corners of his eyes folded into tiny creases. “A few minutes,” she repeated the muscleman's promise. “He's going to write Rosie's name on a piece of rice.”

Todd seemed at a loss for words. And truly, what could he say? What could anyone say about such a thing?

“Maybe he'll make one for you, Daddy's Friend,” Rosie suggested, then recited to the muscleman, “Todd Mr. Sloane. Can you fit that all on a piece of rice?”

“Don't bother,” Todd muttered, digging his hands into his pockets and turning to stare at the pedestrians strolling past, those fortunate souls making progress toward their destinations, unrestrained by a demanding child who wanted a novelty necklace.

He looked a little haggard to Sally, as if he hadn't quite recovered from his earlier scare. Sally wondered whether she should have been scared, as well, whether her failure to panic at Rosie's sudden disappearance meant she was a bad mother. But she knew Rosie. She would never voluntarily go off with a stranger, and if a stranger tried to snatch her, she'd scream bloody hell and probably bite the stranger, too. When it came to Rosie, Sally knew what to worry about, and what not to.

Even so…Todd's expression right now—impatient, exasperated, annoyed—reinforced her assumption that he wasn't overly fond of Rosie. Yet if he didn't like Rosie, he wouldn't have been so distraught when she'd momentarily slipped from their view.

“There, see? Just a few minutes.” The muscleman
had been bowed over a magnifying glass with a light attachment, one of those stand-alone models that Sally had seen in doctors' offices to aid doctors in their examinations of splinters, infected cuts and toenail fungus. The man used his trusty tweezers to lift the rice grain he'd been working on, dropped it into a glass bulb and fastened the bulb to a beaded necklace. “There you go. That's twenty dollars.”

“The sign says twelve dollars.” Sally pointed to the price list above his cash register.

“This was custom-made.”

“Custom-made? You said you had a Rosie rice already made. If we'd bought that one, it would have been twelve bucks.”

“But you didn't buy that one.”

“Because you couldn't find it.”

“And your daughter said she wanted me to make one just for her. Right, Rosie?” he asked, dangling the necklace in front of her.

Rosie earned a few points by pressing her lips together and peering up at Sally, rather than confirming the muscleman's story and grabbing the necklace. “In other words,” Sally persevered, “if you'd made this necklace ten minutes ago, it would have been twelve dollars. But because you made it while we stood here—promising you a guaranteed sale—it's going to cost twenty dollars.”

“Because it's custom-made,” he insisted.

Todd hauled his wallet from the hip pocket of his khakis and handed the guy a twenty-dollar bill. “Let's just go, all right? Rosie, take the damn necklace and let's go.”

Sally wanted to protest. The man had ripped them off for eight dollars—and even if he hadn't, the necklace
ought to have been her expense, not Todd's. Rosie was her daughter, after all.

But he was already striding away, Rosie trotting to keep up with him while simultaneously easing the necklace over her head. It got caught on her hat and Todd paused to help her lower the pendant around her neck.

He was doing this because he felt sorry for Rosie, Sally decided. He was being extra nice to Rosie because Rosie's father had been a two-timing piece of scum, and while a rice necklace was a poor substitute for an honorable father, it was the best Todd could do.

Sally hadn't expected to experience any warm feelings toward Todd. His patrician car, his musical preferences, his general testiness and resistance to enjoying a lovely afternoon in the big city ought to have filled her with her usual loathing toward him. But he'd bought Rosie a necklace—for which Sally would pay him back—and he'd helped Rosie to put it on. And now the two of them were resuming their walk, a few steps ahead of Sally as she collected her thoughts and tried to remember that she didn't like Todd.

Well, she didn't. He'd been Paul's best friend. Guilt by association.

She accelerated her pace to catch up to them. They'd reached a monstrous-looking concrete building that appeared to have been designed by an engineer on bad drugs. “City Hall,” Todd told her as they passed it.

“It's ugly,” Rosie commented, gazing at its cubistic facade of gray grids and narrow windows.

“Yeah,” said Todd. “It is.”

Well, Sally thought, there was something they all agreed on.

“I'm guessing we just keep on heading west and we'll reach Boston Common in a few blocks,” Todd said.

“The State House is over there, so Mount Vernon Street should be in the area.” He raked a hand through his hair, shoving it back from his forehead. “We should have brought the map along with us.”

“We'll find the place,” she said confidently.

“We could have stuffed the map into your tote bag. You've got room in that thing to stash an elephant.”