My Lost and Found Life (2 page)

“Why would you mention drugs?” He gave me a menacing look. “Are you afraid I might find some inside?”

“No, I'm not,” I said. Suddenly I was tired of answering his weird questions while he avoided answering any of mine. “Okay, fine. Go ahead and look all you want. You won't arrest me for not making my bed, will you?”

Without replying, he crossed the deck and walked in the back door. I took a swig from my Diet Coke can and followed.

Officer Strobel gave the kitchen a cursory look.

“Oh, look, there's her favorite coffee cup,” I said, pointing to a mug on the gleaming granite countertop. “Maybe you should have the contents analyzed.”

Mr. Cool Cop ignored me and walked through the dining room and into the living room. We had redecorated just a few months ago, and I was proud of our elegant new furniture, silk drapes, and Oriental rugs.

“Very nice,” he said. “You live well.”

“Naturally,” I said, with the nonchalant air of a duchess speaking to a dog.

He was impervious to my scorn. Glancing around, he pointed to the side door. “Where does that lead?”

“We hide our washer and dryer out there.”

He continued down the hall, glancing into the guest bathroom and then the family room, where we kept our computer and new flat-screen television. At the doorway of my bedroom,
he stopped and stared at the chaos of clothes, papers, and books strewn across the bed and floor.

“Looks like someone already tossed this room.” He smirked.

I pushed past him and closed the door in his face.

“She's not in my room.”

When he reached my mother's room, he surprised me by walking across it, opening the door to her walk-in closet, and stepping inside. I perched on the edge of the bed, pretending to study the red polish on my toes, and called after him, “You forgot to check under her bed.”

“Where does she keep her suitcases?” he asked.

“On the floor on the left side of the closet.”

“There aren't any here,” he said.

“Of course, there are,” I said impatiently, and pushed past him to stare at the place where her matched set of dark green luggage should have been. The suitcases were gone! I stood there, my mouth gaping. My mother wouldn't go on a trip without telling me, would she? No, she wouldn't, I told myself, trying to erase the memory of last night's hysteria from my head. Suddenly, I didn't feel like being a smart-ass anymore.

“She must have put them in the garage,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.

“Is there anything else missing—any clothes or shoes or toiletries?” he asked.

“How would I know?” I responded, gesturing toward the bulging clothes racks.

He studied my face for a moment, then asked, “Can I use your phone?”

Without waiting for an answer, he picked up the receiver next to my mother's bed and dialed. “Hey, Donahoe. I'm at the Mitchell house. No, she's not around. Uh-huh, just the daughter. She says she doesn't know her mother's whereabouts. Looks like she might have skipped.”

“Skipped!” I repeated, staring at him in shock.

Glancing at my horrified face, he turned his back to me and added, “Uh-huh. I'm going to talk to the boyfriend and then I'll come back to the station. It's early yet.”

The minute he put down the receiver, I screeched, “Why did you say ‘skipped'? What the hell is going on?”

“There's some money missing from your mother's office, a lot of money, and we want to find out what she knows about it.”

“You mean you think she stole it,” I hissed. “Well, you're out of your mind. My mother wouldn't do something like that.”

“Maybe so.” Strobel nodded without conviction. “In the meantime, I need those phone numbers you mentioned. By the way, what does your mother drive?”

“A Mercedes. Blue.”

“Do you know the tag number?”

I looked at him, confused at the question.

“The number on her car's license plate,” he added.

“No, I don't know it.”

“That's okay, I can get it from DMV,” he said, snapping open his notebook.

I gave him both Gloria's and Phil's phone numbers and protested once again that he was crazy for even suspecting my mother of wrongdoing.

Strobel closed the notebook. “That's all for now. If your mother comes back, tell her to call the police department right away. She should ask for me. Tell her it will be a lot better for her if she calls us.”

He gave me another badass cop stare and left, pausing only to give the driveway a searching look as if he expected to see armed thugs hiding behind the rhododendrons.

“Asshole!” I mumbled as I watched him walk away.

The minute I shut the door, I bolted for the telephone and called Gloria myself.

“Nope, no idea where she is,” Gloria wheezed into the phone, sounding as if she had just run a marathon. “Actually, I haven't spoken to her in a few days.”

I didn't bother to ask why she was panting. Nor did I tell her about the police.

“I thought you two talked every single day,” I tweaked her.

“You must be thinking of you and your girlfriends. Your mom and I have lives,” she retorted with a right-back-at-ya attitude.

“This is really important,” I insisted. “I
have
to find her right away. Help me out here, Gloria.”

“I would if I could. Look, I'm kind of busy right now.”

Gloria was always in a crisis—for heaven's sake, it can't be that hard to handle a couple of preschoolers. My mother and Gloria had been friends since high school, even though they weren't much alike. Diane had hatched me at a young age, while Gloria was one of those career women, a bank vice president to be exact. Six years ago, though, she had finally married
another banker and started popping out kids. Now she had two little boys when, at her age, she should have been having grandchildren practically.

Even though she and my mother were tight, I wasn't so crazy about Gloria. I overheard her once telling my mother she shouldn't give in to me so much and that I was turning into a spoiled brat.

“My mom didn't say anything about going out of town, did she?”

“Not a word. Why? Where would she go?” Gloria said in a distracted tone. “Uh-oh, there's someone at the door. Gotta go. Tell Diane to call me later.”

She hung up. Officer Asshole must have arrived. I smiled inwardly, just a little. A few minutes with him and Gloria would be the one badgering me with questions. In the meantime, I dialed the number for Phil's gas station.

To my complete embarrassment, my mom had been going out with a mechanic for the past three years. I had to admit Phil was handsome in a rugged, outdoorsy way. He even had plenty of hair. Still, he wore cowboy boots and drove a truck. I wished my mother would date a doctor or lawyer or at least someone who wore a suit, carried a briefcase, and drove a Beamer.

Phil owned a Shell station down on El Camino Real, the main drag through our little burb. Reynaldo, the Mexican guy who worked for him, answered the phone. He said Phil wasn't at the station. “I think he's at home,” he added when I pressed him.

When I called Phil's home number, a woman answered.

Her voice sounded familiar, but she was definitely not my mother. She called, “It's for you,” and Phil picked up the phone. I was curious who the woman was, but I let it go for the moment. I had enough to worry about.

I asked him if he'd seen or talked to Diane today. Without a trace of embarrassment, Phil claimed he hadn't seen her “in a while.”

There was an awkward pause as I tried to take in his meaning. And then he hung up on me! I stood there, staring at the receiver, angry and more bewildered than ever.

Before long, Gloria showed up at the front door. She dragged her two hyperactive horrors into the living room and began interrogating me. What did my mother tell me? Where could she be? And on and on. But I didn't have any answers. She kept repeating over and over, “I can't believe this. This is crazy,” until I wanted to slap her silly. Naturally, I restrained myself. Besides, knowing Gloria, she probably would have slapped me back.

“I wanna go home,” whined her five-year-old, and the younger one stopped chasing Stella long enough to chime in.

Finally, Gloria stopped barking questions at me and herded them outside. I should have been relieved, but I didn't know what to do with myself after she backed her big SUV out of our driveway. I was alone again in the empty house, confused and impatient, with my mother's whereabouts a complete mystery and the police lurking, if not in the driveway, then at least in my imagination. My stomach was in knots. I didn't feel like sunbathing or watching the tube or eating. Even shopping didn't sound like fun anymore. I called Nicole
and backed out of our shopping excursion without telling her the real reason.

All I could do was wait and worry. But sitting and waiting was too passive for me. I wanted to take action—any action. So I cleaned my bedroom. In a storm of activity, I hung up clothes, made my bed, and tried to organize the chaos, all in an effort to keep my anxiety under control. In the back of my mind, I also thought it would please my mother when she came back. I was certain she would come home and set the police straight.

I found myself wishing I had a father or uncle I could call—someone who would fix this or make it all go away. But my father was dead. To tell the truth, a live Jimmy wouldn't have been any comfort anyway. My darling daddy had spent his whole life obsessed with himself.

Jimmy had been movie-star handsome, and women had fawned over him—my mother included, at least when I was little. Before he died, she seemed less infatuated than exasperated by him, as if he were a cat that couldn't be taught to use the litter box instead of the bathroom rug. By the time I was ten, it was clear even to me he was a loser, a pathetically unsuccessful actor who spent his time drinking in bars and bitching because the world failed to recognize his genius.

Diane always told a romantic tale of being alone in the world and then meeting my father at a wedding where he was tending bar. He claimed to have studied at the Actors Studio in New York, but somehow ended up in San Francisco instead of Hollywood. Anyway, they married, Diane had me, and we all lived unhappily ever after until he fell and cracked his skull
outside his favorite tavern. I was fourteen when he died, and I didn't miss him a bit. Why should I? It wasn't as if I had ever been “Daddy's little girl.”

Jimmy always said he was an orphan, but I didn't buy it. His relatives had probably disowned him long ago. Even if he'd had parents, siblings, or other relatives somewhere, I'd never know now that dear old Dad had gone to the happy hour in the sky.

As for my mother's family, they too were firmly planted in Holy Cross Memorial Park. There was no one left among the living. Only my mother and me.

As the minutes and hours dragged by, I paced, channel-surfed with the TV's remote control glued to my hand, and paced some more. I tried to watch a movie on the tube, but it was hopeless. I couldn't sit still or concentrate. The knot in my stomach had moved up and was now firmly lodged in my chest. My emotions teetered between fear and anger. What was wrong with Diane to worry me like this? If she thought scaring me was going to change my mind and make me sorry for what I said, she was wrong, wrong, wrong. I was not going to be manipulated, and I was surprised my mother even imagined this kind of trick might work.

Several times I picked up the telephone receiver and listened for a few seconds to the dial tone, just to make sure the damn thing was working. My cell phone was fully charged. I plugged it into the wall anyway just to make absolutely certain. My mother didn't call.

Around nine the phone rang, and I leaped for it. But it was only Gloria.

“She's not back,” I told her with an edge in my voice. “Listen, I want to keep this line open in case she calls.” I didn't wait for her answer before hanging up.

The only other person who called that night was Nicole. While I was tempted to unload the whole story on her, I didn't. I reasoned that my mother would reappear any moment, and in the meantime, I didn't want Nicole's mother, Cindy, to find out. Although Gloria was bossy, she wasn't mean. But Cindy was a total witch, and she didn't like me. If she found out, in no time the whole town would know about the missing money and the police wanting to question my mother. Besides, I was certain that the whole thing was a mistake—it had to be.

Every time I heard a car enter our street, I rushed to the window and peered out. A couple of times I saw a police car cruise by and slow down as it passed our house. Officer Strobel and his cohorts were keeping an eye out for my mother, the dangerous fugitive.

Around midnight I turned out the lights, crawled into bed, and hugged my pillow to my chest. Sleep seemed impossible. I couldn't stop worrying. My eyes stayed open, staring into the darkness. Even though I've never been a crier, I found myself fighting back tears. Where was my mother, and what was this all about? I was never afraid to be home alone at night, yet suddenly, our house exuded an eerie atmosphere. The whole place seemed empty and vaguely sinister, as if the walls, the furniture, and even the very air around me were thick with tension. It felt as if the house, too, were watching and waiting for my mother.

Sometime after two I gave up trying to sleep, wrapped my
comforter around me, and moved cautiously through the dark house to the living room. Without turning on any lights, I opened the drapes and propped myself up on the sofa cushions so I could watch the front yard and the street beyond. Through the open window I could smell the scent of the jasmine blooming along the front porch. The house was so still I could hear every noise outside as if I were eavesdropping on the sleeping neighborhood. Mrs. Musick's back gate was banging in the cool breeze. Across the street the Goldmans' Irish setter was barking, probably at Stella, who liked to prowl the neighborhood at night. Or maybe raccoons were visiting again—I could hear a rattling noise from the direction of the garbage cans. Our house creaked and groaned as if it couldn't settle down either. A scrap of paper danced down the empty street. I listened and watched and at some point I finally fell asleep.