Nine Years Gone (3 page)

We stayed in that room the entire night and only slipped out when the sun started to peek through the blinds. Ashley would be up shortly, so I put on a robe and used the first-floor restroom while Katherine stepped into the shower. True to form, my niece met me downstairs at precisely seven in the morning, still wearing the Disney Princess nightgown she had worn to bed the night before. I sent her back upstairs for socks to keep her feet warm, and when she came down again, she went straight to the kitchen, where she poured cereal into a bowl as large as her head and tried using one of our serving spoons to slurp down the milk. I used a sponge to wipe the milk she had spilled onto the counter before getting her an appropriately sized spoon and escorting Simon to the backyard.

When I came back inside, I carried her bowl to the dining room and sat beside her at the table.

“Can you get me a napkin?”

“Sure thing, kiddo,” I said, reaching to the napkin dispenser on the center of the table. She wiped milk from her chin. “Did you sleep okay?”

She seemed to think before answering. “Is your house haunted?”

“No,” I said, a smile beginning to form on my lips. “Why?”

“Because Mrs. Harmon read us a book about a haunted house on Halloween. If the house isn’t haunted, who was giggling last night?”

Aunt Katherine.

My smile disappeared, and I coughed to cover up my momentary pause and to give me time to think of a response. “It was pretty windy last night, so the trees must have rubbed against the roofline or your window. I’ll take a look today to see if anything needs to be trimmed.”

She narrowed her gaze at me and rested her spoon on the side of her bowl. “Why would trees giggle?”

“I don’t know, honey, but as soon as I find out, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

She nodded, but I’m pretty sure she thought I was teasing her. “Okay.”

I watched as she plowed sugary cereal into her mouth. As her temporary—hopefully permanent—guardian, I felt like I should have given her eggs or oatmeal, or at least something with better nutritional value than sugarcoated flakes of wheat. But she didn’t like healthy food—no one I’ve ever met really has—and we didn’t have time before school to go through the hassle of a full meal.

“Uncle Steve,” said Ashley, using a napkin to wipe a drop of milk from her chin. “When can I see my mom again?”

Katherine and I had talked about the question, but neither of us knew how to answer it. Almost four months ago, my sister, Rachel, dropped Ashley off at our house in the middle of the night and said she couldn’t handle her any more. Rachel isn’t a bad person, and I love her as much as anyone can love his sister but, between her drug use and untreated manic depression, she isn’t in any kind of shape to raise a daughter. Katherine and I had offered to adopt Ashley permanently and even sent Rachel the papers. All she had to do was sign them. For everyone’s sake, I hoped she’d make the right decision, whatever that was.

I laid my spoon on the table. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. Besides, I kind of like you here. I think I might just keep you forever.”

Ashley picked up her bowl and tilted it towards her lips to drink the remainder of the milk. Most of it made it into her mouth, but some trickled down her chin and onto her gown.

“I miss Mom, but I like it here, too. I don’t want to go back home.”

“You’ll see your mom again. Don’t worry about that. And, we’re going to keep you as long as we can. If you’re done with breakfast, why don’t you go upstairs and get ready for school?”

She nodded before slipping off her chair and running upstairs. I took her empty bowl to the sink and went to the bathroom in our finished basement to get ready for the day. At a quarter to eight, I kissed Katherine goodbye and drove Ashley to school, the same private Catholic elementary school I had attended.

I hugged her goodbye on the sidewalk in front of the school, felt her bony, frail frame, and wished I had given her a better breakfast. Before I could tell her that I loved her and that I’d be there to pick her up, she fell into a group of identically dressed little girls walking toward the building. Ashley giggled and talked and smiled. Even though I dropped her off every morning, seeing her walk away still tugged at my heartstrings. I hoped she was truly happy, that her signs of contentedness and merriment weren’t the product of my over-productive imagination; I think she was okay. Katherine and I were doing our best.

When the first bell rang and the rest of the students ran inside, I walked back to my car to drive home. Katherine had already left when I arrived, but Simon greeted me at the back door. Few things compare with the feeling of being wanted, and my dog gave me that feeling every time I came home. It was hard not to love that.

I scratched behind his ears before finding his leash and taking him along on the one-mile trek to my writing studio in my father’s old law office. Leaves crinkled underfoot, and the acrid fall scent of decaying walnuts and wood smoke from last night’s fires wafted on the breeze. The sun warmed the back of my neck, but late November grasped the rest of my body, chilling me through my jacket.

Growing up, I had two good friends with whom I spent most days. One of them, Isaac, spent his teenage years stealing cars and then his early twenties in prison. That finally straightened him out, and now he owns one of the largest custom car shops in St. Louis. My other friend, Vince, spent ten years in blue with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department before becoming a private detective at one of the largest criminal defense law firms in the region. I could use his help and advice now, so I called him up.

“What’s up, buddy?” Vince asked, his voice gravelly but soft. He cleared his throat.

“Did I wake you up?”

“If I said yes, would that prevent you from calling me before ten again?”

“Probably not,” I said, leading Simon to the right at the end of Crofton Avenue and onto Lockwood. The houses on the right side of the street were four, maybe even five thousand square feet and had been built for some of nineteenth and early twentieth century St. Louis’s best attorneys, doctors, and businessmen. The homes on the left, while still charming, were smaller and seemed somehow diminished by their peers. “Would it make you feel better if I felt guilty?”

“Marginally,” he said. “What’s going on?”

I looked around me before speaking to ensure that no one was within listening range. A man picked up after his dog on the grass boulevard in the center of the street to my left, but he couldn’t hear me.

“I got a call last night from a woman claiming to have information about Dominique Girard.”

“What is that, the fourth this week?”

“This one is different. You sitting down?”

Vince hesitated. “Yeah. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Tess Girard. I met her at Bread Co. last night.”

I counted to eight before Vince reacted. “You’re sure it’s her?”

“Positive,” I said, reining in my dog so he wouldn’t run into the street at a stop sign. Simon sat on my foot and grinned up at me, and I stroked his head absently before checking for traffic.

“How is she?”

“She looks good.”

Vince sighed. “I’m glad. I always liked Tess.” He paused. “We’re going to have to tell Isaac.”

“Eventually,” I said, starting across the street. “But let’s hold off until we have some more information. I don’t want to give him reason to overreact.”

“And he would overreact,” said Vince. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t have a clue. Do we treat her like an old friend? Do we ignore her? I don’t know.”

“How do you feel about her?”

“She’s a friend, I guess, but I’m married and I love my wife.”

“What does she want?”

I slowed and then stopped and sat on a bench someone had placed along the sidewalk. A few leaves drifted to the ground around me as the wind blew. Simon sat on my foot and grinned at me again, and I petted the back of his head. His blatant attempt to get my attention used to annoy me, but I now I find it to be one of his more endearing quirks.

“She said she wanted to talk to me about Dominique. Beyond that, I don’t know.”

“As glad as I am to hear she’s okay and as much as I’d like to see her, she needs to go. Talk to her and send her on her way.”

I trusted Tess, and maybe a part of me even still loved her as a friend. But that cold look in her eyes, the one hidden behind her smile, unsettled me.

“I will, but I’d like you to look her up first, maybe find out where she’s been.”

“I don’t know if I’m the best person for that. Aren’t you tight with Gabe Fontaine from the second-district police station?”

I grunted. “Gabe’s too smart. I don’t want him putting too many pieces together.”

“Fair point,” said Vince. “What can you give me on her?”

“Not much,” I said. “She said she’s staying in the Ritz-Carlton under the name Holly Olson. That name ring any bells for you?”

“No.”

“Me, neither, but it’s what I’ve got. Run the name and see if she has a criminal record or list of aliases. I’ll take it from there. I don’t want her showing up at my house. It would scare Ashley, and I don’t even know how Katherine would react.”

Vince knew enough about my sister and her daughter to understand the situation. “How is Ashley?”

“She misses her mom and she has nightmares, but they’re getting better. Simon’s been sleeping beside her bed. He makes her feel safe.”

Vince exhaled loudly. “Okay. I’ll look up Holly Olson and see what there is to see.”

Despite the chilly temperature, I was starting to sweat and I could feel my shirt sticking to my lower back. I fanned my corduroy jacket.

“Thank you. I’ll owe you one.”

“I’m sure this will blow over, but yes, you will owe me one. I’ll take Cardinals tickets as payment. You plan to renew your season tickets next year, don’t you?”

“You can have a couple of night games next season, but I’m keeping the afternoon ones.”

“That sounds fair to me,” said Vince.

I thanked him again before hanging up and walking the remaining three blocks to my dad’s old office. At one time, Hale and Hale had been one of the more successful divorce practices in the county, which made sense with my father at the helm. Old Man Hale had a gift for divorce. He had likely caused half a dozen with his promiscuity, and he wasn’t too bad at representing wealthy divorcees in court, either. Now that my dad was dead and I owned the building, I used the second floor as a writing studio and rented out the first floor to an ice cream parlor.

I unlocked the ground-level front door and took the stairs to my office, where I threw my keys and wallet on an oak desk on the left side of the room and then grabbed a rawhide for Simon from a box in the supply closet. After that, I turned on my laptop and started a pot of coffee. I didn’t want to think about Tess or the mistakes of my past, so I did what I always try to do when I need to get my mind off something: I went to work.

As I had hoped, the events of the past few days disappeared as I set my mind to my newest novel. Unfortunately, reality pulled me back just as quickly, as my cell phone rang twenty minutes after I started writing. I pulled it out without looking at the caller ID.

“Vince?”

“No. It’s me.”

Tess. For some reason, my brain told me to slam the phone down and leave town, pretend nothing happened. Even without conscious direction, my mind began running through the scenarios, plotting ways this conversation could go wrong. I cleared my throat, glanced at my watch, and then switched the phone from one hand to the other.

“I’m sorry about our meeting earlier,” I said. “I was a little out of sorts. It’s just been so long since we’ve talked. A lot has happened. Dad died a couple of years back, and then Ashley moved in with us a few months ago. I’m married now, too . . .” I stopped talking, realizing that I was rambling.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Tess. “But since you brought it up, do you have time for a date with an old friend? I’d love to catch up.”

I nodded to myself, knowing that I owed her a meeting, even if it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

“I’d like that, too,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t catch the lie.

She read off an address, which I wrote down on a scratch pad beside my phone.

“I’m not familiar with that street,” I said. “Where is it?”

“It’s a coffee shop in Arnold. People won’t recognize us there.”

“You don’t think it’d be too risky to meet in public?” I asked.

“It is a risk, but I think it’s worth it. You’ve got the address. I’ll see you in half an hour. We have so much to talk about.”

I ran Simon back to the house and then got in my car. Arnold was one of those small towns that I had heard of on weather reports but knew little about, leaving me no idea of what to expect. I put the address Tess had given me into the GPS on my phone and headed toward the interstate.

Many of the businesses near the address Tess had given me had loading docks for deliveries and large parking lots for displaying outdoor equipment or heavy machinery. None of them looked like a coffee shop. As I pulled to a stop in the parking lot of the business Tess directed me to, I rechecked my GPS to ensure that I had come to the right spot. I had, so I called her on my cell phone.

“Hey. Are you sure you gave me the correct address? It looks like a gun range.”

“Yes. It’s a shooting range, but they’ve got a coffee bar. I’m in the pro shop.”

Had I been meeting a stranger, I might have refused. Reluctantly, I slipped the phone in my pocket and crossed the gravel lot to the range’s front door. The interior had a retail space directly in front of the doors and a coffee shop on the left side of the store. The right side of the shop had gray lockers arranged around a solid oak receptionist’s desk, while frosted glass doors led to the range. Tess stood inside the retail section, a package of orange foam earplugs in one hand and two pairs of plastic safety glasses in the other.

As I walked toward her, she flashed me the sort of smile that could make otherwise sane men do incredibly stupid things just to get her attention. Standing near her in my corduroy jacket and jeans, I felt like a thistle beside a rose. Tess looked at the floor and then back to me, her smile turning almost coy.

“I got you some earplugs and safety glasses,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t think you’d bring any.”

I looked around the shop, noting its exits in the front and back. “I didn’t know you wanted to meet me at a gun range.”

“I like shooting. It makes me feel safe.”

“I’ll wait for you in the coffee bar,” I said. ‘Take your time.”

“I want you to come with me. It’ll be fun.” She leaned close enough that I could smell the lilac from her hand lotion, the same one she had been using since high school. “At least go through the motions and pretend. We’ll both look out of place if we don’t.”

I surveyed the range’s other patrons. Already, the clerk at the register of the retail section was staring at us, so maybe she was right. I acquiesced, and she checked us in at the counter beside the gun range. I thought she had just brought the firearm on her hip, but she used a key to open one of the lockers beside the receptionist’s desk and pulled out a black metal case. She handed it to me, and we walked through the doors. The range was small and narrow, with ten lanes for shooters and five metal tables for those waiting. Only one man stood at a lane, and he stared downfield so intently that he didn’t even notice us.

Tess walked to the lane as far from the other shooter as possible and set up a paper target at roughly ten yards. Each round she fired pierced the paper within six inches of the target’s simulated center of mass. When she finished the magazine, she slid her firearm into the holster on her belt and looked back at me.

“Your turn.”

I shook my head. “No, thank you. I didn’t bring a gun.”

“That’s why I brought this one,” she said, walking toward me. She took the black case I had been holding and opened it on the nearest table. “It’s a Smith & Wesson 1911 converted to shoot a .22 long rifle cartridge. It won’t kick too much.”

“I’d rather not.”

Tess took my hand and put it on top of the firearm. “You came all the way out here, so you might as well try. You might like it. I’ll even help if you’ve never shot before.”

I didn’t mind guns, and I could understand why many people liked shooting them, but in all the years I’d known Tess, not once did she ever express any desire whatsoever to shoot anything. In fact, just the opposite. She had told me time and again how she didn’t like it when her stepfather’s security team openly carried firearms on vacation. Time changes people, evidently.

“I don’t have a choice in this, do I?”

Tess winked. “Nope.”

I removed the weapon from its case and slid a magazine into the grip.

“Just try to have some fun,” said Tess.

I walked to the same lane she had used, and since I didn’t care how I did, I didn’t bother setting up a new target before racking the slide. Under normal circumstances, I could shoot well, but this time, I simply pointed the weapon downfield and pulled the trigger, nearly missing the target entirely.

“Steve,” said Tess. “I’m walking towards you. I’m going to help you out.”

I looked over my shoulder at her to let her know that I had heard. She leaned into me, and I once again smelled her lilac hand lotion, and once more, I was transported back to the days when Tess and I were together, when a single word from her could set my heart racing and a touch sent blood rushing through my system. When she put her hands on my shoulders to square me to the target, an awkward, nervous flutter traveled down my back.

“Now relax and spread your legs,” she said. I did as she suggested, and she patted me on the back and whispered into my ear. “You remember when you told me that in high school?”

She laughed, but I pretended not to hear as I raised the firearm. I finished the magazine, but I found my thoughts continually straying to the woman behind me. Once I finished, I took a step back from the lane and started to hand the gun back to Tess.

“Just put it in the box for me,” she said, nodding toward the black metal case. While I did that, she removed the empty magazine from her own weapon and pulled the slide back to clear the chamber. Never in my life did I imagine I’d watch her field strip a weapon, so seeing her do it was a little surreal.

“You’ve learned a couple of things since you’ve been away,” I said, once she had the gun cleaned and reassembled.

“You’d be surprised at how easy it is to learn something when your life is on the line,” she said, checking the sight lines and dry firing the weapon. She looked back at me and smiled. “It hasn’t been all bad, though. There have been happy moments, too.”

“I’m glad.”

After putting her weapon back in her holster, she took a hesitant half step toward me, looking almost as if she were going to kiss me. I turned my head away and stepped back before she could.

“Let’s talk in the shop,” I said, fingering my wedding ring. “I think we’ve both got a lot to say.”