All Your Pretty Dreams (28 page)

Isabel knew the one.
Although it could be the campus bookstore too, it was huge with
shelves and shelves of novels, games, and movies. Just before
running out the door she looked around the house. Her papers were
strewn over the dining table. Dirty dishes in the sink. She spent
ten minutes frantically cleaning up. As she reached the car, Jonny
called.

“
I’m at O’Hare. The flight
gets into Bloomington at one-thirty.”

“
I’ll pick you up,” she
said. She flipped the phone shut, ran a hand through her damp hair,
and hit the gas.

The airport was small.
There was plenty of illegal parking along the curb, so she sat in
the Bug. The late summer weather was mild after all, not the
intense heat the morning had promised. She rolled down the windows
and felt a breeze ruffle her hair.

The Barnes & Noble had
been frustrating. Sixteen clerks and she could only talk to five or
six, the rest were off or too busy. She didn’t have a picture of
Curtis. She wasn’t a private eye. Lots of people bought stacks of
books at the start of the summer, he was hardly unusual. Many books
and games had gone out the door. Months had passed.

Curtis probably didn’t live
in the area at all. He could have taken the job for the summer,
driving for the field crew, picking up some extra cash. He read a
lot of books. Maybe he was a grad student somewhere, or an English
teacher, or a writer even. Or a school bus driver in Cleveland. A
waiter in San Antonio. Why the hell hadn’t she talked to him all
summer?

The side door opened. Jonny
stuck his head in. “Hi.” He threw a small duffle bag into the back
seat. “Thanks for picking me up.”

She pulled into traffic,
making her way out of the airport and back onto the highway. She
didn’t know what to say to him. She was no closer to finding Wendy
than she’d been yesterday. And he’d come all this way.

“
Anything new?”

She shook her head. “Oh,
well, Maddie called to say Curtis told her about a big bookstore
where he’d bought novels. But nobody remembered him. It’s been
months.”

“
Did you get somebody to
open the bus barn?”

“
No.” She wasn’t really
sure who was in charge of that. They drove in silence, out of the
suburbs of Bloomington, past ripe cornfields, fields of alfalfa,
cows, mini-horse pastures, more suburbs. The sun shone down hard on
the highway and she gripped the wheel tightly.

Finally they returned to
campus. Long stretches of awkward silence had passed between them.
Isabel badly wanted to talk but couldn’t find the words. He seemed
preoccupied. Worried, no doubt. He wanted to go straight to the
maintenance office at the physical plant. They parked and ran up
the steps. The door was locked.

Jonny swore and pounded the
door. No one answered. “Take me to the bus barn.”

The fenced yard with the
vans and buses and trucks was still locked up tight. No one in
sight. Jonny rattled the gate and called out. He hiked the
perimeter, as much as he could, looking up at the tall chain link
fence with barbed wire strung across the top. When he returned to
the car he was frowning.

“
Pretty secure,” he
said.

“
Unless we get some giant
wire cutters. Prison Break.” She smiled at him.

“
If we knew she was in
there I would do it in a second.” He gripped the chain link with
all fingers and stared at the locked shed. “This looks like a dead
end.” He turned to Isabel. “So now what?”

“
I wish I
knew.”

“
Let’s find somebody in
Administration. Somebody has to know how to find the driver.” He
hopped in the car, clicking into his seatbelt. “How about the cops.
You know the way?”

Jonny had brought Wendy’s
senior picture and showed it to the clerk on duty at Campus Police.
“We think she may have stowed away in a University van. Nobody’s
fault,” he said. “We just need to find her.”

The clerk— or officer, his
tag said Monroe— was a balding man with a double chin and beady
eyes. He pulled out a form. “Tell me the particulars.” Jonny gave
her name, age, description, address, phone. The clerk copied the
photo on an ancient Xerox machine. When he had looked over the form
three times, he nodded to himself. “We’ll get this posted
tonight.”

“
I’m in town today. Please
call me if anyone sees her.” Jonny leaned his elbows on the
counter. “Now, is there any way we can find out more about the
driver?”

The clerk frowned. “That’s
a matter for Human Relations.”

“
Do they staff HR on the
weekends?”

He shrugged. “Doubt
it.”

Jonny stared at the clerk
who pretended not to understand. After a minute of fingering the
form he began to squirm. “I could make a call, I guess. But I
wouldn’t count on anything. They’d have to open up the building and
look through files.”

“
How taxing,” Isabel said.
Jonny kicked her on the shin. “I mean, that would be great, Officer
Monroe. We know you’re busy but we’re so worried about
Wendy.”

“
If she stowed away, like
you say, he won’t know anything,” the clerk said.

“
But he might,” Jonny
said. “Please.”

Monroe made the call, to
the university switchboard that took calls after hours for
Administration. He asked for someone in Human Relations to call—
immediately. Jonny and Isabel sat down in worn vinyl chairs to
wait. It was a quiet night on campus. No one else came in to the
Police Station. Monroe busied himself with paperwork. Twenty
minutes passed before the reply came.

The clerk explained,
briefly. “A phone number would be sufficient. Any kind of contact
information. The brother is here and is very worried.”

He listened some more.
“Okay. Right.” He hung up. “The building is closed until Monday.
They’re doing some kind of toxic material cleanup. Nobody gets in
or out.”

Outside the light had left
most of the sky. The days were getting shorter. Isabel stomped up
to the car.

“
They just couldn’t be
bothered to go over there tonight! Toxic cleanup. They don’t even
care.” She flopped behind the wheel. “They don’t want to get
implicated in case Curtis did something—”

She hadn’t meant to bring
up unpleasant scenarios. She glanced at Jonny. His jaw was clenched
and he stared out the windshield. He was angry too. She made
herself calm down. They had to think of something else. She
couldn’t think, which usually meant one thing. “Are you hungry?
Because I could eat a horse.”

Jonny had a draft beer with
his burger at the Sports Pub but he wasn’t in the mood for
drinking. He wanted to keep his head clear in case somebody called.
He’d brought along Sonya’s cell phone. The remains of his burger
lay in a puddle of ketchup.

Isabel had devoured hers.
You had to like a girl with a healthy appetite. She’d been helpful
and kind, trying to think about new investigative routes and
keeping his spirits up with jokes. Artie was right, she did care.
Even if they were no closer to finding Wendy.

“
Listen.” She leaned
closer. “I don’t think Curtis lives here. I think he probably just
found a contract job for the summer.”

He hadn’t thought of that.
“And he probably didn’t willingly drive her down here.”

“
He was a stickler for the
rules.”

“
But if she stowed away?
He might not have seen her at first.”

“
Do you think she wanted
to come here?”

Jonny shrugged. He looked
around the pub, the high booths around the perimeter, the
television screens playing pre-season college football. Clumps of
students ate and laughed and talked. What would it have been like
to go to a college like this? A real university. A real degree.
Would it have changed his life? Would he have met someone
else?

“
You ready?” He’d had
enough of the regrets. He paid the check and walked outside into
the night air, still warm but with the moldy scent of autumn
creeping in around the edges.

Isabel stepped up beside
him, jingling her keys. “Got an idea?”

He glanced at her. His
ideas had nothing to do with Wendy. What if he’d met someone like
Isabel, someone smart and caring, someone who wanted to learn and
grow? Who would he be now? He tossed his head.
Enough
. “You?”

“
Not really. You want to
go back to the professor’s? I’m staying at her house while she’s in
the hospital.”

“
I should get a motel
room. But thanks.”

She looked at him sideways.
“It’s a big house.”

In the wood-paneled entry
Jonny caught the closed-up smells of the old house: grease, mildew,
cloying perfume. Isabel moved briskly, flipping on lights and
showing him through dusty parlors and messy offices. She told him
to sit and went upstairs to get her laptop. When she returned she
told him she’d emailed all the students, just in case somebody
remembered something about Curtis, or the departure from the Rainy
Days.

They sat at the kitchen
table, a clean spot in a kitchen that looked haphazardly
scrubbed.

“
Let’s see,” Isabel said,
tapping keys. “Nothing. Maybe tomorrow.”

“
I should see about
catching a flight,” Jonny said. She pushed over the laptop. In a
few minutes time, he was booked out of Bloomington at 10:45 in the
morning.

“
A wasted trip. Sorry,”
she said, closing the computer.

“
You never know. I’m glad
I came.”

“
You don’t need to get a
motel room. You can stay here. I mean, on the sofa. It’s a little
lumpy but adequate.”

“
Thanks.”

“
It’s all so frustrating,”
she said. “She can’t have just disappeared.”

He felt the weight of hope
again, pulling him down. It wasn’t getting any lighter. Wendy was
thoughtless and wild, yes, but would she run off and never call her
mother? Never write to her doting father? Had something really bad
happened to her?

“
I should call Artie,” he
said. He pulled out his phone, made the call, hung up. Not much to
say when you’ve failed.

“
Any leads at that end?”
she asked.

He shook his head. Isabel
got up to make them some tea, something herbal and minty to help
them sleep after this day. Jonny wrapped his hands around it and
felt the steam on his chin. Then, out of nowhere she asked him
about his wife.

“
Were you married
long?”

He was surprised at her
bluntness, then sort of relieved. Everyone tiptoed around his
feelings, as if they comprehended him better than he did himself.
Half the time he had no idea what was going on in his heart.
Unfortunately, the other half of the time he was all too keenly
aware.

“
Too long. Eight
years.”

“
You must have been
infants.”

“
Still in diapers. What
about you? Where’s your boyfriend?”

“
Let’s see,” she said,
putting a finger to her chin. “I’ve mislaid him, that’s it.” She
slumped a little. “He married somebody else. He wasn’t the person I
thought he was.”

“
That’ll do it.” He sipped
his tea. He wondered who he’d thought Cuppie was, and how he’d
found out differently. Whatever it was, God bless it.

“
And in Vegas
too.”

“
Very tacky. Then
what?”

“
No idea. I’m not on their
Christmas card list.”

“
Then what with
you.”

“
Oh. Then I went to
Europe. Backpacked around. Met a guy in Barcelona.”

“
The Spanish throw you
out?”

“
After the torture
chamber, and the rack.” She looked straight at him, a steady gaze
into his eyes, a gesture he found both brave and amusing. He
smiled. What did she see in his eyes? Was she deciding whether he
was worthy of her secrets? “He was Latin.”

“
Ah.”

“
And the bees were
calling.”

“
Your
calling. What’s your thesis on?”

“
Wild bee pollination.
Boring stuff but it could save the world.” She smiled. “Are you
grilling me, Mr. Knobel?”

“
I like to call it the
Spanish Inquisition. How’m I doing?”

“
Not bad. But you forgot
to tie me up naked and lash me with leather,” she said.

Suddenly she was bright
red, from her neck up through her cheeks. He tried not to laugh, a
picture of her wrists tied to bedposts flashing through his mind.
He loved girls who blushed. There was entirely too little blushing
in the world. More embarrassment would make the world a better
place. Just think what would happen if some of our leaders could
blush about their misdeeds.

Isabel’s eyes darted around
the kitchen. It occurred to him she had, well, feelings beyond
drunken kisses in the dead of night at funerals. That triple-whammy
was too loaded to be real. People did irrational, out-of-character
things at family funerals, especially when drinking. When she
hadn’t replied to his note, it was clear that night had meant
nothing.