Doubleback: A Novel (2 page)

“Right on schedule,” he thought to himself.

chapter
2

Three Days Earlier

I
found the used condom when I was changing the sheets in the guest room. Technically, it’s not a guest room—it’s my office. But there’s a daybed against the wall, and, sometimes, when out-of-towners show up, or some of Rachel’s friends spend the night, it’s put into service. As it clearly was last night.

At first, I didn’t know what it was. Crumpled up, an off-white, beigy color, it might have been a used band-aid. Maybe one of those footlets they give you at the shoe store. Even an empty sausage casing. I swept my hand over the sheet and scooped it up. When I realized what it was, I dropped it back on the bedcovers, ran into the bathroom, and washed my hands. Then I gingerly picked it up with a pair of tweezers and placed it on a sheet of clean, white printer paper. I picked up the paper and walked into the hall.

“Rachel...”

Her bedroom door was partially closed, but I could hear her talking on the phone. There was no pause or drop-off in her voice. I called again, louder this time, all the while staring at the condom as if it was infected with Ebola.

I heard a grudging, “Hang on a minute,” and in the next breath, “What is it, Mom?” Her voice had that clearly-annoyed-to-have-been-disturbed tone.

“Out here,” I snapped. “On the double.”

A dramatic sigh was her response. Then, “Call you right back.” Rustles and creaks followed as my eighteen-year-old pulled herself off her bed and emerged from her room. Her blond mop of hair, so unlike my dark waves, fell across her forehead. Her big blue eyes that she’d learned to highlight in just the right way with liner and mascara sought mine. As tall as I, and more slender, she wore a red t-shirt and gym shorts, and all her physical attributes were very much in evidence. My daughter had turned into an attractive, desirable young woman.

Evidently, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

I held the condom out in front of me. At first she squinted as if she couldn’t figure out what it was. Then her brain registered, her lips parted, and a flush crept up her neck. At the same time, she tried to hide her surprise and shot me a look that managed to be both shrewd and defiant.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You and your friends were blowing them up like balloons.”

Her eyes narrowed, the way they do when she knows I’m onto her and the only possible recourse is disdain. “No, Mother.”

“Pouring water into them, maybe.”

Her eyes were little more than slits.

“No? Pray tell how this ended up in the sheets.”

Her eyes flicked to the condom then back to me. Her shoulders heaved, and she blew out a breath. “All right. I’ll tell you. But you’ve gotta swear not to tell anyone.”

“I can’t promise that, Rachel.”

“Mother, please. You have to. If it gets around...”

“Tell me. I’ll decide.”

Her face scrunched into a frown. Her lower lip protruded. There was another dramatic silence, and then she said, “It wasn’t me. It was Mary. She and Dan were in there.”

Mary was her best friend. Dan was Mary’s boyfriend. “When?”

“Saturday night.”

It was Monday now. “Where were you?” She didn’t answer.

“With Adam?” Adam was Rachel’s boyfriend. At least on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or whenever she wasn’t breaking up with him. Regrettably, she’d inherited my emotional intimacy patterns. Or lack of them.

“We didn’t go upstairs, Mom. I swear. We were out on the deck smoking hookah.”

My house had become the “go-to” place for Rachel and her friends over the summer. I kept a lid on drinking and smoking, but otherwise left them alone. The newest craze was smoking flavored tobacco in ornate silver hookahs that would do Alice’s Caterpillar proud. But teenagers always think they’re smarter than adults, and I knew they slipped in some weed now and again. I’d done worse in my youth—I came of age during the sixties—so I pretended not to notice.

Still, sex in my office wasn’t my idea of acceptable behavior. “Rachel, this is wrong. It can’t happen again. Not in my house.”

“Mother, we’re not children. Jesus. I’m going to college next year.”

“I know. And I can’t wait.”

“You would say something like that. You never want me around. You don’t trust anyone. You always have to be in control.” When Rachel goes into attack mode, I cringe. It was a tactic she’d learned from her father, who figured he could wear me down with belligerence. It didn’t work when he did it; it wouldn’t work now.

“If I were you, I’d button my mouth before I found myself grounded for a month.”

She tightened her lips, but her eyes were pools of rage.

Then the phone rang. Her eyebrows went sky high, and she bolted into her room to grab it. Which was fortuitous. We were both on the verge of saying things we’d regret.

“It’s for you,” she called petulantly.

I poked my head in her room.

“Could you please take it in your office? I need to call Julia back.”

“We’ll continue this conversation later.”

She rolled her eyes.

I went back in my office, put down the condom, and picked up the phone.

“Sounds like another fun morning at the Foreman’s.” It was Susan Siler, my best friend and possibly the wisest person I know.

“She’s full of mother angst right now.” I started to tell her about the condom but Susan cut me off. “Ellie, I want to hear about this, but it’s got to wait. Something important has come up.”

“Go ahead.”

Susan rarely makes demands. Of course, her life is perfect. She has the perfect husband, two perfect kids, a perfect house, and a perfect part-time job in an art gallery. We’ve been friends for nearly twenty years, and I still don’t know how she does it.

“I have this friend,” she said. “Sort of a neighbor, actually. Christine Messenger.”

“I don’t think I know her.”

“Ellie, her daughter has been kidnapped.”

•   •   •

We live in a peaceful bedroom community twenty miles from Chicago on the North Shore. It’s an affluent suburb in which the biggest tragedy occurred twenty-five years ago when a disturbed young woman went on a school shooting spree that killed one child and wounded several others. In fact, our village is generally so safe that, if you believe the rumors, it was once a haven for Outfit families—their children deserved safe neighborhoods, too, didn’t they? It stayed that way until the village police chief was caught extorting money from local businesses, after which he and the Mob made a speedy exit.

Christine Messenger’s red-brick house, nestled on a block of similar homes, was neat and well-tended, with what had to be a nitrogen-enriched green lawn, a riot of annuals and climbing roses flanking the door. It wasn’t that large—three bedrooms, I guessed—but it fit nicely with the white picket-fence theme of the street. I met Susan outside—she lives three houses away—and we trudged up the flagstone path to the door.

Susan is taller, slimmer, and more graceful than I. She’s always perfectly coiffed and dressed, and today her light green sun dress and matching sweater complemented her red-gold hair perfectly. Her pearl earrings—studs, of course, nothing too ornate—glowed in the sun. Susan gave me the once-over with a practiced eye, taking in my cropped pants, wrinkled t-shirt, sandals, and hair tamed temporarily with an elastic band. She didn’t say a word.

“What did you tell her about me?” I asked, trying not to feel slovenly.

“I told her you were my friend, and you had experience with this type of thing.”

I raised my eyebrows. “This type of thing?”

“You know what I mean.”

Over the past several years, I’ve had several encounters with the dark side of human nature. I don’t look for it, and don’t much like it. I prefer a boring, normal life. But then Rachel is my daughter, Jake Foreman is my father, and Luke Sutton is my boyfriend. Normal is not an option.

“How old is the girl?” I asked Susan.

“About eight.”

“When did it happen?”

“Couple of hours ago. After she dropped Molly at camp.”

The Park District runs a day camp for kids during June and July, basically a glorified baby sitting service with arts and crafts and the occasional trip to the pool. Rachel had attended when I worked in the Loop.

“Chris took the train downtown as usual,” Susan went on. “She was just getting to her office when the call came.”

“What did they say?”

“That... well, why don’t we let Chris tell you herself?” She stepped up on the porch and rang the bell.

“You know what I’m going to tell her,” I said, listening to three perversely cheerful chimes.

“What?”

“That she needs to go to the police. Now. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The kidnapper specifically said no police. Or he’d kill Molly.”

I leveled a look at Susan. She looked back at me. We stood there staring at each other for a long moment.

She blinked. “Don’t look at me with those big gray eyes. I’m not asking you to get involved. Just talk to her. Chances are she’ll do whatever you say. But she’s totally freaked out, and you’re the only person I could think of who’d understand.”

I sighed.

•   •   •

Houses give off smells. Some are pleasant, some sour. Sometimes they define the home’s personality, and you know at once whether the place is one you want to spend time in or leave as soon as you can. I’ve never figured out where the smells come from—laundry soap, lingering body odor, dirty carpets—but a stale, briny odor bit at my throat as I entered Christine Messenger’s house. I resisted the impulse to flee.

Not that the house was a mess. The décor was well-bred Wasp elegance, with plenty of silk and brocade, an antique or two, and a splash of color that her decorator must have said would “give the room a finished look.” But the shades were drawn, and the dim lamplight threw gloomy shadows across the living room.

Christine Messenger closed the door and stood against it, as if she was barricading herself—and us—inside. She would have been attractive, were it not for the fear and misery etched on her face. She had red hair, like Susan, which fell to her shoulders, but hers was darker, almost auburn. Her eyes were green and red-rimmed. Her skin looked pasty, and when I examined her closely, I saw it was covered with freckles that she probably agonized over as a child. Although she looked thin, I couldn’t tell for sure. She was wearing bulky sweats, like it was the middle of January. I’d seen it before. Grief can strip body heat away faster than a cold shower.

“Thank you for coming.” Her voice was ragged. “Susan said you might be able to help.”

“I don’t know.” It was a brilliant blue-sky June morning, but as I stepped into the living room, my mood darkened. “I’m so sorry.”

She nodded grimly and pulled out one of those small packets of tissues from a pocket.

“When did it happen?”

She extracted a tissue and clutched it tightly. “It must have been around seven-thirty this morning. Right after I dropped her at camp.”

I could feel her desperation. “Perhaps we could go into the kitchen?”

Christine stared at me blankly, as if her distress had slowed down her reflexes and she needed extra time to process. Then it registered. “Yes, of course.”

The kitchen was cheerier, mostly because of a skylight that bathed everything in bright light. I considered it a hopeful sign. We sat in chairs around a butcher block table.

“So you dropped her off at camp...”

“They have the early bird program, you know. She likes making lanyards. Blue and purple. And pink.” She fingered the tissue. “I drove to the train station as usual. Got the 7:52 downtown. I was almost at the office when—”

“Where do you work?”

“Midwest National Bank at Madison and Dearborn...”

I nodded. “... when I got a call on my cell.”

“Who was it?”

“I didn’t recognize the voice. He said...” She took a breath. “They had Molly.” She crumpled the tissue.

“He said ‘they’?” When she nodded, I asked, “Did he say how much—I mean—what they wanted?”

Christine looked blank again, then shook her head. “No. He said not to call the police. That if I did, they’d... hurt her.” She said it slowly, enunciating each word.

“Did they let you talk to her? You know, to prove they really had her?”

Christine’s hands began to shake. Susan covered them with her own. Christine gave her a grateful look. “Yes. She sounded... so frightened.” Her voice quavered.

“Do you have a picture of Molly?”

She nodded, got up, and brought back a photo she’d obviously had ready. A school photo with the ubiquitous blue background, it showed Molly in a Kelly green sweater over a white collared shirt. She was a fresh-faced kid with flaming red hair tied back in a scrunchy. Her eyes were blue and widely-spaced, her nose tiny, and a flash of silver gleamed behind a pair of reluctantly smiling lips. I could relate. I had braces when I was her age, and I swore never to let them show in pictures. But when the photographer said “smile” or “cheese” or “artichoke” as did Sid, the man who took all our school pictures forty years ago, I couldn’t help it. “She’s adorable.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Christine blinked away tears.

I stood up, my chair scraping the floor. “Did he say anything about next steps? What you needed to do? What they would do?”

“He said he’d call me later. After he was convinced I wouldn’t go to the police.” She bowed her head. Susan kept her hands on Christine’s but looked over at me. I saw a warning in her eyes.

I started to pace. “Christine, Susan called me because she thought I might be helpful.” I paused. “But my advice is to go to the police. They have the resources and experience to deal with this. Despite the threats.”

Christine looked up. Tears rimmed her eyes. “I can’t take that chance.”

“I understand.”

She looked up. “So you’ll help me?”

“I can’t. As I said, I really don’t have any special knowledge in matters like this.”

Her face crumpled. Tears inched down her cheek.