Ink and Bone (14 page)

FOURTEEN

T
he Egg and Yolk was the newest restaurant in The Hollows. An overpriced, fifties-style diner—complete with red leather and chrome counter stools, a jukebox, and
Leave It to Beaver
,
Father
Knows Best
,
The Andy Griffith Show
, and other classic American television shows playing in a continuous loop on wall-mounted, flat-screen televisions.

Merri knew that it was a place frequented mainly by tourists and people passing through town to see the fall foliage, or packed with weekenders for the Sunday brunch. She’d chosen it as the place to meet Jones Cooper because she thought it would be empty at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and so it was. The locals stayed away because it was too flashy, too expensive—too
new
.

She walked in and took a seat in a booth toward the back, following the directive of the sign, which encouraged her to: Sit Wherever You Like!

Even so, she felt the eyes of the cook behind the counter and the older waitress over by the cash register. People in The Hollows knew her because of Abbey. Folks were always kind to her, but after a while their kind and pitying glances were heavy and brought Merri down. But it was more than pity, too. There was a current of fear, of distrust. As if the horror that had befallen her family might in some way be contagious. Merri could just
imagine
other mothers wanting to hug their children away when she was around. She didn’t blame them. She would have felt the same way once upon a time.

She stayed bent over her phone, scrolling through news. In true
Jackson fashion, she’d set up an alert for stories relating to that missing man. A shadow caused her to look up, and the waitress was standing over her with an ice water and a menu.

“Thank you,” said Merri.

The woman placed the red plastic tumbler on the table with a ringed, elegant hand. Merri glanced up and saw her own reflection in the woman’s glasses, then the cool, ice-blue eyes behind that. Her smile was warm, attentive.

“Mrs. Gleason?” she said, laying the menu down.

Merri nodded.
Shit.

“I was one of the volunteers that helped search for your girl,” she said. “I want you to know that we’re all still hoping you’ll find her.”

“Thank you,” Merri said. Her face felt like ice, like it might crack into a million pieces.

People didn’t even know how cruel kindness could be, how much it hurt.

“I pray for your family every night,” she said. She smoothed out the front of her yellow-and-white uniform, something odd, uncomfortable about the gesture.

Yes, from the safety of your home, where your life is perfectly intact, you pray for us. Why did that always sound so condescending? She’d asked Wolf once. So goddamn superior. Because you’re a hard, cold bitch, Merri Gleason, Wolf would joke. Or half-joke.

“That’s very kind,” said Merri, even though she wanted to gather up her things and run. There was absolutely nowhere to hide from people, though that’s one thing she
had
learned. You couldn’t get away from good-intentioned folks who hurt you without even knowing.

Jones Cooper came through the door then with a jingle of the bell. The woman looked at him and back at Merri with an understanding nod.

“I’ll get another water and a menu.”

He slid into the booth across from her. She liked his face, strong brow, high cheekbones. Those eyes—what would she call them? Penetrating. The bad guys must squirm before him. Even she felt
a little uneasy, wondering what he could see when he looked at her: Someone unstable? Someone desperate? Was she unstable and desperate? Would any other type of person have hired a psychic to find her daughter?

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said.

“You’re at Miss Lovely’s?”

When she confirmed, he nodded his approval. “That’s a good place for you.”

He didn’t go on, but Merri thought she knew what he meant. Better than a rental or one of the impersonal places she might have picked outside of town. At Miss Lovely’s she felt safe and cared for, a rare experience.

The waitress came back with the water and menus. Cooper ordered coffee and a patty melt. Merri ordered a pot of tea and chicken noodle soup.

“I have a couple of things I want to get straight before we continue,” Cooper said when the waitress had gone.

“Okay,” she said.

“After Abbey disappeared, suspicion turned to your husband for a time.”

She bowed her head, took a breath. She tasted the familiar flavor of shame and anger in her mouth. She had to force herself to say the words she’d repeated too many times to too many hired detectives.

“At the time of the abduction, Wolf—my husband—was having an affair,” she said. Merri never got used to the word
girlfriend
. It sounded so sweet and innocent, when in this case, it was anything but. “The police discovered that pretty quickly, and a lot of time was spent on Wolf and his
mistress.”
Another strange word, somehow antiquated, with an almost permissive quality.

“They didn’t have anything to do with this,” she concluded.

The police didn’t believe Wolf that he couldn’t identify the men on that trail. That he’d never seen the perpetrators, had his glasses knocked off in the fall, as had Jackson. That all he saw were some vague and fuzzy dark forms through the trees, listened to Jackson
get shot, the kids screaming. But he was in shock, terrified for the kids and himself, not thinking about identifying anyone. He’d been plagued by nightmares since. Merri told Jones all of that.

Jones nodded gravely. “I’m sorry to have to bring this up, Mrs. Gleason. But are you absolutely certain he had nothing to do with it?”

It was a question she almost couldn’t bear to answer again.

“What motivation would they have to hurt or abduct Abbey?” asked Merri, trying and failing to keep the annoyance from her voice. “Their thing—it was tawdry, insubstantial.”

She hated the way she sounded, like a jaded New Yorker.

“He was careless, stupid,” she continued. “But he loves his children. He’s—broken by this. Just as I am.”

She looked away, swallowed back the tightness at the base of her throat.

“What do you know about the girlfriend?” asked Jones.

Merri lifted her palms. “Just a girl, some publicist, twenty-five. A total slut, sure.” She didn’t like that word; it was misogynistic wasn’t it? Wasn’t
Wolf
a slut, someone careless about sex and who they hurt with it? Though why should she be concerned about referring to her husband’s mistress that way? “But not someone who would steal a child. Anyway, they were both cleared of any foul play.”

There was that tone again, cold, disinterested in her husband’s infidelity. Boys will be boys.

Cooper nodded slowly but held her eyes. He saw it all, she thought, every shade and layer of her. He’d already decided that the affair had nothing to do with Abbey; he was just doing his due diligence.

“I understand,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to dwell on uncomfortable topics.”

“Topics?”

He cleared his throat. “There were questions about the prescription drugs you were taking at the time.”

Where do you get your pills? Do you have a dealer? Do you owe anyone money? Would they have come after you? Hurt your family?
God, she
could still taste the humiliation, the rage, the sick dread. It was a toxin. She might carry it in her body forever, like grief. Maybe it would kill her, show up as cancer or as some mysterious blood disease a couple years from now. When it manifested itself in her body, she would know precisely when she caught the germ.

A tragic event like this put your whole life under scrutiny. If Wolf had been having some petty affair, if she’d been taking too many Vicodin and Abbey
hadn’t
disappeared, none of it would mean very much. They’d still be shitty parents, but their flaws and mistakes wouldn’t be on display for everyone to see and judge. When you’d failed to safeguard the life of your child, people wanted answers, reasons why such a thing could never happen to them. Nothing like a good public flogging to make everyone feel better about themselves.

“A couple of years ago I had knee surgery and was prescribed some pretty powerful pain relievers to which I became addicted. I was in the throes of that problem when we lost Abbey, and that came to light as well. I had a nervous breakdown about three months after she went missing, and I was hospitalized.”

“Where were you getting your pills?”

Merri shrugged. “I did a little doctor hopping,” she said. “I got some online.”

“You didn’t have a dealer?”

Merri drew in a sharp breath. Could you call a colleague whose family lived in Canada and who on his regular trip up north picked up various prescriptions for friends a dealer? Ambien for his friend that didn’t have insurance? Tylenol 3? Vicodin? That friendship was over; she’d had no choice but to give his name. He didn’t get in any real trouble, but his drug-trafficking days, however benign, were over.

She explained this to Cooper.

“I understand,” said Jones again. Something about the way he said it was comforting, not judgmental, and put her at ease.

“Although it might not make me mother of the year,” she said. “I was fully functional, and my problems had nothing to do with Abbey going missing.”

Was that really true? She still didn’t know.

“Except that I should have been with them and I wasn’t always myself,” she added.

He reached out a hand and put it on her arm. Usually, she drew away from people, hated their touch. Especially since Abbey, and since she’d been off the pills. She felt like there was an electric current constantly running through her. But she was okay with him.

“I know you didn’t have anything to do with what happened to your daughter,” he said.

She looked down so that he couldn’t see how close she was to tears. It was embarrassing to be crying all the time in front of people. She had never gotten used to it, how raw she was, how near she always was to breaking apart.

“Please don’t waste any more time on those things,” she said. “I didn’t hire you to get stuck in old grooves in the road. I need a fresh approach.”

She was trying hard not to sound edgy, but she was practically vibrating with urgency. There was a clock in her head; she could hear it ticking. Every second Abbey was farther away.

“I had to hear about those things from you,” he said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask.”

He explained to her how he was going over the files, and how he had gone to the lake house, and to the trail. And Merri was sure that was the right way to do things. But it was just more of the same.

“What about Miss Montgomery?” she asked. “Will she be able to help?”

He’d been clear with Merri that there were no guarantees, and she got that. There had been a number of private detectives before Cooper, and she knew how it went with them. With the presentation of that first big retainer check, every single one of them believed that he’d be the one to bring Abbey home. But then when the weeks wore on, the calls would be less frequent; then Merri’s calls would go unreturned. Inevitably there would be a conversation about how all the leads were cold, the police had done a decent job, nothing had been missed. Nothing missed—except her daughter.

Now she was that mother who, in her desperation, had turned to a psychic. A terribly sad cliché, something people had laughed about (mirthlessly) in one of the groups she’d visited for families of missing children.
They’re waiting like vultures for us, these charlatans
, one father had said bitterly.
How do they live with themselves, taking our money when we’ve lost everything else?

But Merri had an aunt who’d had prophetic dreams, the stuff of family legend. And there had been a few strange things about Abbey, too. She had a dream that her hamster Daisy was going to die, and the next day he (there had been some gender confusion) did. Sometimes when Abbey had tantrums, the lights in their apartment would flicker. And she hadn’t wanted to go to the lake house. She’d had nightmares about it for weeks leading up to the trip. But, of course, they’d dismissed it.

There’s a monster in the woods.

No such things as monsters, kiddo. You know that.

“I went to see Eloise,” said Jones in response to her question. “Her granddaughter thinks she might be able to help. Eloise isn’t getting anything yet.”

“Is her granddaughter a psychic?” asked Merri.

“So I’m told.”

“You’re not a believer?” she asked. She had to say the guy wasn’t into selling himself, which was a bit of a change.

The waitress brought their food but seemed to linger nearby, needlessly wiping down clean tables and fussing with condiment trays that acted as centerpieces. Was she listening to their conversation? Would what Merri said become fodder for the gossip mill around town? Jones went quiet, took a bite of his sandwich. She sensed that he, too, was waiting for the waitress to leave the proximity. Finally, she did.

“I’ve been around long enough to know there’s more to this life than we can see or understand. Let’s say I have a healthy respect for Eloise, as well as a healthy skepticism.”

Merri nodded. That put them on the same wavelength.

“And her granddaughter?”

“Eloise seems to think she’s something special. I trust Eloise. And Finley seems like a good kid.”

“Kid?”

“She’s twenty-one.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” said Jones, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t even remember twenty-one.”

Merri smiled a little.

“This is not a bait and switch if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Jones. “It’s not an exact
thing
, whatever it is we do. But I will say Eloise has had some big successes. Finley is untried, but she’s the one who’s picking up the signals—or whatever it is. So, up to you if you want me to continue.”

He was giving her an out. Maybe she should take it.

“We didn’t discuss your fee,” said Merri.