She's Not There (9 page)

“Breathe,” she heard Peggy say as she sat down beside her and put her arm across her shoulder, although the invisible jar prevented Caroline from actually feeling her touch.

“Yes,” Jerrod answered the officer. “In the garden restaurant directly below. You can see it from the window.” He walked to the window and pointed. “Yes. There. You can actually see our table.”

“What was the name of that writer?” Caroline asked Peggy. “The one who committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven?”

“What did she say?” Becky asked.

“Sylvia something, I think.”

“Sylvia Plath,” Peggy told her.

“Right.”

“Why is she talking about Sylvia Plath?” Rain asked.

“I think she's in shock,” Peggy said. “Caroline? Caroline, are you okay?”

“Samantha's gone,” Caroline said.

“I know.”

“I should never have left her.”

“Mommy, I have to go to the bathroom,” Michelle said.

“I'll take you,” Peggy offered.

“I want Mommy to take me.” Michelle's hands wrapped around her mother's neck, breaking through the invisible glass shield.

Caroline felt the air being squeezed from her body, as if she were being strangled. “Please, somebody,” she cried. “Get her off me.”

Everyone's eyes focused immediately on Caroline.

“I'll take her,” Becky said quickly, lifting the squirming youngster into her arms and carrying her into the bathroom, Michelle screaming in protest.

The police continued to ask variations of the same questions for the next hour, to which the group gave variations of the same answers. “Did any of you accompany your friends when they went to check on their daughters?” one of the officers asked.

“No,” they answered.

“Why do you ask that?” Steve said.

“What are you implying?” Hunter asked.

Caroline knew why they were asking. Her husband had been the last person to see Samantha. Was it possible that something had happened on his watch? Could he be in any way responsible for their daughter's disappearance?

No, he wasn't responsible, she decided, answering her own question. Still, it was at Hunter's insistence that they'd left their girls alone. Which made him responsible after all.

Except I can't blame him,
she thought in her next breath.
I gave in. I went along. I'm just as guilty. This is my fault, too.

“What happens now?” Hunter asked as the police were closing their notepads and preparing to leave.

“You go to bed, try to get some sleep,” the oldest of the officers answered. Caroline thought she'd heard one of the other officers refer to him as Detective Ramos, but she wasn't sure. “We'll meet again in the morning.”

“You expect us to sleep?”

“Probably not,” Ramos conceded. “But it would be a good idea to try.” He checked his watch. “It's almost two
A.M.
Nothing more will be accomplished tonight. We'll resume our search in the morning and contact the local papers if we haven't found your daughter by noon.”

“That's it?”

“The border has been notified. Officer Mendoza will be posted outside your door all night in case anyone tries to contact you. We'll follow up, check on the waiter you saw in the hall and the housekeeper you talked to, conduct interviews with the entire staff. But this will all take time. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Shipley. Try to get some sleep. Your daughter needs you.” His eyes fell on Michelle, who was once again fast asleep in her mother's arms, then circled the room, sizing up its occupants. “Obviously I need all of you to be available tomorrow.”

“We're supposed to be leaving tomorrow,” Rain said.

“Clearly that's not happening,” Peggy said, her voice a sharp rebuke.

“Of course not. I didn't mean…”

“Mr. Shipley, do you have a picture of your daughter that I can borrow?” Officer Ramos interrupted.

Hunter reached into his wallet, removed a small photo of Samantha from behind his driver's license. “I'm sorry. It's a few months old.”

“Beautiful child,” Ramos said, tucking the picture into the pocket of his shirt. “I assure you, we'll do everything in our power to get her back to you.”

“Do you want us to stay here tonight?” Becky asked Caroline after the police and the hotel manager had left.

“No,” Hunter told their friends. “Ramos is right. It's going to be a long day tomorrow. Get some sleep. We'll see you in the morning.”

Caroline watched her friends approach in single file to kiss her cheek or give her a hug. But she felt nothing. Her baby was gone. Someone had entered their suite and taken her while she and her husband were downstairs enjoying crêpes suzette. She should never have let him persuade her to leave their daughters alone. If she'd stood her ground, none of this would be happening.

Her brother and Becky were the last to leave. “You're sure you want us to go?” Becky asked again.

Caroline nodded. Steve leaned in to take her in his arms. “Please don't call Mom,” she whispered.

“I won't.”

But even as he was saying the words, Caroline knew he'd be on the phone first thing in the morning.
Please, God,
she thought,
let us find Samantha before then.

T
he phone rang at just past six-thirty the next morning. Caroline reached across the bed and answered it before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” she whispered, glancing toward the other bed and watching Michelle turn over in her sleep.

“It's me,” Lili said.

“Thank God. Where are you?”

“Can you meet me?”

“Of course. When?”

“Now.”

“Where?”

The girl gave Caroline an address. “Come alone.” The line went dead.

Caroline threw herself out of bed and jumped into her clothes, taking less than a minute to brush her teeth and splash some cold water on her face. She scribbled a brief note for Michelle—
Back soon. Don't worry
—then snuck out of the hotel room and hurried down the hall, boots in hand. She gave no thought to what she was doing or that no one would have any idea where she was. She gave only fleeting thought to the fact that Lili knew she wasn't alone.

She raced down eight flights of stairs and pushed her way through the lobby doors onto the street, her boots now on her feet, although she had no memory of having put them on. A cab was idling on the other side of the road, but even after she waved frantically in his direction, the driver remained stubbornly where he was. She ran across the street, slipping on the icy road and almost falling before she reached him.

“Where to?” he asked as she climbed into the backseat. Caroline recognized him as the same man who'd driven her and Michelle to the hotel from the airport the day before, but she quickly dismissed the coincidence. “I am not familiar with any such place,” he said when she gave him the address.

Caroline wondered if the girl was playing with her, leading her from one dead end to another in some sort of elaborate sick joke. “Can you check? Please, I'm in a hurry.”

“My GPS, she's not working.” Reluctantly, the cabbie pulled a map from his glove compartment and unfolded it, studying it carefully before dropping it to the seat beside him. “Ah, yes. Now I see it.”

Except he couldn't find it, and they drove around for almost twenty minutes until it became obvious even to Caroline, who didn't know the city but
did
recognize the same snowdrift after they'd passed it for the third time, that they'd been driving around in circles.

“Am lost,” the driver admitted finally, pulling to a stop and checking the map again.

“Please,” Caroline begged. “I'm already very late.” Would Lili decide Caroline had changed her mind about meeting her and leave? Would she call the hotel again, wake up Michelle?

“Ah, here it is,” the driver said, jabbing at the map with his index finger. “I know now. Is not so far away.”

“Hurry. Please.”

“Don't worry. We be there in five minutes.”

Except they'd already been driving around for almost half an hour, the morning rush hour had begun, and they soon found themselves mired in a traffic jam several blocks long. “Looks like an accident,” the cabbie said with a shrug. “What can you do?”

“Is there another route we could take?”

Without a word, the driver did an illegal U-turn and sped down a side street, gunning the engine and throwing up a cloud of snow in his wake.

Caroline heard the sirens before she saw the police car. “No,” she muttered. “Please, no.”

“Where's the fire?” the policeman asked, approaching the car and leaning into the front seat, his helmet covering his head and face except for his dark eyes.

I know those eyes,
Caroline thought, as the taxi driver handed over his license and registration.

“We've already had one terrible accident here this morning,” the officer continued. “Not ten minutes ago, a teenage girl was hit by a speeding car as she was crossing the street.”

“Is she all right?” the cabdriver asked.

Caroline felt a scream building in the back of her throat. Was it possible that girl was Lili?

“Afraid not.” The officer removed his helmet, revealing a head of thick, black hair. He stared accusingly at Caroline, as if she were the one responsible.

“Detective Ramos?” Caroline whispered, the scream in her throat gaining traction and filling her mouth like bile.

“This is your fault,” he told her. “You should never have left her alone.”

The scream shot from Caroline's lips into the surrounding air.

“Mom?” a voice called from somewhere above her head. “Mom? Mother, wake up!”

Caroline bolted up in bed, her eyes darting around the hotel room, trying to bring it into focus. “What's happening?”

“You're having a nightmare.”

“What?”

“You were having a nightmare,” Michelle said, relegating it to the past tense. “God, look at you. You're soaking wet.”

Caroline swiped at the pool of sweat between her breasts. She pushed a clump of damp hair away from her forehead.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Michelle said. “What were you dreaming about?”

Caroline shook her head. “I can't tell you.”

“What do you mean, you can't tell me? Why the hell not?”

“My mother always said it's bad luck to tell your dreams before breakfast because the bad ones will come true.”

“Since when did you start listening to Grandma Mary?” Michelle asked.

She was right. Caroline had spent a lifetime trying to ignore her mother's unsolicited advice. “I'll tell you after breakfast,” she said anyway.

Except that by the time they'd finished their coffee, Caroline had forgotten all but a few vague details of her nightmare. “It was one of those frustrating dreams where you keep trying to get somewhere but something keeps getting in your way. I probably should have realized it was a dream when I saw the cabdriver.”

“What are you talking about?” Michelle asked.

“And Detective Ramos.”

“Who's Detective Ramos?”

“You wouldn't remember.”

They spent the morning sitting in the lobby of the hotel on the off chance that Lili would finally turn up, then called for a taxi to take them to the airport when she didn't. As the cab pulled away from the curb, Caroline took a last look down the snow-lined street.

“She's not there, Mother.”

“I know.”

“She never had any intention of showing up.”

“You're right.” Was she? “Maybe we should have waited longer.”

“And miss our flight? Besides, you left her a note.”

Caroline felt a pang of guilt and looked into her lap. She'd thought she was being discreet when she'd left that note for Lili with the reception desk.

“Stop worrying. I'm sure she'll contact you again,” Michelle was saying as they settled into their seats on the plane. “She'll have some sort of sob story, of course, a reason she couldn't meet you. Then she'll promise to make it up to you. She'll offer to come to San Diego. Of course she'll need money. Yada, yada, yada. It's like those Internet scams from Nigeria. They're transparent as hell, but you wouldn't believe how many people fall for those things.”

I'd believe it,
Caroline thought, but said nothing. She wished Michelle would stop talking. She'd made her point, her point being that her mother was an idiot. Caroline leaned her head back in her seat and closed her eyes. After a few minutes, Michelle took the hint and they spent the duration of the flight in silence.

Hunter was waiting for them when they pushed through the heavy, opaque glass doors into the arrival area of San Diego International Airport. He was wearing a lightweight navy suit and a blue-and-yellow-striped tie, having come straight from the office. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, grabbing their overnight bags as he led them toward the parking lot.

“Oh, just feel that glorious warm air,” Michelle said, doffing her heavy jacket.

“You don't have to carry my bag,” Caroline told her former husband. “I can manage.”

“I've got it, Caroline. Just answer the question.”

“We're not in court. I'm not on the witness stand. And you already know what I was doing.”

“Some girl phones, tells you she's Samantha, and you go running? You honestly thought there was a chance this girl was our daughter?”

“I guess I did.”

“She didn't show up, did she? She didn't even call.”

“You know she didn't,” Caroline said. Michelle had obviously phoned her father from the Calgary airport, relayed the depressing details of their trip, and told him what flight they'd be on.

“How much did that little escapade cost you anyway?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Last-minute tickets don't come cheap, as we know from past experience. They had to set you back a pretty penny.”

“A pretty penny? Who says things like that anymore?” Caroline said, annoyed at Hunter's proprietary attitude. They were no longer husband and wife, a decision he'd made for the two of them a dozen years ago. What right did he have to question her expenses? They reached his cream-colored BMW. “Anyway, I'm sure the pennies aren't nearly as pretty as the ones you spend on a new car every year.”

“I lease,” he reminded her. “And I'm still paying alimony, if I'm not mistaken…”

“Have you ever been?” Caroline interrupted.

“…which gives me some rights…”

“Please,” Michelle said. “Do you have to argue about this now?”

“No,” Caroline said. “I'd be more than happy to take a cab.”

“Get in the car,” her ex-husband directed, throwing the two overnight bags into the trunk and climbing behind the wheel as Michelle crawled into the backseat, leaving the front seat empty for her mother.

Reluctantly, Caroline took her place beside her former husband, trying not to notice how handsome he looked. As good as ever. Maybe even better. His hair had yet to turn gray or thin out, and his waistline was as trim as it had always been. If anything, the years had sharpened his features, emphasizing the prominence of his cheekbones, which in turn emphasized the fullness of his lips. “How's the baby?” Caroline asked in an effort to clear her head of such disconcerting thoughts.

“She's fine,” Hunter said, paying the attendant and pulling out of the parking lot. “Don't change the subject.”

“I wasn't aware we had a subject.”

“Just tell me what happened. Everything. From the beginning.”

Caroline wasn't sure what beginning he was referring to exactly, but the one thing she
was
sure of was that it was pointless to protest further. Hunter was a good lawyer, maybe even a great one. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to argue. And if he couldn't win outright, he'd wear you down over time. Might as well get it over with, she decided, starting with Lili's phone call. She watched his face as he listened, his expression changing from curiosity to disbelief to flat-out anger. When she reached the part about leaving a note for Lili with the reception desk when they checked out of the hotel, he was already halfway out of his seat, his entire body swiveled toward her.

“Watch where you're going,” she cautioned.

Hunter returned his attention to the road. But even in profile his outrage was formidable. “And you didn't even think to call me about this?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don't know. Maybe because Samantha was my daughter, too.”

Caroline blanched at Hunter's use of the past tense. “What are you saying? That you would have come with me?”

“I might have. You didn't give me that chance.”

“Because you wouldn't have come. You would have said it was a wild-goose chase and I was a fool to even consider it, just like you did when I went to Tacoma and Miami. Be honest, Hunter. There's no way you would have gone to Calgary. Or that Diana would have let you go,” she added, drawing a measure of satisfaction when she saw him flinch. She'd heard from multiple sources that his much younger wife had him wrapped around her little finger and that he rarely made a move without her okay.