You Believers (17 page)

He stepped inside, scanned the room, eyes snagging on Billy, who sank onto a chair.

“Billy Jenkins?”

Billy nodded. “I made the report.”

“I’m her mother,” Livy said “Have you found her?”

Standing there in the large room, the man looked small under the high ceiling, a little boy–man dressed up, playing cop. He stood there holding a plastic shopping bag and a cheap portfolio. His shoes were scuffed and his face shiny.

Livy saw his shoulder holster as he propped his hands on his hips, moved closer to Billy, who wouldn’t look up. Billy always looked guilty. She had never trusted Billy, pot-smoking, brick-laying Billy. He hardly talked unless you asked him a question. Katy had said he was just shy around strangers.

Livy moved toward the cop. “You’re here about Katy. My daughter.” She sucked in a breath, straightened, crossed her arms over her chest, hands clenched tight to stop the shaking. “You can tell me,” she said.

The cop looked again toward Billy.

Livy grabbed his arm. “What?”

He took a seat, set the bag and the portfolio on the coffee table, reached into his pocket for a pad. “I’ve got good news,” he said.

No, he didn’t. Livy stared at the man in the suit with the gray little eyes and the bloated face that looked like he drank too much. He flipped the notepad open, eyes on the pages as if he’d forgotten what he’d come to say.

“We found your daughter’s truck.”

She studied the bald spot on the top of his head. “And was Katy with it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then you don’t have good news for me.”

He glanced up at her and shrugged. Fury surged through her, and she clenched her fists, fingernails digging into her palms. She swallowed the words
you bastard
and said, “You won’t have good news for me until my daughter is home.”

“I’m doing you a favor coming here like this. Doing more than my job.”

“I suppose I should thank you.” Livy walked to the window, looked out at the dimly lit street, saw a neighbor setting garbage out. She glanced back.

The detective set his notepad on the coffee table and watched Billy. “We’ll need you to come down to the station and answer some questions.”

“Am I being arrested?” Billy patted the front of his shirt for his cigarettes.

“No. Just come by tomorrow morning. You ever take a lie-detector test?”

Billy paled. “No.”

“You willing?”

Billy sighed. “Yes, hell, yes. I’ll take the test.”

Livy felt her head was expanding from pressure building inside. She looked at her hands, felt her face, everything was normal, feet on the floor, arms at her sides, ears trying to hear what this stranger was saying, but she couldn’t connect.

“I’ve got an idea about your daughter.”

“An idea?” Livy said. “Based on whatever you’ve got in that little notebook of yours?” Livy paced. “This is Katy’s house. She painted these walls, refinished those floors. See that coffee table? She found it
by the side of the road; she stained and inlaid all those little pieces of wood. See those shelves? She built them. Katy could find any piece of junk by the side of the road and make it something good.”

“I know you’re upset. But these things aren’t relevant to the case.”

“‘Case’?” Her voice shrieked. “We are talking about my daughter.”

The man held her in his gaze as if he were straining to be patient with a nut. “Ma’am, you are gonna have to calm down and listen to me.”

She crossed the room, sat next to Billy. “Calm? You want me to be calm?”

He nodded. “We called in dogs, searched the truck. There was no sign of foul play. Keys in the ignition, no sign of a struggle. We found this shopping bag.” He nudged it toward Billy. “When you reported her missing, you didn’t say anything about a shopping trip. You know anything about this?”

Billy shook his head.

Livy grabbed the bag, found the skirt, the top, the underwear, and the receipt. “It’s dated three days ago. The day she disappeared. 6:22 p.m.” Livy leaned toward the detective, clutched the receipt with both hands. “Dollar Daze. She bought these things the day she disappeared. Have you asked anyone at the store if they remember her?”

The detective made a note in his pad. “We’ll check it out.”

Livy threw the receipt at him. “You didn’t even bother looking at the receipt, did you?”

He tucked the flimsy piece of paper into the portfolio. “I told you we’d check it out.”

Billy reached for the matching underwear, beige with black lace. “She never buys stuff like this.”

“Sure, she does,” Livy said, grabbing the underwear, shoving it into the bag.

“Not for me,” Billy said. He sat, looked toward the door and shook his head. “Not for me,” he said again.

The detective pointed his pen at Billy. “Any ideas who she bought that underwear for? You the jealous type?”

“No.” Billy stood. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Not at the moment.” The detective shoved the clothes back into the plastic bag. “Evidence,” he said as he watched Billy leave the room.

Livy grabbed the bag from his hands. “You could at least fold her clothes. My daughter bought these things. My daughter.” Livy sat and concentrated on getting the seams straight on the skirt, folding the top carefully so no crease would show in the front. She glanced at the detective. “Something awful has happened. She’s in some kind of trouble somewhere. She’s . . .” Livy stacked the clothes neatly on her lap, hid the underwear under the skirt, smoothed the fabric.

“I’ll need those,” he said as he took the clothes from her, placed them in the bag. “Ma’am, we’ve profiled her.”

“What?” She’d heard the words but couldn’t take her attention away from Katy’s things disappearing into the plastic bag.

“Profile. We gather facts, habits, age, race, income, where she liked to go.” He paused. “What she liked to drink.”

“I know what a profile is.”

He went back to flipping through his pad. “There were beer cans, lots of beer cans under the seats of her truck. Did your daughter have a drinking problem? Was it her habit to drink and drive?”

Livy stood and faced him. “My daughter is not the criminal here.”

“Ma’am, we dusted the truck for prints—but now I have to tell you, the truck, it was filthy. Full of trash and dirt and leaves.”

“She liked to collect plants from the woods,” Billy said. He stood in the doorway now. “She liked to collect leaves and rocks and sticks and things. Is that a crime? She worked two jobs, was always running somewhere. So sometimes things slipped her mind. She was not a drunk.” Billy crossed the room, mashed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the table. “You profiled her? Your profile say she keeps a perfect house? It say anything about that garden in the backyard? Does it say Katy is the kind of woman would give her last dollar to a stranger if he had the need?”

The detective cleared his throat. “We found evidence of marijuana.”

Billy laughed. “‘Evidence of marijuana.’ Want to tell me just what that means?”

“We found marijuana.”

Livy yelled, “My daughter is not a drug addict!”

“How much marijuana?” Billy said.

The detective looked to his notes. “On the seats, in the glove box, not a lot, but enough to know she smoked dope.”

Billy turned away. “So you found some pot. Did you find enough pot to make a bust? You got that there in your notes?”

The detective snapped the notebook closed and stood. “She had pot in her possession. So maybe she was partying when she, ah, disappeared.”

Livy sank back into the chair. Grace and dignity. She’d taught Katy that.
No matter how bad things are, if you get through each day with grace and dignity, you’re doing all right
. She gripped the arms of her chair. “Her truck,” she said. “Where did you find her truck?”

“Lake Waccamaw.” He looked at Billy. “You gave us that clue.”

“She liked to drive there,” Livy said. “We all knew that. She liked to drive out there because she liked nature. She liked to sit out there and write.”

“And drink, most likely,” the cop said.

“Would you please quit slandering my daughter?”

The cop shrugged and looked at his notes.

She turned to Billy. “Maybe she went for a hike out there, wandered off out there. Maybe she just got lost.” She turned back to the cop.

The detective softened then. “Our dogs got no scent of her.”

Livy stood. “Your dogs. How would they know what she smells like?”

Billy leaned forward. “I gave them a shirt. The one she sleeps in. I gave them something in case they needed to track her.”

“Track her?”

“Shelby said it could be useful.” Billy stood and went back into the kitchen.

Livy turned to the detective. “Mr. . . .” She paused. “I don’t even know your name, and you talk about tracking my daughter with dogs.”

“Block. Detective Block,” he said. “And this would all go easier if you wouldn’t resist.”

“Resist?” She turned back to the bookshelf, read the titles:
Walden, The Road Less Traveled, The Wizard of Oz
. She could still feel him there behind her. “Would you please leave?”

“I’m sorry. No parent wants to hear these things.”

She faced him. “What things?”

He opened a larger notebook now. Livy caught a glimpse of a computer printout. “The profile. Mr. Jenkins gave us some information, and some we gathered ourselves. Facts, random facts, we put them together, draw conclusions. Most times we’re right, Mrs. Connor.”

“My name is Mrs. Baines. Connor was her daddy’s name. I remarried. Add that to your list of facts. Married twice, and yes, I like
a cold beer now and then. We were just having one. What do you conclude from that, Mr. Block?”

He sat. “You really should listen to this. We’re almost always right.”

“‘Almost always’ doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

He studied his papers. “As I said. Beer cans, marijuana.”

Livy stared into his puffy, pinkish face as he read from his list of facts. “She’s a bartender. And a decorator,” Livy said.

He went on. “One arrest for driving under the influence.” He nodded toward Livy. “She’s an attractive woman. If you don’t mind my saying, she seems to have a record for closing bars in this town.”

“My daughter is not a tramp!”

He kept his eyes down. “I’m just noting the information we’ve gathered on her—I made no conclusions about her morals, ma’am.”

“Yes, you did.”

He read on. “Katy Connor recently received five hundred dollars for a wallpapering job, according to Mr. Jenkins, on the day before she disappeared.”

“She never deposited that check,” Billy said. “She left it in a cook-book she was reading.”

“Distracted,” the detective said. “And she dyed her hair.”

“She dyed her hair?” Livy said. “I dye my hair. Are you calling that evidence of something?”

The detective looked at her directly now. “According to our profile, most likely Katy Connor gets a case of the prewedding jitters, she dyes her hair blond, runs off to Fort Lauderdale with friends she met at a bar, one last bash out of town. She’ll run out of cash in time, decide she needs to come home and face the music.”

“If my daughter were going to run off, she’d run home. She’d run to me.”

“We don’t always know our daughters, ma’am. My own daughter,
she did the same thing once. Ran off to Fort Lauderdale for two weeks, did things I don’t even want to think about. Came to her senses and called home.”

Livy spoke calmly: “And how old was your daughter?”

“Eighteen.”

She rushed across the room, got so close that spit flew at his face as she spoke. “My daughter is a thirty-year-old woman. She’s not some tramp who ran away.”

He took it calmly, no doubt used to crazed mothers and worse. “Like I said, sometimes we don’t know our daughters.”

She slapped him. Heard the sound, saw the shock on his face before she even had the thought to do it. Her hand, it just flew, and now it burned. She stepped back, shocked. They faced each other, breath rising and falling between them.

“Livy, are you all right?” Billy was beside her, holding her arm. She jerked free. “No, I am not all right.”

The detective grabbed up the plastic shopping bag, tucked it under his arm with the purse. “I’ll just write that up as extreme distress.” He headed for the door. “Ma’am, you better just go on back to Tennessee and leave the business of investigation to us. But you’ll owe me an apology when your daughter comes home.”

She went after him again, but Billy held her, whispering, “Shh, Livy, let it go.” The detective walked out, slammed the door.

She turned to Billy. “You really have no idea where she is?”

“I told you, Livy. I’ve checked everywhere. She didn’t dye her hair blond, just those highlights things. And she sure as hell didn’t run off to Florida.”

Livy walked across the room, stood at the window, and stroked the fabric of the curtains her daughter had made. She had hemmed all the edges by hand. Livy studied the uneven stitches, kissed them, turned and looked around the room. The gleaming floors, the scattered
rugs Katy had picked up from yard sales. She felt Billy watching her. “I’m doing all I can, Billy. I don’t know what else to do.”

He lit a cigarette. “Maybe they’ll find something when they trace the numbers on her cell phone. Probably something there we don’t know about.”

Livy squeezed the fabric of the curtain, told herself to relax or she’d pull the whole thing down. She looked toward Billy, blowing a cloud of smoke between them. She wished she smoked. “I could use another beer.”

He nodded, and she followed him into the kitchen, her eyes burning in the harsher light. She flicked off the switch as he opened the refrigerator door. “I need the darkness,” she said. “Just for a little while.” Billy cracked open the beer, slipped the bottle into her hand. They sat at the table, drank, listened as the old refrigerator cranked up, rumbling, whirring, the machinery struggling to keep things cool.

Billy swigged his beer, leaned back, and started laughing.

“What?” Livy clutched her beer with both hands.

“You slapped him!” Billy said. “You popped a cop in the face.”

Livy felt the laughter well up, shake inside her. “I did. I slapped a cop in the face. Wait until Katy hears this. Her mother slapped a cop.” She thought of Lawrence. He’d be horrified. Just the thought of the shock on his face made her rock with a new swell of laughter. “Livy Connor Baines assaulted a police officer.” They both sat in the dark, laughing. “So much for grace.” She reached for Billy’s hand. “Katy’s gonna love this.” They looked across the table at each other, holding hands tighter, tighter as the clanking of the refrigerator shut down and left them sitting in the dark with the slant of yellow light from the living room and a quiet hum of hidden machinery whirring on.