Zeke (12 page)

Now, however, as Zeke moved inside
her, she had a different perspective. She told herself this was heaven. They
were wild and free. Just like the gypsies Zeke had mentioned. She clung to him
and moaned in satisfaction while looking up at the upholstered ceiling of the
van. The cold night air swirled outside, making eerie sounds as it snuck
through the crevices of the abandoned building nearby, and then crept down to
investigate the van that had invaded its space.

Hiring an Investigator

William Falstaff pulled up in front
of the house, grabbed his notebook and recorder, and walked briskly up the
sidewalk. He was not a large man, only about five feet, seven inches, but
squarely built and in good physical shape for a smoker. With a full head of
auburn hair, pale complexion, serious expression, broad chest, and muscular
arms, he looked exactly like what he was: a former phys. ed. teacher.

He glanced around the property. The
Cox family lived in a rambling two-story house flanked by well-tended shrubs
and located in an unremarkable middle-class neighborhood. Although the modest
home had seen better days, it was clean and tidy, the sidewalk and driveway
carefully edged, and the flowerbeds weeded. A light rain had begun to fall and
the wind carried a pervasive chill. Pulling his coat up around his neck, he
rang the doorbell and waited. He was ushered into the house by a tall man
wearing a pair of gray slacks and a plaid shirt, whose physique had gone to
plumpness but retained an impression of its former fitness.

“Mr. Falstaff?” Frank asked.

“Will. And you are?”

The man stuck out his hand. “Frank
Cox. Come on in.” He stepped back to allow Will entry. “This is my wife,
Linda.” He indicated a fidgety woman perched on the edge of a flowered sofa.

Will took in the eighty’s décor and
concluded the family had inherited some well-preserved furnishings from a
parent. These were thrifty people, he decided, half expecting their television
to be sprouting rabbit ears. It wasn’t.

Linda nodded at him from the couch,
twisting her hands in her lap. Light brown hair, the frizzy victim of a recent
permanent, capped her head. She looked like everyone’s distant aunt, wearing
polyester pants that would have been better suited to someone her mother’s age,
and a yellow sweater over a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Behind her
wire-rim glasses, her eyes were red and tired.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Falstaff,”
she said in a voice that was surprisingly steady. She looked as if she might
burst into hysterical fits at any moment. She started to stand up, but then
sank back onto the sofa, lacking the motivation to rise.

“Will.” He corrected her gently, and
reached out a hand, which she pressed briefly with her fingers. He shrugged out
of his coat and draped it over one arm.

“Yes, fine. Will. Won’t you please
sit down? Would you like something to drink?” Linda remembered her manners.

“No, thank you. Just had some
coffee.” Taking an armchair, he fished in the pockets of his coat and produced
a notebook and pen, along with the small recorder. “I’d like to get started
here, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Cox.” He turned to lay the coat over the back of
the chair.

“Sure, sure,” Frank answered for
her as he paced the living room.

“I want to record our conversation,
if that’s okay with you.” He placed the device on the coffee table. “No one
will ever hear the recordings except me and my partner when we transcribe notes
for the file. It’s all confidential and just for my own information. Can I have
your permission to record?”

They both nodded and Will turned on
the little machine, reminding them he would need verbal responses. He told them
he had never had any luck recording a nod. They didn’t smile, but that was
okay.

“I understand your daughter is
missing,” Will began gently. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed on what’s
happened so far?”

Frank cleared his throat and ran a
hand through his thinning hair.

“Susan vanished.” Frank’s voice
choked, but he regained control. “As I told your partner, they found her car
abandoned outside of town at the old Founders Cemetery, keys still in the
ignition. She left a note on the seat. That was this morning, and we still
haven’t heard a thing. The police won’t file a missing person report because
she’s over eighteen and it appears that she left voluntarily. We don’t know
where to turn. She doesn’t answer her cell phone and nobody has seen her.” He
rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “This is completely
outside her character. She has a good life here, was in her second year of
college, had a part-time job. She seemed happy. This is just not something she
would do. But, we can’t get anyone to take us seriously, Will. We’re about to
go out of our minds.”

“So she’s been missing less than a
day?” Will snapped his notebook closed.

“Please don’t give me that look.”
Frank clenched his jaw. “That’s the same look we got from the police.”

Will cleared his throat. “Well, the
thing is...”

“The thing is,” Frank said firmly,
“Sue wouldn’t do this. The thing is that her car was abandoned! We can’t wait
for days to pass. I know my daughter, and I’m telling you something’s
wrong
.”

“Okay, Mr. Cox. I understand.” Will
reopened his notebook. Even if the girl called home later that night, it was
obvious these parents needed some assurance. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank God,” Frank said, and closed
his eyes for a few seconds.

“Has she ever done this sort of
thing before? Ran away from home? Went off with friends without letting you
know?” Will asked, making notes as they talked.

“Never,” Linda said, pulling a
tissue from the box on the end table. She patted the corners of her eyes before
continuing. “She’s a good girl. She’s never given us a moment of trouble.”

“I need to take a look at that
note,” Will said.

Frank went to a small roll-top desk
in the corner and brought back a piece of pink paper. His hand trembled
slightly as he passed it to Frank.

Laying his notebook on the end
table, Will unfolded the note and smoothed it out across his lap. It was a
rambling letter all about wanting her freedom, breaking away from societal
expectations, and hitting the open road. She told her parents she loved them,
but just needed some time to experience life. She asked them not to look for
her. Said she would be
incommunicado
for a while. Asked them not to
worry. Signed it Susie with a little heart dotting the “i” in her name.

“Even that letter is out of
character for her,” Linda said, hands nervously pulling at the hem of her
sweater. “She never talked that way.”

“What way is that?”

“You know. She’s never needed to
experience
life
, or to
break away from societal expectations.
Those aren’t
Susan’s words. Someone put those ideas in her head.”

Will nodded and held up the note.
“Can I keep this for the time being?”

He received nods and reminded them
to verbalize the permission, which they did. He folded the note and placed it
into his coat pocket. “Have you called her friends, co-workers, classmates?”

“She only has one close friend,”
Frank said as he retrieved some papers from a desk in the corner. “Joyce Mould.
She hasn’t seen Susan for over a week. But, she said Susan called her last
night. Joyce said Susan told her she was going to run off with some new employee
she’d met at work. But, Joyce said by the time they’d hung up, Susan had
changed her mind and wasn’t going to leave. I just don’t understand it. Any of
it. Susan never gave a hint anything was going on.” He handed Will the papers
which contained Joyce’s name, address, and phone number. Also listed were Sue’s
employer and her class schedule.

Linda interjected, “We also asked
about new boys working at the nursing home; the one where Susan works. We were
assured they had no new employees; and no
young
men. We can’t figure out
why Susan would tell a story like this to her friend.”

Will made a note of this. “She have
a regular boyfriend?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” Linda
answered. “A few crushes back in high school, but nothing ever came of them. You
know how teenagers are.”

Will gave her a dubious glance.
“She didn’t just walk away from her car, Mrs. Cox. Somebody gave her a ride.”

“There’s no one,” Linda insisted.
“Unless she hitchhiked.” Her voice wavered. The thought obviously disturbed
her.

“I doubt it,” Will said. “I drove
out to that cemetery before I came over; it’s fairly isolated. Not much traffic
out there. But I’ll check with the farmers in the area, see if any of them saw
anything. I’m not ruling anything out at this point.”

Frank looked thoughtful. “Thanks,
Will. But, I agree with you. I don’t think Susan would get into a car with a
stranger. She’s a serious, intelligent girl. She doesn’t do dangerous things.”

I think she has now
. Will
kept the thought to himself. There would be time for that later. “What about
money? Anything different there?” He glanced up from his notes.

“I don’t know,” Linda said. “She
has a good sized savings account, her college fund.”

“Okay, we need to check with the
bank on that, first thing tomorrow. Unless you have internet banking.” Will
looked expectant but was told no, no internet. “Are your names on the account?”

“Yes, as alternates. But, Susan’s
the primary account holder,” Linda said, finally dislodging herself from the
sofa and going to the desk. She handed Will a passbook with entries dating back
years. “She had a card to make withdrawals and deposits.”

“I’d advise you to close that
account,” Will suggested.

“We can’t do that,” Linda cried.
“What if she needs money to come home? We can’t leave my baby out there
stranded. Alone.”

“Okay, how’s this. Leave five
hundred dollars in the account and move the rest to a new one. Would that work
for you?”

Frank spoke up before Linda could
protest. “That’ll work fine. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow. I’ll tell them to
let me know immediately if any transactions take place on the original
account.”

“Perfect,” Will said. “You wouldn’t
have a recent picture of Susan, would you?”

Linda moved to a frame on the
mantle, removed the photograph, and handed it to him.

Will studied the image. Sue was a
moderately attractive girl with long brown hair and a round face similar to her
mother’s. Soft brown eyes and a slight close-mouthed smile reminiscent of the
Mona Lisa, but without the intrigue. Just an ordinary girl.

“May I keep this?” At their
agreement, Will slipped the photo alongside the note. “What about activities?
What does she do outside of work and school?”

“Nothing, really,” her mother
answered. “She was taking summer classes, kept up with her homework, always
showed up for her job. That sort of thing. She reads a lot.”

“What did she do in her free time?”
Will found it hard to believe a young person could be that reclusive.

“Well, we don’t really know.” Frank
rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “I’m on the evening shift out at the plant two
weeks every month and Linda works a split shift at the club. We’re gone a lot
at night, but Susan was always here when we got home.”

“She ever sneak out that you know
of?” Will inquired.

“Oh, no!” Linda’s hand went toward
her throat. “She wouldn’t do that.”

Will gave them a noncommittal nod.
He asked for the last few months’ worth of cell phone bills, which Frank handed
over to him without comment. Will glanced through the bills and frowned. Then
he folded the pages and stuck them into his coat pocket along with the note and
photo. “We need to track that cell phone.”

“You can do that?” Frank was
amazed.

“No,
I
can’t.” Will
considered Frank for a moment. “But I’ve got some connections. I’ll see what I
can do.”

Frank’s eyes lit up. “If you can
trace her phone, it’ll tell us exactly where she is. Right?”

Will shook his head. “Don’t get
your hopes up on that,” he said gently. “It could lead nowhere. She may not
have the phone with her. It could be disabled. It might not be turned on. Any
number of things.”

“Still...” Frank and Linda
exchanged looks, the naked hope on their faces heartbreaking to see.

“Does she have a computer?”

“No, we’ve been meaning to get
one,” Frank said. “She just uses the one at school now, or goes to the library.
But we’ve been talking about buying one.”

Will thought that odd, no computer
in this day and age; he hardly knew anyone without one. But, he could see this
was a family who had not kept up with modern trends. Their clothes and
furnishings were evidence of that.
Maybe Sue left to escape the eighties
time warp.
“I’d like to see her room and her car, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Frank said.

Linda stayed downstairs while Frank
led the investigator up to Sue’s room. He waited in the doorway while Will
looked around. A canopy bed suited for a pre-teen dominated the room, made up
in ruffles, and covered with frilly pillows. White nightstands, a matching
white vanity, and rose-colored curtains gave the space a distinctly feminine
touch. Will looked at the cluttered bulletin board on the wall and studied each
item tacked to its surface. A movie ticket, a blank calendar, a high school
class photo, a magazine clipping of a teenage heartthrob, a picture of a kitten
with a ball of yarn, a school photo of a rather plain smiling girl in glasses,
which turned out to be Sue’s friend, Joyce Mould. He lifted each item and
examined the backsides. He found nothing of substance there.

Will moved to the white desk in the
corner upon which sat a jewelry box, a phone, a cup full of pencils and pens,
and some magazines. In the small drawer, he found a supply of paper, more pens,
some paperclips, scissors, various odds and ends, and a miniature stapler. He
dug a little deeper and pulled out some small pieces of paper, receipts from
various shops. There were a few from stores in the mall, and five receipts from
the same used bookstore, Re-books, and all relatively recent. These he
pocketed. He opened the closet door and called Frank into the room.