“Can we go to the bedroom?” Linnet stood and buttoned his jacket, holding the memo pad in front of him at belt level. “Have a look around at what Erica left behind?”
Her daughter's bedroom was as still as a sanctuary. The bed had been made, of course, but the only item Margaret had removed was a round pink case that held birth control pills, which she had discovered that first day, and pocketed from her husband. The several doses remaining she had flushed down the toilet in private. Diane and Margaret watched Linnet poke about the room, opening drawers and fingering the contents. Diane whispered in her sister's ear. “This creep is making me uncomfortable. Ask him if he has information or did he come just to make these ridiculous accusations and to leer at us?”
Linnet provided a running theory of the case as he snooped. “Without an actual crime, Mrs. Quinn, they'll be hard to locate, and his brother Dennis is unwilling to press charges against Wiley. Says he lent him the car. Erica's underage, but barely, and the truth is thousands of teenage girls run away each year, escape old mum and dad. Or run off with some boy or worse. Little to hold them in a little town.” He angled a writing pad to catch in the falling light any impressions on the surface.
Like a firehouse alarm, the phone rang downstairs, and Margaret raced to answer it. Diane waited at the top landing, trying to eavesdrop on her sister's end of the conversation while keeping an eye on the detective. Under the illusion of privacy, Linnet stuffed an article of clothing into his jacket pocket, and the flash of robin's egg blue stood in relief against the dark wool as he thrust his hip forward to shut the bureau drawer. A claret stain of embarrassment rose and receded before he would look at her.
Margaret returned, out of breath, clutching Erica's latest school portrait. “That was my husband. He told me to be helpful and give you whatever you want. He also said you came for this.” As she handed over the photograph, she felt a parent's pang of apprehension and remorse, wondering what this stranger would do with the image of her daughter.
“There's nothing here,” Linnet said. “Your husband told me you have a theory. They're headed for the coast. Jersey, maybe, or Maryland.”
A notion, an ocean. “I don't know where she is, it was just a stupid guess. Please find her.”
He studied the photo for a few seconds, glancing quickly at Margaret to trace the familial resemblance. “We'll send this out on the wire to our field offices, ask them to share it with the local police. Keep an eye out.” He winked. “But I don't want to get your hopes up, Mrs. Quinn. It's a big country, and far easier to disappear in than most people imagine. Our best chance is that your daughter and her lover run into some trouble, nothing serious, but enough to get the local police involved. And then they think to give us a call. Missing people are missing for a reason. Some get lost, run into some nasty character, and stay lost. Some of these girls are just afraid to return home, and I'm hoping that's the case with Erica. That she'll come to her senses and give you a call before it is too late. But, if she's decided to stay lost for one reason or another, she might just vanish.” He held up the portrait. “Sometimes this is all we have to prove they were ever here.” He tipped his hat at the top of the stairs and jogged down to the door and out into the street, leaving the women quite alone.
“Did you see him wink at me?” Margaret raised her eyebrows.
“He took something else,” Diane told her. “Snuck it in his pocket. Panties, I'd say. Pervert.”
For the first time in weeks, Margaret laughed. She clutched her sister's arm, and they sat on the edge of the bed, giggling until tears came to their eyes.
22
Waking in darkness, Erica sat up in bed and realized that Una had failed to bring her the nightcap of warm milk. Every evening since the arrival, they had shared the ritual, and just the smell of cardamom triggered an overwhelming desire for sleep, and she always drank the potion to the dregs, a trail of spices climbing the inside wall of the ceramic mug. But Una had passed over the moment that evening, her neglect linked to the fuss over Wiley's shorn head. The sight of him shocked Erica initially, but when she touched the short bristles, she thrilled to the new sensation and could not resist running her palms over and over the coarse nap, the skin and bone. The old woman, likewise, could not stop staring at him, her son's name loose on her mouth as she whispered what she had wrought, if only in appearance. Like Frankenstein's Prometheus: it's alive. Or the ghost made flesh again. Una did not know what to think or how to act, for she had betrayed her grandmother under the willow tree, let slip her desire and extracted the truth, their plot unspooling like a skein of yarn batted by a cat.
“You could pass for Cole,” Mee-Maw had said, and then to Erica, “And you are growing more like her each day, pale and thin as a Madonna.”
“But they're not, Mee-Maw. They're not them. We should ought to let them go.”