“Thanks for your concern, but it's my life.”
“Sure is, no one else's. Good luck to you and your baby. And when the color starts showing, just let your hair grow back the way it was.” She tore a slip from her pad and laid the bill between their plates. “Y'all pay on the way out.”
30
A light snow was falling as Agent Linnet arrived, covered in white. From the pocket of his overcoat, the pink edge of an envelope was puckered with moisture. Valentine, she supposed, but for whom? He stomped his shoes clean on the doormat, and when Margaret invited him in, he sent powdery showers to the floor as he wrestled free of his coat. Paul lurked in the archway to the living room, and Linnet cheered up when he saw him, extending his right hand like an old friend, and ushered him toward the sofa and chairs, and three cups laid out upon the table. Margaret hung up his coat and tucked his hat upon the shelf.
Don't be afraid, she told herself. This can't be good news at this hour and in person. Good news they tell you over the phone. Bad news shows up in person. Whatever you do, keep it together. No tears.
Linnet rose when she entered the room with the coffee, bowing slightly at the waist, and waited for her to take a seat before lowering himself to the easy chair. The February wetness soaked through to his suit, snowdrops sparkled in his hair, and he smelled faintly of sour wool. “I was just telling your husband, Mrs. Quinn, that we may have made a break in the case, but I want to tell you both right off that we have not been able to locate your daughter. Though we do have news about the boy, and good reason to suspect that she is somewhere in northern California.”
A notion, a notion, you picked the wrong ocean.
He reached into his suit and took out a small manila envelope, opened it, and spilled out the postcard onto the coffee table. Margaret recognized at once this last word from Erica, the cryptic message from Memphis.
“It all started here, for we were otherwise lost as stray lambs. We may have tracked them sooner had we been notified when you first received it. A couple of days can make a big difference, so I want you to promise if you hear from her again, you get in touch right away.”
Paul stole a look at Margaret. They had agonized and argued for three days when the postcard first arrived. She had wanted to keep it as tangible proof of her daughter's existence, while he had insisted it be turned over to the authorities as evidence. Without telling her, Paul simply took it one day to the Pittsburgh FBI offices. Margaret slipped it in her pocket while the investigator blathered on.
“When we learned she was in Memphis, we had our first clue. Our field offices sent out a bulletin to local law enforcement, but I suspected, and was proven out, that Wiley and Erica were no longer holed up there.” He patted the breast pocket of his jacket, and realizing the object of his search was not there, he stood with a sheepish grin and excused himself to fetch his coat.
“What do you think he has to tell us?” she whispered to Paul.
“I'm no mind reader. News about Wiley Rinnick.”
With the flat-footed walk of the forgetful and embarrassed, he returned to the living room and stretched a map of the United States across the table, doubling it over to the southern portion. “I put a pin here in Memphis,” he said. “And drew a series of concentric circles, figuring that they either came from, or had to be heading to, one of these spots, but we had no idea of which direction. My first guess was New Orleans. Look how Memphis is sort of on the way between here and there, and you could disappear into the bayou, and no one would never find you. I always wanted to go to New Orleans. But turns out we heard from state and local police a couple of other places.”
Margaret and Paul studied the map. A yellow line began in Nashville and ran along Route 40 to Amarillo, Texas, and then a dotted red line curved northwest to San Francisco.
“It's like a jigsaw. We had one piece—the postcard—but where are the others? Our first real lead was from a fast-food joint outside of Nashville that was robbed a couple of days after Rinnick and your daughter left town. The assistant manager worked with the police on getting a good sketch, and the state police thought to send it our way. Could've been Wiley, long hair and all. But it was just the boy by himself, no mention of a female accomplice. Though the night manager remembered the robber insisted on two milkshakes, one for a girlfriend somewhere. And the Tennessee police had another unsolved mystery with a Pinto—we think that's Dennis Rinnick's car—that had been abandoned in a high school parking lot till the end of October. They switched license plates, and the girl whose car was stolen mentioned a boy and a girl who invited her to come along with them to California. But we didn't make the connection right away.”