Crooked Little Lies (8 page)

“Is he using, dealing drugs again? Because you know we’ve run him in for that.”

“Not lately; not in a long time. He’s not on anything.” Annie crossed her arms tightly around her middle, hoping she was right, praying she was.

“You’re sure.” Sheriff Audi wasn’t. Annie could tell by the way he sounded.

“I’d know,” she said, flatly, although that wasn’t true. Under the weight of Cooper’s glance, she felt pushed to explain. “He hears voices in his head sometimes, and when they get really loud, when they shout—” Annie’s throat closed around the threat of tears.

She felt Cooper cup her elbow in his palm to steady her. “It’s okay,” he murmured, and it wasn’t, but Annie was somehow reassured anyway.

“He self-medicates,” she said. “He won’t take the doctor-prescribed meds, but he’ll take the stuff a stranger, a—a dope dealer on the street hands him—or he did. But not lately. Not in nearly a year now. I’d know,” she reiterated.

“People have been known to take advantage of him,” Madeleine said, and Annie heard her reluctance, shades of her hovering fear.

“Yeah,” Sheriff Audi said, and he blew out a sigh as if the thought of such cruelty depressed him.

Annie said, “Bo was working other places besides here. He did odd jobs for JT, for the neighbors. They could have paid him. That might be where he got the extra cash.”

“I told him not to go showing it around,” Madeleine said. “I said to him that very morning showing off that money would invite nothing but trouble.” Her voice shook. “What are you going to do about this, Hollis?”

“Put out a BOLO,” Sheriff Audi answered, and when Madeleine frowned, he interpreted for her. “It means ‘be on the lookout.’”

“Ah,” Madeleine said. “Sounds very Hollywood. But this isn’t the movies, is it? It’s real life.”

“Yes, ma’am, that it is.” The sheriff was respectful. But everyone treated Madeleine with courtesy. You didn’t dare do otherwise. Sometimes Annie thought she might be the only one in town who was aware of the softness that formed the center of Madeleine’s heart.

She said she’d made Sheriff Audi his usual lunch, ham and Swiss on rye toast.

“Can you sack it up for me?” he asked.

Madeleine said she would.

“You want to sit there?” The sheriff addressed Annie. He indicated an empty booth. “I can work up a description.”

Annie hesitated. To accompany this man, to help him with his report, would make it real; it would confirm there was good reason to be afraid, and she didn’t want to believe it. Even though she knew better.

She had called JT on her way to work this morning and told him if she didn’t hear from Bo by the end of her shift, she was going to the police. In a way, she’d meant it as a test. She couldn’t shake her sense that JT knew something about where Bo was, and after she warned JT of her intention, she thought for sure he’d tell her not to bother, that involving law enforcement wasn’t necessary. But he didn’t say anything, didn’t respond at all, and fear came, jolting up Annie’s spine, ringing in her ears so loudly, she had to pull off the road.

“You really don’t know where he is?” she demanded.

“No. My God! Don’t you think I would have told you?”

Doubt hardened the silence. The very air had felt consumed by it and by their mutual foreboding. Annie didn’t remember now if they said good-bye.

“Go on.”

Annie glanced at Madeleine.

“Carol and I can finish up,” she said. “Cooper, stay with her, okay?”

Annie wanted to say she didn’t need Cooper, but it wasn’t true. She was glad for his presence when he slid into the booth next to her.

The sheriff got out a notebook, and when he asked, Annie told him everything she remembered about the last time she saw Bo. She described what he was wearing, a blue-plaid cotton shirt and gray chinos, and said she had no reason to believe he would have changed his clothes. “He’ll only shower at my house or at JT’s.” She didn’t add that Bo often complained the water in other places was infested with alien microbes. It would only add to the sheriff’s suspicion of drug use. She did tell Sheriff Audi about Bo’s earmuffs, that he’d been wearing them when he came to the café on Wednesday, but he wasn’t wearing them now.

“So he must have gone to his dad’s house at some point after you saw him on Wednesday and taken them off, is that right?” The sheriff looked at Annie. “He could have changed clothes then, too, couldn’t he? Did you look? Would you know?”

“I’m not sure, but I can check,” Annie said.

“Also, if you have a recent photograph, that would help, too.” Sheriff Audi glanced up from his notepad, in anticipation of her answer.

As if he thought she should whip out a photo on the spot. “I can probably find one. I just don’t know how recent it will be. I’m sorry.” Annie wondered why she was apologizing. Because they weren’t the all-American family? Or any sort of family? Because they didn’t take pictures? They had been better at those family sorts of things before her mother died. Her mom had been the tie that bound them.

Sheriff Audi said they would use whatever she could find. “Is it possible JT saw Bo later in the week than you, that he could confirm what Bo was wearing?”

Annie said she doubted it. “I don’t think he pays much attention to Bo’s clothes.”

Until JT married her mom, he pretty much dressed Bo in whatever he could find at the Goodwill store. Bo was thrilled when Annie’s mom took him to JCPenney.
Brand-new clothes
, he kept saying. Shirts and pants no one else had worn. Annie remembered the care he’d shown afterward, folding them carefully when he took them off. Sometimes he’d slept in his favorites. Annie had rolled her eyes. She’d made fun of him and called him a dork. Why?

Cooper said, “I’m pretty sure when I saw Bo on Friday he was wearing what Annie described.”

“Gray pants, blue-plaid shirt.” The sheriff leaned back. “You say the car he got into was a Lincoln?”

“Yeah. Town Car, maybe 2010, 2011. Black. I didn’t pay attention to the license plate, but the woman driving it was older. At least her hair was really white. I didn’t get any sense it was a dangerous situation, though. Bo got into the front passenger seat under his own power. He was talking a blue streak. You know how he goes on.”

Sheriff Audi nodded.

Annie’s cheeks warmed. The understanding of Bo that Cooper and the sheriff seemed to share seemed almost intimate. It made her want to defend Bo, to say
You don’t know anything about him
, even though it was clear there was nothing to defend, that they were only sorting through the facts, trying to find a direction, a way to help.

“He and the woman were laughing,” Cooper said, “as if Bo was telling her jokes.”

“Bo doesn’t joke,” Annie said.

Both men looked at her.

She thought of what JT had said, that as soon as you worked out Bo’s rules, he changed them. But Bo didn’t laugh easily or show much emotion, except when an animal or a person was hurt. When that happened, he felt it, too. She remembered the time Freckles was sick with some virus. Bo stayed up all night, holding him. She remembered when she had tonsillitis, he walked nearly a mile each way to the Baskin-Robbins because she loved their French-vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup the best. By the time he got home, the ice cream had softened, but that only made it better; all that melty, chocolate-swirled ice cream had felt so soothing and cool against her raw throat. She could still taste it, could still see how Bo sat on her bed beside her, how he cared that she hurt. It brought her to tears, remembering these things about him. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes.

“What about a cell phone?” the sheriff asked. “Does Bo have one?”

Annie lowered her hands and said he did, giving the sheriff the number. “Can you find him that way?” Her heart seized on this possibility, relating it to movies and shows she’d watched on television.

“It’s possible, if the phone is on, or even if it isn’t, as long as—” The sheriff broke off.

“As long as—” Annie prompted.

“I think the battery has to be good, right?” Cooper asked.

“Yeah. That’s why the sooner we get going, the better.”

But that wasn’t the only reason. Annie could see by Sheriff Audi’s and Cooper’s expressions that it wasn’t. “You think someone might have done something to Bo; they might have taken his phone—” she began.

The sheriff interrupted her. “We don’t know anything at this point, Annie.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt him?”

“You’re thinking of the drugs, aren’t you? That someone hurt him over drugs.”

“I’m asking if you know of anyone who might have had a problem with Bo.” The sheriff’s gaze was gentle, so gentle and kind, Annie felt she might break beneath it.

She looked into her lap. He knew as well as she did there were folks in town who had a problem with Bo. They didn’t like him walking in their neighborhoods or talking to their kids. Once, when he’d scooped a little boy out of the street who’d fallen from his bike, the mother had come screaming out of her house. She’d grabbed her son and slugged Bo on his chest, hard enough to leave a bruise. She told the police when they came that she didn’t want “that weirdo’s” hands on her kid. “He should be locked up,” she said. Annie remembered JT saying it was a good thing the woman hadn’t had a gun.

Would she have killed Bo, if she’d had the means? Annie didn’t know. She guessed anybody would do anything, given the right amounts of fear, real or imagined, and sufficient provocation.

She thought of Leighton Drake. She had risked her heart with him for a few heady, hectic weeks last summer, something she had never done before, and then he’d betrayed her, threatening Bo’s life in the process. But he was gone now. He’d moved back to Chicago, where he was from, in August. She met the sheriff’s gaze. “There are people in this town who harass Bo, who don’t want him around, and sometimes, it’s gotten physical. But not so much, really, since high school.”

“Okay, then. But if you think of an incident or anyone specific—”

“I’ll let you know,” Annie said.

“What about JT? I’d like to talk to him, too. Find out when he last saw or spoke to Bo. Do you know where I can reach him?”

“He’s usually home from work around six o’clock, but I can call him now and find out his location. I should talk to him anyway and let him know what’s happening.” Annie paused.

“What?” Sheriff Audi found her gaze again.

She shook her head; she didn’t want to say where her mind was, that it had wandered back to have another look at her sense that JT knew something. He didn’t; he couldn’t. He would never let her worry herself sick this way. “It’s nothing,” she said and scooted out of the booth.

Cooper and the sheriff followed her.

The café was mostly empty, although a few people, a dozen or so, lingered. Their faces were familiar to Annie. They were the regulars, the ones she waited on almost daily. She felt their eyes on her as she crossed the floor to get her cell phone out of her purse. She felt their concern, and she realized they knew Bo could be in danger. If she were living in a town larger than Hardys Walk, she might have wondered how the word had spread so quickly.

“What can we do to help?” One of the women who worked at the library intercepted Annie. Others joined her, making a small crowd. Madeleine came out from the kitchen with Carol.

“I need my purse, my cell phone to call JT,” Annie said.

Carol said she’d get it and ducked back into the kitchen.

Sheriff Audi said he was putting out the BOLO, and then raising his voice, he addressed everyone in the café. “I think most of you know Bo Laughlin. If you’ve seen him since Friday, I’d like to hear about it.”

There were headshakes, an exchange of worried glances, a low rumble of uneasy murmurs.

“I usually see him,” Annie heard one woman say.

“It’s odd not to,” said another.

“I can get folks together to go and search for him, Hollis.”

Annie looked at the man who had spoken. His name was Ted Canaday. He owned the sporting goods store across the street. She’d served him his lunch today, chicken salad on wheat toast, hold the pickle. He’d ordered the same thing for lunch as long as she’d worked there.

“Ted, if you want to set up a central location and ramrod a search effort, I know we’d be grateful for the help, and so would Miss Annie here.” The sheriff smiled at her.

“Ted,” Cooper called out. “Count me in. Whatever you need. I’ll get my dad and my uncle, too.”

Someone else suggested they headquarter the search effort in the community center down the street.

Carol said, “We need a photograph to make flyers.”

“Annie isn’t sure she has one.” Cooper answered when Annie didn’t.

“I’ve got one on my cell.” Carol touched Annie’s elbow. “I took it when we bought Bo those red rubber gloves. Remember? To match his muffs.”

Annie nodded even as she thought she would never let that picture be used. She’d go to JT’s, find another, one that wasn’t silly. Other voices rose and fell, swirling around her, but she lost the individual words and their meaning in the swelling clamor of her panic. She felt sectioned off from reality. Why had she spoken to the sheriff? Bo was fine: he’d call; he’d show up. Didn’t she know that? Know him? Annie touched her fingertips to her temples.

“Do you want me to call JT?” Madeleine spoke at her elbow.

“No,” Annie said. “I’ll just go in the kitchen so I can hear.”

“It’s the right thing, filing a report, letting everyone know.” Madeleine seemed to have read the doubt that clouded Annie’s mind.

“But what if he isn’t missing? What if he’s just off somewhere new, a place we haven’t thought of?”

“Then we’ll have something to celebrate when we find him, won’t we?”

“He got into a car with a stranger, Madeleine. I’ve never known him to do that.”

“People do all sorts of odd things on a whim.”

“I’d better call JT,” Annie said.

“Bo’s all right.” Madeleine’s voice followed Annie. “We’ll find him, and he’ll be fine. He’ll ask us why we made such a fuss.”

“You’re right,” Annie said. “That’s exactly what he’ll say.”