Authors: Barbara Delinsky
“Does she get along with her father?” he asked.
Celeste waggled a hand. “They aren’t best of friends, but they’re not enemies either. He lives in southern New Hampshire.”
“Would she be trying to get his attention?”
“If she is, she’s wasting her time. He doesn’t see beyond his own desk, his own work, his own daily schedule.”
“Does she resent him for that, or for not being around more?”
Celeste certainly did, even after all these years. Emily could hear it in her voice. It would have been a miracle if Dawn hadn’t picked up on it.
But Celeste said, defensively, Emily thought, “Not terribly. We’ve done fine without him—well, as fine as two people can do who don’t get along, but last weekend was so
nice,
really it was.” She included Emily in her bewilderment. “We
did
get along. I actually
liked
it. And I honestly think that if she were bothered by something, I’d have detected it. We spent more time together than we have in the last three years combined.”
“You, Dawn, and Carter,” Brian said, which, in the wake of Thanksgiving, was how Emily saw them, too. They had been a tight threesome at the Davieses’.
Celeste smiled. “Dawn liked him a lot. He knew just how to handle her. He treated her like a person, like a grown-up. I have to take a lesson from that.”
Emily wasn’t sure she wanted Celeste taking lessons from Carter. There was something about him. Emily couldn’t put her finger on it. He was too good, too smooth, too perfect.
“Where’s Carter now?” Brian asked.
“Paris, until Sunday.”
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday.”
“Would he have any idea where Dawn is?”
“I don’t see how, if I don’t know.”
“She might have talked with him.”
Celeste shook her head. “If it was about anything sneaky, he’d have told me. And he’d have given her hell.”
“They were on close enough terms for that?”
“We were together for the better part of five days.”
“The three of you?”
“Yes.”
Surprising, Emily thought. Interesting, actually, coming from a woman who professed to be thrilled to have her daughter grown up and out, who professed to want nothing more than to have fun in the second half of her life.
“Did that get on your nerves?” Brian asked.
“No. She was reasonable for a change. We didn’t argue. It’s the first time in my adult life that I’ve been part of a family unit.”
Emily hadn’t thought Celeste wanted that. Interesting, indeed.
“Only Carter isn’t family,” Brian reminded her.
“You know what I mean. It was the closeness. He was a father figure for her. She’s never had that around here. She ate it up.”
“Did she have trouble saying goodbye to him on—what was it—Sunday?”
“Sunday. No. No trouble. She was fine.”
“Smiling? Hugging?”
“Yes. What are you getting at?”
“Does she have a crush on him?”
“She wouldn’t dare.”
“Daring has nothing to do with crushes.”
“He’s mine. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Try to explain ‘appropriate’ to impressionable young women,” Brian remarked.
Emily agreed. “If Dawn went ga-ga over Carter’s looks and his manner and the attention he paid her,” which, to her eye, Dawn had done, “that’s halfway to a crush. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
But Celeste was insistent. “She didn’t. She just liked him.”
“Can you reach him?” Brian asked.
“Now? No. I told you. He’s in Paris.”
“You don’t have a phone number there?”
“No.”
“Can you get one?”
“I could call his office here. They must have a number. But I don’t want to do that. I might embarrass him, chasing him down that way, and besides, he doesn’t know anything about Dawn. Believe me. If he knew
anything,
he’d have told me.”
To listen to her, Emily might have thought she was talking about her sweetheart of umpty-ump years.
“How long have you known Carter?” Brian asked.
Celeste hesitated. “Four weeks.”
“Not very long to be so sure about what someone would do.”
“We’re very close.” To Emily, she said, “Why’s he attacking me?”
“He’s not,” Emily said as gently as she could. “He’s trying to narrow the field down to those people who may either be with Dawn or know something about her. Your relationship with Carter has been a whirlwind affair. Realistically, Celeste, there’s a lot you don’t know about him.”
“You’re jealous.”
Emily choked on a breath, shot a quick look at Brian, and said, “No. No, I’m not.” But she wasn’t arguing that point. “You haven’t known him long, Celeste. You haven’t lived through enough with him. You haven’t seen him in different situations.”
“I trust him.”
“Yes, trust him, but realize that since he didn’t raise Dawn, and since he’s spent even less time with her than he’s spent with you, he may not know the rules. He may not know that if she shares certain kinds of plans, he’s supposed to tell you.”
“He may not want to betray her.”
“Exactly. So, with the best of intentions, he may know something about Dawn right now that would explain where she is.”
A full minute passed before, begrudgingly, Celeste said, “I suppose.” She faced Brian a bit more humbly. “Even if his office has the Paris number, no one will be there to give it out until morning. Maybe I should be waiting at home in case he calls me there. He said he wouldn’t. He said he’d be running around so that he can get back in a week, instead of the ten days he originally planned for the trip. But there’s always a chance. Same with Dawn calling. Not likely. But possible.”
“Wait at home. That’s best.”
“She’s off somewhere doing her own thing. Isn’t she?”
“Probably.”
“You don’t really think she’s in trouble.”
“Nah.”
But Emily’s mind was off in a heartbeat, imagining all
sorts
of trouble at the mere mention of the word.
“Em?” Brian asked softly.
Her eyes flew to his. She wrapped her arms around her middle and propped her upper body on them. “I’m okay.”
“Sure?”
She nodded. When Brian asked Celeste for a recent picture of Dawn, she said, “I have one on the cork-board in my kitchen.”
Brian looked at his pad, frowned, then, diplomatically, asked Celeste, “If her roommate is right and the closet at the dorm is intact, and if she’s been running around somewhere for three days now, what might she be wearing?”
“When I dropped her back on Sunday night, she had on jeans and two sweaters, layered, with flats, but she had a dufflebag full of clean things. She could have put any of them on—the short skirt she was wearing at the Davies’s, the shirts and vests, the black stirrups, the Doc Martens.”
Brian made the appropriate notations, then dropped his pen on the pad and rose. “Let’s assume she’s gone of her own volition. If we continue to strike out tomorrow, we’ll rethink things.”
Emily walked Celeste to her car. “Dawn will be fine,” she said in an attempt to be encouraging.
But Celeste was past encouragement, into fury. “No, she won’t. She’s in deep shit. She’ll catch hell for this one, Emily. That’s a promise.”
Emily supposed that anger was easier to bear than the awful thoughts that kept flitting through her mind, fragmented images of bits of clothing, of Susan Demery’s finger, of Daniel’s empty car seat.
Brian was just hanging up the phone when she returned.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“The campus police. I want them to know I’m on the case.”
“You asked them to search the campus, didn’t you?”
He folded her in his arms. With her head pressed to his chest, things didn’t look quite so bleak. “It doesn’t hurt to cover the bases,” his voice said. “Not that I’m expecting a problem. I’m really not, Emily. This isn’t the case of a two-year-old who can’t talk or fight or recognize danger when he confronts it, and it isn’t the case of an eighteen-year-old heiress. There are lots of credible reasons why Dawn isn’t where she’s supposed to be.” He turned his wrist to see his watch. “It’s after ten. Think Myra’s asleep?”
“Her light’s still on.” Emily had made a point of noticing, because therein lay another immediate source of worry. “Why?”
“Think she’d come over and sit with Julia while we run down to the station?”
“I’ll stay with Julia.” It was a safer idea.
“But I want you with me,” he said. Beautifully intense silver eyes drove home his earnestness. “You know Dawn. You know how investigations work. I want you helping.”
“Helping, as opposed to sitting here, growing depressed.”
“That, too, and I won’t apologize for it. Will Myra stay? Julia is sound asleep. She’ll sleep through ’til morning, not that we’ll be nearly that long. An hour, maybe two. Can she handle it?”
“Yes. I think. She’s been subdued lately. Listless. Her family is thinking of forceably moving her, if she won’t move to a nursing home herself.”
“They’d actually go to court?”
“No. They’ll just sell the house, pack everything up, and
move
her. They won’t win in court. When she wants to be, she’s fully lucid.”
Brian released her with a squeeze. “I’ll go get her.”
It was a full ten minutes before he returned, and Emily could see why. Myra was moving slowly, seeming to lack the strength that she’d had several weeks before.
“Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?” Emily asked.
“I don’t sleep lately anyway,” Myra said and allowed her coat to be slipped from her arms. “The detective says your friend can’t find her daughter.”
“Dawn. That’s right. But she’s probably off with friends.”
“I’ve written the number of the station over there by the phone,” Brian told Myra. “If there’s any problem, call us. Better still, I’ll call you. I’ll let you know what’s happening.” He moved toward the door.
Emily moved with him. “If Julia wakes up, check for the rabbit. It falls out of the crib sometimes.”
“Help yourself to food and drink.”
“If you can’t find Brian’s number, dial nine-one-one.”
“The furnace clangs twice when it fires up. Don’t be alarmed.”
Myra followed them to the top of the stairs. Glancing back every few steps, Emily felt a twinge of uneasiness. Then the door closed, and they were on their way.
• • •
Brian put out Dawn’s description over the Boston area network, putting sixty different departments in Massachusetts, plus the state police, on the lookout. He faxed her photograph to the same departments. The reproduction wouldn’t be great. But five-five, one-twenty, eighteen-year-old blonds weren’t unique. Something was better than nothing. He could improve on it if she remained at large for long.
On his way to the computer, he called Myra. It took five rings and several weeks off his life before she answered. “How’s my Julia?” he asked on a deliberately light note.
“Did you find the girl?”
“No. We won’t find her tonight. I’m just establishing the basis for a search. Is Julia all right?”
“She’s fine. I keep peeking in. She hasn’t woken up.”
There was a lift to her voice that hadn’t been there earlier. Brian found it a comfort. “Ahhh,” he said. “Good.”
“Where are you looking?”
“Locally. We don’t think she’s gone far.”
“You have to look under the willow.”
He might have known it would come, and while he was uncomfortable with Myra talking nonsense at the same time that she babysat Julia, he did believe she was harmless. So, appeasingly, he said, “Well, that’s an idea for tomorrow. Can’t see much in the dark. Call me, now, if Julia gives you trouble.”
“She won’t,” Myra said.
“How is she?” Emily asked when he hung up the phone.
“Julia? Sleeping. Myra? Awake and aware.” Actually, quite jaunty, in that last parting note.
His confidence in Julia’s safety restored for the time being, he plugged
CARTER DEMMING
into the computer.
Emily was at his shoulder. “You didn’t like him, huh?”
“I liked him okay. But she doesn’t know him real well, and he and Dawn were nearly as chummy as he and Celeste at the Davies’s that day. I keep asking myself if it’s pure coincidence that they left Celeste’s one after the other last Sunday.”
“But Celeste dropped Dawn at school herself. She watched her walk into that dorm.”
His eyes were busy on the screen while he talked. “Then she came back home, spent less than an hour with Carter, and kissed him goodbye. He drove off. She didn’t see where he went.”
“You’re thinking he may have circled back and picked up Dawn.”
“Can’t rule it out.”
“Would he have harmed her?”
He couldn’t rule that out, either. He had known some Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydes in his day. But he didn’t want to alarm Emily unnecessarily, and he really didn’t think Carter was manic. “I just think the two of them may have decided to play around a little.”
“But if he’s in Paris now, wouldn’t she be back at school?”
“Do we know for sure he’s in Paris?” He hit
escape
with a twack. “He doesn’t have a criminal record, at least, not in Massachusetts.” He hooked into the federal system, but found no sign of Carter there, either. Nor when he plugged into individual state police files for the entire New England and Midatlantic regions.
He had a thought, but it was a while and several phone calls before he had what he needed to gain computer access to the files he wanted.
“Taxpayers?” Emily asked when the list came up.
“Real Estate. Celeste said he lived in Cambridge.” He scrolled through the alphabetical listing until he reached the
d
s, then the
de
s, then the
demms.
“If he does, he doesn’t own the place, at least not under his own name.”
“I don’t like this, Brian.”
He reached for the phone and called information. “For Cambridge. I’d like a listing for Demming, that’s
D
as in David, first name Carter.” He waited.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I have no such listing.”
“Is there an unlisted number under that name?”
“No.”
He hung up. “Something stinks.”