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  “Leave me alone!”

  “Okay, if you insist,” Judith said from the bed, “but I started feeling horny and thought better of my decision to sleep alone. And I hoped you’d be in the mood for some atoning.” She could not see the expression on his face in the dark. Had she, she would not have been quite so flippant.

  ***

  The police put Dexter Light in the drunk tank for the night. They’d found him wandering around the Owings Mills Mall. He seemed harmless enough but clearly in no condition to navigate his way back to Baltimore.

  “Who’s your daddy?” he asked. “Who’s your daddy?” Then he burst into laughter. “That’s what I want to know, Officer. Can’t be Marvin, that’s for sure, so, who?” He collapsed on the steel bunk and passed out.

  “I swear this is the same guy we get every year from Scott. Let’s see….” The cop, a veteran of nearly twenty years, rifled through Dexter’s wallet. “Driver’s license, Dexter Light. That’s our guy.” He carefully inventoried the contents of Dexter’s pockets and put them in a manila envelope.

  “Now, here’s an old picture,” he said, holding a crinkled black and white photograph of a pretty, dark-haired woman up to the light. “Not a bad looking broad either.”

  ***

  “I decided that I had to make a choice,” Rosemary said, wiping her eyes. “If we were…if I….” She trailed off.

  Just say it, you idiot, he won’t think badly of you, and what if he does?You haven’t seen him for fifty years and might not again for another fifty. Didn’t you say this morning you were old? So, stop acting like a teenager.

  “Am I acting like a teenager?”

  “I don’t think so, but then it’s been a long time since my kids were that age and I had any real contact with one, and I didn’t understand them then, either.”

  “Here’s the thing. If I condition whatever relationship that may develop between us on first making sure you weren’t involved in your wife’s…disappearance, then it would seem like I could never trust you. I’d have to cross check every detail and that would mess up everything. Oh God, I’m making a fool of myself, aren’t I?”

  “You aren’t if what you’re saying is—you want to feel safe, but by asking the question, you will have already put a precondition on whatever follows. Is that it?”

  “Yes. That’s nicely put. How do you do that, anyway?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Nevertheless, if you asked the question that sits like the proverbial elephant in the corner, I would say, ‘No, I didn’t have anything to do with it.’ But I might be lying, you see. Is it likely I’d confess to something like that?”

  “I don’t think you’d lie. I don’t think you even know how.”

  “I write fiction, remember. I’m very good at inventing stories.”

  “Then I was right,” she said. “I’ll never know for certain. I’ll have to follow my instincts.”

  Good for you.

  “And they’re telling you…?”

  She straightened up, rose, and walked across the room to a small desk painted dark green with a thin gilt line edging its fold-up writing surface. She reached into a drawer and removed a bulky envelope. She resumed her place on the sofa and handed it to him.

  He opened the flap and peered in. Newspaper clippings, old photographs—all about him.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s for you. My secret, now it’s yours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have been keeping track of you for years, Frank.”

  “Really? Your husband…?”

  “He didn’t know. He wouldn’t have understood. To even care about someone from far away would have seemed like infidelity. Men think if a woman is interested in a man it must be about sex.”

  He sorted through the clippings. One very yellow one, no more than a column inch, announced that Frank and three other boys had won the 100 yard freestyle relay in the ninety-five pound class at Meadowbrook Swimming Pool. He looked up.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now we see,” she said and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You were late again last night.” Barbara busied herself with wiping the kitchen sink although, as far as Frank could see, it didn’t need it.

  “Not too late, I don’t think.”

  “It was after two. More drinking with your old buddies?”

  “Not this time. I had a long conversation with someone from my past.” He smiled and turned his head away, remembering that once upon a time to have intercourse with someone meant you had had a conversation.

  “You’re smiling,” she said. “Does that mean you are spinning more bullshit?”

  “Barbara, how you talk. Your mother and I never taught you to talk like that!”

  “Mom, no, but we all heard you use language a lot stronger than that.”

  “Well, just a few words I picked up in the Army. By the way, where’s Bob?” Frank tried to change the subject.

  “Up at a normal hour and running errands somewhere.”

  Always a tip-off. If she’d said hardware store or barber shop or any of a half hundred destinations, he would have let it pass, but somewhere? Somewhere could mean anything, but at that moment, it meant his daughter and her husband were not communicating.

  “Somewhere?”

  She resumed cleaning her sink, her back to him. “He went out. I don’t know, Dad. He took his car and left early this morning. He said he had things to do.”

  “Most stores don’t open until ten.” She stopped wiping. Her shoulders sagged. “I’m your old man,” he said gently. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” She turned to face him and then he noticed the red eyes, the fatigue. “I didn’t wait up for you, I swear. We were arguing until one-thirty. Then I couldn’t sleep. That’s why I know.”

  “You two been fighting a lot lately?”

  “It’s that time in our marriage, I guess. Pushing twenty years and all of a sudden the dreams, the fancy plans, all seem so far away, so unlikely. The kids are growing up so fast. There are big decisions ahead for us and—”

  “Money is tight and getting tighter.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Been there, honey. Is there anything else you two fight about, besides money, that is?”

  She tore off a square of paper towel from its roller under a cabinet and wiped her face. “I don’t know. It usually starts with something trivial, you know? Then it sort of spirals up and away, but in the end, everything seems to come down to money.”

  “That’s it?”

  She crumpled the towel into a small ball. Outside, a mockingbird began its borrowed litany. Somewhere down the block a lawnmower coughed to life. And somewhere Bob Thompson was breaking his daughter’s heart.

  “I don’t know. How can I know? He never says anything. He comes home late, eats dinner, and retreats into his little den. We don’t make love and when I ask him what the matter is, he says, ‘Nothing’ and clams up even more. I think there must be someone else. Isn’t that what all that usually means?”

  “No, not necessarily. But something’s not right. Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “What good would that do? You’re leaving tomorrow morning and you have some hoop-de-do to go to tonight.”

  “Oh yeah, I meant to tell you. Would it be okay if I stayed on for a few days, a week, maybe?”

  “Stay on? Here?”

  “Well, I could go to a motel if that won’t work,’” he said. She unfolded the ball of paper towel and began to shred it into the sink.

  “No, no. That’s not what I meant. It’s just….” She scooped up the bits of paper and deposited them into the trash bin. The lid dropped with a clank. “Why?”

  “Long story. I promised some people at the party last night I would look into the mystery of the missing boys.”

  “That sounds like a ti
tle of one of your books. Is it?”

  “Who knows, it could be. That possibility crossed my mind, but no, it’s a real mystery this time. Do you remember hearing about four boys disappearing from the Scott campus twenty-five years ago?”

  “Not at the time. We lived in Chicago then, didn’t we? I think one of the Scott parents may have told me something like that a while back, but I’m not sure. Is that what you’re investigating?”

  “Yes.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut like someone trying to shake off a mild headache. “Of course you can stay. But I’m not sure about the car. I have to be out of the office this week.”

  “No problem. I have a friend helping me who can drive.”

  “Well, it will be nice, then. You can see something of the boys.”

  “We’re going to the Lacrosse game at Loyola, this afternoon, apparently, Frank said. “They said their dad promised but couldn’t at the last—”

  “No, he couldn’t, could he? He’s too busy doing whatever the hell he does nowadays that nobody knows about.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing, actually. We’ll walk over to the game—have a big time.”

  “Okay. That’ll be good. I only wish that I—”

  “I’ll talk to him, Barbara. It may not be anything. Money problems always make people do funny things, act crazy.”

  She sat at the table and began her shredding again, this time a paper napkin. “What is it about men? They keep secrets. They think they can’t let on they need something, so they pull away from the people who love them and then go dippy over the first woman who gives them a kind word and a smile.”

  “Well, you’re assuming a lot there. First, you don’t know if there is a smile with a woman attached to it or not. And—here’s the part you won’t like—most men will not go for the smile from a stranger if there’s a better one at home. How have you been lately?”

  She bristled and tore another napkin in half.

  “Oh, I see, it’s my fault. I work an eight-hour day, sometimes ten hours. I come home, make dinner, and do all of the house work that every other woman has an entire day to get done. I help the kids with their homework and I’m tired at the end of that. What do you expect? I should put on a tape and do a strip tease for him, too?”

  “I merely said—”

  “I’m tired. I get up at five-thirty. I go to bed at eleven. You do the math, Dad. I can’t keep this up.” She picked up the last napkin on the table and blew her nose. “And he’s in the study. Working, he says. Or he eats and leaves the house. He says he has work to do. Work! What the hell does he think I’m doing all day and all night?”

  “I’ll talk to him, Barbara. There may be some very simple explanation for the whole thing. In the meantime, let me loan you some money.”

  “I don’t want your money, Dad, I want my husband back.”

  He got up and found a clean cup in the cupboard. He filled it with coffee. He put it in front of her and poured himself another as well.

  Bob Thompson started life on the wrong side of the tracks, as they used to say. He did not have the advantages of private schools, summer camps, and parents who were connected to the power structure in one way or another. He grew up within sight of the old Baltimore and Ohio roundhouse, now the Chessie System Railway Museum. He worked his way through the University of Maryland flipping burgers, washing cars, and delivering pizzas ’til three a.m. He got his CPA at night school. He worked hard, kept his thinning hair and expanding midriff in as much control as he could, and wore a look of permanent confusion when he was around his wife, whom he held in awe. In no way did he fit the uptown mold.

  “We fight over the Scott Academy thing, too,” she said, ignoring the coffee.

  “How’s that?”

  “I want to send them to Scott. I told you that. If they went there, I wouldn’t have to arrange for someone to watch them in the afternoon, and…Bob says, ‘No way can we afford it. Not on what I make.’ I said, ‘You make? What do you think what I bring in is—chopped liver?’ And he says it helps. It helps?”

  She finally gave way to the tears she’d been holding at bay. Frank leaned over to the counter and grabbed a fistful of napkins and handed them to her.

  “Dad,” she said, her words muffled by napkin balls, “solve my mystery too. What is he doing? Is he seeing someone? I need to know. I’m going crazy. Stay as long as you need to. Find out for me, please?”

  “Sure. I’ll talk to him. Follow him around town, if I have to. I’ll find out. In the meantime, you need rest. I’ve got the boys this afternoon, then the party tonight. You take the day off and rest a little, read a book, take a bubble bath.”

  “Easier said than done. Can you get a ride to your party? I don’t know when or if Bob is getting back and I have a job to do at the church. Well, if I have to, I could cancel but—”

  “No need, I have a friend picking me up.”

  She sighed, gathered her flannel nightshirt closer and gazed at the clock.

  “You know, I think I will just rest for a while,” she said. She got up, somewhat awkwardly. She hadn’t inherited her mother’s grace, only her regular features and smile. A smile little in evidence lately. She turned and pursed her lips as a new thought seemed to cross her mind. She frowned.

  “Who’s the friend you’re going to the party with?”

  “Just an old friend, a piece of my childhood.” He regretted the use of the word piece.

  “Who?” she said, not quite insisting.

  “Well, if you must know, I’m going with Rosemary Mitchell.” He buried himself in the morning paper. He felt her eyes burning holes in the middle of the op-ed page.

  “The friend who’s driving you around town while you do your investigating— that wouldn’t be Mrs. Mitchell, would it?”

  He shrugged.

  “And that someone from your past, the one you had a conversation with, that wouldn’t be Rosemary Mitchell, too?”

  He lowered the paper. “Barbara, what’s the problem?”

  She glared at him for what seemed a full minute. “Where’s Mom?” she hissed, and her tears began again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “I don’t know why we have to do this so early.” She was tall and very blonde, the kind of blonde that usually comes from a bottle, but in her case, it was the real thing. He’d discovered that the night before when she came back to his room.

  “You said you wanted to go hiking. We’re going hiking.”

  The dead dry desert stretched to the horizon. The sun just cleared the mountains to the east. He squinted and said, “It’s supposed to hit triple figures again this afternoon. Morning is the only safe time for a beginner to tackle the desert. If we want to do ten miles, we have to start early. By noon, it’s going to be well over a hundred degrees out here.”

  “Ten miles! You said, like, a hike. I don’t want to go….If I wanted to travel ten miles, I’d call a cab.”

  “Well, let’s see how it goes. If it’s too much for you, we’ll turn back, okay?”

  She rolled her eyes and smoothed her baggy shorts. They were his. She’d met only a few men whose waist matched hers. Most of the ones she dated were paunchy business men and agents. But this guy seemed nice, and Joey, her minder, had ticked her off, so she’d gone with him last night and then allowed him to talk her into this hiking thing. It must have been the line of coke she did in the bathroom before she let him seduce her. She had what she called her loose moments, usually after a snort.

  “I have to pee,” she said.

  “There’s a privy over there,” he said and pointed to the spot-a-pot on the edge of the pulloff.

  “No thanks, those things stink.”

  “Well, there’s nobody around. You could go behind a saguaro. Just don’t get too close.”

  “I’ll use the facility.” It did have an odor, but not too bad. The dry air seemed to do something to spot-a-pots in the desert. She discarded her thong down the hole. She did not need that thing riding up
on her, and she knew it would. A wedgie in the desert. “These thongs aren’t made for walking…” she sang.

  “What?”

  She watched him slather sunscreen on his arms and legs. “You next.” He handed her the bottle.

  “What number?” she asked, inspecting the bottle and seeing no indicator.

  “Forty. You need it out here.”

  “How can you get a tan with forty? I never use anything stronger than fifteen. Usually, none at all. I’ll pass.”

  “You’re not here to get a tan. You’re in the desert and the sun can fry you like an egg. Besides, if you don’t, you’ll have tan lines or worse, you’ll look like a dancing lobster. That won’t go too well on the runway, will it?”

  He had a point. She did not need a farmer’s tan. And it would be pretty obvious two minutes into her act when she dropped the shortie raincoat and got down to the leopard skin bikini. She squeezed out the liquid and began to apply it.

  “Get behind your knees,” he said. “People always forget that and then they are miserable.”

  “You want to help me here?” She flashed him a smile.

  “Sure. Where do you want me to put it?”

  “Here.” She slid her shorts down.

  He laughed and obliged. “I don’t think this part is in danger of sunburn.”

  “Maybe not now, but who knows what might happen out there.”

  He gave her a water bottle fitted with a belt clip and took a rucksack with three more and slung it over his back.

  “Water?” She made a face. “I need coffee this time of day.”

  “Coffee’s no good. It’s a diuretic and will speed the dehydration process. Water is what you get. One more thing,” he said, and produced a shapeless wide-brimmed hat and clapped it on her head.

  “What’s this for?” She caught sight of her reflection in the SUV’s window. “I look like a bag lady.” The idea stopped her. She knew she needed to change her act. Everybody did what she did. Prance out in some fantasy costume, drop it piece by piece and work the pole. She needed a gimmick if she wanted to book into the big clubs, Vegas, maybe. A bag lady. She’d come out all hunched over in crappy clothes and the guys would boo maybe, or think it was comedy act, but then as she peeled off each layer of rags, they’d get it. Yeah, a bag lady—something like that—sweet.