Table For Five

She told herself to get a grip, but the fact was, good-looking men intimidated her. She was always convinced they were making fun of her. It was ridiculous, at her age, to feel that way, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. No wonder she preferred third-graders.

The phone rang. Sean snatched it up, spoke briefly to the caller and then hung up. “They found Crystal’s car. Dead in the school parking lot. What do you make of that?”

“It means they’re probably together.”

“At least we have something to tell Cameron.”

They found Cameron with a biology book open on the desk in front of him, but he was staring at the clock rather than studying.

“Hey, sport.” Sean went over to the desk and leaned against the edge of it.

Lily had to admit he seemed relaxed and natural around Cameron. Like her, he was being careful not to appear frantic.

“Got a minute?” Sean asked his nephew.

“Who was on the phone? What’s going on?”

“Well, for one thing, your mom’s car has a dead battery and she left it in the parking lot of Charlie’s school. So now we’re guessing your dad gave her a ride.”

“A ride to where? Chicago? They’ve been gone for hours.”

“We don’t know where they are yet, but we’re going to find out. The police are going to drop by and get some more information from us.”

“When? When are the police coming?”

“They said they’d send someone right away,” Lily said.

“What’s that mean, right away?”

Sean looked over at Lily. “I swear, you two…soon, okay? And I’m sure they’re going to want to talk to you.”

“I can’t tell them anything,” Cameron said, closing the textbook with an angry thud. “All I know is my loser mother didn’t show—”

“Cameron,” Lily broke in. “Watch what you say about your mother.” She bit her tongue to keep from taking the thought further. She was thinking of how guilty he’d feel if he found out something terrible had happened.

“I can say what I want,” he retorted.

“Don’t snap at her,” Sean warned.

“I wasn’t snapping.”

“Yes, you were. And you’re still doing it.”

The doorbell rang and the three of them froze. Then, as one, they broke for the stairs and hurried to answer the door.

chapter 11

Friday

10:00 p.m.

This sucks hind tit, thought Cameron, eyeing the cops sitting at the kitchen table. Having two parents missing was actually worse than having them both in your face.

There was a guy and a woman. The guy looked young and kind of geeky, taking notes on some sort of Blackberry device. The woman was older, with a calm demeanor and the no-nonsense air of a math teacher.

Uncle Sean was jumpy but gave them straightforward answers to their questions. Unfortunately, he was clueless. He’d known Cameron’s dad longer than anybody, but didn’t have the first idea of where he might have gone. Lily was trying to act brave, but Cameron could tell she was freaking. Behind her thick-lensed glasses, her eyes seemed too bright, as though she had a fever. She’d bitten off the fingernails of one hand and would probably start on the other when no one was looking.

As for Cameron, he was pretty ticked off by the whole situation. It was probably nothing, just a stupid mix-up. It wouldn’t be the first time his parents caused some big idiotic mess, getting everyone all freaked for nothing. They’d been doing it for years. Just because they were divorced didn’t mean they’d stop.

“So they left the school at three-forty-five,” said Officer Vessey, the guy with the Blackberry.

Lily nodded, her brown ponytail bouncing like a cheerleader’s. “Yes. I went to the faculty lounge to talk with my school principal, and I looked at the clock that hangs over the coffeemaker. It was three-forty-five.”

“Do either Mr. Holloway or his ex-wife suffer from any incapacitating medical condition?”

Everyone looked blank. Officer Franklin said, “Sometimes that accounts for a disappearance.”

“They’re both fine,” Cameron said, and it came out sounding belligerent. Too bad, he thought.

Sean said, “You already have that information.”

“Miss Robinson, did you see them leave together?” asked Officer Franklin, unfazed.

Lily took a sip of her herbal tea. Mom always kept a box of assorted weird tea on hand for her. Lily was a health nut, and chamomile tea was probably the strongest thing she ever put into her body. No wonder she bit off all her fingernails.

“They left my classroom together,” Lily said. “They walked out of the building at the same time. I didn’t actually see them get into Derek’s car together.”

“Would it have surprised you, seeing them drive off together?”

Lily didn’t like the question. Cameron could tell by the way she shifted in her seat.

“I suppose. But maybe not. They both take very laudable interest in their children. Now that we know Crystal’s car had a dead battery, we know why they drove off in the SUV. It makes perfect sense.”

“And what was their state of mind? Can you describe that to us?”

Lily flicked a quick glance at Cameron. He put on a bored expression, like he didn’t give a crap.

“Well, as I said before, it wasn’t a happy meeting. Their daughter Charlene has been struggling in school.”

Like that was a surprise, thought Cameron.

“Were they contentious at the meeting?”

Lily lifted her hand to chew on her nail, then seemed to think better of it and tucked it under her leg. “I wouldn’t say ‘contentious.’ Strained, maybe. Listen, if you’re trying to figure out if they were apt to harm each other—physically—the answer is no. Absolutely not.”

“You’re sure of that.”

It was creepy as hell, Cameron thought, the way these cops assumed the worst of his parents. It must be such a drag, being a cop. You had to deal with people at the worst moments of their lives, and you never got to see their good side.

“As sure as I can be,” Lily said. “I told you, I’ve known Crystal since she was thirteen and I was eight. We’re as close as sisters, maybe closer. I’m her children’s godmother and she is a gentle, loving, reasonable person.”

Cameron sensed his uncle’s skepticism. He didn’t exactly roll his eyes but shifted in his chair and let out a restless sigh. He tried as hard as he could to feel absolutely nothing, just a cool sense of wait-and-see. It was getting tougher by the minute, though. He was starting to wish he hadn’t eaten so much pizza earlier. The way his stomach felt, it was threatening to make an encore appearance.

The cops stayed focused on Lily, like maybe she was holding something back. “Miss Robinson, how long have you known Derek Holloway?”

“Since they got engaged about seventeen years ago. I can’t say I was ever close to him, and since the divorce, I’ve only seen him in my role as Charlie’s teacher.”

“What was your opinion of him?”

Go ahead and say it, Cameron thought. You hated his guts.

“He adores his children,” Lily said. “I don’t believe he would ever harm Crystal.”

“And you have no idea where they might be right now.”

“None,” said Lily. “It’s completely unlike Crystal to fail to come home to her kids.” There was a hitch in Lily’s voice, and the sound of it stabbed into Cameron.

He felt defensive, prodded to speak up. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said.

Everyone swung to face him. You could hear the shush of the dishwasher in the stillness. Cameron felt his ears turning red. “She blew us off last month when her flight from Denver was delayed.”

“She called to say she would be late,” Lily stated in her know-it-all teacher voice.

“Yeah, but only after she was like four hours late, and Dad had already left town, too, for a tournament.” Cameron bristled with resentment. “I had to give the girls their supper and put them to bed.” He couldn’t help it. He glanced at the clock over the stove. Way more than four hours had passed. He wondered if he should say anything more. As the one person who had witnessed his parents’ marriage from a front-row seat, he knew things no one else possibly could.

“That’s completely different.” Uncle Sean spoke up, sounding more calm and reasonable than any of them. “Someone knew where they both were.”

Then it was his turn to be interviewed. “Mr. Maguire, can you characterize your relationship with your brother?”

Cameron ground his teeth in frustration. Here they were reviewing the history of his wacko family when they should be out searching for his parents. But where? Where?

Sean’s jaw developed a tic and Cameron sensed his impatience, too. He took a deep breath. “We’re half brothers. We have the same mother. His father passed away in the sixties and our mother married my father. We both grew up right here in Comfort. Both played golf, both went pro. I joined the Asian Tour and Derek kept his PGA card. I moved back here and I’m working at the country club.”

Cameron knew there was a lot more to that story. A whole lot more. Like the fact that Dad’s father had never been married to his mother and was broke when he died. And the fact that Grandma had married Patrick Maguire just six months later. And Uncle Sean was born just a few months after that. But that was all ancient history. It probably wouldn’t help them figure out where his parents had gone.

Something not so ancient burned inside him like a bleeding ulcer. He was never meant to know about Ashley, but he’d found out and now the weight of that crushed him. It wasn’t his to tell, he reminded himself, especially to a room full of strangers.

“When was the last time you saw your brother?” the cop asked Sean.

“Last night. He came into the clubhouse for a drink, and we talked.”

“Did you get any sense that there was a problem?” asked Officer Franklin. “Any issues between your brother and his ex-wife?”

Just that they hated each other, Cameron thought bitterly. Just that they kept secrets from each other.

“None at all,” said Sean. “Crystal is the mother of his children, and he’s always been good to her.”

It was on the tip of Cameron’s tongue to address that statement, but he said nothing. He couldn’t do it. He simply couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about stuff he barely let himself think about. Besides, he could be wrong.

Now it was Lily’s turn to get skeptical. She didn’t exactly roll her eyes, but she pursed her lips as if thinking, “Uh-huh. I’m so sure.”

The kitchen phone shrilled suddenly. Cameron’s heart leaped. Everybody around the table jumped at the handset. Cameron grabbed it first. He was the one who lived here, after all.

“Hello.”

“Cameron, it’s Jane.”

Great, he thought. He looked at the four expectant faces around the table. “Jane,” he said.

“Derek’s girlfriend,” Uncle Sean explained to the cops.

“Do you know where my dad is?” Cameron asked her.

“Actually,” she said, “I was calling you with the same question.”

Cameron felt his hopes deflate like a pricked balloon. “I think you should probably come over,” he told her in a dull voice. “He and my mom haven’t come home and the police are here asking questions.”

There was a brief, fragile silence, and then she made a terrible sound, like there was something caught in her throat.

“Jane?” Cameron asked.

“I—um, I’ll come right over.”

“Girlfriend?” asked Officer Franklin.

“They’re very close,” Uncle Sean explained. He glanced at Cameron.

“You can talk about it in front of me. It’s not like I didn’t know,” Cameron said, trying to regain his equilibrium after the phone call. He preferred bored impatience to sick dread any day. “She was going to move in with him.”

“Does your mother know this?” asked Lily in an edgy voice.

Cameron shrugged. “I didn’t tell her. I guess Dad was going to eventually.”

A short while later, Jane burst in without knocking. She had really short blond hair and sharp features, and at the moment she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. She never smoked around Cameron and the girls.

Cameron knew his mother smoked sometimes, too. Last fall, as they were finalizing the divorce, he found her on the back steps late one night, smoking a Marlboro and flicking a lighter on and off, watching the flame.

She’d turned to him with the saddest smile he’d ever seen. “Don’t ever smoke, baby,” she’d said to him in a tired, husky voice. “It just tells people when you’re unhappy.”

“Got it, Mom. Never let on when you’re unhappy. Check.”

He remembered realizing the sting of his sarcasm hit home. Though it was dark outside, he could see her wince as if in pain.

“I talked to him just before 3:00 p.m.,” Jane was saying. “He was very clear. He would pick Ashley up by four-thirty this afternoon and take her to her mother’s house. I had a class to teach tonight, so I brought the baby here myself.”

Dumping her like a sack of old mail, Cameron added silently. The truth was, he didn’t really mind Jane, but at the moment he was looking for someone to be pissed at.

They briefly filled in Jane on what they knew so far. The two of them had left Charlie’s school together, presumably because his mom’s car wouldn’t start. Neither responded to repeated calls on their cell phones. There had been no reports of accidents despite the inclement weather. The cops explained that some cell phones had a GPS device and could be tracked down, but apparently his parents’ phones didn’t have this feature.

Unexpectedly, giving him no chance to think about his answers, Officer Franklin started questioning Cameron.

“Did you talk with your father before school this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fought with him would be more accurate, but no one needed to know that.

“Did you talk about anything in particular?”

“Not really. We have to change houses every Friday. That’s in the parenting plan. I said I was going to the golf course after school and I’d see him in a week.” What he’d actually said was, I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.

His father had responded in kind. Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.

It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up, Cameron had concluded.

“After that,” he said, “I got my things and caught the bus to school.”

“Did you see your mother today?”

“No. She was supposed to pick me up at the golf course and she didn’t show.” He went to the window and stared at it, seeing only his own ghostly reflection. It weirded him out to imagine what was going on in the cops’ heads about his parents. They were probably thinking of people messing around in a sleazy motel or getting drunk and screaming at each other. “Look, can’t you just go find them? You’re not going to learn anything more here.”

“At this time, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate,” said Officer Franklin. “When two adults in good health are involved, they eventually show up. This has already been put up on the city channel where the dispatchers chat among themselves, but until there’s a true emergent situation, we can’t do a broadcast.”

Which was her way of saying they were shit out of luck. Nobody was being protected and served here, Cameron thought. He wondered if he should point that out.

“For the time being,” Officer Franklin went on, “you can call the state patrol and area hospitals. I appreciate your alarm, but I’m sure they’ll show up with an explanation.”

Uncle Sean stood up, his lips tight with unexpressed anger. “I need to put gas in my car before the station closes. Then I’m going to start looking.”

Cameron stood up, too. “I’ll go with you.”

“We need for you to stay right here,” Officer Franklin said.

Although she barked it like an order, Cameron sensed the compassion beneath the words. It would be a mistake for him to go out looking for his missing parents.

He might not like what he found.

chapter 12

Saturday

12:45 a.m.

“What exactly is an APB, anyway?” Jane Coombs asked Lily. She spoke without looking up from the screen of her cell phone. She’d been staring at it as though willing Derek to call.

“It stands for all points bulletin,” Lily said. “It means each law enforcement agency within a prescribed radius receives a broadcast of the alert.”

“And they’re not going to do that for us,” Jane said, a quaver in her voice.

“Not until they’ve been missing twenty-four hours. That seems to be the magic number.” She felt like quavering, too. She hated the icy knot of worry in her gut.

Other than the sound of the shower running upstairs for Cameron, the house was eerily, uncomfortably quiet. Soon after Jane’s arrival, the police had left, promising that if Crystal and Derek didn’t return by four o’clock tomorrow, they would initiate the mysterious business of conducting a missing-persons search. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. And worry.

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