Accomplice (9 page)

When it was time, I saw the parade of vans and SUVs driving up to the farm. It looked like a funeral procession, except none of the cars had headlights on. A bunch of black Escalades turned into our drive and my knees got shaky. My legs felt watery, so I let myself fall back onto my bed. I was a puddle soaking into the sheets.

It seemed weird to run bounding down the stairs, so I waited until my mom summoned me. I cried a little when the vehicles pulled up, leaving my face all flushed and streaked, but I didn’t dare turn on a faucet to wash up. I didn’t want to miss my mom calling my name from the downstairs landing.

When she did, I checked my hair and makeup. The braid was a little loose, but I liked how a few stray strands wisped around my face. In any case, I didn’t look like a monster.

No one did. My mom had even worked some kind of miracle on Mrs. Caffrey. For the first time in the past
few days, Chloe’s mom didn’t look like you might have to restart her heart with a defibrillator. She had a shirt on that seemed ironed and even a dab of lipstick or something. She still wasn’t herself—but she looked okay.

I expected Lila Ann Price to knock on our door. But instead a younger guy did the honors, wearing a headset and a tailored suit that Ace the guidance counselor would have coveted.

“Andy Cogan, Producer.” He said it like his name was the greeting itself and stuck his hand toward each of us. With the other arm, he was already motioning the camera crew inside the house and a good half dozen guys in coveralls started stapling cable to the ground and opening and closing the curtains in the living room.

“We’d like to take a couple of shots of Chloe’s bedroom.” He had his hand on the banister, one foot on the stairs.

“Well…what?” Mrs. Caffrey finally turned and asked my mother. She looked like I felt. My mom was the only one who wasn’t absolutely flabbergasted. This was a new trend in the world.

Mom stepped in to announce, “I’m sorry—this isn’t the Caffrey residence.”

A short woman, with short hair and a short skirt, stopped…well…short and swung her head toward Andy Cogan, Producer. He asked her and not my mom, “This isn’t One-oh-nine Cedar Run Lane?”

“It is, it is.” The short woman yapped, like she was worried he’d take away her kibble. She shuffled the papers on her clipboard. Andy warded her off with one hand—“I need an address check,” he big-dog barked into the headset. “I need an address check on the Caffrey house.”

“I’m Sheila Caffrey.” Chloe’s mom stepped forward. She didn’t look ready to run a Parents’ Association meeting, but she said it like she knew the power it would command. The guys unwinding cable stopping unspooling. The short girl concentrated fiercely on her clipboard, and Andy Cogan, Producer, swung to look at her. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the headset’s static crackle.

Andy Cogan, Producer, recovered first. “Mrs. Caffrey,” he said with reverence. “I’m so sorry. We got a little carried away here. We’re just all so pumped to play a part in helping bring your daughter home.” I wondered how many times he had to trot that line out. His voice stayed subdued. “I’m Andrew—I’ll be producing this segment of
The L. A. Price Show
. Thank you for welcoming us into your home.”

“This isn’t my home. Ours is the barn out front.”

“You live in a barn?” The short girl couldn’t launder the sneer out of her voice. Andy shot her a look that said she was going to be someone’s assistant for the rest of her life.

“It’s a renovated barn.” Mrs. Caffrey sounded apologetic.

“They used to be in a trailer,” I said.

“Finn!” Mom gasped, but Mrs. Caffrey got it and her face creased up into a slight smile.

“I’m just saying. That might have made filming hard.” No one responded to me, but Andy Cogan, Producer, gestured to the assistant. She fussed with her clipboard.

“You must be Finley,” she said.

“Finn.”

“Chloe’s best friend?” I just shrugged. “I’m sure this is very hard for you.” She didn’t go on to say,
And that’s why you’re being a bitter brat.
But she didn’t have to. We all heard it, anyway.

Mrs. Caffrey stepped in. “The Jacobses are our closest friends and they’ve pretty much taken me in these last few days.” She patted my mom’s hand as it squeezed her shoulder. “The girls have grown up together.” Her voice faltered a little at that last part, but she kept going. “Chloe certainly spends a great deal of time here, but why don’t I show you our home?”

The crew started spooling up the cords and folding up all the kinds of tripods.

“Sheila, you okay?” Mom asked while she pulled our jackets from their hooks in the hall closet.

Mrs. Caffrey flashed another wry, brave smile, and
Andy Cogan, Producer, practically licked his lips. Sheila Caffrey had some serious star power. I knew she was about to make Chloe very proud.

By the time all the cameras and sound equipment had been set up in the right house, Mr. Caffrey came bounding through the back porch. “Sheila!” he bellowed, and for a second, I worried that someone had forgotten to tell him about the film crew.

“Brian,” she said. “Thank God. How did it go in town?”

“Tough.” He shook his head. “Really tough, I’m not so sure that—”

“My husband is devoted to his business.” The shrillness had started edging back into Mrs. Caffrey’s voice.

“What?”

“Cam’s at boarding school,” my mom told him. She sounded like she was trying to work it out in her own brain first.

“What?” Good to know that the old Caffrey lines of communication were working at usual capacity.

“Cam’s at boarding school.” My mom repeated it again loudly, but in the same flabbergasted tone. It wasn’t enough to lead anyone to the path of clarity.

“Mrs. Caffrey thought that would be better.” I stepped in, thinking it would help.

“Better than what?”

So that was a no-go on the me-being-helpful plan. I looked to my mom to save me. She opened and closed her mouth. Twice.

“Better than discussing his autism? Really? Now we’re stashing away our son?”

Mrs. Caffrey’s neck snapped up and she crossed the living room to us. She glared at my mom, as if the whole thing was my mom’s fault. “How is Cam?” she asked him carefully.

“Autistic.”

“Brian, we’ve talked about this.”

“We talked about how the equipment and all these people would upset him.”

Mrs. Caffrey’s voice dropped to a hiss. “This isn’t the time for this.”

“No, apparently it’s the time to claim Cam’s off at Exeter.”

Mrs. Caffrey’s voice set into a hardness that at least I was afraid of. She pronounced each word like she was scratching it into stainless steel. “It’s not the time to talk about Cam. We need to keep the focus on Chloe.”

“This reeks of shame, Sheila. People know about Cam. In town—his teachers—what will people at the Princeton Center think?”

“This is our daughter’s life, Brian. I don’t care what people will think of us.” And then Chloe’s mom tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and put on a bravely
bright smile. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Does Lila Ann need anything?”

Andy Cogan, Producer, let out an appreciative chuckle. “No, ma’am. Ms. Price has a battalion tending to her needs right now.”

“This must be very difficult. She must relive her own experience every time.” Mrs. Caffrey shuddered a little and brushed her hands across her lap. “Well, the least I can do is set out a pitcher of iced tea.”

“Let me help you in the kitchen.” Mom rushed off to follow her. It was just me and Mr. Caffrey then, and a whole lot of vo-tech graduates. And when Lila Ann Price did arrive, she just knocked on the door, like anyone else would have. Like good old Andy Cogan, Producer, had an hour or two before. By the time she actually knocked, the ice cubes in the pitcher of iced tea had melted to tiny discs and the Caffreys sat like guests in their own living room with my mother and me hovering in the background.

“Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey.” Her voice oozed concern and her eyes already looked a little misty. “Thank you so much for making room for us. I know how the house feels smaller with all the police and folks in and out. And I know it feels emptier, too.”

She’s good
, I thought.
Lila Ann Price is very good. I’m going to have to be careful around her.
She ushered Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey back to the sofa and informed my
mother and me that she’d like us to join them in twenty minutes. So we stepped back into the dining room and served as the live studio audience. Mrs. Caffrey had assembled an army of framed pictures of Chloe and they stood on alert on the coffee table.

Lila Ann Price started in immediately. “The disappearance of Chloe has captivated the nation. What would you like to say to your daughter or the individuals holding her?” And Mrs. Caffrey crumpled on cue, bent her head into the crook of Mr. Caffrey’s neck, and wept.

He spoke first. “We’ve said over and over again that we believe that Chloe will come home safely. Chloe is a kind, intelligent, and generous girl, and we believe that if someone knows where she is, he or she will show the same kindness, intelligence, and generosity in helping her to return home, to her family, where Chloe belongs. We love Chloe very much and we’re only interested in her safety.” It sounded a little canned and rehearsed, and maybe because it did, Lila Ann Price jolted Mrs. Caffrey again for the sake of a few more tears.

“What were the last words you spoke to your daughter?”

“Oh God—I’d like to think I told her I loved her—that’s what you mean to say, right? I mean you don’t ever think…I would never have expected. I’m sure I told her I loved her, but the girls…they keep all those animals and I probably just reminded her about chores
or her responsibilities or…” Mrs. Caffrey choked on tears and then she said defiantly, “I must have told her I loved her.”

Mr. Caffrey stepped in again with the rehearsed lines: “We’d like to say now that, Chloe, if you’re listening—wherever you’ve been or whatever you’ve done, it doesn’t matter. We’re not angry. Please just come home, and if there’s something we need to talk through, we will work it out together as a family.” He looked so uncomfortable, pleading into the camera. Chloe’s dad with his artfully disheveled hair and his carefully pleated tweed trousers—she had made him beg.

Lila Ann pounced. “Do you have reason to believe that your daughter has run away on her own accord? Was Chloe experiencing difficulties?”

“She’s a teenage girl,” Mr. Caffrey offered as explanation. You could tell he was a little offended. And my own mom reached out and rubbed circles across my back.

I swear to God it was calculated when Lila Ann reached up to clutch the locket dangling from her own neck. She murmured, “I wouldn’t know,” and looked up to search Mrs. Caffrey’s face with brimming eyes.

“I’m so sorry.”
Bingo
. Mrs. Caffrey grabbed Lila Ann Price’s hands and held them with her own. “Brian didn’t mean to…”

“Of course not. And I didn’t mean…it’s just
not…” and then she slipped in a rueful chuckle. “I’m sure the teenage years are a trying time. But in all of these photographs”—you could see the cameraman’s hand reach toward a dial to zoom in—“your Chloe just strikes me as such a happy and confident young woman.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mom watching me carefully. It’s not like I was going to dart out onto the set and object. Chloe
was
happy. Until the whole Margaret Cook thing, I would have said that Chloe saw her own life as perfect. Except for maybe Cam.

“She is a very happy girl.” Mrs. Caffrey nodded. “Especially when surrounded by all of us who love her.” And I wondered then. Mrs. Caffrey didn’t miss as much as I thought. Because that’s exactly what I would have said: As long as she’s encircled by people, Chloe’s fine. And really, who wouldn’t be? It was like Chloe traveled in a sea of adoration. But when she was on her own, when there wasn’t anything planned on a Saturday except for cleaning stalls or working through the Netflix queue, she was different. Lately, I’d seen her looking out on the stretch of land around our houses almost hatefully.

Mrs. Caffrey continued to prove she might actually be familiar with the individual who was her daughter. “I don’t know any teenage girl who’s exactly confident.” And she deflected the inevitable tug on the locket when she said, “I remember how it was—don’t you? Chloe puts on a good show of it, but I imagine she has the same
self-doubts any of us did. She can be very hard on herself.”

“That’s a lot of pressure—could Chloe have made a poor decision because of all of it?” Lila Ann fixed her face into a look of sympathetic wisdom.

“No.” That was Mr. Caffrey. Abruptly. He might as well have finished by declaring, “Case closed.”

Then Mrs. Caffrey reached over to squeeze his hand. Chloe’s dad continued, “That’s impossible to imagine. Chloe is devoted to our family. She’s very close to her brother.”

“Will we have a chance to meet Cameron?”

“It’s important to us that he focuses on his schoolwork.” And aside from the swift grimace across Mr. Caffrey’s face, no one skipped a beat.
Well-played, Mrs. Caffrey.

“Do the police have any leads?”

At first, when Mr. Caffrey said yes, it felt like I’d swallowed a jagged rock.

But I could tell by his carefully composed expression that he wasn’t talking about Dean West—it was just one of the answers they’d prepared beforehand. He said it with dead eyes.

Lila Ann Price cocked her head slightly and then let it slide. “Well, we won’t ask you what those leads are, Mr. Caffrey—I’d never want to interfere with a police investigation. Let me take this opportunity, however, to offer
our assistance. If any of our viewers at home have any information about Chloe’s whereabouts, please call
The L. A. Price Show
’s toll-free hotline. Dial 1-800-LAP-INFO. Mr. and Mrs. Caffrey, as a showing of our support,
The L. A. Price Show
would like to offer a one hundred thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the return of your daughter.”

Mrs. Caffrey’s hands flew to her face. “Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Price. We appreciate—”