She's Not There (10 page)

“That's not the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“The point is that we could have talked it through. We
should
have talked it through.”

“We don't talk, Hunter. We never have.”

“That's ridiculous. We were married for twelve years. You're saying we never talked?”

“
You
talked. I listened.”

“That's bullshit and you know it.”

“Face it, Hunter. You're a bully. In court and out.”

“And you're a victim. Like always. It's the same old shit.”

“Guys, please,” Michelle pleaded from the backseat. “Can we not do this?”

“You should have phoned me,” Hunter repeated, either unmindful or uncaring of his daughter's request. “You should have told me what was happening. You should have given me the option. Admit it.”

“Only if you admit that there's no way you would have gone with me,” Caroline said, once again standing her ground, something she wished she'd done more often during their dozen years together. Maybe if she had, they wouldn't be having this stupid argument. Samantha would never have gone missing.

“Well, I guess we'll never know,” Hunter said.

“
I
know.”

“Right. Because you know everything.”

“I know there's no way Hunter Shipley would have taken a few days off work for something as unimportant as his family.”

“Okay. That's enough. You're way off base.”

“Really? How many days did you take off work after Samantha disappeared?” Caroline knew she was being unreasonable, but the words escaped her mouth before she could stop them, pushed out by fifteen years of repressed rage.

“Mom,” Michelle said. “Let's just drop it, okay?”

“How many days, Hunter? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?”

“I stayed…”

“Seven whole days,” Caroline said. “You stayed one whole week.”

“That's not fair.”

“Really? How fair were you? Leaving me alone in Mexico to deal with everything.”

“I asked you to come home. I begged you, for God's sake.”

“And I begged you to stay.”
Please, Hunter,
she'd begged.
Just give it a little more time.
The same way she'd begged when he told her he was ending their marriage.

“The investigation was going nowhere. The police had pretty much made up their minds that we were behind Samantha's disappearance. There was nothing more to be accomplished by staying…”

“You left me,” Caroline said, no longer sure if she was referring to the time he left Mexico or the time he left for good.

“I hired a private detective…”

“Whom you fired after three months.”

“Because he was getting nowhere.”

“Because he was costing you a
pretty penny
.”

“Goddamn you, Caroline,” Hunter muttered.

“Goddamn
you,
” she said in return.

Michelle fell back against her leather seat, the movement creating an audible
whoosh
. “I need a drink,” she said.

“T
ell me you're not seriously considering going home,” Caroline demanded of her husband.

“It's something we
have
to consider,” Hunter said. “It's been almost a week.”

“It's been five days.”

“And the police are no further ahead than they were the night Samantha disappeared.”

“That's not true. They have leads…”

“They have nothing.” Hunter plopped down on the sofa in the living room of their suite, running his hand through his thick brown hair in frustration.

Caroline walked to the window, stared down at the restaurant below, spotting her mother and Michelle having lunch under one of the multiple red umbrellas. Her mother had insisted on coming to Rosarito as soon as Steve had called her with the awful news. She'd burst into their suite and immediately wrapped Caroline in a tight, almost suffocating embrace. Caroline had instantly reciprocated, gratefully clinging to her mother, her entire body going limp. “Mommy,” she heard herself sob into the silk shoulder of her dress.

“How could you let this happen?” her mother said.

“We have to look at this realistically,” Hunter was saying now.

Caroline wanted to walk over to where he was sitting, slap him hard across the side of his head, and shout, “How's this for realism?” Instead, she stopped pacing and waited for him to continue.

“It's been five days,” he reiterated. “The police have searched the hotel and grounds at least a dozen times and found nothing. The guests have all been investigated and cleared…”

“There's that man who had a collection of pornography on his computer…”

“The pictures were all of grown men. And his alibi checked out: he and his friends were at a nightclub down the beach when Samantha disappeared. They have a roomful of witnesses.”

“Samantha didn't just
disappear,
” Caroline said, tired of the euphemism that implied her daughter had somehow magically vanished into thin air. “She was abducted. Someone took her.” She burst into a flood of angry tears. How many tears could one body hold? How many could she spill before she drowned in them?

Hunter was immediately at her side, his arms moving helplessly around her, as if seeking a safe place to land.

“Don't,” Caroline said before he could touch her.

He backed off and returned to the couch, although he remained standing.

“Go on,” she said, trying, and failing, to keep the edge out of her voice. “We were being
realistic.
” She knew she was hurting him, pushing him further away every day. But he deserved to be pushed, to be hurt. This was his fault. Samantha was gone because of him.

And now he was talking about going as well. Leave the scene of the crime, return to San Diego, resume their normal life. Except they'd come here with two children, and they'd be leaving with one. Their lives would never be normal again.

“There's nothing more we can do here,” he argued. “We've searched everywhere. We've told the police everything we know. We've gone over everything that happened that night a thousand times. We've answered all their questions. It's obvious they don't believe us. It's obvious they're starting to think we had something to do with it.”

“What is it they think we did? Do they think we kidnapped our own child?”

The look in Hunter's eyes told Caroline it was worse than that.

“They can't seriously believe we murdered our daughter.”

“I think that's exactly what they believe. Which is one of the reasons I want to get the hell out of Mexico.”

“But if they believe that, what makes you think they'll let us leave?”

“Because they need proof to hold us and they don't have any.”

“They don't have any because we didn't do anything,” Caroline said, growing dizzy from going around in so many circles. Was Hunter right? Could the police really believe they'd murdered Samantha? Instead of searching for their little girl, were the police busy gathering evidence to implicate her and Hunter? If so, maybe he was right—nothing more would be accomplished here. They were jeopardizing not only their freedom but their lives. Maybe they should
get the hell out of Mexico
before it was too late
.
“What about that waiter from room service who nobody has seen since that night?”

“The police claim they're looking for him.”

“You don't think they are?”

“Let's just say I don't think they're looking very hard.”

“Why not, for God's sake?”

“Because they've already decided we're guilty,” he said again. “This happens all the time, Caroline, and not just in Mexico. I see it every day. The police think they know who's responsible, so they get tunnel vision. They ignore other suspects and discount any evidence that doesn't support their position.”

“What about the housekeeper?” Caroline persisted. “She had a master keycard. She could easily have gotten inside. Or the babysitter who was with the kids every night. You saw how she loved Samantha. Maybe she couldn't have children of her own. Maybe…”

“The housekeeper was at home with her family. The babysitter was on another assignment.”

“They could have had accomplices…”

“Yes, they could have,” Hunter agreed, sinking back down on the sofa. “But the police aren't looking for accomplices. They're looking at us. They're saying we're the ones who canceled the babysitter…”

“Which we didn't.”

“…that you were the one who phoned the front desk and told them not to put any more calls through to the room…”

“Because my mother had phoned and I didn't want anyone else to call and disturb the girls.”

“It doesn't matter why. It just matters that it looks suspicious.”

“How is that suspicious? Oh, God. It's hopeless. We'll never find her. We'll never get her back.”

“It's not hopeless,” Hunter said, his posture saying otherwise. “I've already talked to the senior partners at my firm. They think we should hire a private investigator, which I'll do as soon as we get home…”

“I can't do it. I can't go anywhere until I find my baby.”

The phone rang. Hunter picked it up. “Yes,” he said instead of “hello.” Then, extending his hand toward her: “It's Peggy.”

Caroline took the phone from his outstretched hand.

“How are you?” Peggy asked.

“Not good.”

“Do you want me to come back?”

Yes,
Caroline thought. “No,” she said. Peggy hadn't wanted to leave Rosarito, but she had two children of her own to get back to. She had a job, responsibilities, a life.

Rain and Jerrod had been the first to go, leaving as soon as the police gave their okay, off to spend Thanksgiving in New York. Caroline didn't begrudge them their plans. They weren't close friends, and there was nothing they could do here. Besides, Rain's concern had verged on the spectacular, her sympathy so overwhelming that it left little room for Caroline to feel anything but numb. In truth, she'd been glad to see them go.

She was equally relieved when her brother and Becky followed suit the next day, the tension between the two having become unbearable after Mary's arrival. Peggy and Fletcher were the last to leave. “We're just a phone call away,” Peggy had said then.

“What's happening?” she asked now.

“Apparently the police think we did it.”

“That's ridiculous. What are you going to do?”

“Hunter wants us to go home.”

“Maybe that's not such a bad idea.”

“I don't know. He's called a press conference for this afternoon,” Caroline said, feeling sick to her stomach. The world press had jumped on the story of Samantha's disappearance, and Hunter had decided they should sidestep the seeming incompetence of the Mexican police by appealing to the international community for help. At first Caroline had resisted taking her grief public, but Hunter was insistent that a mother's tears would go a long way toward getting Samantha back, so how could she refuse? The police were against them talking to the press, and had been successful so far in keeping the reporters at bay, claiming that such publicity would only hinder their investigation. But Hunter was convinced that they were only concerned about looking bad. Besides, he argued, the police thought that he and Caroline were guilty of murdering their own child. So, screw them.

“Let me know how it goes,” Peggy said before hanging up.

“I guess we should start getting ready,” Hunter said.

Caroline understood that he was referring to the press conference, but she wasn't sure what he meant by “getting ready.”

“Maybe brush your hair, put on a bit of makeup,” he explained, answering the question in her eyes.

Caroline ran a disinterested comb through her hair and applied a bit of waterproof mascara to her swollen eyes. She changed out of her shorts and oversized shirt into a modest beige sundress. Her skin was tanned, effectively hiding the blotches caused by days of constant crying, and she'd lost at least five pounds, unable to eat much or keep anything down. Still, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she was surprised to see a seemingly calm and controlled, albeit haunted-looking, woman staring back.

“Mommy!” Michelle shouted as the door to their suite opened. The child rushed into the room, throwing herself at her mother's knees and almost knocking her down.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Caroline said, staring down at the deep purple fingerprints now spread across the bottom half of her dress.

“I had blueberry pie for dessert,” Michelle announced.

“You'd better change,” Hunter said.

Caroline returned to her bedroom and riffled through the closet. The beige sundress was pretty much the last clean article of clothing she had with her. The only other thing she could wear, besides shorts, bathing suits, or evening wear, was a blue-and-white-striped miniskirt and a sleeveless blue T-shirt.

“
That's
what you're wearing?” her mother asked when Caroline returned to the living room.

Caroline brushed aside her mother's words with a wave of her hand. What possible difference did it make what she wore?

Hunter scooped Michelle into his arms. Caroline noticed the child's hands had been washed clean. “Ready?” he asked, heading for the door.

As ready as I'll ever be,
Caroline thought.

She spent the next two days in bed, poring over the papers and watching the news on TV.

“Haven't you had enough of that crap?” Hunter asked, throwing the last of his shirts into his suitcase and zipping it up, then depositing it by the bedroom door.

“Did you see this?” Caroline held out the latest edition of the
Los Angeles Times,
which her mother had brought back to the room earlier in the day. “We made the front page.”

“Ignore it.”

“Easy for you to say. You come off rather well, all things considered.”

“Sweetheart, please…”

“You're the
handsome man
barely holding himself together,
” she read. “You're the one
clinging tight to his daughter
while I'm the one who's
aloof
and
standing ramrod straight.
” She scoffed. “Who knew good posture was such a bad thing?”

“Don't do this to yourself…”

“They even comment on the shine in my hair,
as if she'd just come from the hairdresser,
” Caroline read, almost choking on the words. “I haven't washed my hair in a week, for God's sake. The stupid reporter doesn't know shine from grease.”

“You can't let it get to you. You'll make yourself sick.”

“Oh, and of course, we were out
cavorting with friends at a nearby restaurant
when it happened. God forbid they leave that part out.”
Or mention that it was at your insistence,
she thought, her attention temporarily diverted by something on television. Their ill-fated press conference was once again being broadcast around the globe. “Oh, there I am again, still ramrod straight.”
I
do
look aloof,
she thought.
My hair
does
look shiny. My skirt
is
very short,
as another paper had pointed out the day before.