The Dead Place (20 page)

It was only as she was hurrying back downstairs that Kate thought to check the answering machine. Grace must have gone home with someone from school. Which she shouldn’t do, but if she’d actually found a new friend, Kate was prepared to be delighted and just remind her, gently, that she should call if there was a change in plans.

Only there weren’t any messages. Kate picked up the phone to dial Grace’s cell and heard it ringing in the hall. It was still in Ian’s jacket pocket from when he’d confiscated it.

She was supposed to have taken the bus straight over to campus for her lesson with Dr. Beetleman. Kate found the number in the campus directory on Ian’s desk in the upstairs office, but there was no answer when she called. He was probably still teaching and couldn’t hear his phone. Grace’s lesson should have ended an hour ago.

Ian didn’t answer his phone either. It was now ten after six and the sun was going down. Kate hesitated just long enough to scribble a note for Grace and stick it on the refrigerator.

Streetlights switched on as she drove block after block, scanning the sidewalks for a glimpse of a familiar black-haired figure slouching along with a scowl and a backpack. There was no one out; the sidewalks were distressingly empty.

Parking was always a hassle on campus. “Why the hell don’t they plan for this?” Kate muttered as she circled the same area for the fourth time. “Haven’t they ever heard of a parking garage?”

Just as she was about to park illegally, a goateed man came out carrying a cello, which he loaded, taking his time about it, into the back of a small green Ford.

The halls of the music building were flanked with practice rooms, and Kate caught glimpses of violinists and one heavy-bosomed singer before she reached Beetleman’s office.

The department secretary, a whey-faced young woman wearing too much perfume, was shutting down for the day.

“I need to see Dr. Beetleman.”

The young woman looked up from packing her purse and gave Kate a bored once-over. “He’s busy. You’ll have to make an appointment for sometime later this week.”

“Is he still teaching? I’m looking for my daughter, Grace Corbin?”

The secretary shrugged. “Sounds vaguely familiar, but he’s got lots of students. I can’t possibly remember all of their names.” She turned her attention back to the voluminous purse in which she was trying to stuff a slightly less voluminous lunch satchel.

“Look, this is important. I really need to find my daughter. Now.”

The young woman raised her head and sighed as if greatly put upon. “All right. I’ll see if I can get him. Just have a seat.” She pointed at a small reception area behind Kate.

Perched on the edge of a stiff couch, Kate watched the young woman make a big show of picking up the phone, turning her back to Kate with the phone pressed tight against her ear.

Two long minutes later, the woman turned back and hung up. “You can go on back to his office,” she said, waving toward a hallway.

Dr. Beetleman stood up when Kate appeared in his doorway, offering her a large hand to shake and a friendly smile. As always, his shock of rumpled white hair made him look like an aging Beethoven. It was a resemblance he appeared to cultivate.

“I’m looking for Grace. Is she still practicing?”

Dr. Beetleman frowned slightly. “Grace? She hasn’t been here today.”

It took effort for Kate to keep her voice level. “She was supposed to have a lesson with you.”

Dr. Beetleman’s frown deepened. “When she didn’t show, I assumed something came up. Have you tried her friends?” He gestured toward a chair for her to take a seat.

Kate sank into it, feeling heavy with embarrassment. “What friends? If she has friends, I don’t know them.”

The professor nodded in a comforting way as if this were a perfectly natural thing and not a sign that Kate was an inadequate mother.

“She’s been having, well—” Kate struggled to find a way to characterize her daughter’s metamorphosis into rebellious teen.

“Troubles,” Beetleman finished for her. “Yes, Ian’s mentioned that.”

“Has he?” It was Kate’s turn to be surprised. She thought she should probably feel offended that Ian was discussing things with someone else when he wasn’t even talking to her, but this man had been like a father figure to Ian. It shouldn’t have surprised her.

“Yes. Of course, as I’ve reminded Ian, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with Grace.”

“Does she talk to you? About her friends, I mean.” She sat forward, clutching her hands in her lap.

“Not really. We talk mostly about music, of course. She’s a very talented girl, but she needs to work harder.”

Kate nodded. “She loves music, but she thinks she also loves this boy.”

Dr. Beetleman smiled. “A girl as pretty as Grace has to be careful.” He leaned forward and patted her hand and that’s when she realized she was clutching the edge of his desk like a lifeline.

“Don’t worry. Grace is a sensible girl,” the professor said with a smile. “I’m sure by the time you get home she’ll be waiting for you.”

Wanting to believe this, Kate headed for home, phoning Ian again on the way. He answered on the fourth ring sounding breathless.

“Yes?” He sounded distracted.

“Grace didn’t come home.”

“What?”

“Grace didn’t come home after school, well, after her piano lesson.”

“She’s probably still in one of the practice rooms. I wouldn’t worry about it.” He sounded annoyed, and Kate swallowed a desire to scream at him.

“She isn’t. I’ve just come from Beetleman’s office. She never showed up for her lesson.”

“Have you called her friends?”

“What friends? I don’t know any of her friends, I don’t even know if she has any.”

“Deep breaths, Kate, it was just a question.”

“Then answer it yourself. Who are her friends?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure someone does. What about the counselor at school, what’s his name—Troll?”

“Trowle. Somebody Trowle.”

“So call him. Maybe she got in trouble at school.”

“I think they would have called if that were the case.”

“Maybe she’s joined some club, then. Why don’t you just go home and check again. She’s probably at home right now raiding the liquor cabinet.”

“Jesus, Ian, don’t you even care?”

His put-upon sigh was long and drawn out. “What do you want me to do, Kate? Leave work and help you search the streets of Wickfield because our daughter is late getting home? She’s a teenager, Kate. That’s what teenagers do.”

“She’s never done it before.”

“There’s always a first time. Look, I’ve got to finish up some work here. Call me if anything changes.”

The house was ominously silent. Kate walked through the rooms anyway, calling Grace’s name. Nothing had been moved; it was obvious Grace hadn’t been home.

Kate looked in her daughter’s room, trying to tell if anything was missing. Had Grace planned to run away? Had her backpack been unusually full this morning?

With a growing sense of dismay, she realized just how little she knew of her daughter’s life. When had that happened? How was it possible that in just a few short years she had gone from what had sometimes been cloying intimacy with Grace, days when Kate couldn’t use the bathroom without company and grew so tired of the chatter that her head ached, to this state? Grace might as well have been a stranger.

Kate rifled through her desk drawers searching for anything that would point her toward Grace. A little address book she’d been given as a gift had a few names in it, but they were all old friends from the city.

She knew one girl, though. What was her name? Kate flipped through a pile of textbooks on Grace’s desk and finally found a note tucked into the back of a book.

“Where were you?” was written in blue ink.

“Meeting with counselor,” followed in black. It went back and forth for several more lines.

“That sucks.”

“Yeah. Guy’s an idiot.”

On the bottom of the page was an ornate H. Kate struggled to remember. Heidi? Harriet? Something like that. If she saw it, she’d be able to pick it out. Suddenly she remembered the school directory. Hadn’t they been given one of those when Grace started at Wickfield High?

She raced down the hall to the extra bedroom that Ian used as a home office. It was lined with bookshelves and had an oak filing cabinet. She jerked it open hard enough to make the files jump. Sure enough, there was a hanging file neatly labeled
WICKFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
.

Kate flipped through the papers it held, school forms and announcements falling like leaves onto the Oriental rug at her feet. C’mon, where was the directory? She had a vague recollection of Grace being given one by the principal of Wickfield with a cheerful prediction of using it to contact “all your new friends.” Kate only needed to find one.

It wasn’t in there. Feeling desperate, Kate scooped up the papers she’d dropped and stuffed the whole file back in the drawer. And just like that she found it. A slim blue printout in the front of all the other files with the words
WICKFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
typed on the front page.

Flipping to the Hs, Kate scanned the list of names. Harry, Heidi, Hector—Haley! It was Haley Chin! She remembered now, could picture the shy girl who could barely make eye contact.

The phone rang ten times before it was picked up. A man answered. “Mr. Chin?”

“Yes?”

“This is Kate Corbin, Grace’s mother.”

“Who?”

She knew then that Grace wasn’t with Haley Chin, but she pressed on anyway, asking to speak with Haley.

“She’s doing her homework.”

“Please, Mr. Chin, it’s very important. My daughter is missing.”

Haley Chin sounded just as shy over the phone as she did in person. “Yes, Grace was at school, but she didn’t come home with me.”

“Did you see her get on the bus?”

“No, but I ride a different bus.”

“Please, Haley, please try and think back. Where was she at the end of the day?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Corbin. We don’t really hang out that much.”

Kate could hear the deep rumble of a male voice in the background, and then Haley said. “Maybe she had some club meeting after school.”

Leaving behind a hastily scrawled note instructing Grace not to go anywhere, Kate drove to the high school, going in the opposite direction of Wickfield’s rush hour, a single stream of cars and vans exiting off the highway heading for home.

Her belief in Haley’s suggestion faltered the closer she got to school. Even if Grace had stayed after school, any activity would have to be done by now and wouldn’t she have called for a ride home? Keeping an eye out for cops, Kate sped the whole way, missing the entrance and having to screech to a halt and reverse back and cut hard left, rubbing her right front tire against the curb.

There were three cars left in the parking lot, and Harold Trowle happened to be strolling toward one of them. She raced to a stop in front of him, and he took a step back with a startled look, almost dropping the pile of folders he was carrying. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt again, the strap of an overloaded messenger bag bisecting his chest and raising the hem of his shirt to reveal a slice of white, wobbly stomach.

“Where’s the fire?” he said with a broad smile as she hopped out of the car. His false jollity didn’t quite mask the annoyance she could see in his eyes. He shifted the pile of folders, bending one of his meaty arms over them to block them from view.

“I’m looking for my daughter. Grace Corbin?”

“Aah, Mrs. Corbin.” He shifted the folders again to shake her hand. “Nice to see you. Is something wrong?”

“Grace didn’t come home this afternoon. I thought maybe she was still at school.”

“No chance of that, I’m afraid. Nobody’s left at this time of night but me and Principal Myers. Oh, and the janitors.” He checked his watch. “Yep, definitely not at this hour. It’s way late.” He seemed to recognize the impact of that because he hastily added, “Not that teenagers really keep great track of passing time. Are you sure she hasn’t gone over to a friend’s?”

Kate shook her head. “But she’s not with Haley Chin, that’s who she hangs out with the most, so I thought maybe if I came to school…” Talking too fast, she forced herself to stop, feeling the anxiety simmering inside burst into full flame. “I don’t know where else she could be.” Except with Damien Rattle. She didn’t say that, didn’t suggest it. She didn’t want to go down that path. “Do you know any of her other friends?”

A veiled look came over Harold Trowle’s face. “My sessions with the kids are confidential,” he said. “I can’t reveal what they tell me.”

“I don’t want details about her social life, I just want to know where she might be.”

He nodded, that automatic counselor nod that was supposed to convey understanding, but only annoyed her. “Yes, I can see how that would help.” He stroked a big palm over his hairless chin. “I’m afraid I don’t know anybody other than Haley that she hangs out with.”

Her phone rang as she drove home, and she answered it with a breathless “Hello?” The disappointment when it was Ian’s voice was so keen that she started to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he said at once. “Did you find her? Has something happened to Grace?”

“No, I didn’t find her. Jesus, Ian, she’s been gone for hours now.”

“Okay, calm down, panicking isn’t going to help, Kate.”

“I’m not panicking!” She was, however, shouting. The emotion had to go somewhere.

“Look, just come by campus and pick me up and we’ll go from there.”

He was waiting for her on the curb outside Ludlum Hall, his briefcase clutched in one hand, cell phone to his ear with the other. He hung up as she pulled to a stop next to him.

“I’ve called Campbell’s parents, but no one’s seen or heard from her,” he said as he got in the car.

“Do you think she’s with Damien?”

“Probably.”

“She was never late home when she skipped school to be with him. Never.”

“Because she was busy trying to fool us. Maybe she doesn’t care if we know, or she missed the last train out, or she decided to stay in town with that idiot.”