The Laura Cardinal Novels (30 page)

“Here we are,” Dale said.

Suddenly she felt queasy. James was going to college in the fall. He owned an expensive sports car. His father was a surgeon. What were James’s parents doing in a place like this, when they could have stayed at one of the inns by the airport?

“Come on,” Dale said, getting out. He came around to her side and opened the door.

At least the motor home looked good. Clean-looking. New tires. That dispelled some of her worries. The other thing that made her feel better was, for some reason, THE ROPERS wheel cover under the back window. It had to be James’s last name. She tried it on for size. James Roper.
Mrs
. James Roper.

And she liked the curtains in the window. Not blinds, but lace curtains. Something a mom might make. James’s mom?

Still, she balked. “Where’s James?” she asked.

“He’s inside.”

“I thought he was working on the air conditioner.”

“He’s probably finished by now. Come on, let me introduce you to his parents.”

That made her hang back even more. She didn’t doubt they would call her mom the minute they saw her.

Dale gave her a little nudge. “Come on, don’t be shy.” He unlocked the door to the motor home and stood there, waiting for her to step up inside.

The confined space was stuffy like it had been shut up. It didn’t seem to her that the air conditioning had been on recently. And wouldn’t you have it on in order to make sure it worked?

“Jamie!” Dale called into the interior. “Come on out here! Milady awaits!”

That convinced her. She stepped up into the tiny living room.

“Oh,” Dale said, as he closed the door behind them. “You know something? I just remembered, Jamie went to the store.”

“What about his parents?”

Dale was looking at her, his face sad.

Alarm bells were ringing in her head now. Her stomach tightened, and her heart started pounding in her chest, her throat, her ears. She suddenly felt an overwhelming premonition that she had just stepped off the face of the earth.

Beth Holland had been watching TV, one eye on the window. Any moment she expected to see the sweep of headlights announcing Marie Lansing’s car.

She had gotten Bryan out of the house by quarter of nine. It was for Summer’s sake, because the two didn’t get along, and things were tough enough on children of divorce. Even though Summer knew they were involved, she didn’t want her to have to face the evidence first-hand. And so she had hustled to make her own bed and even wash the wine glasses and throw the wine bottle into the recycle bin.

Everything had been straightened up by nine o’clock. But nine became nine fifteen, then nine thirty. And now she was starting to worry.

She’d put off calling because she didn’t want Summer to think she didn’t trust her. But this was ridiculous. Steeling herself, she went to her address book and found the number.

Marie Lansing answered the phone.

“This is Summer’s mother. May I speak to her?" She didn’t want to embarrass Summer by telling Chrissy’s mother what it was about. They would have their talk and that would be it.

Confusion in Mrs. Lansing’s voice. “Summer? She’s not here.”

The girls couldn’t still be at McDonalds at this time of night. “She told me she was going to meet Chrissy and Jenny at McDonalds, and then go to your house.”

Marie Lansing said, “Chrissy’s here. Let me put her on the phone.”

As she waited, Beth started to feel more than worry. She told herself not to be silly. It was probably a misunderstanding.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Chrissy? Do you know where Summer is?”

“Huh-uh.”

Fear sharpened to a point.
Take a deep breath
. “I thought she was meeting you and Jenny at McDonalds.”

“No,” Chrissy said carefully. “I think she said she was busy tonight.”

“Busy?" She could hear her own voice, up an octave.

“I don’t know what she—I mean, I don’t think we had any plans,” Chrissy said quickly. “You could call Jenny. Maybe she knows.”

She gave Beth the number.

Dreading what she would hear, Beth called Jenny Conley’s house and started praying as she waited for Mrs. Conley to go get her daughter. Went through the same questions, the same elusive replies.

Whatever Summer had going, it didn’t include Jenny or Chrissy. Summer had lied to her.

Shaken, Beth put the phone down.

She stared at it for a moment. Then she picked it up again and called Buddy.

Buddy Holland was in the process of opening the door to his house in Bisbee when the phone rang. He locked the door behind him and carried the pizza from the Greek place and the beer from the Safeway over to the kitchen counter.

Then he stood over the phone, waiting for the message. He never answered the phone because of telemarketers. He hated them with a passion, but there was nothing he could do to them, so he didn’t waste his energy. Two things you had to just let slide in this world—spam and canned phone calls.

After the beep, Beth’s voice— strained and anxious—came on. “I don’t know where Summer is—“

He grabbed up the phone.

“Ohmygod, Buddy, she lied to me! I can’t believe it …”

The moment he heard her voice, he knew what had happened.

She was babbling. “I dropped her off at McDonalds and that was the last—“

“Beth, stop it. You need to calm down. Tell me exactly what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”

She told him. About the friends at McDonalds. About Summer’s promise that Mrs. Lansing would drive her home at nine. He glanced at the clock. It was a little after ten now.

Summer had been gone three hours.

When she was through talking, he said, “Listen carefully. I want you to call TPD right now. Have them send someone out to the house. Ask for either White or Cheek. I’m on my way.”

“She could just be meeting a boy. Don’t you think we should look—“

“Call them. Do it now. I’ll see you in an hour and a half.”

“You don’t think—“

“We don’t have time to think. Call them.”

When he hung up the phone, he sat down and closed his eyes.

This would be the end of his career. He had to face that. But his career was, at this moment, as unmourned as the uneaten pizza in the cardboard box. It meant nothing.

One thing for sure: He wouldn’t want to live if he never saw his little girl again.

He swallowed his pride and made the two calls: one to the Tucson Police Department, the other to the Department of Public Safety. He managed to convince the people who mattered that they needed to recall Laura Cardinal from Florida—now.

By the time she arrived, he would have psyched himself up sufficiently to tell her the truth.

She was a wily one—a cop’s daughter—but just like the others, she’d ended up doing what he wanted. That was the secret about girls. They aimed to please. Girls could be easily pressured, talked into things—they didn’t trust their own instincts. They shut that part of themselves down because they didn’t want to appear to be uncool, or rejecting, or out of the loop. So they were malleable.

Even now, he could tell she didn’t believe it. She was still trying to apply the ways of the world she knew to this new circumstance. She’d been raised to be polite. She’d been raised to be a good girl. His heart ached for her. Politeness could be a dangerous thing in this day and age.

And yet it was what had attracted him to her. That aura of innocence. Oh, she pretended to be wise in the ways of the world, but she wasn’t. She was like a kitten with its hair standing up, making itself seem bigger than it was.

That quality—that politeness,
that kindness
—that was what he had loved in Misty. Sadly, Misty had grown out of it. She’d had disappointments, she’d fallen into bad ways, she did drugs, but he preferred to remember her the way she was when they were in love.

He watched Summer’s face. She was staring around, her bewilderment turning to panic.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

He kept his voice steady and low. As you would talking to a frightened animal—and really, that was what she had been reduced to. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I think I’d better go home.”

“In a minute. Just let me explain to you—“

“Where’s James?”

This was always the part he didn’t like. He hated that moment when he had to tell them the truth. Still, he had learned that it was better to get it over with rather than to scare the girl even more. “James is not coming.”

“Where is he?" She had that look in her eye now, a dawning. He reached behind him, made sure the plastic handcuffs were there, stuck down the back of his jeans. He didn’t want to use them, but he would if she didn’t see reason.

“I want to explain this to you so you understand that I have only your best interests at heart.
I’m
James. I’m the person you wrote to, I’m the person you fell in love with.”

Her mouth dropped open. She started for the door. “Let me out of here!”

He moved quickly and barred the doorway. She couldn’t stop herself and stumbled into him, her face almost even with his, her tiny breasts in that peasant top brushing against his chest.

That did it. He wanted her now. Right now. Wanted her badly.

He closed his eyes, sidling away from the proximity of her breasts. He couldn’t let her touch him again. If she did, that would be it. That would be it because he had such a tenuous grip now on himself now—

He slid away further. Aware that he was hard as a rock.

No, he told himself. He knew it wouldn’t work that way. It just wouldn’t. He’d learned from experience. Girls needed to be wooed. His mother had told him that.

He closed his eyes and started to pray. As he prayed, he pictured what it would be like, the two of them, driving all over the country, going wherever they pleased…

“You don’t know how great it will be,” he said to her. “We can go all over—the Grand Canyon, Disneyland. Have you ever been to Six Flags Over Texas?”

“I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to go home. You take me home right now.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.” He held his hands up, open. “It’s for your own good.”

But he was looking at those small breasts. Like tiny buds, just barely stretching the peasant top. And her skin. Golden, like honey. There were white stripes, tan lines where she’d worn a swimsuit or sundress that had tied at a knot at the back of her neck. He could see it because of the blouse’s scoop neck. And the skirt. So short, so tiny, the narrow little girl hips. The smooth long legs. Like satin.

Misty had dressed like that. His mother used to talk about how slutty she looked. How if Misty were
her
child she’d dress her in nice dresses. He agreed with that. They hid a girl’s wares. Even pure girls had wares. It was just the way God made them.

“Take me home or I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. I’ve heard two screaming fights since I’ve been here.” He tweaked open the shade, the lace curtains. “See—nobody around now. They’re all at work or inside their trailers.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“You’ll understand. I know it’s going to take awhile to get used to this, but we’ve got a lot of good times ahead. Just the two of us—“

If only she
could
understand. He felt the same way when he watched the vet shows on the Animal Planet. When he saw the frightened animals struggling against the people who would help them. They just didn’t understand that they were only making things worse by fighting.

He made himself turn away from Summer, the thin top, the smooth denim skirt.

He walked over to the closet and pulled out a dress. Girl’s size 12. He had made it last year.

He held it out to her. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you go into the bedroom and put that on?”

He saw she was about to argue. And then he saw the intelligence, the cunning, come back over her face.

Nothing like Misty.

Had he made another mistake?

She took the dress, turned on her heel, and walked into the bedroom at the end of the short hall, closed and locked the door.

In the bedroom, Summer stood back from the door, her heart pounding.

This wasn’t happening. Where was James? What happened to James?

I’m James

She couldn’t think. Her mind was racing, but she couldn’t think. She was stuck on the man who said he was James when he wasn’t. She was stuck on what he said—God it was so creepy—“
Have you ever been to Six Flags over Texas?"
Like he thought if he offered that to her everything would be all right, like she was some little kid, and the idea of going anywhere with that ugly, balding, little worm—

Creepy, the way he looked at her.

He was probably her
parents
’ age.

This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be.

She became aware of the dress in her hands. It was like a little girl’s dress. She was way too old for it—why’d he want her to wear that? But when he handed it to her, she just took it.

Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I try to escape?

Instead, she just accepted the dress—maybe she even said “thanks.” What was wrong with her? How could she have gotten herself into this mess?

Because she knew this was something very bad. She knew enough about sex—three of her friends weren’t virgins anymore, and they had told her everything—she knew what this guy wanted.

He was old. He was ugly. The thought of doing it with him made her sick to her stomach. But here she was, in this smothering little room all alone. Her mom didn’t know where she was. Her dad …

He was a cop, but he lived in Bisbee. Of course they’d start looking for her, but how would they find her here? She had a pager in her purse, but what good would that do? He’d just turn it off. She wished her mom had gotten her a cell phone. She said to wait until her birthday.
Now I probably won’t have a thirteenth birthday
.

She had seen enough on TV to know that she was in deep trouble. He would probably rape her. And kill her.