Missing Since Monday

  I burst into tears. “Dad, I’m sorry I got mad at you,” I said. “I still don’t think Mom is guilty and I still don’t think you were right to make decisions about Mike and me and our custody behind our backs, but we can’t be angry. We need each other too much right now.”

  “Come here, Maggie.” I crossed the room and sat next to my father on the couch, laying my head against his shoulder.

  “Dad?” asked Mike.

  “It’s okay, son. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Lamberton left the room and the rest of us sat together in needy silence.

  16

  The Return of Jessica Ellis

  IF ANYONE WERE to ask me to look back on the spring that Courtie disappeared and associate one word with it, I would have to say telephone. It seemed that any important or scary happening was signaled by the phone. Even before Dad and Leigh left for their vacation, the phone was ringing with Brad’s anonymous calls. It rang with Leigh’s unfortunate call from Saint Bart’s. Later, it rang with news of Courtie. It rang when the body was found in the woods. And one day, it rang with a call from a run-down diner in upstate New Jersey.

  The caller was Jessica Ellis, my mother.

  By then, Courtie had been missing for nineteen days, and the detectives were running out of clues to follow up. The FBI had been unable to trace my mother. Mr. Tierno was not a suspect. Birdie was no longer a suspect. And nothing could be done about Miss Jean Farmer and the rented car until she returned it, at which time the rental agency was to call the police. There wasn’t much you could do with a fake name and address. The state police were to watch for the car, though.

  Brad had been caught, and no ransom calls were coming in. Even Lamberton himself wasn’t around much by then, although he stopped by about once a day to see what was going on. Dad had started going into the office part-time. Life was returning to normal. Except that we didn’t have Courtenay. I began to wonder if she was dead after all.

  And then the phone rang.

  It rang at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. I was sitting in the kitchen looking forlornly at a math paper. It was a review sheet for my geometry final, and not a thing on it made sense. Mike was sitting across the table from me, annoyed because he was supposed to be tutoring me, and nothing he did or said seemed to help me understand the problems better. I had simply missed too many classes that spring, and anyway, it was hard to concentrate.

  Leigh was in her studio on the second floor. I knew that illustrations for a picture book were due to a publisher two weeks from then. I also knew that she’d barely worked on them since about a week before she and my father had left for Saint Bart’s. Furthermore, I knew that although she was panicked about getting the assignment done on time, she just wasn’t able to work on it for any extended period of time.

  Dad was upstairs, too. He’d been on the phone all morning, contacting various service organizations, lawyers, and private detectives. The police may have been slowing down their involvement with us, but Dad couldn’t stop searching. I wasn’t sure whether he was looking for my mother or for Courtenay.

  When the phone rang, I assumed it was for Dad, but I made a grab for it anyway, hoping David might have been trying to get through. Besides, I couldn’t look at one more theorem or corollary.

  “Hello?” I said.

  There was a pause. Then a woman’s voice asked simply, “Maggie?”

  Here’s how wrapped up I was in my geometry: I actually thought the caller was Mrs. Taylor, my teacher, calling at home to check up on me.

  I glanced guiltily at Mike. “Yes?” I said.

  “Maggie Ellis?”

  “Yes? … Mrs. Taylor?”

  “No. Maggie, this is your mother.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “It’s Mommy, sweetheart.”

  I didn’t seem able to raise my voice. “Where are you?” I whispered.

  Mike looked up from my math paper and raised his eyebrows, asking a silent question. I wanted to cup my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and tell him who was calling, but I couldn’t move.

  “Not too far away, darling. I’m in Ridgewood, New Jersey. I want to see you.”

  We had done an excellent job of keeping Mom’s name out of the news, out of the story altogether. As we had promised Lamberton, we hadn’t mentioned that angle of the case to a soul. At least I hadn’t, and I assumed the others hadn’t either. Because if Mom had gotten wind of it, she’d never have dared to get so close to Princeton.

  “You want to see us?” I repeated. Why couldn’t I say anything intelligent?

  By that time, Mike had gotten to his feet and was standing behind me. “What’s going on, Maggie? Is it about Courtenay?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s Mom. It’s our mother. She wants to see us.”

  “Where is she?” Mike clenched his jaw, and I could see a muscle under his ear working up and down, up and down.

  “Maggie? Are you still there?” asked Mom. “I know this is a surprise, but—”

  I waved Mike away. “Yes. Yes, I’m here. You’re in Ridgewood, Mom? When do you want to see us?”

  “Today. Can you get away? It’s Saturday.”

  I didn’t answer her question. “How come you never tried to see us before?”

  “I wasn’t permitted to.”

  “But you aren’t now, either, are you? Why—”

  “Not so many questions, darling. Let me give you directions to Ridgewood. Mike can drive, can’t he?”

  “Yes.” All I could think of was how warm I felt, talking on the phone to my own mother, hearing her call me “darling.” That word didn’t have the same meaning coming from the lips of anyone else, not even my father. The bond between mother and daughter is unique, and very strong. It can stand a lot. It would have to, I thought, in order for a simple word to turn my knees to oatmeal, and to make me forget everything Dad had told Lamberton about Jessica Ellis.

  “Do you have paper and pencil?”

  “Um, yes. … Just a sec.” I scrambled around for a pen and a pad of notepaper. “Okay.”

  Mom gave me directions to a motel and diner on the outskirts of Ridgewood. “Bring a map of New Jersey with you just in case. And Maggie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Not the police and not your father.”

  “All right.”

  “You’re a good girl. I’ll be waiting, sweetheart.”

  In slow motion, I returned the receiver to the cradle. “Mike,” I said in a low voice, “she wants to see us today. She’s in Ridgewood at some diner or motel. She gave me directions. I know we shouldn’t go, and I know we should tell Lamberton, but if Dad keeps up this custody thing, we might not have another chance to see her for years. I think we should go ahead. We can see for ourselves that Mom doesn’t have Courtie. Then we’ll come home, tell everyone all about it, and Mom’s name will be clear and she’ll be off somewhere before anyone can do anything to her. What do you think?”

  A slow grin spread across Mike’s face. His hand gripped an imaginary microphone, and in his best announcer’s voice, he said, “Folks, it’s truly inspiring. These people, separated for so many years, are about to be reunited by the miracle of the telephone and a VW Rabbit—and you are here to witness the emotional and blessed event.”

  I grabbed Mike, kissed his cheek, and cried, as loudly as I dared, “I can’t believe it! We’re going to get to see her! I wonder how she’ll look. Remember her hair—all kind of scraggly and wild, like she—”

  “Not now, Maggie. In the car. We’ve got to get going.” Mike ran to the base of the stairs and yelled up, “Hey, Dad! Leigh! David and Martha want to go to the beach! We’re taking the car! We’re going to … ”

  “Asbury Park,” I whispered.

  “Asbury Park! Okay? We’ll be back by seven. See you.”

  Mike and I grabbed a couple of apples and some beach towels to make our trip look legitimate, but we didn’t even bother with our sui
ts since we’d have had to go upstairs for them. On our way to the garage, I could hear Leigh calling out something about my geometry exam, but I didn’t answer her. We jumped into the car, and Mike sped down the driveway and headed for Route 1.

  “How long do you think it will take to get there?” I asked.

  “About an hour, I guess. Maybe an hour and a half. Depends on the roads.”

  “Oh, Mike, finally. After all this time we’re going to see her. Mom. I knew she’d call us one day.”

  “Remember the time it was snowing and she arranged an indoor picnic supper on the floor in the living room?”

  “And let us roast hotdogs in the fireplace?” I added. “And remember the time she and Dad had company for dinner and Mom was carrying the chicken into the dining room and dropped the whole platter on the floor, and just said, as calmly as ever, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll go get the other one’—but of course there was no other one; Mom just put the dropped one back on the platter.”

  Mike laughed. “Do you remember the time we were bored and she told us we could paint the tile walls in the bathroom with watercolors?”

  “Yeah. And when I was little and you were at school and Dad was at work, did you know that Mom would sit on the floor in my room and play dolls with me? Not many mothers would do that. … Mike?”

  “What.”

  “Do you remember any of the stuff Dad told Lamberton about?”

  Mike hesitated. “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so, either.”

  Mike pressed the blinker down and turned left onto Route 1.

  We lapsed into silence.

  17

  Mom

  THE DIRECTIONS MOM HAD given me led us to a stark, seedy highway just south of Ridgewood. We could see nothing but sleaze, as Mike put it, in all directions. We passed run-down gas stations, the price signs swinging back and forth in the breeze. We passed squat motels, paint peeling, the numbers on the room doors fading. They had funny names like Sleep-E-Hollow and Bed ’n’ Bite and E-Z Nite. One even advertised rooms for rent.

  “Can you imagine living in one of those awful motel rooms right on the highway?” I asked Mike.

  He set his jaw. “You’d have to be pretty desperate,” he replied.

  We passed diners, blinds drawn against the sun, broken glass scattered through the parking lots. Some of them looked abandoned. A blackboard was set out in front of one. In childish handwriting, it advertised: Today’s Special—Cheese Sandwich—50¢.

  “That’s a special?” I said.

  “Could you look at the directions again?” asked Mike. “Either we’ve passed the turnoff or we’re right on top of it. Mom said two and a half miles on this road, and we passed that almost half a mile ago.”

  “We’re watching for the American Tile Company,” I told Mike, “or a sign that says American Tile Company. I’m not sure whi—Hey, there it is.” Looming up on our right was a billboard, the paper peeling away at the edges. A fat cartoon workman wearing a white cap and overalls was holding up a piece of tile twice his size. AMERICAN TILE CO., the sign screamed. TILE FOR ALL YOUR NEEDS. “Okay, turn right,” I instructed. “Yeah, this is the road. Now we’re looking for Annie’s.”

  “Annie’s?”

  “That’s what Mom said. It’s a motel with a diner. She said there’d be a big sign and the diner is trimmed in red. It should be on the right.”

  We passed an old gas station, no longer in use, and a low, flat-roofed brick building that could have been anything—once. The broken windows were boarded up and trash was blowing through the parking lot. A newspaper had flattened itself against the front door.

  “Mike?” I said. “I don’t like this place.”

  “What place?”

  “Here. This area. There’s something almost obscene about it. There aren’t even any people around.”

  Mike didn’t answer me. He was gazing intently down the road, shading his eyes with one hand. “There’s Annie’s,” he said.

  We pulled into a parking lot that was just as full of trash and broken glass as any other we’d passed. There were, however, three cars parked in the lot, all of which looked as if they were on their last legs—or last wheels. The lot stretched around behind the diner, a wasteland of pavement.

  “Park in front,” I said nervously. “I don’t want to get too far from the road.”

  Mike obliged. We eased ourselves out of the Rabbit, emerging at the same time. Our eyes met over the top of the car.

  “Lock it,” said Mike.

  I ducked down, locked the door, then stood again. “I really don’t like this place,” I said nervously. “It’s creepy. I feel as if we’ve wandered into the Twilight Zone or something.”

  Mike was grappling with some problem. “Look,” he said after a moment, peering at the dirty windows of Annie’s Diner, “maybe you should leave your door unlocked, just in case. That way we can get in fast if we have to.” He tossed me the keys and I unlocked my door. Then I ran around to Mike and grasped his arm. We approached the diner.

  Annie’s Diner looked as if once it might actually have been a dining car on a train. It was made of metal, long ago gone grimy, and was shaped like a train car. But attached to one end was a ramshackle building with a sign identifying it as the OFICE, and attached to the other end was a long structure with a row of doors numbered 1 through 6. Annie’s Motel.

  “You don’t think Mom’s staying here, do you?” I asked Mike, shuddering.

  He shrugged, frowning.

  We climbed the steps to the diner, and Mike opened the door for me. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside, I was surprised. The diner didn’t look so bad after all. At any rate, it was clean, which was more than I had expected. The heavy smell of coffee that greeted us was very reassuring.

  A thin older woman (Annie?) who reminded me of Birdie was standing behind the counter, a pot of coffee in her hand.

  “Can I help you kids?” she asked pleasantly.

  I looked around. There were six booths in the diner and ten counter stools. The booths were empty, but two of the stools at one end of the counter were occupied by old men. A third stool, at the opposite end, was taken by a teenage boy.

  “We’re—we’re waiting for someone,” I said.

  “Well, have a seat. Anywhere.” The woman waved her hand vaguely in front of her.

  Mike and I sat down in one of the booths.

  The woman approached us immediately, armed with the coffeepot. I saw that a name tag was pinned to her white uniform. My name is Verna, it said. I’m here to serve you.”

  “Coffee?” asked Verna.

  “Yes, please.”

  Verna turned over two of the cups that were waiting face down on the table. She filled them and left.

  “Where is she?” I whispered to Mike. “Where’s Mom? I thought she was already here. I mean, I thought she was calling from here. Look, there’s a pay phone by the door. … I thought she’d be here,” I said again.

  Mike stirred his coffee idly, even though he hadn’t put cream or sugar in it. “This isn’t the place I’d imagined for a reunion of long-lost relatives,” he said.

  I rubbed my eyes tiredly. “You don’t suppose she’s—could she have … it would be kind of like her not to show up after all. I mean, it would be like our laid-back Mom, not like Dad’s desperate Jessica. Maybe we’re just too much responsibility.”

  “I think she’ll show up,” said Mike without conviction.

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she would have risked getting in touch with us and have asked us to drive all the way up here if she didn’t really want to see us. She’s never tried something like this. And she had it pretty well planned, giving us those specific directions and all. Besides, we didn’t arrange a time to meet.”

  “That’s true. How long do you think we should wait?”

  “An hour,” said Mike firmly. “An hour is long enough.”

  I was sitting on the side
of the booth that faced the front door of the diner, and I kept trying to see into the parking lot, but it was impossible. The Venetian blinds were halfway closed and the windows beyond were filthy.

  Mike and I sipped our coffee.

  I looked at my watch so many times during the next ten minutes that Mike said I was making him more nervous than he already was.

  At long last, a bell tinkled as the door opened. I craned my neck up.

  “Is it—” Mike started to ask.

  I shook my head and sat down. “Just some guy.” We watched a middle-aged man take a seat at the center of the counter and accept coffee from Verna. He ordered a doughnut, pulled out a newspaper, and began to read.

  I sighed.

  Immediately the bell tinkled again.

  I jerked my head up. Then I grabbed Mike’s hand. He stood partway up and looked over his shoulder.

  The woman who stood hesitantly in the doorway and removed a huge pair of sunglasses did not look much like the Mommy I remembered. She was old. Her dull reddish hair, which was close-cropped but still managed to escape in all directions, was streaked with gray. Her lined face was a pasty sort of color, the freckles all running into each other, and her mouth looked pinched. It was a prune made of human flesh. She was very thin.

  Mom’s eyes flicked nervously to Verna and the men at the counter. She seemed to size them up. When she was satisfied, she pulled the door closed behind her and stepped inside.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Mom?” I said.

  She jerked her head around. “Maggie?”

  “It’s me, Mom.”

  “And me.” Mike stepped out of the booth.

  Our mother put her hand to her mouth and walked slowly toward us. “Oh, it can’t be,” she whispered. Her hand was shaking. “My babies. You’re … Of course I knew you’d be grown up, but still, I didn’t expect … Why, Maggie, you’re beautiful.”

  She held her arms out to us and gathered Mike and me into an awkward three-person hug, murmuring our names and stroking our hair. When at last we disentangled ourselves, all three of us were crying, and so was Verna behind the counter. The four men had turned to watch, and even the young guy looked teary. When I glanced up, the four of them ducked their heads and spun their stools back to their food.