Table For Five

“I talked to him just before 3:00 p.m.,” Jane was saying. “He was very clear. He would pick Ashley up by four-thirty this afternoon and take her to her mother’s house. I had a class to teach tonight, so I brought the baby here myself.”

Dumping her like a sack of old mail, Cameron added silently. The truth was, he didn’t really mind Jane, but at the moment he was looking for someone to be pissed at.

They briefly filled in Jane on what they knew so far. The two of them had left Charlie’s school together, presumably because his mom’s car wouldn’t start. Neither responded to repeated calls on their cell phones. There had been no reports of accidents despite the inclement weather. The cops explained that some cell phones had a GPS device and could be tracked down, but apparently his parents’ phones didn’t have this feature.

Unexpectedly, giving him no chance to think about his answers, Officer Franklin started questioning Cameron.

“Did you talk with your father before school this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Fought with him would be more accurate, but no one needed to know that.

“Did you talk about anything in particular?”

“Not really. We have to change houses every Friday. That’s in the parenting plan. I said I was going to the golf course after school and I’d see him in a week.” What he’d actually said was, I hate you, you son of a bitch. I hope I never see you again.

His father had responded in kind. Go ahead and hate me, you little shit. Just make sure you don’t screw up in the tournament this weekend.

It’s not like you’ll even be there to see me screw up, Cameron had concluded.

“After that,” he said, “I got my things and caught the bus to school.”

“Did you see your mother today?”

“No. She was supposed to pick me up at the golf course and she didn’t show.” He went to the window and stared at it, seeing only his own ghostly reflection. It weirded him out to imagine what was going on in the cops’ heads about his parents. They were probably thinking of people messing around in a sleazy motel or getting drunk and screaming at each other. “Look, can’t you just go find them? You’re not going to learn anything more here.”

“At this time, we can’t do an attempt-to-locate,” said Officer Franklin. “When two adults in good health are involved, they eventually show up. This has already been put up on the city channel where the dispatchers chat among themselves, but until there’s a true emergent situation, we can’t do a broadcast.”

Which was her way of saying they were shit out of luck. Nobody was being protected and served here, Cameron thought. He wondered if he should point that out.

“For the time being,” Officer Franklin went on, “you can call the state patrol and area hospitals. I appreciate your alarm, but I’m sure they’ll show up with an explanation.”

Uncle Sean stood up, his lips tight with unexpressed anger. “I need to put gas in my car before the station closes. Then I’m going to start looking.”

Cameron stood up, too. “I’ll go with you.”

“We need for you to stay right here,” Officer Franklin said.

Although she barked it like an order, Cameron sensed the compassion beneath the words. It would be a mistake for him to go out looking for his missing parents.

He might not like what he found.

chapter 12

Saturday

12:45 a.m.

“What exactly is an APB, anyway?” Jane Coombs asked Lily. She spoke without looking up from the screen of her cell phone. She’d been staring at it as though willing Derek to call.

“It stands for all points bulletin,” Lily said. “It means each law enforcement agency within a prescribed radius receives a broadcast of the alert.”

“And they’re not going to do that for us,” Jane said, a quaver in her voice.

“Not until they’ve been missing twenty-four hours. That seems to be the magic number.” She felt like quavering, too. She hated the icy knot of worry in her gut.

Other than the sound of the shower running upstairs for Cameron, the house was eerily, uncomfortably quiet. Soon after Jane’s arrival, the police had left, promising that if Crystal and Derek didn’t return by four o’clock tomorrow, they would initiate the mysterious business of conducting a missing-persons search. Until then, there was nothing to do but wait. And worry.