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“That stinks.”

  “Yes.”

  DAD joined them upstairs. Dad was supernice to Mom. The way he looked at her made Carrie want to cry. Mom was enjoying all the attention, but she gave Dad a kind of look that Carrie spent a long time trying to name. She finally decided that the right word was cynical. As she looked between them, she felt sure that Mom didn’t love Dad anymore.

  If she had realized that yesterday, Carrie thought, it would have caused her to be really upset. Added on to everything that was hanging over her head right now, she just felt sad about it in a distant way, the way she felt sad about the reign of Mary Tudor.

  “Well, this has certainly been a nice surprise,” Mom said, as if no one had done more than said “Happy Birthday” on her birthday.

  “I have another one for you,” Dad said. His voice trembled a little.

  Mom smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I can hardly wait. Then again, there are good surprises and bad surprises.”

  “Kids, I think Mom needs another break from all of us, so today we’ll spend the day in Las Piernas, and Mom can just relax here in peace and quiet. Or go for a drive, or whatever she wants to do.”

  Mom studied him, then covered a big yawn. “I am tired. Where will you be?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d take them to see some of their aunts and uncles.”

  “Are we going to Grandfather’s again?” Troy asked happily.

  “We might. Get your own breakfasts, then let’s clean up the house for Mom before we go, so she can just relax all day. We’ll leave here at about ten. Will that give everyone enough time?”

  The boys shouted gleeful agreement. Carrie and Genie looked at each other. Carrie said, “Maybe I should stay here with Mom, in case… in case she needs anything.”

  “Don’t be silly, Carrie,” Mom said. “You go along with the others. I’ll be fine.” She gave Carrie a little kiss and a hug, and then gave hugs and kisses to the others, too.

  Dad stayed behind as they cleared the tray and herded the boys out. Carrie glanced back and saw him giving Mom a long kiss, and Mom seemed to be kissing him back. Any other time, such a display of passion would have embarrassed her. Instead, she found it gave her a little bit of hope. Maybe Mom just didn’t know what she wanted.

  Maybe they would be all right after all.

  AFTER breakfast, as the boys raced to their room, Genie whispered, “I’ll call Ms. Kelly back and tell her not to come by today.”

  “Thanks,” Carrie said.

  SHE started cleaning up the kitchen. She noticed that the little bowl Dad had used was a mortar. The pestle had been set alongside it to dry. Poor Dad. He must have gone so far as to crush fresh spices for the Bloody Mary. Thinking of this made her feel another wave of hopelessness. One kiss wasn’t going to change things between Mom and Dad.

  Genie came running into the kitchen. “Shit!”

  Carrie’s eyes widened.

  “When I called back,” Genie said, as if she hadn’t just spoken a totally forbidden word, “it wouldn’t let me leave a message.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It says her voice mail is full.”

  “Don’t feel so bad. She’ll drive here, I won’t be around, and she’ll drive away. I mean, I’m sorry that she’ll waste her time, but we can’t help it.”

  “I guess not,” Genie said. “But it might be hard to get her to come here again.” After a moment she said, “Let’s bring the camera Grandfather gave you to his house today and take pictures of you, and then ask him to get them developed for you. When they come back, we can mail them to Ms. Kelly.”

  Carrie could think of a number of ways this could go wrong, but agreed enthusiastically, because she could tell Genie was trying so hard to be helpful. She didn’t think she fooled her sister, but maybe Genie was just disappointed about having to change plans.

  THE house was never messy, but there were a few chores to be done. Dishes, laundry, dusting — there was never an end to them. Genie supervised the boys while Carrie did the sort of work she’d never entrust the boys to do.

  As she put the mortar and pestle away, she saw a jar of strawberry preserves one of their aunts had given them. A Mason jar.

  She thought of Genie, of her plea to ask Ms. Kelly about someone named Mason.

  THEY were finished with the chores before ten. Genie had even managed to get the boys dressed and ready.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t come out of their bedroom.

  “Now what do we do?” Aaron asked.

  “I know,” Carrie said, wondering if her mother had given her the ability to be an actress. “Let’s play hide-and-seek.”

  Genie stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. I’m braver than you think.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” Genie said, then turned to the boys and said, “I’ll be ‘it’ first.”

  She covered her eyes and began counting. “One-alligator, two-alligator, three-alligator…”

  CHAPTER 39

  Tuesday, May 2

  8:30 A.M.

  NEWSROOM OF THE

  LAS PIERNAS NEWS EXPRESS

  NOTHING like a day away from the office to ensure that your next morning will be delivered hot and fresh from hell.

  I heard my phone ringing from across the room as I made my way to my desk. John was motioning me into his office, Mark Baker was calling my name, and Lydia Ames was waving a thick fan of pink message slips at me in an imperative way.

  I raised my index finger in the waitress-style “be right with you” sign to John, Mark, and Lydia, and answered the phone as I dropped my purse onto my desk.

  “Irene? It’s Caleb. I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I was just wondering…”

  I sat down under the pressure of a load of guilt. “Oh, hi, Caleb. Of course you want to know what happened yesterday. Sorry, I should have called you as soon as I got back from talking to the Garcias.” I quickly gave him a synopsis of what we had learned. He was excited and full of questions. I answered a few, then said, “I can’t go into much detail right now — I just got into the office. I can tell you more after I get off work, or you could call Ethan. He was awake when I left the house this morning.”

  He thanked me and said he’d call Ethan.

  Lydia walked over with the stack of message slips before I finished talking to him. “Your voice mail is full,” she said the moment I hung up the phone. “Here’s hoping one of these people can help you find her.”

  “Help her father find her,” I said.

  That seemed to amuse her, but she only said, “Better talk to John.”

  The talk with John didn’t take all that long. He was pleased with the story. Mark had done his usual fine work, following up on the aspects of the story that concerned the police work in the case of Carla Ives. His review of their efforts ran as a companion piece to mine.

  I told John about my visit with the Garcias, and he called Mark in to talk that over. He decided, as I had thought he would, that I should keep my mitts off the story, since it so closely involved the Las Piernas Police Department. If it had gone to certain other reporters on our staff, I might not have been so complacent about it.

  I got back to my desk and started picking up messages from my voice mail. I had another set of calls from parents of children who were missing, all of whom wanted me to put a story in the paper about their own child. I could understand their desperation. I doubted they would understand that I was already pushing the limit on the number of stories I’d be able to write on the subject, and that I wasn’t the one who decided what would be in the paper each day. I spent a brief moment contemplating what the paper would be like if I did, another contemplating the headaches that went along with that power, and went back to listening to calls. Several were about children allegedly taken by noncustodial parents.

  A few were from people who thought they’d seen a girl who looked something like Carla Ives. Two of these I recognized as people who called the paper about twice a week,
claiming some connection to various stories. I made a list of the others, although most sounded vague — like the man who said he had seen her in a grocery store with another little girl in Huntington Beach, but had no idea where she lived or who she was with. When he added that he thought she might be deaf now, because the two girls were using sign language, I was almost positive he had seen someone else.

  I got a real surprise about halfway through the playback process. A woman’s voice said, “My daughter Jenny has been missing for five years, and my son was wrongfully convicted of killing her and my husband. My name is Elisa Fletcher….”

  She went on to leave a callback number and a request that I contact her as soon as possible. I hesitated over it, then copied her name and phone number on a second slip of paper and gave it to Mark. “Curiosity is killing me,” I admitted. “I’ll want to talk to her at some point, but I don’t want to step on your story.”

  When I got back to my desk, I got a call from Reed. He had some questions about the Fletcher dentists, most of which I couldn’t answer.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about Sheila’s presence at the scene of Gerry Serre’s burial, though,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “Are they rushing the DNA on the cigarette butts found at the scene?”

  “That’s not something for publication,” he said. “How did you find out about it?”

  “I’d rather not say. And I couldn’t write about it, anyway. You know that.”

  “You could talk to Mark.”

  “This sounds like a roundabout way to try to get me to tell you who talked to me.”

  He laughed. “The DNA in the cigarettes was tested. No hits in any of our databases.”

  “Did you check it against the shoe DNA?”

  “That hasn’t come back yet. We’re hoping they’ll finish it this afternoon.”

  “How about comparing the cigarettes to Sheila’s DNA?”

  There was a pause. “Now, what makes you ask something like that?”

  “I can’t help but think that she had some reason to be at the scene out at the Sheffield Estate. Some reason other than searching with Altair. She wasn’t really trying to find anything, and if it was supposedly for attention, why did she arrive there before the press was on hand? She didn’t know I was going to be there — she damned near ran me off the road when I got there, and kept going, so if it was publicity she was after, what was up with that?”

  “She made sure the Express was there that evening, for the show with the teeth.”

  “Yes. A show.”

  “If she knew something about the death of Gerald Serre, that little show probably got her killed by his murderer.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.”

  “What’s on your mind, Irene?”

  “What if she knew something about his murder or burial because she was there when it happened? Or killed him herself?”

  “Revisiting the site in full view of the newspaper and investigators?”

  “Offering to be of help in the investigation. Don’t tell me she’d be the first killer to do that.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Reed, what if she wanted the press to be able to say there was a reason for her DNA to be found there? That we had seen her smoking there, and so on?”

  Another pause. “Ben documented every step of that recovery process.”

  “Did she know that?”

  He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe not. She got there after the coroner left. Anyway, we’ll be running her DNA as part of the investigation of her murder. I’ll ask the lab to do a comparison.”

  I went back to listening to messages and making notes. About three messages after the one Caleb’s mom left, I heard another one that piqued my interest.

  “This is Martha Hayes. I used to be Martha Faroe. Reggie Faroe was my son. I’m very sorry about that man’s little girl, but Reggie had nothing to do with her being taken, and I can prove that. Please call me.” She left a number, so I gave her a call.

  She thanked me for returning her call, then said, “Reggie was no angel, and nobody knows that better’n me. His daddy was trouble, too — got killed in a bar fight. He passed his drinking along to Reggie, I guess. And his ability to charm the ladies. That boy was in trouble one way or another most of his life.”

  “You speak of him using the past tense….”

  “That’s exactly my point. Reggie was dead a week before that little girl went missing.”

  “I’m sorry….”

  “Absolutely no need to be. I loved him, I was his mama, and I wished he’d straightened out. But I would be a liar if I didn’t tell you that he made life miserable for me and Mr. Hayes and my children from my second marriage.”

  “How did he die?”

  “No certain answer to that. His body was found in Arizona.”

  I was silent, thumbing through the photocopies I had from Blake Ives. When I found what I was looking for, I said, “Mr. Ives hired a private investigator, who was able to trace Reggie to a Nevada trailer park around the time Mr. Ives’s daughter disappeared. And your son and a female companion disappeared from the trailer park around that same time.”

  “I know all about that PI — he come by here asking about Reggie, told me he thought Reggie and Bonnie had that little girl.” She laughed. “I told him that I could no more picture Reggie wantin’ to live with a little kid than I could picture him flyin’ to the moon, and that’s the truth.” She paused. “I even told him that Reggie and Bonnie wasn’t together, but I seen he didn’t believe me. I don’t know who that — what’d you call her?”

  “The PI called her a ‘female companion.’”

  “Yeah, well, I know some cops who’d like to know who she was. Anyway, back then I didn’t know Reggie was dead.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Reggie was left for dead out in the desert. He might have been murdered, but it wasn’t a sure thing — he was at the bottom of some cliff out there, and it was a question whether he fell or was pushed. Nobody saw him fall, or even ever saw him out there or knew why he was there. Didn’t have no wallet or anything on him to say who he was.”

  “And you say he was found before Carla Ives went missing?”

  “The date they give me for the body being brought in was a week before that little girl went missing, if she went missing when you said she did.”

  “What’s your theory about what happened to him?”

  “I tend to think he pissed somebody off and got himself killed, because he wasn’t exactly the type to go hikin’ in the desert. Anyway, I don’t think whoever it was left him there expected he’d ever be found, but as it happened, some rock hunter out looking for gems come across the body and called the sheriff. Well, they didn’t have nothin’ to go by, because Reggie wasn’t missed by no one.”

  “There was no missing-persons report.”

  “No. You see, Reggie disappearin’ for long periods of time wasn’t exactly anything new to me. And then I have this PI come along and tell me he’s run off with this Bonnie, that I know left him some time back, and her little girl. But back then I thought maybe they got back together. And when I didn’t hear nothin’ from Reggie, I just thought maybe he’d decided to become a family man, and well, leave it to him to do it such a lousy way.”

  She paused, then said, “I did him wrong, thinking of him like that.”

  “You say you were contacted by an Arizona medical examiner’s office?”

  “Yes. Just about two years ago, I got a call from Arizona. Somebody down there was goin’ through cold cases, John Does in the morgue. A trainee or something, and they give him this job to do. Decided to run the fingerprints. That’s the one time I guess I was lucky Reggie had a prison record. He was in the FBI system, and so they matched him up that way. And my husband, Mr. Hayes, he paid so I could go down there and bring Reggie’s ashes home.”

  By that time, she said, she had forgotten about the PI who had been asking about Reggie. My sto
ry had reminded her of him.

  “I’m not mad at you or Mr. Ives for what’s in the story,” she assured me, “but I started to think about it and figured Reggie got blamed enough for things he did do, maybe I’d set the record straight for him. I mean, I know you don’t come out and say he took that girl, but people will suppose it, just like Mr. Ives does. And maybe if Mr. Ives stops looking in the wrong place, he’ll have an easier time finding her.”

  She gave me the names of her contacts in Arizona. I thanked her, made some notes, and went back to retrieving messages.

  I logged onto my computer and found my e-mail in-box nearly as overloaded as my voice mail, although a few of the subject lines told me I had the usual amount of déjà poo in there, too — jokes and links that had been sent to me a dozen times before. Nothing dies on the Internet.

  I was deleting spam while half-listening to messages, which is why I had to replay one of them — a young girl. I wondered why she had hung up before finishing her first message, and felt relief that she had left the second one.

  A scared young girl, whispering two messages. Messages left before seven in the morning. Not the usual hour for crank calls by kids.

  Huntington Beach — where a man had seen a girl who matched Carla Ives’s description.

  For a few seconds, I told myself that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But I hadn’t reached this point in my career by ignoring gut feelings. I jumped: If this wasn’t Carla Ives, I wouldn’t lose much time following one false trail.

  Playa Azul and Vista del Mar. I looked up the location, printed it out, and hurried over to the City Desk. “I have to follow up on a lead,” I told Lydia. “You can reach me on my cell phone.”

  I heard her surprised “What—? ” and not much more as I left the newsroom.

  I glanced at my watch again when I reached the car.

  If I didn’t run into traffic, I could just make it on time.

  CHAPTER 40

  Tuesday, May 2

  8:55 A.M.

  A HOME IN LAS PIERNAS