“I’m Kevin Infante,” said the male detective, who had the kind of Mediterranean good looks to which Helen was once partial. She found herself patting her hair, running her fingertips across her neck as if she might be able to erase the beaded lines that had come to rest there, like those wispy necklaces favored by young girls. “And this is my partner, Nancy Porter.”
“We were hoping to talk to your-to Alice Manning,” the girl said. Although plump, she struck Helen as everything Alice had once yearned to be-unthreatening, agreeable, popular. Miss Congeniality. The class secretary but never the class president. Alice probably hadn’t broken the habit of wanting those things, poor thing.
“She’s not here. She’s…out.”
“Do you know where she is, or when she might be home?”
“May I ask what this is about?” Helen’s voice squeaked a little.
“We just want to talk to her,” the female detective repeated with a firm, unyielding tone. “Nothing more.”
“I think she took a walk.”
“A walk?”
“She walks a lot.” God, she must look like a terrible mother, standing here with her morning hair, in this decadent silk robe, like some madam in an old Storeyville brothel. All she needed to complete the picture was a bare-chested man at her kitchen table, reeking of sex and screaming for his breakfast. But Jesus, Alice was eighteen, a grown-up under the law. Was Helen to be held to a different standard because of the past? How many women could produce their eighteen-year-old children on a Saturday afternoon? It’s 1:30P.M., do you know where your children are? Helen had always thought the old public service announcement was more for children than for adults, for she had never felt safer than when she was curled up on the sofa in her family’s den, hearing that rhetorical question just before the nightly newscast. Her parents knew where she was. She knew where her parents were. All was right with the world.
“Does she have a cell phone? Or a job where we might find her?”
“You know, I’ve encouraged her to get a job.” Helen felt relief at being able to tell that small truth. “She says she’s looking. That’s probably what she’s doing today, following up on some leads.”
“Do you know where?”
“Well, no.” Helen tried to remember what they had discussed, specifically. “Not the grocery stores, because they’re union. And not the convenience stores. They’re not safe. I mean, don’t you agree? You wouldn’t want to have a daughter working in a convenience store, would you?”
She was flirting, she realized, setting up the male detective to tell her that, no, he didn’t have a daughter, wasn’t even married, in fact. Maybe he would scrawl his home number on his business card, or ask with fake nonchalance if there was a Mr. Manning.
But it was the girl who pulled out a card and handed it to Helen.
“Would you call us when she comes home? We just need to talk to her. Nothing formal. May have more to do with one of her friends than her.”
“ Alice has a friend?” Helen could not bear the idiocy of her own voice, this stupid, echoing, out-of-it quality, as if she were some Judy Holliday type. She never sounded this way, never. “I mean, she seems to keep to herself, as far as I know.”
“When did she get home?” the female detective asked.
Until that moment, Helen had been trying to cling to the idea that this was all a coincidence, that there was no link between present and past. Damn it, Alice, she thought, suddenly furious with her daughter. She had been given every chance to start over-second chances, third chances, even. But she would rather keep punishing Helen than take advantage of her opportunities.
“Last night,” the young woman prompted. “What time did she get home last night?”
“Do I have to talk to you?”
“No,” the male detective said. “But why wouldn’t you?”
“I can think,” Helen said, “of no shortage of reasons. For one thing-you still haven’t told me what this is about.”
“Well, it’s not really about anything. We’re working on a case, your daughter may be able to help us. That’s all.”
Ah, these were the police Helen remembered, in their most unhelpful guise. They were always so maddeningly elliptical, so noncommittal. Taciturn, reserved, insisting you were on a need-to-know basis even as they began destroying your life. Do you recognize this, Ms. Manning? Have you seen this before, Ms. Manning? The question had come before she could focus on the this in question. That detective had been middle-aged, thick-middled, and reeking of tobacco. She remembered still that she had not specifically requested “Ms.” and the presumption had irked her. She refused to look at the bagged object in their hands, eager to disavow it, even though she knew she could not.
After all, Alice ’s name was written on the bottom of the metal box in firm purple marker. Alice wrote her name on everything-toys, books, notebooks. Once, she had even scratched her initials on the back of a locket with her name engraved on the front. “Because it says Alice, not Alice Manning,” she had told Helen at the time. “So another Alice could take it.” Alice had worried a lot about phantom Alices, little ghost girls intent on stealing everything she had. She wrote her full name everywhere she could, including even her despised middle name to be on the safe side. Alice Lucille Manning, Alice Lucille Manning, Alice Lucille Manning, ALICE LUCILLE MANNING. “Did you name me for Lucille Ball?” she asked Helen once. “No, for my mother’s mother.” “Oh,” Alice said. “Well, can I tell people that you named me for Lucille Ball, like she was a distant relation?”
At least these detectives were empty-handed, a reprieve of sorts. Maybe it really was an innocent coincidence, a traffic accident seen, a robbery witnessed, nothing more. “I don’t know when she’ll be home,” Helen told them. “But she’s always home for dinner. Especially Saturdays. We have pizza on Saturdays.”
The female detective’s parting glance was pitying. Helen didn’t mind. Pity was the least she deserved.
The afternoon sun created a powerful glare on the parking lot at Westview, so Ronnie did not notice the man and woman walking purposefully toward the bagel shop until they were inside. But once she could see them, she knew they were officials of some sort, on business. Health Department? Not on a Saturday, and not with guns on their belts. Mall security? Those guys wore uniforms and didn’t come in pairs. No, these were cops.
“Ronnie Fuller?” the woman asked. She looked familiar for some reason, yet Ronnie didn’t know her. Maybe she just had one of those faces.