Ceepak ignores the not-so-subtle hint.
“Frankly, I'd forgotten all about Lisa till you guys showed up. DeFranco.”
“Excuse me?” says Ceepak.
“DeFranco. That was her name. Lisa DeFranco. I think her mom still lives around here. I see her sometimes at the A amp;P over on Amboy Avenue.”
“Shopping?”
“No. She works one of the registers up front. That's how I knew it was her. The nametag.”
Ceepak nods. “Thank you, Mr. Kladko.”
“That's it?”
“Thank you for your time.”
“Hey, no problem….”
He tucks the plastic bag with the ring in it into the front pocket of his khakis the same way you might stuff away one of those curling gas-pump receipts the machine spits out after you fill up on your credit card. Apparently, it holds very little sentimental value.
“I wonder if Mrs. DeFranco is working at the A amp;P this morning,” says Ceepak as we watch Kladko hustle down the escalator.
I have a hunch we'll soon find out.
On the ride over to the A amp;P, Ceepak explains.
“Mr. Kladko is hiding something.”
“Yeah. I figured as much.”
“‘Everybody's got a secret, Sonny. Something they just can't face.’”
Ceepak isn't calling me “Sonny” because he forgot my name. He's quoting Springsteen. “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” It's something we do with each other because we both love The Boss, the poet laureate of the Jersey Shore. However, when it comes to actually having lyrics memorized, Ceepak wins, hands down. I'm better at the sing-along parts. The sha-la-la-la's.
“Don't you find it curious that Mr. Kladko chose to meet us at a mall?” Ceepak now asks.
“I guess it was his turn to get the kids their Sunday morning Cinnabon fix. Kill two birds with one stone and all that.”
“Perhaps. Or, maybe he didn't want us bringing the ring and any questions it might raise into his home.”
“Questions from Mrs. Kladko?”
Ceepak nods.
“He had to agree to see us. Showing reluctance would have seemed odd. However, he immediately assumed we were private investigators. Our very presence made him nervous.”
It never occurs to Ceepak that simply talking to him about the weather can make someone nervous.
Especially someone with a guilty conscience.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ipray that when my mom is sixty-five she isn't bagging groceries on the 12-ITEMS-OR-LESS line at the A amp;P. This is what we see Mrs.
DeFranco doing when the store manager points her out to us.
“She has her break at ten.”
“We'll wait,” says Ceepak.
It's nine fifty-eight. The manager folds his beefy arms across his chest-it's clear that nobody in his little kingdom ever sneaks off early.
Mind you, neither Ceepak nor I are wasting our two minutes of waiting time. We're both observing Mrs. DeFranco. Ceepak probably sees more than I do-but I notice some stuff, too.
Like the way the she jams the bread into the bag on top of the bananas and then adds the sixty-four-ounce Hawaiian Punch can so she can simultaneously smoosh somebody's food and ruin their day, just like all her days started being ruined years ago.
She looks tired. Haggard. On her feet for too long-twenty years too long. She looks like an old cloth left out in the sun, one you used to clean your car, then dropped on the driveway where it baked until the cotton started to crack.
Long story short, I'm guessing Mrs. DeFranco is going to be a real laugh-a-minute when we talk to her.
“Where the hell is Sea Heaven?”
“Down the shore,” I answer, not bothering to correct her.
We're standing in the humid shade out front of the A amp;P. Mrs. DeFranco is sucking hard on a Marlboro-one of the real long ones so it'll last her the whole break. We had to flash our badges to get her to talk to us. Actually, we had to flash them to get her to quit saying, “Leave me the fuck alone,” in front of all the little kids buying gum-balls from the machines near the sliding doors.
“We'd like to ask you a few questions about your daughter,” says Ceepak.
“Who?”
“Lisa.”
“You seen her? She in Sea Heaven?”
“No. Not that we're….”
“What'd she do? She kill somebody or some shit like that?”
“No, ma'am. In fact, we have no idea where she might be.”
“Well, that makes two of us. I ain't seen or heard from her in twenty-four years.”
“I don't understand….”
“She ran away!” Narrowing her eyes, she takes another hot drag off the cigarette. I can hear the paper broil. “She hit the highway. Never told me where she was going. Never called-not even once. No postcards, neither.”
It's hard to tell what she's feeling. The Marlboro seems to interest her more than her daughter.
Ceepak, as always, wants to help. “Maybe Lisa is still in our area. We could look for her. Initiate a search.”
Now she laughs. “Fine. Knock yourself out.”
“She'd be what?” says Ceepak. “Forty-two? Forty-three?”
“Something like that,” says Mrs. DeFranco. She sends out a steady stream of smoke. “Check all the whorehouses first.”
“Ma'am?”
“The whorehouses. That's where she'd be, the fucking little slut.”
Okay. We definitely have some of those Dr. Phil-type mother-daughter issues going on here.
“Your daughter was promiscuous?” asks Ceepak.
“She was a fucking tramp. I heard about it. Heard what she did under those bleachers and out in the parking lot with all them boys.”
“Back in 1983, when she first disappeared, did you file a missing person report?”
“Why? She wasn't missing. She ran away. Besides, I was busy. Had my own shit to take care of. Ronny said I was doing the right thing….”
“Ronny?”
“This guy I was seeing back then.”
“Do you have a photograph of your daughter? It might help us find her if …”
“I threw all her pictures in the trash.”
“Did your daughter go steady with any particular boy?”
She laughs. Smoke comes out her nose. “Why buy a cow when the milk's free? That's what she was. A fat fucking cow. Ate too much junk food. Guess that's my fault, too, hunh?”
“Didn't her father intercede with these young men?”
“Her father? Hah! That bastard left before Lisa was even born. It was just her and me-and then, when I'm finally getting my own shit together again, she takes off and Ronny dumps me.”
“I apologize if we've stirred up painful memories, ma'am.”
Ceepak sounds totally bummed. Not the end he'd imagined for our mission to Edison. I'm bummed, too. For him.
But Mrs. DeFranco isn't done yet.
“When she left town, she was even fatter.”
“Ma'am?” asks Ceepak.
“Jesus. How stupid are you? Lisa was knocked up, okay? She was fat because she was pregnant.”
“Are you certain?”
“I found a positive EPT in the trash next to the toilet, didn't I?”
We wait. She still looks like she has something more to say.
“And then?” Ceepak encourages her.
“She packed her shit, took off in the middle of the night, and I never saw her again. She was gone. Fine, I said. She doesn't want to come home, that's her fucking choice.”
Ceepak looks sad.
“Anything else you can tell us, ma'am?”
“Before she left, she showed me a ring. A present from her boyfriend. Oh, she was so fucking proud. But it wasn't no engagement ring and it sure as shit wouldn't pay for no abortion, neither. They don't give you jackshit when you hock those things. I know. And I told her so, too.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Exit 80 on the Garden State Parkway.
That's when Ceepak finally says something.
“Can you drop me off at the animal shelter?”