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My daughter thinks I’m wastingher time. I see it in her face as she walks into my kitchen, as she carelessly tosses her purse onto the countertop. Jane has never been a patient girl. When she was growing up, she was in a rush to learn how to walk, to wear big-girl panties, to play basketball with the boys. My smart, fierce, indomitable daughter is always ready to go up against the enemy.
Tonight what she’s up against isme,and the battle lines are being drawn as she stands in my kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“Bad day at work?” I ask, to make small talk. She’s a homicide cop; for her it’s always a bad day.
“Dead lady in Roslindale. A nurse.”
“Murder?”
“Yeah. Surprise.” She sips her coffee. “You heard from Vince lately?”
“He called me this morning. Says his sister’s still in a lot ofpain, so he’ll need to stick around for another two weeks. I always thought hip replacements were a breeze. Not hers. He’s been waiting on her, hand and foot.”
“Tell him to make his escape and get back here. Thenhecan help you track down Tricia.”
“This is your old neighborhood, Janie. Girl goes missing, you oughta take a personal interest.”
“I did what you asked. I talked to Detective Saldana, found out where they are on the case.”
“Jackie says he’s not doing a damn thing to find her.”
“What he’s doing is going with the probabilities. Tricia ran away from home three times before. She came home all three times.”
“This time could be different. It could be a stalker. Some creepy old guy who’s lured her to his house and locked her up in his basement as a sex slave. Like that guy in Cleveland who locked up those three girls for years. Made the cops look like idiots.”
At the mention of the Cleveland case, which ended up splashed all over the cover ofPeople,Jane falls silent. I knew that would make her reconsider. No detective wants to screw up a case as public as that one.
“Okay,” Jane sighs. “Let’s go talk to Jackie.”
We don’t have to drive; the Talleys’ house is only a block and a half away, and at this time in the evening it’s a pleasant walk, the smell of cooking in the air, the glow of TV sets in windows. When we get to the Talleys’, I see Rick’s blue Camaro in the driveway and I wonder if he and Jackie are getting along any better these days. You’d think, after twenty years of marriage, they’d have either ironed out their differences or gone their separate ways. Jackie told me that during one of their arguments, he’d shoved her against the refrigerator and Tricia had seen the wholething. While I have lots to complain about when it comes to Frank, mainly his running around with another woman, at least he never shoved me. Maybe because Jane would’ve slapped handcuffs on him.
I knock on the door and almost instantly Jackie appears, her hair in disarray, her cheek smeared with eyeliner. I have always thought she was an attractive woman—maybetooattractive—but today what I see is a frightened mother. “Oh Angela, you brought her! Thank you. Janie, I can’t believe you’re a detective now. I remember that day when you were babysitting Tricia and you put her in the playpen and told her she was in jail. Even then, you were practicing to arrest people.”
Jackie keeps up the nervous chatter as she leads us into the kitchen where Rick sits reading the sports page. Although you could call him a handsome man, still with a head full of dark hair at forty-five, I never liked his looks, and I like them even less tonight. His hair is slicked back and a gold bracelet winks from beneath the cuff of his shirt. I cannot abide men who wear bracelets. When he sees Jane, he sits up straighter. Maybe it’s because she has a gun on her hip. Sometimes the only way for a woman to earn a man’s respect is to come packing heat.
Jackie scurries to the stove, where a pot’s about to boil over, and turns down the burner. The table has been set with two plates and a careless pile of silverware. The kitchen smells like burned food and the range is filthy with grease and brown crud. The sad state shows me just how much their daughter’s disappearance has disrupted this household.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Talley. I see you’re about to have dinner,” says Jane.
“No, no, don’t worry about it. Your visit is much more important.” Jackie pulls out a chair. “Please, sit. To think that our Janie is now hunting down criminals. If anyone can help us, you can.”
“This is really Revere PD’s case, strictly speaking, but I’ll try to help.” Jane sits down, carefully setting her sleeves on the crumb-littered table. “My mom says Tricia disappeared last Wednesday?”
“I woke up and she wasn’t in her room. The chain on the front door was off, so I know she walked out that way. I figured she’d gone out to see her girlfriends, so I didn’t worry about it until it got really late. Then I called the police.”
“Detective Saldana said Tricia stole money from your purse. How much?”
Jackie shifted uneasily. “I don’t know. Fifty dollars, maybe.”
“You have any idea why she took off?”
“She hasn’t been talking much to me lately. She and I, we’ve had a few arguments.”
“About what?”
“Everything,” Rick interjected with a note of weariness. “Her grades. Her smoking. Her so-called friends. Ever since she turned fourteen, it’s been pretty much hell around here.”
“You’rethe one who’s always on her case about those things, not me,” says Jackie.
