All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1) Read online

Gabriel leans close to whisper. “You pinky-sweared.”

  Celine tries to laugh, but she snorts instead. She releases his hand and draws an “X” in the air with the red glow of her cigarette. “I also crossed my heart and hoped to die. Maybe I’d rather die than be that bored.” Her fingers tug at Gabriel’s curls. “Just kidding. We’ll be at your thing on the stroke of six, but you’ll owe me, mister.”

  “The grade fours have to be there early.”

  Celine switches on the bedside lamp to look at her face in a lipstick mirror. She presses down the dark pillows under her eyes. They puff back up when she lets go. “Your newsletter said six. Six it’s gonna be, buster.”

  “It said five o’clock for the kids in the play.”

  Celine looks at the alarm clock. Her eyes turn mean. “Little bugger,” she says. “You woke me up early.”

  ¤

  The hands of the Budweiser clock point to 5:15. Gabriel’s leg muscles hurt as he crouches beside Celine, who’s asleep on the couch. She’s wet from sweat and the damp hair is dark, which makes her look strange. Her mouth is wide open. The teeth beneath her top lip are pink with lipstick, as far as she got with getting ready for the play before she needed her medicine.

  Gabriel crumples his tinfoil angel wings and cigarette paper halo to put his head against his mother’s chest. Her heart thumps too fast, like she’s afraid of something, maybe of Elvis the Pelvis snoring in the bedroom.

  Gabriel stands up. He’s excited to be the angel in the nativity scene who says, “I bring you glad tidings of great joy.” He doesn’t usually make it to after-school events, but this time Miss Granger made him promise he’d come. She said the class couldn’t put on a nativity scene without the head angel. He hopes that’s not really true.

  Gabriel sets the angel costume on the floor where it won’t touch Celine’s used needle. He jostles her arm. It slips off her tummy and hangs down the side of the sofa. “We have to go,” he says.

  She chokes on air.

  Gabriel leaves Celine to press his nose against the cold glass of the living room window. Their street doesn’t have a lamp, so he can only see the snow when the wind smacks it against the building.

  His boots are upside-down by the radiator where he left them after school. The liners are still wet from melted ice. His dry socks suck up warm water when he pulls the boots on. He worms into his coat with the broken zipper and cinches up the drawstring of the hood. He doesn’t have a hat or gloves because Celine works too hard for her money to waste any on winter gear when it hardly ever snows in Fenny.

  Gabriel’s boots squelch as he crosses the apartment back to the bedroom. He badly needs a ride and Elvis has a pink Cadillac. Gabriel’s heart pounds when he asks, “You sleeping?”

  The giant opens one eye. “Oh, man. Why d’ya wake me up? I was dreaming about a room full of lesbian strippers.”

  “I have to go to school.”

  Elvis rolls onto his stomach. “So go.”

  “It’s snowing.”

  “So take a god-damned snow day.” Elvis swipes the air as a warning.

  Celine’s medicine still hasn’t worn off so Gabriel scrounges under the kitchen sink for a plastic bag. He stuffs in the stained white sheet that Celine said was good enough. As he fits the wings in, one of the silver pipe cleaners stuck to an edge with red nail polish comes loose. He leaves it. They don’t have things like glue in the apartment and he can’t use more nail polish. Celine freaks out if people touch her things.

  The wind screams when Gabriel opens the door. He counts each step he manages to take: nine, ten, eleven. The wedge of light from the apartment gets smaller until it’s gone. The toe of Gabriel’s boot disappears. He pulls it back into the light.

  “Fucking born in a barn?” Elvis’s voice booms. The door slams shut and Gabriel hears the clunk of the lock. Seconds later, the living room lights go out.

  “Elvis,” Gabriel calls. “Celine!”

  No one hears. No one ever does.

  The tires of a car going in the direction of the school gobble up crunchy snow. A radio plays the real Elvis singing “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Gabriel sees an older girl from school singing along in the backseat.

  The car is at the end of the road before he gives chase too late. His boots slip and slide on the icy road. Running is impossible.

  When the car, and its light, is gone, Gabriel slows to a walk. He’ll freeze to death if he sits outside the apartment all night, and maybe another school family will give him a ride. Otherwise, he’ll walk the whole way.

  One thing is for sure: If a stranger stops, Gabriel won’t get in their car. Celine takes rides with strangers; he knows what they might do.

  «8»

  “What I don’t get is why your principal didn’t call off this silly snow,” Ben Kiknicky jokes for the sake of his daughter Helena. He lets the curtain fall back over the window. The eight-year-old wriggles into her homemade camel costume with a beatific smile on her face. She laughs as she tugs the mask over her head. This pleasantness is a vast improvement over her earlier intimidating behavior. Then she stomped into the kitchen. There were tears in her eyes and a flush of rage on her cheeks.

  Clutched in her hands was a camel costume’s head, an object that took Ben’s wife, Romy, three evenings to create.

  “Camels are ugly,” she said.

  Romy, the intuitive parent, skipped dinner, and went to work with craft supplies and some little-used items from her clothes cupboard: all under-appreciated gifts from Ben.

  Now, an hour later, the camel has four-inch-long black felt eyelashes secured to wires, a rhinestone headband, a Hermes silk scarf, and 14-karat gold hoop earrings.

  “Our daughter is the Carmen Miranda of the desert,” Romy says in response to Ben’s pained look. “And we’re proud to be the parents of such a pretty dromedary.” She has three-year-old Mark in her arms. The fake fur trim around the hood of his yellow snowsuit makes her sneeze.

  “I can barely coax Maggie the Mazda down the driveway in good weather. She won’t like this snow,” Ben warns.

  “Then we’ll ride our camel to school,” Romy says, as she pretends to lower Mark onto Helena’s back. Playing make-believe with their daughter is the only acting Romy, once a talented drama major, does these days.

  “No way!” Helena shrieks with delight. “You guys are too heavy.” She races around the room on all fours, rearing and kicking in a way that reminds Ben of the summer before Helena started kindergarten. She’d impersonated a nipping, unpleasant Shetland pony for most of August. Ben isn’t sure yet if it’s a curse or a blessing that his daughter can so completely inhabit the world of imagination. Neither are Helena’s exhausted teachers.

  “It’s coming down thick and the town won’t plow Hummingbird Lane tonight, if ever,” Ben informs the family as Romy settles Mark into Ben’s arms. “We might get there, but we might not be able to get back home after.”

  “Home’s overrated,” Romy says. “We’ll bring blankets and a Thermos of hot chocolate, just in case. And if we get stranded, Effie and her dad will come to the rescue, right Camel Miranda?” She grapples Helena to the ground to fasten the row of snaps on the costume’s back. Ben gets a good look at his early Christmas gift to his wife: a black silk bra edged with rhinestones that Romy would return because of the cost if Ben let her. He zips up Mark’s snowsuit and pulls on his mittens, acting casual, as though he’s thinking about anything but sex.

  “Effie’s a ballerina genie, but I’m way prettier,” Helena declares.

  “Can someone tell me what a genie’s doing in a nativity play?” Ben asks.

  Romy straightens and her sexy bra disappears beneath the shabby sweater that Ben would love to see the last of. The wicked grin on her face is the kind that always makes Ben desire to bed his wife. “She’s there to give Frankincense to baby Jesus,” she says, “Why else?”

  “What if I insist we stay home because of the weather?” Ben draws close to Romy, whispers into the soft ear h
e’d like to nibble. “We’ll put the camel to bed early, light candles in the bedroom and crack open that new bottle of coconut-flavored lubricant.”

  Romy’s arousal is a current Ben can feel. Even so, she’s the less self-indulgent parent, and laughs off Ben’s suggestion as though it isn’t perfectly earnest.

  ¤

  The large windows of Leuvekamp’s Corner Market are perfect for playing one of Ben’s favorite games. He calls it My Woman’s Hotter than Your Woman and the rules are simple. Romy enters a store, or party, or anywhere men are, and the eyes of every red-blooded male gravitate toward her. The prize is a warm glow of ownership and all Ben has to do to win is watch the scene play out.

  Besides legally blind Mr. Leuvekamp, there’s only one other person in the store where Romy is picking up a last-minute snack for the kids. Ben can only see the back of the man’s head and hunched shoulders. It’s enough to know he’s short and squat, making the game unfair. If he has a woman at all, it’s definitely not a raven-haired, statuesque beauty.

  Normally-placid Mark whines in the back seat. Ben turns to check on him, already knowing somehow Helena will be at fault. Sure enough, Camel Miranda has undone her seatbelt and is giving Mark’s tender baby cheek butterfly kisses with her sharp camel eyelashes by nodding the mask up and down.

  Ben pulls the camel off his helpless son. Helena resists Ben’s attempt to clip on her seatbelt until the dome light comes on, then she screeches with delight as Romy slips into her seat holding a jumbo candy cane. “For good children only,” she says, a ploy Ben disagrees with although he’s grateful for the calm-restoring results.

  Ben pecks his wife’s cheek, one of the many types of kisses he wants to give her. “All set?” he asks.

  As he puts the car in reverse, Ben notes the balding tip of the man’s bent form between two aisles. If he swooned over Romy, Ben missed the moment. He turns to shoulder-check. The silly game is forgotten as Ben drinks in the snow-tinged glory of his sexy, smiling wife. “Hey, babe,” he says.

  Her response is the best kind of promise. “Ditto,” she says.

  «9»

  As Willard shops at Leuvekamp’s Corner Market, he tries to sort out the muddled feelings he has about the convenience store. On the hate side are those things he doubts he’ll ever get used to after years of living in the woods: the too-bright lights, the security camera mounted in one corner, and the large plate-glass windows that put him on show.

  Also on the hate side is the clerk. The cagey old man reminds Willard of his grandfather. If Willard stays in Fenny until the weather clears, he’ll have to stagger the time of his trips to the store to avoid becoming familiar to the man. Willard isn’t fooled by the way the clerk pretends to read the newspaper; he’s trying to catch a thief in the act.

  On the love side are the shelving units where chip bags sit five deep. He sniffs the scentless plastic of a potato chip bag and his mouth waters at the thought of the salty goodness inside. In case the blizzard snows him in at his motel room, he snags his second and third choices: Cheezies and a jumbo bag of corn chips.

  Willard doesn’t have to steal, not like his mother forced him do when he was little until he got caught. He has a bagful of his grandfather’s money to pay for the things he wants. Still, he feels like a guilty thief because of the round fish-eye mirror set up high in the corner near the restroom.

  Willard moves away from the chips to his favorite section, the chocolate bar aisle. The store’s owner knows how to stock candy bars; Willard will give him that. As hard as it was to make a decision in the chip aisle, it’s even harder to choose from among the abundance of chocolate delights. The sight of so many new favorites makes Willard weak in the knees. He crouches, needing privacy to compare the weight of two caramel bars, until the only other car besides his leaves the lot.

  The woman who left was taller than Willard by a foot, with shoulder-length black hair, and a red coat that’s seen better days. Despite her lack of style, she’s the kind of woman Willard’s mother would have said was stuck on herself.

  “Evening, Mr. L,” she said as she swept past Willard. She disappeared for a moment in the dried goods aisle. When she rose, she held a box of animal crackers. She strode to the counter where she plunked down the box. “You know how long school plays drag on,” she said. “I’ll need these to keep my little sweetheart amused.”

  Willard edged toward the counter with the hope the woman would pull a picture out of a wallet to show the storekeeper. He saw his own mother do such things, back when the Crawley boys were her pride and joy. The woman disappointed him by simply plucking a jumbo candy cane from a bowl before pushing a twenty-dollar bill across the counter. The crisp, bright bill was nothing like Willard’s limp, worn ones.

  Now, with only a faint whiff of the woman’s perfume remaining in the store, Willard piles his treats on the counter. He includes a jumbo candy cane at the last minute, in honor of his own little sweetheart, Terrance Jackson Crawley, December 1976–April 1977.

  Willard is shoving the door open against the storm when Mr. Leuvekamp rustles the newspaper loudly enough to make him look back. The old man’s voice is a disused croak when he warns, “Careful there now, fella. Don’t slip.”

  Willard panics before he realizes the old man couldn’t possibly know what happened back at the shack. He would have had to stand in the bushes with a pair of binoculars to see the blood spread until the head of Willard’s grandfather was just an island in the middle of a bright red lake.

  Willard doesn’t need the store-owner’s warning: he won’t slip. No matter how hungry he gets before he moves on from Fenny, the other thing he won’t do is return to this store.

  ¤

  Even with the car windows shut tight and the news radio turned up high, Willard can’t block out the hateful sound of shrieking wind. He’s used to blizzards—they happened every winter at the cabin—but Willard always hunkered down in front of a fire for the duration. What he didn’t do was drive on slick roads or get lost trying to find a motel. The one Willard saw on his way into town had a glowing “Heart of Fenny” neon sign and a promise of free cable television.

  The car slides and Willard rights it, then slows it to a crawl. He needs a free hand to supply his mouth with soothing salty chips. If his grandfather had taken him on fun vacations, Willard wouldn’t be here now, running from a mishap. If Terrance wasn’t afraid of riding in cars, Willard wouldn’t be all alone in the dark. None of what has happened to Willard is fair.

  A small figure appears in the dim light of the snow-coated headlamps. As Willard rolls closer he sees it’s a child who scoots off the road, only to be stopped by the high bank of snow.

  Willard slides to a stop. His hand works overtime, feeding his mouth so he can think. A large bag of barbecue chips is gone before the child gives up on trying to disappear. Willard sees the child is a boy when he turns to look into the glare of the headlights.

  Willard steps on the gas and spins the tires as he steers closer. He reaches over to lower the passenger side window, letting in a blast of snow that powders the seat. There were questions worried adults asked Willard in his boyhood, one of which he uses now, “Does your momma know you’re out here by your lonesome?”

  When the boy doesn’t answer, Willard clicks on a dome light. He knows from looking into motel mirrors that his face never grew into that of a man. Willard leans out the window to show his reassuring small round face, with its flat nose and tiny eyes.

  “Yes,” the boy says.

  Willard removes the wrapper from the bottom of the giant candy cane. “You sure about that?”

  The boy nods.

  Snow clings to the end of the cane Willard holds out the window. “I bought this for my little brother,” he says, “but I can get him another one if you want it.”

  The boy stares at the candy with the same hungry blue eyes as Terrance. “It’s good. Go on.” Willard leans over to thrust the cane into his hand. “Where ya headed?” he asks.

&
nbsp; The boy’s cold jaw has trouble moving. “School.”

  “They don’t have school at night.”

  “They do for Christmas plays.”

  “Oh, I remember those. What grade are you in?”

  “Four.”

  “Same as my little brother, Terrance.”

  The pleasant conversation is interrupted by the lights of an approaching car. “See you later, alligator,” Willard says. Instead of answering “After while, crocodile” the boy sucks on the candy cane, silent and staring just like Terrance.

  «10»

  Harvey is stunned by the sight before his eyes. He stopped home to change into civvies before the play only to find the hallway crammed with boxes. Beyond the boxes, waiting to go somewhere without him, are four green suitcases inherited from his parents. Harvey leaves his boots on and the door open. He’ll spontaneously combust without the blizzard to cool his blood as he reads the packing labels: kitch, bed, bath and frag. Pamela’s in such a hurry to end their relationship, she couldn’t even take the time to finish writing the words.

  Harvey takes a knife from his pocket and slits open the tape on a box marked Effie. His daughter’s clothes are inside, neatly folded, smelling of a happy childhood.

  Harvey sits on the floor with his slumped back propped up by a wall. He tears off a label attached to the largest of the suitcases. The address is a city on the opposite side of the country. Pamela isn’t just taking Effie from her home; the bitch is taking her from Harvey completely.

  ¤

  Harvey is three blocks from Effie’s school, and driving too fast for the conditions, when he has to suddenly brake. The front end of a late model VW Beetle is stuck in a snow bank, with the back end spewing dangerously onto the road. “Great,” he says to the civilian who can’t hear him as he parks, “make me late for the end of the world.”

  The car belongs to an underdressed young woman wielding a snow shovel with the effectiveness of a mascara wand. A quick glance at the clock on the dash confirms that Harvey’s obedience to the call of duty will make him miss his chance to fight with Pam in public. It might even make him miss his daughter’s milestone, the last he’ll ever see if Pam gets her way. Cursing under his breath, he turns on the squad car’s rooftop lights to alert other drivers to the hazard.