Leaving Time(22)

Suddenly the expression on my father’s face changes. The frustration melts like foam where the ocean hits sand, and his eyes light up. They are the same color as mine, a too-green that makes people uneasy. “Alice?” he says. “Do you know how to do this?” He lifts the handful of thread.

“I’m not Alice,” I tell him.

He shakes his head, confused.

I bite my lip, untangle the strands, and weave them to make a bracelet, a simple series of knots any day camper would know by heart. His hands flutter over mine like hummingbirds as I work. When I’m done, I unclip it from the safety pin that is fastened to his pants and tie it around his wrist, a bright bangle.

My father admires it. “You were always so good at this kind of thing,” he says, smiling up at me.

That’s when I realize why my father did not report my mother as a missing person. Maybe she wasn’t missing, not to him. He’s always been able to find her, in my face and my voice and my presence.

I wish it were that easy for me.


When I get home, my grandmother is watching Wheel of Fortune on television, calling out the answers before the contestants, and giving Vanna White fashion advice. “That belt makes you look like a tramp,” she tells Vanna, and then she sees me in the doorway. “How did it go today?”

I falter a moment before realizing she is talking about babysitting, which of course I didn’t really do. “It was okay,” I lie.

“There are stuffed shells in the fridge if you want to reheat them,” she says, and her gaze flits back to the screen. “Try an F, you stupid cow,” she shouts.

I take advantage of this distraction and run upstairs with Gertie at my heels. She makes herself a nest on my bed out of pillows and turns in circles to get comfortable.

I don’t know what to do. I’ve got information, and nowhere to go with it.

Reaching into my pocket, I take out the wad of bills I brought and peel one of the dollars off. I start folding it mindlessly, seamlessly, into an elephant, but I keep screwing up and finally crumple it into a ball and throw it on the floor. I keep seeing my father’s hands making angry knots in the embroidery floss.

One of the original detectives who investigated the elephant sanctuary has Alzheimer’s. The other is dead. But maybe it’s not the end of the road. I’ll just have to find a way to get the current detectives in the department to see that the department screwed up ten years ago, and should have considered my mother a missing person.

That should go over really well.

I turn on my laptop, and with a buzzy chord, it comes alive. I type in my password and open a search engine. “Virgil Stanhope,” I type. “Death.”

The first article that pops up is a notice about the ceremony where he was going to be made detective. There is a picture of him, too—sandy hair swept to the side, a big, fat, toothy grin, an Adam’s apple that looks like the knob on a door. He looks goofy, young, but I guess ten years ago, that’s just what he was.

I open a new window, log in to a public records database (which costs me $49.95 a year, FYI), and find the death notice of Virgil Stanhope. Tragically, it’s dated the same day as his detective ceremony. I wonder if he got his badge and crashed in a car accident on the way home or, worse, on the way there. A life interrupted.

Well. I can relate to that.

I click on the link, but it won’t open. Instead, I get a page stating there’s a server error.

So I go back to my first search and rummage through the article descriptions until I find one that makes all the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

“Stanhope Investigations,” I read. Find the future in the past.

It’s a crappy slogan. But I still click to open the page in a new window.

Licensed. Domestic and marital relationship investigations. Surveillance services. Bail recovery agent. People searches. Child custody investigations. Accidental death investigations. Missing persons.

There is another button at the top: About Us.

Vic Stanhope is a licensed private investigator and former law enforcement officer and detective. He holds degrees in criminal justice and forensic science from the University of New Haven. He belongs to the International Association of Arson Investigators, the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents, the National Association of Certified Investigators.

It could be a coincidence … if not for the tiny thumbnail photograph of Mr. Stanhope.

True, he looks older. And true, he has that buzz cut guys get when they’re losing their hair and they try to channel Bruce Willis to look supertough. Yet his Adam’s apple is still front and center in the photo, unmistakable.

I suppose Vic and Virgil could be twins. But still. I grab my cell phone and punch in the number on the screen.

Three rings later, I hear someone grab the receiver on the other end. It sounds like it falls to the floor with a run of static and curses, and then is recovered. “What.”

“Is this Mr. Stanhope?” I whisper.

“Yeah,” the voice growls.

“Virgil Stanhope?”

There is a pause. “Not anymore,” the voice slurs, and he hangs up.

My pulse is racing. Either Virgil Stanhope is back from the dead or he never was dead.

Maybe he just wanted people to think that, so he could disappear.

And if this is the case—he’s the perfect person to find my mother.