Mother May I(54)

15




I drove so Marshall could work on his phone and laptop, searching for Lexie Pine. We agreed to go forward as if she were the daughter. It was the only thing that made sense, we told each other. What we didn’t say, not out loud, was that she was also our only lead. If we were wrong, or if we couldn’t find her, then Robert was lost to me.

Once I had us on the highway, I asked Siri to read my messages. According to Trey’s texts, he’d gotten the hotel to ship his suitcase and gone to the airport to sit standby, hoping to get on an earlier flight. While we were in the Wilkerson house, he snagged the last seat on the four-o’clock. Spence had died less than twenty-four hours ago, but Trey was desperate to get home to support his parents and extended family and also check in with key clients, most of whom Spence had wooed. I glanced at my watch, then set the cruise control a little faster; he was already in the air.

In coach. Right by the toilet, but at least I’ll be home soon. Pour bleach on everything, please? Sorry, but I can’t get your flu. Mom is wrecked. She practically thought of Spence as a second son.



Siri read the messages with no inflection, but I could hear my husband in the phrasing. He also asked if I was feeling any better and if I’d talked to the girls. He told me he loved me and to kiss Robert for him, and he asked me to check in as soon as I could. My silence was beginning to worry him, I could tell.

I couldn’t risk having him connect to the plane’s Wi-Fi, seeing no answers, and texting concerned questions to my mom. I used voice-to-text to send a slew of reassuring lies. I told him I felt fine, now, just resting to recover. I also told him how sorry I was about Spence’s death. Marshall shot me a sideways glance. I suppose I should have said how sorry I was to hear about Spence’s death, but what I’d said had more truth in it. I told Siri to send.

Mom had texted also, asking how I was feeling and telling me that Anna-Claire had finished her report. Her last message said, Honey, don’t be mad, but it looks like Peyton’s left her keys as well. Her purse has nothing in it but nine kinds of lip balm. ?! Can you check around the house?

Understanding flashed, and then I was swamped with rage aimed at my middle child. Marshall must have come to the same conclusion, because he gave me a rueful glance and said, “I know. I know. But she’s just a kid.”

No way in hell Peyton’s keys were at the house. The mother had them! How else had a seventy-something-year-old woman in poor health gotten inside our eight-foot wooden privacy fence? She’d had keys. To the back gate and all the doors. She could have come inside and taken Robert in the night. Perhaps she had come inside, creeping around, touching our things. She would have seen Trey’s gun safe and the deer guns in the locked glass case, making me, alone, outside the house, a safer target. She’d left her gaudy gift bag hanging on my door, when she could have dumped it brazenly down on the center of my bed.

But then I would have known she had the keys. I swallowed, realizing she still did. We were vulnerable in more ways than I knew, and the rage still washing through me became half fear. Peyton had looked away, making—

That thought cut out before it could finish. I’d looked away, too. I’d lost so much more than keys.

My anger did not abate, it only turned, aiming itself at the mother. She or her daughter had been that close to at least one of my girls. To my Peyton. Close enough to smell her coconut shampoo. Close enough to slip a creepy hand inside her purse.

Peyton wouldn’t have noticed. Trey always joked that our middle child practically kept her eyes flipped around backward to peer deep into her own inventive brain. Either that or she had them pointed at a book.

I voice-texted Mom, Tell Peyton not to worry. I’ve got them.

If this was ever over, if Marshall’s plan worked and we got Robert back, if I ever had my whole family safe at home, I’d tell Peyton that she was too young for her own set and that she could have them back next year. Meanwhile I’d replace them, right down to her Poké Ball key chain. I’d find a used one on eBay or beat a new one up a little bit myself. She must never, never know. Her soft heart would break; she’d blame herself. I would not allow it.

I checked my watch, then gave the cruise control another bump.

Marshall looked up from his laptop. “Done? I need to make some calls.”

I nodded, and he put his cell on speaker so I could hear.

First up he asked a friend on the force to see if Lexie Pine had an arrest record. She did, starting from when she was barely twenty, the charges escalating over the years: petty larceny, possession, solicitation, assault, possession with intent to distribute. She’d been in and out of jail for most of her adult life.

I found her criminal history oddly comforting, more proof that this woman who’d staked out Geoff Wilkerson and possibly my children, too, who had lurked in the shadows of the Botanical Garden to watch Spencer Shaw die, was no angel.

Marshall also showed me her most recent mug shot when it landed. It was six years old; her last arrest had sent her to state prison for almost four years. She had a small, elfin face that might have once been pretty but was now creased and puffy, the skin picked raw in places. Dingy blond hair. Gray-pearl teeth in her slack mouth. Her eyes were wide and angry. I was so caught by that flat, furious gaze that I drifted onto the shoulder and the rumble strip growled at me. I jerked the Taurus straight and centered us, then took another glance. Her slightness surprised me. She had the narrow shoulders of a young girl, frail bird bones at her collar exposed by her peasant shirt.