Snow Creek(7)

I nod not because I understand the self-sufficient family’s setback with the lemons, but because I didn’t come for a social visit. I came because a woman freaked out back in my office that something terrible had happened.

I give Joshua a card with my phone number.

“Will you please call me when your parents get back?”

“Will do,” he says, looking at the card, “Detective Carpenter.”

Ruth is suddenly very quiet. I assume she’s still processing the trauma and worry of wondering where her sister and brother-in-law are. Considering the chilly rain outside, Mexico should be a relief, even the source of a little sisterly envy. That is, if envy wasn’t a sin—which it was in any Bible I’d read in a hotel room.

I face her. “Are you going to stay with your niece and nephew?”

“No,” she says, snapping herself out of her stupor. “As I said back at your office, I have to head back to Idaho for the church caucus.”

“Right,” I say, though I know she’d told me no such thing.

I turn to Joshua and Sarah.

Ruth tugs at me.

“Let’s go now, Detective.”





Four





Ruth doesn’t utter a word until we are back on the gravel road. Her jaw is clenched, and I watch her grasp her hands and press them between her knees. I crack the window. Her wintergreen deodorant is working overtime.

“I’m sorry you came out all this way,” I say. “The kids should have called you or something.”

“Something’s wrong,” she says. “I know it.”

I try to calm her. “The fact that their parents left them alone is wrong in my book, but Joshua is old enough to look after his sister.”

I don’t tell her that my own parents were far, far worse. I survived.

“Something was missing,” she says. “It doesn’t make sense.”

I take my eyes off the road and glance at her for a split second.

“I haven’t been out here for several years. Maybe six. My sister always had her wedding portrait hanging in the front room. Next to the kids’ latest photographs.”

“Okay,” I say.

“It was gone. I think that’s weird, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

I don’t tell her what I thought was out of place.

The T-shirt.

Maybe it was something Joshua had hidden and wore it only when his parents were away. Miller High Life didn’t fit the Wheaton family at all.

“I’ll check with the orphanage in Mexico,” I tell her. “Name?”

“La Paloma.”

“All right,” I say. “If it checks out, we’re good. If they aren’t there—though I’m sure they are—then we’ll fill out the paperwork and report them missing.”

“My sister never said they were going there,” she says. “She would have told me.”

“Do you share everything?”

“Yes. Everything.”

I look at her eyes.

“Does she know you wear mascara?”

Ruth turns away.

“No,” she replies, her voice hushed. “I only do that when I travel. I like to fit in when I’m outside of my church group.”

“Look,” I tell her, “we don’t know what happened. What we both know is that no matter how close you are with someone it’s only what you think you know. Only what they choose to reveal to you.”

She’s upset, and I notice that she is fidgeting with the shoulder harness, pulling it up and down… almost hard enough to leave a mark against her neck. She’s hurting herself. I immediately pull over and stop the car.

“Ruth, we’ll figure this out. You need to trust that we will do everything we can to find your family.”

Tears are flowing now. Silent tears.

“I know. I know. But…”

“Tell me.”

I gently pull her hand from the shoulder belt and she quietly reaches for a tissue she has stored under her bra strap. She dabs hard at her eyes. Harder, I know, than needed.

“Don’t tell my sister or my husband about the mascara.”



By the time we get back to the office and try the number for La Paloma, the administration staff is gone for the day. I ask Ruth where she’s staying for the night.

“I can’t stay,” she says.

“You’re going back home?”

“My husband wants me back tomorrow. I’ll have to drive all night as it is.”

I don’t understand this woman’s loyalties at all. Not even a little. Her sister might be missing and she’s going to leave before she finds out anything?

I don’t try to persuade her.

“How can I reach you?”

“Here’s my address.”

She hands me a card.

“A PO Box?”

She casts her eyes downward. “Our phone service is spotty.”

“I thought you have satellite and internet?”

“My husband has an account; I suppose I could give that to you. You’ll only call in an emergency, correct? He’s very busy and doesn’t like to be disturbed.”