Ooh, La La!, page 35
Skye jerked away. “Don’t touch me. Just leave me alone!”
“All right, sweetheart.” Kate rose slowly. “I’ll be inside if you need me.”
“I don’t!” Skye sobbed. “I don’t need anyone I can’t trust!” Kate softly closed the door behind her, Skye’s words echoing through the lonely chambers of her heart.
She picked up a pillow from the sofa and carried it to the living room rocker, the one where she’d rocked Skye as a baby. Cradling the pillow against her chest, she leaned back and set the chair in motion, wistfully remembering the days when she’d been able to provide for Skye’s every need.
It took all Kate’s self-restraint to wait forty-five more minutes before going back out to the porch. She knew she needed to give Skye time and space to accept the truth, but she was anxious to provide comfort.
The door creaked on its hinges as Kate pushed it open. She stepped out and stared at the porch swing.
Empty. The chains that suspended it from the porch beam were straight and silent, as still as the warm night air. Alarm shot through her.
“Skye?” she called. Only the rhythmic swell of cicadas answered. Kate stepped farther out on the porch. “Skye, where are you?”
Silence. Kate hurried down the porch steps to the sidewalk and looked up and down the street but saw no sign of the girl. She went in the backyard, then checked both sides of the house. Nothing.
Stay calm, Kate ordered herself Stay calm and think.
Perhaps she’d gone on a walk. Or maybe she’d gone to Mary Ann’s house—it was only about a mile away. Kate rushed inside, pulled out Skye’s school directory, and looked up the phone number, then hesitated. Mary Ann would be at the concert. It was unlikely Skye would go to her house knowing she wouldn’t be home.
Still, it was worth a try. Kate got an answering machine. She left a message that she was looking for Skye and wanted to be contacted if she showed up or called.
She hung up the phone, trying to tamp down the panic rising in her throat. Maybe Skye had taken the streetcar to the Superdome. After all, she’d taken the streetcar the day she went to the French Quarter.
Kate was tempted to get in her car and race downtown. But the Superdome was huge, and she wouldn’t know where to start. Kate needed to be home in case—no, not in case; when—Skye returned home.
Another thought hit her. Oh, Lord! Could Wayne have come by and taken Skye out of spite? The thought sent a cold chill racing through her. Grabbing the phone, she called the motel where Wayne had been staying. A brief conversation with the desk clerk revealed that he had checked out the day before.
Kate hung up the phone, more alarmed and confused than ever. Just because he’d checked out didn’t mean he’d left town. It only meant she had no idea where he might be.
Kate paced the living room. She longed to talk to her mother, but Ruth had gone on an overnight trip with her therapy group as part of her treatment.
At eleven-thirty, Kate gave in and called the police.
A squad car pulled up five minutes later. Kate was relieved that the policeman wasn’t one of the officers who had responded to her mother’s false burglary report.
The officer listened to her story, making notes as she talked. “We’ll put out an A.P.B. for the girl’s father on a possible domestic kidnapping. From what you’ve told me, though, ma’am, it sounds like she’s run away.”
Kate swallowed.
“In most cases, teens who run away—especially younger ones—return within forty-eight hours. But, if you like, we can go ahead and file a missing persons report. We don’t have to wait twenty-four hours with minors.”
“I want to file one.”
“I’ll need a recent photo and a full description of your daughter.”
Kate strode to the back of the sofa, where a collection of silver-framed pictures adorned a narrow table: Skye as a baby, giving an enormous toothless grin; Skye sitting in front of a Christmas tree, hugging her grandmother; Skye and Kate on a visit to Disney World. Her heart ached as she looked through this photo gallery of her daughter’s life. She picked up Skye’s most recent school photo and handed it to the officer, then answered a long series of questions.
“What will happen now?” she asked as he finally closed his notebook.
“We’ll distribute her photo and this information to local and state police, and get this info on a national hotline for missing children. Since she’s gone to the French Quarter before, I’ll call the French Quarter precinct and ask them to keep an eye out for her.”
“Is that all?”
He rubbed his chin, his eyes apologetic. “Well, we’ll be looking for her father, as well. And we have extra patrols around the Superdome, keeping an eye out for unsupervised teenagers.” He rose from the sofa. “There’s a good possibility she’ll show up later tonight. In the meantime, make a list of all the places she might be. Call all her friends and see if any of them have heard from her or have any idea where she’s gone. Check all of her hangouts. You might even check the hospitals.” He hesitated. “Do you happen to have a set of her fingerprints?”
“No.”
“How about dental records?”
A chill cut through Kate. “I-I can get them from her dentist.”
“It’s good to have them on hand.”
In case she shows up dead. Tears sprang to her eyes as she walked the officer to the entry way.
The officer paused at the door. “I sympathize with you, ma’am. I’ve got two little ones of my own.”
Kate nodded, fighting back the tears.
“Chances are, she’ll come back soon. Most young teens do.”
“I hope you’re right," Kate said, her fingers clutching the door as he walked away. Please. God. Please, please, please, bring my baby home safe and sound. And soon.
Chapter Twenty-six
Ruth burst through Kate’s kitchen door at ten the next morning, her face beaming, her voice happy and excited. “I did it! I spent the night away from home and didn’t have a single panic attack!”
Kate tried to smile. “That’s great, Mom.”
Ruth froze in her tracks, her expression abruptly shifting to one of concern. “My heavens, Kate—what’s wrong?”
Kate hesitated. She hated to give her mother such bad news just as she was starting to conquer her fear. It might cause a setback. But she had to tell her.
“It’s Skye.” Tears streaming down her face, Kate sank into a chair at the kitchen table beside her mother and poured out the whole story. “I don’t know where she’s gone,” she finished. “I’ve called everywhere.”
Ruth tightened her grip on Kate’s hand. “Have you called Zack?”
Kate looked up.
“She really bonded with him. She might try to go to California.”
“But how? She can’t have more than twenty dollars on her.”
“Maybe she’d try to hitchhike.”
The two women stared somberly at each other, their unspoken fears darkening the room,
“You need to call him,” Ruth urged.
Her mother was right. Drawing a deep breath, Kate rose from the table and went to the phone.
The film editor clicked off the projector, plunging the dimly lit edit booth into near total darkness. “Which take do you want to use?”
“Let me see them again,” Zack said.
“All seven?”
“Yeah.”
With a long sigh, the heavyset man hit the rewind button.
Zack scowled into his Styrofoam cup of coffee. It was irritating as hell, the way he couldn’t keep his mind on the movie. For the umpteenth time this morning, his mind had strayed back to New Orleans, to a woman with hair the color of spun gold and a heart made out of the same substance. Instead of making decisions about what footage to cut, he’d found himself daydreaming like a lovesick schoolboy. What was Kate doing? What was she thinking? Was she back at her job at the university? Did she miss working on the movie?
Did she miss him?
He took a punishing sip of coffee. It bothered the bejeezus out of him that shed sent him that damned note instead of telling him good-bye in person. Everything in it had sounded so blasted reasonable, so damned sensible, so friggin’ cheerful.
Kate had made things easy for him, and he resented the hell out of it. He knew his reaction made no sense, but knowing that irritated him all the more. If she’d wept and wailed and begged him to pledge his undying love, he’d have been eager to leave her. At least that’s how it had always worked with other women.
But Kate was unlike any other woman he’d ever known. Everything about her was special. She was smart and funny and enthusiastic. She was ethical and kindhearted and fair. She was the most caring, most giving, most alive person he’d ever met. And when it came to sex—hell, the chemistry between them blew the bedroom door off its hinges.
All the same, it was darned inconsiderate of her not to say good-bye. Nobody liked good-byes, but they provided a sense of closure. There was unfinished business between them, and it was affecting his work.
At this stage of a movie, he usually didn’t care about anything except getting it finished. Like a man possessed, he’d skip meals, forgo sleep, and forget to shave, pouring all his energy into sculpting the footage into a movie. The editing process was tedious and excruciatingly slow, but Zack had always thought it was the most creative, exhilarating part of the process, the part where the story all came together. While he was editing, he usually came the closest he ever got to actually being happy.
He sure wasn’t happy now. He was skipping meals and losing sleep and sporting a growth of beard, all right, but it was because he was miserable and distracted. This was the most important project of his life, and he couldn’t concentrate on it. It was a good movie—maybe even a great movie—yet it seemed somehow lacking, somehow unsatisfying.
Hell, his whole life was lacking and unsatisfying. For the first time, work was letting him down. In the past, it had filled up all the crevices and low spots in his life, like high tide over a rocky shoal. Now it had receded, leaving nothing but jagged edges and broken shells.
Something was missing. No, not something; someone.
Damn it, he didn’t need this. He’d always taken a secret pride in the fact that he didn’t do emotions. He stayed on an even keel. He used logic. He didn’t moon or pine or regret the past He dealt with what was in front of him, did what needed doing, moved on.
But he couldn’t seem to move past Kate.
The editor snapped a switch. “Okay. Here we go.”
Zack shifted in the chair, trying to gather his concentration as the image of the swamp filled the screen.
A shaft of light intruded from the back of the booth. “Thought I’d stop by and see how this puppy’s coming along,” came an unmistakable rasp.
Goldman. Sure enough, Zack looked up to see his grotesque Humpty-Dumpty form standing in the doorway.
Zack attempted a congenial expression. “Come on in, Marvin. We’re looking at the raw footage.”
“Hell, if I wanted to see raw, I’d go to a meat market.” Goldman rotated the cigar in his mouth. “Show me what you’ve laid down.”
“We’re still going through the rough stuff. You know what they say—you can’t hurry perfection.”
Goldman muttered a particularly crude obscenity. “You damn sure can, and you damn sure will. I want this in front of a test audience in two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“You heard me.”
Post-production usually took two, three, even four times that long. Goldman was asking the near impossible.
But maybe it was just what Zack needed. A near-impossible challenge would force him to concentrate. “It’ll mean working around the clock,” Zack warned. “I’ll need another editor.”
“So get one. And send some clips to promotions ASAP. They needed them yesterday,” Goldman chomped his cigar. “Got any footage of Lena naked?”
“Sorry, Marvin.”
“No outtakes? You didn’t shoot some film when she wasn’t watchin’?”
Zack shook his head.
Goldman gave a phlem-rattling cough. “You disappoint me, Jackson.”
A young assistant popped her head in the booth, her expression apologetic. “I hate to interrupt, but you’ve got a call, Zack.”
“Take a message."
“I tried to, but she said it was an emergency.”
"Who?”
“Kate Matthews.”
Zack rose from his chair so fast he almost knocked it over. “I’ll take it outside.”
He brushed past Goldman and followed the assistant to an empty cubicle. The office chair squeaked as he simultaneously sat down and pushed the flashing light on the phone. “Kate?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but something’s happened.” Her voice sounded strained and thin.
His heart kicked into high gear as his mind seized on a possibility. Was she pregnant? Hope, irrational and excited, rushed through his veins. “What is it?”
“It’s Skye.” Kate’s voice wavered. “She’s missing.”
His blood froze in his veins. He gripped the phone as if it were about to take flight. “Since when? What happened?”
His chest grew tighter and heavier as Kate explained the situation. “And she was gone all night?” Zack asked when she finished.
“Yes. I was wondering… has she called you?”
“No.”
He heard a quick intake of breath, as if Kate were stifling a sob. “If she does, will you let me know?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
“Of course.” He rose, unable to sit still. “What are the police doing?”
“N-not a whole lot. They’re looking for Wayne, but they’re pretty much treating this as a typical runaway case. They told me she’d probably come back in forty-eight hours.”
A lot of horrible things could happen to a young girl in forty-eight hours. He prayed none of them already had.
“We need to get Skye’s picture on TV and in the newspapers,” Zack said decisively.
“The officer told me dozens of teens run away from home every day in Louisiana. The media can’t publicize them all.”
There were times when having a well-known name could be useful, and this was one of them, “Listen, Kate—I’m going to call my publicist. I’ll have him phone your local news media and say that you’re my girlfriend. Better yet, my fiancée. We’ll say we’re afraid Skye’s been kidnapped and we’re asking the public to keep an eye out for her. That ought to get things moving.”
A long silence followed.
“Okay, Kate?”
“O-okay.”
“I’m coming back to Louisiana.” He wasn’t aware he’d made the decision until he heard himself saying it, but he was immediately certain it was his only possible course of action. To hell with Goldman and his damned deadline. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Thanks, Zack.”
The tears in her voice did something funny to his throat. “Hang in there, honey. We’ll get her back.”
It was amazing what a difference Zack’s name made.
Within an hour after her conversation with him, a TV news crew had appeared at Kate’s front door, wanting to tape a story about Skye’s disappearance.
Within two hours, police detectives were processing Kate’s porch as a possible crime scene and gathering further information from her.
Within four hours, the state police called to say that Wayne had been taken into custody in Texas. He was alone and claimed to know nothing about Skye’s disappearance. The authorities believed he was telling the truth. They were holding him, however, because he had two other people’s wallets in his back pocket.
And within seven hours, Kate opened her front door to find Zack standing on the porch. She stared at him for a long moment, her heart pounding. He took a step toward her, and the next thing she knew, she was in his arms, bawling like a baby.
Zack held her close. “We’ll find her,” he murmured. “I promise we will.”
All of the pent-up fear and worry came pouring out of Kate as Zack embraced her. He murmured to her softly, stroking her hair, as she soaked the shoulder of his navy shirt. He felt warm and solid and strong, and his presence gave her hope.
Ruth greeted Zack warmly, then went to answer the phone. She returned a moment later. “Kate—it’s the detectives. They think they have a lead.”
Kate rushed to the kitchen phone, Zack and Ruth right behind her.
“Ms. Matthews, we might have something,” said a deep baritone voice.
“What?”
“We had a couple of calls after the five o’clock news aired. Both reported a girl matching Skye’s description hitchhiking on I-Ten.”
“Which direction was she going?”
“West. Which matches up with another call we got.”
Kate couldn’t breathe. “Yes?”
“A girl with long, dark hair wearing a shiny blue shirt was spotted getting out of the cab of a semi-trailer truck.”
“That’s Skye! Where?”
“Outside Houma. The lady who called us said the girl seemed fine,” the detective said. “She saw her wave to the driver as he drove off.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Kate breathed.
“What?” Ruth asked. She and Zack were standing beside her, their expressions anxious.
Kate put her hand over the receiver. “A girl who sounds like Skye evidently hitched a ride to Houma.”
“The cabin,” Zack and Ruth simultaneously murmured.
“We have a fishing cabin about ten miles southwest of Houma,” Kate said into the phone. “It’s only accessible by boat.”
“Where, exactly?”
“The launch is about two miles west of the highway, a couple of miles past Theriot.”
“Do you keep a boat at the launch?"
“Just a rowboat. We always get a ride from a friend who takes care of the place. His name is Jean-Pierre Vacherie. I’ll get you his number. He can take you there or give you directions.” Kate set down the phone and darted across the room to retrieve her address book from a desk drawer.
