friends?” he asked.
“I…” Ms. Greenway stopped and he saw that she’d closed her eyes. “I don’t think so. She says she has other kids to sit with for lunch, and another girl asked her to partner in badminton during gym class, but as far as I know no one has invited her over to play or anything like that.”
“You said she didn’t know how to play.”
“No.” Brown eyes that were both bleak and dazed met his. “She’s determined to help me. She wants to clean house and cook dinner. I feel like…like…”
“She’s trying to make you want to keep her?”
“Maybe.” She heaved a sigh. “Mostly, I think that’s what she’s used to doing. Taking care of her mom.”
He nodded. Mike had seen plenty of that kind of role reversal in families with a parent who was mentally ill, a drug addict or a drunk. Their kids grew up too fast. They learned quick that if there was going to be food on the table, they had to put it there. They also learned excellent cover-up skills; most kids were afraid of losing whatever family they did have. It was up to them to make sure school counselors, neighbors and social workers didn’t notice how dysfunctional their home situation really was.
He wondered what Sicily Marks had made of this house.
“All right,” he said abruptly. “I’ll need your parents’ phone number.”
She looked almost numb. With a nod, she turned and walked away down the hall. Turned out she had to get her smart phone, which she’d had on the table right beside her as she ate, so she could look up her own parents’ phone number.
He remembered already having jotted down their names. Laurence and Rowena Greenway. After adding the phone number, he remarked, “Your father’s name is familiar.”
“He’s in the financial news regularly,” she said with an astonishing lack of expression. “He was a big contributor to Governor Conley’s campaign.”
“Your parents have money, and your sister and her kid lived without?”
“I doubt they ever offered help, or that she would have taken it if they had.”
“Did they help you get started in your business?”
“No.” Flat. Final.
“Put you through college?”
She hesitated. “They did do that.” Then her eyes met his. “My relationship with them is hardly the point, is it?”
“Not if this turns out to be a stranger abduction.” Her flinch made him feel brutal. “More kids are snatched by members of their own families than by strangers, Ms. Greenway. I need to keep that in mind.”
Her lashes fluttered a couple of times. “I see,” she said, ducking her head.
He needed to talk to Sicily’s grandparents, start a search for her father. Find out more about her mother’s death. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to get away from this woman. But seeing how utterly alone she looked, he frowned.
“Is there someone you can call to be with you tonight?”
Her chin lifted. “That’s not necessary.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m always…” She stopped. He couldn’t help noticing that her hands were fisted so tight her knuckles showed white. “I’m comfortable by myself, Detective. Please don’t concern yourself.”
He’d been dismissed. Mike gave a brusque nod, said, “I’ll call in the morning, Ms. Greenway,” and left.
CHAPTER THREE
SICILY GROANED. OH, HER HEAD hurt so bad. Instinctively, she lifted a hand up, but her elbow banged something and she cried out.
Once the pain subsided a little, she tried to think. It was dark so she must be in bed. First she thought she was at home—well, at the apartment Mom had rented in the Rainier Valley, which was kind of a pit and they hadn’t been here that long… Except then she remembered Mom was dead. Images flickered through her mind: the police coming to the door, the tense hour waiting for the aunt she didn’t know to come for her. The funeral and the night she spent on Aunt Beth’s couch before the twin bed was delivered the next day. A new bed! Only it didn’t even have a headboard, so what had she banged her elbow on?
Something hard pressed into her hip, too. And her shoulder, and even her thigh. Sharp edges and weird bumps.
She heard herself panting. She was suddenly scared. Really scared. Her instinct was to huddle and be really, really quiet, except she’d already made sounds. Still, she tried to stifle her breathing and listened hard. After a minute she realized she was hearing traffic. Not like the freeway, these were city streets. And someone a long ways away yelled, and then another voice answered. There was a siren even farther away. It sounded…like what she’d have heard from practically any apartment she and Mom had lived in. Regular city sounds. Aunt Beth’s was different. Especially late at night, it was quiet. Once in a while she’d hear a car, some neighbor coming home, but hardly ever sirens or loud voices or stuff like that.
Finally, timidly, she stretched out her hand and felt around her. If only it weren’t so dark. First she found a wadded something that was soft, like clothes, but when she brought it to her nose it stunk like gas or oil. There was a crumpled bag that smelled like French fries. All the surfaces were hard and angular except for…whatever was under her hip. She felt her way along it, remembering the story a teacher had told about the three blind men groping an elephant. Beth got the point, but she’d been able to tell that most of her classmates didn’t.
A tire. She was lying on a car tire. Why was there a tire under her?
A weird sensation swelled in her chest. It felt hot and scary and she finally recognized that it was fear. She lifted her hands above her, knowing what she’d find.
She was inside the trunk of a car. A car that wasn’t running, that was parked somewhere in the city. And it had to be night, because there’d have to be cracks, wouldn’t there? And she could see light, now that she was concentrating, but only a little, leaking around or through taillights.
Now her breath came in whimpering little shudders. Mommy, Mommy. Aunt Beth. Please somebody come and get me.
What if I scream?
She was curled into a tiny, terrified ball now, containing that scream behind chattering teeth. Because, really, she’d maybe rather not find out who’d unlock the trunk and lift the lid.
* * *
MIKE TOOK A CHANCE THAT HE’D catch the grandparents at home and drove straight to Seattle, checking his computer on the way for Laurence Greenway’s address. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find the Greenways lived in Magnolia, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. When he got there, he found the enormous brick home was a waterfront property.
An eight-foot brick wall fronted the property and iron gates kept out the hoi polloi. He rang a buzzer and when a voice inquired who he was, he said into the speaker, “Police. Detective Mike Ryan.”
After a pause, the gates slowly swung open. He followed the circular drive and parked beside the front porch.
He recognized the man who opened the door to him. He’d seen Greenway on the news or in photos in the Seattle Times, he realized.
Beth Greenway’s father was handsome in the way wealthy men often were. His slacks and polo shirt were casual but obviously expensive. At maybe five foot ten, he was lean and fit for sixty years old. He undoubtedly belonged to a club, played racquetball, probably had a personal trainer. His hair had been allowed to go white but had a silver gleam to it that didn’t strike Mike as natural. He had the tan of a man who spent time on his sailboat.
He stood in the open doorway and said, “May I see your identification,