Which is just what they did.
Confronting Merlot while briefly reuniting with her mother had created an awkward, emotional scene. Amanda had a tough time telling me about it. People who shield themselves with a hard outer core do it for reasons of protection. Her voice broke several times. She drifted between tears and rage, but each time fought her way back under control.
Merlot had a rental in one of the older canal-front subdivisions off A1A, Lauderdale. That he apparently had a live-in male roommate was unexpected. Amanda described the roommate as tall, muscular, not really black but not really white, with some kind of heavy accent, maybe French or Creole.
The roommate intercepted them and refused to let them speak with Merlot or Gail Calloway. Then Merlot appeared, saying he would call the police if they didn’t leave. Frank asked to speak with Gail alone, just to confirm that she was all right. No deal. Then he asked to speak with Merlot alone. Same thing, and Merlot again threatened to call the police.
“It was the first time that I can say Frank ever really let my mother and me down. The son-of-a-bitch was ready to walk away, saying it was a legal matter or time to call a lawyer, something like that. Not that angry, just frustrated and maybe a little pissed off because we were imposing on his new life. I wouldn’t budge, though, so the police finally did come, but at least they made Merlot bring my mom to the door.
“Doc, I hardly recognized her. In the six or seven weeks since I’d seen her, she’d lost maybe fifteen pounds. She looked pale and gaunt, all eyes and hair and cheekbones. Her eyes, she’s got the most unusual eyes you’ve ever seen. One green, one blue, and I know she’s sick when her eyes get this milky, glassy look. Well, that’s just the way her eyes looked. Glassy, like she wasn’t well. She even sounded different when she spoke. What’s that word-mesmerized? That’s the way she sounded, but more like she was dazed. She came out, gave me a big hug and kiss right there in front of the cops. Then she told Frank and me that we had to stop saying all the bad things we’d been saying about Merlot.”
I interrupted and told her to explain that in a little more detail.
“My mom told us that we had to stop spreading lies about her friend Jackie.”
“She was convinced that you two had been lying about the guy?”
“Exactly.”
“Did she seem paranoid? Or as if the guy might have her on drugs or something?”
“No. She just seemed absolutely confident that Frank and I had been spreading lies about her boyfriend. She said that she knew what we’d been saying and that we had to stop because we were making ourselves look silly.”
“Had you and Frank said anything to anyone about Merlot?”
“Nothing. Yeah, we’d talked between ourselves, but we hadn’t said a damn thing to anyone else. Then she told us that she’d never been happier.”
“Judging from her voice, did she mean it?”
“I don’t think anyone was forcing her to say it. But she didn’t sound normal, either. Not like she was drunk or anything, but, like I told you, kind of in a daze. Or like she was trying real hard to show Merlot that she was a hundred percent on his side. That she was protecting him. You know the way people behave when they’re trying to let someone know they care? Like that. She said that she was living with Jackie now and they’d soon be going on a trip.”
“Did she say where?”
“I asked her, but Merlot cut her off before she could answer. As we were leaving, she kind of blurted out that it might be a while before she’d be able to call me on the phone. Because they’d be sailing and some of the ports were remote.”
“The police were still there, they heard that exchange.”
“Yeah, and it was… awful,” Amanda said. “It was like one of those nasty little scenes you see on television cop shows. Lights flashing, neighbors staring out their windows, trashy white people arguing on the sidewalk. That’s the way I felt, trashy. And helpless. Helpless because of the way my mother was behaving. You know what the worst thing was? Mom, my own mother, she believed Merlot, not me. That business about Frank and me spreading lies. It was like she’d been brainwashed or something. He’d been telling her that crap. Why? I mean, why go to the trouble? Christ, I wanted to scream I was so frustrated.
“So then the cops tell us we’ve got to leave, stop harassing the happy couple. What choice did I have? I told Mom to please call me. I couldn’t make her believe that I couldn’t call her. She didn’t even know Merlot’s number’d been changed. So Frank and I go get in the car. Mom’s standing there behind the cops. Merlot, the fat ass, he’s got his arm around Mom, his Creole roommate standing there still looking pissed off, ready to fight. You know what Merlot does then?”
“What.”
“He flashes me this smug little smile as we’re pulling away. A very private smile, him looking right into my eyes, just him and me. It was kind of like he was telling me, yeah, you’re right about the kind of person I am. But your mother doesn’t know it and no one else will ever believe it, so screw you.”
The way Amanda described it, I could picture it: the man’s eyes boring into hers, making her hate him even more, wanting her to hate him because he was enjoying it.
Slightly more than two weeks later, Amanda received a card from her mother postmarked Cartagena, Colombia. All it said was that they were aboard a forty-eight-foot sailboat and having a wonderful time. Over the following two months, she received three more cards, all of them postmarked Cartagena, all of them pleasant and very brief. They offered no return address and gave no more information than the first.
“She might have been writing to a stranger,” Amanda said. “They were that impersonal, that cold. And there wasn’t a clue about what their plans were, where they were headed.”
Amanda received the last of the three cards nearly a month before she tracked me down on Sanibel. Increasingly concerned about her mother’s well-being, she contacted the Broward County Sheriff’s Department and then the FBI. Both agencies were attentive and sympathetic, but how could they list Gail Calloway as a missing person when an official police report quoted the woman as saying that she was staying voluntarily with Jackie Merlot? Not only that, but Gail had volunteered that the two of them expected to be out of touch for a while while traveling.
“It’s quite a predicament,” I said.
“Yeah. Now you see what I mean when I say the police can’t help. And the private investigator Frank hired, he’s not going to travel out of the country to try to bring Mom back. He’d be risking his license.”
I thought about it for a moment before saying, “I’m going to tell you something that you may not want to hear. You’re assuming that your mother wants to be rescued. You need to face the possibility that your mother really is happy, that she meant exactly what she told you. She’s a grown woman. Merlot may be a bad guy, maybe the scum shyster of the earth, but it doesn’t much matter what we think. She may be doing exactly what she wants to do.”
“No, nope, I don’t think so. I know my mom. She’s in trouble. She may not know it yet, but she is.” Amanda gave it a couple of beats, looking at me before she added, “And you think so, too.”
I said, “I do?” amused by her confidence; sat there letting her know I was waiting for an explanation.
“I’ve been watching your expression, Ford, the way your eyes changed. While you were listening, I could almost see the wheels turning. You’re a smart man. You’ve been around and you’re good enough at reading people to figure I’m not the kind of person to exaggerate or to panic or go all freaky just because I don’t get my way. I’m not exactly the all-American girl, but I’m no ditz, either. And I’m not one of those adult children who can’t leave their parents. For the last five years, I’ve lived very happily on my own, thank you.
“But what I told you about my mom, it got to you. It made you mad. I could tell. There’s something very… unhealthy about Merlot’s behavior, and you know it. You and my real father were once very close friends, and the woman that he loved is in trouble. Guys like you-and I may be wrong here, but it’s the way I read it-guys like you, the straight shooters, you’re throwbacks. You take friendship seriously, and what I just told you really pisses you off. Not you personally, but in a way that offends your sense of loyalty. I may be way off base but, hey, I hope I’m right because there aren’t many people left, male or female, a person can count on. So, the question is, do you have any ideas how to find her and pry her loose from that fat bastard?”
So, along with her other good qualities, give the lady low marks for her generous, hopeful assessment of my character, but high marks for the way she read my reaction to her story.
