The Missing

“It’s somebody else’s, I know that much. Probably hired somebody to steal her away from her parents.” Her eyes narrowed. “You a detective or something?”

“No,” he said. “I’m the man got paid a thousand bucks to steal her.”

Vessy gave him back the cigarette and reached for the bottle. “Well, ain’t you a jack-in-the-box.” Her mouth formed a straight line. “What you want now?”

“I aim to steal her back.”

She stopped before taking a drink. “Excuse me, but that don’t seem too bright. The sheriff’s in Acy’s poker club.”

He pointed a finger up the hill to Lilac Street. “They can’t report me, not without admittin’ to a crime themselves. And I’ll sell that kid right back to them again, but this time for a cool two thousand.” He got up and put the cigarette in the trash burner, then turned to look at her. “Could you use five hundred of it?”

She glanced rapidly around her shack, every surface jaundiced in the kerosene light, as if she might never see it again. “What I got to do?”

“Can you ride a horse?”

She made a face. “What you think? I was raised ridin’ a mule to school, all five grades, then I come home to plow till dark.”

“I need you to help with the girl down to my place in Louisiana.”

She stuck a tongue in her jaw and thought about this. “And then what?”

He was not used to smiling, but smiled now and straightened his back the way a gambler with the winning hand does before he lays down his cards. “Sweetness, then you can do whatever the hell you want.”

***

HE STAYED at her place talking with her long after the streets were empty. The next day he laid low at the hotel. The following night, he walked over to Ditch Street, ignoring the aromatic fog rising from the steaming runnels flowing downhill from the tannery. She let him in and told him at once that Tuesday Acy would be away from the house early for sure, and that Mrs. White was leaving on the morning boat headed upriver to Louisville to shop. Neither would get home until five-thirty at the earliest.

He wedged back in the spindle chair and its joints popped like caps in a toy pistol. “You got pants you can wear under a dress?”

She nodded, sitting across from him at her table. “You got horses?”

“I got two set up to buy.”

“Neither one of ’em bite?”

“The ones I’m lookin’ at might not have teeth.”

She grinned, and a trace of a blush formed above her cheekbones.

He smiled back, his expression mysterious, the way some mean men smile at people, with the suggestion that he might bring her as far as he needed her, then leave her in the woods somewhere with a knot on her head. If Vessy read these notions on his face, she gave no hint of it. Taking his flask, she poured herself a small drink, hoping the taste would burn the tannery stench out of her nostrils. She smiled delicately into the glass.

Chapter Twenty-five

ON TUESDAY at a quarter to six Acy walked home from the bank. His fine burgundy Oldsmobile stayed in the carriage house on the alley because he liked the exercise the uphill route gave him, even when he was tired, as he was today. When he opened his front door, the quiet was palpable, and at once he knew that something was different. No cooking smells. He looked at the floor, wondering if he had forgotten some event, perhaps a recital or music class for Madeline. Nothing came to mind. He went into the kitchen and put a hand on the stove, which was cold. Upstairs, everything seemed in order and the beds were made, which meant that Vessy, who did the housework when the maid was ill, as well as the cooking, had been in.

He decided to take the car down the hill and eat at the Wilson Hotel. At the restaurant, while waiting for his food, he studied his ironstone plate. Had Vessy taken ill? His wife, he knew, had caught the Galeno upriver to shop, and there were all sorts of reasons the old boat might be late getting back in. Perhaps Madeline had gone along, and Vessy as well, to help with the packages. Two young lawyers came over to join him, and soon he was talking of tax laws and thinking about the night’s steaks. He would have enjoyed a glass of wine, as in the old days before the war when drinking was legal. But the steaks arrived plump and running with hot fat, so he was happy.

***

THE GALENO had indeed developed boiler trouble and was limping downstream two hours behind schedule. Willa liked riding a boat upriver, imagining against fact that the dowdy, short-trade packets still running were grand floating palaces, but after dark she always wished she’d taken the train. She was tired, and the ladies’ lounge at the rear of the main salon had lost its gilt and gloss, the chair seats threadbare and smelling of coal oil. Two dour spinsters were returning from a doctor’s visit, and all they wanted to talk about were the limitless female problems they’d suffered. She passed the time by going through her two large bundles of purchases, one of which held even more shifts and pinafores for the girl. She was anxious to return and show her Madeline the new things, though the girl seldom reacted much to gifts of clothes. That would change as she got older and learned more about style and fashion. Willa had taught her many things already, although the girl still refused to call her Mother, or to wave at people properly, or to refrain from certain unruly expressions. The times she tried to feel close to Madeline, when the girl was in her lap and she was brushing her hair, the child would turn suddenly, staring at her as though Willa were a complete stranger. Then she would feel hurt and denied, but she was always able to cheer herself with the knowledge that at last, at long last, she possessed a child.

The Galeno landed after eight o’clock, and Willa called the house from the wharf boat and asked Acy to come down and get her. When he arrived, he helped her with her packages. “I guess we’ll have to drive by Vessy’s to pick Madeline up.”

“What on earth for?”

“She must’ve brought the child home with her. They’re not at the house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Nobody was home when I got there after work.”

She waited for him to close her door and walk around the hood. He was moving quickly and jumped into the driver’s seat like a boy. “I hate for Madeline to be in that neighborhood, it just smells so awful,” she said, waving a perfumed hand before her nose.

He put the car in gear and drove up the hill, turning down Ditch Street and driving past a row of narrow, tin- roofed houses, their windows yellow with kerosene light, until he stopped in front of Vessy’s. The house was dark, but he still got out and knocked.

He sped a little as they rolled on toward home. Willa put a gloved hand on his arm. “What is it?”

He motioned with his chin. “No lights on at home, either.”

They went in and searched for a note, a clue. Willa went to a drawer in the walnut breakfront and retrieved her bottle of Canadian whiskey, pouring herself a long swallow into a cut-glass tumbler. A tremor ran through her hand as she drank.

Acy came back from the old carriage house and sat down, taking her drink and downing it. “They’re not here.”

“Maybe Madeline became ill and she took her to the doctor.”

He let out a sigh. “That’s got to be it.”

But after an apologetic phone call, he came back into the dining room and said the doctor hadn’t seen them. By this time it was nine o’clock. He went to the neighbors on either side. Mrs. Spurlen hadn’t seen Vessy or Madeline all day. Mr. Scott, who owned several farms but had retired to town, brought his great gray eyebrows