SATURDAY MORNING
The past fourteen hours have been brutal. My phone has become part of my hand, a magic portal with all the hopeful answers—and agonizing questions. I don’t dare drag my gaze from it. Any minute now, surely, Erika will call or text, I tell myself, anticipating the cool flush of relief when I see her Sorry, had my phone off. But to my utter frustration and mounting anxiety, the frantic messages to my daughter remain unanswered, the calls disappearing into voicemail.
Where is she?
I would have contacted the VSP right away after I sent her our code phrase and she responded with “Sure!” if it hadn’t been for that damned Apple Watch. It’s constantly spitting back automatic replies, sometimes when she hasn’t read the original message. Erika would be mortified if I jumped the gun and begged the police to put out an APB when she was just having a glass of wine at the Snowden Inn or simply taking a few minutes to herself, mulling over what certainly has been a traumatic day. She’d never forgive me.
Besides, it’s not as though she has a stellar track record when it comes to responding in a timely fashion. There’ve been plenty of occasions where she’s failed to get back to me despite my pestering. Usually, the lame excuse is her phone ran out of power and she couldn’t find a charger or she was in a place with no service, though I’ve suspected she’s simply tired of being virtually tethered to her mother. And who could blame her? We live right on top of each other. She’s an adult woman, and yet I’m always in her business.
Except this time it’s different. Erika hasn’t been under this much stress—or police scrutiny—since the accident in high school. The VSP clearly have her in their crosshairs now that her former boyfriend, Colton Whitcomb, is dead under mysterious circumstances, and a male employer with whom she’s infatuated has been missing for days. Andre, especially, seems out for blood. I can’t help but feel she’s being bullied by a man with baggage and a badge. I mean, searching her apartment? Totally over the top.
Tammy and I went by the apartment to tidy up and were appalled. The place was a mess, in chaotic disarray. Drawers hung opened, couch cushions upended, trash cans overturned. A tornado could have landed here and it would’ve been neater. We put it back together before she could see it. And now I wonder if she ever will.
“You might feel better if you drove around and looked for her,” Tammy finally said after hours of watching me pull my hair out. “That’s what was killing me in Florida, the endless waiting, the inability to do anything. You gotta take action.”
Shit. In my self-centered obsession about my own daughter I’d forgotten the reason Tammy was in Snowden, to search for hers. How could I be so insensitive?
“Psssh. Stop,” she said when I apologized for my thoughtlessness. “Look. Let’s finish the dishes. If she’s not back by the time we punch the button on the dishwasher, then why don’t we see what we can find?”
We went from clutter to clean in a flash. I spooned pot roast, gravy, and mashed potatoes onto a plate, covered it with Saran Wrap, and put it into the fridge for when Erika got home. As if she were working late.
“Atta girl,” Tammy said with a wink. Grabbing her sunshine-yellow parka, she said, “One smoke and then we’ll go.”
Tammy took the wheel of my Subaru, squinting at the night road ahead and grimacing whenever we hit a pothole or a rock. Clutching my phone, always, I stared out the window searching for the Tesla or a break in the trees where a car might have plowed through. Once, I thought I saw a person standing with her thumb out, but it was only a white birch.
We headed to the Barrons’ house and had to park the car at the gate and walk up the driveway. The automatic outdoor lights flicked on, but clearly no one was home. The windows were dark. I rang the bell and even tried the doors, in case one had been left open. But they were locked tight.
Then we drove to the Snowden Inn, where the bartender was closing down for the evening. He knew Erika but told us she hadn’t stopped by for weeks.
“How about her friends?” Tammy asked me next.
I shrugged. “If she had any.”
This is a huge part of Erika’s problem, in my opinion, lack of companionship. She’s always been a bit of a loner, a daydreamer who’s happier in her room scrolling through social media than actually engaging in human interaction. Or maybe that’s my distorted view.
Running out of options, we ended up driving aimlessly around Snowden as I mentally fended off the scenarios maliciously creeping into my thoughts: Erika dead in the woods like Colton. Erika injured, captive, trapped . . . drowned.
Finally, I bit the bullet and called the VSP. Seeming less than interested in a twenty-seven-year-old woman who hadn’t responded to her mother for three hours despite the exchange of their mutual code words, a dispatcher nevertheless promised a trooper would stop by the house. Tammy and I went home and waited. No trooper.
There was nothing left to do but hit up the local cop—Andre Picard. I had problems with him, but at least he’d approach Erika’s disappearance seriously, if skeptically. After all, according to Freddie, Andre and Trooper Kashi had instructed her not to leave the area and here she was, disobeying.
“She’s gone!” I said, when he answered the door in his flannel pants, half asleep and blinking. “You have to search for her now! Put out an APB. We’ve already wasted too much time.”
Andre made us a pot of coffee and called the barracks, issuing a missing-person alert. He took my statement, calmly asking important questions that, in my turmoil, I hadn’t thought to ask. Who last saw her? She was supposed to go to work for a meeting. Did she have that meeting? Who was at the meeting? Did I have contact info?
He, of all people, had the telephone number for LuAnn Cowles, the To the Manor Build producer in LA, with whom he’d apparently spoken early in the day. Or the day before. Or the day before that. I have no idea. Details flit in and out of my brain like butterflies through a field. Nothing sticks.
Andre managed to track down LuAnn, even putting her on speakerphone for my benefit. She came across as a genuinely nice person, though I got the sense from the way she hesitated when she answered a few of his tougher questions that she had another agenda, besides my daughter’s safety. To her, Erika was an assistant she’d met once at a wedding and subsequently via Zoom. She was peanuts compared with the all-important success of To the Manor Build.
And then she dropped the bomb: Erika had been fired.
When LuAnn said the word terminated, I tried not to curse. Erika must have been devastated. Becoming the Barrons’ assistant had been life changing for her, proving to the community of haters that not only was she valued, but she was valued by Important People. For her to lose this beloved job, and all because of some wild, unsubstantiated allegations involving an ex-boyfriend and a vengeful cop, could send anyone over the bend.
It was Amber Allen all over again. An unfortunate accident, a small-town rumor mill painting her as a woman scorned, followed by harsh judgment and merciless repercussions.
“I hope she hasn’t done something drastic,” I said, under my breath.
“She’s okay,” Tammy whispered. “She’s not gonna harm herself over a stupid job. Anyway, she wouldn’t have used her code word, right?”
“I was so sorry to let her go,” LuAnn said. “Kim, I want you to know that our decision had nothing to do with your daughter’s abilities. Like I told her, I have never worked with such a capable assistant and capable assistants are worth their weight in gold. I will gladly write her a glowing recommendation once this is all cleared up.”
Too little, too late, I thought.
Andre asked LuAnn for details of the meeting. When it began, when it ended. It had begun at seven p.m. our time and ended about fifty-five minutes later. By then only LuAnn, a TMB lawyer, and Erika were in the meeting.
“This is going to come across as severe, but remember TMB must ensure one-hundred-percent confidentiality among our talent, staff, and vendors,” LuAnn prefaced defensively. “Whenever you terminate an employee, you run the risk of sabotage. Therefore, in situations such as this where there is no supervisor on the premises to oversee the terminated employee, per TMB policy we follow a process where as soon as the employee is informed of her termination, security is on hand to immediately escort said employee from the work site.”
My jaw dropped in horror. What kind of operation was this?
Tammy went, “You can’t be for real.”
“We’ve had bad experiences,” LuAnn said. “Terminated employees have stolen pricey staging pieces or downloaded confidential internal emails in an attempt to embarrass TMB. Dented fridge doors. Smashed windows. Even, once, defecation on an antique hand-knotted Persian carpet. That case set our security policy in stone forever.”
“Erika Turnbull is not the type of girl to take a piss on your fancy rug,” Tammy said, outraged on my behalf. “Y’all should be ashamed for treating a loyal employee with such a lack of dignity.”
“No shit,” I agreed.
Andre stayed on task. “Do you have the contact information for that security officer?”
“HR does, I’m sure,” said LuAnn, seeming less authoritative after Tammy’s dressing-down. “They’ve gone for the weekend, unfortunately. They won’t be back until Monday. I do know that when we were setting this up earlier, they were looking for suggestions in the area. I mentioned the security firm Robert Barron hired for the wedding. They were out of Boston, as I recall.”
The beefy men in suits ringing the perimeter of the ceremony with their white earbuds and impenetrable sunglasses. Tammy was right. Calling in professional bouncers to remove an assistant who’d busted her ass to ensure this ridiculous reality show contest ran without a hitch was not only overkill, it was insulting.
Andre thanked LuAnn and hung up the phone just as an alert from a dispatcher crackled across his portable radio. “Missing person located. Code 452. TH 117 at mile marker—”
My heart leapt. Erika!
He turned down the radio, got up, and went to the other room, shutting the door behind him and leaving me in a cold sweat. Had they found her and, if so, in what condition? The way Andre silenced the radio had me worried as I rapidly Googled “Code 452” on my phone, along with “Town Highway 117.”
“That’s her. I just know it,” Tammy said, brightly. “All that fretting for nothing, Kim. Bet her car broke down and she had no cell service. You know how that is.”
I showed her my Google results. “Town Highway 117 is the Mad Tom Notch Road in Peru.”
Tammy frowned. “Isn’t that where you took me the night I got in? It’s where Colton Whitcomb’s body was found and . . . Erika’s car.”
“You’re right. Good memory.”
Just then, the door opened and Andre appeared, phone to his chest. He looked to me, then to Tammy, and then to me again.
“We found her.”