Page 58 of A Week Away

That got a chuckle out of him. “Good luck with that.”

And then we pulled up to the house. He parked on the street. Yeah, I was right. He wasn’t allowed to park in the driveway I had to pick up the pace to keep up with him. He rushed through the front door and into the kitchen. As he did, he called out, “Mom. We’re here. We’ve got dinner. And it’s hot!”

Silence.

Cass set the bag down on the kitchen counter, then continued over to the door to the garage. He opened and stuck his head inside. Then he backed out.

“Her car’s not there.”

“I guess you lucked out.”

“No, it’s weird. She never stays late.”

I glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was 5:35. “It takes fifteen minutes to drive home?”

“Twenty. But she always leaves five minutes early. Mr. Cray usually leaves at four.”

“Must be nice.”

“They work hard,” he said, defensively.

“Maybe you should call the office, just in case.”

He walked over to the wall phone and dialed. The phone still had a rotary dial instead of buttons. I guessed that it was here when they bought the house and Joanne didn’t want to pay to replace it.

Cass turned around and looked at me, saying, “No one’s answering.” He hung up and said, “We should go to Top Dog. Maybe her car broke down.”

“It looked like it’s just a couple of years old. Why would it breakdown?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a lemon.”

“Then why hasn’t she called you? She’d call you if her car broke down, wouldn’t she?”

He walked back through the house to Joanne’s office. I followed him. He was staring at the answering machine.

“There aren’t any messages. We should go.”

“Put the dinner in the oven so it doesn’t cool off too fast.”

He heard me, but he didn’t pay any attention. I followed him outside and we got into the Belvedere.

“What if she comes home while we’re gone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s all kind of weird. She’s never late. Never. She’s a good mom.”

Not the time to disagree with that.

“We’ll find her,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. I had no idea what was going on.

It didn’t take us twenty minutes to get back to Top Dog. He drove at least fifteen miles over the speed limit and the car had a very powerful engine.

As we approached the parking lot, I could see that there were six black-and-white patrol cars. There were a lot of people, mostly police officers standing around. At the center of it all I could see glimpses of a bronze car. A bronze Eldorado. On the pavement next to the car, a sliver of purple that had to be Joanne.

“Don’t turn in,” I said, as firmly as I could. “Keep driving.”

“What? No. Why?”

“Do what I fucking tell you.”