Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (23 page)

At twenty-two, most of us are not yet gifted
with sleek tongues. Sometimes the words line up nicely in our
minds, but they don’t come out as elegantly as they should. That
comes with practice, experience, years. I just know that, having
found a T-shirt to pull over the fragments of my own blouse and
skirt, and having secured my purse and only managing to find one
shoe, I headed for the door, stopping only to scream at the top of
my lungs, “You are an asshole Paul Westbrook. I’ll fucking hate you
until the fucking day I die. And when I tell Ernie what you’ve done
he is going to fucking kill you.” As I ran towards the door, all I
could hear was Paul’s laughter.

It was apparent to me, loathing him as I
mostly always had, that there was no way I would have gone to bed
with Paul of my own choice. I didn’t even like the guy and there
was no amount of drink that would have made me want to sleep with
him. Plus, I am by choice and nature a loyal person. I don’t make
commitments lightly or easily. When I do I honor them. I was like
that at fourteen and I’m like that now. And that was certainly my
headspace when I was with Ernie. By then our relationship was no
picnic, but it’s simply not my style to sleep with boyfriend’s
friends. Especially when I
loathe
them. And I loathed Paul,
even before he raped me.

And, though courts of law can be wishy washy
about proving this kind of rape, there is no doubt in my mind that
that is exactly what Paul did to me. I don’t know for sure if he’d
drugged me. But I know what was in my heart and the revulsion I’d
always felt at the thought of Paul’s touch.

In retrospect, all of this might have had a
different ending if I’d done the right thing: instead of heading
back — to my and Ernie’s then home — bruised and emotionally
bleeding, I should have gone to the police. Or, at the very least,
some school counselor: campuses are always crawling with them, my
tuition paying their salaries. Why didn’t I? I’d been violated and
I felt as low as I ever had in my life. But I was young and stupid.
I wasn’t even confident that what Paul had done was illegal,
especially since I couldn’t say for sure what it was he
had
done.

So I went home. Luckily I had a couple of
dollars in my purse, and I caught the bus. Trudged up the stairs of
our third story walkup just focusing on what I’d say. How I’d
explain things to Ernie and how angry he’d be. At Paul.

I knew the instant the door opened to my key
that something was wrong. And then I heard the laughter from the
bedroom: his low and lusty; hers high and sweet. I felt like
running away, hiding. But I was home: there was no place to go. And
curiosity was a component of my personality, even then.

I didn’t think a lot about what I was doing.
Didn’t hem or haw, just pushed through into the bedroom and stood
there — mute until they became aware of me. And it was clear from
the little I saw that
this
girl had not been raped. I knew
her. I could never be positive, but I suspected Ernie made sure of
that. She was teeny, yet voluptuous, bubbly and vivacious.
Everything that, in my mind, I was not.

I expected — wanted — the classic television
reaction. Ernie becoming aware of me and throwing the naked and
exceedingly beautiful girl off of him, rushing to me, taking me in
his arms and begging my forgiveness. I hope I would not have
forgiven him, but it didn’t matter. He did none of that.

“So how was it with Paul, baby?” He was
naked, lying on his side, his leg entwined with the girl’s, his
hand stroking her thigh. “He always says he’s hung. Was he hung
like a pony?”

That was when I understood that Ernie had
known.
Had perhaps even helped make it happen. Maybe because
Paul had wanted to, or maybe because Ernie himself had wanted the
coast clear to be with the girl now sprawled on my bed.

For all the things I
didn’t
do with
this entire situation, I did one right thing: I got the hell out of
there. For good. While Ernie watched, I grabbed a laundry bag and
stuffed in everything of mine I could lay my hands on. When the bag
was full, I grabbed his wallet and relieved it of the fifty-odd
bucks he was holding. He didn’t try to stop me. Maybe he’d ceased
watching.

I used the money to get as far from
Cambridge as I could. When the money was gone, which wasn’t very
many hours, I called my mother and sat in a Greyhound station
waiting for the cash she wired to get to me. And then I went
home.

Seattle is a long, long way from Boston if
you’re on a bus. When I think back on it, the trip seemed to take
about a month, though in fact, it couldn’t have been more than five
days. But the miles soothed my soul. Soothed the part of me that
Paul had violated. And the part that still couldn’t believe that
Ernie hadn’t followed me. That, in fact, at any stop the Greyhound
made, he’d be waiting for me when the doors opened and I went out
to stretch my legs. I wouldn’t have taken him back at that point,
but I would have loved the chance to tell him so to his face. It
didn’t come up.

And that was the last time I’d seen Boston.
Or Paul. Or Ernie. Until this week, that is. I didn’t even go back
for graduation. And my mom — whom I
did
tell everything to —
backed me up by contacting the university and telling them I’d
developed Thalaxian flu or Altzheimers or something else really
cool-sounding so that, ultimately, they just shipped my diploma out
to me in Seattle. Which, inadvertently, was how I fell into the
stock market. But that’s a different story.

The Safeway sign at PCH brought me into the
present. It reminded me of the empty cupboards at home and that I
was hungry again and should probably stop for provisions. I glanced
at my watch as I pulled into the parking lot. It was six o’clock.
And then I remembered.

“Shit,” I said it aloud. And then I said it
again as I turned my car around and headed for the exit in the
direction that would take me back the way I’d come. “Shit.” Because
I’d told Steve I’d meet him at five-thirty. And I had a hunch he
would have been on time.

Chapter Thirteen

Finally getting home was like a replay of
the morning. Tycho happy and reproachful — he’d spent the day
without a run, without happy petting, without me – the light on the
phone that alerted me to voicemail blinking at me mindlessly and
the feeling of things not done — or done badly — nagging at the
center of my gut. Part of this feeling, of course, was Steve. I’d
finished meeting with Arianna in plenty of time to make it to the
restaurant by the five-thirty he and I had agreed upon. By the time
I’d remembered and raced back there, he was gone, though the
hostess had reported that a cheerful young man who fit his
description had come in a little after five and had grown slowly
less cheerful until he’d left glowering — and apparently stood up —
at six-fifteen.

“If he comes back, tell him I was here,” I
told her. She nodded her agreement, somehow managing to look
skeptical
and
disapproving at the same time. Or so I
thought. Not that it mattered. I’d told him I’d be there and that
I’d explain things at five-thirty. I hadn’t shown up. And we hadn’t
exchanged phone numbers. I simply had no way to reach him
tonight.

I felt badly. And like I’d proven his
earlier opinion of me to be correct. Maybe he was right: maybe I
was
using him. Could you use someone subconsciously? The
thought made me feel hollow inside.

And then there was Jennifer and all I’d
learned at the Hestman School. I quickly changed out of my
quasi-ladies-who-lunch duds, pulled on some track pants and a
T-shirt, grabbed the bag Bruce had given me at the school and
headed upstairs to talk to Tyler, something I wasn’t looking
forward to at all.

Tasya opened the kitchen door at my knock.
She looked as drawn as her husband had earlier in the day.

“Have you heard from Jennifer?” I asked
needlessly. The answer was written on Tasya’s face.

“No. Not exactly,” she called out to Tyler
over her shoulder. “Madeline’s here. Do you want her to come
in?”

Tyler called out in the affirmative from
somewhere deeper in the house and Tasya indicated that I should
follow her. As we left the Sub-Zero appliances behind us, I
realized that I’d never seen any room besides the kitchen in Tasya
and Tyler’s part of the house. Usually I would have enjoyed this
glimpse inside the real lifestyles of the rich and famous but at
that moment I had two things on my mind: Jennifer’s whereabouts and
the identity of the owner of the masculine voice I could hear that
clearly wasn’t Tyler’s.

I followed Tasya into a large living room
that looked, in some respects, like a grown up version of mine. The
view was the same, as well as the floor-to-ceiling windows, but
opposite ends of the room were dominated by a fieldstone fireplace
and a baby grand piano. The terra cotta tile floors — the same as
the ones in the kitchen and covering the decks — gleamed dully
under my feet and, combined with large potted plants, gave the
impression that indoors was outdoors and vice versa. It was a
beautiful home. But I noticed it all in a peripheral way. What
dominated my attention were two uniformed policemen standing in
Tyler’s living room. My first thought was panic: they were here for
me. I realized quickly, however, that they were there to talk about
Jennifer.

When he saw me, Tyler broke off talking with
the policemen and explained to me, “I wanted you here now in case
you were able to turn up anything at the school. Were you?”

I shook my head in the negative. “She wasn’t
there.”

I thought it would be better if I told Tyler
what I’d learned at the school in private. After that, if he wanted
the police to know, he could tell them himself. Also, I wanted to
draw as little attention to myself as possible. While it didn’t
seem likely the cops would make the connection between Tyler
Beckett’s tenant and the person on the LRG surveillance video, I
didn’t feel like taking any chances.

Tyler indicated I should sit on the
overstuffed sofa while he finished making the report on his missing
daughter. I sat and tried to fade into the background as much as
possible while examining my surroundings.

It was a good room. The setting was grand
and many of the appointments were obviously expensive, but it
looked like a place where people lived, not just a room to show to
company. I focused on a photograph-covered wall near me, examining
photos from Tyler and Tasya’s wedding, some images of Tyler that
had obviously been taken on the set of various films, plus photos
of Jennifer — riding a horse, acting in a school play, at the beach
with a woman unfamiliar to me who I took to be her mother — at
various ages.

“I have a bad feeling,” Tyler said to me as
soon as the police were gone. Tasya went to him, rubbing his
shoulder while sitting on the edge of his chair. “A very bad
feeling.” Then to me, “nothing at the school, huh?”

“Well, they didn’t know where she was. But
they told me some stuff you should know.”

Tyler and Tasya seemed ever more deflated
when I relayed what Dr. Alder had told me: about Jennifer’s
increasing truancy, her slipping grades, the reported surliness
and, finally, her expulsion the previous day.

“She said it started after the winter
holiday?” Tasya asked finally.

I nodded and Tasya started to cry. “Tyler,”
she said, “I’m so sorry.”

“C’mon babe. It’s not that,” Tyler was now
the comforter, Tasya the bereft.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Tasya and I were married last
Christmas.”

“There’s something else, though,” I said,
finding myself reluctant to bring up the matter of Dr. Alder’s
unreturned phone calls.

And rightly so. Tyler exploded, “But that’s
ridiculous. I’ve always been so accessible for anything to do with
Jen.” Then he subsided, looking broken and adding quietly, “but
we’ve been out of town a lot this year. And she’s always been so
strong. I thought I was past the point where I needed to worry
about her. She took care of
me
after her mother and I
split.”

My own mother’s voice came to me, how she
had always said we’d never be too old to worry about. I understood
the words more fully now.

“What about the boyfriend? Have you tried
him?”

“What boyfriend?” They practically said it
together.

It was inconceivable to me that they didn’t
know him. “I met him here. At your barbecue. A gangly-looking
redhead with a lot of product in his hair?”

They continued looking blank and I thought
back carefully to what Jennifer had said to me about him. “That’s
what she called him: the ‘boyfriend person.’ Cody I think his name
was. No. Something even more nonsensical.” A beat and then I
remembered. “Corby.”

Tyler and Tasya looked at each other in a
way that told me plainly they’d never heard Corby’s name before and
I wished there was some way I could change things: fix it so I
wasn’t the one that had to break that to them. I remembered the
white bag. “And the school gave me this,” I told them handing it
over.

They promised to let me know if they heard
anything and I saw myself out. The day, which had started in a
strange hotel room at Marina Del Rey, was starting to take its
toll.

The maniacally flashing red light on the
phone on my desk caught my attention as I walked in the door. I
groaned inwardly: I hadn’t cleared them before I’d left in the
morning, knowing that several of the messages were from Emily and,
since she’d gotten me caught me up on the phone, there didn’t seem
a big reason to listen to them. I was even less interested now, but
knew I couldn’t just continue to let them pile up: it was possible
there’d be something on at least one of the messages I’d want to
know.