Ring of Truth (6 page)

But now, faced with the closed door on the second floor, Lucy couldn't quite bring herself to use that key, even though the delivery of a cake did seem to her like sort of an emergency. Somebody might knock it over, she reasoned, if she left it out in the hall. But Allie had made a point about saying, “Now, Mom, you can't just come in anytime you want to. You have to knock, just like you do on my door at home.” That, itself, had been a battle royal several years earlier, with Mom arguing that it was her house and she had a perfect right to enter any room of it, and Daughter arguing it would be an invasion of her privacy. When Ben had weighed in on Allie's side, Lucy caved.

Lucy knew she'd better respect this door, too.

With a defeated sigh, she set the cake tin on the floor just to one side of the door and hoped none of those other people who lived there would step on it, or steal it.

“Don't cry,” Ben told her when she got home. “She has to grow up.”

But it was hard for Lucy to let go, and not to worry and feel rejected. Already she suspected that Allison was off
doing things Lucy didn't know about, and probably with people that Ben and Lucy hadn't even met.

The two high school girls who were Allison Tobias's friends helped her celebrate her new freedom that first night at the Marina Bar & Grill, a popular hangout overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. The girls were too young to drink legally, but they had fake IDs, like almost every other high school student they knew, and the Marina was too crowded to be particular.

If Ben and Lucy had known, they'd have had a fit.

“I love my parents,” Allie declared, raising her first glass of draft beer and looking solemn. “God bless 'em.” Then she broke out in a huge grin that was instantly mirrored in the faces of Emily Rubeck and Gretchen Hansford. “May they put my old room to good use!”The three gaily clicked their glasses together, and then chugged their beers. None of them normally drank that fast, or very much at all, but this was a special night of long-awaited independence for the most protected one of their trio. Emily and Gretchen were both headed for out-of-town universities, even though they didn't quite have the grade-point average of their smart and diligent friend Allison. What they did have were more permissive parents; Lucy and Ben were well known among their classmates for keeping their only child on the tightest of leashes.

“It'll always be 1950 for Lucy and Ben,” Gretchen said, as she set her now-empty glass back down on the little paper coaster. Already her brain felt a little dizzy, but she was having fun; they all were, and they had agreed that they wouldn't drive on this festive night, they'd walk—or wobble—back to Allie's new place. If they didn't find a party first, or three cute guys to drive them. “ Nineteenfifties!” she repeated.

This observation struck the girls as hilarious.

But Gretchen and Emily knew that it made Allison feel guilty to make fun of her well-intentioned parents, so they didn't press the jokes too far. Besides, there was so much else to discuss over their second, and then their third, beers. What should Allie put up on her bedroom walls to decorate them? How much stuff could the other girls get into their dorm rooms without ticking off their roommates? And had Allie met any of the guys in the other apartments? Were they nice? Were they cute? Should the girls have a little party and invite Allie's neighbors?

“There's this really built guy who has an apartment down in the basement—”

“In the basement! Oh, yuck, I'd never live in a basement.”

“And these computer guys who live upstairs, but I've never seen them, because they go to work, like, around two in the morning, and they don't get back until, like, one-thirty the next morning—”

“Never date a computer guy—”

“And the other two people on my floor are girls.”

“Are they nice?”

“I guess. I don't really know.”

“Yeah, 'cause you're too busy checking out the guys!”

Giggling turned to guffaws, until other patrons at the increasingly packed and noisy tavern turned to look at the three young women who were having such a terrific time together. “I hope you're not planning on driving,” the waitress observed, on her fourth trip to their table. “ 'Cause if you are, I'm staying off the roads.”

“Not us!” Gretchen told her, pretending to be serious for a second.

“Absolutely not,” Allie echoed, with a straight face that she couldn't maintain. She laughed up at the waitress, who couldn't help but smile back at the girl with the face that looked so young, so innocent. The waitress, in her late
twenties, remembered how it felt to be a graduate fresh from high school. She was tired on this night, as on most nights, and she thought to herself that these silly girls had no idea what life had in store for them.

“Gonna walk to Allie's place,” asserted Emily.

Allison Tobias beamed with pride at those two words: “Allie's place.” The waitress caught the look, and even intuited its import. She, too, had once known the excitement of moving out, getting a place of her own. Now it only seemed to represent more hard work, but once it had been exciting. She had a strange sense, one that she didn't recall ever having before, of wanting to warn the giggling girls somehow—but warn them of what, the waitress didn't know. Of life in general? Of enjoying this moment in particular, because it might never feel this good again? She didn't know, and the odd moment passed.

“Are you really sure you want another round?” she inquired.

Gretchen crossed her eyes at Allie. “Everybody's a mom.”

“Yes, Mother,” Allie said to the waitress, and then blushed a deep scarlet that made the waitress smile a little and shake her head at them. Encouraged, Allie added impishly, “We'll be good.”

“I doubt
that
very much,” the waitress teased as she left them.

The three friends drank, talked, and laughed until one in the morning. No “cute guys” had approached them, but the more the girls had to drink the braver they got, until Gretchen worked up the nerve to do the approaching. By the time they weaved out the front door, they were accompanied by two men, strangers to each other, both a few years older than the girls who were flirting with them. One of the fellows seemed to have his eye on Gretchen, the other one was paying all of his attention to Emily.

Allison walked behind the quartet, trying to join in.

But that's hard to do when you're the odd man out, when everybody's got a partner but you. When it's supposed to be your special night, it really stings to be the one not chosen.

But Gretchen and Emily were good friends, loyal friends, and no fools, either. It was one thing to flirt outrageously with strangers in a bar, but it seemed to strike both of them at the same time that it was another thing entirely to leave that bar with men they didn't know. If it was possible to sober up fast, those two did. They managed to talk their way away from the two men, and once that was accomplished they each grabbed one of Allie's hands and started running away with her, down the sidewalk, giggling. It didn't take long for their friend to feel right in the thick of things again. But it's possible that she didn't quite sober up as quickly as they did, or perhaps the alcohol had hit her harder—she was thinner than both of them by a good ten pounds. Or maybe the feeling of being a wallflower stuck with her, even as the trio jogged together to her new apartment. Whatever the reason for it, when they reached 22 Hibiscus Avenue, Allie Tobias encouraged her friends to go on to their own homes.

“I'm going straight to sleep,” she told them.

“I thought we were going to spend the night here,” Emily protested, feeling a little hurt herself. She spied a folded piece of yellow paper taped to the door jamb. It was addressed to Allie, so Emily pulled it off and read it. “Oh, God, Allie, your mom's been here, and you're supposed to call her as soon as you get in.”

Allie grabbed for the note and read it. “Uh-oh.”

“Are you going to call her?” Emily asked.

“No way!” Allie said, looking aghast. “She'd know!”

“What are you going to tell her, if you don't call her?”

The three of them were used to this, to being “creative” in the pursuit of independence from their parents.

“I'll just say I didn't see the note.”Allie gave the appearance of trying to wrack her tipsy brain to come up with a believable excuse to give her mother. “And I didn't call, because I was so tired from moving that I fell into bed early, and slept through all night, without even taking my clothes off.”

“But what if she's called here? Wouldn't you have heard it?”

“No, if I was that tired, I might sleep through a hurricane.”

Gretchen wasn't crazy about the idea of going to her own home at this hour with liquor on her breath. “My parents will know I've been drinking if I go home.”

“You can come to my house,” Emily offered.

Emily's parents were the soundest sleepers.

They both turned to look at Allie, still hoping she'd invite them in.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and she looked so inebriated that Emily laughed and asked her, “Are you
sure
you can get upstairs?”

“I'm sure! It was great, guys. Thank you.”

They watched her go inside and close the door. As they turned to run the two blocks to Emily's house, Gretchen said, “You think she's mad 'cause of those guys? Because they paid attention to you and me and not to her?”

Emily didn't know about that, but they both felt bad about the way the evening had turned out.

In the morning, Emily and Gretchen felt worse, with ferocious hangovers. They waited a long time to call Allie at her new telephone number, in order to give her plenty of time to sleep in. When they finally agreed they couldn't wait one minute more—at 11:30
A.M.—Gretchen
dialed the new number.

She let it ring six times before hanging up.

“She's already gone out, I guess.”

“Or she's in the shower.”

“Or she's mad and she's not speaking to us.”

“Allie wouldn't do that, would she?”

“I didn't even get her answering machine.”

“That's weird. Why didn't it pick up?”

Gretchen shrugged. “I don't know, but I'm starved. Can we fix some breakfast? Do you think your mom would mind?” When Emily indicated that would be okay, her friend suggested, “Bring the phone, Em.”

All through breakfast they called, and beyond that.

But they never did reach their friend.

In the little house on Thirty-seventh Street, where Allison's parents lived, Ben and Lucy weren't having any luck contacting their daughter, either. Over a period of ten hours, Lucy's feelings changed from hurt to annoyance, and then to fear, and finally to a sickening terror.

“Her very first whole day on her own and she doesn't call us,” Lucy complained on the night when Allie was out celebrating with her friends. After leaving the cake, Lucy waited and waited to hear from the daughter who had
promised
to call her mother every day. “This is a poor way to start a new life, I must say.”

“You want me to go over and check on her?” Ben asked.

“No, I'll call her myself.”

“She won't like it.”

“Well, she'd better get used to it, or remember to call me.”

But when Lucy called, she didn't get any answer, because Allison, Emily and Gretchen were down at the Marina, giggling, drinking beer, and working up the nerve to flirt with guys.

Finally, around midnight, Lucy insisted that Ben drive her
by the Hibiscus address, so they could see if there were any lights on in Allie's room. From the street down below, they saw that their daughter's apartment was dark. Lucy jumped out of the car and left a note in a prominent place on the backdoor where the tenants let themselves in: “For A.Tobias,” it said on the front, because Lucy didn't want to give away any signal that a single woman lived there alone. Inside the little folded piece of paper was a note that said: “Call us when you get in, no matter how late it is! Love, Mom & Dad.”

The telephone in their home never rang that night.

And although Lucy called the new number every hour on the hour all night long, no one ever picked it up. She didn't know what to think, or what to do. This couldn't be right; it wasn't like Allie to be so irresponsible as to fail to call home when she was supposed to. But what if this was just a stupid way of trying to assert her independence; what if she was really there—or if she'd gone to stay at a friend's house—and was just stubbornly refusing to give her mother what she wanted. Or what if she'd brought a boy back to her room—

It would be awful, to walk in there and discover that.

But wouldn't it be worse
not
to discover that?

How could she help her daughter, and be a good mother, if she didn't know everything that was going on in Allie's life? A young girl needed guidance in all things, because there were so many dangers, so many ways in which she could make mistakes, bad judgments, come to harm.

Lucy Tobias spent a miserable night.

The morning would only get worse for her and Ben, for Allie's two friends, and for everyone else who cared at all about a sensitive, unassuming eighteen-year-old girl with a bright and hopeful future in front of her.

It was one of those awful coincidences that make you wonder if there might truly be such a thing as a fate that cannot
be denied: the day
after
Allison moved into her new apartment, her police officer uncle in Bahia Beach felt something nudge his memory. It was a name, one of those that had been given him by his worrywart of a sister. Lucy was going to ruin that girl if she didn't cut the apron strings, Lyle Karnacki thought. They were apron strings made of iron; it would take a blow torch to cut them, he thought, and shook his head ruefully as he made the trek personally from his division to Juvenile.

When he got there, he inquired of a cop he knew, “The name Steven Orbach mean anything to you?”

The woman rolled her eyes, and said, “Stevie? Killed his mom when he was fourteen. Why?”

“Oh, fucking shit,” Lyle breathed. “Tell me the whole thing.”