Point Of Departure

The line of cars inched closer to the tolls, and as her engine shuddered in protest, Mia drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. Somewhere between Springfield and Boston, her odometer had rolled past three hundred thousand miles. It was nearing time to send the ancient Blazer to the boneyard, but she was loath to spend the money on a new car. At least the old girl was paid for. Embarrassing to drive, but paid for. The previous owner, a twenty-year-old kid from Revere, had pimped it out with shiny black paint, chrome wheels and opaque, black-tinted windows. Kev, of course, loved the damn thing. He called it her Mafia staff car.

Kaye, on the other hand, was forever hounding her to buy a new car. Her sister-in-law was a strong proponent of the you-have-to-look-successful-to-be-successful philosophy. That might work fine for Kaye, who drove a flashy BMW and dressed like Ivana Trump. But Kaye wasn’t feeding and clothing a seventeen-year-old boy with a hollow leg and feet that wouldn’t stop growing. She wasn’t paying off student loans and a killer mortgage. And she certainly wasn’t going it alone. She had a husband to help pay the bills, a husband who was solid, respectable and gainfully employed.

Mia finally reached the tollbooth. The toll taker, a sallow-faced man in his sixties, wordlessly took the five-dollar bill she offered, and shoved the change into her hand with sullen impatience. Checking her rearview mirror, she pulled away from the tolls, changed lanes and shot across town through the Big Dig tunnel in a quarter of the time it had taken back in the days of the elevated expressway. She took a downtown exit and quickly found herself in the heart of the North End. Boston’s Little Italy, with its narrow, congested streets, its restaurants and its pastry and butcher shops, possessed an old-world charm and a warm, neighborhood feel Mia hadn’t known existed until she had married Nick and moved here. Now, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

She climbed the hill and turned onto her street, found a tiny opening at the curb only two houses down from her own, and squeezed into it. Shutting off the engine, she studied her house, assessing its curb appeal, admiring the brick and stone exterior, the bay windows, the freshly painted front door. She’d bought the house seven months ago, and still the sight of it sent a tiny thrill down her spine. She hadn’t been in the market for a house; she’d originally brought a client here, a thirtyish yuppie banker looking to invest in the recently fashionable North End. He’d wanted something he could buy cheaply, renovate and turn over in five or six years. The house had just come on the market, and the asking price, while a little steep, still didn’t reflect the skyrocketing prices she’d been seeing all over the Greater Boston Area.

The house hadn’t been what her client was looking for. Too expensive, too much work to be done. But Mia had walked through the front door and fallen instantly in love. The house might need work, but she was handy with a hammer and a paintbrush. She’d walked from room to room, picturing what she could do with the place even as she extolled its virtues to her client and prayed he wouldn’t love it the way she did.

It was the courtyard that sold her. It was exquisite, a sun-dappled oasis tucked away behind the house, accessible to the street only by a narrow alley that ended in a locked wrought-iron gate. Although it had been a blustery February day when she’d looked at the house, she had seen the tiny courtyard’s potential. She could picture it blooming in a riot of color, with tubs of pink and white impatiens and long wooden planters overflowing with red geraniums. A park bench over here, maybe some kind of water fountain over there, with cascading sprays of greenery everywhere.

She’d grown up without flowers, without any of the feminine touches a mother would have brought to her life. Johnny Winslow hadn’t exactly been Martha Stewart. Mia’s old man had been too busy drinking and committing the petty crimes that kept him on a first-name basis with various members of the local constabulary to place any stock in something as frivolous as flowers. Or any home decor more exotic than a tableful of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon bottles.

Mia had gone home that night and spent hours crunching numbers. Winslow & DeLucca was doing well, but she and Kaye had agreed at the start of their partnership not to bleed it dry. They lived on their personal commissions and filtered most of the agency’s share right back into the firm. The real estate business was notoriously unpredictable, and she had to be sure she had enough money tucked away to cover the next dry spell. In another year, Kevin would be off to college, and Mia didn’t even want to think about what that would cost.

She’d weighed her options and her finances carefully. It had been close, but in the end, the little courtyard, with its old-world charm, had won out. In the morning, she’d gone into the office, called the listing Realtor and made an offer. It had been accepted immediately. Four weeks later, she’d signed papers and the previous owner had handed over the keys. Now she had a home that belonged to her (or would, after 356 more payments), a never-ending renovation project that filled every hour of her spare time, and a hefty mortgage that kept her awake at night thinking up creative ways to put more cash into her bank account. Fear of starvation, she’d discovered, was a powerful motivator.

She found Kevin at his desk, his lanky six-foot-three frame hunched over a gargantuan computer monitor. He handled the joy stick with rapid and accurate movements as the vroom-vroom of racing automobile engines, accompanied by squealing tires and a frenzy of gunshots, poured from the wall-mounted speakers. Pausing in the open doorway, Mia made a sweeping assessment of his room: the empty pizza box beside his desk; the clunky size-thirteen sneakers—bought a month ago and probably already outgrown—carelessly discarded in the middle of the floor; the dog-eared Star Wars poster; the dirty socks collecting dust bunnies beneath the unmade bed. Kev’s housekeeping skills might be lacking, but this was his space. As long as there were no drugs hidden in his underwear drawer, as long as the dirty socks eventually got washed and nothing was growing under the bed, she let him keep his room the way he wanted it.

Leaning against the door frame, she said, “Killed any bad guys lately?”

“Shit! I mean, shoot.” Kevin glanced warily over his shoulder. “Geez, Mom, you just got me killed. Now I have to start all over again.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me for the intrusion.”

“You could at least knock first. You scared the crap out of me.” Finally remembering the manners she’d drilled into his head since birth, he leaned back in his chair, swiveled in her direction and said, “So how was the seminar?”

“Have you ever watched paint dry? Multiply that times ten, and you’ll have an idea.”

His grin was quick and broad. “Sorta like sitting through Miss Crandall’s English class.”

“Sorta like that.”

“So,” he said, “I have something to ask you.”

Cautiously, she nodded. “Okay. Ask.”

“Michelle’s family is flying down to Tampa for the Columbus Day weekend. They’re leaving on Thursday night. They invited me to come along. Can I go?”

“They’re flying all the way to Tampa for three days?”

“Three days, four nights. They do it all the time. They have a condo down there, and it’s right on the beach. There’s plenty of room. I’d have my own room and everything. It would be really cool, Mom. The sun, the sand, the swaying palm trees.”

The sex, she thought, but didn’t say it. What kind of supervision would the Olsons provide? Would it be sufficient to keep Kevin from sneaking into Michelle’s bedroom while the rest of the family was asleep? She knew the kids were deeply involved, and she’d spoken to Kevin some time ago about safe sex. Mia wasn’t sure if their relationship had reached that level yet, but if it hadn’t, it was bound to in the near future. Anybody who looked at the two of them together could tell. One of Mia’s biggest fears was that Michelle would get pregnant and both their young lives would be ruined. Could she trust her son to exercise good judgment?

Mia took a deep breath. “Who’s paying for your plane ticket?”

It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, and they both knew it. But because it was the opening she’d provided, he jumped into it eagerly. “Don’t worry, Mom, I already told them I’d pay for it myself. I knew you wouldn’t want me to let them take on the extra expense. This time of year, a ticket to Florida’s pretty cheap if you buy it online. I have enough money saved up. I already talked to Denny. He says I can have the time off from work. And all my teachers are giving me my assignments early so I won’t miss anything important.”

Her son was one clever boy. He’d covered all the bases. “Let me think about it,” she said. “How soon do you have to have an answer?”

“Tomorrow. Mr. Olson needs to know how many tickets to buy.”

“I’ll let you know in the morning. Right now, I’m taking a hot bath.”

She started to move away from the doorway, but his voice stopped her. “Mom?”

Mia turned back to her son, waited. “I know what you’re worried about,” he said, raising his gaze to hers. “Michelle and I are seventeen years old. We’re smart and we’re careful.” A flush spread across his cheeks, but he bravely continued. “We respect each other, and we don’t take chances. We know how much we have to lose. So please don’t worry about us. We know what we’re doing, and we’re acting like responsible adults.”

Well. It looked as if she had her answer. Something tightened inside Mia’s chest, and she felt a momentary urge to cry over the realization that her son was sexually active. He was so young. It seemed just yesterday he was taking his first steps, learning to ride a bike, becoming an Eagle Scout. Was he emotionally mature enough to handle a sexual relationship? Who would guide him through those shark-infested waters? For the first time in Kevin’s young life, she felt totally inadequate as a parent. She’d done well, raising him alone after Nick died, but there were times when a boy needed a father, and this was one of them.

Mia stepped back into her son’s room, leaned over his chair and gave him a hug. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

Most kids his age, male kids anyway, would have struggled to escape, but not Kevin. He hugged her back with the same enthusiasm with which he faced everything in life. “Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of you, too.”

Kevin DeLucca was his own person. He didn’t let peer pressure influence him, and he didn’t give a rat’s behind that it wasn’t cool to actually like your parents. Most adolescents were sullen and sulky, but Kevin was sunny and upbeat. His and Mia’s relationship was based on trust, mostly because he had never given her any reason not to trust him. Mia knew how lucky she was to have a son like that.

“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she promised. “Don’t stay up too late.”

She’d just started to run her bath when the phone rang. It was past ten o’clock, late for a phone call, and for an instant, the old fear crept up through her, fanning out in a wall of flame across her chest and tightening around her throat. Back in the day, back when she was a kid, a call after 10:00 p.m. invariably meant that Dad was in trouble again. Back in jail on a D&D, occasionally something worse.

But those days were in the distant past. It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen Johnny Winslow, nearly as long since a late-night phone call meant trouble. It was probably just Bev, calling to remind her about an early morning appointment. Or one of Kev’s buddies who’d chosen to ignore her no-calls-after-nine-o’clock rule.

Kevin’s voice yanked her back to the present. “Mom,” he yelled, “it’s for you.”

Tying her soft flannel robe more tightly around her, she eyed the claw-foot bathtub with great longing before turning off the taps and padding barefoot into her bedroom. “I’ve got it,” she said into the telephone receiver, and heard the click as Kevin hung up. “Hello?”

But it wasn’t her administrative assistant’s voice she heard. It was her brother’s. “Mia,” he said, “it’s Sam. Can you come over to the house? The police are here, and Kaye’s missing.”

Three

A single unmarked police car sat at the curb behind Sam’s Volvo. Mia parked three houses down and locked the Blazer. Adjusting the soft leather gloves she’d worn to ward off the evening chill, she walked up the three steps to the door and rang the bell. A plainclothes cop wearing a shoulder holster and a deliberately neutral expression answered the door. Beneath the police academy stiffness, he was cute as the proverbial button. Tall and lanky and handsome. But he looked so young that she felt like a pedophile for the salacious thoughts that raced through her head. She shoved them aside and followed him into the living room, where her brother sat on the cream-colored leather couch. His hair was mussed, as though he’d been running his fingers through it.

In the armchair across from him sat another plainclothes cop, a fortyish woman in a gray suit, her chestnut hair clipped in a short, no-nonsense style. Her blue eyes were sharp and intelligent as she gave Mia a thorough once-over.

Sam glanced up, looking unfocused and weary. When he saw Mia, his entire face changed. Warmth flooded his eyes, and one corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile so loaded with gratitude it was almost painful to witness. He looked like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a life preserver. “Mia,” he said, standing and crossing the room. He took her in his arms and hugged her, hard. “Thank God you got here so quickly.”

She glanced past his shoulder at the cops and whispered, “Sam? What the hell is going on here?”

“Ms. DeLucca,” the female cop said in a brisk voice as no-nonsense as her hairstyle. “Detective Lorna Abrams.” She gave a brief nod toward the younger cop. “Detective Policzki. We’d appreciate it if you could sit down with us and answer a few questions.”

Mia stepped free of her brother’s arms. Policzki, her erstwhile doorman, stood in front of the bay window, feet planted firmly apart, arms crossed, his silent demeanor rivaling that of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Mia had an overwhelming urge to tickle him, just to see if he was human.

Squelching it, she removed her coat and gloves and, tossing them over the back of the couch, took a seat. “Kaye is missing?” she said, her gaze moving back and forth between the two detectives.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Abrams said.

“Meaning?”