Authors: Alison Gaylin
No . . . It can’t be. . .
“I don’t know whether he’d made it up or not, but it went a little like this . . .
Cement mixer/Turn on a dime/Make my day ’cause it’s cement time/Cement mixer, you’re
my pal/Ain’t gonna hurt me or my little gal . . .”
Brenna’s breath caught. She knew the song—knew it well enough to sing along. She knew
it like the blue vinyl backseat of the white Mustang her dad had called the Land Shark,
knew it like the strong hands on the wheel, the smell of Old Spice, and the voice—the
deep, laughing voice she loved, but couldn’t hold on to.
“It’s okay, pumpkin, it won’t hurt you, it’s just a bus for building materials.”
Dad.
“Just like the one that takes the big kids to school, only this one is for the stuff
they make the playgrounds out of!
Cement mixer/Turn on a dime . . .”
“You know what my Daddy called those cement mixers?” Lula whispered to the camera.
“He called ’em school buses. For playground ingredients. Isn’t that funny?”
“Man, I’m gonna miss her,” said Trent, who was back in the room.
Brenna turned to him, fast. “We’re taking the case,” she said.
L
ula Belle didn’t have a Facebook page, personal or fan. No YouTube channel, either.
According to Trent, there had been a @misslulabelle Twitter feed that had amassed,
at one point, more than ten thousand followers—but it was taken down after it was
discovered that it wasn’t Lula Belle tweeting, but a Bible studies major from Azusa
Pacific University with a gift for sexual hyperbole and way too much time on his hands.
Strange that a webcam girl would have so little online presence, but that added to
the mystery, didn’t it?
It added to something, anyway.
Brenna couldn’t get it out of her mind—that cement mixer song, her father’s voice,
deep but with a smile in it . . . How had this shadow of a missing girl known a made-up
song word for word? How had this “performance artist”—with a name, by the way, that
sounded like Miss Tallahassee Tractor Pull, 1945—how had she been able to reach into
Brenna’s head, grab one of the few intact memories she had of her dad, and claim it
as her own? So many questions, and Brenna needed answers. She needed them now, and
far as she knew, only one person, other than Lula Belle and her manager, might be
able to answer them: God help Brenna, it was Errol Ludlow.
She glanced over at Trent. His computer screen was full of Lula Belle—a freeze frame
of her sprawled across the chair, deep-throating the Coke bottle. He was sizing up
each part of her body in relation to the inanimate objects in order to discern an
accurate height, weight, and set of measurements, using a program he’d developed last
year after coming across one too many badly taken photographs.
The fact that Trent was cursor-gauging every square inch of his new dream girl without
so much as a moan or a “who’s your daddy,” impressed Brenna to the point of mild shock.
She smiled.
Maybe he’s growing up
. “Hey, Trent?”
“Yeah?” He didn’t take his eyes from the screen.
“Did Errol Ludlow say anything to you about Lula Belle’s family?”
“Just that she probably learned the Coke bottle thing from her mom,” Trent said. “I
think he was being sarcastic.”
Brenna sighed. Same old Errol, sensitive as ever.
She Googled Errol Ludlow. The first thing she noticed was a
Daily News
article from five years ago—a profile piece in the Business section called “Errol
Ludlow Is Watching You.” Brenna had already read it on April 19, 2004 (a Monday),
on a Fourteenth Street subway platform waiting for the A train at 9:30
A.M.
She scrolled through a few reprints of the piece and a
New York Times
article about “modern-day gumshoes” until she found Errol’s Web site, a new one—LudlowInvestigations.com.
She called it up, stared at the home page. Her jaw tightened.
Unbelievable
.
She printed it out, then tapped his office number into her phone.
The number hadn’t changed since the last time Brenna had dialed, yes,
dialed
it at 9
A.M.
on October 21, 1998, from the ancient payphone outside the police station in Tarry
Ridge, New York, and even now, she had to grit her teeth to keep from feeling the
cool plastic of eleven years ago against her ear, from hearing the whir of the rotary
dial, such a dated piece of machinery even back then, the scrape of her fingernails
against the metal as she called that number, her heart pounding up into her throat,
the words spilling out of her mouth as soon as she heard that staccato hello, all
too familiar . . .
“Errol, I know it’s been a while but I need your help in getting a police file . . .”
“Brenna Spector. My, my. I thought your hubby wouldn’t let you talk to me anymore.”
“Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent
a new nation.” Brenna whispered, jolting herself back into the present. It took her
a few moments to notice the pause on the other end of the line, and that voice, Errol’s
voice, enunciating every syllable, just like always. “Con-ceived in lib-er-ty and
ded-i-cat-ed to the prop—”
“Errol Ludlow.”
“Yes? To what patriot am I speaking?”
She took a breath. “This is Brenna Spector.”
“Brenna Spector! What a pleasant surprise.”
Brenna stared at the computer printout.
It’s
not a surprise. You knew I’d call
. “Meet me at the Waverly Diner in half an hour.”
“Will do.” She could practically hear the smirk.
She hung up without saying good-bye. “Trent, I’ll be back at two.” She grabbed her
coat, shoved the printout into her bag, and flung it over her shoulder. “If you need
me before then, call my cell.”
“No worries.” He tore himself away from the screen image and looked at her. “Probably
won’t be here when you get back, though. Got a meeting with Mrs. Shelby at one-thirty.”
Brenna nodded. Annette Shelby, an insanely wealthy former client, had contacted her
office a week ago. She was paying Trent three hundred dollars an hour to find her
beloved Persephone, who had disappeared shortly after their recent move to the city
from Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Persephone was Annette’s Persian cat.
An eye roller of a case if there ever was one, but Brenna tried to take it seriously—number
one, because it was Trent’s first solo job, and
he
took it so seriously, creating three separate computer renderings of the missing
pet—one five pounds lighter, one five pounds heavier, one the same weight, though
a little worse for the wear—and canvassing every animal shelter in all five boroughs.
Number two was the obvious cash incentive, and number three was the fact that, three
months ago, Brenna had found Annette’s presumed dead husband—and she still felt bad
about it. At least the cat probably wanted to come home. “Any news on Persephone?”
she asked.
He shook his head. “Tonight I hit the fish market.”
“Good thinking.”
“Yeah, well, I’m more than just eye candy, B. Spec.”
She blinked at him. “What did you just call me?”
“B. Spec,” he said. “You know, like J. Lo, only with different letters because, uh
. . . your name is not the same as hers.”
“Trent.”
“What?”
“No more nicknames.”
He looked at her. “But . . . where I come from, nicknames are a sign of affection.”
“You’re a long way from where you come from.”
“Staten Island?”
“Figuratively, Trent.”
He shook his head, then turned back to Lula Belle. For a few seconds, Brenna watched
him, working the measuring tool, staring into the screen until he was once again lost
in the world of it.
“Who’s your daddy,” he whispered.
I
t wasn’t until Brenna was out the door and into the hallway that her thoughts went
back to Errol Ludlow, and how, in moments, she’d be seeing him again for the first
time in eleven years. What memories would he set off? How was she going to stop them?
Brenna reached into her coat pocket. The previous day, her daughter, Maya, had borrowed
the coat, and as expected, the pocket was full of a thirteen-year-old’s detritus—gum
wrappers, a wadded-up dollar bill, a receipt from Ricky’s, a couple of hair ties.
Perfect.
She slipped the hair ties around her left wrist, headed down the hallway, out the
door, and down Sixth Avenue.
The cold smacked her in the face, made her eyes water. But Brenna’s body was so tense,
she barely reacted.
Don’t think about him
, Brenna told herself, but still her mind reeled back to October 21, 1998,
the snaking fall chill against the glass of the old-fashioned phone booth outside
the Tarry Ridge Police Station, Errol’s voice pressing into her ear. That clipped
staccato . . . “I can get you the file, but not for free.”
“How much money do you want?” Brenna asks, hoping it’s money, hoping it’s not anything
else.
I can give you money. Please ask for money
.
“I want you to do one more job for me.”
She closes her eyes. “Errol, I can’t. I’m . . . I’m a mother now.”
“One more job. It is an easy one. Guaranteed. Hubby will never find out.”
Brenna snapped the hair ties against her wrist. The sting brought her back to the
present, to Greenwich and Seventh.
She exhaled.
Works like a charm
.
From across the street, the Waverly Diner sign winked at Brenna. She moved toward
it, weaving through a group of slow-moving tourists, past three laughing teenage girls
to the crosswalk, narrowly missing a bike messenger as she hit the street. The whole
time, Brenna stared straight ahead, touching the hair ties, glad they were there.
“A
sshat,” Brenna muttered. She was sitting in the Waverly Diner, watching Ludlow through
the window. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but she’d seen him, waiting at the crosswalk
as a cab whizzed by, checking his watch . . . Through the glass and from this distance,
he looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him. The first time she’d seen
him, too, come to think of it. Same graying buzz cut and, as she could see under the
flapping trench coat, that same god-awful dark green polyester jacket he’d worn during
her job interview on May 21, 1991. Had he gone shopping even once during this millennium?
A young woman tapped Errol on the arm and said something to him. At six-eight, he
towered over her and he seemed to take pride in that. He looked at his watch, and
said something back. The woman nodded and headed off in another direction. She’d asked
him the time, obviously, but from the look on his face you’d think she’d asked him
for his autograph. Brenna watched him standing there, smirking to himself like the
asshat he was.
God, that smirk. That same, smug smirk . . . Brenna glared at him as he approached
the door, hearing Lula Belle again in her head, fingering the computer printout in
her bag.
I’m going to wipe that smirk off your face
.
“Will you be eating alone?” Brenna looked up at the waitress—an NYU student-type with
bright red hair, a pale cameo face, the delicate features modernized by a lip ring—a
good candidate for Errol’s Angels, Brenna thought. Streetwise, but with an innocence
to the eyes . . .
Ludlow had just pushed open the door and was peering around the room, the top of his
head no more than a foot away from the ceiling. His gaze flittered on the waitress
and he smiled knowingly. Eleven years since she’d seen him and Brenna could still
predict his thoughts.
His gaze shifted to her. “As I live and breathe. Brenna Spector!” Errol shouted the
words without moving from his spot, as if this were some private party, thrown especially
for him. Errol had always had difficulty observing conventional boundaries. It wasn’t
entirely his fault, big as he was, but he couldn’t enter a room without invading it.
There were about ten other customers in the diner, seven or so in booths, and almost
all of them turned and stared at the booming giant in the doorway “You look good!
Especially for your age!” he said. “You’ve got to be
pushing for-ty
these days, am I right?”
Brenna looked at the waitress. “I’m with him.”
She chewed on her lip ring and gave Brenna a pitying look.
“Believe me,” Brenna said, “I know.”
Errol strode up to the table. “You have a delightfully un-con-ven-tional look, young
lady,” he said to the waitress, relishing each syllable, just as always. “You stand
out, yet you fit in.”
She shrugged. “I model sometimes.”
“Modeling is for shallow girls.” Errol snorted. “I could make you a private investigator.”
“Ummm . . . No thanks.”
He pulled out his wallet, slipped out one of his cards, and handed it to the waitress.
Brenna noticed the design—it had been new on September 24, 1992
.
“I’ll bet you could get a lot of information out of a man with a bat or two of those
pretty eyelashes.”
“Information?”
Again with the smirk. “Brenna here worked for me when she was about your age,” he
said. “Such a naïve little thing back then, wanting to find her runaway sister . . .
I taught her everything she knows.”
“You know what you want?” the waitress asked Brenna.
What she wanted was to sock Errol in the jaw. “Just coffee.”
Errol ordered green tea—his drink of choice for twenty years.
“You never change,” Brenna said.
“You would know.” He grinned. “That memory of yours . . .” He looked up at the waitress.
“I’m sure you have seen Brenna Spector on the news?”
“Stop it, Errol.”
“Perfect memory?”
The waitress’s face was blank.
“Solved the Iris Neff case?”
“Uh . . .”
“Fabulous interview on
Sunrise Manhattan
. Though the
New York Post
rather unfortunately referred to her as—”
“Stop it, Errol.”
“Head-Case Hero. They could have done better, in my opinion. Perfect memory doesn’t
necessarily make one a head case, but when you’re a slave to alliteration, as the
Post
clearly is—”
“I need to check on other tables.”
“Suit yourself.”
The waitress left with Errol smiling benignly at her rear end.
Once she was no longer in sight, he came back to Brenna. “You really do look good,”
he said.
“You seem surprised.”
“Well, it has been eleven years,” he said. “Eleven years can wreak havoc on the female
form.”
Brenna gave him a sweet smile. “But you’ve been following me, Errol. You’ve seen me
on
Sunrise Manhattan
, read about me in the papers.” She reached into her bag, pulled out the printout.
“You know everything about my involvement with the Iris Neff case.”
“Yes, and how is Detective Morasco? Page Six spotted you two at some bar . . . which
one was it?”
“We’ve been to more than one bar.” Brenna placed the printout of Errol’s home page
on the table between them and smoothed it out. “And clearly, you read the
Post
more carefully than me.”