CHAPTER FOUR

Delores Manning was thinking of her mother when she opened her eyes. Her mother, who lived in a shit-kicking mobile home park just outside of Sigourney. The woman was very proud, very stubborn. The plan had been for Delores to visit her after the signing in Cedar Rapids. Having just signed a contract for a three-book deal with her current publisher, Delores had written a check for $7,000, hoping her mother would take it and use it wisely. Maybe it was snobby, but Delores was embarrassed that her mother was on welfare, that she had to use food stamps to buy groceries. It had been that way since her father died and—

The foggy thoughts of her mother drifted off as her eyes started to grow accustomed to the darkness she found herself in. She was sitting down with her back pressed against something very hard and almost cool to the touch. Slowly, she got to her feet. When she did, she struck her head on something that felt exactly like the surface against her back.

Confused, she reached up and could not extend her arms very far at all. As panic started to creep in, her eyes realized that there were tiny slats of light falling into the darkness. Directly in front of her were three rectangular bars of light. The bars alone filled her in on her situation.

She was in some kind of container…she was pretty sure it was made of steel or some other kind of metal. The container was no more than four feet tall, not allowing her to fully stand. It seemed to be no deeper than four feet and about the same width. She started to take shallow breaths, instantly feeling claustrophobic.

She pressed herself against the front wall of the container and drew in fresh air through the rectangular slats. Each slat was roughly six inches tall and maybe three inches across. When she drew in the air through her nose, she detected an earthy smell and something sweet yet unpleasant.

Somewhere further off in the distance, so faint it may as well have been on another world, she thought she heard a sort of squealing noise. Machinery? Maybe some type of animal? Yes, an animal…but she had no idea what kind. Pigs, maybe?

With her breaths coming more naturally now, she took a step back in her crouched position and then peered through the slats.

Outside, she saw what looked to be the interior of a barn or some other old wooden building. Perhaps twenty feet ahead of her, she could see the door to the barn. Murky sunlight came in through the warped frame where the door did not set flush against it. While she could not see much, she saw enough to gauge that she was probably in very serious trouble.

It was evident in the edge of the bolted door she could just barely see through the slats of the container. She whimpered and pushed against the front of the container. There was no give—not so much as a creaking noise.

She felt panic creeping up again so knew she’d have to use the little bit of logic and calmness she now possessed. She ran her hands along the bottom of the container’s door. She was hoping to find hinges, maybe something with screws or bolts that she could potentially work on. She wasn’t very strong, but if even one screw was either loose or crooked…

Again, there was nothing. She tried the same thing on the back and found nothing there as well.

In an act of absolute helplessness, she kicked at the door as hard as she could. When that did no good, she went to the back of the container and got a running start to throw her right shoulder into it. All that accomplished was having her rebound and fall backward. She hit her head on the side of the container and fell hard to her backside.

A scream rose up in her throat but she didn’t know if that would be the best thing to do. She could easily recall the man from the truck on the road and how he had attacked her. Did she really want him to come rushing to her?

No, she did not. Think, she told herself. Use that creative brain of yours and figure a way out of this.

But she could think of nothing. So, while she was able to choke down the scream that wanted to come out, she was unable to hold back the tears. She kicked at the front of the container and then fell into the back corner. She wept as quietly as she could, rocking back and forth in a seated position and looking to the shafts of dusty light that spilled in through the slats.

For now, it was all she could think to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mackenzie did not like the fact that her mind brought up dozens of clichéd stereotypes as she and Ellington pulled into the entrance of the Sigourney Oaks Mobile Home Court. The mobile homes were all dusty and looked to be on their last legs. The vehicles parked in front of most of them were in the same shape. In the dead yard of one of the trailers they passed, two men sat shirtless in lawn chairs. A cooler of beer rested between them, as well as several empty and crushed cans…at 4:35 in the afternoon.

The home of Tammy Manning, Delores Manning’s mother, was located directly in the middle of the park. Ellington parked the rental car behind a beaten up old Chevy pickup. The rental car looked better than the vehicles in the park, but not by much. The selection at Smith Brothers Auto had been meager and they had ended up selecting a 2008 Ford Fusion that was in dire need of a paint job and a new set of tires.

As they walked up the rickety front steps to the door, Mackenzie made a quick sweep of the place. A few kids were rolling toy cars along in the dirt. A pre-teen girl walked blindly with her eyes glued to a cell phone, her belly exposed through the dirty shirt she wore. An old man two trailers down was lying on the ground, peering up under a lawnmower with a wrench in his hand and oil on his pants.

Ellington knocked on the door and it was answered almost instantly. The woman that answered the door was pretty in a plain way. She looked to be in her fifties and the strands of gray in her otherwise black hair stood out in a way that was almost like decoration rather than the signs of age. She looked tired but the smell that came off of her breath when she said “Who are you?” made Mackenzie pretty sure that she’d been drinking.

Ellington answered but made sure not to step in front of Mackenzie when he did so. “I’m Agent Ellington and this is Agent White, with the FBI,” he said.

“FBI?” she asked. “What the hell for?”

“Are you Tammy Manning?” he asked.

“I am,” she said.

“Can we come in?” Ellington asked.

Tammy eyed them in a way that was not suspicious but something closer to disbelief. She nodded and stepped back, allowing them in. The moment they walked inside, the thick smell of cigarette smoke engulfed them. The air was filled with it. A lone cigarette burned in an ashtray of dead butts on an old coffee table.

Another woman sat on the couch on the opposite side of the coffee table. She looked a little uncomfortable. Mackenzie thought she actually appeared a little grossed out to be sitting there.

“If you have company,” Mackenzie said, “perhaps we should speak outside.”

“She’s not company,” Tammy said. “This is my daughter Rita.”

“Hi,” Rita said, standing to shake their hands.

It was apparent that this was Delores Manning’s younger sister by about three or four years. She looked very similar to the photo of Delores that Mackenzie had seen on the back cover of Love Blocked.

“Oh, I see,” Ellington said. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing that you’re here too, Rita.”

“Why?” Tammy asked, plopping down next to her younger daughter. She plucked the cigarette from the ashtray and took a deep inhale.

“Delores Manning’s car was discovered abandoned with two flat tires on State Route 14 late last night. No one has seen her or heard from her since then. Not her agent, not any friends, no one. We were hoping you might know where she is.”

Before Ellington was done, Mackenzie had gotten the answer from the look of shock on Rita Manning’s face.

“Oh my God,” Rita said. “Are you sure it was her car?”

“We’re certain,” Ellington said. “It was complete with half a box of her latest book in the back. She had just come from a signing in Cedar Rapids.”

“Yeah,” Rita said. “She was…probably on the way here. That was the plan anyway. When she didn’t show up by midnight, I figured she just decided to stay at a motel somewhere.”

“Had you made plans for her to stay here?” Mackenzie asked. She was looking at Tammy when she asked it, but Tammy appeared to be more interested in enjoying her cigarette.

“Sort of,” Tammy said. “She called me last week and said she’d be in Cedar Rapids. Said she wanted to come by to visit, so I told her that was fine. I let Rita know and she got here yesterday right after lunch. Sort of a surprise.”

“I drove all the way up from Texas A and M,” Rita said.

“When was the last time you spoke with Delores?” Ellington asked Rita.

“About three weeks ago. We usually do an okay job of staying in touch.”

“What state of mind was she in the last time you spoke?” Mackenzie asked.

“Oh, she was on cloud nine. She had just signed on to do another three books with her publisher. We made plans to go out on the town drinking the next time she was in Texas.”

“You’re a student, I take it?” Ellington asked.

“Yes. A senior.”

“Mrs. Manning,” Mackenzie said, making sure the mother knew that she was being spoken to and not the daughter, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t seem too bothered by this.”

She shrugged, exhaled a mouthful of smoke, and then ground the butt out in the overflowing ashtray. “I guess someone from the FBI knows more about how I should feel about something like this than I do?”

“I wasn’t saying that, ma’am,” Mackenzie said.

“Look…we’re talking about Delores here. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. I’m sure she called Triple A or some shit when the tires went flat. She’s probably already halfway back to New York by now. Making money, traveling the country. If she was in some kind of trouble, she would have called.”

“So she wouldn’t have been embarrassed to call for your help?”

Tammy actually thought about this for a minute. “Probably not. She would have called for help and then raised hell if I asked even one question. It’s just how she is.”

The resentment in her voice was almost as thick as the smoke in the air throughout the tiny trailer.

“So you have no idea where she might be?” Ellington asked.

“None. Wherever she is, she didn’t bother calling me to tell me about it. But that’s not too big of a surprise. She never really tells me much of anything.”

“I see,” Ellington said. He looked around the room with a frown. Mackenzie could tell that he was thinking the same thing she was thinking: That was a wasted hour-and-ten-minute drive.

Mackenzie looked directly toward Rita, currently a little pissed at the lack of help from Tammy. “We’ve got Bent Creek PD on it, as well as agents from two different offices. From what we know, she’s been missing for roughly twenty-nine hours. We’ll be in touch the moment we find anything.”

Rita gave a nod and a soft “Thank you.”

Both Mackenzie and Ellington paused a beat to give Tammy a chance to add anything. When she did nothing more than light up another cigarette and reach for the TV remote on the coffee table, Mackenzie headed for the door.

When she was outside, she breathed the fresh air in deeply and walked straight for the car. She was already opening the passenger side door when Ellington finally made it down the steps.

“You okay?” he asked her as he approached the car.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just can’t stomach people that have no concern at all for the safety of their own flesh and blood.”

She was about to get into the car when the front door of Tammy Manning’s trailer opened. They both watched as Rita came down the stairs in a quick little jog. She came over to the car and let out a shaky sigh.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that,” she said. Mackenzie saw that Rita also seemed to be breathing much easier now that she was outside. “Things with Mom and Delores haven’t been the best ever since Dad died. And then when Delores became this well-to-do writer, something about it almost offended Mom.”

“You don’t have to explain personal problems,” Ellington said. “We see it from time to time.”

“Be honest with me…this thing with Delores…do you think she’ll be found? Do you think she might be dead somewhere?”

“It’s far too early to tell,” Mackenzie said.

“Was it…well, was there anything like foul play?”

Mackenzie recalled the spray-painted glass. She was pretty sure she still had some of the black flakes of the paint under her fingernails. But it was far too soon in the course of events to give such information to family members—not until more information could be obtained.

“Again, we just can’t know for sure yet,” she said.

Rita nodded. “Well, thanks for letting us know. When you do find out anything, just call me directly. Forget about Mom for now. I don’t know what her problem is. She’s just…I don’t know. An aging woman that let life beat the hell out of her and never bothered to pick herself back up.”

She gave them her number and then slowly walked back up the stairs. She gave them a quick wave goodbye as Ellington backed out of the parking spot and headed back through the trailer park.

“So what do you think?” Ellington asked. “Was this a wasted trip?”

“No. I think we now know enough about Delores to know that she would have called if her plans changed and she could have called.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

“I don’t know for sure. But from what I gathered from Tammy and Rita, Delores was trying to reconnect with her family. Rita said there was a strained relationship there. I don’t think Delores would have bothered calling to ask to come by for a visit if there was no hope for reconciliation. And if that’s the case, she surely would have called if plans changed.”

“Maybe she had a change of heart.”

“I doubt it. Daughters and mothers…when they get estranged…it’s tough. Delores would not have made the move of calling only to back out.”

“You’re analyzing this like a shrink,” Ellington said. “That’s impressive.”

Mackenzie barely noticed the compliment. She was thinking about her own mother—a woman she had not spoken to in a very long time. It was easy to strain a relationship that was supposed to be so pivotal to a woman’s life. She knew all about mothers who let their children down, so she could relate to Delores.

She wondered if Delores Manning was thinking of her mother in her desperate time. That was, of course, if Delores Manning was still alive.