Page 43 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“I just want us to at least be open to the fact that Leo’s disappearance and what happened to you are more than a coincidence. And what if she is helping hide him? What if she knew they owe people all over town money, and…”

“No,” I say firmly, ending the conversation, and everyone is quiet. I turn and walk away.

I sit with the girls and we eat peanut butter sandwiches at the card table at lunchtime while Herb watches the football game. Mort is still editing the podcast they recorded, and Millie is asleep with her mouth hanging open, an empty mini bottle of Baileys next to her coffee cup on the side table. I let Evan go for the day since he wasn’t scheduled and told Heather to take the day off since I would be here anyway.

Once the girls are in the craft room gluing cotton balls onto paper plates, I sit in the front office, and my blood boils at the thought of them pointing the finger at Mack. It’s preposterous. I stare at my lost phone on the desktop in front of me and wonder, of course, how it got in Riley’s house. They’re right about one thing. If I confront Riley about this, he’ll deny it. Obviously. It won’t help me gain one bit of information, and it will only serve to make him weirder and more defensive than he already is. There is nothing to gain by accusing him of taking it. I just need to find out for myself what the hell is really going on, and if he is somehow involved.

When the sun starts to set and the girls have fallen asleep on the rec room sofa in front of the Cartoon Network after an hour of video games with Herb, I hear a small tap on the open office door. It’s Florence and Herb. I think they might be here to apologize for going behind my back with the Riley interview or what they said about Mack, but their faces are grave, and I instantly know something is wrong.

“What?” I snap.

“Well, maybe nothing,” Flor says. “It’s just that Bernie said that his church lunch thingy ended at 1:00 p.m. today and he’d be back in time to watch the end of the game and now it’s 5:30 and he isn’t back.I called Ginny and she said that he said something about him having to leave early, so she thought we picked him up, but we didn’t and nobody has heard from him since. His phone goes right to voicemail.”

“Well, who else would he have left with?” I ask.

“That’s the thing,” Herb says. “Ginny said she drove back to the church after we called her and she saw his phone sitting on a folding chair by the dessert table. He left his phone behind and just got up and left. We can’t imagine with who and it’s fourteen degrees outside, so he didn’t get far on his own two feet, that’s for sure.”

“Well, shit,” I say. “There has to be an explanation.”

“Ginny said his phone’s not locked and she could see an incoming call—a restricted number around twelve forty, and that’s about when he said he had to go all of a sudden. She’s beside herself.”

“Well then, maybe…he must be with someone he knows,” I say, but Bernie only really talks to a handful of people outside of his family and the folks at the Ole. Who the hell would be calling him on a restricted or unknown number?

“Okay. Herb, you call the police. Officer Harris is on duty Sunday, so we’ll talk to her before Riley can get involved. I’ll call Ginny again and see what we can do to help,” I say in a hushed voice so as not to upset the girls.

Then a flurry of phone calls are made and, within an hour, after calling everyone in town we can think of who knows Bernie, Officer Harris is sitting in the rec room with us, taking a report, because it appears as though Bernie has vanished into thin air.

I hear Clay’s pickup truck pull in front of the glass doors and the girls, who are already bundled up, run outside as I yell “put your hats on” after them. Clay is taking them to Chuck E. Cheese for dinner and Skee-Ball for a couple of hours because I don’t want them around this. Even though everyone has been quiet and subtle, there is an energy that’s palpable and they’re smart, and I can’t expose them to anymore fucking trauma, Lord help me. I wave at Clay as he lifts them into the truck and buckles them in. I go back in and sit on the sofa next to Millie. Everyone has a distant, glassy-eyed look, and I keep wracking my brain for an explanation because there must be one. A man doesn’t disappear from a church potluck with two dozen people around in broad daylight. Where would he have gone? Who the hell called him?

By 9:30, nobody has heard a thing and half the town is looking for him. The temperature has dropped down to nine degrees and he has no phone and his wallet is on his dresser in his room, so he has no money except maybe the twenty he keeps in his pocket in a money clip for a rainy day.

Millie is hunched over the jigsaw puzzle with a box of Kleenex, crying, and the rest of the gang sit on the sofa, silently waiting for any news. Some of the other residents who are close to Bernie are hanging out in the rec room too, and the only sound is the canned laughter from an oldAll in the Familyepisode playing on the community television.

Everyone jolts when Clay and the girls come through the front doors. June runs over to pet Gus, and Poppy pauses and hugs my legs when she notices all the sad faces.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing, sweetie. It’s time to get you guys home to bed,” I say.

“Did they find him?” Clay whispers, and I shake my head and give him a look that he understands, and we begin to shuffle the girls back out the door. I hesitate to leave. I feel like we should be doing something more, but what? I guess we let the search party do their job for now.

“I’ll be right by my phone,” I tell the gang as we head out and into the pickup coughing out exhaust,idling in front of the glass doors.

As I’m buckling June into her seat, I notice something in the bed of the truck. It’s the flapping sound of plastic against the frigid wind that catches my attention, and I can see it’s a black garbage bag.

I go to tuck the loose plastic under so whatever he has in it doesn’t blow out, and then I see that it’s a pile of plastic and wires, and when I flash my phone flashlight on it, I gasp at what I’m looking at. It’s our missing equipment. It’s all of our security cameras with the wires cut clean, dumped into a garbage bag…in Clay’s truck.

17

FLORENCE

The police have advised us all to stay put at the Oleander’s for our own safety and security, so of course we all pile into the resident van now that it’s morning and there is still no word about Bernie. We wanted Evan to drive us, but Shelby has him staying on high alert at the Ole and is trying to double his hours for a while, if she can get him to agree. I can’t say that I blame her. It’s a comfort, but one man with a small security guard gun in a building with a questionable alarm system will do little to deter a maniac who has been very creative in their means of attack.

I had forgotten how poor Herb’s driving abilities were since we had the luxury of someone else more competent taxiing us around recently.

“Why must you speed up when you approach a stop light only to hard stop behind the car in front of you?” I ask, holding the door handle for dear life as Herb chews on the end of an unlit cigar.

“And why is the window cracked?” Millie snaps. “It’s three degrees, are you going through man-o-pause or something? Jeez, Herb.”

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