Lisa Gardner - Before She Disappeared

I had to go back to working in bars. Serving is one of the easiest and comparatively well-paying jobs, given my transient lifestyle. Besides, being around booze isn’t one of my triggers. Nights like this one, when I’m feeling overwhelmed and lost and a little bit sad, are the challenge for me.

Stoney glances up when I walk through the front doors. So do a few others. The late hour has brought out dozens of customers. Most of the tables and barstools are now filled. Loners, couples, groups of friends. Those who are having fun, those who are drinking hard.

I don’t mingle and I don’t judge. There but separate. That part has always come easily to me. Like a lot of drunks, I’ve spent most of my life feeling alone in a crowded room. Drinking was one way of making it easier to take.

I head to the kitchen to take Stoney up on his offer of food. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and now that the drama of the day has passed, I’m starving. I discover a short plump Black woman wearing a white apron and working the grill with a metal scraper in one hand and a wooden spoon the other.

She glances up when I walk in. “You the new girl?”

“I start tomorrow.”

“Lord, you’re a skinny thing. Hungry?”

“Always. But I can help myself. Looks like you’re busy.”

“No worries, hun. Burger or chicken? Long as I’m making four, five won’t matter.”

“My name is Frankie. And if you don’t mind, I’ll take a burger.”

“Viv. Met your roommate yet?”

“Briefly. She stared at me like I was the devil. Or maybe that was the way I stared at her.”

Viv lets out a low chuckle that shakes her entire five-foot-nothing body. “She likes me.”

“Seriously?”

“Chopped chicken livers. Works every time.” Viv flips four burgers and throws on a fifth frozen patty in the blink of an eye. I respect any person who can cook that fast.

“You a lifer?” I ask, meaning a lifetime of working in a kitchen.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Me, too. Behind the bar.”

“Stoney says you don’t drink.”

“Twelve-stepper.”

“Mmm-hmm. My husband does the same dance. Need a list of local meetings?”

“That’d be great.” I’d printed out some info before my arrival, but in this matter, at least, I’ve learned to accept help. “What do you put on the burgers?” I push myself away from the doorjamb.

Viv nods toward the stainless-steel prep island, where I see a block of sliced cheese, a jar of pickles, and a bag of buns. Thin white melamine plates are stacked at the end, near canisters of silverware. It’s a small kitchen, but efficiently set up. Viv moves straight from the grill to the fryolator and drops in a basket of fries.

I wash my hands, then plate the buns, dish out sliced pickles, unpeel slices of cheese. I add a fifth plate for me. Tucked in the kitchen with the smell of seared hamburgers and crisping fries, I’m famished.

“Lettuce and tomatoes in the fridge,” Viv informs me in a stage whisper. “And my special sauce. Keep a batch just for Stoney. And friends of Stoney’s.”

“I like you already.”

Happy hum. Viv tosses the four finished burgers onto the plates, flips the fifth, and grabs the fries. She is damn good.

I deliver the four plates to Stoney while Viv finishes up mine. Stoney doesn’t bat an eye to find me standing at the end of his bar with food delivery. The three of us could’ve been working together for years. I both love the feeling and fear it. There’s a reason I’m always the outsider. Many AAs talk about needing to replace one addiction with another as a form of coping. I gave up drinking and took up always being on the move instead.

A rolling stone gathers no moss. Paul used to tell me that all the time. Later, he’d accuse me of not listening. But I heard it all. I always heard it all.

Viv has moved on to deep-frying frozen chicken wings. She hums as she works, a sheen of sweat glistening across her brow. Her movements are unhurried, smooth. Stoney appears with two tickets in his hand. He glances at my burger, still midpreparation, then hands me the tickets and disappears.

I read off the orders for Viv, then smash the top on my burger and dig in.

“Stool in the corner,” Viv sings out.

Sure enough, there’s an old wooden stool tucked in the shadow of the fridge. I pull it up to the prep counter and take a seat. Since Viv has already proved she has no problems talking while she works:

“I heard there’s a girl gone missing,” I cue up.

“Angelique Badeau,” Viv confirms. The sizzle of meat as she tosses two more ground beef patties on the grill.

“What happened?”

A wave of the metal scraper in the air. “Girl walked out of high school one day and bam, no one’s seen or heard from her since.”

“Drugs, gangs?” I ask.

Viv turns long enough to give me a look. “Cuz she’s Black?”

“White kids have gangs, too,” I assure her. “For that matter, so do most groups, including all the middle-class, middle-aged white guys suddenly becoming biker dudes. You could argue gangs are one of our common denominators.”

“What are you, some sociologist lady? Or worse.” Viv sniffs at me suspiciously. “Some white do-gooder here to save us from ourselves?”

“I would never presume that a woman who wields a wooden spoon with your degree of proficiency needs saving.”

Viv gives a small nod, flipping two burgers, then raising the chicken fryer basket.

“Police still looking? For the girl?” I shovel in another bite.

“They say so. Hasn’t been any news in months.”

“What’s the local take?”

Shrug. “Sounds like the girl was a good student, smart, not the kind for gangs . Then again, tough times to be an immigrant, especially one of the ten-year Haitians.”

“Ten-year Haitians?”

“The ones that came after that earthquake. This area has always had a large community. So after the earthquake struck, people fled here, where they had family to help them out. Got in on some special visa for natural disaster survivors. But the visa was only good for ten years, and guess what, time’s up. By now, lots of ’em, especially the kids, have lives here. Jobs, friends, community. ’Course they don’t want to go back. But you’ve seen the news. These are tricky times to be an immigrant. Mass deportation would gut local healthcare, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Some lawyers are now suing on the immigrants’ behalf, so there’s an extension while the courts sort it out. But after that . . .” Viv shrugs. “Plenty of local families don’t know what the future holds anymore. And limbo ain’t fun for anyone.”

“So this fifteen-year-old girl ran off to avoid deportation?”

“She changed her clothes.” Viv’s voice had dropped lower. “Least that’s what I heard. And left her phone behind. That sounds like a girl with a plan. God knows I’d never get a cell phone out of my grandbabies’ hands.”

I nod, chew my burger. Those details bother me, too. It did sound premeditated. The question remained, was it willing? As in, did Angelique place her backpack under that bush, or did someone rip it off her back and kick it there to avoid detection? If the police had any video of the event, they weren’t saying. But I was willing to bet they didn’t know that answer themselves. If there’d been solid evidence of abduction, the case would’ve rocketed immediately to an Amber Alert scenario. The fact that it took days for the police to fully engage told me there’d been doubt in the beginning. Maybe Angelique had a history of disappearing. Not something I’d wanted to ask the family during our first meeting. Our second meeting, on the other hand . . .

“So, the locals think Angelique skipped out to avoid possible deportation?”