Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

The on-screen Helene wore a light blue dress and matching jacket with the bulb of a white rose pinned to the lapel. Her hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her face carried just a hint of excessive makeup, hastily applied around the eyes perhaps.

The real Helene McCready wore a pink T-shirt with the words BORN TO SHOP on the front and a pair of white sweatpants that had been shorn just above the knees. Her hair, tied in a loose ponytail, looked like it had been through so many dye jobs it had forgotten its original color and was stuck somewhere between platinum and greasy wheat.

Another woman sat on the couch beside the real Helene McCready, about the same age but thicker and paler, dimples of cellulite pocking the white flesh under her upper arms as she raised a cigarette to her lips and leaned forward to concentrate on the TV.

“Look, Dottie, look,” Helene said. “There’s Gregor and Head Sparks.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dottie pointed at the screen as two men walked behind the reporter interviewing Helene. The men waved at the camera.

“Look at ’em waving.” Helene smiled. “The punks.”

“Smart-asses,” Dottie said.

Helene raised a can of Miller to her lips with the same hand that held her cigarette, and the long ash curled down toward her chin as she drank.

“Helene,” Lionel said.

“One sec, one sec.” Helene waved her beer can at him, her eyes fixed on the screen. “This is the best part.”

Beatrice caught our eyes and rolled her own.

On TV, the reporter asked Helene who she thought could be responsible for the abduction of her child.

“How do you answer a question like that?” the TV Helene said. “I mean, like, who would take my little girl? What’s the point? She never did nothing to nobody. She was just a little girl with a beautiful smile. That’s what she did all the time, she smiled.”

“She did have a beautiful smile,” Dottie said.

“Does,” Beatrice said.

The women on the couch seemed not to have heard her.

“Oh, it was,” Helene said. “It was perfect. Just perfect. Break your heart.” Helene’s voice cracked, and she put down her beer long enough to grab a Kleenex from a box on the coffee table.

Dottie patted her knee and clucked. “There, there,” Dottie said. “There, there.”

“Helene,” Lionel said.

TV coverage of Helene had given way to footage of O.J. playing golf somewhere in Florida.

“I still can’t believe he got away with it,” Helene said.

Dottie turned to her. “I know,” she said, as if she’d been unburdened of a great secret.

“If he wasn’t black,” Helene said, “he’d be in jail now.”

“If he wasn’t black,” Dottie said, “he’d have gotten the chair.”

“If he wasn’t black,” Angie said, “you two wouldn’t care.”

They turned their heads and looked back at us. They seemed mildly surprised by the four people standing behind them, as if we’d suddenly appeared there like Magi.

“What?” Dottie said, her brown eyes darting across our chests.

“Helene,” Lionel said.

Helene looked up into his face, her mascara smudged under puffy eyes. “Yeah?”

“This is Patrick and Angie, the two detectives we talked about.”

Helene gave us a limp wave with her sodden Kleenex. “Hi-ya.”

“Hi,” Angie said.

“Hi-ya,” I said.

“I ’member you,” Dottie said to Angie. “You ’member me?”

Angie smiled kindly and shook her head.

“MRM High,” Dottie said. “I was, like, a freshman. You were a senior.”

Angie gave it some thought, shook her head again.

“Oh, yeah,” Dottie said. “I ’member you. Prom Queen. That’s what we called you.” She swigged some beer. “You still like that?”

“Like what?” Angie said.

“Like you think you’re better than everyone else.” She peered at Angie with eyes so tiny it was hard to tell if they were bleary or not. “That was you all over. Miss Perfect. Miss—”

“Helene.” Angie turned her head to concentrate on Helene McCready. “We need to speak to you about Amanda.”

But Helene had her eyes on me, her cigarette frozen a quarter inch from her lips. “You look like someone. Dottie, doesn’t he?”

“What?” Dottie said.

“Look like someone.” Helene took two quick hits from her cigarette.

“Who?” Dottie stared at me now.

“You know,” Helene said. “That guy. That guy on that show, you know the one.”

“No,” Dottie said, and gave me a hesitant smile. “What show?”

“That show,” Helene said. “You gotta know the one I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You gotta.”

“What show?” Dottie turned her head to look at Helene. “What show?”

Helene blinked at her and frowned. Then she looked back at me. “You look just like him,” she assured me.

“Okay,” I said.

Beatrice leaned against the hallway doorjamb and closed her eyes.

“Helene,” Lionel said, “Patrick and Angie have to talk to you about Amanda. Alone.”

“What,” Dottie said, “I’m some kind of freak?”

“No, Dottie,” Lionel said carefully. “I didn’t say that.”

“I’m some kind of fucking loser, Lionel? Not good enough to be with my best friend when she needs me most?”

“He’s not saying that,” Beatrice said in a tired voice, her eyes still closed.

“Then again…” I said.

Dottie screwed up her blotchy face, looked at me.

“Helene,” Angie said hurriedly, “it would go a lot faster if we could just ask you some questions alone and be out of your hair.”

Helene looked at Angie. Then at Lionel. Then at the TV. Finally she focused on the back of Dottie’s head.

Dottie was still looking at me, confused, trying to decide if the confusion should mutate into anger or not.

“Dottie,” Helene said, with the air of someone about to deliver a state address, “is my best friend. My best friend. That means something. You want to talk to me, you talk to her.”

Dottie’s eyes left mine and she turned to look at her best friend, and Helene nudged her knee with her elbow.