Jewel in the Crown
Disclaimer: All the characters in the story are the property of Stephanie Meyer. I have borrowed them for my entertainment and (hopefully) your reading pleasure. I make no profit from their use.
Author's Note: Please don't be mad that I am going back to Forks for this update. But this subplot also needs a chance to develop. I promise that tomorrow you will get an update from Volterra.
Chapter 26: The Mystery Deepens
It's been a rough twenty-four hours since I spoke with Jake about Bella. The longer the time passes without a lead in her disappearance, the less likely it is that we will ever find her. It's simply the way the statistics prove out. It is now a whole week since she has been gone. The trail has obviously gone cold, but I can't help hoping.
Sue has been a real great friend, putting up with all of my worries and Renee's constant whining. But in the last day or so, the object of Renee's anger has suddenly turned into Sue.
Renee has developed this ridiculous idea that the Quileutes know something that they are holding back from us. Billy and Sue are the two best friends that I have right now. They would never keep anything back from me that would help me find my daughter.
On the other hand, all of my white friends think that it's a lost cause. They look at the statistics and the long lists of missing persons. Even I know that a lot of kids that are missing who are around Bella's age aren't really missing. They just don't want to be found. But I know that's not Bella. I am sure that she knows that even if she ran off with that jerk and comes back pregnant that I will still love and support her.
Of course Renee wouldn't, but who the hell cares what she thinks? She is scatter-brained from the word go. If she hadn't gone and married this good looking but mediocre baseball player, then we would be getting ready for Bella to graduate from high school. Okay, she wouldn't be here with me, but at least I would know where she was.
So now Renee has the nerve to accuse me of neglecting her. When she came back from Phoenix, it was nothing but curfews and visiting hours. Renee never gave her a curfew. In fact, Renee was so absorbed in her own stuff that she only paid attention to Bella when she needed her to cook dinner or balance the checkbook. Of course Renee was the one who needed the curfew. When it comes to crazy, Renee has cornered the market.
Then when we go to see poor Jake, who is just as worried about Bella, as we are. She gives him the third degree like he is part of some conspiracy to keep her away from us. I am glad that Billy was there because I could see that he was getting real pissed off at her attitude. Nothing sucks worse than when someone is making false accusations against you.
I'm not surprised when Jake comes strolling into the station this morning to talk to me. He is obviously trying to avoid Renee.
"Want to have a conversation without Mama Bear trying to sink her teeth into you?" I ask.
"I know that Billy says that she's real upset that Bella is missing," he replies. "But she doesn't have to take it out on me. It's not like I didn't try to stop her."
"I know, Jake, I know," I answer. "None of us could have stopped her, not even Renee. She is, after all, eighteen and she was so crazy where Edward was concerned that there was no talking her out of whatever idiotic thing she wanted to do. So to what do I owe this visit?"
"Well, I remembered something," he says. "It's just a little thing, but it may help."
"At this point, Jacob," I reply. "There is no thing that is to little. Anything is bigger than nothing."
"Okay," he says. "Well, I got to thinking about the passport thing, you know? And I remembered something else that Alice said. It was something like 'you can't get on the flight without it.'"
"What flight?" I ask, as I feel my pulse starting to race.
"I don't know," he admits. "They didn't say anything else about a flight. But I was thinking that if they were going to take a flight, wouldn't they leave from Sea-Tac?"
"That would be my first guess," I say thoughtfully. "Of course it doesn't have to be an international flight. You can't get on any flights these days without identification. Hmm. But you can use a driver's license for domestic flights."
"How many international flights go out of Sea-Tac?" he asks.
"Not a whole lot," he says. "Most of them are to Canada or Mexico. But they could always having been traveling to a connecting flight somewhere else."
"Would they have records of that?" he asks.
"Probably," I say. "In fact, they would probably have her whole itinerary in the airline computers. I'm going to see if they started at Sea-Tac. For all we know they could have gone to Portland or something."
"But Seattle is closer," he says. "And Alice was in a really big hurry."
Jacob stands there awkwardly, looking like he wants to say something else, but is afraid to.
"I'm sure that she was," I reply. "Anything else I can do for you, Jake?"
"No, um, that's all," he says uncomfortably.
"Okay, son, spit it out," I say with a sigh.
"Could you kind of make sure that I don't have to talk to Bella's Mom again," he says. "I got really pissed at her the last time and I don't want to hurt her or anything. It's not like she's the only one worried about Bella."
"I know where you're coming from, Jacob," I say. "I've got to live with it. But I can't make any guarantees where Renee is concerned."
"Yeah, I figured that," he says. "But doesn't she, like, have a husband somewhere, and a home that she can go to?"
"Yes, she does," I reply. "But she thinks that waiting here is somehow better than waiting there. If you think that you've got it bad, she's being real rough on Sue. She's got this weird idea in her head that the Quileutes are in some conspiracy with the Cullens to keep Bella away from us. But I've never been under the impression that you two were that friendly towards the Cullens."
"We're not," he says. "We never had any contact with them. And the only contact that I had was because of Bella. I mean, why would we have anything to do with them?"
"Don't ask me!" I say raising my hands. "But don't ask Renee either, because whatever she says won't make sense. Good Lord, if you talk to that woman long enough, then you are the one who starts thinking that you are crazy."
"Okay," he says. "Well, I hope that you can find something out about Bella."
"Thanks again, Jake," I say. "Tell your Dad that I'll call him up so we can catch a game or something else that Renee won't want to do with us."
He gives me smile as he leaves my office, but it's not one of his usual cheeky grins. He actually looks kind of sad. This whole thing must be real hard on him. He must be thinking that if they hadn't gotten into that stupid fight with her that Bella wouldn't have run off to save Edward from whatever stupid-ass thing that he had gotten himself into.
I call up Sea-Tac and give them the date that Bella and Alice would have been leaving there and a rough estimate of the time. It's one of those times when I am grateful for computers because they discover that Isabella Swan took an American Airlines flight out of there to connect in JFK with an Air Italia flight to Florence.
However, there is no record of an Alice Cullen leaving the airport. I call up American Airlines and find out from the flight manifest, that only an Isabella Swan flew to JFK. The ticket, not surprisingly, was paid for in cash. Since Bella doesn't have a credit card, that makes complete sense.
My next call is to Air Italia. It's the same deal. Bella is on a flight to Italy, paid for in cash, no Alice Cullen with her. Now I'm looking at the cost of the two flights and thinking that she must have wiped out her whole college fund to pay for them. So I call the bank. Normally, I wouldn't be able to get this kind of information without a warrant, but Jessica Stanley's mother works there and she is only to happy to overlook the rule if it might help me find Bella quicker.
But once again, the lead turns up empty. Bella hasn't touched her account since she deposited her last paycheck two weeks ago. So I'm beginning to think that this situation has gone from weird to insane.
Why the hell would Bella want to go to Italy? And why would Edward be in Italy in the first place? And if she went with "Alice Cullen," the girl obviously wasn't traveling under her own name. If that is even her own name. So that leads to the final question.
Who in God's name is Alice Cullen? Where did she come from? And where did she go? And if that isn't her real name, who the hell is the rest of her family? Is this kid "Edward Cullen" really Edward Cullen? What kind of a mess has my daughter gotten herself into?
Will I ever see her again?