by Natasha Deen
“In her defense, she said Kent was really pissed with her the last time, and she’d promised she would never call the cops again.”
Nancy sighed. “Of all the luck.” Then her eyes lit up. “You know who could help—?”
“His dad.” I smiled. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Smart girl. I’ve got his number in the file.” She found it and handed it to me.
I checked my watch. 9:30. Not too late for a call. I dialled the number. There was a ton of static on the line, but I was finally able to explain why I was calling, then laid it on thick with Kent’s lack of communication.
I gave Nancy the thumbs up when worry crept into his voice. “Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s been over a month. I haven’t heard from him. Have you?”
“No.” It was hard to hear him over the static. “But we didn’t really talk a lot in the last few months. I figured it was just school.”
“Yes, sir, but now I’m worried. It’s just not like him.”
There was a long silence. “No, it’s not. Let me look into this. Is there a number I can reach you?”
I gave him my cell number, then thanked him and hung up.
A few seconds later, Nancy’s line rang.
She picked up. “Sheriff’s office. Nancy Machio speaking.” She listened. “Doug, how are you?” A pause. “Kent? Yes, it’s been a while. What’s going on?”
I had a moment of elation, of glee that we were finally getting some traction on Kent. The feeling was fleeting because I immediately realized I was the only one who’d see the full circle. I’d see Kent get closure. But for his mom and dad, there would only be questions, sorrow, and loss. Thanks to me, a family was about to come apart at the seams.
The next day after school, I went with Nell to visit Rori Pierson.
“Bruce and Tammy were asking about you and the séance, again,” said Nell as we drove to the house. “I told them to go ahead without you. That it might be hard for both you and Serge to have any kind of an Ouija conversation with company.”
“You’re genius. How will I ever find a way to thank you?”
“We’ll start by throwing out that coat and work from there.”
“I said you were genius. I didn’t say you were divine.”
“Yeah, well, that coat looks like it’s already halfway to the pearly gates.”
I rolled my eyes and changed the conversation.
We got to the house and I saw what Nancy had meant about the vandalism. Someone had hacked their bushes, broken the windows in the garage. The world was a crazy place full of crazy people, and someone deciding to add to the trauma of a missing child by tormenting the family wasn’t unheard of. But it put that person lower than pond scum and I hoped karma would nail their butts.
Nell and I headed to the front entrance. I rang the bell. A few seconds later, Mrs. Pierson, dressed in yoga gear, opened the door and ushered us into the kitchen.
“Sorry it took so long,” she said. “The housekeeper’s off and I’m trying to do her job and mine. Rori’s been asking about you,” she said as she walked us inside and seated us around the glass dining table. “She wants to thank you both for saving her.”
“Oh, it was nothing, really,” I said.
“You girls help yourselves to some juice and squares, I’ll go get her.”
When she was out of earshot I asked Nell, “How can you babysit in here? The whole place looks like it’s been prepped for a photo shoot.” I leaned to the side, closed one eye and ran my gaze along the glass table. “There are no fingerprints on this table. They have a small child. Shouldn’t there be jam smears or toys?” I sat up. “Perfectly arranged flowers, white marble floors, glass tables—”
“They have money and a live-in housekeeper.”
“Baby, I think they’ve got a team of them of housekeeping elves.” The place made me nervous. It wasn’t the cleanliness. It was the antiseptic quality of it. For all the luxury, there was ...I didn’t know. Not like the house was unloved, but more like the people who lived in it were hyper aware of appearances. That projecting an air of perfection wasn’t just something they wanted but something they needed to do.
“Here she is.” Mrs. Pierson sang the words as she walked hand-in-hand with Rori.
Nell got up, went to the girl and swept her into a hug.
I didn’t know Rori, so I hung back, gave her a little wave when she looked my way. She smiled, wiggled her fingers at me.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Good,” she said. She squirmed out of Nell’s arms and looked around. “Where are the boys? I made them a picture.” She waved the piece of paper she held in her hand.
“The boys?” Nell put her hand on Rori’s shoulder. “What boys?”
“The boys from the night.”
I went still and did my best not to look at Nell.
“Oh, this again.” Mrs. Pierson gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “The doctors said it was the head injury, but she’s convinced there were boys with her that night.”
Rori nodded. “They were! One of them had wings.” She frowned. “The blond one didn’t have wings, but he made me feel better.”
“And scales.” Her mom gave me a good-natured roll of her eyes. “Don’t forget the angel with scales.”
“He had them! They were there!”
“Of course he did.” Mrs. Pierson set out a plate for her daughter. “Sit with your friends.” To us, she said, “The doctors think her imaginary friends—”
“They’re not imaginary!”
“—are part of her dealing with the trauma of the injury. They told us to go along with it, that she’ll outgrow it eventually.” Mrs. Pierson turned toward the hallway. “It’s funny. She was never into imaginary play until now.”
I cut a glance to Rori, whose red face said everything. “I believe you.”
She gave me a wary look. “You do?”
I nodded. “Yep, I have those kinds of friends, too.”
Mrs. Pierson smiled at me from over her shoulder. “That’s very sweet of you, Maggie.” She directed her attention to her daughter, started giving her the usual parent spiel, don’t eat too many treats, don’t spill the juice.
While she was talking, Nell came up to me. “I meant to ask you about that. How come she can see Serge and Craig and I can’t?”
I shrugged. “She was on the border between life and death. I guess it makes sense.”
“You think she can still see them?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” I called Serge to me.
“Thank God,” he said as he appeared. “I decided to hang out with Kent. Any more walking and I was going to start feeling like Moses in the desert. A bored Moses.”
Rori says she saw you the night of her accident. Head over, see if she can still see you.
“No problem, I’ll take any friends I can find, right now. Even tiny ones.” He turned her way. Maggie, what does she look like to you?
A little girl. Why? What does she look like to you?
A little, normal girl? Chubby cheeks and rosy complexion?
Rori wasn’t exactly a chubby-cheeked kind of girl. She’s too skinny for the cheek thing. She looks about the same as she did when we found her that night. Why? What does she look like to you?
You know those commercials with starving kids with flies on their eyes?
Like that?
Like that, but no flies. He gave Mrs. Pierson a once over. She doesn’t look any better. Like a skeleton with a skin covering.
What do you think it means?
Rori’s starved for love and Mrs. Pierson’s anorexic. What do you think?
I think you’re right.
Geez. With a house like this and all that money, you’d think they’d be happy.
Why can you see all that?
“The boy is here, but he’s all fuzzy,” said Rori. “Can you see him?”
“No, sweetie.” Her mom had the distracted tone of an adult whose focus was on something else. “Only you can.”
I went over to the little girl. “I see him, too.”
“What’s his name?”
Oh, boy.
“Shaggy,” said Serge, then lifted his eyebrows at me. “What? It’s better than The Boy, and besides, it works. I got a gang and one of my best friends is a dog who’ll eat anything.”
Nell read the text and grinned.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Rori.
She shook her head.
“His name is Shaggy,” I said.
“Thanks for making me feel better,” said Rori.
“Yeah, no problem, kid.” Serge sat in the chair next to her.
“While you kids visit, I’m going to go downstairs to the gym. I have to do my therapy for my torn rotator—”
“It’s still giving you trouble, huh, Mrs. P?” asked Nell.
“My own fault. I shouldn’t have dived for the tennis ball. The exercises shouldn’t be more than a half-hour,” said Mrs. Pierson. “It’s Mrs. Humphrey’s day off and I’m not comfortable leaving Rori unsupervised—”
“No problem,” said Nell. “We’re happy to hang out.”
As soon as Rori’s mom left, I asked, “Rori, do you see the boys all the time?”
She shook her head. “Only that night and right now.”
“Before then, did you ever see people that no one else did?”
She shook her head, again. “It’s kind of hard to see Shaggy, now. He’s all fuzzy.”
Nell elbowed me. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone else who could see what I did.” Maybe it was a brain injury thing. If Serge was fuzzy, maybe that meant eventually Rori would lose the ability to see ghosts. Part of me hoped she wouldn’t. It was nice knowing there was someone else like me. Most of me hoped she would. Nice or not, it was a crap life she was chained to.
“How are you feeling?” Serge asked her.
Nell translated.
“Good. I’m getting lots of cards.” She nodded at a circular table where a stack of get-well cards lay amid a pile of mail. “People are really nice.”
“Bet you’re happy to be home,” I said.
Rori kicked at the chair legs. “It’s loud here.”
“Loud?” I asked.
She glanced at the hallway.
Oh. Loud.
She looked up at Nell. “Can I come live with you?”
“Oh, honey, “said Nell. “Your mom and dad are just worried for you. They don’t mean to be loud.”
“They yell all the time. Please, can I stay with you?”
“How about this? Let me talk to your mom and maybe you can spend a weekend with me.” Nell glanced my way. “Maybe Maggie and Shaggy will come—”
“Absolutely.”
“—and we can have a whole slumber party.”
“Can you talk to Mom and Dad? Ask them to not be so loud?”
“Uh, well, honey, when it comes to grown-ups—”
I stood, went over to the table. “You said people were sending you cards. Any favourites?” I picked up a pile. The mail caught my eye. I set down the cards and picked up the envelopes.
“Should you really be reading other people’s mail?”
I jumped at Nell’s voice, then looked over her shoulder. Serge and Rori were talking.
Nell tracked my gaze. “He distracted her from parent talk by letting her play on my cell. They’re talking about the picture she made about the submarine she had in her brain.”
“The submarine in her brain?”
Nell shrugged.
Okay, that was a new one. “Are we talking the sandwich or the military equipment?”
“Her drawing’s a little on the abstract side and I didn’t want to showcase my artistic illiteracy by asking her to clarify. Anyway, it’s probably part of how she’s dealing with the trauma.”
“Probably.” I held up the envelopes. “Doesn’t this seem strange to you?”
She rifled through them. “Bills, offers for credit cards, medicine dispensaries promotions, flyers for furniture stores, and charities asking for money. Seems normal to me.”
“Yeah, but look at the charities.”
Nell did. “Homeless, animal shelters…so?”
“Mrs. Pierson was angry the night Rori disappeared. She said her husband was ignoring his family because he was busy doing volunteer stuff on account of Serge’s death.”
“So?”
“So what’s with the animal and homeless charities? Think about it. You see some news report about a murdered kid, dysfunctional family. Wouldn’t you start donating to charities connected with that, like domestic violence shelters or organizations for runaways?”
Nell shrugged. “Maybe he’s been moved to donate to all causes.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s like this house. Everything’s about appearances. Besides, if he was really volunteering for a phone line like Mrs. Pierson said, then where’s the mail to prove it? Charities are always asking for money—look at what we do for the blood drive. Plus, the mail here is a few weeks old. If he was really volunteering with a support line, there would be something here.” I took the envelopes from Nell and put them back. “He’s lying to his wife. Something’s going on here.”
“One mystery at a time, Johnson. Maybe one charity sold his name to the other, and the mailings are only now coming in.”
“I just think—”
“Yeah, well I know you should stop thinking about this. You’re frustrated with Kent and your inability to cross him over. I think you’re freaked out because stuff’s happening and Craig can’t help, and I think you’re compensating by looking for mysteries where none exist.” Nell lowered her voice. “This is an unhappy family, okay? Fact is, they’re unhappy people. The doc”—She exhaled sharply—“he makes good money as a doctor, which already ticks off people. But he’s also got a Midas touch with investment. Only he won’t share his knowledge or invest for other people.”
I glanced behind me to make sure Rori couldn’t hear us talking about her parents.
“People think he’s greedy and wants to be the richest guy in town but it’s actually about integrity. He doesn’t want to be responsible for losing someone else’s money. Imagine how it feels to be him—saving lives and protecting other people from potential financial ruin and having them hate you for it. And for Mrs. P. She married for wealth, security, and status, but she never thought they’d end up in some tiny town. There’s nothing for her here—no charity balls, no big volunteer circuit to join—and she’s got an absent husband, too. He’s always travelling to conferences without her, taking boys-only vacations. The only thing they have in common is Rori. And even then,…they barely do stuff as a family. Mrs. P and the doc live separate, unhappy lives. He’s probably not volunteering for anything, okay? He’s probably having an affair and so is she.”
I lifted my hands in surrender.
“It’s a mystery, but it can wait. Let’s deal with Kent, then we’ll worry about the Piersons, okay?” She left me and went over to Rori and Serge.
I sighed. She had a point. I was probably overthinking everything, but I couldn’t shake the feeling we weren’t doing enough and I was missing something really obvious.
Chapter Thirteen
I joined the group and we hung out for a little longer. It was easy to see why Nell liked babysitting Rori. She was a fun kid, sweet, smart. And sad. Whatever was going on between her mom and dad, it was bringing her way down. I did my
best to make her laugh, joined in her ninja hero party games. A half-hour later, Mrs. Pierson came upstairs.
“Thanks for visiting girls, I appreciate it.” She smiled and hugged her daughter. “Mommy just heard about a great new ride for us. What do you think? Would you like to have a trip with Mommy tomorrow and we’ll go look at convertibles? We can have a spa day—it’ll be so much fun! We’ll get our nails done and everything!”
Rori nodded, then whispered to Nell. “What’s a convertible?”
After we left, I dropped Nell at her house, then phoned Nancy.
“If you’re calling to tell me about more vandalism in town, I’m not in,” she said.
“Wow. Still? The Piersons?”
“Thankfully, not today. But someone tossed stones at the windows of the grocery store, wrecked havoc in the hospital storage. The mayor is up one side of me and down the other, but I don’t have enough deputies or patience to deal with this. If the town wants to put a stop to this, they’ll have to do more than just complain to me.”
“I suppose asking if you had any leads on Kent might put me in line for no dessert tonight?” I put her on speaker so Serge could hear.
“Nah, you’re fine. I got some leads but a lot more questions. Kent was living in campus housing. His roommate said he got an email from Kent a couple days after Thanksgiving. In it, Kent says he’s dropping out and someone was coming to pick up his stuff. A day or so later, a moving guy came and packed up all Kent’s things.”
“Did he save the email?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Moving guy? Did he get the name of the company?”
“No. Just some average-looking guy of average build and darkish hair, dressed in khakis and carrying boxes. The roommate didn’t think anything of it—”
“Because he had the email from Kent.”
“Right. The only thing he remembers is the moving guy asking about the laptop. Seemed real upset it wasn’t around. Unfortunately for us, that’s as much as the kid can remember. The university’s sending the paperwork they have but I don’t think it’ll be much help. I visited Mrs. Meagher, did a walkthrough of his room and collected his laptop.”
“How’s she taking Kent being a missing person?”
