by Anya Allyn
The sharp ring of my bedside phone woke me.
Lacey's voice sounded urgent.
"Okay," I told her, checking my watch, "I can come down for ten minutes before dinner."
I slipped my hoodie on, and told mom I needed to go to Lacey's, making up something about picking up a homework assignment.
6. LACEY
Setting my school bag down on the cool white tiles, I said a quick hello to Lacey’s mother. She was always dressed in expensive, coordinated clothing. Nothing like the jeans and old t-shirts my mom wore.
Mrs. Dougherty clasped her hands together. “Lacey’s in the family room. Just finished piano practice. I’ll get you juice, and a nice slice of sponge cake.”
I was about to say no and then I remembered that she would always bring the drink and food regardless of whether you said yes or no.
“Yes please.” I smiled.
I wandered through to the family room.
Lacey sat at her piano. She played the last of something heart-achingly beautiful. The final note echoed around the austere room, as though it were trying to find escape.
In the cold winter afternoon, the room was just so... colorless. White walls, white floor, white piano and white-haired Lacey. A single image adorned the wall above the piano—a family shot of three girls and their parents—pursed-faced Mrs. Dougherty and a steely-eyed Mr. Dougherty in his police uniform.
Mrs. Dougherty set the drinks and cake down on the glass coffee table. “It’s so exciting—Lacey’s been invited to perform at a prestigious competition in September!”
Lacey smiled painfully. She was always embarrassed about her piano talent.
“Way to go, Lace!” I said.
“She’s incredible,” Mrs. Dougherty mused. “She was just a little thing when she pleaded for a piano. None of us are musical, so it’s just wonderful. “
Gathering up the last of her dignity, Lacey picked up her plate and drink and gestured for me to do the same.
“Goin’ to my room,” she said quickly.
I followed her through her enormous house to her pale pink bedroom. Rows of carefully arranged trinket boxes covered her dressing table and shelves—she seemed to have added even more to her collection since last time I was here. I bent to view the tiny boxes made of antique wood, intricately carved seashell, smooth marble and filigree metal.
Two blonde girls filed into the room, climbing up onto Lacey’s bed—Lacey’s sisters. With their long hair pulled back with hair clips, they looked like small, identikit Laceys. Jacinta cradled a soft baby doll, while Amy played a hand-held game.
“Go!” ordered Lacey.
“But you’ve got cake,” Amy pointed out.
“Go ask mum for some.”
“We already had some.” Jacinta nodded with serious blue eyes. “But Daisy didn’t get a piece.” She looked down at her doll.
“Get that thing out of here!” Lacey’s face paled. She pushed her plate at Amy.
The girls fled, taking the cake with them.
Lacey freaked at the sight of dolls. The one time she’d stayed over at my house, I’d had to stuff my old childhood doll and bear in my wardrobe, because Lacey couldn’t sleep with them staring at her.
I gestured towards my cake. “I’ll share.”
“Nah, that’s ok.” Lacey held a palm up.
The other thing Lacey had an aversion to was food. She was thinner than her ten year old sister. Aisha had told me Lacey was diagnosed with anorexia years ago. As far as I could see, if she was on any treatment for it, it wasn't working.
I closed the door, taking a long breath. "Okay, Lace, what did you want to talk about?"
Lacey settled into her desk chair, swiveling it around to face me. "I know my dad was at your house with Detective Kalassi earlier. I just wanted to tell you I'm really sorry."
I stepped over to sit on the stool beside her. "Don't be sorry. It's his job."
"I know... but it feels weird sometimes being the sergeant's daughter. It's a small town. This sounds kind of lame, but through all of this, I kind of hoped we were becoming real friends."
I tried not to show surprise. She'd always seemed so locked away in her own world I hadn't realized she cared one way or another about being friends.
Awkwardly, I reached to squeeze her hand. "Hey, we are." I glanced towards the door, pulling a mock-nervous face. "And I'm cool about who your dad is. Just as long as he doesn't start questioning me again here."
In truth, I didn't like being at Lacey's house. I'd only been there twice, but I'd never felt comfortable in the cold white spaces or around Mr. Dougherty.
"Don't worry. My father's not home from work until late tonight. He works super-late these days."
"Working on Aisha's case?"
"I don't know. He doesn't tell me about his work." She shrugged. "He doesn't talk to me much at all, about anything...."
I eyed her sympathetically. We sat in silence for a time, but unlike in prior weeks, the silence was more shared than strained.
"D'wanna watch music videos... or something?" I offered.
Lacey shook her head. "There's something else I want you to see."
She bent to unlock a low drawer in her desk. A yellow folder sat on the bottom of the drawer—wordlessly, she handed it to me.
I gasped as I pulled the first sheet from the folder. Marked with an official police logo, the paper read:
CONFIDENTIAL
Missing Person Investigation
Aisha.Rihanna.Dumaj (Age 15)
"How did you get these?"
Lacey tilted her chin upwards. "My dad's briefcase. I guessed his code to open the case—it wasn't hard—it was the name of his favorite cricket player. Then I just photocopied everything from Aisha's folder."
"God, why? If your dad found you with these—"
"Yeah well, I don't care. He just thinks he can throw his weight around this town, and I'm sick of it. It's not fair for him to be trying to pin this on Ethan and an old man. All he cares about are promotions, and he probably thinks he'll get one if he solves this case quickly." She raised her pale eyebrows. "I thought maybe we could do our own investigation."
I stared in disbelief at Lacey. Since I’d known her, she’d seemed to me to have no backbone. But I'd mistaken her little mouse voice and congeniality for spinelessness.
The folder suddenly felt heavy in my hands. "Have you read it?"
She shook her head. "I only had a few minutes to copy it all. My dad stopped in here for a quick bite to eat after being at your house."
I took a long breath, the dread in Lacey's eyes reflecting my own. My fingers found the next page in the folder, and I slid it free.
My spine tensed as my gaze fell upon an image of the house we'd chanced upon out in the forests—the house the newspapers had reported as being the Fiveash mansion. In black and white, the photograph itself seemed to have been taken in another era. The house had been empty at the time, and police had turned its myriad rooms upside down, but found no trace of Aisha.
The next image was of a slender man of about thirty.
"Who's that?" I asked.
Lacey flicked thorough the documents and took out a paper. "Seems to be a Mr. Henry Fiveash. The guy who inherited the Fiveash mansion. Says here he acts as a kind of caretaker for the house—it used to have a heritage order on it and had to be preserved. But somewhere along the line, the house dropped off the radar."
I took the document from her. It seemed that Henry Fiveash had an air-tight alibi. He'd been in hospital the week Aisha had gone missing, recovering from an operation.
The next images were of Ethan. My heart stilled at the sight of him—a wide smile that would look almost swaggering if not for the bemused look in his eyes. The other photo was a beach shot of a nine year old Ethan in between a man and woman in swimsuits—his parents. Next was a police report, listing a long line of petty misdemeanors. The last entry was dated only three months ago. The report stated that Ethan had stolen a car and dri
ven himself and his grandfather to the top of Devils Hole.
Ethan stole a car? And drove himself and his granddad to Devils Hole?
Lacey read along with me, her eyes widening.
The next image was of Ethan's grandfather, marked Seth.David.McAllister (Age 87). Accompanying the photo was a detailed report. Apparently, a handkerchief belonging to him had been found in the forests at the time Molly went missing. And there were sworn witness statements to say he was seen in the forests at the times that Frances and Aisha vanished. One of the statements came from a tour operator.
Raif hadn't been making it up.
"Oh God." I sat back on the stool.
Lacey met my gaze. "I don't know what to think now...."
I forced myself to take the last of the documents from the folder. They were mostly photographs.
"Those have to be Molly and Frances." Lacey touched two of the photos sadly. "They were never found."
Molly looked around twelve, staring at the camera with a direct, insolent gaze from beneath a tangled mess of purple-streaked hair.
Frances was a tiny girl of around three, her image circled in a Christmas family shot that included her parents, older sisters and a baby brother. Her arms were folded in front of her red party dress, her face displaying that pouty look kids get when they don't want to be photographed.
Last was a photo of Aisha—a close-up school photo from early this year. Chocolate hair framed her startlingly aqua eyes.
The next page mentioned other missing girls, girls that had been reported missing in a wide circumference of Barrington Tops, and referenced another folder for more information.
I handed the photographs and documents back to Lacey. "I don't think I want to know any more about missing girls."
She nodded softly. "I don't want to know any more about that either. I'm sorry to land all that on you at once. I shouldn't have done that."
I managed a weak smile. "Yes you should. Now that we're both private investigators and all of that."
Lacey returned the smile. She returned the folder to the bottom drawer and locked it, then dropped the key in one of the trinket boxes.
"So where do we go from here?" said Lacey.
"Maybe we should try to find out more about Henry Fiveash. The report didn't say a lot about him."
"I'm on it." She turned to open up her laptop computer and switch it on. With her delicate, piano-player hands, she typed in, Henry Fiveash, Devils Hole, Barrington Tops.
She clicked on a few dead-end results before bringing up a page of text that looked as though it had been there since the nineties, with gray text on a green background.
Slipping her glasses on, Lacey began reading out loud:
Henry Fiveash, great-grandson of Tobias Fiveash, inherited the Fiveash holdings in the USA, India, England and Australia.
Tobias Fiveash, from a three-generation circus family, made his fortune as a young man when he added two-headed and six-footed animals to the circus line-up. He used the money to invest in the gold rushes of the time.
Misfortune befell the family when a number of his circus convoys were lost over a steep embankment. Seven members of the family were killed. Tobias sold his circus and died a broken man, in the early 1900s. The time and place of his death is not certain. One record stated he drowned off board a ship destined for England, and another that he died in his own estate in Barrington Tops, Australia.
“Doesn’t say much about Henry Fiveash himself,” Lacey remarked.
“And doesn’t say what connection the Fiveashs’ had to Australia. I mean, why did he build that house in Barrington Tops?”
“Maybe he brought his circus out to Australia?”
“Makes sense.”
We tried to find some more pages, but there wasn’t much. Just some dry stuff about the Fiveash business investments and gold stocks. There was a single, obscure reference to some mining equipment that Tobias had custom-made at great expense.
“Hold the bus,” Lacey said. “What about the Mountain Maid?”
“Who’s that?”
“Not who—what. The Mountain Maid is an old gold mine here at Gloucester. There was a gold rush there in the late 1880s. Maybe Tobias Fiveash had investments there”.
“I like it,” I pondered. “And maybe he built the guest house nearby so he could live in comfort when he came out here to visit the mines. And plus he would have made money renting out the house room to visitors or rich investors.”
Lacey twisted her hair around her finger. “The house seems a long way from the gold mines though, I mean, why didn't he build something closer?”
I sat drumming my fingers on the desk. “Hey maybe he tried to mine up there. Near the house.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “You wouldn’t imagine so. It’s all volcanic rock there, isn’t it?”
“Old Tobias must have had a huge pot of money though. He would have had the money to try. Plus it did say he designed his own mining equipment.”
We spent a boring hour looking up the feasibility of mining gold from volcanic rock, and ended up figuring that it was possible to mine some types of gold from some types of igneous rock.
Lacey jumped to her feet. “We should tell the police. If there’s a mine up there and the ground’s unstable, Aisha may have fallen in somewhere.”
"No!"
She glanced at me sharply. "No?"
"Well, the police wouldn't take us seriously," I said quickly. "I mean, it does seem pretty far-fetched."
Lacey stepped over to her bed, lying back like a snow angel, her hair fanning the pillow. “It does sound crazy when you think about it. But I'll take looking like an idiot over doing nothing. I'll mention it to my dad. He already thinks I'm a nutjob, so it can't hurt."
I recalled Aisha telling me that Sergeant Dougherty had once tried to physically push a chicken drumstick into Lacey's mouth, and then called her a mentalcase when she spat it out. He obviously didn't understand anorexia, or didn't want to. But I couldn't let her tell her dad about our wild gold mine idea. Not with Ethan up there on the mountains.
"Look. Just... no. This is supposed to be us and our own investigation, right? So why bring the police into it?"
"Well, you saw it wasn't looking good for Ethan's gramps. Shouldn't we be trying to help clear his name?"
My breath caught in my chest. "We can't have the police going back up on the mountains... because that's where Ethan is."
She eyed me with alarm. "He's there?"
I nodded stiffly. "He's looking for Aisha himself."
"God. I thought he was up North somewhere. Why did he go back? Did he find out something?"
"No, he doesn't know anything. He's just desperate. I saw him, for a minute, on the afternoon he left."
I didn't want to tell Lacey Ethan had stayed in my room overnight. It would sound wrong in the retelling. And I'd already told too much.
A thought began unfolding in my mind, a cold, dread thought that I couldn't force back down, couldn't pack back in its box. "Maybe we should go ourselves...."
"Go where?"
"To the mountains."
Her eyes grew large. "Hang on. Us?"
"Well, like, someone has to check out the goldmine idea. Right?"
"No way Hosea. My mother wouldn't let me back up there."
"Mine either. But maybe we could sneak off and take a couple of daytrips up there. We go on winter break next week don't we?"
"Well yeah, but how much could we really do? We'd spend most of each day just walking up the mountains and off them off again." Lacey folded her arms in close around her chest. "If we went, we'd have to stay there a while." A quiet terror stole into her eyes.
I gazed at her numbly. "Stay there?"
"In tents. But it's almost July...."
I did a mental flip. July had always meant heat, gearing up the hottest month of the year—August. Here it meant cold. "How cold does it get?"
"Sub-zero. And some years, cold enough to snow even on the ro
ads leading in."
We stared at each other, each of us probably hoping the other would shoot the idea down. But neither of us did.
We plunged into silence. The idea was crazy. How could I even consider going into the depths of the forest with a killer on the loose? And how would I even survive whole nights of pitch darkness out there? Maybe mom was right. I was just like the crowd I'd been hanging around with back in Miami. Jumping into things without thinking them through.
But this was different. One of my friends was dead and another one was being framed as either the murderer or the murderer's accomplice. Ethan needed help, and we were the only people who could do anything.
"So... we're going to do this?" I said.
"Guess we are."
"We'd need a heap of gear, right? I have a couple of hundred in the bank. But it's linked to my mother's bank account. She'd probably notice if I took it out."
"We've got all-season camping gear here. My dad's big on camping." Lacey wriggled herself into a cross-legged sitting position. “But, the question is, how do we take camping gear without everyone guessing where we're going?”
“I guess we can tell our parents we’re going away on winter camp for the break. My mom's going to be pretty hard to convince, but I think she'll go for it if I go hard on the needing-time-away angle.”
“That might work pretty well with my mum. She already says I’m too highly-strung. We can go for a week or so, and be back in time for Caitlin and Brianna's birthday party—where we'll spend the night trying to avoid having Ben and Dominic pushed onto us. What do you think?”
I gave a snicker at the Ben and Dominic reference. “Sounds good to me.”
I looked up Google Maps for the nearest and biggest body of water—one that was far enough away—but not so far our parents would freak. And it had to be close to the coast, where towns were heavily populated—I knew my mother wouldn’t go for me camping at another wilderness area.”
I pointed to two big blobs of blue that were next to each other on the map. “Myall Lake and Wallis Lake. Are either of these any good?”
