“We don’t have much time,” Laura warned. “If something is already set up, how can the FBI or Homeland Security get Deirdre or her two friends to tell us where it will happen? Remember, we were thinking about the girl from Mapleton who might be the next? That’s in less than three weeks.”
“I’ll give Nolan a call,” Connor promised. “He’s probably already on top of it and has alerted the Mapleton PD. We just wait to see if they want any assistance.”
They took a break and he texted Nolan their concerns. As expected, Frye responded that they were “already on top of it” and aware of the girl from Mapleton.
Connor checked Laura’s scratches and couple of bruises again.
“Any other bruises I should know about?”
“No. You can see them all from where you’re standing.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Laura. It makes me so angry—I keep trying not to think about it.”
She smiled.
“I’m sure you’ll find a way to cope. I’m perfectly okay. Some moments of panic but then I remembered what my father told me to do if I ever got stuck in somebody’s car trunk.”
“I’m glad, but we got an anonymous 911 call from the hotel’s courtesy phone. Some guy who saw them grab you and took pictures of the car and license plate. That’s how we found you. Your Morse code helped by telling us he had a gun, but we would have found you. We knew where the sting was happening and where you would end up.”
“Now you’re making me feel totally useless and worthless!” she cried, teasing.
He tickled her, causing peels of laughter.
“You are a lot of things, Laura Keene, but useless and worthless are not on the list.”
“I read those case notes you sent over; I presume you also gave copies to the FBI and DHS.”
He nodded.
“I saw one of them,” Laura said, “Emily Macchio, who also acted as if there was a game on for the night of the prom. I hope the feds can get Mary Wilson or Deirdre Covington to roll.”
“They noticed what you noticed; Frye told me.”
“Hey, remember to bring hard leather dress shoes and a suit with a buttoned-up shirt and bow tie to the next dance practice.”
“Are you planning on wearing your prom dress?”
“Heck, no,” Laura responded. “That’s a surprise. But I will wear a long dress of some kind and stilettos. So you’ll need those hard leather shoes. Are we on for tomorrow evening after dinner?”
“Heck, yeah,” Connor replied. “Seven o’clock sharp.”
forty-two
-
Ready for the prom?”
The question seemed to come from nowhere, and Laura whirled to see to whom the voice was attached.
Her old friend, Father Eddy Barlow, had somehow gotten into her shop without her hearing the jangling bells on the door. She figured he opened it carefully and slowly, maybe even put his hand over the bells. After all, he was tall enough.
“Prom?” she asked. “Who’s had time to think about that?”
She advanced to the middle of the shop to give him a rousing handshake.
“It’s good to see you, Eddy.”
“And you, as well, Laura. I understand you’ve had a few challenges and mishaps recently. Held the bells quiet so I wouldn’t startle you. You looked like you were in the middle of something.”
“Nothing new,” she responded, smiling. “My whole life has been a series of challenges and mishaps, as you call them.”
“I also heard you and Connor have been practicing your dancing together in preparation for the prom the weekend after Easter?”
“A few times in his parents’ basement. That’s all we’ve been able to fit in with our crazy schedules. But I think I’m closing the shop the week after Easter because it’s spring break in this town for everyone. I’ll have no business. We may get in some more practice.”
“Well, it’s good to see that you’re well and okay, Laura. I was worried. And don’t forget your Easter bonnet Sunday at Mass.”
“I won’t,” she said, smiling and waving as he left the shop.
Every visit from him was uplifting, she thought, until she saw her next visitor.
• • •
Dr. Colin Anderson strode in, jangling the bells, and weaving his way among a small number of customers already in the shop, hovering around the spring and Easter items. It didn’t take him long to reach the counter, as the customers this last week before Easter seemed to appear randomly there or not there. Right now, they were there, but not many.
Laura put on her shop smile and greeted him.
“Dr. Anderson. How are you?”
He smiled what she was sure he believed to be a charming and disarming smile.
“That’s my line, Laura. You’ve had a rough couple of weeks, I hear.”
“I’m good,” she returned politely. Then she spotted her savior at the door but kept her eyes on Anderson and her customers, one of whom brought an egg decorating kit to the counter.
Colin stepped to the side as she rang up the customer and bagged their purchase, stuffing the receipt into the bag.
“Enjoy decorating your egg,” she wished and hoped Anderson didn’t see the difference between the smile she gave this customer and the one she had given to him.
Then Eric Williams stepped up to the counter.
“Hello, Colin,” he said, giving the man a brief handshake. “Hey, Laura, do you have another one of those dream basket thingies like the one you sold me before? Maybe with a spring theme?”
“Well, people always think of Paris in the springtime, but you already had that one. Hey, what about Rome?”
“Sounds good. I’ll take it.”
“Hang on, gentlemen. I’ll be right back.”
And she was, but Dr. Anderson looked as if he were ready to walk out, she noticed upon her return.
“No, really, Colin. Fly fishing is fun and relaxing. You should try it. I’ll show you how anytime, and I promise you’ll get hooked, pardon the pun.”
Anderson looked as if he would rather be anywhere else than fly fishing with Eric Williams.
“I just stopped in to see how you are, Laura. I’m glad everything is okay. Williams?”
Another barely-a-handshake took place between the two men.
After Anderson left, Laura rang up Eric’s Rome dream basket, but he lingered. As she rang up another customer, and her shop was now empty except for Williams, she looked him in the eye.
“Are you following him?”
He looked around the store.
“Who?”
“Colin. Every time he comes into my shop, so do you. Then he leaves.”
“Coincidence. I needed to get another basket for the Easter weekend. I’m kind of trying to bribe my wife into our not spending the weekend with her family.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much love lost between the two of you guys, though. Something happen I’m not aware of?”
He took a while to answer.
“Naw. I just don’t like the guy.”
After Eric left, Laura had an aha moment.
Dr. Colin Anderson was the one from her dream who looked like one of the Munleys in the infamous picture #245 she’d gotten from the town photographer. But that couldn’t be possible because she had already traced him all the way back to Norway, and neither the Munley nor the Dowell family had anyone from Norway in their lineage. And Anderson’s family was only recently in Raging Ford, so it must be someone else. But who could it have been if not him or someone very like him?
Now she was back to square one on tracing who had killed her parents, with the only up side being the pool was now significantly smaller.
• • •
&nbs
p; With her mind not cluttered or driven to distraction over seven missing prom queens and a human trafficking ring, now all in the capable hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, Laura poured her energy into building the wooden frame for the big bunny for the Easter Egg Hunt. She and her friends had agreed to have their parts of the project completed by Friday and ready for assembly on Saturday.
It surprised her she still had these skill sets, but it also brought back sad memories of the loss of her parents, and the conspiracy she believed had been perpetrated against Samuel Rage’s family. She also felt guilty she hadn’t made a lot of progress in that arena in recent weeks.
When she closed up shop for the day, she noticed more daylight hours, thanks to the change to Daylight Saving Time. She had no plans for her evening, so she pulled out her father’s notes again and was caught by the story of thirteen-year-old Lorelei Rage who went to the Old Library one day in late summer many years ago and vanished.
forty-three
Nolan Frye was talking more to Connor at this lunch on Wednesday than to Laura. If he was hoping for more tidbits from her, it was not the right approach, and besides, she didn’t have any. It looked like a formality for him to close seven cold cases in the Cold Case Deck and advise the Raging Ford Police Department and a courtesy to include Laura.
“We sat down with Morgan Reilly and her parents—the girl from Mapleton High School that Laura and Corporal Broadmoor spoke with. At first she denied there was anything going on, and her mother backed her up. But the father, thank goodness, could tell when his daughter was lying. He stared her down until she cried and ran upstairs to her room to bring down the note supposedly from her boyfriend who would be prom king. Exactly what we suspected. Printed note and free car ride coupon from a non-existent company. Given that information, we hauled Mary Wilson, or Deirdre Covington as she prefers to be called, over the coals a bit, and she finally admitted what she had done to Brittany and the other six girls over the years. Wilson is a cold and very bitter woman.”
Laura had to interrupt.
“Did your teams or anyone find any of those notes in the missing girls’ effects, their rooms, or anywhere?”
“Actually, no. But one of them kept a diary and mentioned what we talked about…that something exciting was going to happen at the prom. At the time, we had no idea what that meant and presumed it was the prom queen crowning.”
Laura was surprised someone actually wrote in a diary in this day and age. Historians depended on journals and diaries from times past to reconstruct lives and events. Now a subpoena was needed to check emails, text messages, and social media, but that’s where the communications and thoughts were these days.
“I wonder what happened to those notes,” Laura mused.
Frye shrugged.
“Don’t know. We only know that Morgan Reilly’s message did not tell her to destroy the note or bring it with her. So your guess is as good as mine.”
“Nolan, are any of the girls still alive?”
“Six could be, but we’ve only located one so far, although we haven’t seen her yet. Brittany is dead. Wilson admits to strangling her with a cord and burying the body after she took the red dress.”
“Did she give up the location?” Connor asked.
“Yes, she did, and we found Brittany’s remains exactly where she said they would be. She wormed her way into a targeted girl’s life by hanging around that girl’s friends. When she was too old to pass for a teenager, she thought up the modeling agency. She found out all kinds of stuff about her targets by being invisible. That’s how she set things up so well.”
“What can we do?” Laura offered.
“Nothing,” Frye said. “Our team is following the trails of where Mary sold the girls and who she believes were the end clients. Where she didn’t have the end client’s name, she gave us the broker she worked through. Most of the sales were direct, so that makes it a tad bit easier. We have several leads and are tracking all six of them. We located one girl, but there is some diplomatic stuff that has to happen for us to get her back. These people who buy young girls to be their sex slaves are drowning in money and are not likely to want to give up their toys easily. But we’re doing our best. I have a question for you, Laura.”
She looked up.
“What made you think that they used a free ride coupon?”
“As I told Connor, it’s what I would have done. That way, there’s no one else involved you have to worry about and no evidence online or anywhere else because you send them the coupon with the note and collect the coupon when you pick up the person. You could even print on the coupon, ‘Hey, we’re new! First ride’s on us! Watch for our website and app – coming soon’ or something like that. You just need a car, maybe even a rental. I’m not sure those clunker rentals even have company stickers on them, so nothing to identify. And she could have used a different one for each girl so that statements by anyone who did see something wouldn’t match statements from another abduction. Nothing to connect.”
“I should keep an eye on you then, I guess.”
Connor kept a straight face.
“Did Covington tell you what started her off on this? Was it jealousy or punishment?” he asked.
“Both. Jealousy of a rich girl who probably wasn’t very nice and could have any one or thing she wanted because she had money and privilege. Punishment for the pain she felt that no pretty dress in the world was going to make Dante Lelanley love her. She said she tried, long after Brittany was dead and buried, but he was desolate over Brittany’s loss and not interested in her, ever. That’s when she decided she needed a new mission. And she came up with the plan to make pretty, rich girls less important. She called it, ‘putting them where they belong.’”
Laura nodded.
“That’s exactly what she said to me in the hotel. It was scary hearing it.”
“And you’re darned lucky, Laura,” Frye pointed out, “that someone saw the whole thing and put in that 911 call.”
“Did you ever find out who made the call?” Connor asked.
Frye shook his head.
“Nobody remembered the guy. He just asked where the courtesy phone was and then he was gone. Impressions were medium height and light hair. Nothing beyond that. He was not staying at that hotel. We verified that. Cameras in the lobby didn’t pick him up, either. Lots of people used the courtesy phone. Apparently just there for the auction, as he said on the call. Not everyone who registered showed up for the auction, so we’re looking through those names, but it may not matter. All he did was make a phone call.”
“I’m surprised anyone saw what happened to me, besides Kelly, and she didn’t know what was going on. It was jam-packed in there. I don’t know how anyone could have noticed it.”
“Maybe,” Frye said, twinkling at Connor, “someone just happened to notice a pretty girl and was watching her.”
• • •
Speaking of the anonymous caller, Justin Carlson was surprised that there still wasn’t anything on any news station about Laura. There was plenty of news about “an attempted kidnapping” and DHS breaking up a huge human trafficking ring that had existed for almost a decade.
DHS was hot on the trail of tracking down six young women who had been sold into slavery. A seventh, sadly, had been found dead, and her parents would now mourn her loss a second time but get the closure they desperately needed.
Carlson guessed that the word “attempted” meant she had gotten away, but why would they leave her name off? They did mention an anonymous caller had notified the authorities that he had seen the abduction and provided a description of the kidnapper, car, and license plate number. They asked for any information anyone had on this person, as the FBI and DHS wished to thank him personally for his assistance.
“
Yeah, sure,” Justin said aloud, glad he had thought to create a generic email address for the auction, one he would never use again. It was not for anyone to find him; it was for him to find and safeguard his sister.
He was glad Laura was okay; at least it seemed that she was. He remembered something else that Edna Phelps had told him about his birth parents: They were concerned for his and his sister’s safety. There was danger they couldn’t explain, and they didn’t feel they could protect or safeguard two babies as they grew up. They wanted to give him an anonymous and happy life without those fears. The danger, Phelps stressed, was evidenced by their eventual murders. He shuddered when he thought about this and a headache pounded, threatening to split his head apart.
So what was his job? Was he supposed to protect his sister as he thought?
He wished he had the answers.
One thing was certain: His next step would be to go to Laura’s shop in the next few days, maybe, and interact with her. He was not yet ready to tell her who he was, but it would be soon.
forty-four
On Easter Monday, the day of the hunt, on the grounds of Samuel Rage Elementary School, nearly a hundred small children were lined up—or as close to lining up as they could muster—with baskets in hand, bunny ears on their heads and fluffy bunny tails on their sit-upons, thanks to the wondrous product called Velcro, waiting anxiously for the bell to ring and send them looking for eggs.
The eggs themselves were plastic, colored eggs, filled with toys and treats, which had all been donated by the merchants of the town and hidden by the middle and high schoolers who were posted along the perimeter to ensure that no one went astray. The big kids also bore sacks with extra eggs to help those who had trouble finding any. The eggs, in the meantime, quietly awaited being found and scooped up into little baskets by the eager fists of very excited tots.
A Dress to Die For Page 21
