First Girl Gone: An absolutely addictive crime thriller with a twist (Detective Charlotte Winters Book 1)

by L. T. Vargus

  The high-pitched keening coming from the thing’s mouth turned to laughter.

  Still giggling, Allie ripped the mask from her head and tossed it to the ground. Charlie’s eyes went wide, her emotions rapidly shifting from pants-shitting fear to relief to embarrassment to anger.

  Allie bent over at the waist, laughing so hard now she was gasping for breath. She struggled to get the words out.

  “You should… have seen… your face.”

  Charlie gritted her teeth together, furious at herself for falling for the prank.

  “And the… flailing!” Allie said, mimicking Charlie’s frantic movements.

  “I hate you.”

  Allie sunk to the ground across from her sister, silent laughs still spilling out of her. She held up a hand to indicate she couldn’t quite speak yet but then tried anyway.

  “… peed a little.” Allie’s voice sounded pinched, like she was forcing the words out through a pinhole.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “I think I just peed my pants a little bit.”

  “You think?” That got Charlie laughing too. “You either peed, or you didn’t.”

  Allie nodded, tears streaming down her face.

  “OK, I definitely peed. Happy?”

  Now they both laughed.

  When they’d composed themselves, Allie stood and helped Charlie up.

  “Come on. I’ll show you how the hidden door works. There’s a bunch of them, all connected by a series of passageways that run alongside the maze.”

  Allie walked up to the door she’d come out of, running her hand along the right side of the mirror, which triggered a small latch. The door creaked open.

  Charlie poked her head into the space beyond. It was dank and smelled of mildew.

  “I can’t believe we never knew about this before,” Charlie said. “How’d you find it?”

  “Will Crawford told me about it. I guess he’s really into exploring this place. He said he’s found all sorts of crazy stuff he doesn’t think anyone else knows about.”

  The sharp smell of the coffee hit then, bringing Charlie back to the present—dark roast, her favorite. Her eyelids fluttered. The fragrance alone seemed to wake her up a notch or two.

  She poured herself a cup. Added a glug from the carton of half-and-half, the fridge light sending two flares over the kitchen floor as she got the creamer out and then put it away.

  As she took that first scalding sip, her eyes sensed a slight movement where her laptop lay open on the counter next to her—a notification pop-up. It could wait. She took a few more sips, getting about half the coffee down, feeling the caffeine seep into her bloodstream, start working on her brain.

  Then she figured she better check the notification. She fiddled with the touchpad one-handed, not willing to part with the coffee just yet.

  The notification was for a new email, but the subject line was blank. She navigated to her inbox and opened the message. It was short, just two cryptic lines that seemed like they could be swallowed up at any second by the white space dominating the rest of the screen:

  FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT.

  FIND HER.

  Was this a message about Kara Dawkins?

  Goosebumps rippled over Charlie’s skin, the flesh surrounding her body seeming to contract all at once like a strange membrane tightening around her.

  The “sent from” box showed Charlie’s own email address. Like she’d sent it to herself, which didn’t make sense.

  Spoofed. She didn’t know where she’d learned the term, but she remembered that spammers and other scam artists could fake an email address, make it look like it was sent from someone it wasn’t. Obviously, this person was set on remaining anonymous.

  FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT.

  FIND HER.

  There was something menacing about that. Almost taunting. If it really was connected to the Kara Dawkins case, it made the whole thing seem much more ominous.

  Chapter Ten

  Kara’s friend Maggie had agreed to meet Charlie in front of the high school that morning. Arriving a few minutes early, Charlie got out and gazed up at the two-story rectangle of beige brick, another surge of memories flooding her mind. She couldn’t go anywhere in this town without drowning in the past.

  The time they were sitting under the big maple tree at lunch and a seagull swooped down and stole the top bun off Liane McIntyre’s burger.

  Avoiding pep assemblies by hiding in the girls’ bathroom with Zoe Wyatt and Jennifer Siskey.

  The day Mara Snerling leaned over a Bunsen burner in chemistry class and set her hair on fire.

  These memories didn’t stick in her head like some of the earlier ones had. The prospect of talking to Maggie, of finding out where Kara was sneaking off to at night, proved too strong to be pushed out of Charlie’s thoughts for long. She was close now, perhaps minutes away from fresh answers in the case, and the excitement thrummed just behind her eyes.

  Charlie milled around for a few minutes, eventually peering through the glass of the front doors. The school looked the same as it always had inside. Beige terrazzo floors with banana-yellow lockers set into the brick walls.

  An older Honda Civic pulled to the curb, and Charlie swiveled toward it. A girl with long hair in an unnatural shade of purplish-red climbed out of the driver’s side, lighting a cigarette.

  “I thought all the cool kids were into vaping now,” Allie commented.

  Charlie’s first thought had not been about the coolness factor of smoking cigarettes but wondering where a girl of seventeen or eighteen even got cigarettes when the legal smoking age was twenty-one.

  Allie scoffed.

  “Oh, please. We got our hands on much worse at that age. It wasn’t even hard.”

  Charlie reached the bottom of the steps and called out.

  “Maggie?”

  The girl swung around to face her, blowing out a cloud of smoke. She wore dark eyeshadow and had drawn-in eyebrows.

  “Yeah. You the private detective or whatever?”

  “That’s me. Charlie,” she said, extending a hand.

  Maggie popped the cigarette between her lips and held it there while they shook.

  “Thanks for meeting me here,” Maggie said. “My stepdad is sort of a wannabe militia-type, and he’d be all, ‘Why’d you bring a cop into my house?’”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Yeah, I know that. But he’s an idiot.”

  Charlie noticed that in lieu of a coat, Maggie was only wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.

  “Do you want to sit in the car to do this?”

  “Nah,” Maggie said, ashing her cigarette on the ground. “I don’t smoke in the car. Is it cool if we walk and talk?”

  “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  Maggie pushed off from where she’d been resting her shoulder against the car and headed toward downtown. Charlie followed.

  “How close are you and Kara?”

  Taking a drag, Maggie shrugged.

  “I wouldn’t say we were really friends at all until this year. I moved here in the middle of last year, and I don’t know, we didn’t hang out with the same people, I guess.”

  “When did that change?”

  “I’m guessing you heard about Kara’s DUI?”

  “I did.”

  “The same night Kara got busted, I got an MIP. Minor in possession.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “It was the same party. Anyway, we met during community service. We had to volunteer at the senior center, serving food and stuff. And, I don’t know, I guess you could say we bonded.”

  “And when was the last time you saw or talked to Kara?”

  “We talked Wednesday.”

  That got Charlie’s attention. “What time?”

  Resting the cigarette between her lips again, Maggie drew her phone from the pocket of her hoodie. She swiped at the screen a few times.

  “Around four. She sent me a few texts after that, but I was in th
e shower and didn’t see them until later.”

  “Can I see?” Charlie asked, gesturing at the phone.

  Maggie passed her the device.

  Charlie looked at the last few exchanges between the two girls.

  MAGGIE: OMFG NO HE DID NOT!!! That’s hilarious tho.

  KARA: ikr? So are you gonna come get me or what?

  MAGGIE: Yeah, I just gotta do my stupid chores first, or stepdouche will freak.

  KARA: Ew… he treats you like a slave, I swear. Do you have to wash his nasty skidmark underwear again?

  MAGGIE: Lol, stop yer gonna make me throw up.

  KARA: So what time?

  MAGGIE: 4:30. Soup bench.

  KARA: K.

  KARA: Almost smells like chicken noodle today.

  KARA: Where r u?

  KARA: Hurry up. I’m freezing my ass off.

  Charlie glanced up from the screen.

  “You two had plans to meet up?”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, taking one last drag from her cigarette and then tossing it to the sidewalk.

  “Where’s the—” she glanced back down at the screen to read it again before handing the phone back “—soup bench?”

  “It’s the bench all the way on the other side of the town square.” Maggie pointed at the park up ahead. “Always smells like soup over there. Usually French onion. Sometimes it’s more like beefaroni. Either way, it’s gross.”

  “And did you have plans after that?”

  Maggie sighed.

  “She’ll kill me for telling you this, but whatever.” The girl reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. “We were gonna try to hitch a ride down to Florida.”

  “Hitch a ride? Like with someone you knew or hitchhiking with strangers?”

  Maggie’s eyes went wide.

  “Uh, with someone we knew,” she said. “If I was ever in the mood to get rape-murdered by a psychopath, then maybe I’d hitchhike with a stranger.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Charlie said, laughing a little. “So what happened Wednesday afternoon?”

  “I was late. Not by a lot. Fifteen minutes, maybe. And by the time I got there, Kara was gone.” Maggie thrust her hands in her pockets. “I figured she bailed on me.”

  “Did you leave right away?”

  “No, I waited around a while. I thought maybe Kara ran inside the gas station for smokes or something. When she didn’t show, I went over to Trevor’s house. He was the one driving down to Daytona Beach. But he’d already left. I was so pissed off that they’d left me behind that I sort of forgot about Kara for a while. Until the next day when her mom called me all freaked out, anyway.”

  Charlie considered this, and a new idea came to her.

  “Is there any chance Kara caught a ride with them anyway?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, because I called to bitch Trevor out for leaving without me. I asked if Kara was with them, but he said no.”

  A pang of disappointment hit Charlie then. Kara sneaking off to Florida would have been such a clean and simple explanation for her disappearance. Her parents would have been angry, sure, but they also would have been relieved to know where she was and that she was safe.

  Charlie was nearly at the end of her list of questions for Maggie. She’d left the most important for last.

  “Kara’s stepsister says she’s been sneaking out at night,” Charlie said. “Do you know where she might have been going?”

  “I have no idea,” Maggie said, but there’d been a beat of hesitation before she answered, and her voice had gone up in pitch, like she was nervous.

  “Maggie, you heard how panicked Kara’s mom was. I need you to tell me what you know.”

  Chewing her lip, Maggie relented.

  “Fine, but when you find Kara, promise you won’t tell her it was me that said anything?”

  “OK.”

  The girl let out a long sigh.

  “Well, a while back, I wanted us to get jobs together at Taco Bell. But Kara kept saying no, and I kept bugging her about it because she’s always talking about getting out of here, and I figured what better way than to make some money?” Her shoulders scrunched into a shrug. “Then one night, we smoked a bo— a cigarette together and got to talking about it again, and she told me she already had a job. I asked where, but she wouldn’t say more. Said part of the job was keeping everything confidential.”

  “Why would she have to keep it a secret?”

  “I don’t know, but a few weeks later, I overheard some guys at school talking about seeing her at the club.”

  “The club? Like the Lakeside Tavern?”

  It was the only bar in town that Charlie could imagine someone referring to as a club, as they occasionally had live music. It was a popular tourist destination in the summer because of its location near the marina.

  Maggie frowned.

  “Maybe. My stepbrother washed dishes there for a while, and I know they paid him under the table. I guess that could be why she had to keep it a secret?”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  Closing her eyes, Maggie shook her head.

  “No. I was kind of mad about it, actually. I kept talking about us getting a job together, and then it turned out she had some sweet gig she wasn’t letting me in on? Pissed me off.”

  Charlie lapsed into silence, pondering this new development. A secret job? It would certainly explain the sneaking out, but it also begged a whole slew of new questions.

  “So, is that it? Are we done?” the girl asked.

  “Yeah, just one last thing,” Charlie said, remembering the cryptic email she’d received earlier that morning. “Does ‘Follow the white rabbit’ mean anything to you?”

  Hugging herself against the cold, Maggie asked, “Like, from Alice in Wonderland?”

  Charlie smiled.

  “Never mind.”

  They’d come to a stop near the bench where the two girls were supposed to meet, and Maggie’s eyes went to the empty seat.

  “You know, I wasn’t worried at first,” Maggie said. “But this isn’t like her. She never goes this long without texting me back. What if something bad happened because I didn’t show up on time?”

  Charlie saw the fear in the girl’s eyes. She knew from experience how it felt to blame yourself for something like that. How many times had she wondered what might have happened if she’d been pushier about asking Allie where she was going or who she was hanging out with?

  “This wasn’t your fault,” Charlie said. “And don’t worry. I’ll find her.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Allie said, and Charlie tried her best to ignore it.

  Charlie sniffed the air and frowned.

  “It really does smell like soup over here.”

  Maggie had started to walk away, and she paused now and turned back, a half-smile on her lips.

  “I know, right?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Charlie sat down on the “soup bench” and let her eyes roam the area. The texts Kara had sent to Maggie suggested she’d been here the afternoon she disappeared. Perhaps even sat in this very spot. This was, at least in terms of Charlie’s investigation, Kara’s last known location. A prickle of unease accompanied that thought.

  She jotted down a few notes. Kara had begun texting Maggie at 3:57 p.m. on the day she disappeared. The timestamp for the final text Kara had sent Maggie was at 4:36 p.m. Her comment about the bench smelling “like chicken noodle today” indicated that Kara had been in the park at that time. And by approximately 4:45 p.m., when Maggie arrived, she was gone.

  Charlie glanced up again, her gaze moving from the playground at one corner of the park to the Shell station across the street.

  “You were here. Right here. Where did you go?” she asked in a whisper.

  She sat a few more seconds, thinking. Observing. Looking out at the same view Kara would have looked at.

  Find the trail, Charlie told
herself. Figure out where she went next.

  The talk with Maggie had been productive—more than she’d dared to hope. She now knew where Kara had gone after she left her house. She knew what her plans had been. And she knew that Kara possibly had a job she hadn’t told anyone about. Charlie was getting somewhere.

  Tucking her notebook into her bag, Charlie stood.

  “Where are you going?” Allie asked.

  “To see if anyone around here saw Kara that afternoon.”

  An electronic ding announced her arrival at the Shell station. She went to the candy aisle and grabbed a Snickers. She wasn’t hungry, but she’d found that clerks and cashiers were more likely to brush her off as a nuisance if she waltzed in and started asking questions. Being a paying customer often got better results. The routine shifted the roles, put the worker in the mindset of serving the customer.

  The man behind the counter was thickset with a black beard that tumbled halfway to his belly button.

  “Just the candy bar?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Charlie said, handing him a five-dollar bill. “Well, that and a quick question for you.”

  He made a face that told her to go ahead with it.

  “My little sister has been missing for a few days, and I know she comes in here sometimes,” Charlie said. “In fact, she might have come in here on Wednesday, which was the last time anyone saw her. Were you working then? Around four-thirty?”

  That was another thing she’d learned. People on the street were much more likely to help you out if your story was personal.

  Squinting, the man turned around to consult an employee schedule posted on the wall. He jabbed Wednesday with a finger.

  “Yeah, I was here.”

  “Great! Would you mind taking a look at this picture of her?”

  She brought up a photo of Kara on her phone and held it out to him.

  He leaned in, wrinkling his nose. The way he kept squeezing his eyes down to slits made Charlie think he needed glasses, which probably didn’t bode well for asking whether he’d seen anyone hanging around in the park on Wednesday.