by L. T. Vargus
“I see. So you’re in California right now?”
“Yeah. My family does it every year for Christmas break. My grandparents all live out here.”
“Could you do me a strange favor? Could you text me a photo of you standing in front of a palm tree when we’re done?”
“Uh… sure?”
“Thanks. And I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions.”
“Any old palm tree?” Paul asked.
“Any old palm tree.”
“OK.”
They hung up, and a few seconds later, the requested photo of Paul and a palm tree appeared on Charlie’s phone.
“What was all that about?” Allie asked.
“I wanted to make sure he was where he said he was. If we had Amber’s phone, I could have checked for the Disneyland text he says he sent, but we don’t, so…”
“You think he could come up with a lie that quickly?” Allie shook her head. “Boys his age aren’t that clever.”
“How would you know?”
Allie shrugged.
“I’m just saying. Boys are dumb.”
The front door opened then. Charlie spun around in her chair and was surprised to find Zoe entering the office.
“Are you psychic?”
“What?” Zoe shrugged out of her police-issue parka and tossed it on the couch.
“I was just thinking about calling you, but you beat me to it.”
Zoe gave a quick half-smile, but Charlie could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Her voice sounded strange, too. Charlie studied her friend’s face, trying to place the odd look she found there.
“What’s up?” she asked when Zoe didn’t say anything.
“Well, I guess I should start out by apologizing,” she said finally, falling back onto the old leather behemoth.
“For what?”
“Everyone was so dismissive of the Kara Dawkins thing, even me. I guess maybe it’s sort of contagious. It’s easy to convince yourself everything is just fine when that’s what everyone else is saying. But now, with this second girl going missing, the whole department is really feeling like they screwed the pooch.” She sighed. “No. Not they. We.”
Charlie clicked and unclicked her pen.
“Did you really come all the way over here to tell me that?” She pointed at Zoe’s uniform. “While you’re on duty?”
Zoe glanced down at the khaki-colored uniform. She’d never been good at lying or hiding things, and Charlie could sense there was something Zoe wasn’t saying.
“Or did they send you over here to copy my homework?”
Zoe sighed.
“Pretty much.”
With a grin, Charlie leaned back in her chair. If she played her cards right, this could be very good.
“Is this a quid pro quo arrangement? I tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know?”
“I have been authorized to share certain information.”
Charlie rolled her chair forward.
“Can I see Amber’s car?”
Zoe shook her head.
“They already towed it to the crime lab on the mainland.” She pulled a tablet out of her bag and handed it to Charlie. “But I have pictures.”
Charlie swiped through the photos of Amber’s car, an ice-blue Hyundai Elantra. There were several shots of the exterior of the car. It was in good condition—no dings or scrapes, recently washed. The next set of photos showed the interior of the car. Again, it was spotless. No dust or random bits of trash. An air freshener hung from the rearview mirror. Charlie brought the screen closer to her face and zoomed in on the photo.
“Is that a Little Mermaid air freshener?” Charlie asked, remembering Paul’s comment that Amber was a Disney fanatic.
Zoe leaned in to get a better view.
“Looks like it.”
Charlie continued flipping through the photos.
“What do you suppose that smells like?”
“Hmm…” Zoe considered it. “Seaweed and fish?”
Photos of the backseat showed an overnight bag and a basket of laundry, already neatly folded.
It was clear Amber had left the house in her own car, intending to drive back to East Lansing. What had happened after she left the house? Was she meeting someone at the park-and-ride? Or had she been taken somewhere along the route, and the kidnapper abandoned her car there?
Outside again, the next photo was a shot of the open trunk. There were a pair of boots, a snow brush, and a portable air compressor, still in the box.
Charlie went back to one of the first photos, a shot of the driver’s side door open.
“This is before anyone touched the car, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How tall is Amber?”
“Five foot six.”
“That’s about my height.” Charlie tapped the screen. “And the seat looks pretty far back to me.”
Squinting, Zoe studied the photo.
“It does,” Zoe agreed. “You think that means something?”
“Yeah, but it only really confirms the obvious.”
“What’s that?”
“That by the time the car was parked in the commuter lot, someone else was driving. Someone taller than Amber.”
“A man.”
“Most likely. And she was alone when she left the house, so that means she stopped somewhere between here and the park-and-ride. It’s the only explanation. Otherwise, how does someone else end up behind the wheel?” Charlie snapped her fingers. “What about the GPS on her car?”
“We checked it. The history shows her pretty much driving straight from the house to the lot, though she did stick to the back roads, for some reason.”
Charlie tried to make sense of that. Again, she wondered if Amber had been meeting someone at the park-and-ride. Her finger swiped over the screen, absently sifting through the photos again.
“How long until they process the fingerprints?”
“Few days. They got lots. And we already took prints from the whole family so we can rule them out.”
Finally, Charlie handed the tablet back to Zoe.
“Well, I’ll put together what I have on Kara Dawkins and send it over,” she said. “You’ll keep me updated on the official investigation?”
Zoe slid her coat back on and fastened the zipper.
“Where I can.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Charlie spent the rest of the morning digging through Amber Spadafore’s background. She also got in touch with one of the girls Amber had brunch with the morning she disappeared, who agreed to gather the rest of the crew together to meet with Charlie for a brief interview later in the day.
Around noon, Charlie took a break. She walked to Town Square Pizza and ordered two meatball subs. Since she had some time to kill before the interview with Amber’s friends, she figured she might as well take Frank lunch. He didn’t have chemo today, but he still had to eat.
When he answered the door, he was in his robe. It wasn’t like Frank to not get dressed in the morning. He was an early riser, a wake up at 6 a.m. ready to kick the day in the face kind of guy. Now that she considered it, Charlie wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him in pajamas. His face was puffy and gray, and his eyes looked bloodshot and yellow.
She forced herself to smile and held up the plastic bag printed with the Town Square Pizza logo.
“I brought lunch. Meatball subs.”
Frank winced.
“I’m not hungry just now,” he said. “You can just put mine in the fridge.”
She wanted to argue that it wouldn’t be good later, but she could tell he was feeling pretty miserable and didn’t want to push it. Doing as he asked, she put his sandwich in the fridge and left her own on the counter. She was starving, but the face Frank had made when she’d mentioned the subs made her think that just the sight and smell of her food might make him ill.
“There’s been a development in my missing girl case.”
Frank eased himself into hi
s trusty chair, grimacing as he settled into the cushions.
“Oh yeah?”
“A second girl is missing.”
That got his attention. He sat up straighter and stared at her intently.
“See? This is what I was saying before. Here, the police have been dicking around for what, a week? Ignoring the fact that a young girl has disappeared. And now there’s another? Luckily, you’ve been out there, keeping the trail fresh.”
“I guess so,” Charlie said.
“You don’t have to guess. It’s the truth. Every cop worth a damn will tell you that the first seventy-two hours is the most critical period in a missing persons case. It’s the best chance they have at finding a lead, in part because people have short memories. And you were the one out there, gathering that evidence before it faded, while the cops sat around with their thumbs in their asses. So don’t give me any of that ‘I guess so’ garbage.”
Charlie couldn’t help but smile at his passion.
“Any advice, oh wise one?”
“I assume you’re looking at ways they might be connected somehow?”
“Yeah, but so far, I haven’t found much to link the two girls. Kara’s seventeen. Still in high school. Amber is twenty and in college.”
“Do they look alike?”
“Not really. Kara is blonde. Amber is a brunette,” Charlie said. “They’re both pretty, though.”
“What about the families?”
“Both sets of parents are divorced, but that’s about where the similarities end. Misty and her husband live over in the Mill Creek subdivision. The Ritters have a house on Outer Drive.”
“Ah. So the new girl is a cake-eater.”
It was an old name the locals used for the rich city people who owned vacation homes on Salem Island. Charlie thought it had something to do with Marie Antoinette, but she wasn’t sure.
“Yes, but they do actually live on the island.”
“What’d you get from the family?”
“A whole lot of drama.”
“Oh yeah? Who with?”
“There was major tension between Amber’s mom and dad.” Though now that Charlie thought about it, Sharon Ritter had sniped at everyone during the interview. “Actually, the mom is just generally kind of a pain in the ass.”
Frank nodded.
“At one point, the parents started bickering, and Amber’s brother totally blew up,” Charlie explained. “Screamed at them and then walked out.”
“That’s interesting.” Frank stroked the stubble along his jawline. “I’d start there, then. Give them a real good look, find out what they’re hiding. But be… discreet.”
“You think the family is involved?”
“Not necessarily. But with the level of turmoil you described, I’d want to know more. If they carry on like that in public, then what goes on behind closed doors?” Frank asked, bobbing his head up and down. “The secrets. The family secrets often lead you where you need to go. Someone has to know something.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Nanny cams.”
Charlie blinked.
“You want me to spy on my own client?”
“There are two girls missing,” Frank said, and she thought he had a point. He went on. “Besides, it’s in the contract.”
“It is?”
“I set up hidden cameras all the time in divorce cases. If anything, this is much more serious than that, isn’t it?”
He was right. There were two girls missing. Amber’s parents had hired Charlie to find their daughter, and she intended to do it, by whatever means necessary.
Chapter Thirty
After bidding farewell to Frank and making him promise to call if he needed anything, Charlie headed back to town for her meeting with Amber’s brunch posse. Starving now, she unfolded the paper swathing her sub, the sandwich perched in her lap like a swaddled baby. It was cold. Probably going to be horrid, but she was starving. She took a bite.
“Good God. First you eat a whole pizza alone in your car, now a cold sub? This situation is declining rapidly.”
“It wasn’t a whole pizza,” Charlie said, chewing. “And the sub’s not so bad, actually.”
“Will you listen to yourself? This is just pathetic.”
“I didn’t want to eat it in front of Frank when he’s not feeling well. What was I supposed to do?”
Allie scoffed.
“You’re supposed to, I don’t know… have a life? Some friends? Someone to talk to other than your dead sister.”
Charlie ignored her, finishing the sub just as she arrived outside Cafe Fina. She wadded up the wrapper and tossed it back in the paper bag the sub had come in. She hoped Frank would manage to eat something today. She hated seeing him with no appetite. It was very un-Frank.
As she climbed out of her car, she caught sight of the soup bench across the park. She thought back to when she’d talked to Kara’s friend Maggie. It had been just a couple days ago, but it seemed longer now. She’d still been holding out hope that Kara had run away back then.
A cloud of coffee bean smell hit her as soon as she opened the door. She picked out the group of Amber’s friends and went over to their table.
“Sarah?”
One of the girls raised her hand. She was very pregnant—probably seven or eight months, judging by her girth.
As Charlie slid into a chair, a waitress came to take her order.
“I’ll have a chai latte, please.”
When the waitress left, Sarah introduced the other two girls, Sophie and Jennifer.
“We were just talking about how we’re so blown away by all of this,” Sarah said. “I mean, we saw Amber last week. How can she be missing? I can’t wrap my head around it.”
“How did she seem that morning?” Charlie said, the scream of the espresso machine’s milk steamer almost drowning her out.
“Fine. The same old Amber. Just super thoughtful and gracious. It was such a wonderful surprise.”
“What was?”
“The shower? Oh, I probably forgot to explain that part,” Sarah said and stroked her belly. “I’m pregnant. Obviously. Amber had organized kind of a mini shower. A surprise. She’d even gone to the restaurant ahead of time and put out decorations on the table and everything. It was just… so sweet.”
Sarah started to tear up, and Sophie reached over to pat her arm.
“Amber’s always been good at organizing things,” Sophie added. “She has this way of pulling a group of people together and getting the best out of them. She was the captain of our dance team in high school. That’s how we all know each other.”
The waitress returned with Charlie’s drink.
“So you didn’t notice anything unusual at brunch?”
“Definitely not,” Sarah said. “It was just a really pleasant morning. Hard to believe things could go so terribly wrong just after.”
Charlie nodded, took a long drink of tea. She knew the feeling well.
“Did Amber mention where she was headed after the brunch?”
“Back to East Lansing,” Jennifer said. “She said she had a mountain of laundry to do before she left.”
The same frustration Charlie had felt at the beginning of her search for Kara Dawkins resurfaced. Asking the same old questions and getting nowhere.
Sarah glanced at her watch.
“Oh shoot! I have a doctor’s appointment to get to. Are we almost finished?”
“We’re done, actually,” Charlie said. “Thank you all for coming down here.”
Tucking her notebook into her bag, Charlie scooted away from the table and left a few bills to pay for her tea. As she headed for the door, Jennifer and Sophie were helping Sarah maneuver into a fluffy down jacket.
Charlie pushed outside, a burst of icy air ruffling her hair. She took a deep breath and hoped the Ritter house was ready to give up its secrets.
Chapter Thirty-One
By the time Charlie arrived at the Ritter house that evenin
g, the family was just sitting down to eat. Todd Ritter, the stepfather, led her toward the dining room, stopping just shy of the doorway. Charlie could see Amber’s mother and brother seated at the table in the room beyond, both of them noticeably quiet compared to earlier. She sensed an awkward tension in the air.
“You’re sure you’re not hungry?” Todd said. “You’re more than welcome to eat with us. Chicken parm tonight. Made it myself. Not to brag or anything, but it’s sort of my specialty. Secret’s all in getting a good crispy texture.”
“No thanks. I just wanted to get a look at Amber’s room, if I could.”
“Her bedroom?”
“Yeah. You never know what little detail might help.”
Todd nodded, gave a shrug. Charlie couldn’t help but notice the contrast between his relative level of nonchalance and the family’s demeanor in the next room, which seemed somber. Choked. Tight.
“Sure. That makes sense,” he said. “It’s just upstairs. Second door on the right.”
He waved his finger at the staircase, pointing like an air traffic controller waving in a 747.
“You need anything, just give a shout. We’ll be down here digging in.”
“This guy seems way too much like a sitcom dad or something,” Allie said, keeping her voice quiet, as though he might hear.
Charlie climbed the stairs and found the door to Amber’s room—white paneled wood with a Winnie-the-Pooh sticker just above the doorknob. The edges of the yellow sticker had been peeled back, some of the white papery layer underneath exposed. Maybe Amber had put this here as a kid, and years later, embarrassed, made some half-hearted attempt to remove it. Funny how that worked, Charlie thought, how we always tried to erase our pasts. Opening the door, Charlie’s eyes snapped to the corkboard on the far wall with photos pinned to it. She crossed the room to get a closer look.
Snapshots. The pictures all featured Amber and her friends at a variety of wholesome locations: the school cafeteria, an amusement park, even one of a big group at the bowling alley, everyone giggling.
