Close to Home (36 page)

Nothing.

In fact, she discovered that after further investigation by an assistant detective, the alibis of the other suspects had now all checked out. Even Lars Blonski could prove he wasn't anywhere near either of the two girls. Her stomach burned a bit as it did when she was super-stressed, so she popped a couple of Tums with her diet soda and took a bite of her sandwich.

Where the hell were they?

Who the hell had taken the girls?

She looked up when she heard footsteps approaching and saw Cooke walking into her office. “Could be we have more of a problem than we think,” he said.

“More?” She swiped at the edge of her mouth with the napkin that had come wrapped with her sandwich.

“Got a call from Turner in Missing Persons. Two more girls are missing.”

“What?” She nearly came out of her chair, but Cooke held out his hands, fingers spread, indicating she should sit.

“They've only been gone for a few hours, but their parents are terrified, panicking, probably overreacting.” But his eyes were dark, his lower lip protruding, worry evident in the lines of his face.

“Let's hope,” she said.

“They'll probably show up later at a friend's house or something.” He didn't believe it, she could tell.

“They were together?”

“No.”

Bellisario didn't like the sound of that.

“But they do know each other; both go to Our Lady. The first, Dana Rickert, was shopping. Didn't return. The parents found her car in the parking lot of the outlet stores down in Troutdale. Purse and cell missing.”

“Probably with her,” Bellisario said. The outlet mall was about an hour west on I-84.

“She left this morning. Was supposed to be home by noon.”

Bellisario glanced at the clock on her desk, where the digital readout glowed a bright 4:47. “Alone?”

“Apparently. She wasn't even going to meet friends.”

“Really?”

“When she didn't answer her phone, they drove out to the stores to investigate, thought maybe she had car trouble and the battery on her phone was dead or something. Found her car, talked to Security, and pushed the panic button. She was supposed to be home for her sister's birthday party—a big deal, I guess. She'd been excited about it. Had some special present planned.”

“Shit.” Bellisario leaned back in her chair, her sandwich forgotten. “GPS chip in the phone?”

“There was. No more. She's kind of a techie. Didn't like her parents snooping. Disabled it.”

“What about security tapes from the shopping mall?”

“Getting 'em now.”

Bellisario had hoped this was a false report, that the worried parents were, as Cooke had suggested, pushing the panic button before it was time. “Is she a friend of Rosalie Jamison or Candice Fowler?”

He shook his head. “Not according to her parents.” Cooke frowned, suddenly looking older than his years as he stood in the doorway, one shoulder shoved against the frame. “The second girl, Mary-Alice Eklund, said she was meeting her boyfriend, a kid by the name of Liam Longstreet.”

Bellisario nodded. “Soccer player,” she said. “For Our Lady. I've seen his name in the papers.”

“There's the problem. The kid said they had no plans to meet up, but her car was found parked behind the school, in a place where Longstreet said they'd get together sometimes. You know, to be alone.”

“Let me guess. No purse. Not answering her phone.”

“You got it. Longstreet got a weird text from her, but he was working for his dad, didn't notice it for a couple of hours as the old man is death on texting and cell phones in general, especially when he's on the job.”

“And the text was?”

“Why are you contacting me from this number?”

“You're saying someone was using another phone and claiming it was Longstreet?”

“Looks like it. The good news is that her old man called the phone company and read them the riot act. He got the number of the phone that had called his daughter and dialed it, but no one answered.”

“Shit. Tipped the guy off.”

“Maybe. Anyway, Eklund gave us the info, and we got the name of the registered owner. A guy by the name of Evan Tolliver.”

“Who's he?”

“Owns Tolliver Construction. Out of Vancouver, Washington.”

“Vancouver,” she repeated. “Where Sarah McAdams came from,” she said, her thought synapses snapping as she remembered Sarah saying as much, and Bellisario had taken notice of the Washington plates on her Explorer. “What the hell does Evan Tolliver have to do with this?”

“Beats me.”

She made a note. “I'll talk to Sarah again.”

“Good. Because there is a connection between Mary-Alice Eklund and Jade McAdams. Seems the McAdams girl was Mary-Alice's charge. As a new kid, Jade was put under the wing of an upperclassman—in this case, Mary-Alice Eklund. But things weren't going smoothly, according to Mrs. Eklund. The girls didn't like each other, and Mary-Alice complained to her mother that Jade had threatened her, said she wished her dead or something like that.”

“Kid stuff, probably. I met Jade McAdams today.”

“Maybe, but there was also a jealousy thing going on. Mary-Alice was convinced the Longstreet boy was interested in Jade. He denied it when her parents asked him about it and said he only knew Jade from being a TA in one of her classes.”

So two girls didn't get along. That wasn't exactly breaking news.

“Do Mary-Alice Eklund's parents have a GPS locator chip on their kid's phone?”

“Oh yeah.” Cooke didn't seem too excited about it. “According to the last coordinates, the cell is somewhere in the Columbia River.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bellisario said, and it was more a prayer than a curse. Could it be that the missing girls had been killed and tossed into the huge span of water separating Oregon and Washington? Would their bodies have been weighted down to sink to the bottom, or carried westward to wash up on the shores or batter against the huge dam downriver?

“FBI's all over it,” Cooke went on. “The Eklund girl was last seen sometime this afternoon. Her mother left the house around eleven, and Mary-Alice was still in her bedroom. Asleep probably. That's when the timing gets a little iffy, as no one was home when she left, but when Mrs. Eklund got home around two, her daughter was already gone. The parents are worried sick she's been abducted.”

“It's early for an AMBER Alert.”

“Who the hell cares?” Cooke said. “Worst thing that happens, the kids show up and the department looks like it was quick to pull the trigger. A little egg on our face. FBI agrees.”

“You're right,” she said, tossing the remains of her late lunch into the trash. Her bad feeling had just gotten worse. “I'm on it.”

Her first stop? A place she'd been not two hours earlier: Blue Peacock Manor, that god-awful monstrosity of a house, to talk again with Sarah McAdams and her daughter Jade, just to cover all her bases.

And, oh yeah, she planned on having another face-to-face with Hardy Jones, the scumbag who had lied to her earlier. It was time for Hardy to come clean.

A
s Sarah pulled the Explorer into the parking area of Hal's Auto Repair, Gracie, still in a bit of a snit, said, “I'll wait in the car.”

Her immediate response was
no,
because of the missing girls, but Sarah realized she'd have a full view of her vehicle for the few minutes she'd be inside the shop. She pulled under the awning that stretched to a spot where gasoline pumps had once stood and was right next to the door and wall of glass that formed the front of Hal's building—unconventional for the town, as there wasn't anything the least bit Western decorating this glass-and-concrete building. “Fine.” Gracie could sit in the SUV and stew, she thought, yanking her keys from the ignition. “This shouldn't take long.”

The second Sarah cut the engine, Jade was already out of the car and walking through the front door. “I'll be right back,” she said to Gracie, then followed after her oldest, leaving Gracie to pout and in plain sight through the plate-glass windows that lined the front of the building where the reception area was located.

Hal, seventy-five if he was a day, was waiting for them, though she could see through another set of windows two men still working on a pickup in one of the bays. The hood was open, a light suspended over the engine, one man on a creeper that he slid underneath the truck, the other peering into the open engine cavity from above. Antique signs selling anything from Nehi Soda to Lucky Strike cigarettes adorned the walls.

“There ya are; should be good as new!” Hal said as he took Sarah's credit card, swiped it, then slid a receipt across the worn counter, where an antique cash register actually dinged as the drawer opened. Hal's snow-white hair peeked from beneath an oil-stained baseball cap that was probably as old as the vintage cigarette machine standing against the back wall.

“Thanks,” Sarah said as she tucked the receipt and the card into her purse. Jade snagged the keys that glinted under the fluorescent lights mounted high overhead, reminding Sarah of something . . . what was it, a niggling little thought that she couldn't quite recall.

“I'm going to stop at the store, get some things I need and a Coke,” her daughter sang on the way out.

“Wait, Jade, I don't think—”

“Mom, please. It's no big deal. It'll take ten minutes. Then I'll come straight home. I promise.”

Sarah wanted to argue. To remind Jade that girls had gone missing, but they'd been over it a million times already. “Just be careful and really, ‘straight home'.”

“Yeah, yeah! I know.”

“Your car's in the lot out back,” Hal called to Jade and hooked a thumb at an exit near the back “Through that door.”

Jade stopped and switched direction, the key swinging from her fingers as she headed out the door he'd pointed to. Sarah watched her go, her gaze trained on Jade's key ring. What the hell was she trying to remember?

“Good to have you back, Sarah,” Hal said, snapping Sarah to reality.

“Good to be back.”

“You gotta let 'em go, a little,” he said. “Kids. It's hard. You worry yourself sick. But you gotta remember what you were like at her age.” His eyes glinted. “I do. You never wanted your wings clipped.”

“I know, but, the missing girls . . .” She stared at the doorway.

“And what? They don't have crime in Vancouver?” He offered her an encouraging smile. “Raising kids isn't for sissies, I know. See my hair? From my kids. All five of 'em. Trouble.” He chuckled at a memory, “But they survived, grew up to be fine people, gave me twelve grandkids, with another on the way.”

“Congratulations,” she said, and wished she could take his advice.

“Sorry about your mom.” Hal had serviced cars for everyone in the family, including Arlene. “Heard about her from Dee Linn.”

Of course,

“Give her my best.”

“I will,” she promised before pushing her way out the front door.

Gracie sat quietly in the backseat, absently petting Xena's head and playing a game on her phone.

Sarah opened the door and asked her daughter, “Gonna join me up here, or pretend I'm your chauffeur?”

“Funny, Mom,” Gracie said, but switched seats to the front. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“It's okay, we all have bad days.”

And they were piling up.

Since arriving in Stewart's Crossing, she couldn't remember a good one.

Not a great start for that new beginning she was hoping to find.

Traffic was practically nonexistent as she pulled from under the awning and into the side street. The fog was thinning a bit, and she caught a glimpse of Jade sitting behind the wheel of her parked Civic as they passed the open gates of the area where the cars that were finished were kept. Sarah waved, but Jade, concentrating on her cell phone, didn't bother looking up.

Some things never change, she thought, starting the drive home. There was still a party to attend tonight, she thought, and inwardly groaned. She had no costume, and unless she wanted to rustle through some of her mother's, and probably grandmother's old trunks in the attic to come up with something, she'd have to attend without so much as a mask.

Which was just fine. As she understood it, costumes were “optional,” though it was obvious that Dee Linn was hoping everyone would dress up.

Too bad, she thought, driving past the animal shelter where they'd adopted Xena, then turning up the hill. She'd attend Dee's party, fine, even put up with the insufferable Walter and their friends, along with the rest of the family, but she'd go as herself, the harried, single mother.

And you'll see Clint there.

Perfect,
she thought, and held back a long-suffering sigh.

 

Clint's jaw grew rock-hard as he flipped on the local news. The reporter, a thin woman with a wide smile and impossibly white teeth, was standing on a tree-lined street he recognized and pointing out that there weren't many streetlights in that particular area of town.

“. . . though the police aren't confirming, we believe this is the most likely spot where Candice Fowler was abducted.”

He listened to the rest of the newscast and the serious discussion between the reporter and anchor on a split screen, in which the reporter hesitated before answering the slick-haired anchor's questions because of a delay in the audio feed. What Clint learned chilled him to the bone. Another girl missing, possibly taken. Worse yet, the anchor mentioned that there were “unconfirmed” reports of two other girls who hadn't come home, though the police and FBI weren't commenting.

He stared at the screen.

What the hell was going on in his sleepy little town?

He thought of Jade, his newfound daughter, and Gracie, the younger one. Were they safe? Probably not. Even Sarah. No one was secure when a freak was loose. He picked up the phone to call Sarah, then thought better of it and decided to visit her face-to-face. Maybe he was overreacting, but he'd rather err on the side of caution in this case.

Tex whined to go outside, so Clint walked through the back door to the porch and, leaning against a post supporting the overhang, peered through the fog in the direction of Blue Peacock Manor as the dog hurried down the steps.

From this vantage point on a clear day in winter, he could look across the sprawling acres of his property, to the forest separating his land from the Stewarts'. After the leaves fell and left the branches bare, he could glimpse the old house with its widow's walk and cupola.

Today, the air was thick and soupy, the low clouds obscuring any visibility. He'd always liked the change of seasons, the different weather patterns that were a part of the gorge, but he was rapidly changing his opinion. He felt a need to see Sarah's house, to catch a peek at a window burning in the night, to know that she and the girls were safe.

Besides that, he rationalized, it was his right.

All the way home, Sarah's thoughts were jumbled. While Gracie was content to play whatever game had caught her fascination on her iPhone, Sarah drove and considered the fact that the new life she'd envisioned, her fresh start in Stewart's Crossing, was a complete and utter disaster.

Little more than a week ago, she was worried about renovating the old house, about relocating away from Evan and Tolliver Construction, and about settling her girls into a new life here in Stewart's Crossing.

Now, those considerations seemed small. She had Clint to deal with, a man whom she still found attractive, a man she also wanted to keep at arm's length, one who'd lost his son and now realized he had a teenaged daughter. Complicated.

And that wasn't the end of it. Sarah had to somehow deal with the recent soul-jarring discoveries about her family. What she'd thought was her heritage, her beliefs about her ancestral line, had turned out to be false, with possible incest and murder, and maybe suicide, in the mix. This was her family's legacy, if Helen's journal could be believed.

Then there was the fact that her own birth had been deliberately omitted from the family Bible's genealogical records. All her brothers and sisters were listed, so why did the notations stop at her name? Just one more entry? Surely her mother hadn't been that busy. She understood why Roger and Theresa hadn't been listed; they hadn't been Stewarts by blood. Their father was Hugh Anderson. But worse than all of her other worries was the fact that there was a predator on the prowl in Stewart's Crossing. Two girls were confirmed missing, two more feared abducted, and her older half brother was, at the least, a person of interest and, at the most, the primary suspect.

Roger . . . fathered by Hugh Anderson.

She glanced in her rearview mirror and wished she had insisted Jade come straight home. Maybe she was overreacting about the missing girls and being overprotective—well, tough. Despite Hal's unsolicited advice, Sarah had to be the best mother she could be, and if she and Jade ended up on separate psychiatrists' couches one day because of it, so be it.

But she would take her worries down a notch or two. The kid did need her own life. She took the corner into the lane a little too fast and hit the brakes, slowing a little, driving through the mist-shrouded trees and telling herself that things would get better.

They had to.

 

Got my car back, Jade typed into her phone. I can come to Vanc. Meet at your place? She sent the text to Cody and wondered how she'd convince her mother to let her leave. Sarah would have a fit if she thought Jade was going to stay at Cody's apartment, so she had to text some of her other friends in Vancouver to see if she could use them as cover.

It's not like she was going to spend the whole night at Cody's, though that would be cool, but if her mother ever got wind of it, she'd be dead meat, so she needed Brittany to work it out with her mom, who was single too, but whom Sarah had met a couple of times.

She nosed her Honda onto the street and liked the feel of the steering wheel in her hands, and the return of the familiar sense of freedom. She couldn't go back to Blue Peacock Manor, that dreary monstrosity of a house. Not quite yet. In fact, she refused to think of the decrepit place as home. She'd drive around a while, then stop by that diner off the freeway, grab some french fries and a Diet Coke, wait there until she heard from Cody and Brittany, figure out exactly what her next move would be, then head up to the
Psycho
house.

Hopefully, Brittany would text her back quickly. Driving through the center of town, she looked for the road that ran parallel to I-84, but she kept driving in circles. For a small town, Stewart's Crossing was kind of confusing. Hadn't she driven by the feed store and The Cavern twice now? Crap. Still thinking about how she could get together with Cody, she found a map app on her phone and typed in the name of the diner. If it turned out she couldn't stay with Brittany, there was always Plan B, which included sneaking out of the house and just taking off, but she'd rather go the more legit route.

She didn't really want to go as far as sneaking out if she didn't have to. And then there was the new wrinkle in the plan, her newfound father. She didn't know what to think about him. He seemed okay, maybe even could be a little cool, but she didn't like the idea of
another
parent butting into her life right now. As much as she'd wanted to know who her real father was, she didn't need another adult laying down the law. Besides, she had a dad—Noel McAdams, the man who'd adopted her. Oh, crap. Was that even legal? Since Clint Walsh hadn't known about her, hadn't given up his parental rights? She'd read about something like this online, about a celebrity kid whom the mom claimed was the daughter of one dude and it turned out that had been a lie. A big lawsuit had ensued.

Clint had tried to call her, though he hadn't left a message, maybe showing he cared and giving her some space all at once. She hadn't responded. Was still deciding what to do. It was all pretty hard to digest. And the fact that he was into Mom—Jade recognized the signs—that was weird. She supposed it was cool, in a way, but she just wasn't sure. It was all more than she wanted to deal with.