Forgotten Girls, The (5 page)

The boarded-up garage stood
separate and apart from the house to which it belonged—a fortunate thing,
considering its taint of death. It was a standard ivory stucco two-car garage
sitting about a hundred feet from the main house, off to the side. If it
weren’t for the boards still nailed to its doors, covered with goodbye messages
and spray-painted testimonials to the girls, one would never suspect the horror
that had taken place inside.

Billy sent them over to this
forlorn spot to view what was now, officially, a crime scene. Lieutenant Nick
Glades was standing in the driveway and greeted them when they arrived. He was
young, immaculately dressed in a crisp blue police uniform, and his eyes shone
with excitement, as though he couldn’t believe his luck. And he couldn’t.

He had worked in Greenvale only
three years, after an injury caused him to switch gears and leave the urban
jungle behind. Trading in thrill for decent hours was a good move with a wife
and two small children at home. Sure, there were days so quiet he could hear
himself think. And yeah, if he were asked to work a real case or go on another
high-speed chase, he might not exactly turn it down. But hey, no one was
asking. So he plodded forward and forced himself to focus on the big picture:
his comfortable life.

But life throws curveballs. Having
two high school kids die in this town was one such curveball. Nick’s front row
seat to the aftermath of the girls’ deaths placed him at the epicenter of the
investigation. From the outset, he felt something was off. It was those dammed
crests. It felt like they were placed there, though neither he nor anyone else
could prove it—not that he hadn’t tried. He had. He just hadn’t succeeded.

Now, with the Freed murder last
night and two Bronx homicide detectives involved, he felt fired up. He had
forgotten the adrenaline rush of working a real case. For the first time in a
long while he had gotten dressed that morning with the old sensation he used to
get when he first joined the force. If he remembered correctly, it was called
excitement.

“I can’t believe Mrs. Freed’s murder
might be connected to the girls. I just can’t believe it,” he exclaimed as soon
as Bella and Mack exited their car and introduced themselves. He was the only
other person besides Dennis privy to this connection.

“She came in just last week. I
spoke with her myself,” Nick added.

“Came in where? Who?” Bella asked,
surprised.

“Mrs. Freed. To the station house.
She worked at the
Gazette
and was doing a story on whether prescription
drugs were being sold at the high school.”

Bella frowned, wondering why
Dennis hadn’t mentioned this. The three of them walked slowly toward the garage
and, once in front, saw the notes left to the girls—send-offs scribbled on scraps
of paper or etched into the wood itself. Pictures and paper hearts surrounded a
lone, forlorn-looking teddy bear clutching a valentine heart close to his
chest. The bear had fallen over on the ground and lay sideways. Mack bent down
and straightened it back up. Wooden boards covered the garage doors and even the
small windows at the top, as if to keep a dark memory locked inside.

Nick took a key out of his pocket
and unlocked the side door to the garage. He led them into the dark and damp
space, the only light entering from where the door stood propped open. He
walked over to a corner and flipped a switch. A single frail, teetering light
bulb instantly, but dimly, lit up the barren room. A workbench rested alongside
a wall, with a toolbox, some scattered gardening supplies, and an old fan on
top. Two new shiny bicycles leaned sideways in a corner, one against the other.
A dozen or so plastic Rubbermaid boxes were piled high near the far wall.

Underneath the single teetering
light bulb, smack dab in the middle of the room, were two simple-looking,
ordinary wooden chairs placed next to each other, a few feet apart. In front of
them, on the floor, were two big X’s made with light gray masking tape. X
marked the spot.

 “Did Dennis know she came in last
week?” Bella asked.

“Sure,” Nick replied, leaning
against the worktable.

“What exactly did she say to you?”

“She said the paper received a tip
and she was looking for information about whether it might be true. She was upset—took
it a little too much to heart, if you ask me. I told her I found it hard to
believe, but she seemed hell bent…”

“Why was it so hard to believe?”
Bella asked.

“Greenvale isn’t exactly a mecca
for drug dealing. Our high school is ranked top ten in the nation.” Nick smiled
proudly.

Bella didn’t see why the school’s
ranking mattered.

“What exactly did she want from
you?” Bella continued.

“Ya know, she was pumping me for
information,” Nick replied, nodding slowly in satisfaction. “She wanted to know
if we had heard about it, if we could provide a police presence on campus, if
we could check it out, stuff like that.”

“Did you agree to look into it?”
Bella asked, though she already knew the answer.

Now he looked sheepish. “No, we don’t
have that kind of manpower,” he replied.

“Did you contact the school
authorities to tell them you had reason to believe something may be going down
at school?” Bella asked.

“No,” he answered blandly.

Bella looked at him directly in the
eye.

“Why not?”

“We didn’t have a name, a
location, any other complaints, any real evidence this was happening,” he replied
a bit nervously.

Mack didn’t say a word.

“So what exactly did you offer Ms.
Freed, in terms of help? She was clearly agitated, yes? Isn’t that what you
said? Did you probe into why she seemed so upset?”

Bella fought against her growing
irritation with him by reminding herself he was a newbie.

“The way you frame it sounds bad,
Detective, but she had no proof drugs were being sold at school. Just a nameless
‘source’ and her ‘gut.’” Nick gave a condescending shrug of his shoulders and a
smile.

“That’s all, huh? Just her gut?”
Bella asked sarcastically.

She hated when men put down
women’s intuition as unfounded feminine emotion. It was her pet peeve and it
happened all the time. She inhaled deeply.

“Did Mrs. Freed say anything else?”
Bella pressed on.

Nick gazed into space for a few
seconds. “She asked about the girls,” he answered slowly, once again nervous,
as he looked around the garage and seemed to just now be making a connection.
“Wanted to know if there had been any evidence they had taken prescription
drugs. Specifically Adderall.”

“These girls?” Bella pressed
quizzically, pointing to the spot where the two X’s still remained taped to the
floor.

Nick walked over to the marked-up
floor, looked up at the rafters, then moved his gaze away from the ceiling and
fixed his eyes back upon Bella. He quietly nodded.

“Really?” Bella replied,
intrigued. So Joslyn had inquired about these girls.

She followed Nick’s expression as
he looked back up at the ceiling.

“Let me guess—you weren’t at
liberty to discuss their case with her.” Bella sounded resigned before even
hearing the answer.

“Yes, that’s correct. I wasn’t,”
Nick responded quietly.

“Was your interest piqued, even a
little?” She knew she sounded condescending but she couldn’t help herself.

“I…well, yes, of course. For sure.
Wait here a minute.”

He turned and stepped quickly out of
the garage, and Bella looked over at Mack, who was studying something on the
floor. Nick returned two minutes later with a box of papers and placed it on
the worktable. Bella ran her fingers over the top of the many files inside. Mack
came over and stood next to Bella. Nick began to speak quickly and enthusiastically:

“When those girls died, I don’t
know, the whole thing was bizarre. They had everything going for them. They had
both been accepted to their first choice college. They had loving families. There
was a rumor they were, ya know, kind of into each other. Ya know, gay.
Lesbians. With each other. And, ya know, maybe they had been shamed or
something. I don’t know. No one could explain those crests. We just assumed it
was some kind of lover’s gift, a secret between the two of them.”

Nick paused for a second. He looked
a bit self-conscious when he continued:

“There were no prints in the room other
than theirs, no witnesses, nothing pointing to foul play.”

“Did you share your doubts with
anyone?” Mack spoke for the first time.

“I told the captain what I thought.
But there was nothing we could find to point to anyone—no motive, no evidence.
Nothing.”

Bella noticed Nick was starting to
look upset. “Did you ever learn anything about the crests?” she asked.

“Only that the ribbon is common—found
in most arts and crafts stores,” Nick replied. “But no one had seen those
crests or knew what they meant. The athletic department here uses the standard
ones with the tiger on the front under a flag. These were different. Take a look.”

He reached over and pulled a file
out of the box. Two seconds later he was holding a photo. He certainly knew his
way around the files.

“Look at this. You see how the
shape is oval?”

“Yes, but I’m more interested in
the Latin. What does it mean?” Bella leaned forward as she looked at the photo
of the crests and the inscription written on them, eager to hear.

Nick gave her a blank stare.

“What does it translate into?”
Bella repeated.

Again nothing.

“No one checked, huh?” Bella’s
voice was laden with disappointment.

Nick looked down at his feet.

Bella had had enough. “A disgrace.
Put it back in the box. I am taking the whole thing with me. Tell Dennis these
are mine now,” she said, her mouth tight. She lifted the heavy box of files and
walked out.

“You coming with me?” Bella shot
Mack a look as she exited.

“Where else would I go?” Mack
answered serenely, a small smile playing about his lips.

Nick looked crestfallen, like he
had been spanked a few too many times.

“Don’t worry, man,” Mack consoled
him as he passed. “I’m the one who has to live with her until this case is
over, not you. Count your blessings, huh?”

“My wife woke me with the news
last night, right out of a dead sleep. What a thing to wake to,” Ethan said, as
he leaned back in his worn brown leather swivel chair and grabbed his
suspenders with both hands.

“She’s a night owl, my wife. Was
awake when Gertie called to tell her what happened at the club. You know how
ladies are, nothing gets past ’em,” he added with a sad smile.

Ethan Jeffries, owner of the
Greenvale
Gazette
, had been a resident of Greenvale for forty years and his family
forty years before him, he bragged, as soon as the three of them sat down. He
looked to be in his seventies, and seemed supremely at home at his desk in the
large open space the
Greenvale Gazette
occupied. Three empty desks lined
the far wall and copies of the
Greenvale
Gazette
lay everywhere.

“It’s a bad business, it is,” he
continued. “There hasn’t been a murder in Greenvale since 1978 when Charlie
Jackson shot an intruder who turned out to be his brother. Not a murder in town
since,” he lamented.

He seemed sadder about his town
losing this distinction than about the actual murder itself.

“The murder of Margaret Rapper
eight years ago doesn’t count?” Mack asked sarcastically.

“Margaret?” Ethan looked
surprised. “Well, yes, I guess officially we would have to consider her death a
murder, wouldn’t we, as that poor boy was found to be guilty. But if you ask
me, and many others here in town, she shot herself in a fit of drunkenness, blackout
drunk like she was most nights. I just don’t consider her death a murder no
matter what that jury said. So my statement still stands.”

Ethan changed subjects quickly to
regale them on his lineage—how he had run the
Greenvale
Gazette
out of a two-hundred-year-old building that had been home to a printing press smack
dab in the middle of town. It had floor to ceiling windows on the ground level
so those on the sidewalk could see all that was happening inside—which wasn’t
much. Most of the people who rushed by in the rain waved as they passed by.

“Can you tell us about the article
Mrs. Freed was working on?” Bella asked, not particularly taken by this cute
little man who sat before her. He seemed like a provincial braggart.

“The college destination piece?
Yes, she was putting that together for me,” he said wistfully.

Bella and Mack looked at one
another.

“No, the article she was working
on about prescription drug abuse at the high school, specifically about a drug
called Adderall,” Bella corrected him.

Ethan looked at Bella, then at
Mack, then back at Bella. He seemed confused.

“I am sorry. I think there has
been a misunderstanding,” was all he said.

“A misunderstanding?” Mack asked.

“Yes sir,” Ethan said cautiously.
“She did ask me about writing an article on that topic but I couldn’t have been
clearer. I told her I had no interest. It is not the kind of thing we do here.”

“So you did not have Mrs. Freed
working on that?” Bella frowned.

“To do a piece that might blemish
my alma mater?” He chuckled and shook his head. “Every kid nowadays takes ADD
medicine—hell, how else can they do all they need to without it? Even my
grandson takes Adderall and he’s only five!”

Mack looked at Bella.

“How did Mrs. Freed react when you
told her not to write it?” Mack asked.

“Well enough. I gave her the task
of putting together the college destinations of the senior class by name. It
was an opportunity to have her girl’s name in print next to Vanderbilt. Instant
bragging rights. Thought it would make her happy. She agreed.”

“What exactly did she say to you
when she proposed writing about Adderall?” asked Bella.

Ethan squinted his eyes and
caressed the side of his face with his hand.

“She told me she had information
suggesting that it was being sold on campus, up at the high school. She said
she had done some research and learned Adderall had all kinds of side effects
no one really knew about.”

He stopped for a minute.

“OK. Did she say anything else?”
Bella prodded.

“She said a lot of things, my
dear,” Ethan chuckled. “She was a very smart lady, that she was. She could talk
till the cows came home, and not just about rubbish. Gertie didn’t know how I
could stand it, if you want to know the truth. But that’s just not Gertie’s
way. She’s more of a…how should I say? A gentler type.”

Bella managed a fake smile.

“What kinds of things did Mrs.
Freed say about Adderall, Ethan?”

“She had it in her head that too
much of it, or the wrong dose, can cause all sorts of problems. Everything from
irritability and lack of appetite, which is pretty well known, to paranoia.
Even psychosis,” Ethan said flatly.

“Did she say why she was
interested in writing about it?”

“I think it had something to do
with those two girls who killed themselves,” he responded. “Her daughter was
friends with them I think. It hit her pretty hard.”

He snapped his suspenders and
shook his head and continued:

“Look, she wasn’t working for the
money. So I asked myself, why did she want to work here? Or anywhere for that
matter? With a husband so well off and all? I mean, she was one well-educated
woman—Princeton, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism—so I said OK, she needs
something to do, that’s all. But I wasn’t counting on her being such a handful,
if you know what I mean. When she wanted to start digging into people’s lives…”
Ethan trailed off, shaking his head.

“So you had no idea she was
working on this story?” Mack repeated.

“Are you kidding?” Ethan
responded. “I told you—absolutely not. Bring more bad publicity into town after
what those two girls did? No way, Jose.” He shook his head. Then his eyes
widened and he looked at Mack. “Oh, excuse me, didn’t mean anything by that,”
he stammered. “No way, no how, I meant to say.”

Mack shot him a look.

“Have you ever met her husband,
Ethan?” asked Bella impatiently.

“No, I never met Mr. Freed. Heard
enough about him though. Gave huge to the high school—two new wings—quite a
fella. That’s what we need more of around here if you ask me. Men like Mr.
Freed.”

“Is there anything else you can
think of that might help us, Ethan? Anything at all you may have seen or heard?”
Bella asked.

“If you’re trying to imply this
business was done by someone she knew, well I would think you’re barking up the
wrong tree, little lady. We border Newtown and, well, ya know, they’ve had
quite a change in their demographic these past years. Whole new subset of the
population has moved on up. I hear stories and, well, let’s just say, murder
isn’t on the menu for the kinds who live in Greenvale.”

*

“That guy’s gotta be kidding,”
Mack said contemptuously when they left. “What a load of horseshit. He’s one
smug…”

Mack didn’t finish the sentence.
He was too peeved. Big tough guy like Mack rattled by little old Ethan, Bella observed,
as Mack moseyed his way to the car. I guess we both had soft spots hit today,
she thought.

It was 10 a.m. and the rain had
petered to a soft, sporadic drizzle. The streets in town were crowded with women,
and women only: pushing strollers, heading to exercise class, filling the cafés.
One SUV after another, driven by women with aimless expressions, drove past.
Bella noticed there wasn’t a man for miles. There also wasn’t a 7-Eleven or a
Dunkin’ Donuts in sight either—Starbucks, Mrs. Greens, The Organic Muffin
Factory, and Pip’s Cakery were the only choices for coffee.

“You want a drink or something?”
Mack asked sweetly once they were back in the car. “I’ll run out and get us
one.”

Bella smiled, slowly.

“You feel like shelling out four
bucks on a latte? Or are you just anxious to mingle with all these girls?” she
teased.

She imagined Mack waltzing
casually into one of these places. She thought the women might fall down and
die.

“I just wanted to get you a drink,
that’s all. If you wanted one.”

He said this so quietly and
seriously she was taken off guard for a moment. They looked at one another and
she smiled again.

“No, thank you,” she said gently.

“So she was pursuing this story on
her own, pretending she had the backing of the paper,” Bella pointed out. “Jamie
didn’t mention a thing about it.”

“No, he didn’t,” Mack replied. “Maybe
he didn’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t she have told him?”
Bella asked.

“He didn’t mention her academic
credentials either, huh? She was one smart lady.”

“He did call her bright,” Bella
remembered.

“He’s not kidding. Princeton and
Columbia. And she spent all those years out here. Doing what?”

Bella thought about that as she
looked out the window. Other than this small strip of town, lined with cafés,
restaurants, a spa, two gyms, a yoga studio, a high-end kitchen place, and
clothing stores, there didn’t seem to be much else going on.

Bella shook her head. “I have no
idea,” she said.

“Well, however she spent her time
it sounds like she added amateur sleuth to the list with this story. She was
snooping around,” Mack said.

“Maybe her buddies will shed
light. Let’s see what they say. If any of ’em are half as smart as she was we
should know a lot more real soon,” Bella replied.

Mack nodded, grabbed the steering
wheel, and made a sharp U-turn in the middle of the busy town, oblivious to the
numerous hostile glares.

Bella looked at him coyly:

“Time to meet the girls of
Greenvale.”