Snake Skin (7 page)

Here, in the Yeager kitchen, there existed
none of that detritus of everyday life.

Instead, it was cold, sterile. All chrome
and black, relieved only by white semi-gloss trim and sandstone
tile on the floors. No photos except a framed black and white print
of the Eiffel tower. There was a desk, but instead of overflowing
with bills and coupons and school notices like Lucy's, it contained
only a memo pad—blank—a black enameled pen in a holder, and the
phone.

"Were there any messages?" Lucy asked as she
delivered the tea to the lacquered black pub-height table perfectly
aligned in the center of the room. Two chairs only.

Melissa shook her head. A few wisps had
escaped her ponytail holder and were plastered against her cheeks.
"The police took the answering machine, but there was nothing on
it. If anyone wants me, they call my cell."

The tea's cinnamon laden aroma filled the
room, the only sign of life except for the two women. A plant would
help, Lucy thought. Even a dead plant—a sign that someone human,
fallible, lived here.

"We'll need the cell phone. And access to
your computer, Palm Pilot, anything like that."

"That's what the State police said. They
took everything. Have someone monitoring the phones." She stared
down into her mug. "I hate him for this. This is all his
fault."

"Who?"

"Him. Gerald. Everything was fine until he
decided we weren't good enough anymore, until he left."

"How long ago was that?"

"Ten months. Bastard packed his bags and
walked out and that was that."

"That must have been tough on Ashley. How'd
she take it?"

Melissa frowned as if she'd forgotten about
her daughter. "She was fine until this summer. This summer it was
like she was having her own mid-life crisis."

"When did you first notice something was
wrong?"

"Just before school ended. I took her
shopping for a bathing suit—God, that was a fiasco." She looked
past Lucy, rolling her eyes and making a clicking sound with her
tongue that reminded Lucy of Megan and her twelve-year-old
friends.

"Ashley developed early. She's had her
period for two years now and she's already got twice the figure I
do. Not to mention all that baby fat." Melissa glanced down at her
own perfect size two and straightened her posture, pulling her robe
around her, re-knotting the ties with elegant grace. "Good thing
she never wanted to follow in my footsteps, she never would have
made it."

"Your footsteps?"

"I was a model. Put Gerald through
veterinarian school, earned enough to buy this," she gestured to
the house, "and to start my own agency after we moved here. I know,
Pittsburgh is nothing compared to New York, but Gerald had a once
in a lifetime job offer from the Pittsburgh Zoo."

"He works at the Zoo?"

"He's in charge of their herpetology
department. Reptiles," she added when Lucy gave her a questioning
look. "He was responsible for the new snake house. It won some kind
of big prize. Way he acted you'd think it was the Oscar or
something."

Great. More snakes. Lucy changed the
subject. "You had no idea Ashley was missing until the phone
call?"

Melissa's frown barely made a dent in her
forehead. Botox? Or did nothing penetrate her polished facade?

"I fell asleep reading. She told me she'd be
home by midnight, it's not a school night, so—" She shrugged one
shoulder. "The phone woke me. At first there was silence, just a
man breathing. I almost hung up. But then he said he had Ashley and
I ran to her room and her bed hadn't been slept in." Melissa's face
was still blank, but her words sped up, in danger of derailing.

"He used Ashley's name?"

"No. No, he just said, 'we have what you
want'—but Ashley was gone. He had to be talking about her. He hung
up before I could say anything."

"No instructions, no demands for money?"

"Nothing. Just laughed and hung up. I
searched the house. Ashley was gone. I called the Martins—she was
supposed to be babysitting for them, put it on the calendar a week
ago. But they said they'd never asked her." She swiveled in her
chair, staring at the backdoor as if she expected Ashley to walk
in. "Someone took my baby. Why? Why would anyone do that to
me?"

Still no tears.

Melissa turned back to Lucy as if she
expected Lucy to have the answers she needed.

Lucy had no answers. Just more
questions—things weren't adding up. "Maybe you can show me Ashley's
room and tell me more about her. I'd like to get to know her
better."

Melissa tugged her belt even tighter and
stood. "Not much to tell. She's like any kid. Goes to school, comes
home, goes to her room, and goes to bed. A little spacey at times,
but you know how girls her age are."

Lucy followed her from the kitchen to the
stairs leading to the second floor. Melissa's description didn't
sound like any "normal" fourteen-year-old girl she knew. It sounded
like a kid headed for trouble. With parents too caught up in their
own concerns to care.

Ashley's room confirmed her suspicions. It
was a dull room, painted eggshell white with a beige rug. No
individuality expressed here. Instead, there were coordinating
sheets, comforter, pillow shams and drapes.

The only artwork was a framed reproduction
of Monet's water lilies that matched the bedspread. No stuffed
animals. No
Cosmos
poking out from under the mattress, no
earrings and underwear littering the dresser top. No rock stars
taped to the wall, wearing lipstick kisses.

Sterile, like a hotel room. A room where no
one was ever coming home.

"Any luck?" Lucy asked Taylor who was
packaging Ashley's computer. He'd sealed the tower in a plastic
evidence bag, labeled it, and was photographing it from all angles
to document the chain of custody.

"I won't know until I get it back to the
lab," he said. "But there was something funky."

"What?"

"When I got here the computer was on—but the
monitor was blank except for a prompt."
 "You lost me."

"It's the kind of screen you'd see if the
hard drive has been erased."

"How long would that take, a computer this
size?"

He shrugged. "Depends on how thorough you
were. Reformatting the hard drive, minutes. Scrubbing it clean,
several hours."

Anticipation tickled Lucy's nerve endings,
an itch she couldn't scratch.

This wasn't a typical teenage angst
runaway—this was someone who had meticulously covered her tracks.
Lucy glanced around the room again. It hadn't just been stripped of
personality, it had been stripped of anything that could help her
find Ashley.

And it hadn't happened overnight.

"Did Ashley erase the hard drive herself?"
Because Melissa Yeager stood in the doorway, listening, Lucy didn't
add the question foremost in her mind: or had someone else deleted
the information for Ashley?

"I won't know until I analyze it."

"How long?"

"Dunno." Taylor exhaled the word, his
initial optimism evaporating faster than helium from a balloon. It
was clear the admission cost him. "It depends if I can extract
anything—if there's anything left to extract."

"What about her cell and other
electronics?"

"Her cell phone is gone but I'm working with
the provider to get a list of calls and text messages. If anyone
turns it on, we'll have GPS tracking. The Staties have got mom's
cell and laptop. Dad gave us consent for his, but I'm working on
search warrants anyway."

"Focus on Ashley's. Did she have anything
else?" Lucy asked Melissa Yeager. The mom hovered still outside the
room as if some invisible barrier blocked her entrance. "An
electronic diary, a PDA, a pager?"

Melissa's shook her head. "No, just the damn
phone. Like it was surgically implanted. Texted on it day and
night. Sometimes I'd come in to check on her at night and she'd be
typing away."

Exactly why Lucy refused to give Megan
texting privileges to anyone but her and Nick. Technology was great
until predators learned how to manipulate it for their own
purposes.

That familiar itch curled her fingers again.
Was that what she was dealing with here? A predator? A man like
Pastor Walter, only slicker, sleeker….able to convince his prey to
cover her tracks. Or smart enough to cover them for her.

She returned to stand in the doorway with
the mom, mirroring her anxious posture. "Do you have anyone to stay
with you? Someone you'd feel safe with?"

Melissa shook her head.

"So, you're not seeing anyone?" Lucy tried
again.

"No. Not—" Melissa broke off, stared at
Lucy. "What are you asking?"

Lucy stared back, unabashed. "I need to know
about the people in Ashley's life. Where does your boyfriend
live?"

Melissa made an exacerbated noise without
parting her lips. "He's not—I don't even know what you'd call him.
An old friend. We had a thing, once, ages ago. It was only natural,
after Gerald betrayed me—"

"What's his name?" Lucy asked.

"Jon. Jon Tardiff. The photographer. He
lives in Manhattan."

"Did Ashley know Jon?" A nod from Melissa.
But she also broke eye contact, looked down at the floor, her
fingers picking at the knot on her robe. "Did she like him?"

Melissa gave a shrug and slouched—totally
out of character for the perfect-postured fashion model image she'd
portrayed earlier. "No. Ashley didn't like Jon. He came to visit
when she was at Gerald's, or we'd see each other when I was in the
city."

Lucy stood aside as Taylor gathered up
Ashley's computer and his equipment and left. There was more going
on here, something she couldn't quantify. "Why didn't Ashley like
Jon Tardiff?"

Gerald Yeager and Isaac Walden joined them.
Gerald stiffened at the mention of Tardiff but his expression
remained as blank as ever. "Ashley hated him," he spat the words.
"The pervert used to take naked pictures of her when she was
young."

"He's an artist," Melissa protested. "I was
naked in them as well, that never bothered you."

"Tardiff has a history of molesting young
girls?"

"No. Of course not." Melissa stood up
straight again, challenging her ex.

"Not that I could ever prove," Gerald
said.

Isaac and Lucy exchanged a glance. Isaac
jotted a few words in his notebook and Lucy knew he'd run down the
truth.

If it was true, if Tardiff had a thing for
girls, then Melissa was living every mother's worst nightmare. The
thing you never, ever thought about—for fear that if you did, even
for a second, you might be inviting the monster into your home.

Maybe that's what Melissa was hiding. She'd
let the monster waltz right in and steal her only child.

"What's missing?" Lucy asked the parents,
deciding to table further discussion of Tardiff until she had more
facts. "What could Ashley have taken with her?"

Melissa's eyes darted around the room. Lucy
followed her glance and spotted something shiny on one wall. A torn
triangle of transparent tape. "Did something used to hang
here?"

Melissa nodded, one hand covering her mouth
as if to keep from screaming.

Gerald answered for her. "What happened to
her drawings? Ashley was a fantastic artist, loved to sketch and
paint." He pushed past Melissa and stalked around the room. "Where
are they?"

She kept shaking her head, small little
shakes, watching her made Lucy dizzy. "I don't know." The words
sounded frayed, torn. "After she got back from your place that one
time, the next day they were all gone. I thought she had grown
tired of them, threw them out."

"Threw them out? Ashley would never do that.
Did you take them from her, was that your way of punishing her for
coming to me when she ran away? You bitch, you had no right!"

"Hold on, hold on." Lucy stepped between the
two, restraining her impulse to bash their heads together and send
them both into time-out. "Ashley ran away? When?"

"Last month. We had a fight and I woke the
next morning and she was missing."

"She wasn't missing, she came to my place,"
Gerald interjected. "And she left you a note, don't
over-dramatize."

"Dramatize? My daughter is missing, gone
lord only knows where, she could be dead, and you accuse me
of—"

"Calm down, everyone. No one's found a note
this time, right? No messages?" Both parents shook their heads.
"Okay. Walk me through what's missing."

Lucy opened the closet door. It was like
falling into a fashion model's travel trunk. Lining the shelf stood
boxes upon boxes of designer shoes and purses, each labeled with
color and style. The hangers were brimming over with colorful
gowns, lovingly protected in clear plastic garment bags with
attached photos of Melissa strutting her stuff on the runway. On
the back of the door hung a silk cloth with small pockets sewn into
it, each bulging with a different piece of jewelry.

"Those aren't Ashley's," Melissa said. "I
ran out of room in my closet and since Ashley refused to hang up
her clothes anyway, I started using hers."

Lucy blinked. Fourteen-year-old girl,
already angsting over her looks, being forced to live with fashion
Barbie-mom's runway successes. Sounded like cruel and unusual
punishment.

Then she looked again. Several of the
outfits were out of place, not in the bags labeled with their
photos. "Did Ashley ever wear these?"

"She could maybe put them on, but they
wouldn't fit her properly. Not with her figure." The mother made it
sound as if Ashley were a candidate for stomach stapling.

"How about the shoes?" A thin layer of dust
covered the shoe boxes. But several of the jewelry pockets were
empty.

"Never. I'm a six, Ashley wears an eight
already."

Lucy pushed hard against the closet door to
latch it shut, taking the opportunity to master her annoyance
before turning around to face the parents once more. "Where are
Ashley's clothes?"