Runaway Girls Read online

  “But Daniel has taken her there before?” asked Harper.

  “Well, sure. Sometimes he has to pick her up from school before he’s done at work and comes back to the office because Cynthia just has to get her nails done or whatever.”

  There was a sour, slightly pinched expression on her face. Then she seemed to remember who she was talking to and quickly corrected it to a neutral expression. I’d seen this kind of thing happen so often it was remarkable to me that people didn’t realize how much they were revealing just by blatantly trying to censor themselves in the first place.

  Now we knew that Katy Lipman strongly disliked Cynthia Hayes, and if I had to hazard a guess, based on our meeting with Mrs. Hayes the previous day, I was sure the feeling was mutual. The question was what had happened between the two women to create bad blood—if there was a specific incident or episode, or if it was a more general dislike of two opposing personalities. If there was something more concrete, was Brittany caught between it somehow?

  “Brittany would come back and do her homework until her dad took her home,” she continued. “We don’t really talk much, but she’s a sweet girl.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Brittany?”

  “Uh, must be a few weeks ago?” said Lipman. “Her dad brought her by the office. Then we had to come out here to the site. He knew how boring it was for her, so he brought her to the Dairy Queen to get her a sundae. Kind of like a bribe.”

  “How many weeks ago, exactly?” I pressed her.

  “Um, I don’t know—three?” she guessed. “I don’t really keep track of things like that too well. Seeing Daniel’s kid, I mean.”

  “It’s fine,” said Harper. “Most people wouldn’t.”

  “It would be more suspicious if you had,” I said. Partially because it was the truth, and partly just to see her eyes go wide. I couldn’t resist messing with her a bit for trying to give us the slip the day before. I saw Harper repress a small smile on the other side of the Jeep.

  “What do you know about Brittany’s relationship with Daniel?” he asked.

  “Not much,” said Lipman. “I mean, we’re business partners, not confidantes, you know? They get along, I guess. Daniel’s always spoken highly of her. He has no complaints. She seems like a good enough kid. Maybe fights her mother and acts a little secretive, but who doesn’t, at that age? Let alone girls.”

  “So she and Mrs. Hayes don’t get along?” I asked.

  Something passed over her face. A shadow. She looked out the windshield at the hills above. Then she shook herself. “I never got along with my mother at that age, either,” she said.

  “Do you think she’d run away?” Harper asked.

  Lipman looked startled. She glanced around. “Run away to where?” she asked.

  She had a point. Brittany would have to get at least as far as Wheeling and then maybe catch a bus to Pittsburgh, in order to disappear completely. In a town this small, where everyone knew her name and her family, she’d never pull off running away.

  Even if she made it as far as the city, it would be difficult to hide from truant officers and police with so many people looking for her. If she was sixteen and looked older, she could lie about her age, dye her hair, and maybe get a job waitressing. She could find a sublet; I doubt anybody on Craigslist spent much time vetting their renters. But a fifteen-year-old girl who looked twelve, out on her own? She’d attract attention from the worst kind of people—and the last people she’d ever want to notice her: authority figures.

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Lipman. We might need to follow up with you again about all of this. If you think you’ll be in your office, that is.” I raised my eyebrows at her, letting her know exactly what I thought of her little stunt yesterday.

  She flushed. “Of course,” she said.

  We backed away from her windows and headed down the hill. I glanced over my shoulder. Lipman had made no attempt whatsoever to exit the Jeep. If my eyes didn’t deceive me—which they rarely did—I could see her through the driver’s side window, shaking like a leaf. She was hiding something.

  “What do you think?” asked Harper as we got in the car.

  “Still acting weird,” I said. “I thought she was going to jump out and run into the hills any second.”

  “Agreed,” he said. “Lunch?”

  “Pizza or Dairy Queen?”

  He made a face. “I think if I eat any more fast food, I might drop dead. Either of a heart attack or depression at our overall lifestyle.”

  “The Wells Inn has a restaurant,” I said. “Or it did, at one time. I don’t know if it’s still there. My grandparents took me when I was a kid.”

  “The Wells Inn it is,” he said.

  The Wells Inn couldn’t have looked more haunted. It wasn’t the façade, so much. It still maintained much of its earlier sweeping grandeur. It was the complete absence of life. It was as if my memory was a hand-drawn postcard of it in previous times, compared to the lonely place it had become today.

  There were a couple of men in work boots and overalls when we approached the porch. They glanced up at us, then went back to reading their papers. I couldn’t tell if they were guests or workers.

  I pushed open the door, hesitating slightly. I couldn’t even tell if the place was open. The door gave way with a creak, and Harper and I stepped inside. I gazed around the dimly lit lobby. There were newspapers stacked on a counter next to a suggestion of what might have been breakfast—a pot of coffee, a few stale-looking croissants. The place was in a state of disrepair as if it was under renovations. There was a ladder next to the front desk, behind which a round-faced, worried-looking, dark-haired woman appeared.

  “Can I help you?” Her brow furrowed as if she suspected we were in the wrong place.

  “Is the restaurant open?” I asked. Somehow I doubted it.

  “No, it’s not open,” she said, sounding unhappy. “I’m not sure when it will be. It’s hard to find good help these days.” She glanced at the ladder reproachfully.

  “Are you still renting rooms?” I asked, thinking of the men on the porch.

  “We have a couple of long-term rentals. Oil and gas men. Only two people are staying in the place right now. We’ve been under renovations for nearly ten years now.”

  “Is that so?” asked Harper. He was a master of making polite small talk.

  “It is,” she said regretfully. “This place used to flourish in the old days. The whole town did. It was a boomtown. Folks used to say you could put a straw in your front yard and hit oil. But that’s all gone away now. What few people I can find on the place end up quitting on me or stealing. Drugs.” She shook her head, looking resentful. “It’s a crying shame, what’s happened here.”

  “Crying shame,” I echoed. “Do you know anything about a missing girl? We’re investigating the disappearance of a teenager over in New Martinsville. Have you maybe heard about it from one of your guests?”

  She frowned. “I saw something about that on the news last night,” she said. “Personally, I think it was out-of-towners.”

  “Out-of-towners?” asked Harper, probably remembering our conversation on my first day in town.

  “This is a small town. They all are, up and down the river. Everybody knows everyone else. Not the kind of place you’d steal somebody’s kid and think you could get away with it. But all these men, restless and roaming around bored, when they’re not at work or tired from working? There’s nothing to do here other than gamble at Gumby’s. It’s not even warm enough to be outside. I bet you someone from out-of-state up and took her. Probably waited till he was at the end of a job. Think of how easy it would be just to disappear. From a place no one knows you, has ever even seen you? I’d put money on it.”

  “Thank you for that, ma’am,” I said. Harper was starting to rub off on me. I normally wouldn’t do that. No woman likes to be called ma’am. I placed my card on the front desk. “You go ahead and call us if you think of
anything else.”

  “I will.” She cast a dark look in the general direction of the front porch. I guessed she wasn’t altogether happy with her current guests.

  Harper and I made our way outside. The men had gone—to where I was unsure; it wasn’t like they had many options. They had probably left for work.

  Across the street, there was an alley. I could see trash blowing across it like a tumbleweed. For some reason, it reminded me of a song from the Disney animated version of Robin Hood: the part where the rooster troubadour sings about the sorrows of the town when the sheriff jails everyone for failure to pay their taxes.

  I had loved that movie when I was a kid. My mom would check it out on VHS, and I would watch the movie ad nauseum. Even as a small child with no concept of taxes or money (or poverty), the “Not in Nottingham” sequence depressed me. I had that feeling now, looking at the empty streets and alleys of Sistersville.

  “Pizza it is,” said Harper, startling me from my reverie. We got into the car. I gave him directions from my phone, and he turned onto one quaint and narrow street after another, each as empty as the last.

  There was a beautiful old Victorian mansion right on the river. It looked out of time, shining against its bleak surroundings, a pristine birthday cake of a house. It stood as a testament to the town’s previous grandeur, faithful and unwavering. As if one day, the town would again rise up to where it had once been, its rooms would fill with family and life, and they would play on the riverbank while they waited for the ferry to cross and take them home.

  9

  The Secrets Between Them

  We retraced our footsteps back across the bridge. I held off on getting pizza so I could play it off like we were just ordering food. Dana was clearly easily spooked, and I didn’t want her to realize we were coming back a second time for the specific purpose of talking to her.

  I wished we could have taken the ferry across the river. It ran from May to September, though the season was currently in flux while the township scrambled to hire a new captain. I remembered taking it with my mom as a kid: warm sunshine on the deck, the smell of the river and the sight straight up and down the Ohio as far as the eye could see.

  “What else is in this town?” Harper wanted to know. We were passing through blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Duffy, between Sardis and Hannibal. “Is this the same town your parents grew up in?”

  “Just my mom,” I said. “She grew up in Hannibal, which is where you are when you cross the bridge. Then Duffy, then Sardis, which is where the Dairy Bar is.”

  “Is this Duffy?” he asked, glancing around.

  “It was,” I said. “About a minute ago.”

  It was a rare blue-sky day. It was normally gray and overcast. The temperature was nearly fifty, and it seemed like a positive harbinger of spring to come. I unbuttoned my overcoat as I got out of the car and breathed deeply. I could almost smell the changing seasons. That was the thing I missed most, growing up in Florida. Seasons.

  We walked through the front door, bell jangling. Dana looked up, jumping a little when she saw us. Did everyone who knew Brittany have something to hide? I was relieved to see that Crystal was nowhere in sight. Unless she was back in the kitchen cooking, which I highly doubted. She seemed like the type who wanted to be up front, where the action was.

  “Hello, Dana,” I said in what I hoped was my warmest voice. I had been accused of even my friendliest overtures sounding more like a winter’s day in the Arctic, but I wanted badly not to startle her and put her on her guard. “How are you today?”

  “I’m okay,” she said cautiously, glancing at Harper. If anything, she seemed more nervous around him than of me. Boys. “Did you—I mean...did you want to get lunch?”

  “Yes, I would.” I scanned the menu on the wall over her head. “I’d like a fish sandwich, please. Do you have Coleman’s?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “I’ll take that. And fries. And a Coke. Please.”

  She turned to Harper. “Can I get anything for you, sir?”

  “I’ll try your black raspberry ice cream I’ve heard so much about,” he said.

  “Cone or a cup?”

  “Can I get it as a milkshake?”

  “Sure.” She rang the order up on the register. “Will that be for here or to go?”

  “For here, please.” I glanced around conspicuously. “Crystal not working today?”

  “She’s coming in later. After me.” She frowned at the old-fashioned register, fingers hovering over the keys. “I mean, she’s supposed to, anyway.”

  “Does she miss work a lot? Or just late?” It’s hard to question anybody casually once they know you’re a fed. Most people assume everything’s an interrogation, even if you’re just asking for directions.

  But Dana was young and, at that moment, inattentive. She didn’t seem nearly as bothered by being questioned as she had the first time we spoke.

  “All the time.” Dana sighed and rolled her eyes theatrically. “It’s like, an epidemic with her.”

  I smiled sympathetically. “Must get annoying.”

  “You have no idea. She’s like, the most unreliable person…” She trailed off in a mumble before finding the key she wanted and hitting it triumphantly. “Sorry. I’m dyslexic. I usually just memorize where the buttons are, but I started this job pretty recently, and I haven’t yet. It was Brittany’s idea for us to make a little bit of extra money of our own. Her mom’s always canceling her allowance.”

  “Oh really? Does she get in trouble a lot?”

  “Not really. Her mom will make up any excuse to punish her, basically. I think mostly just for hanging out with Crystal. She hates Crystal with, like, the hatred of a thousand suns. Is that how the saying goes?”

  “The intensity of a thousand suns, I think,” I said.

  “Yeah, however. I bet she told you all about it.” She looked up at me, her expression sorrowful. She was a sensitive kid. Most of them are. Some more than others. “Are you any closer to finding her?”

  “We have some leads we’re pursuing,” I said. “But time is of the essence, and anything that anyone in Brittany’s life can tell us will expedite the process. By which I mean, make it a lot quicker,” I added at her confused look. “And we need it to go as quickly as possible so that we have the best chance of getting her home safe and sound.”

  Dana glanced around. “Well, I couldn’t tell you this yesterday. What with Crystal being here and all—I’m actually more afraid of her than I am of you. No offense.”

  “None taken,” said Harper politely.

  She glanced at him, then back at me. “I know they were talking to people online. People that they shouldn’t have been.”

  “What kind of people?” I asked.

  “Boys. Brittany wasn’t allowed to date, and Crystal’s mom said she’d kill her if she came home pregnant, mostly because she had Crystal so young. She said that killing her if she got knocked up would be two less mouths for her to feed. She’s crazy. So’s her boyfriend. I don’t even know why Crystal’s late to work so often; it’s not like she wants to be at home.”

  “Were they boys? Or men?”

  She looked startled. “I think they were just boys from school,” she said.

  “Do you think there’s a chance they could have been talking to the same person?”

  “I don’t know.” I could see the wheels turning in her head. She shifted anxiously from foot to foot. “Do you think that’s how they got taken?” This poor girl, already so nervous around boys, would probably never talk to a man until her twenty-first birthday. Her father would be thrilled.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Did they tell you anything about it?”

  She frowned. “They left me out, sometimes,” she said. “Said I was too big of a baby to understand, and they didn’t want me tattling on them. Like I would ever do that. I don’t like Brittany’s mom any more than she does. And I’m way too scared of Crystal’s mom to say anything to her. She’d proba
bly beat me. She got arrested for hitting the mailman one time. He brought her a final notice on her credit card. Anyway, I knew about it, but not much. It was one of the secrets between them.”

  “Did they keep a lot of secrets from you?”

  “More recently, yeah.” She looked glum, eyes downcast. “It used to be Brittany and me. Since kindergarten, basically. Then Crystal showed up here last year, and everything changed. Brittany started wearing makeup, which I’m not allowed to do. Technically, she’s not, either, but she’d put it on after homeroom. The homeroom teacher knows her mom, so she couldn’t do it before. She got it from Crystal. The makeup, I mean. And then cigarettes—Crystal would steal them from her mom and sneak them in her purse. They’d go behind the gym and make me be the look-out. She started borrowing clothes from Crystal, dressing sluttier. Push-up bras and tank tops, short skirts. They made fun of me for wearing grandma bras in the locker room. They started drinking at work and after. Crystal would take stuff from her mom’s boyfriend while he was out cold. He’d be so drunk when he woke up that he thought he drank it. She put it in their Cokes.”

  She stopped abruptly and looked up, wide-eyed. If was as if she had suddenly remembered who I was and who she was actually talking to. But I was wrong. She was looking over my shoulder.

  The door swung open behind me. I had a feeling like the saloon doors had just swung inward at the OK Corral. I turned to see none other than Crystal, strolling in and snapping her gum as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Not at all like her best friend was missing.

  Her hoodie was tugged down over one shoulder to reveal the black strap of a tank top over the red strap of her bra. Her hair was looped in a sloppy blond ponytail, deliberately messy and showing off her hoop earrings. River trash, Brittany’s catfish had called her. But it broke my heart slightly to see someone so young already so hardened-off. Hers was a learned behavior.