Where the Lost Girls Go

by R. J. Noonan

  “What about a small gas can?” I asked. “Would that be locked up in the mechanic’s garage?”

  “Yes, a gas can is there. And I keep a can in the maintenance shed for blowers and mowers. You need some gasoline for your car? I can give you a small bit.”

  “No, thank you, but I do need to take a look at those gas cans. Maybe take a photo.”

  “You need to see gasoline?” A hint of a smile graced his face. “This I don’t understand.”

  “Trust me on this. It matters.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I can show you.” As we headed toward the second garage, I pushed a little harder. “I appreciate your help. It’s such a huge property; I don’t know how you manage,” I said.

  “One task at a time.”

  “I haven’t made a dent in checking out the entire property.” I walked alongside him as he pushed the wheelbarrow out to the front path. “I know you must be terribly busy, but would you have a chance to show me around a bit? I’ve been out to the barn, but after this, I’m heading over to the pool house and those guest houses.”

  He paused on the path in front of the garage and lowered the wheelbarrow. “Mr. and Mrs . . . do they know?”

  As in, did they realize I was snooping around the property collecting evidence on their daughter’s possible homicide? As in, did I have a warrant? “Of course,” I said. “I checked in with them when I got here.”

  Carlos rubbed his thick jaw with the backs of his knuckles. “I should talk to the boss first.”

  “But the Jamesons don’t want to be disturbed, and I don’t want to get you in trouble with them.” I lowered my gaze, respectful and studious. Less Officer Mori, more Japanese student of life. “It’s no problem. I can show myself around. Thanks so much for your time.”

  “You know, Officer, I am heading over that way after I return this to the shed.” He picked up the wheelbarrow and gave me a fatherly look. “Some things, I can show you.”

  I thanked him and tried to soak up the surroundings like a sponge. He showed me the “messy” garage, where we located the gas can. And then, with a minimum of words, Carlos showed me the rest of the grounds. The long, windowed building with a glass ceiling contained a sparkling swimming pool. The balmy air in there smelled of chlorine, and the tiles and cement work were pristine. Aquamarine water and teak lounge chairs with white cushions and fluffy white towels. Resort-like but vacant.

  “Will you close the pool for the winter?” I asked.

  “It’s open all the time.”

  “I’ll bet that hot tub is nice on a cold autumn night.”

  Carlos shrugged. “I don’t think anyone uses it. Lucy and her friends, they used to like it. But not for a long time.”

  The maintenance shed, tucked out of sight of the other buildings, was tidy and contained the second gas can. All present and accounted for, I thought. So where had the can from the Ghia come from?

  The clubhouse had a similar air of desertion. The place was well-appointed with a river rock fireplace, a wet bar lined with glimmering copper tiles, game tables, a television that was larger than me, and two rows of pinball and video machines, including Pac-Man. The place whispered of laughter and good times, but the machines were turned off and the pool table was masked by a vinyl cover. A haunted resort.

  Located at one end of the horseshoe were the guest cottages—five one-bedroom buildings built with craftsman finishes. Carlos unlocked two of them so that I could walk through the simple but cozy interiors. Each cabin was furnished with a writing desk, an overstuffed loveseat, and a brightly colored Pendleton blanket on each bed. And the cabins were locked up so tight that the air was stale and draining.

  “Why do they keep them closed up?” I asked, peering into the window of a third cabin.

  “For many years you could go anywhere. Every building was open. Then Mrs. Martha heard about the squatters in the woods. She told me lock everything up.”

  Natalie had mentioned something like that. “Have the squatters in Stafford Woods been a problem?”

  He shrugged. “Mr. doesn’t mind. It’s Mrs. She worry about safety. This is why the cottages are locked.”

  Just then a bellowing sound came from the direction of the mansion.

  “What’s that?”

  Carlos pursed his lips. “Mr. Kent.”

  I darted past a cluster of trees to get a clear view across the road to the parking lot.

  Kent Jameson banged on the hood of the patrol car. “Officer Mori! Officer!” The exclamation was as low and loud as the growl of a bear. “Where the hell are the cops when you need them?” He stumbled back from my parked patrol unit, tripping and catching himself. “God help us all! The world has gone to hell!”

  His wife emerged from the house and hurried down the stairs, descending like a pink cloud in her brightly colored fleece over cut jeans—that expensive, artfully slashed style. Her voice was inaudible, but her approach seemed conciliatory as she reached for him and said something about coming inside. He was barefoot, his hair standing straight up, as if he had spent the morning raking it up toward the sky.

  Kent turned away from her, faced the open horseshoe, and flung his arms wide. “Have you found her?” His voice resounded through the clearing at the community’s center. “Have you found my girl? What happened to my daughter? My Lucy.”

  Holding one arm up to get his attention, I moved toward the dramatic, raw scene. “Mr. Jameson?” My voice didn’t carry quite so well. I gave a slight wave.

  “Where is she? Did you find my girl?” He darted across the paving stones, running toward me as if I held some divine light. With crossed arms holding her fleece in place, his wife loped behind him.

  I walked briskly, trying to meet him halfway. Behind me, Carlos seemed to have disappeared amid the trees and buildings. A wise choice.

  “Tell me!” Kent Jameson’s voice was inappropriately loud, his tone too fiery, and he wasn’t tracking well. I suspected he was either drunk or deranged from grief. “Did the searchers find her?”

  “No, sir.” We were close enough to speak at normal levels. “The search hasn’t begun yet.”

  “Well, at the very least, tell me she wasn’t driving the Ghia.”

  Misery radiated from his body. I hated to disappoint him. “Not yet. We’re still waiting on lab results.” I didn’t tell them about the disabled brakes.

  Jameson seemed to deflate and then puff up again, like a lion roaring before it attacked. “Still waiting?” He tossed his head, his mane oddly golden in the gray light. “Good God, how long does it take you people to put the pieces together?”

  “Sir, I can assure you that everyone is working as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

  “Don’t fucking sir me.”

  I was going to apologize but stopped myself, thinking that it might infuriate him all the more. It wouldn’t do to poke the bear.

  “Where the hell is my girl? My Lucy? She should be your first priority.” He scraped his fingers through his hair, making it even wilder. “If you haven’t found my daughter, what the hell have you been doing all morning?”

  At first I thought his gusty list of questions was rhetorical, but he gaped at me, waiting for an answer. “While forensics works on making an ID, I’m investigating yesterday’s crash.” I kept my voice level, trying to restrain my racing heart from thumping out of my chest and launching another attack on me. “Trying to find out how it happened, what caused it.”

  “Where’s your boss? Where’s Chief Cribben? He should be here.”

  “He’s back at the precinct conducting a press conference,” I said. “They thought it would be best to divert the media from your compound as much as possible.”

  “Good luck with that,” Kent said smugly. “The media love me. They can’t stay away, even on a quiet day. I can be in the bulb section of the hardware store and I hear them in the next aisle, whispering and snapping pictures with their cell phones. Everyone wants a piece of me. I’m Kent-Fucking-Jameson, don�
�t you know who I am?” he roared.

  “Everyone in Sunrise Lake knows you, Mr. Jameson.” I kept my voice low and measured, despite the trepidation flickering through my chest. Jameson was not a large man, but today he looked fierce, with beady eyes, wild hair, and a beet-red hue to his face. He was fired up with adrenaline and, from the smell, a fifth of whisky. “You’re a local hero.”

  “Damn right I am!” he railed, pointing to the sky as he staggered forward and back.

  “Kent. Enough.” Martha was observing him carefully, like a doctor mulling over a diagnosis.

  He swatted the air in her direction. “I’m trying to find my daughter.”

  “Kent,” Martha said, “you’ve been drinking. Haven’t you? Yes. Oh, my God. After nine years sober? Really, Kent?”

  “Yes, broken. I am irretrievably broken,” he said, raising one hand dramatically to the sky like a Shakespearean oracle. “Cast my pieces into the darkness and forget that my heart once beat in tandem with the turning of the earth.”

  “Kent. That’s enough. Please. Do you want some tea?”

  Heaving a sigh, he rested his head in his hands. Then, looking sober and dignified, he raised his head and strode down the path. “I need to get back to work.”

  And just as quickly as the drama had bubbled over, it evaporated.

  10

  “I guess he won’t be joining the search,” Martha said as we watched Kent turn onto the paving stone approach to his studio. “I hope people don’t think ill of him because he’s not participating, but he can’t appear in public this way.”

  “I think they’ll understand. Will he be okay?”

  “Eventually. He’ll rant and rave and pace. Some days he’ll walk for miles through the woods, working a storyline through, but not today. This is too personal to offer it up to nature. Today he’ll rattle around in his studio. He’ll scavenge through closets and cupboards for hidden stashes of booze. In between fits of rage, he’ll do some writing.”

  “While he’s drunk?” I asked. “Will any of it make sense?”

  She stared after him, smoothing down the pink fleece. “He wrote two of his top five bestselling books while he was in the tank. The Black Rose Inn and Dead-End Motel. Kent was a high-functioning alcoholic when I met him. He was accomplishing great things but was, well, terribly broken, as he said.”

  I nodded. “I appreciate your honesty.”

  “It’s nothing that hasn’t been published in interviews.” Martha rubbed her hands together. “It’s cold out here.”

  “And he’s barefoot.”

  “He probably doesn’t even notice. When crisis hits, Kent storms off, and I make tea. Come join me. I’ll try to answer your questions, and I’d like to go over your time frame so that I can prepare Kent for what’s to come.”

  As I fell into step beside her, I wondered if the task was truly so simple, as if she were helping her husband rehearse a speech or research a Ming vase. Granted, Lucy was not Martha’s daughter, but they had lived as a family for many years. Perhaps a dysfunctional family, but no one was perfect. Inside the house, I followed her to the kitchen just beyond the great room, a cross between woodsy cabin and modern chic. The dark cabinets were reflected on the shiny floor and quartz countertops that had pin dots of sparkly stone in them, like embedded jewels. Elegant and icy. The oversized windows looked out over flat garden beds and a greenhouse.

  “You have your own gardens.”

  “We’d like to do farm-to-table, but I don’t have a green thumb.”

  As evidenced by the leggy, brown beds. Even for October, her garden seemed long dead. “Do you enjoy gardening?” I asked.

  “I do. So I’ll continue moving dirt around and hoping for the best. What kind of tea would you like?” she asked, setting a surprisingly traditional china teapot onto a tray. “I have Genmaicha and Hojicha.”

  Two popular types of Japanese green tea. Martha Jameson knew her teas. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was a coffee drinker. “How about some Earl Grey?”

  “Perfect. I have that new 212 brew from a local tea maker. Have a seat. Juana said you arrived a while ago. Have you had a chance to talk with my staff?”

  “I have. When I spoke with Andy Greenleaf, I noticed that there are a few other people working out at the barn. I was wondering why you didn’t mention them last night.”

  “Day laborers.” She filled the teapot from an instant-hot water spout. “I don’t even know them. Andy hires people in need. It was actually Kent’s idea. He wants to help people directly, but he doesn’t have the time and he’s not a big fan of the limelight. Kent says it’s our duty to feed them and offer them work. But the rules are that they never cross over to this side of the estate.”

  “Where does Andy find them?”

  “Here and there. Some of them are passing through. Some come out from the missions in Portland because they want the work and the break from city grime.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” It seemed to contradict what I’d heard from Carlos about her fear of intruders.

  “My husband insists on it. Kent and I have a tradition of giving back to the community.”

  “A very generous one,” I added. “You’ve helped our town in many ways.”

  “We try.” She put a teacup in front of me and poured the steaming liquid through the sifter. “We always hope that people in the community embrace our sense of charity and pay it forward. Everyone can give back in gestures large and small. It’s not only about giving away money. It’s about believing in people, nurturing people.” She poured a cup for herself. “Milk and sugar? Lemon?”

  “No, thanks. This is wonderful.” The tang of citrus permeated my sinuses.

  “The bergamot really shines through. That’s so important in an Earl Grey.”

  I didn’t think the nuances of tea mattered much when the teenage girl who had lived in this house was probably on a slab at the morgue, but I shouldn’t judge. Everyone handled grief differently. Perhaps denial was Martha’s coping mechanism.

  “Where were we?” She took the seat beside me and studied her tea. “Charity. I guess random acts of kindness are important to me because I grew up with nothing. Trailer trash. That’s what the kids called me in middle school. Children can be cruel and brutally honest.”

  “You’ve seen much success, but you still remember your roots.”

  “There’s a part of me that’s still a frightened kid from Medford. That’s why I like to surround myself with people I can help. My assistant, Talitha, was just days away from being deported with her son. Her husband had already been sent back to Iran. Kent and I hired a lawyer who knew how to navigate immigration matters. Then there’s Carlos, our groundskeeper. A good man, big family. He was dying when we first hired him for some small repairs. His kidneys were failing. The doctors said that only a transplant would save him.”

  I squinted as I put down the teacup. “And you made that happen?”

  Martha smiled. “Kent and I found him one of the country’s top nephrologists. Got him onto the transplant list. Within days of the surgery, he was a new man. It’s been three years since the surgery, and Carlos takes great care of our place.”

  But not such good care of his kidney, if the DUI report from two years ago had anything to say about it.

  “I don’t know what we would do without him.”

  The Jamesons might have to learn how to do without Carlos if the man kept drinking. In my interview with Carlos, he had seemed sober, and I hoped that DUI was simply an isolated incident. Alcohol use didn’t mix well with kidney disease. But I kept mum; Martha was on a roll.

  “And then there’s Andy. We found him when he was living in a tent in Stafford Woods, out of work and homeless. The courts gave him a tough break with that sex offender status.”

  “Even so, it’s hard to imagine parents with a young girl hiring a convicted sex offender.”

  “Well, there’s where we differ. The first time I laid eyes on him, I saw a lost young man
with a special spark inside. He was camped out in the woods and came across one of our fillies that had gotten loose. He brought her in, and right away, I saw that he had a way with horses. He’d spent a few summers on a ranch out in central Oregon. Quite a horseman, and handy, too. I made him promise to follow the rules of his probation, and he has obliged.”

  “Did he ever seem interested in Lucy?” I asked. “She is seventeen now.”

  “Not at all. He has a girlfriend, been together a while now. Poor guy. Andy has a youthful look, but he’s pushing thirty, and his relationships are still under a microscope for dating a girl from high school. Really, he was just a kid when it happened, and when his parents threw him out and he lost his job, where could he turn? No one wanted to go near a sex offender, no matter what the details of his case were. We gave him a chance, and he has more than proven himself.”

  “He was fortunate to find someone like you and Mr. Jameson.”

  “Andy Greenleaf needed help, just like any person in crisis.” With a nurturing smile, Martha passed a plate of cookies. “I’ve always believed that if you love and support someone, they’ll go on to do great things. Like the flowers and plants in my garden. If you give them water and sunshine, good soil and a little space, they grow. It’s that simple.”

  Except that Martha Jameson’s gardens were dead.

  “Has Lucy borne out this theory?”

  “Not quite, but then, she’s young still. Well”—she winced—“she was young. It’s beginning to sink in now. She’s probably gone, and that’s destroying my husband. He’s always adored her.”

  It wasn’t hard to believe that Kent Jameson loved his daughter, though it was difficult to imagine Lucy living here on this wooded compound, in luxurious surroundings that for the most part seemed to be sealed tight. That spritelike teenage girl with Goth eyeliner and a pixie haircut would be out of place sleeping in a twin bed across from a dozen stuffed animals. Swimming in that pristine pool. Laughing over a game of Ping-Pong in the stale clubhouse. Where exactly did Lucy fit into all this?

  “Did Lucy like living here?” I asked as my cell phone buzzed. I ignored it, determined to give Martha free rein; this one was a talker.