“Did you think Madison was losing it?”
“I knew she was having problems. Her marks had dropped quite drastically. She was not turning in her work. She was distracted in class.”
“Her parents said that they would get her tutoring?”
“That was what they said.”
“Did you think that was a good solution?”
Mrs. Wright considered the question. “No, I was not confident that was going to solve the problem. I didn’t think it was just a matter of her not understanding the work and needing to be walked through the process.”
“What did you think the problem was?”
“I thought she was… experimenting. Some kids go off the rails, rebelling and trying out the things that their parents have told them to stay away from. It can be a long journey back when they get too deeply into drugs or some other alternative lifestyle.”
“You thought it was drugs?”
“That was just one possibility. There are many of them. Lots of ways to self-destruct.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I imagine you have explored some of them.”
“A few,” Zachary admitted. He’d made some fairly disastrous choices in his life.
“She was tired in the middle of the day. Sometimes dozing off, particularly after weekends. Mondays you might as well give up on trying to reach her.”
“Could it have been her job? Working too much in addition to school?”
“Could have been. Her parents threatened to make her quit if she didn’t straighten up. I got the feeling that there was an emotional aspect to it.”
Zachary frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Hard to explain. It wasn’t just that she was tired and not doing her homework. She was… emotionally labile. Anxious, angry, defiant… and then other times, silly and giggly. Showing off her latest fashion statement. It was more than just being overtired. If it was because of work… then I would wonder whether she was being bullied or harassed at work. She was so distracted and emotional.”
That sounded about right for a teenager. Zachary had felt out of control all the time, unable to corral his brain or his emotions to be a calm, productive student like so many of his peers seemed to be. But then, he had been bullied and harassed almost constantly, both at school and in his various homes.
He made a few notes in his notebook, trying to capture the thoughts and questions that flitted around his brain. It gave him a chance to breathe and distance himself from the childhood memories.
“Madison didn’t ever talk to you about what was wrong, or say anything that gave you a clue. Maybe you overheard her talking to a friend, but didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. Just… some sense…”
“I’m afraid not. I wish she had come to me. I would have done whatever I could to help her. But I don’t know what was wrong or why she disappeared. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve been very helpful. Thanks for answering my questions. And let me know if you think of anything, or happen to hear anything. Keep your ear to the ground…”
“I’ll do my best,” Mrs. Wright promised, and gave him a brief smile. “Thank you for taking this on. I hope you’re able to find her.”
9
Madison’s three best friends were apparently joined at the hip. They came together into the conference room that Zachary had been allowed to use, and wouldn’t be divided.
“I’d really like to talk to you separately,” Zachary told them. “I’m sure the police interviewed you separately, didn’t they?”
“You’re not the police,” the redhead challenged him.
Zachary shook his head. “No. I’m a private investigator. It would be most helpful to me—and most beneficial to Madison—if you would talk to me one at a time. Sometimes there are little things that you remember differently, and they wouldn’t come out if you all talk to me together, because your recollections color each other’s memories. I don’t get three individual stories; I get one blended-together story.”
“We’re meeting together,” the tallest girl, a brunette, declared, and she put her arms around the waists of her two friends. They, in turn, threaded their arms around her, so that they were all holding on to one another. Zachary looked at them helplessly. He didn’t have any authority over them. He couldn’t force them to talk to him, much less to do it separately. He counted himself lucky that all three had agreed to meet with him at all. He had expected at least some pushback, with one of them saying that Madison deserved her privacy and if she wanted to run away, he should just stay out of it.
The girls looked satisfied that they had talked him into it, and each took a chair.
“What are your names?” Zachary asked with a sigh. He felt overwhelmed and outnumbered. Another reason he didn’t interview witnesses together was that it was so distracting to have to watch three different people and their reactions at the same time. It was hard enough to keep his thoughts and questions straight when he was only talking to one person. Three felt a little like trying to hear all of the words of a three-part round at the same time.
“I’m Josette,” the redhead offered.
Zachary wrote it down.
“I’m Leila,” the taller brunette said.
“And I’m Katelyn.” The smallest girl, another brunette.
“How long have you each known Madison?” Zachary puzzled over whether to assign each girl a page in his notebook and flip back and forth as they answered, or whether to make three columns, one for each of them, or just to try to tag each note and keep track as they went along.
Josette and Katelyn had known Madison the longest, since some time in the early elementary school grades. Leila had gone to a different elementary school and didn’t know Madison until she graduated to middle school.
“So you know each other pretty well.”
They all nodded their agreement. Zachary tried to peg their moods before getting deep into the interview. They were more cheerful than he would have expected. With Madison missing, he would have expected them to be sad, maybe tearful. They weren’t laughing and smiling, but they didn’t seem to think that anything bad had happened to Madison.
“What’s been going on with Madison lately?”
They exchanged looks, questioning each other with their eyes. Zachary could feel the communications passing between them, even if he couldn’t interpret each look.
“What do you mean?” Josette asked.
“Several people have said that Madison was having trouble lately. Schoolwork, inattentive, and now this… you didn’t notice anything different about her?”
More looks, trying to decide what they should tell Zachary. They clearly knew plenty, but they weren’t sure that they wanted to divulge anything to him. They were closing ranks on their friend, shielding her from the investigation. Did they know where she was? Had they been in communication with her or had she told them ahead of time that she was planning to leave?
“She was good,” Katelyn said. “Really. Maybe she wasn’t doing so good with her schoolwork, but who does? I mean, it’s hard, and where is it going to get us? Does it really matter how we do now? No one is going to be looking at these marks when they’re deciding whether we can get into college or be hired for a job. All they’ll be looking for is a diploma. Maybe SAT scores for college. That’s all. No one cares what you got in high school English.”
“It would be a problem if she failed.”
“She wasn’t failing. She was still passing. And the final exam is half the mark, so you can totally coast during the semester, as long as you do well on the final.”
“So you think she wasn’t doing well just because she didn’t care about marks? She figured she could just study for the final and be okay?”
Katelyn shrugged. “I don’t know. It isn’t like we talked about it. We didn’t talk about marks and studying. Sometimes we worked on homework together, but most of the time when we were hanging out, it was to have a good time together, not to do work.”
Zachary nodd
ed encouragingly. “What did you like to do together?”
“Go to the mall and shop. Girl talk. Internet stuff. Chill out bingeing on TV series. Whatever. Normal stuff.”
“Did you spend a lot of time outside of school together?”
“Yeah, sure.” Katelyn looked at the other girls for their reactions, and they nodded to back her up.
“Sure,” Josette agreed. “Every day. We were like the four musketeers.”
“What about her job?”
A more significant shared look. They knew that Madison didn’t really have a job. But they didn’t know that Zachary knew.
“Yeah, we all have jobs. But we make it work. We’re not working all the time. Our parents wouldn’t let us. It’s just a few hours. You have to leave enough time for homework and socializing.”
“Where did Madison work?”
“Pedal Pushers,” Leila said instantly. They didn’t have to look at each other for that one. They had the story established already.
“Are you the one who pretended to be her supervisor at Pedal Pushers?”
“What?”
“When her mother met the supervisor and got her phone number. Was that you?”
Leila looked at Zachary with wide eyes. She didn’t look at the others, realizing that he was already on to them and knew at least one of the secrets.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leila said in a thready voice. She swallowed and swiped at her eyes like she was crying, but Zachary didn’t see any tears.
“Madison didn’t work at Pedal Pushers. That’s just what she told her parents.”
“She did!” Leila insisted.
Zachary shook his head. “She didn’t. Even if I didn’t figure that out, the police have already checked. There is no record of Madison working at Pedal Pushers. Or of the girl she said was her supervisor.”
They all just sat there, looking at him. Zachary wrote down a few notes and cleared his throat. “Lying about it isn’t going to help Madison. If she’s in danger, I want to help her. If you think it’s going to get her in trouble, then tell me that. I’m not stupid. I’m not going to tell her parents or the police something that’s going to get her in trouble.”
Leila’s head was bowed as she looked down at her hands, but she raised her eyes to Josette to see what she thought.
“Fine,” Josette said in an exasperated voice, like Zachary was the one being stubborn instead of them. “She didn’t work at Pedal Pushers.”
“One of you acted as the supervisor?”
“No. Mrs. Miller knows all of us. We got someone else to do it. Someone she hadn’t met. And we’re not turning her over to you. She didn’t have anything to do with Mad disappearing.”
“But you were all in on it. You all knew that it was just an act that Madison was putting on for her parents and schoolteachers.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did she do that?”
“So she could spend time with her friends.”
Katelyn spoke up. “Parents think it’s okay to spend twenty or thirty hours a week at a job, but they don’t like you spending that much time with your friends. They start to complain that you’re not putting in the effort. So Madison wanted to keep her parents off her back. Make them think that she was working hard, instead of hanging out with friends.” Katelyn gave an unconcerned shrug.
“So you want me to think that she was hanging out with you,” Zachary said. “With her girlfriends.”
“Yeah. She was,” Josette said challengingly, looking Zachary in the eye. Her eyes stayed steady, as if she weren’t lying. But he knew better.
“She wasn’t with you. She was with Noah.”
That got all of them. Their eyes widened and they looked at each other for help again. They put their heads together and there were furious whispers between them. Arguing about who had told, who had given it away. Somebody must have, for Zachary to know.
“She didn’t hide it that well,” Zachary said. “She was with him quite a bit. The police know his first name, but not his last name.” Zachary looked at each of them. “Do you know Noah’s last name?”
There was no need for them to check in with each other for that answer. They all shook their heads independently.
“None of us know his last name,” Josette asserted. “I don’t know if Madison even knew it. He was sort of… an enigma.” She liked the word. He saw her smile, enjoying the chance to use it.
“An enigma,” Zachary repeated. “Is that what he called himself? Or was that Madison’s word?”
“Madison’s, I guess. I don’t think he ever called himself that.” Josette wrinkled her nose. “It’s not the kind of thing you can call yourself, is it? It’s like saying that you’re the smartest one in the room. You don’t get to choose what other people call you.”
“And Madison said that Noah was an enigma.”
Josette nodded. The other girls followed suit.
“He was so hot,” Leila said, and giggled.
Josette and Katelyn elbowed her. “Leila!”
“Well, he was—don’t tell me that you weren’t both thinking it. He was so…” She shrugged, having difficulty expressing it. “He was older, and he was good looking, and no one knew where he had come from or why he hooked up with Madison. He just… no one had ever seen him before, and then suddenly, he was there, and he and Mad were getting really hot and heavy, but it was like they’d always known each other. He really loved her.”
“You didn’t know him before? None of you did?”
“No. None of us.”
The others both confirmed.
“Where did they meet?”
“Just…” Leila looked at the others for help. “Just here, right?” she made a motion to encompass the school. “He was just, like… there one day. Outside the school, like he was waiting for her. He knew her name. Stopped her to talk to her…”
“He said that he’d seen her at a party,” Josette offered, inserting her memory. “At a party or a football game; I don’t remember. Just that he already knew who she was, because he’d seen her before, but none of us knew him. He was just there. Out of the blue.”
“Like an angel who fell from heaven,” Leila said in a dramatically dreamy voice, and then laughed. The others made motions for her to stop and settle down.
“Leila!” Katelyn said in a low, stern voice.
“You don’t know where he had seen her before?” Zachary looked at them each in turn. Leila sobered, putting on a serious expression, and they each denied knowing where Noah had seen Madison before.
“So, he approached her. Just called her name. And then suddenly, they were boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Well… pretty much,” Katelyn admitted. “I don’t remember where he took her the first day. Out for ice cream, I think. Something like that. Something nice and sweet. And he was. He was always treating her like she was something special. Opening doors for her and taking her out.”
“And buying her things,” Leila added. “He, like, was always giving her something.”
“Clothes?” Zachary suggested. “Handbags? That stuff?”
The three girls nodded. If anything, they looked jealous. They wished they could have had a boyfriend like Noah. A sweet, handsome older guy who liked to buy them things. What girl wouldn’t like that?
“How much older than Madison was he?”
“Mmm… I don’t know.” Katelyn looked at Josette. “Did she ever say? I don’t think she knew. None of us did.”
“But he was for sure?” Zachary checked.
“He didn’t go to school here, and this is the only high school in the area. So he must have graduated.”
“Or dropped out,” Leila added.
“He didn’t drop out,” Katelyn said, rolling her eyes. “He was smart. And he had a job. He must have, right? Otherwise, how could he get her all of those presents? And it had to be a good job, because some of that stuff was really pricey. No high school guy can afford to spend that much o
n his girlfriend.”
Zachary nodded and wrote down a few details. He had seen some of the labels on the clothing and, as a private investigator, he’d learned clothing brands and designers in order to be able to tell how much people were worth. Or if they were suddenly spending more than they should. The brands he had seen in Madison’s closet had been big names. And those were the ones she had left behind.
10
“What did the two of them do together?” Zachary asked. “You said that they were getting pretty serious.”
They avoided his gaze, each pretending to be looking at something else in the room. The light. The table. Her fingernails.
“How serious were they?” Zachary asked. “From the pictures I saw, I’m guessing they were spending a lot of… intimate time together.”
“What pictures?” Josette demanded. Her eyes were blazing. “What pictures are you talking about?”
“Pictures that other people took of her. And pictures she took herself and posted on social media accounts.” He paused. “Not the ones that her parents knew about.”
Leila started to flush. She rubbed her forehead. She turned her face away from him, shielding it with her hand, as if she could keep Zachary from seeing she was blushing.
“Yeah, well, her parents wouldn’t have wanted to see that, would they?” Josette said in a hard voice, like if Madison’s parents thought they had anything to complain about, they should just get over themselves. “She had to keep it a secret.”
“They were pretty heavily involved.”
“They were together. A couple. That’s what couples do.”
“High school couples?”
“Sometimes, yeah. Why would they be any different than adults?”
“On the weekend, Madison had a sleepover Friday and Saturday nights,” Zachary said.
“Yeah, so?”
“She wasn’t sleeping over with one of you, was she?”
She Told a Lie Page 5