by Lisa Jackson
Pescoli’s cell phone rang, and she answered, even though she didn’t recognize the number of the incoming call. “Detective Pescoli.”
“Regan?” a frantic woman’s voice asked. “This is Darlie Cronin. Remember me?” Without waiting for a reply, she ran on, the words tumbling faster and faster, one after the other. “I’m Lindsay’s mother, Lindsay Cronin, a friend of Bianca’s, and I work at the preschool and . . . I don’t know what to do. She’s missing. She was in her room last night when we went to bed, Roy and me, and then, and then, she didn’t get up this morning, which sometimes happens. I mean, I didn’t even check on her until around eleven or eleven-thirty, I think . . . what?”
She turned away from the phone for a second and had another muffled conversation before she said rapidly, “Roy says it was really almost noon and, and . . . I can’t find her. Her car is gone. She’s not answering her phone and I’m . . . I don’t know what to do.” She paused, gathered in a breath, then said a little more slowly. “After calling around, even the hospitals, I went to the station and filled out a missing persons report and the woman officer there was very nice but . . . but I don’t think it’s enough. I’m . . . we, Roy and I . . . oh, God, what if something’s happened to her? To my baby?”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Pescoli said, remembering the woman as being smart and kind, even-tempered, her only fault being that she was a little over-indulgent with her kids, an older boy and Lindsay. Darlie had always turned a blind eye to her daughter’s faults, but then, that wasn’t so unusual. “Why don’t you start over?”
“Okay, okay.”
Alvarez kept driving and Pescoli put the phone on speaker, so they both could hear.
Her voice quivering, Darlie filled in the blanks: Lindsay was missing, had been since last night. Though Lindsay had left in her car, in Darlie’s opinion, her daughter had either been abducted or something horrible had happened to her. “The worrisome thing is she didn’t take any clothes, and her iPad and makeup and everything is all still here. So if she left of her own accord, she planned to come back, but she’s not answering her phone and . . . and the window was open. Someone could have come in, taken her at gun or knifepoint, or . .. oh, my God,” she crumbled then, breaking into sobs.
Pescoli asked briskly, “What’s your address?”
Darlie rattled it off.
“Okay, stay put,” Pescoli said, dread seeping into her heart. “We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER 19
Barclay Sphinx was waiting at a round table in a meeting room off the lobby of the motel. Three window shades were open to a spectacular view of the parking lot, where shafts of sunlight were bouncing off the single row of cars parked next to the fenced-off swimming pool.
Dressed in a black T-shirt and another jacket and jeans, he wasn’t alone. Not only was Michelle seated in one of the chairs but also two men and a woman, Fiona, whom she’d been introduced to at the meeting the night before.
Michelle was beaming, her makeup fresh, her sleeveless white dress hugging her curves, her hair twisted into some kind of braid that reminded Bianca of Elsa in Frozen. How long she’d been there, Bianca didn’t know, but she was seated right next to Sphinx.
“There they are now,” she said as Lucky held the door open for her.
“Bianca!” Sphinx said, getting to his feet and reaching out to grab her hand. His handshake was firm and warm, his smile wide, his little soul patch perfect in his otherwise clean-shaven face. “So glad you could come. Your dad and stepmom tell me that you’re in for the pilot of Big Foot Territory: Montana! Perfect!” He waved her to a chair next to him, and Lucky sat one over. Fiona Carpenter moved to sit across from Bianca. The other two guys filled a couple of the remaining chairs.
Everyone had a small laptop on the table in front of them. And, again, there was a spread of food—three trays filled with a variety of cold meats and cheeses, breads, and sliced fruit and vegetables, with dips and butter-filled bowls scattered nearby. In the center of the display were two pots of coffee—regular and decaf—and some bottles of water.
“Help yourself,” Sphinx said when he caught Bianca eyeing the pineapple spears and strawberries dipped in chocolate. “Fi, get her a plate, would you? And for the dad—Luke, right?” At Lucky’s nod, Sphinx continued, “Get him something, too.” Fiona promptly began filling two small paper plates. “I apologize,” Sphinx said, and glanced at Michelle. “As I already told Michelle here, I have to leave tonight. I’m working on a new series about ghost towns in Oregon, so I’m swinging down to Darby Gulch and won’t be back here for a couple of days. At that time, we’ll begin filming, just as I outlined at the meeting last night. I’d want you to star in the first episode for certain, possibly the second depending upon how long I can string out the story line of the murdered girl.”
Napkins and a variety of the refreshments were set in front of Lucky and Bianca. “Anything to drink?” Fi asked.
Bianca settled on a water, and Lucky poured himself a cup of coffee. Sphinx barely missed a beat as he continued, “The production crew will arrive tomorrow, legal’s working to get everything set up, someone will be a liaison between us and the police department. I was hoping that your ex”—he looked over the tops of his glasses to Luke—“would be that person, but I got a real resistant vibe off her last night.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Luke said, picking up the suggestion. “She’ll probably come along.”
“Excellent. Her insight and the whole cop angle would be great. And the gritty, tough-as-nails pregnant cop angle would really connect with some of our viewers. Yeah, I like it,” he said, rubbing his soul patch as he thought, his eyes narrowing on some inner vision. “I like it a lot.”
“The baby is due soon,” Bianca pointed out.
“Well, we’ll be pushing this fast. As early as the end of this week, or the weekend. The sooner the better.” He was thinking out loud and said to Fi, “Take notes.”
“Always do,” she replied, typing on the laptop in front of her.
“Let’s get the whole town involved in this, yes? Some sort of celebration.” He fluttered his fingers, caught up in his vision. “Something like Big Foot Daze. How fast could we put that together? We’d need a little run time for publicity, but we could get the town involved, have a celebration.”
“That’ll take some time,” Fiona warned him.
“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll talk to the press. There’s a local newspaper guy who wants an interview, Manny Something or Other.”
“Manny Douglas. Got him on file. Just sent his info to your phone,” Fi said.
“We can print our own flyers. Maybe Bianca could do a radio or TV interview or two—?” He glanced at Bianca, who didn’t know what to say.
“We could make that work,” Lucky said, nodding and grinning.
Michelle, too, was smiling.
“We’ll get the mayor involved. You’ve got her name?” Sphinx asked.
“Right here,” Fiona replied, glancing at her computer screen. “Carolina Justison.”
“I’ll need that number.”
“Just sent it to your phone.”
“Good. Include the cop’s, Bianca’s mother, and the sheriff’s number as well.”
“I did.”
“God, love ya, Fi,” he said.
“Sure, sure.”
“Mom won’t like it,” Bianca said, earning her a reproving look from Dad.
“I said I’d take care of it,” Lucky reminded her a bit tightly.
“Good, good. And even if she’s not a believer, which I sense she’s not, we can make that work, too. It’ll add a little tension to the story line.” He glanced at Bianca. “I’m loving this. All we need to get started is a contract.” With a nod to Fi, he said, “I’ll pass the baton to my assistant and she can get through all the legal stuff. You’ll be paid, of course, as will all of the extras, people from the club last night, I’m thinking. Like those two or three guys who were mixing it up at the end of th
e meeting?”
“Ivor Hicks and Fred Nesmith?” Luke asked.
“Sure. Or guys like them. Local color. We need passionate people, very . . . rural, almost backwoodsy. Authentic. People that would be fascinating to our demographics, so no accountant or insurance salesman types, if you know what I mean. We want to see the raw side of Montana, the real gun-totin’ cowboys and hunters and maybe some anti-government folks. Fi will take over, and when we’ve nailed down the contract, we’ll talk story line and character development.”
“Character development?” Luke asked.
“I’d like to work out Bianca’s character.”
She said, “Uh . . . I’m me.”
“Of course, of course, but maybe a . . . more condensed version of you, if you will, a stronger, more potent version.” He turned his gaze from Bianca to his assistant. “Fi, why don’t you . . . ?”
Fiona smoothly segued into the point woman, directing them all to look at their computer screens. She laid out everything. All explained neatly and concisely.
And in the end, Bianca and Lucky signed.
She was, Michelle insisted, on her way to being a star.
Bianca wasn’t sure about that, but she did know that, when she got home and admitted to her mother what she’d done, there would be hell to pay.
* * *
The Cronins hadn’t seen or heard from their daughter since the night before.
“Normally, I wouldn’t worry,” Darlie said as she sat on the edge of a worn couch next to her husband. Pescoli and Alvarez were in chairs on the far side of an oval coffee table. “But this is so not like Lindsay.” Darlie folded her hands over her lap, then refolded them nervously. Petite and blond, she wore a skirt and lacy top and kept glancing at her husband, a round man with a paunch, thinning brown hair, and a clipped mustache. Today he hadn’t shaved, and silvery stubble covered his jaw and chin. He was in jeans and a T-shirt and he stared, for the most part, at the floor.
She handed Pescoli a neatly typed list of Lindsay’s friends. She swore she knew of no one who would want to hurt her daughter. At that statement, she reached silently to her side, and her husband’s large hand clasped over her outstretched palm.
“I keep telling myself she’ll come home, that her phone is out of battery or turned off or lost or whatever, but . . .” She swallowed hard, the cords of her neck straining as she thought of the direst of consequences. Clearing her throat, she said, “We just want her back. We’ve called her brother. He’s studying at Boise State, and Malcolm offered to come home, but we didn’t see any reason for that; not unless he hears from her.”
After taking her statement, they all walked through her room, saw the open window and the pillows bumping up under the covers.
“This is how you found the bed?” Pescoli asked.
Darlie nodded. “I know. It looks like she left of her own accord.”
Hell yeah, it did. Pescoli remembered pulling this same trick herself and then, as a mother of teens, finding a similar bed with a fake body composed of pillows when Jeremy had sneaked out to meet his girlfriend, Heidi Brewster, when they’d both been in high school. “I’d say so,” Pescoli said. She checked the window, found it unlatched, slightly open, as if whoever might have sneaked out of this room had used it for escape and left it open just enough in case she had to hoist herself back in the same way.
“No footprints in the flowerbed,” Darlie said from the doorway of the small room with its circular rag rug, hand-me-down desk, and twin bed covered in a striped duvet. “I checked.”
“Maybe this was the backup plan, to return if she got locked out or didn’t want to make too much noise coming back in.”
“That’s the point,” Darlie said, her voice cracking. “She never came back.” Roy, standing next to her, placed a big arm over her shaking shoulders.
“Even if she did sneak out, she thought she was coming back.”
Roy whispered, “Shh . . . it’s okay, honey.”
She threw off his arm. “It’s not okay, Roy. You know it’s not okay!” Dabbing at her eyes where mascara was starting to run, she said to Pescoli, “Just find her, okay. Find my baby!”
* * *
Alvarez and Pescoli returned to the car. For whatever reason, Lindsay Cronin had waited until her parents were in bed, then sneaked out. They’d been right; there were no footprints in the mulch of the flowerbed, no indication that anyone had climbed in or out of the window. Pescoli called the station and gave Zoller Lindsay’s phone number so that records could be requested, as well as a description and the license plate of her Ford Focus for a BOLO—be on the lookout.
“I hope they’re wrong about her,” Pescoli said. “Maybe she has a wild streak her parents don’t know about and she’s sleeping it off somewhere, not realizing her phone is turned off.”
“Or without battery,” Alvarez said. “What teenager has their phone off?”
Pescoli grunted and the baby kicked again. “We have to stop for lunch before we do anything else. I’m starved.”
A few minutes later, they pulled into Wild Wills, a restaurant in the lower section of town on the river, one of Pescoli’s favorite haunts.
Inside the front door, they passed by “Grizz,” a huge stuffed Grizzly Bear that always wore a perpetual bared-tooth snarl and glass eyes and was outfitted by the staff for the season or holiday. Today he was wearing a pink polka-dot bikini with a matching floppy beach hat.
Pescoli noted the parasol tucked under one of his forelegs and a martini glass with a fake fruity drink tied to one of the huge, furry creature’s paws. Someone had even painted his claws a flamingo pink, and to keep with the theme, a pair of plastic flamingos stood next to him, one sporting a bow tie, the other a choker necklace.
“I have this eerie feeling that all the bears in the county are plotting their revenge for this kind of humiliation, that they’ll pull a Planet of the Apes on us and take over. Put us in cages, make us do all their dirty work and do lab tests on us.”
“That’s only if the rats join them.”
Which made Pescoli think again about the creature that had been chasing Bianca.
What had Farnsby said when she’d asked if the “monster” could have been a bear? “You see any claws?”
Even painted dark pink, Grizz’s claws looked deadly. Long, curved, sharp, and, today, tinted raspberry.
So what had chased her daughter?
Not a Sasquatch. No matter what members of the BFBs thought.
They moved into the spacious dining room with booths lining the walls and tables placed over the old plank floors. Overhead, wagon-wheel chandeliers had been suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling. On the walls, stuffed heads of animals, long dead, had been mounted, so that it appeared a variety of the creatures native to the area were staring down at the patrons as they dined. Bison, moose, bighorn sheep, deer, and elk, were present, along with a full-sized cougar, porcupines, and a beaver. On one wall, over the slowly spinning pie display, geese, pheasants, and ducks flew toward the exposed beams of the ceiling.
Alvarez cast her gaze at the once-living creatures that had become wall decorations. Above them, the huge head of a bison loomed, glassy eyes staring sightlessly. “They do more to squelch your appetite rather than enhance it.”
“Sandy says the customers love ’em. Especially the tourists.”
“Hmmm.”
Alvarez ordered an Asian chicken salad with iced herbal tea, and Pescoli chose a turkey pot pie with a side of fries and sparkling water. The place was crowded, most tables occupied, the waiters moving quickly from one four-top to the next. Alvarez and Pescoli discussed the case, and by the time the food came, Pescoli thought she might faint. She dug in eagerly, making short work of everything on her plate, including the slice of orange that was supposed to be the garnish. Then, while Alvarez was still picking at her salad, Pescoli ordered a piece of peach crumble with ice cream. “You only live once,” she said to Alvarez when the dessert came, piled with vanilla ice crea
m, a dab of whipped cream, and a drizzle of peach syrup.
“You’re eating for two.”
“What I’d really like is a Diet Coke, cigarette, and a beer . . . not in any order. Oh, yeah, and a corned beef sandwich, but I’ve got to wait until the baby’s born.”
“Maybe you could throw in some sushi, too.”
Pescoli took a bite of ice cream and shook her head. “No raw fish for this girl, pregnant or not.”
“Don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Don’t know and really don’t care.”
As she finished her dessert, they discussed the case and the new wrinkle of Lindsay Cronin’s disappearance. Disturbing, yes. But connected? Hard to say.
Alvarez’s phone made a little bubbling noise. She looked at it, got a quick message, and nodded. To Pescoli, she said, “They got the records for Destiny’s phone. Zoller’s already going over the texts and calls, comparing them to her social media accounts, and the statements from everyone who knew her.”
“Maybe we’ll get something.”
“Let’s hope.”
By the time Pescoli scraped off every last bite, she felt satisfied, her blood sugar restored to order, the baby no longer kicking. They paid the bill and drove directly to Northwest General, the hospital where Destiny Montclaire and Simone Delaney volunteered, the very hospital in which, months earlier, Dan Grayson had died. Neither Alvarez or Pescoli said anything about it, but it was as if his ghost were there between them.
Grimmer than they had been, each lost in her own thoughts, they didn’t speak as they made their way to the cafeteria where Destiny had once worked part-time as an unpaid volunteer. No one within the kitchen staff had a bad thing to say about her. She was friendly and efficient, punctual and responsible, if at times quiet. Never did her supervisor worry that she would be late or not show up. She’d helped the cooks at the busiest times of the day, was always available to clean tables.
From the cafeteria, Alvarez and Pescoli made their way to the children’s ward. Destiny had transferred to the children’s wing about six months earlier. Here, they were told, she read stories or played with the kids or, once again, helped clean up.