“Okay,” said Sally. “Fire away.”
“As you’re obviously aware, the options for young girls and women who get into trouble are pretty grim here in Wyoming,” said Maude.
“What kind of trouble?” said Sally.
“The kind that’s always referred to as ‘getting into trouble,’ ” said Maude.
“Oh. Like that young lady who was trying to keep the appointment with her doctor, the one you were helping,” said Sally.
“Yes. Poor kid. It’s almost like the dark ages all over again,” said Maude. She wasn’t talking about the medieval era. As Sally knew, Maude had been pregnant and unmarried in Laramie in the 1960s. Meg Dunwoodie had helped her out of the jam, changing her life and earning her love and gratitude forever.
“Only worse, in some ways. Back in your day,” said Sally, “there wouldn’t have been demonstrations and explosions. There just wouldn’t have been any choices.”
“I’d never have thought we’d be back to underground railroads, but we are. Which is how I happened to be passing the time in a certain Fort Collins doctor’s waiting room, a couple of days after that fiasco, and saw a large blond man walk up to the receptionist’s desk and ask if anyone had seen his girlfriend. He said he hadn’t seen her in a few days, and he was down from Laramie, trying to get word to her that her father had been killed.”
“You happened to overhear this in a waiting room?” Sally said.
“I have excellent hearing,” said Maude. “Unlike people who ruined their ears with loud rock ’n’ roll.”
“It helps if you don’t care who knows what a busybody you are,” said Sally.
“On the contrary,” said Maude. “I had to hide behind a plastic ficus tree. I was worried the guy might recognize me—”
“Because,” Sally concluded, “you remembered seeing him at the demonstration. He was praying with Bea Preston and shoving Hawk around.”
“How did you guess?” said Maude.
“Bea told me she had somebody looking for Charlie,” Sally said.
“Since when are you and Bea Preston intimate confidantes?” Maude asked.
“I went to see her after the memorial service,” Sally said. “We need to get down there, Maude. I hate to think this, but the right hand clearly knows what the left hand is doing around here. What if Bea’s guy gets to Charlie before the police do? Bea makes no secret of the fact that she’d like to have the poor kid locked up. I wouldn’t put it past her to take it into her own hands.” She thought a minute more. “You know, I don’t think we should take Aggie with us. What if we manage to find Charlie, and there’s some kind of problem? I don’t want to put her in that kind of situation.”
“Obviously you don’t know my great-niece very well,” said Maude. “Aggie called me yesterday and asked me to take her shopping today. I think she must have heard from Charlie, and they’ve made a plan to meet. She’s damn determined to ride to the rescue.”
Sally thought. “Charlie would have told her not to go to the cops, and Aggie would feel like she had to agree. But why wouldn’t she just ask her mother or father to take her? Why you?”
“My nephew and niece are loving, compassionate, wise, and honest people,” said Maude. “They’d probably feel they had to call the sheriff. On top of which, they object to the notion of carrying concealed. Which, as it happens, I don’t. As Aggie well knows,” Maude finished. “And it seems she also knows about the underground railroad. Kids these days.”
Oh good. Just a typical Saturday of schlepping around the mall, looking for a deeply damaged, possibly psychotic, perhaps homicidal girl-woman, with a hell-bent teenager and a pistol-packing sexagenarian. Potentially shadowed by an evangelical enforcer and God only knew who else, not to mention being one step ahead of or behind peace officers who would not look at all kindly on the interference of private citizens, however well intentioned (or well armed). Couldn’t get much better than that.
Hawk was playing Saturday morning city league basketball. She’d better let him know where she was going. But how much detail? She left him a note: “Gone to the mall in Ft. C. with the girls, for some retail therapy. Call my cell if you need me.”
Just another shopping spree with the gals.
“So tell me,” said Sally to Maude as they hurtled south on Highway 287, Maude’s Chevy Suburban having no trouble hauling the high road at eighty miles per hour, “how did you happen to be in the waiting room of a medical clinic that probably considers patient confidentiality on a par with nuclear secrets?”
Maude glanced over at her. “I’ve done some referrals, some counseling, and, well, some transportation. In cases where there’s been recent violence, and where the patient is a minor, the clinic sometimes likes to keep the counselor of record in the loop.”
“And you’re that counselor for Charlie Preston,” Sally said, drawing the obvious conclusion. “But Charlie’s not a minor.” Sally thought again. “So she’s been there before?”
“Draw your own conclusions,” said Maude, eyes on the road.
“But you didn’t drive her down there this time. She had a car.”
“I know about the clinic too,” Aggie put in, leaning forward from the backseat. “Charlie told me she was going. She was really scared.”
Sally reflected that at the age of fourteen, her biggest life concern had been whether her boyfriend’s braces and hers would get locked if she let him kiss her. “Was that before somebody beat her up?” Sally asked.
“It was the day before she left,” Aggie answered. “We talked on the phone, so I didn’t see her. She didn’t say anything about having been beaten, but she was freaking out.” She looked out the window at a herd of antelope grazing by a snow fence.
“Abortion is a hard choice for anybody to make,” said Sally.
“It’s a lot harder if you’ve got a stepmother who tells you it’s one more reason you’ll burn in hell,” Maude said.
Nobody said much of anything else in the hour it took them to make their way to the mall. The place was jammed. They finally found a parking spot about five million miles from the entrance, and once inside, had to weave their way among phalanxes of teenagers shouting at each other and gabbing on cell phones, oblivious mothers wrestling behemoth baby carriages and herding zigzagging toddlers, and supersize seniors moseying along at half the pace of the crowd. One part of Sally’s brain told her that she should chill out and enjoy the spectacle. This was, after all, the cavalcade of American humanity, the modern-day equivalent of strolling the promenades of Paris in the days of Toulouse-Lautrec. Another part of her brain considered the virtues of neutron bombs.
There were sales everywhere; no wonder the mall was packed. They made slow progress, walking into every store to see if by any chance the bored clerk talking on the phone, or the gum-cracking kid sullenly helping customers, might be Charlie Preston. Jewelry stores and shoe stores, shops selling potpourri and cell phones, beauty products and maternity wear, CDs, DVDs, pianos and eyeglasses. They walked the aisles of the bed and bath emporium, peering around every rack full of overstuffed, overprinted comforters, flimsy tables, and pillows hard and springy enough to bounce a quarter halfway to the moon. No Charlie.
They braved a trendy jeans-and-shirts store, dark, crowded, and deafeningly soundscaped with grating pop music. Aggie obviously knew and loved the place. Sally wondered whether the experts who developed marketing strategies for youth stores had cut their professional teeth in the military, prying Manuel Noriega from his palace by blasting Metallica at brain-splintering volume until the Panamanian dictator came out whimpering. Were the geniuses counting on the fact that parents would simply hand over their credit cards to kids piling up purchases, and then run screaming back into the mall, desperate for an Orange Julius?
No Charlie there either. They stopped for a lifesaving Orange Julius.
They tried Sears. Maude got her watch battery. Sally found a table full of cashmere sweaters at half price. No Charlie.
They hit
the upscale department store. Aggie scored a pair of jeans marked down from two hundred to forty dollars. Sally wondered when jeans in the junior section of a department store had started costing more than a week’s worth of groceries for a family of four.
Still no Charlie.
“That’s about all I can take of the mall,” Maude conceded. Maude was possibly the strongest person Sally had ever known, but consumerism had sapped her powers. “Let’s go sit somewhere quiet and have a bite to eat.”
Somewhere quiet? Fort Collins, like every town in the United States, had been taken over by franchise restaurants that specialized in gargantuan portions and acoustics designed to wake the dead. “Let’s get something to eat, anyway,” said Sally, as they headed out into the parking lot.
Two aisles away from Maude’s Suburban, they saw flashing lights and heard raised voices, staticky radio transmissions. The Fort Collins police, it seemed, were making a bust. Sally caught sight of the backs of two officers, cuffing a young man in a backward baseball cap and a tank top revealing arms covered with ink.
“Oh my gosh!” Aggie exclaimed, thrusting her shopping bag at Sally, cutting away from them and heading between cars, toward the action. “That’s Billy Reno!”
“How do you know?” Sally asked, hustling after Aggie.
“I recognize the dragon tattoo!” Aggie said, and shouted, “Billy!”
The suspect glanced over his shoulder. He had bewildered eyes and just about the sweetest smile Sally had ever seen. “Huh?” he said. “Oh. Hi, kid,” he told Aggie.
“Eyes front!” barked one of the cops.
“What’s going on here, Officer?” said Maude, a restraining hand on Aggie’s arm as she addressed the guy checking the handcuffs.
The officer ignored her.
Now a tow truck came down the aisle, lights spinning. The driver hopped out, and the other cop pointed at a Mazda Miata with County 5 Wyoming plates.
“That’s Charlie’s car!” said Aggie.
“See?” Billy Reno told the cops. “I told you! Charlie’s my girlfriend. I’m just here to pick her up at work. I didn’t steal no car, man!”
“Right, son. And I’m the king of England,” said one of the officers, who did, actually, bear a slight resemblance to Prince Charles.
“I’m not shittin’ you, Officer. This really, truly is my girl’s car. I haven’t done nothin’ here.”
The other cop, who looked more like Derek Jeter than the Windsor scion, sneered. “No, of course not. You’re just a sweet young thing. The fact that you’ve got a sheet longer than that tat on your back is all an unfortunate misunderstanding, not to mention that the owner of this here sports car reported it stolen a week ago. Get the fuck in the car,” he finished, shoving Billy’s head down as he forced him into the back of the patrol car.
“Wait!” said Aggie. “He’s telling the truth. This is my friend’s car. She must be in the mall. Just wait a minute!”
The Prince Charles–ish officer let go of Billy Reno and walked toward them, picking up a clipboard from the roof of the patrol car as he approached. “Hold on there, young lady,” he said, “is there some information you’d like to share with us?”
Aggie looked at the tow truck driver, attaching the big hitch to the Miata. Panic and puzzlement showed on her face. “That’s—that’s my friend’s car. Her dad gave it to her. She works—I think she works, like, somewhere in the mall.”
“Let’s slow down a minute here,” said Maude, addressing the officer. “My name is Maude Stark. This girl is my niece, Agatha. And the boy’s girlfriend has disappeared from Laramie. Her name is Charlotte Preston.”
The cop nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” He took something off the clipboard, handed it to Aggie. “This wouldn’t be the girl you’re talking about, would it?”
Sally looked. It was a digital copy of a photo of Charlie. Probably her high school graduation photo. Perfect, air-brushed hair, phony smile, no facial jewelry. No bruises. The girl looked as if she’d been embalmed.
Aggie nodded. She looked like she might cry.
“We’ve received a missing person report on this Charlotte Preston. There are officers in the mall right now. We expect to have her very shortly.”
Chapter 12
The Bra
The Fort Collins police turned out to be more confident than they had reason to be. Sally, Maude, and Aggie hung around for the next two hours, while the cops took Billy away and searched for Charlie Preston. To no avail. Sally wondered why. Maybe the girl had actually been at the mall, working at her job, when Sally and Maude and Aggie had first arrived. Maybe Charlie had somehow caught sight of them and fled, without getting word to Billy Reno. That would explain his coming to pick her up, and Charlie being nowhere to be found.
Or possibly Charlie had seen them come into the place she worked, and hidden in a back room until they left. And then gone back to work for a while, or simply skedaddled.
Or maybe they’d just missed her, in all the mall madness. Charlie worked her shift selling shampoo or candles or wireless plans or chicken teriyaki, and when she got off, headed out into the parking lot to meet Billy. She might have seen the cops and run off then.
Or maybe Bea Preston’s people had found her. Sally decided not to think about that, for the moment anyway.
Whatever the situation, it was Billy Reno’s bad luck. The Fort Collins cops had ID’d the Miata, had made the driver’s license Billy gave him as a fake, had connected the dots between the car, the missing girl, and the boy with the dragon tattoo. They’d tapped into Billy’s rap sheet, put the cuffs on him, and hauled him off, complaining about how much paperwork it would take to get him extradited back to Wyoming.
Sally had no idea whether Billy Reno might have killed Brad Preston. She just didn’t know enough about him, about the circumstances, about the crime. But she did feel damn sure he hadn’t stolen the Miata. Aggie and Maude agreed with her on that point, and they kept one another spun up about it all the way back to Laramie.
“Billy’s a really nice guy,” Aggie kept saying. “I mean, he’s a criminal and all, but that doesn’t mean he’s, like, evil or something. He just steals cars. And maybe some electronics and stuff.”
“Aggie,” said Sally. “I know that’s what Charlie told you. But at the very least, he’s got some serious problems.” She wondered how to ask. “Is it possible that he’s the one who’s been beating on Charlie, and she’s trying to cover for him? That’s pretty common, among battered women.”
“No! You should have seen her when she first started living with us, Sally. She was a mess. And she didn’t even know Billy then. And she says he’s really sweet. He gave her a diamond necklace.”
“I bet he did,” said Maude dryly.
“Don’t be mean. Charlie says she loves him. So we’ve got to help him. He’s been in so much trouble, if they put him in jail, they might never let him out.”
“I don’t think they can do that over a stolen car. But maybe we should see what we can do,” said Maude.
“I think you should talk to Sheriff Langham,” Aggie insisted.
“Billy’s probably still in Colorado. They have to extra-dite him to Wyoming,” said Maude.
“At the very least,” said Sally as they pulled into town, “we can go down to the jail and see if Dickie’s there. I think,” she continued, “that we ought to take you home first, Aggie.”
“Don’t even think about objecting,” said Maude, as Aggie opened her mouth to protest. “Consider what your mom and dad would do to me if we took you along.”
That did it. She pouted a little, but she conceded the point. They dropped Aggie off, and Sally and Maude headed straight for the sheriff’s office.
They walked into the reception area, separated by an upholstered half-wall partition from a bullpen where clerical workers took phone calls, stared at computer screens and clicked keyboards, relayed messages, and sorted piles of paper. At a desk in one corner, a woman clerk was talking quietly with Dave H
aggerty and Scotty Atkins. The detective and the lawyer glanced up when Sally and Maude came in the door. Scotty’s eyes narrowed microscopically, but he appeared otherwise indifferent to their presence. Haggerty bobbed his head in their direction and returned to the conversation.
“We might as well get out of here,” said Maude. “The kid evidently called Haggerty to represent him. There’s nothing else we can do. I’ve got animals to feed.”
Sally didn’t. And Scotty hadn’t come out and asked them to leave, or even bothered to inquire what they might be doing there. She really ought to let the police know that Bea Preston had the blond guy out looking for Charlie. Plus Dave Haggerty had acknowledged them. So she felt like sticking around, at least for a while. Hawk would be wondering where she was. She’d better give him a call.
She pulled out her cell phone, realized she’d shut it off. When she turned it on, she found Hawk had left a message. An old friend of his from grad school had called to say he was in Cheyenne, doing a deal for a coal-bed methane developer. He’d offered to buy a couple of steaks at the Hitching Post, and that had sounded good to Hawk. He hoped Sally had been having a good therapeutic time at the mall and had spent lots of money. He’d have his cell phone if she needed anything, and he’d be back mid-evening.
No rush getting home then. Sally told Maude to go ahead and go, that she could walk home or get a ride with Dave Haggerty. Maude gave her a look, then told her to call with any news and took off.
And so she sat down in a grimy plastic chair in the waiting area, picked up a tattered copy of a three-year-old Red-book magazine, and nonchalantly strained her ears to filter out ambient noise, to catch anything she could of the conversation between Haggerty, the clerk, and Detective Atkins.
Years of practice picking out talky students in lecture halls had honed her auditory skills. And then, of course, she’d put herself through college and grad school playing country rock in honky-tonks. She’d spent hundreds of hours trying to tune a guitar in the midst of shrieking crowds, hollering musicians, shattering glass. Or it might be that she was just terminally nosy. She caught plenty.
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