The Vanishing Girls

by Callie Browning

  Holden reached forward and shook the matriarch’s hand. He ignored the wetness of the damp handkerchief clutched in her palm.

  “He said you do funerals too. We ain’t got much, but how much is it gonna cost for you to — to…”

  The end of the sentence dangled in the air. It always did. No parent wanted to say “bury my child”.

  The tears were still streaming down her face, but her eyes looked glassy and numb. The sedatives had begun to kick in. Holden knew she needed to rest. He patted her shoulder and said, “I can visit you tomorrow to show you some options." Donna's mother simply stared until one of the relatives — a sister perhaps, based on their resemblance — guided her to a small hatchback to rest and compose herself.

  Just then, the hum of a heavy engine and two square beams of light broke through the night as Paul’s Camaro travelled slowly across the rutted earth. Out of the corner of his eye, Holden noticed Eileen’s mouth tighten. They had only left the party three hours earlier; Eileen's disgust for his brother was still fresh.

  Paul was dressed as though on his way to an eighteenth-century cotillion, clad in a top hat and coattails that fluttered behind him as he walked. He tipped his hat to the policemen and said, “Good evening, folks. To the bereaved, I’m very sorry for your loss.” He cast a dark look at his brother and added, “I’m the co-owner of Davis and Sons.” Holden didn’t miss the emphasis Paul placed on the last word, but he also knew that he didn't have the patience or time for a public argument. Holden excused himself and steered Paul back to his car.

  “What are you doing here?” Holden asked through gritted teeth.

  “You know full well I’m supposed to get half of the bodies. But you and your little floozy have been swooping in and taking almost all for the past few months,” Paul fumed as he shook Holden’s hands off his shoulders.

  “Half of the government collections — which I might add, you don’t even want in the first place since you always tell them to call me. It’s up to you to organize your own funerals.”

  “Since when do you dictate what my half of the business gets to do? From now on I want half of the collections or I’m calling my lawyer.”

  Holden cocked a haughty eyebrow. “You’re only hot and sweaty about these collections because the hospital served you a cease-and-desist,” Holden said, his voice carrying a dangerously cool undertone.

  Paul bristled. Holden had struck a nerve. For years Paul had paid touters to stand outside the A&E to solicit funerals, a practice which Holden was firmly against. One touter had followed the mother to recently drowned child to her car and offered to go home with her, saying grief was nothing a little sex couldn’t cure.

  Her husband, a big-shot lawyer, claimed severe emotional distress and sued Paul. Not only was Paul’s most lucrative income generator gone, but he also had a looming lawsuit that could wipe him out. Much to Holden’s dismay, Davis and Sons had been listed as the plaintiff.

  Jaw clenched, Paul’s words came out as mere whispers between his teeth. “I own fifty per cent.”

  “Then do fifty per cent of the bloody work,” retorted Holden. “Start by paying the massive loan for the fancy building you occupy or cutting back on the huge staff you have. Maybe pull your balls out of your back pocket and do an embalming or two. Then you could do something other than dressing like a ringmaster to drive a carriage.”

  If Paul’s skin were any lighter, Holden would have seen the blood drain from his face. But knowing his brother as he did, Holden also knew that Paul would rather pursue an irrational argument than listen to reason.

  Paul was livid. “You know…at some point, that stick up your ass is going to rupture your spleen. But long before then, I’ll have made you pay for this.”

  He stalked to his car and revved the engine. The wheels spun and a shower of muddy splatters rained on Holden’s pants as Paul shifted the gears and sped off.

  “That was unnecessary,” came Eileen’s voice from behind Holden. She pulled a cleaning cloth from her handbag and set about wiping the stains.

  Holden bit his tongue. Paul wasn’t the most reliable when it came to time or ethics, but his spite had a way of being consistently punctual. Holden could handle anything his brother dished out, but his real fear was that Paul would harm Eileen. For decades, he had struggled to get along with Paul, brushing everything aside for the greater good. But Paul would cross the line if he harmed Eileen. Holden would see to it.

  He took the cloth from her and wiped his shoes before he straightened to his full height and looked at Eileen. She was so beautiful that his breath caught in his chest. Holden knew with certainty that his feelings for her had overtaken him. Not in a gentle way like the caress of a soft wave over your toes at the beach, but gradually, forcefully like thick vines that snake their way over a forgotten cottage, covering every window and door until the cottage becomes no more than a large trellis, a mere microcosm of the forest that engulfed it.

  Chapter 19

  Eye Witness

  A train of puffy clouds swept across the sky, moving in time with the jacket Holden had draped over Eileen’s shoulders as it flapped noisily in the breeze. The echoing wind magnified the clicks of the photographer's camera, the rustle of the cane arrows and the chirps of the whistling frogs, transforming the night's sounds into an ominous rhythm. Eileen shivered as she surveyed the scene. A man in a plastic coat was hunched over, partially hidden by swaying cane stalks as his gloved hands panned the area with a magnifying glass. The wind shifted, allowing Eileen to catch snatches of the investigator's conversation with the photographer.

  “Can you get a picture of this?” he asked, pointing at the section of the cane trash where the victim had been found. He grunted as he stood up and massaged the small of his back.

  Eileen screwed up her eyes to see what he was referring to, but she was too far away. “What am I taking pictures of?” queried the photographer.

  “This little pink thing right here. Looks like a fingernail to me, one of those fake ones women wear when they go out.”

  The photographer shrugged. “Ain’t ever seen one before, but it might be.” He adjusted the camera’s aperture, leaned in and clicked the shutter twice before he adjusted the settings again and snapped a few more shots.

  “How soon can I get back those photos?”

  “A few days. I’ve got urgent ones to push through first.”

  “Fine,” grumbled the investigator. He gingerly picked up the shiny pink thing and dropped it inside a bag, sealed it and put it in his case, a pensive look on his face. “That girl had fake nails?”

  “Dunno,” said the photographer as he swapped out the used film for a new roll. The investigator squinted at him like he wanted to gouge his eyes out with the tweezers in his hand. Eileen shook her head in amusement. Even she could see that the photographer was there to do his job; no more, but preferably less if he could get away with it.

  Holden came up behind her. He had spent the better part of twenty minutes chatting with Clifford and Derricks before Clifford had left to go to the morgue. “We’ve both had a long night and there's nothing more we can do here. Let's go home.”

  The cane field was part of a large plantation, crisscrossed with sunken cart roads made by fat tractor wheels. The easiest thing to do was to head south, going deeper into the cane ground until they came out to a small village on the other side. Once in the car, Eileen turned the steering wheel and drove down the narrow lane flanked by tall stalks of cane. The humps in the middle of the track were covered with thick patches of grass that flicked the metal underbody so it sounded like thousands of tiny pings echoing throughout the car's interior. “I could never understand why tractors sink the ground down to the point where the grass in the middle is like a long island,” Eileen grumbled as she drove.

  “They fill the tyres with water,” responded Holden.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Water acts as a ballast which the tractors need for stability.”

&nb
sp; “Hmm.” Eileen considered what he said and then asked, “How do you know so much?”

  Holden smiled. “I read. You read a lot too, but mostly those classic novels where the people never even heard of electricity so you wouldn’t know about tractor tyres.” Eileen laughed and wiped the windshield with the sleeve of her shirt, trying to erase a smudge that blocked her view. It barely helped the visibility. "Geez, it's dark," she mumbled. Ahead of them, the headlight’s beams illuminated the cart road but left the fields on either side doused in heavy darkness. The thickness of the night pressed against the car doors, threatening to swallow them whole.

  A chill went down her spine as she gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  Holden's voice was gentle as he asked, “Afraid of the dark?”

  She smiled ruefully. “A little bit. The night always felt like a time that wasn’t entirely safe.”

  “I see,” was all he said.

  “I know it may seem strange to you given the circumstances, but I was always afraid of the night because of strange sounds. And now, with everything going on…” her voice trailed off.

  “I can understand that.” He cleared his throat and asked, “What led you to your previous line of work if you don’t mind me asking?”

  She sucked in her bottom lip and blew a breath through her nose. “I found out that the lady who raised me was keeping a secret from me and we had a big falling out. A few months later, she moved to America and I had no way to reach her to ask for help.”

  Holden frowned. "Sounds like a bad secret indeed."

  Eileen's mouth soured. "If lying to someone for their whole life constitutes a bad secret, then it's abhorrent."

  Holden raised an eyebrow, his expression grave as he contemplated her words.

  Eileen sighed. “I had a friend who kept telling me it’s not that bad. I could do it for a few months until I got back on my feet. Let’s just say that we’re no longer friends. I regret doing it now.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “There aren't a whole lot of choices for females out there. Which is kind of obvious given that these women were killed because they’re desperate for jobs,” she added soberly. “By comparison, being afraid of the dark is something I can get over.”

  Holden thought quietly for a moment before nodding his head. “Start with the little fears and the big fears fall in line. Even people like my father had their share of doubts about their ability. He once confessed that he almost didn’t start the business.”

  Eileen tried to remember a time when the peach building hadn't served as a landmark. She couldn't imagine a world without Davis and Sons.

  “What did he do?”

  “He said that he learned the hard way that fear wasn’t his friend. He said you’ve gotta kick it in the nuts and chase it away.”

  The man’s wisdom was on point as usual. “What's your fear?” Eileen asked.

  “I can’t think of any.” Holden shrugged.

  The car jerked to a stop as Eileen pressed the brakes in the middle of the field.

  “Want to drive?”

  Holden looked at her and then the steering wheel as though trying to connect the dots. "But I haven't driven in a long time."

  "Because?"

  He was about to respond when he stopped himself and looked at her. The moon had come up, full and round in the sky, and dusted everything in sight with pale light.

  His laugh was sardonic as he muttered, "'Son, everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear’."

  To Eileen’s surprise, he got out, walked around the car and waited until she climbed over the handbrake before sliding behind the wheel and shifting the car into drive. Hesitation and doubt evaporated and Holden looked like a brand new man behind the wheel, one prepossessed of himself and his capabilities. At the end of the cane field, he turned the car onto the road, his capable hands manoeuvering the car through the village and toward the highway. They drove past shops, small chattel houses and men playing road tennis under a streetlight.

  “Do you want me to take you home?” Holden asked.

  Eileen bit her lip, her mind warring with itself as she considered the implications. Did he want to spend the night at her house? She pursed her lips and said slowly, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “It’s late; you shouldn’t go home alone given the current climate. I can drive you there and come back in the morning to take you to work.”

  “Oh…yes…that would be very nice.”

  Damned him for being such a gentleman, she silently fumed as he followed her directions.

  “I’m sorry about Paul,” said Holden as the wind whipped through the windows. “He was a full ass tonight.”

  Eileen’s cheeks coloured; she had pretended not to hear his floozy comment, but her ruse wasn’t fooling Holden.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I have to worry about it. Paul has been getting away with murder for years and it's got to stop. Everything with him is pure luck. Do you know that he signed up for the Vietnam war and they called it off before he even got a uniform?”

  “That is lucky,” Eileen agreed as she turned his words over in her mind.

  "You're telling me."

  “Now that you’ve mentioned your brother…” Eileen cleared her throat, trying to frame her words carefully. “…I had the chance to talk to the young man in the scrubs. He’s Grenadian and he’s studying at the medical school here.”

  Holden raised an eyebrow. “So what’s his relationship to them ?”

  “He’s the victim’s cousin and he said something interesting when we were chatting.”

  “Oh.” Holden’s interest piqued.

  “He said she was heading to a job interview.”

  Holden smacked the steering wheel. “We’re definitely on the right path.”

  “As a matter of speaking,” Eileen said slowly before she cleared her throat. “He went to a study group in the north, and when she got off the bus, a black car was waiting for her. He couldn’t see the driver, but he said the car was fancy.”

  “What did he mean by ‘fancy’?”

  Eileen looked Holden in the eye. “He pointed to Paul’s car.”

  Chapter 20

  The Reckoning

  Maybe telling him wasn’t the best idea, Eileen reflected the next day. She should have known that Holden wouldn’t race to the nearest police station and have his brother clapped in irons. But on the other hand, his brooding anger didn’t seem like a natural progression either.

  He’d left the car at her house and taken a taxi home, choosing to wait outside in the verandah as he stewed silently in the humid night air. By the time Eileen got to work the next morning, Holden had been there long enough to drink two entire pots of Earl Grey, evidenced by the mound of used tea bags in the bin. His tone was clipped as he dictated two letters before he left work long before lunchtime. She bit her lip. In the months she’d been there, Holden had seldom left on time, far less early.

  She'd always heard that blood was thicker than water but Eileen was an orphan; she had never been forced to test the theory. Almost every story Holden told involved Paul flouting rules with impunity. Holden had said it himself: his brother was accustomed to getting away with murder. What if it was literal this time?

  Her feelings for Holden warred with her disgust and fear for Paul and it left her stomach in knots. If she could gather enough evidence to implicate Paul she would ensure that he faced the consequences of his actions, because there was a good chance that he was the culprit. Not only did Paul have medical expertise, but an eye witness had connected Paul’s car to his cousin's disappearance. She rifled through the telephone directory after Holden left, but neither of the listings for Paul's home or funeral parlour matched the other numbers on the photocopied classifieds she kept in her handbag. Despite that small snag, she knew that it had to be him.

  Eileen was still pondering the situation an hour later at the picnic table under the tree when Clifford sat across from her. Unlike E
ileen, Clifford ate outside every day, claiming that Barbadian weather was perfect whether it rained or not. But that afternoon was particularly nice: a light blue sky and fluffy clouds perfect for outdoor lounging, even if one did work at a funeral parlour.

  He straddled the wooden planks with surprising grace, and popped the lid off his homemade pudding and souse. Eileen stared at the little hairs on the flap of the pig’s ears and the mound of brown pudding swimming in pickled cucumber juice. She could never stomach that particular Saturday tradition and it showed on her face.

  Clifford laughed as he plucked an ear out of the bowl and chewed it. “You don’t like souse, little starling?”

  “Not really,” she said disdainfully as she put away her half-eaten lunch and picked back up her book.

  Clifford chuckled and peeked at the cover. “‘Little Women’? First time you reading that?”

  “No, but sometimes I check it out from the library and re-read it.”

  Clifford nodded and pulled out a pig foot. “You ever read 1984 by George Orwell?”

  Eileen shook her head.

  “Well, you’re only a year late so you could still read it,” he said, winking at her.

  She giggled. “What’s it about?”

  “Dystopian novel ‘bout a world under too much government control. Good book.”

  Eileen nodded, not sure if she should ask what ‘dystopian’ meant. Clifford side-eyed her, his eyes dancing as he said, “‘Dystopian just means gloomy fiction. That’s all, little starling.”

  Eileen smiled. “Are you saying starling or darling?”

  “Starling. It’s a bird.”

  “Oh…is that a good thing?”

  “Them real smart. Could talk better than parrots, even. Pretty feathers too. I had one.”