First Girl Gone: An absolutely addictive crime thriller with a twist (Detective Charlotte Winters Book 1)

by L. T. Vargus

  And suddenly it struck Charlie that Allie had been curiously quiet during this whole trip down memory lane. No sarcastic remarks. No crude jokes. Nothing. Maybe that was where the cold feeling came from: Allie’s absence.

  The quiet of the office seemed to swell to fill the space until it seemed hollowed out, desolate, cavernous, freezing.

  Yes. Charlie was alone. Quite alone.

  Chapter Three

  In the car that afternoon, Charlie planned her approach to the case. She’d dug through Kara’s social media accounts for the rest of the morning, scanned hundreds of pictures, posts, and comments. She’d started to get a real sense of the girl’s personality in the process: sarcastic yet sensitive. When she wasn’t smiling in her photos, she was making silly faces or posing for comedic effect. And she was witty, too. Several of her tweets had made Charlie laugh out loud.

  She’d also checked out the GPS records for the Dawkins family’s vehicles, which Misty had given her access to. These days, much of Charlie’s job came back to checking GPS logs. Everyone agreeing to track their own movements with technology certainly made a private detective’s life easier. Alas, there was nothing out of the ordinary in the Dawkins’ logs—school, work, grocery store. Kara had been grounded from driving for months, and much to Charlie’s chagrin, she had apparently abided by the rules of her punishment.

  That led to the question of how to proceed: should Charlie start talking to Kara’s family, or focus on her friends first? She had some time to figure it out. She had to swing by Frank’s first, take him to his chemo appointment.

  She pulled into the Wendy’s drive-thru on the way, ordering a Spicy Chicken Sandwich, French fries, and a Dr. Pepper.

  “Nothing for you?” Allie asked. “You know how Uncle Frank is about his food. He’ll take off a finger if he catches you bogarting his fries.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Charlie said.

  “Oh, right. Your hospital phobia. Time for some real talk, sis. You need to get over that.”

  That was easy for Allie to say. She hadn’t been there to witness the way their father had withered away after his stroke, rapidly losing every physical, mental, and bodily function, one by one. Hadn’t had to deal with their mother’s neuroses on top of everything else—every time one of the doctors came into the room, her mother had a new ailment of her own to complain about. “I think I’m having heart palpitations,” or, “I was looking in the mirror this morning, and I’m sure this mole on my shoulder didn’t look like this before.” Or Charlie’s personal favorite, “What are the symptoms of Lyme disease, because I think I might have it.”

  Hospitals made Charlie uneasy now. The smell. The noises. All of it gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. But this particular hospital was the very one where she’d watched her father die. So Allie could take her “real talk” and shove it up her non-corporeal ass.

  The line of cars moved along in the drive-thru until Charlie was at the window. The girl who passed her the food looked like she was probably in high school, and that brought Kara Dawkins back into the forefront of Charlie’s thoughts.

  Where are you, Kara?

  Frank’s house was a small white cottage on the tip of a peninsula that jutted into the St. Clair River. Gravel crunched under the tires of the Focus as Charlie rolled down the driveway and parked next to the garage.

  He’d lived here as long as Charlie could remember. When they were kids, she and Allie used to ride their bikes over here almost every day in the summer. They’d swim off Frank’s dock all morning until he called them in to eat lunch, and then they’d go right back into the water, cramps be damned.

  Charlie knocked on the door and waited for Frank to let her in. Salem Island was a small town, the kind of place where everyone knew their neighbors. Most people left their doors unlocked when they were at home. But not Frank.

  “A little bit of paranoia goes a long way,” he always said.

  When Frank opened the door, she again found herself surprised by his appearance: no hair, no eyebrows. She thought it was the latter she couldn’t get used to. He gave Charlie a squeeze and took the proffered bag of food.

  “Oh, baby. Am I glad to see you,” Frank said, eyes sparkling.

  “It’s good to see you too,” Charlie said.

  Frank raised a nonexistent eyebrow.

  “I was talking to the food.”

  A classic Uncle Frank joke, and Charlie was stuck between amusement and annoyance that she’d fallen for it yet again.

  While Frank dug in, Charlie sat on the plaid couch that had been in his living room for decades. There was a good chance it was older than she was.

  “How’s the cheating spouse racket going?” Frank asked before shoving a handful of French fries into his mouth.

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “Actually, we got a new case today. Something different.”

  “Wait, wait. Let me guess.” Frank screwed up his face like he was really thinking it over. “Missing pet. But not a cat or a dog. Too obvious. I got hired to hunt down a missing cockatoo once. You lookin’ for a bird?”

  “No. This is the real deal. An old friend of mine from high school came in. Misty Dawkins. Her daughter is missing.”

  Frank nodded.

  “See? I know there are people who look down on what we do, think we’re just a bunch of paid snoops. But what we do has value. It’s important to people. Even the missing cockatoos.” He aimed a ketchup-stained finger at her. “Never forget the human side of these cases. Whether the case is big or small, it matters to someone.”

  Frank knew Charlie had mixed feelings about trading the more upscale cases she’d worked at the law firm for the domestic cases that made up the bulk of his work on Salem Island.

  “I know,” she said, bobbing her head up and down.

  But Frank was on a roll now.

  “It’s the damn truth. Sure, sometimes things have a tendency to lean toward the sordid, but our ultimate goal is truth and justice. People need that. Society needs that. Heck, if the chemo hadn’t knocked me on my ass, that’s what I’d be doing right this minute. Fighting for another little piece of truth for someone. What else am I gonna do, watch Ricki Lake?”

  “Ricki Lake hasn’t been on TV for years.”

  Frank waved this away.

  “You know what I mean.” He took a bite of his sandwich and followed it immediately with a long pull on his drink.

  Charlie gazed out the windows that looked over the small backyard, which sloped down to the water. She could see two yellow kayaks and an old metal canoe overturned on the shore for the winter. Beyond that was the giant willow tree with a rope swing hanging down from its branches. She wondered how many times she and Allie had swung out on that rope and let themselves drop into the water. How many afternoons had they sprawled on the L-shaped dock, sunning themselves on top of their towels, hair tangled in wet ropes after their morning swim? She remembered doing underwater handstands, pretending they were synchronized swimmers. Contests to see who could hold their breath the longest. A lump formed in Charlie’s throat.

  “Ah, don’t get all nostalgic on me, sis,” Allie said.

  But it wasn’t just nostalgia for Allie that was getting to Charlie. It was Frank, too. Her uncle had always been larger than life. To start, he was six foot five. The tallest man ever, Charlie had thought when she was a kid. And the strongest—he used to carry a card in his wallet that declared he had the strength of ten men, which Charlie had taken as something official until she was nine or ten. She looked at him now, wiping fast-food grease from his mouth with a napkin. He’d lost so much weight, and the lack of hair and eyebrows only added to the frail appearance. He looked withered and gaunt. Like a tree that someone forgot to water.

  He’d maintained a positive attitude since he’d been diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Hadn’t uttered a single complaint throughout the weeks of chemotherapy. And his doctors were still optimistic. But for Charlie, the fear had started to creep in. The
re was no cure for CLL. The best they could hope for was remission, and that was only if he made it through chemo, which was taking its toll. If they didn’t start to see some progress soon, then what? She’d read up online, of course. If Frank’s cancer didn’t go into remission the first time around, his doctors would likely recommend more chemo. And despite his lack of complaints, Charlie wasn’t sure the old man could take it.

  The lump in her throat shifted into something sharp and painful. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not to Frank.

  She blinked, struggling to keep the tears in check.

  “You OK over there?” Frank asked, wadding the foil wrapper from his sandwich into a ball.

  Charlie covered by coughing into her hand. She didn’t want Frank to know she was worried. She had to stay positive, for his sake.

  “Yeah, just a tickle in my throat,” she lied.

  “Go drink some water, ya turkey.”

  She did as he said, using it as an excuse to get herself under control. She pulled her designated glass from the cupboard and filled it with water. Frank had a whole set of collectible McDonald’s glasses circa 1977. She and Allie always used to fight over the Mayor McCheese glass when they were kids, so Frank had scoured the local thrift shops, garage sales, and flea markets until he found another. And even though Charlie was past the age where drinking out of a specific cup was important to her, her hand instinctively went for the one with the anthropomorphic cheeseburger.

  “That one’s mine,” Allie said.

  Charlie didn’t bother to ask how she could tell the difference between two identical glasses because she knew Allie was only trying to annoy her.

  “I’m serious. The copyright symbol on mine is partially worn off,” Allie insisted. “Put it back.”

  Ignoring her, Charlie filled the glass and drank. When she was finished, she set the glass in the sink and glanced over at Frank, who was collecting the trash from his meal and placing it in the paper bag it had come in. He would be OK, she told herself. He was strong. If anyone could kick cancer’s ass, it was Frank.

  “Do you still have that card? The one that claims you have the strength of ten men?” Charlie asked.

  Frank smiled around the straw in his mouth.

  “Of course.”

  He leaned onto one hip and reached into his back pocket, rifling through the various cards in his wallet until he found the laminated rectangle of cardstock.

  “Can I see it?”

  He held the card out then snatched it away when she tried to grab it.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  Frank took another swig of Dr. Pepper.

  “On what you meant by claims I have the strength of ten men. Are you suggesting the card is fraudulent?”

  Charlie rolled her eyes.

  “Of course not,” she said with mock earnestness. “Can I see it now?”

  “See, I saw that roll of the eyes there. I’m not sure I care for your attitude.”

  Charlie blew out a breath.

  “Come on. We’re gonna be late if we don’t leave now.”

  Chapter Four

  They had to drive forty minutes north to Port Huron for Frank’s infusions. The cancer treatment center in East China was closer, only twenty minutes away, but Frank’s insurance wouldn’t cover treatments there. And paying out of pocket wasn’t an option when each treatment cost thousands of dollars.

  In the car, Charlie put on the playlist she’d made especially for Frank, full of his favorites: Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival. When “Travelling Riverside Blues” came on, Frank sighed.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Zeppelin at the Grande Ballroom in ’69?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said. “Like a hundred times.”

  Frank didn’t seem to care. There was a faraway look in his eyes as he gazed out the side window.

  “They were all completely wasted. So drunk they could barely play. Robert Plant was slurring off-key. The crowd was furious, and rightly so. It was a disaster of a set, but they made it through, somehow. They walked offstage at the end of the night to the crowd booing. But then they came back for an encore, which was rare for them. They didn’t usually do that. But they came back and played ‘Whole Lotta Love.’”

  “And they killed it.”

  “Everyone went apeshit! The whole audience, screaming their heads off. It was like they redeemed the whole night with that one song.”

  At the hospital, Charlie parked near the door to the outpatient wing. The rock salt scattered over the parking lot and sidewalks to melt the ice and snow sparkled like diamonds.

  Frank tightened the scarf wrapped around his face.

  “Colder than a polar bear’s asshole out here,” he said, shivering theatrically.

  Everything was brightly lit inside the treatment center. The lobby area was all glass on one side, with tropical plants and a small water feature. But despite the attempts to make the space inviting, Charlie felt her insides clench as they walked through the doors. It was the smell, she thought. A lingering odor of disinfectant and floor wax.

  The infusion room was a long, narrow space with a series of chairs and IV machines along one wall. Frank took his place in a sort of industrial-looking recliner. A nurse scanned his ID bracelet and then hung a bag filled with the special chemo cocktail on the IV pole before hooking the tubing up to the port-a-cath on Frank’s chest.

  Charlie pulled one of the smaller plastic chairs from the other side of the room to sit closer to her uncle. They played a few rounds of Rummy, and then Frank pulled out his wallet and handed Charlie the card she’d asked for earlier.

  It was a simple laminated rectangle of white cardstock. The black lettering read, “This card certifies that FRANK J. WINTERS has the STRENGTH OF TEN MEN.”

  Underneath the writing was a row of ten tiny musclemen flexing their miniature biceps.

  Charlie smiled and flipped the card over to see the seal that read, “Council of Extraordinary Strength.”

  “Where did you even get this?”

  “What do you mean? It says right there, ‘Council of Extraordinary Strength.’”

  Chuckling, Charlie had a sudden flashback to the time she was seven and tried to get her dad to admit that Santa Claus wasn’t real.

  “Seriously, though,” she said. “Did you buy it at a carnival or something?”

  “A carnival?” Frank scoffed, swiping the card from her fingers. “You’ve got some nerve, questioning the validity of my credentials.”

  She considered asking if he’d made it himself, but she didn’t want to push it. And maybe part of her didn’t really want to know.

  Frank dozed on the way back to Salem Island, which wasn’t surprising. Treatment days tended to wipe him out.

  He stirred as soon as Charlie took the turn into his driveway, straightening in his seat and unbuckling his seatbelt. Charlie followed him inside, nervously watching him totter over the icy ground. Breaking his hip in a slip and fall was the last thing he needed right now.

  Frank took his usual place in a beat-up leather recliner. Marlowe, a black cat with oversized fangs, slinked into the room and hopped onto Frank’s lap.

  “You want me to get you anything before I go?” Charlie asked. “Something to drink? A sandwich?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “No, but thanks. You’re a doll.”

  “I thought I was a turkey.”

  “Oh, you’re definitely a turkey,” Frank said, grinning.

  He’d been calling her that since the time she and Allie were fishing off the end of his dock, and Charlie lost her balance and fell in the water. She was probably six. It was early May, and the water was still pretty cold. As Charlie climbed up the dock ladder, her hair and clothes dripping wet, she could already hear Frank laughing.

  “Why are you swimming with your clothes on, turkey?” he’d asked.

  Charlie had been furious.

  “I’m not a turkey! I�
�m a girl!”

  That had only made him laugh harder.

  She knew he was picturing that now, could tell by the smirk on his face.

  “I’m gonna head out, then,” Charlie said.

  As she reached for the doorknob, Frank called out, “Hey, turkey. Your missing girl… how old is she?”

  “Seventeen. Still in high school.”

  He nodded, absently patting the top of Marlowe’s head.

  “Any siblings?”

  “A younger brother and a stepsister who’s about the same age.”

  “Listen to the sister. Talk to everyone, of course, but keep this tidbit in mind all the while: when it comes to high school kids, the siblings always know more than the parents.”

  Chapter Five

  Charlie met up with Misty Dawkins at her house, a small gray ranch in a subdivision of nearly identical modular homes where the old Salem Paper Mill had once been.

  Misty opened the front door, and Charlie paused on the threshold to kick snow off her shoes before entering. There was a Christmas tree in one corner of the living room, and stockings hung over a gas fireplace on the far wall.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Misty said, bustling past her six-year-old son, Tyler, who was sprawled on the carpet watching cartoons. “I just need to pop in the kitchen for a sec and make sure my chili isn’t burning.”

  A man and a teenage girl sat at the round dining table off the kitchen. Misty picked up a wooden spoon and gestured at them.

  “This is my husband, Chris, and my stepdaughter, Rachel.”

  They exchanged greetings while Misty lifted the lid off a pot, releasing a cloud of steam. She stirred then gave the wooden spoon a few taps against the pot before replacing the lid. She slid into the seat next to her husband and gestured that Charlie should sit as well. Chris closed his laptop, and Rachel shut her math book, leaving her pencil between the pages to mark her spot.