Pretties in Pink

22. Hallie

22

HALLIE

“This is the place?” Kellan asked.

Nerves buzzing, I’d made the call to Mrs. Thomas myself. I loved the investigation side of things, following the clues and solving mysteries, but speaking to people I didn’t know still left me twitchy, and it was worse on the phone. At least in person, you were able to feed off their body language.

When I’d told Mrs. Thomas why I was calling, there’d been a long silence, followed by the unmistakable sound of sniffling. Then she told me nobody had called about Janiya in years. That she’d almost given up hope of ever laying her daughter to rest. She waited tables during the day and worked evenings as a janitor, but when I’d asked to visit, she’d quickly agreed to find someone to cover her shift at the diner so she could speak with us.

“Yup, this is it. Whispering Pines.” With no pine trees in sight, whispering or otherwise. A dog barked in the distance, and two people having a shouting match drowned out the sound of a lawnmower to our left. Just like home. “Mrs. Thomas said to carry on driving until we see a turquoise pickup on bricks, then take a right.”

We trundled past run-down trailers with eighty-thousand-dollar trucks parked outside, neat-as-a-pin homes with pots of plastic flowers on wooden decks, patches of scrubby lawn with rusting swing sets, pumpkins and plastic skeletons as folks got ready for Halloween, and boarded-up residences that had seen better days. A proud tabby cat stalked past, tail in the air, as two kids with a death wish ran across in front of our car. Shouldn’t they have been in school? The Stars and Stripes fluttered in the breeze on a nearby flagpole, and the smell of burned toast permeated the air. A microcosm of the American dream.

Kellan gave the slightest nod toward two men in their early twenties standing on a nearby porch. “Dealer.”

“Which one?”

“The blond guy.”

“How do you know?”

“Poorly concealed sleight of hand and a guilty expression. There’s the turquoise pickup.”

The Thomas home was one of the tidier abodes, an old but obviously well-cared-for single-wide, white with a dark-blue stripe at waist height. The door opened before we had a chance to knock.

“Hallie Chastain?”

“Yes, and you’re Mrs. Thomas? This is Kellan Gilmore, my colleague.”

“Please, call me Dori. Come in?”

Inside, the home was as neat as the outside had suggested, and spotless too. I took a seat on an afghan-covered couch while Dori fussed around making coffee. Now I wasn’t reminded so much of my previous life—my own mother hadn’t been much of a housekeeper.

“Thank you,” I said when Dori handed a mug over. It probably wasn’t decaf, but I’d live with the caffeine today. “I appreciate you agreeing to see us.”

“I was real surprised to get your call. It’s been four years now, and after the first six months, the police went quiet. A cold case, they called it. Why are you here if you’re not the police? We sure can’t afford any investigator.”

“Another girl vanished recently. We’re working for a client connected with that incident, and as part of our efforts, we’re reviewing past disappearances in the Virginia area in case there’s a connection.”

Dori sat, but barely. She perched right on the edge of a wooden chair from the dining set in the corner. “And you think there might be a connection with Janiya?”

“We’re not sure at the moment, but we need to consider the possibility. I understand Janiya was taken through her bedroom window?”

“Someone climbed right in and grabbed her. The police found footprints, big footprints right outside.”

“Was the window open? Or had it been forced?”

“It was open.” Tears glistened in Dori’s eyes. “We thought it was safe. I know what this place looks like, and I won’t pretend everyone who lives here is a saint, but my neighbours wouldn’t harm a child. Not a little girl.”

“I’m so sorry she was taken.” Dori looked as if she needed a hug, but I wasn’t sure whether that would be appropriate. “Why was the window open?”

“It was hot, so hot that night, and humid too, I remember.”

“What about the AC?”

“Back then, we didn’t have AC. Couldn’t afford it.”

Well, s**t. That blew our number-one theory out of the water. “I see. Did you often leave the window open?”

“In the summer, yes, but it’s right around the back. If we’d ever imagined what would happen, we’d have closed the place up tight and moved heaven and earth to fit AC, but back then, I was sick, and even with assistance, the medical bills were crippling us. Darin—my husband—he worked three jobs just to put food on the table.”

“Could you talk us through what happened that night? As best you can recall?”

“Darin and I were out—we both worked the graveyard shift in those days—and we put Janiya to bed before we left.”

“She was alone?”

“No, no, my momma lived nearby, and she’d come over each night, just in case Janiya needed something. But Momma fell asleep on the couch, and when we got home, Janiya was gone. Momma didn’t hear a thing.”

“Is it possible to speak with your mom? Sometimes the smallest things can be important, even if they don’t seem that way at first.”

Now the tears fell. “Momma passed away not six months after Janiya was taken. The doctors said it was a stroke, but I know it was guilt. Guilt and a broken heart. She always blamed herself for not waking up.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. For both of your losses.”

“I know Janiya’s gone. I feel it in my heart—call it a mom’s instinct. But more than anything, I want to find her so we can lay her to rest.”

“We’ll do our best to help you with that, I promise.”

Even if I had to work every evening and every weekend on this case, I would help. What else did I have to do? Apart from maybe hanging out with Ford? Kellan nodded too, and I knew I could count on him to assist in some capacity at least.

“In the weeks before Janiya disappeared, do you recall anyone loitering around the area?” he asked. “Any strangers? New neighbours? Tradespeople?”

“No new neighbours, and we didn’t have the money to pay people to fix our stuff. Darin used to do it himself or barter favours.”

“What about strangers?”

“We didn’t see anyone, but I can’t say for certain that there was nobody around. Darin and me, we both work multiple jobs, always have, so we don’t spend as much time here as we’d like. My momma was a godsend. She was on disability, but she’d always watch Janiya while we were gone.”

“Does Janiya have any siblings?”

The sadness in Dori’s voice made my heart ache. “No, just her, and she was a gift. After the first round of cancer treatment, the doctors said I’d never have kids, but then she came along, and like I said…a gift. We couldn’t have asked for a better child. Before Janiya disappeared, Momma always said that everything happened for a reason, but this… Why? Why her? Why did somebody take my baby?”

That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, wasn’t it? Why had somebody taken any of these girls? Once we understood the motive, we’d be closer to finding the perpetrator. Five little girls, all from different backgrounds. Why them? Kellan went through Janiya’s history, asking about her school, her friends, her relatives, extracurricular activities, hobbies, interests. Every so often, Dori would comment that, “Nobody ever asked that before,” and I began to wonder what the police had been doing four years ago.

But there were no “Aha” moments. Nothing jumped out, although it was invaluable to hear Kellan’s approach to the questioning. Careful and methodical, calm and sympathetic. In some ways, he reminded me of Ford.

“Could we see Janiya’s room?” he asked finally.

Dori nodded. “We haven’t changed it. Even though I know she’s not coming back, I can’t bear to throw her things out.”

Janiya’s bedroom was tiny, barely big enough to fit the single bed, the narrow closet, and the toy box it contained. A pink teddy bear still sat on the patchwork quilt, books were stacked on a shelf, and Janiya’s drawings were stuck to the walls. The window was single width and slid up from the bottom. If a man was careful, he could have climbed through and landed in the small space at the foot of the bed. But the window wasn’t big. We were looking for a man with a light build, but reasonably tall. The size eleven footprints suggested a height of just under six feet.

But what was outside the window interested me more.

The view was nothing to shout about—a tiny yard squashed between the Thomases’ trailer and the next home, patchy grass with a rotary dryer in the middle. But the neighbours had AC.

I pointed at the box attached to the outside wall of the next trailer. “Has the AC unit always been there?”

Dori followed my gaze. “Yes. I mean, I think so? I don’t ever recall it not being there.”

“Do you still have the same neighbours as you had back then?”

“Mizz Fleming? She was a friend of Momma’s. She’s been there forever.”

“Think she’d talk to us?”

Another nod. “I can come with you, make the introductions. The police talked to her as well back then, but she didn’t hear anything.”

When we got to Ms. Fleming’s home, I understood why. Even with the door closed, every word from the TV was crystal clear, and Dori had to knock three times before the noise finally shut off.

“Oh, sure,” Ms. Fleming said when I asked about the AC. Actually, “yelled” was the more appropriate verb. She yelled in a New York accent that was even stronger than Dan’s. Dan always said you could take a girl out of New York but you couldn’t take New York out of the girl, and it seemed she was right. “Sure, the unit’s always been there, but it got replaced three years ago. Darn thing was always breaking before that. Every other month, there was a problem, and I could’ve bought a new unit twice over with all the repairs I paid for.”

“I don’t suppose you can remember who came out to fix it?”

“Not the name, but I got a card somewhere. They must’ve come a dozen times, and they still didn’t get it right. Come in, come in.”

Ms. Fleming was as untidy as Dori was neat. I hesitated to use the word “hoarder,” but there really wasn’t much space left.

“Won’t be a minute. You just make yourselves at home.”

“Should’ve brought lunch,” Kellan murmured. “Looks like we’re gonna be here for a while.”

Dori excused herself after the first hour because she had to go get ready for her next job, and my ass was going to sleep on the lumpy couch. Kellan worked on his tablet, and I texted Ford with an update.

Me: The neighbor’s AC unit is RIGHT OUTSIDE Janiya’s bedroom window. Broke several times before Janiya was abducted.

Hot Cop: AC also broken at the Suarez place. Got a name for the tech?

Wait. I didn’t save Ford as Hot freaking Cop. Who had borrowed my phone? I cycled through the possibilities and came up with a plausible answer: the girl from New York.

Me: Did you change Ford’s name in my phone?

Dan: Not guilty. But I can take a guess who did.

Me: Who?

Dan: You’re an investigator—figure it out.

Dammit. Okay, he’d definitely been “Prestia” when he messaged me yesterday. I’d meant to change it to “Ford,” but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Could he have done it? No, that wasn’t his style. I’d been in the office this morning, and my phone had been with me the whole time, apart from when I went to make a coffee, and… The badass from England had been sitting on my desk when I got back. I’d assumed she’d been waiting for her husband to finish his meeting, but what if she’d had more nefarious deeds in mind?

Me: Did you touch my phone?

Emmy: Took you long enough to notice. Are you going over to the dark side?

Take a deep breath, Hallie. Reply to Hot Cop—s**t—Ford first.

Me: The neighbor’s hunting out the details right now. And I mean HUNTING. Her place is FULL of stuff.

Me: You’re the freaking dark side! You can’t just mess with people’s stuff!

Emmy: Can’t or shouldn’t?

Me: My messages are private.

Emmy: Chill, I didn’t read any of them, just changed the contact name. And am I lying? Dan showed me his picture.

Hot Cop: Tech here is Smart Climate. Let me know if there’s a match.

Me: Okay, FINE. He IS hot. And sweet and sexy and kind. Happy now? But you still shouldn’t mess with people’s stuff.

Hot Cop: Hope that’s me you’re talking about, plum. Who messed with your stuff?

Shit, s**t, s**t! I stared at the screen in horror. I. Was. Going. To. Kill. Her. Or possibly myself. Yes, that would be easier since Emmy was basically invincible.

“Why the groan?” Kellan asked, and I groaned again. Why did my colleagues have to be so perceptive?

“I accidentally told Detective Prestia he was hot, and now I want to jump off a cliff.”

“Relax—guys like getting told they’re hot. Unless, of course, you don’t think he’s hot, and then it could be awkward.” Kellan raised an eyebrow, expectant.

“Guys really don’t mind if women objectify them?”

“This guy doesn’t. Are we talking about the man you hooked up with the other night?”

Give me strength. “Why would you think I hooked up with anyone? Did Dan start that rumour?”

Because if she did, I’d have to kill her too.

“No, that was Carter. He noticed you wore the same clothes two days running, and on day two, you were smiling more than usual.”

At this rate, I was going to run out of bullets.

“We did not ‘hook up.’ We were working on the case, and I fell asleep at his place.”

“But you like him?”

And people said women were gossips?

“No comment.”

Kellan grinned. “I’ll take that as a yes. Say, I wonder if anyone’s started a pool yet.”

Did I mention the old Blackwood tradition of betting on people’s love lives? Not that I was in love, no siree. s*x lives? No, that sounded so sordid. Ford was more than just a d**k. As he said, I got the rest of him too. His smart mind, his quick wit, his thoughtfulness, those arms that were so good at hugging. Okay, perhaps I was a little bit in love with him.

Holy s**t.

I was falling in love with Ford Prestia.

“Now what’s wrong?” Kellan asked. “You look as if you got hit by a Mack truck.”

Fortunately, Ms. Fleming saved me. She bustled in with a look of triumph on her face, holding a small red card aloft like a trophy.

“Here you go, hun. Eezy Breezy, those are the folks who made such a mess of the old unit. I’ve switched to a different company now. You want their name too?”

Not if it meant waiting for another two hours. “How about we call you if we need it? We wouldn’t want to take up more of your time than is strictly necessary.”

She seemed almost disappointed. “Let me just write down my number.”

Back in the car, I leaned back in the passenger seat and closed my eyes. Working on a complex case at the same time as I tried to navigate a possible relationship with Ford was exhausting. But I couldn’t simply step away. Not from either of them.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Hot Cop: You gonna leave me hanging?

Me: Maybe I think you’re hot. And all that other stuff.

Hot Cop: Who do I need to have words with?

Me: Emmy Black. Good luck with that.

Hot Cop: How’s about if I just buy you a new one of whatever it was she messed with?

This man… No wonder I’d been smiling in the office. He always made me smile.

Me: How’s about it’s your turn to buy dinner tonight?

Hot Cop: Come whenever you’re ready.

Oh… I wasn’t ready yet, but I was definitely getting there.