Snow White Must Die (Bodenstein & Kirchhoff, #4)(59)

“Waldstrasse 22.” Oliver pointed to the GPS in his BMW, which he tended to follow blindly, although in the past it had sometimes gotten him lost. “It’s in Altenhain. But it belongs to Bad Soden.”

A sense of foreboding crept over Pia. Altenhain. Tobias Sartorius. She would never admit it, but she felt a certain sympathy for the young man. Now another girl had gone missing, and she could only hope that he’d had nothing to do with it. But she didn’t doubt for a second how the villagers would react, and it didn’t matter if he had an alibi or not. Her bad feeling grew when they reached the residence of Arne and Barbara Fr?hlich. The house stood only a few yards from the rear exit of the Sartorius property. They stopped in front of the handsome brick house with a deep hipped roof and several dormer windows. The parents were waiting for them.

Arne Fr?hlich, despite his cheerful surname, was a serious man of about forty-five with a receding hairline, thin sandy hair, and steel-rimmed glasses. His face was distinguished by the lack of any striking features. He was neither fat nor thin, of medium height, and looked so ordinary that it was almost uncanny. His wife, in her early thirties, was the complete opposite. Extremely attractive, with medium blond hair, expressive eyes, regular features, a wide mouth, and a slight snub nose. What did she possibly see in her husband?

They were both worried but very composed, with no trace of the hysteria usually displayed by the parents of missing children. Barbara Fr?hlich gave Pia a photo. Amelie was obviously a striking girl, but not in the way her mother was: her big brown eyes were heavily made up with kohl and eyeliner, and she had several piercings in her eyebrows, lower lip, and chin. She had teased her hair and styled it so it stood out like a shelf from her head. Beneath the dramatic fa?ade Amelie was a good-looking girl.

“She has run away several times before,” her father replied to Bodenstein’s question of why they had delayed in reporting their daughter missing. “Amelie is my daughter from my first marriage and somewhat … hmm … difficult. We took her in six months ago; before that she’d been living with my ex in Berlin, and there she also had big problems with … the police.”

“What sort of problems?” asked Bodenstein. The answer was clearly unpleasant for Arne Fr?hlich.

“Shoplifting, drugs, trespassing, and vagrancy,” he enumerated. “Sometimes she’d be gone for a week. My ex-wife was feeling completely overwhelmed and asked me to take Amelie in. That’s why we called around first and waited for her to show up.”

“But then it occurred to me that she didn’t take any clothes with her,” Barbara Fr?hlich added. “Not even the money she’d earned waitressing. I thought that was odd. And she also left her driver’s license here.”

“Was Amelie fighting with anyone? Did she have problems at school or with her friends?” Bodenstein went through the usual questions.

“No, on the contrary,” said the stepmother. “I even had the impression that she had changed for the better recently. She didn’t wear her hair quite as wild, and she started borrowing clothes from me. Normally she wears nothing but black, but suddenly she put on a skirt and blouse…” She fell silent.

“Do you think there’s a boy behind this change?” Pia ventured. “She may have met someone online and left to go see him.”

Arne and Barbara Fr?hlich exchanged a baffled look and shrugged.

“We gave her plenty of freedom,” the father offered. “Lately Amelie has been quite dependable. My boss, Mr. Terlinden, arranged a job for her waiting tables at the Black Horse so she could earn her own money.”

“Any problems at school?”

“She doesn’t have many girlfriends,” said Barbara. “She likes to be alone. She hasn’t talked much about school, but she’s only been there since September. The only one she hangs out with regularly is Thies Terlinden, our neighbor’s son.”

For a moment Arne Fr?hlich pressed his lips together. It was obvious that he didn’t approve of this friendship.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Pia, digging deeper. “Are they a couple?”

“Oh no,” said Barbara, shaking her head. “Thies is … well … different. He’s autistic, lives with his parents, and takes care of their garden.”

At Bodenstein’s request Barbara showed them Amelie’s room. It was large and cheerful, with two windows, one facing the street. The walls were bare; the posters of pop stars that other girls Amelie’s age liked to put up would have been totally wrong. Barbara explained it by saying that Amelie felt that she was only “passing through.”

“On her eighteenth birthday next year she wants to go straight back to Berlin,” she said, and they could hear the regret in her voice.

“How do you get along with your stepdaughter?” Pia walked over and opened the desk drawers.

“We get along fine. I try to be lenient when it comes to rules. Amelie reacts to restrictions by retreating into herself rather than protesting loudly. I think she’s gradually coming to trust me. She’s often gruff with her half sisters, but both of them are very attached to her. When I’m not around she’ll play with them for hours with their Playmobil figures or read them a story.”

Pia nodded. “Our colleagues will need to take her computer along. Does Amelie keep a diary?”