The Running Girls(16)

“It’s the police, Mom.”

Seconds later, Mrs. Washington appeared. Like her daughter, she was tall and slender, the pair an almost carbon copy of Grace and her mother. Laurie imagined the four of them playing doubles tennis in a country club, Tilly Moorfield a bespectacled onlooker, and chided herself for making assumptions on appearances alone.

“Excuse me if I don’t shake hands, I’m in the middle of making dinner. I’m Jane Washington. You’re here about Grace. Still hasn’t turned up?”

“Detective Laurie Campbell. No, I’m afraid not. May I ask you some questions?”

“Of course, please come through.”

Mrs. Washington led her through to the open-plan kitchen, a miniature replica of the one at the Harringtons’. As she contended with the large pot on the stove, Mia walked over to the kitchen counter, where she was preparing a batch of cookies for baking. The sight of mother and daughter working harmoniously struck Laurie as being a little too idyllic. She struggled to picture Grace and Sandra Harrington together like this, which was perhaps a bit unfair, as she’d never even met the missing girl before.

Mia handed her mother a tray of cookies before sitting down on one of the tall kitchen chairs. “You don’t think she’s really missing, do you?” she said, in the same innocent way a child would ask the question.

“She hasn’t been seen since yesterday evening, Mia. When was the last time you saw her?”

“Yesterday in school.”

“You spoke to her?”

Mrs. Washington paused, staring at her daughter.

“What has that little Tilly been saying now?” said Mia.

“Mia, don’t be rude,” said Mrs. Washington.

“You spoke to her?” Laurie repeated.

Mia glanced at her mother before answering. Her head was nodding slightly, and Laurie suspected she was deciding how best to answer the question. “Yes, I spoke to her in the cafeteria,” she said, after a few seconds’ deliberation.

“That’s news to me,” said Mrs. Washington.

“I don’t tell you everything, you know,” said Mia.

“What did you talk about?” Laurie cut in. The last thing she wanted was to get involved in another domestic argument.

Mia sighed. “You know we used to date, right?”

Laurie nodded, silently urging the girl to continue.

“Well, it ended kind of badly, but we’ve been on speaking terms these last few weeks. We were in the lunch line together and we started talking. I can’t remember what about.”

Mrs. Washington had returned to her cooking, every now and then shooting a look at her daughter.

“Anything else happen between you?” said Laurie.

Mia smiled. “Look, I didn’t mean anything by it. Grace had a strand of hair stuck on her face and I moved it. Next thing I know, Grace has sat down and is having a fight with Tilly.”

Laurie rubbed her forehead. The last thing she’d expected that morning was to be umpiring some high school love triangle. “So Grace and Tilly had a fight,” she said. “What happened next?”

“Grace stormed off one way, Tilly went crying to the restrooms.”

“And you?”

“Me?” said Mia, as if the question didn’t seem relevant. “I continued eating. No way did I want to get involved in that mess.”

“Do you have any idea where Grace could be?” asked Laurie, studying Mia’s reactions.

“No, of course not. Like I said, we’ve started talking again, which is a miracle in itself, but we’re far from being close.”

“Anything you can think of that would explain Grace not coming home last night? Has she been involved in drinking, or drugs, partying of any kind?”

“Who, Grace? You’re kidding, right?”

“Not her sort of thing?”

“Grace is as straitlaced as they come. All she cares about is running. It’s so boring.”

“She was running in this area yesterday evening, toward your house,” said Laurie.

Mia’s eyes widened slightly, but beyond that there was little to her reaction. “She used to run here all the time. Nothing new in that.”

“Are you sure about that? The app on Grace’s phone suggested she hasn’t run in this area for the last six months.”

“What can I tell you? I think she got a new phone. Maybe when she switched, it reset or something? All I can say is that when we were together, she was running round here all the time.”



The rest of the day felt like a bust. Laurie returned to the Harrington household and with the help of Sandra recovered Grace’s old phone, where the running app confirmed Mia’s testimony. Printouts from the app were now pinned on a wall of the incident room. Zigzagging pathways from the previous year, where Grace had made daily pilgrimages past Mia’s house, had stopped the day they ended their relationship.

Tilly was sheepish about the incident at school but confirmed Mia’s side of the story. For Lieutenant Filmore, it was enough to explain why Grace had been in the area last night. That she had made the change of route on the day Mia touched her hair in the school cafeteria was explanation enough for Laurie too, but it didn’t help locate the girl.

Remi and the team had spent the day interviewing kids from the high school. The consensus on Grace was positive enough. She was popular, though not in a cheerleader-type way. She was dedicated to her schoolwork and running. Most of the boys had a crush on her, and several of the girls, too. She was a very attractive young woman and Laurie knew that often brought with it unwelcome attention. Nothing was made of her sexual orientation, which was something that wouldn’t have been the case at Laurie’s much more conservative high school. All the students were questioned over parties and get-togethers last night, but seemingly nothing beyond the weekly meeting of the chess club at a local diner had occurred.