Missing and Endangered (Joanna Brady #19)(33)

“But you’re not going to back off?”

“Nope,” said Joanna, signing the very last card and passing it over to Butch. “First of all, I want to know about the GSR on that robe. Depending on what we find out, I’ll go from there.”

“To bed, then?” Butch asked.

Joanna nodded. They were headed for their bedroom when Joanna stuck her hand in the pocket of her robe and discovered the dollar bill she’d left there.

“Oh, wait,” she said. “I almost forgot. It’s Tooth Fairy day. This morning Sage showed up with a new tooth, and this afternoon Denny lost one.”

“One tooth in and one out,” Butch said. “That seems like an even trade to me.”

With that, Joanna hurried off to Denny’s bedroom and exchanged a dollar bill for the tooth in the specially designed Tooth Fairy pillow that Grandma Eva Lou had given him. Back in their bedroom, Joanna opened the top drawer of her dresser. Inside, there were two small white boxes, one with Denny’s name on it and the other with Jenny’s. One day there would be a box with Sage’s name on it as well.

Joanna dropped the baby tooth into Denny’s box and then returned it to her drawer. She wasn’t sure why she carefully saved all those teeth, except for the one of Jenny’s that had disappeared when she bit into a bean burrito. Someday she’d give them to the kids. Then it would be up to them to decide if they wanted to keep them or throw them away.

For right now, though, they belonged to Joanna, and she planned on keeping them until she was ready to let them go. As she headed for bed, however, her thoughts returned to Kendall and Peter Hogan. Was anyone hanging on to their lost baby teeth?

Joanna hoped so, but it didn’t seem likely.





Chapter 11





Beth Rankin, who had never before had any friends to speak of, now had two. Sure, she’d known a few kids her age, from church mostly. In a brief bow to Beth’s physical fitness and assuming that all activities would be conducted under parental scrutiny, her mother had tried enrolling Beth first in swimming lessons and later in gymnastics. Both pursuits had turned out to be dismal failures. Swimming had come to grief because Beth was terrified of water, and the swim instructor was totally unable to effect any changes in that. Gymnastics had ended abruptly when her mother had declared team uniforms to be immodest.

Beth had been thrilled to leave swimming behind, and she hadn’t minded quitting gymnastics either. She’d had nothing in common with the other girls. Their lives centered on electronic devices and connections—on things like e-mail and video games and Instagram and chat rooms. As for the kids she met at church, the ones her mother would have preferred she socialize with? Out of spite Beth had refused to pal around with any of them. If they were good enough for her mother, they weren’t good enough for her.

Now Beth had two friends in her life—Jenny and Ron—and last night she’d been caught in a crossfire between them. One of the things she loved most about Ron was that he was interested in her. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to know her favorite color? Green. The name of her favorite pet? Blue Boy, a now-deceased parakeet, was the only one she’d ever had. Her favorite TV show? That was easy. She didn’t have one. Her favorite author? She had two possibles, J. K. Rowling and Arthur Conan Doyle. Her favorite food? Pizza, now that she’d finally had a chance to actually try it.

Ron talked to her about the classes she was taking, the books she’d read, the movies she’d seen—there weren’t many of those. And every time they spoke, he never failed to tell her how special she was and how smart. He had never met anyone like her before, and he could hardly wait until he got done with the special project he was working on so he could fly out to meet her.

He also said he thought she was beautiful. That was something that most definitely had never happened to Beth before. So when he started asking her to send him selfies, she didn’t see any harm in it. In fact, the first selfie she sent to him was the first one she ever took. As soon as he got it, he wrote back telling her no wonder green was her favorite color, adding that the only way most people had eyes that green was if they wore contact lenses.

Of course he sent one of himself. It turned out the guy was a hunk and everything those romance writers were always talking about—tall, dark, and handsome. Just thinking about him took Beth’s breath away. How could she possibly be so incredibly lucky as to have someone like Ron in her life?

So when he asked her to send a photo of herself in her bra, it had creeped her out in a way but excited her, too. He didn’t see her as a kid. Ron saw her as a woman—a real woman—and someone he wanted to spend his life with. Besides, when he asked and she said no, he didn’t hassle her about it. A couple of weeks later, on his birthday, she sent a bra picture to him as a surprise. Of course he’d loved it, and naturally, too, he’d wanted more—a photo of her completely nude.

When it came to discussing the birds and the bees, there was only one piece of advice Madeline Rankin had ever bestowed on her daughter. “Mark my words,” she’d said, “if you give a boy one thing, he’s going to want more.”

Madeline had probably expected her comment to function as a deterrent, but it had the opposite effect. If her mother was against it, Beth was for it. Two nights ago, when it had been time to say good night, Beth had promised Ron that the following night they would do their chat with her completely in the nude.