First Girl Gone(28)

Allie took the hint and shut up after that, keeping silent for the next several hours.

But it didn’t matter. Allie’s words had done their damage, worming their way into her psyche. What would she do if Frank didn’t make it? What if she did end up alone for the rest of her life?

The questions rang in her skull all through picking up Frank and driving him to the hospital, receding only slightly once they got to the room where he received his chemo treatments. She watched a nurse hook Frank up to his IV bag of meds and reminded herself that she had to have hope. She owed him that.

Frank settled back into his chair and closed his eyes. Charlie thought he might doze off, so she brought out her notebook and flipped through the pages, looking over her notes for the thousandth time.

“How’s your case? The missing girl,” Frank said.

Charlie glanced up. His eyes were still closed, but apparently he was in the mood to talk.

“Someone sent me a cryptic email yesterday. Anonymously.”

“And what did this cryptic email say?”

“‘Follow the white rabbit.’”

Frank’s eyelids fluttered open. He repeated the words, frowning.

“Mean anything to you?” Charlie asked.

“Can’t say that it does.” He shook his head. “Bizarre.”

“I know,” Charlie agreed. “Like, if they actually want to tell me something, why not just say it?”

“The technology stuff is all over my head, but I got a computer guy you could talk to,” Frank said.

“You have a computer guy?”

“Well, computers aren’t my strong suit, you know that. He’s great on the divorce cases. You should see the stuff he’s been able to dig up from message boards and stuff. Solid gold,” Frank said, shaking his head. “The things people post when they think they’re anonymous.”

“Well, that sounds promising,” Charlie said. “How do I get in touch with this guy?”

“He prefers that clients go to him.”

“OK. Does he have an office or what?”

“You know the place over by the river docks? In the old Sander’s Dry Goods warehouse?”

It was easy enough to picture the place. The massive old building was situated right on the river and had been a major shipping hub in the early nineteenth century. Since then it had undergone a stint as a garden center, an indoor trampoline park, and a dinner theater venue. Charlie also remembered plans to convert the place into luxury lofts when she was in high school that never came to fruition. None of the ventures seemed to last long, but she’d heard the current owner was having more success.

“The marijuana dispensary?”

Charlie imagined a nerd camped out on the dispensary lawn, laptop on his knees, high out of his gourd.

“Yeah, that’s it. The computer thing is sort of a side hustle.”

“He owns the dispensary?” Charlie asked. That was almost weirder than her first assumption.

Frank nodded, and before Charlie could request more details, he said, “Ask for Mason, and tell him Frank sent you.”

“Wait.” Charlie held up a hand. “Mason Resnik?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“We went to school together,” Charlie said, chuckling to herself. Pot and computers. She should have known it’d be Mason.

Before Charlie could say more, Frank sat forward in his chair, nonexistent eyebrows all aflutter.

“A Volkswagen!” he said, jabbing a finger in the air. The words came out with an excited laugh.

Charlie was lost.

“A what?”

“Your white rabbit.”

Charlie just stared, still not following.

“A VW Rabbit. What if the anonymous tip is about a car? It would make sense to follow a car, right?”

“That’s not bad,” she said. Considering it further, she added, “Actually, it’s the only explanation that even half makes sense, so far.”

Frank rubbed his hands together, a look of sheer glee on his face, and for a moment, the old Frank was there. The one who loved nothing more than solving a riddle.

“You clever old bastard,” she said.

That only made him grin wider.

By the time she’d dropped him off a few hours later, Charlie’s hangover was long gone. She left a message for Zoe, asking if she could track down any white VW Rabbits in the county.

With that taken care of, her focus shifted to something else: Will’s tip about the Red Velvet Lounge. She looked the place up online, noting a Yelp review that praised the “hot girls and hotter wings!” Even though it was open during the day, she figured the evening rush would be a better time to scope the place out. The bigger the crowd, the easier time she’d have snooping around without attracting unwanted attention.

Charlie returned to the project she’d started that morning—creating a MISSING flier with Kara’s name, age, physical description, and a large color photo. It was an old-school technique, but Frank insisted it worked for animals, so why not a girl?

Charlie added her phone number to the bottom of the page in bold text, then sent the file to the print shop down the street. Less than thirty minutes later, they had a hundred copies ready for her, hot off the press.

She spent the rest of the daylight hours plastering Kara’s face all over town. The grocery store, the post office, and every lamppost in between. It brought back a lot of memories, most of them unpleasant. How many fliers had she posted when Allie went missing? Hundreds, at least. And where had that gotten her?