First Girl Gone(4)

“It can’t hurt for me to do some poking around,” Charlie said, ignoring Allie’s tongue clicking in disapproval.

Misty clutched her chest, and for a moment, Charlie thought she was going to start crying again.

“Oh, thank the Lord. Thank you, Charlie. And I meant what I said before, I can pay. I’ll pay whatever it takes.”

“We’ll worry about that later. For now, let’s get some of the basic questions out of the way.” Angling her face back at her notepad, Charlie asked, “The other times she ran away… how long was she gone?”

“Usually it wasn’t even a full day. She’d stay overnight at a friend’s and be back the next day. Maybe a weekend at the most, but…”

Misty chewed at her lip. Charlie waited.

“Well, one time she was gone for four days, but that was because I confiscated her car keys.”

Charlie waggled the pen between her fingers. Clicked and unclicked the tip.

“And you said this time you had a fight? What was that about?”

“Not really a fight. Just a little argument. You know how teenagers are,” Misty said, fiddling with the zipper pull on her bag. “Kara got into some trouble this past summer, right after her seventeenth birthday. She’d been drinking, and, well… she got into an accident. And then she left the scene. It was kind of a big mess, but thankfully her lawyer was able to get the charges brought way down. I mean, there was talk of sending her to juvenile detention, but the judge agreed to six months of probation and some community service. So she may have dodged a bullet as far as all that, but she’s lost a lot of privileges at home. I mean, she knows how I feel about drunk driving. I won’t tolerate it.”

“Right,” Charlie said, making a note to look further into this blemish on Kara’s criminal record.

“Anyway, for Christmas break, a bunch of the seniors were going on a cruise. Miami, Key West, and Cozumel. We told Kara she could go if she got her grades up at the end of last year, which she did. But then she pulled the stunt over the summer, and Chris and I discussed it—that’s my husband—and we decided that we just couldn’t reward that kind of behavior. We have other kids, and we don’t want them getting the idea that we’ll look the other way with this stuff. So we told her she couldn’t go.”

“And I’m guessing Kara wasn’t too happy about that?”

Misty let out a sad laugh.

“I think she thought I was bluffing. It was all paid for, and we’re way past the cancellation window. We told her a month ago it wasn’t happening, but I guess it didn’t hit home until Wednesday.”

“What happened on Wednesday?”

“That was the day everyone was getting on the bus for Miami.”

“And she couldn’t have tried to get on the bus anyway?”

“I still have the tickets for the bus and the cruise, not to mention she wasn’t going to get far without her passport, which I have locked up. And I called one of the parent chaperones for the trip, just to be sure. No one has seen her.”

Charlie jotted this down, turned to a fresh page on her notepad, and slid it across the desk to Misty.

“I want you to write down the names of anyone Kara might have seen or spoken to after she left the house. Friends, boyfriend, co-workers if she has a job.”

Pen in hand, Misty scribbled down names and phone numbers.

“I’ll need to come by your house later. Take a look through her things and talk with the rest of your family, if that’s OK.”

Fresh tears glistened in Misty’s eyes, and she lifted a hand to wipe them away.

“Of course. Anything you need,” she said, passing the notebook back. “I meant what I said before. I was never scared any of those other times she left. Not once. You know how they say a mother knows these kinds of things? Knows it in her bones? Well, it must be true. It has to be. Because I’m scared, Charlie. I’ve never been so scared.”

Charlie took down a few more details, and when they finished, both women stood. Misty crossed around the desk and threw her arms around Charlie, gripping her tightly.

“Thank you, Charlie. You have no idea what this means to me.”

“Well… you’re welcome,” Charlie said awkwardly.

Misty seemed to swallow another surge of emotion, and then her eyes went to the photograph of Charlie and her sister again.

“I always admired Allie. She was such a free spirit.”

Charlie nodded. People were always saying things like that about Allie.

The glass on the door rattled as Charlie closed it behind Misty. She sank back into the crumbling wooden chair, and one of the slats jabbed into her spine. It was like the damn thing had elbows of its own.

“So… Misty Dawkins…” Allie said. “She got fat.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Charlie said.

“See? That’s why I’m never having kids,” Allie continued. “Seen it a hundred times.”

“Stop.”

“You pop out some crotch fruit, and your hips and thighs stay doughy until the end of time.”

Charlie’s silence only seemed to egg Allie on.

“Hey, you’re the one who talks to her dead sister instead of having real friends. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, right?”