First Girl Gone(46)

Charlie nibbled on another chip, this one inexplicably lacking nacho cheese dust. So far something like every other one had been like that. Had she gotten a bad bag?

It was inane details like this that often came to the forefront of her thoughts only in the midst of this part of the job. Bored and listless, suddenly every nacho cheese detail tapered into a sharp focus.

After they’d been sitting in silence for some time, Allie spoke up.

“You know what your problem is?”

“This should be good,” Charlie said.

“You’re aloof.”

“Aloof?” Charlie snickered. “I guess somebody’s been leafing through a thesaurus.”

“You make no effort with people. No attempt to be part of the group.”

Charlie let her head fall back against the seat and stared up at the ceiling.

“Sorry I was never Miss Popular like you.”

“I’m just saying. If you don’t learn to open yourself up to people, you’ll end up a bitter old hag who collects creepy dolls because she has no friends or family.”

Charlie snorted. “That’s oddly specific.”

“Life is so beautiful, Charlie. We are surrounded by mysteries, miracles, wonders, and love. A universe populated with details that are striking, strange, vexing, haunting, moving. It’s everywhere. All around us. You just have to reach out. Connect with something outside yourself. Try.”

Allie sighed. Then she went on.

“You stopped believing in it, I think. Life, I mean. You could be out living it instead of what you’re doing, which mostly involves eating in your car alone, from what I can tell. Not all of us get to do that, you know? Live our lives. We don’t get to love or share our passions or fight for what we believe in. It got taken from us. Anyway, it’s not for me to tell you what to do, I guess. It’s your life.”

She was quiet for a moment, and Charlie thought that was the end of it.

“Just remember, I’m not always going to be here. What will you do then?”

The smirk on Charlie’s face vanished.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Allie shrugged.

“Just saying. I could disappear at any second.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. Poof. Gone.”

“Shut up,” Charlie said.

What was Allie’s obsession with this lately? First she’d gone on and on about Frank, and now this.

Charlie tried to focus on other things, but her mind kept wandering back to the idea of Allie being gone. She couldn’t imagine what her life would be like without her sister constantly in her head.

Over an hour passed before anything on the screens moved. The basement lights clicked on, the one dark screen going to a blinding bright white. As the camera adjusted, the picture seemed to fade into view, and then a figure appeared, moving down the stairs.

“Activity in the basement,” Allie said, as though reporting it over a police radio. “Looks like the patriarch of the house, one Todd Ritter, is heading down to his man-baby room. Over.”

“Man-baby room?”

“Yup. He’s going down to his basement to play with his trains. Like a freakin’ baby.”

Sure enough, Todd Ritter moved to the train set. He leaned down and flipped a hidden switch under the table. Tiny lights flicked on in the model buildings, and the little steam engine raced around the track, taking a winding path over a bridge and through the mountain tunnel. The chugging of the train sounded tinny over the laptop speakers. When the steam engine’s whistle blew, it was quite shrill.

“See? Man-baby.”

Charlie crunched another chip before she answered. She tried to chew as obnoxiously as possible, knowing that Allie had always hated that when they were kids.

“I guess.”

Todd fiddled with train bits and changed some of the cars for the next few minutes. Watching this was somehow duller than watching blank screens, Charlie thought, and she tore into the Doritos pretty good.

Another forty minutes went by before one of the upstairs cams came to life. Charlie’s eyes snapped to it as Allie narrated once again.

“Activity in the master bedroom,” Allie said. “Looks like Sharon Ritter… and… an unidentified male subject?”

Charlie squinted at the screen. Most of the man’s body was cut off the left edge of the picture, but he was too tall to be the brother, Jason. Before she could think much about it, the guy ripped his T-shirt off.

“Holy shirtless!” Allie said. “We’ve got man meat.”

The pants came off next, one leg and then the other. He hopped off-screen. Then Sharon passed through the frame, stripped down to her underwear. She, too, exited stage right, the last visible bit of her body language seeming to suggest she was climbing onto the bed.

Now even Allie was speechless.

“Hurry,” Sharon said, her voice hushed. Within seconds, soft moans came through the laptop speakers over the train whistles in the other room. Even with the action happening off-screen, the sound made it too intimate, so Charlie turned it down to a level that was just barely audible.

She struggled to process what she was witnessing. Sharon Ritter was having an affair? With Todd in the house? She slid her eyes back to the basement camera feed. Todd was still playing with his trains. Oblivious.

“Yikes,” Allie said. “You wanted to know what the Ritters might be hiding? Well, there’s a family secret for you.”