“I’m hanging in there, Aurora. This is the worst thing that’s happened in this family since my great-uncle Farris went on a bender and drove a John Deere tractor into the lake.”
I was startled into laughing. “Excuse me,” I said immediately. “I know it must not have been funny then.”
“No, John Deeres are expensive,” Martha said, with a hint of a smile. But then the upcurve vanished. “And our twins are not replaceable like the tractor was. Beth’s down the hall, second doorway to the right.”
I knocked lightly before stepping inside. I knew instantly I was in Jessamyn and Joss’s room. It was large, but full of furniture and girls’ clutter and three tense people: George Finstermeyer, Beth, and Jessamyn. Jessamyn was thirteen, and she was both defensive and sad in the way only teenagers can seem to manage.
“Roe, glad you’re here,” Beth said. “You can shut the door behind you.”
I did, and sat in the rolling office chair that was the only available seating. Beth was sitting with Jessamyn on one bed, and George was sitting on the other; I was sure it was Joss’s. “George,” I said, “I’m Aurora Teagarden, Phillip’s sister. We’ve only met once before, I think.”
He nodded. George, a short and stocky man in his forties, was blond and had a reddish complexion. He obviously needed sleep. His fists were clenched. “You’re married to the writer fella?” he said.
It was my turn to nod.
“Phillip told Josh you’re gonna have a baby,” Jessamyn said.
“I am,” I admitted. “I was counting on Phillip babysitting for us, but until we find him, I’m just going to worry about him. Can you give us anything to go on, Jessamyn?”
She sighed, as if the world was on her shoulders. And maybe she felt like that at the moment. She said, “I already told Mom and Dad. You know Liza Scott, the minister’s daughter?”
“I go to that church,” I said.
“Well, you know those little—excuse me, b-asses, are just being mean to her. There’s nothing wrong with Liza except she’s a little too holy.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me about her situation at school. So?”
“So,” Jessamyn said, just this side of sarcastic, “Liza had this huge crush on Phillip. Like a little lapdog. Anyway, Phillip felt bad for her after Joss told him what was happening to her at school, and he was nice to her, when he should have just shoved her away. So the afternoon … the afternoon they went missing…” For the first time, Jessamyn lost her composure. Her eyes filled with tears. “Well, that day, Joss called me from the soccer field. She was really happy because it was the last lesson of the year and she’d get nearly three weeks off from school and teaching soccer lessons.”
“And Josh and Phillip came to pick her up.”
“Yeah, ’cause they’re like best buds ever since Phillip moved here.” Jessamyn went on to relate the story of Liza’s unwillingness to stay at the soccer field until her mother came, since her tormentors were present. Joss had called Jessamyn (evidently before she’d called Tammy) to remind her that Joss was going to have her hair trimmed before she came home. Joss had wanted to make sure Jessamyn had a way home from her piano lesson. “So I told her I’d gotten a ride with Lynn McManus, and that I’d remind Mom about Joss’s haircut,” Jessamyn said by way of roundup. “Joss said she and Tammy would get here later than they’d thought, because she was a little behind to her hair appointment.”
This was not as familiar to the Finstermeyers as it was to me, and they asked several questions. Jessamyn couldn’t answer most of them.
“I wonder why the boys didn’t drop Liza off on their way to Shear Delight,” I said. I looked at Jessamyn inquiringly.
“I don’t know,” Jessamyn said. “Maybe there was no one at the Scotts’. Liza wouldn’t want to be there alone.” The scorn was apparent in her voice.
“A lot of eleven-year-olds wouldn’t want to go into an empty house,” Beth said sharply.
Jessamyn had the manners to look a little abashed. “Anyway, Joss said good-bye then. She just wanted to be sure I had a ride, since Josh was taking Liza home. This was a real short phone call, because she had to call Tammy.”
“Why did she have to call Tammy?” Beth said.
“They were supposed to meet at Shear Delight. Tammy’s sister was dropping her off there. Tammy was going to come over here to spend the night.”
“I didn’t know that,” Beth said. “But then, Tammy is over here a lot, if Joss isn’t at her house!” She smiled fondly, but then remembered why we were having this conversation, and her face crumpled. “And now poor Tammy is dead! And she was Joss’s best friend!”
“Mom.” Jessamyn looked away, clearly exasperated.
Oh, not now! I thought. Don’t dump this on Beth now!
George said, “Beth, the girls are—were—a couple.”
Beth’s mouth dropped open. “No,” she said, more as if she was testing the word than as if she actually believed it.
“I’m sorry, Mom. She was going to tell you. She was so scared you’d be mad,” Jessamyn said.
Beth looked from one face to another, stunned into silence. “How could she ever imagine I wouldn’t still love her? Oh, my child.” She closed her eyes and took a long breath, trying to get a grip on herself. Finally, she said, “Roe? You knew, too?”
I was profoundly embarrassed. I just nodded. I started to tell Beth I’d only found out hours ago, but that really didn’t make a difference. Beth had had the rug pulled out from under her, and she had to have a little time to get back on her feet.
“Well,” said Beth in an unsteady voice. “Well. Okay. I’ll have to deal with that later. But I love my daughter, no matter what.”
Jessamyn was subdued, now. And maybe to point out the fact that she was a daughter, too, she said, “So if it hadn’t been for Lynn and her mom, Josh would have come to get me, too, and I’d have been in the car.”
“Thank God for Lynn’s mom,” said George. “Thank God.”
Jessamyn looked at him as if she were seeing her father for the first time. Then she shyly took his hand, and he clenched it so hard that her fingers must have ached, but she didn’t say a thing.
I said, “Jessamyn, do you know anything about what might have happened to your brother and sister? Do you know of any other problems they might have been having with other kids, or with a grown-up?”
“Nothing big. Josh wanted to ask Heather Sissley for a date, but he hadn’t worked himself up to it,” Jessamyn said. “He and Phillip were talking about throwing a party during the Christmas break. But that’s it, that’s all I know.” I was leaning forward, prepared to getting up, when Jessamyn said, “You saw the post on Facebook, right? The one from yesterday?”
“Show us,” George said.
I was liking George Finstermeyer more and more.
Jessamyn grabbed her laptop and clicked on a few buttons, brought up a posting by Marlea Harrison. Her icon was a cartoon of a caped woman with a mask. The post read, “Does anyone on the planet miss LS? I don’t think so! Now, Josh and Phillip r hot. Their a loss, for real!”
Beth’s face froze. She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. She called up a listing in her address book and punched it. We heard the buzz of a voice on the other end. “Karina? It’s Beth. No, no news yet. But I think you need to go on Facebook and read your daughter’s latest post. It was brought to my attention.” Beth’s voice was as frosty as her face. “No, I don’t want to read it to you. I’m very upset. I’m sure you can get Marlea to take it down. Talk to you later.” And she pressed End.
The cruelty of children is more shocking than the cruelty of adults. Not only was I shocked, I was angry. But it felt somehow wrong, unhealthy, to be so furious with a child. I closed my eyes, knowing that if Marlea had been in front of me at that moment, I would have been tempted to slap her across the face. I still felt like tracking her down and giving her a “Come to Jesus” moment.
Jessamyn seemed a bit pleased at having d
ropped such a bombshell. I tried to feel more sympathy for a girl who was caught in between her sibs’ age group and Liza’s age group. Instead, I wanted to turn her upside down and shake her in the hope that something useful would come out of her head.
“Thanks, Jessamyn,” I said, working hard to sound grateful. “We needed to hear everything you knew.”
“I miss them,” she said, and I felt like a heel. At that age kids seemed to revolve from one side of the emotional coin to another with the quick flip of the cosmic wrist. “I wish Liza had never been born. Then none of this would have happened.”
“Jessamyn,” her mother said, and in that one word was a weight of censure that made the girl cringe.
“It also would not have happened if Marlea, Kesha, and Sienna had not been born,” I said. “Don’t blame the victim for the crime.” In this case, Liza was literally the victim.
There had always been a certain amount of sound coming from the rest of the house, with so many people talking, moving. Now there was silence. We all turned our heads to the closed door.
Aubrey and Emily came in. I had never seen such a drastic change in two people in such a short time. They looked as though they’d lost ten pounds in two days, and they looked shattered. Though Emily and I had never been soul mates, I never felt sorrier for anyone in my life. Since Aubrey and I had dated for some time, he’d confided in me that he couldn’t father a child. When he’d married Emily, who was a widow, he’d adored Liza and adopted her. So Liza was the only child, for both of them.
“We came to ask Jessamyn…” Emily said, and then she seemed to realize who was in the room already. “Oh, then we aren’t the first ones to think of this.” She even managed a faint smile.
For the first time, Jessamyn looked stricken by the pressure of being the sister of the missing twins. She might be able to keep up a facade in front of her own parents and me, but in the presence of such overwhelming anguish she could not. I liked her better.
“I told my mom and dad, and Miss Aurora, that I really didn’t know much of anything else,” Jessamyn said. “I’m sorry. Liza asked them to drop her off, and they were going to do it.”
“I was late,” Emily said, and she began to cry. Silently. “I was late because the women’s Bible study ran late, and I had to pick up the Christian education room, no one else seems to think about that, and then I looked at my watch and it was just past time to pick up Emily from her soccer lesson, and by the time I got there she had gone. I figured someone else had given her a ride, and that she’d borrow a phone and call me. We were going to give her her own phone for Christmas. She’s too young to have one, I think, but with her situation at school and the rough year she’s had, we…”
She stopped herself with a hiccuping sob. Aubrey put his arm around her, and something about the gesture told me that Emily had said this many, many times in the past few days, and that Aubrey had tried to console her just as often. “Ten minutes cost me my daughter,” Emily said.
There was nothing to say to rebut that. We were all missing children, too. I guess it seemed worse for Emily and Aubrey since their child was so young, so unable to defend herself. Against whom? We didn’t know. No one knew why they were missing. No one knew why Tammy Ribble was dead. Why hadn’t Josh and Joss’s car been found?
“I am so sorry,” I said, and I got up to leave. My stomach twinged, and I put my hand to it.
“Are you all right?” George asked.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. It wasn’t the time to talk about my pregnancy.
Had Jessamyn told us everything she knew? I wondered. Ordinarily, I would not have spoken, because her parents were there and knew her best. But this wasn’t an ordinary time. “Jessamyn,” I said, my hand on the doorknob. “You know how crucial it is that you tell us every little thing.”
I could see the panic in her eyes. She looked down, and I thought she was steeling herself to say something. “I just remembered that while we were on the phone, me and Joss, Joss said something about Clayton.”
“Who?” Emily said, blank-faced.
“Clayton,” Jessamyn said, the impatience back in her voice. “Clayton Harrison. Marlea’s brother.”
I didn’t blame Sarah Washington for not wanting to cast any suspicion Clayton Harrison’s way, if his was the car she’d seen turning in to the soccer parking lot.
Everyone knew Clayton Harrison.
Chapter Eight
Every town has a boy like Clayton, I suppose. His parents, Dan and Karina, had money, both earned and inherited, and they let it flow down to Clayton without attaching any responsibility to it. Clayton was handsome, reckless, and constantly in trouble … when he wasn’t leading the high school baseball team to victory, or being elected to the homecoming court. He’d wrecked his first car, only to be presented with another one. He drank and ran into ditches. Dan Harrison had bought Clayton’s way out of a drunk-driving charge, a persistent rumor had it. Even worse, Clayton was reputed to be the father of a child whose fifteen-year-old mother had given the baby up for adoption … after Clayton had broken up with her in a text message. That couldn’t be considered entirely Clayton’s fault, exactly—but it didn’t add to his virtues, either.
Clayton was a charming liar. This was his senior year in high school, and he was definitely Lawrenceton High’s alpha male. His girlfriend of the past year, Connie Bell, was a beautiful, timid girl, also from a well-to-do family. She’d always seemed overshadowed by her boyfriend.
And Clayton was the big brother of Marlea, whose nasty Facebook message we’d just read.
This new piece of information stunned us all into silence. Jessamyn looked both scared and relieved of a burden. George spoke first. “Did Joss say if Clayton was in the car with him? Or did Clayton follow them? Or maybe he met them by chance? What did she say, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” Jessamyn said. She was about to cry. “Joss just checked that I’d gotten a ride home, and then she said Clayton was there. Something like, ‘There’s Clayton, yuck,’ or something. She doesn’t like him.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this right away?” Beth said, trying as hard as she could to sound calm.
“Because you told all of us never to hang around with Clayton,” Jessamyn said. “And we didn’t. I figured he was in his own car. Connie’s always with him.”
The Scotts looked blank.
“That’s Connie Bell,” I said. “Clayton’s girlfriend. They’re both seniors.”
They didn’t look enlightened.
“Clayton’s dad owns Harrison Timber and Land,” I explained. “Connie’s dad is the president of State Pride Bank.”
“And why should this matter?” Aubrey said.
The atmosphere felt too thick in the small, crowded bedroom. If I’d thought the living room was packed, now I knew it hadn’t been. I wanted to throw open the door and gulp in air. “It matters because those are both families with a lot of money and power and you can’t go poke them with a stick,” I said. “First thing, we need to be sure that Clayton is home, that he’s safe and sound.”
“I’ll call Karina again,” Beth said, but you could tell the idea didn’t sit well.
“No, let me,” I said. “She’s already defensive, with you.”
Beth nodded.
I looked at Karina’s number on Beth’s Contacts list and punched it in.
I switched the phone to speaker as it rang.
“Hello?” Karina Harrison said. I could recognize her piercing voice, from the occasions she’d come into the library. She was on the citizens’ advisory board for the library. She’d tried to get the Harry Potter books banned.
“Karina,” I said, “this is Aurora Teagarden. Phillip’s sister. How is Clayton?”
“Fine,” Karina said cautiously, after a significant pause. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I just learned Clayton met up with our missing kids on the day they vanished,” I said bluntly. “And I want to know what happened, straight from Clayton?
??s mouth. Or maybe I could talk to Marlea, since she was at the soccer field, too.”
This time the pause was longer.
“Marlea’s gone to stay with my mother in Savannah,” Karina said. “I just talked to her about her Facebook posting. I’ll ask Clayton about who he saw that afternoon when he walks in the door. I’m not sure where he is at the moment.”
We all looked around at each other. Really?
I said, “I find that hard to believe. Everyone is in an uproar about our missing kids, and you don’t know where your son is at the moment? Bull. We need to talk to him, Karina. Now, or at the police station.”
That tripped a wire. “No,” Karina said, and she was clearly panicking. “You don’t understand. If you tell the police, my son is in danger.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“He’s been kidnapped. And since your brother and the Finstermeyer kids are missing, maybe they’re the ones who did this! Did you think about that?”
I don’t know how anyone else in the room felt, but I was beyond stunned. George spoke for the first time. “Karina, our kids have also been kidnapped. You can’t seriously believe Josh and Joss, not to mention Liza, and someone new to town like Phillip, plotted and planned to abduct Clayton in broad daylight and ask you for ransom. They’re victims, too. You need to call the police, so they’ll know to look for Clayton’s car.”
“Who’s that? George?” Karina asked. “You’ve been listening in?”
“Yep.”
“No, no, no. Clayton will be lost if we bring in anyone. The kidnappers told us so. We’re paying soon. We’ll get him back. I’m begging you.” She was pleading from her heart; at least, it sounded like that to me.
“We’ll think about it.” I hung up.
Beth was incandescent with rage. “She didn’t tell the police. Clayton’s gone too, and she didn’t tell the police.”
“I can understand that,” I said slowly. “They’ve gotten a ransom demand. It’s their son’s life. But none of you have gotten a ransom demand, right? I sure haven’t. My father hasn’t.”