Last Seen Alive (7 page)

“You can’t have T-bone steak
every
day,” Chyna told the dog. “Just eat this now, and I’ll get something you like better for dinner. Deal?”

Michelle took three sips from her water bowl, gave Chyna one last reproachful glance, and walked out of the kitchen with stiff dignity. Her behavior and posture were so much like Vivian Greer’s would have been, Chyna was torn between laughter and tears. “Mom might not have been a dog lover, but she would have liked
you,”
Chyna called to a sullen Michelle.

Chyna guiltily fixed two more pieces of toast, wondering what had triggered her voracious appetite of the last two days, then decided to check out the telephone as she should have done last night. She picked up the handset and scrolled back to see the latest calls made to the number.

The last number recorded was Ned’s. Chyna frowned, thinking. Had Ned or Beverly called her back after her hysterical call to them last night? No. Ned had talked to her for about twenty minutes, trying to calm her down, urging her to let him pick her up to stay with them, but when she’d refused, pretending to be getting herself under control, he’d given up and said good night. She’d then drunk the brandy and gone to bed.

The secret of the caller’s identity must lie in the next

number. Chyna’s heart hammered, both because she wanted to know who’d called and because she didn’t want to think that someone out there was trying to frighten her. But if she had an enemy, even a harmless one who took pranks no further than phone calls, she needed to know. The next name and number came up. Her uncle Rex. She’d already listened to his message on the answering machine saying he would be here today. Before that, a call had come from a telemar-keter. The telemarketer was preceded by an elderly lady who lived close by asking no one in particular if there were any way she could help after dear Vivian’s “passing.” That was the last call listed.

Chyna sat down at the kitchen table and rested her forehead on her hands. During the last four years, her episodes of what most people called ESP had lessened. She didn’t know if it was because of her tremendous workload, the change of scenery, or simply a matter of “growing out” of it. Whatever the reason, she’d been unutterably relieved. But now it seemed to have kicked into gear again. First, there had come the voice at the lake. Next, she’d gotten the strange, windy phone call from someone sounding remarkably like Anita Simms. Chyna could put both down to heightened imagination caused by grief over her mother if Michelle hadn’t acted so strangely, too. But Chyna had to admit that the dog was deeply attached to her. Perhaps Michelle had been reacting to her heightened adrenaline levels. Maybe the dog’s two bouts of alarm yesterday were the result of Chyna’s fear, not Zoey speaking to her from the lake or Anita calling her on the phone.

Chyna shook her head, deciding not to dwell on the subject further right now. At eleven, she had an appointment at the funeral home. She took a shower and washed her hair, then rooted through her suitcase to find she’d forgotten to pack her blow dryer. She went into her mother’s room to find another. At the time of Chyna’s father’s death, the room had been decorated in beige, light brown, and fern green. Over the years, Vivian had added some saffron yellow, pale apricot, and watermelon pink—small touches that had both enlivened the room and made it more feminine.

Last Christmas when Chyna had come home, her mother had insisted on doing “my little girl’s hair” for the annual Christmas party. Chyna hadn’t looked in the mirror as she felt her mother whipping through her long strands of hair with hot rollers and curling irons. She’s making me look like a twelve-year-old with ringlets, Chyna had thought with dread. Then Vivian had chirped, “All done!” Slowly Chyna had forced herself to look in the mirror to find that her mother had indeed added curls to the hair, but big, loose curls. She’d pulled the top part to the back of Chyna’s head, teasing it a bit for height and using an antique gold and pearl clasp to hold it in place, then draped the lower part seductively over Chyna’s right shoulder.

“You look like a Greek goddess,” Vivian had said with complete love and admiration, not with a tinge of jealousy over the fact that lovely as she was, she dimmed in comparison with her daughter. “Now go out there and socialize. Don’t hover in a shadowy corner like you usually do,” Vivian had instructed. “You seem to feel like you should hide if you’re not wearing those horrible scrubs from the hospital. You have a fabulous figure. Show it off. By the way, Scott Kendrick might be here tonight.”

Chyna’s heart had beat faster at that thought, and throughout the evening her spirits had drooped along with her curls when he hadn’t shown up. “Weather got my Scott hung up in New York,” Mrs. Kendrick told her around ten o’clock, her voice slightly slurry from too much spiked eggnog. “He should be here tomorrow and I’m sure he’ll be sorry he missed the party. He’s probably stuck alone in some shabby motel room watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
for the thirtieth time.”

Chyna had smiled stiffly. She had no doubt Scott was in a motel room. She was totally certain he was not alone watching
It’s a Wonderful Life.
That night she’d vowed she’d get over this ludicrous crush she’d had on him since she was a teenager.

But seeing him at the lake yesterday convinced her that she hadn’t really made much progress since last Christmas.

She still thought he was the most charming, handsome— downright sexy—man she’d ever seen and her heart had beaten just as fast eighteen hours ago at the sight of him as it had when she was sixteen.

“Oh, Chyna, you’re hopeless when it come to Scott,” she said aloud as she pulled herself from her reverie and headed for her mother’s bathroom, stubbing her toe on something barely sticking out from under the bed. Chyna bent down and pulled out an album, once white, now ivory with age. She opened the cover and on the first page saw a cut-out newspaper article titled “Sixteen-year-old Girl Goes Missing.”

Zoey. Chyna read the first article written in the
Black Willow Dispatch
about Zoey, who had vanished in the night “while with her friend Chyna Greer, 16, of Black Willow.” “But she
wasn’t
with me,” Chyna burst out, just as she had the first time she read the article twelve years ago. “She wasn’t with
me”
She turned the album pages, every one of them containing an article pertaining to Zoey, some from the local newspaper, some picked up from the Associated Press from newspapers as far away as Washington, D.C., Zoey’s home. They reported details about the search for Zoey, and they reported when she’d been given up for dead.

Chyna turned the page and gasped when she saw the headline of the next article: “Another Local Girl Goes Missing.” The newspaper was dated December 28, nineteen months after Zoey’s disappearance, while Chyna was home on Christmas break from college. The article stated that Heather Phelps, 17, a senior at Black Willow High School, cheerleader, and member of the student council, had taken her parents’ car around 7:00
P.M.
to Baker’s Drugstore, where she’d been last seen alive. The Phelpses found their car parked near the drugstore around 11:00
P.M.
Heather had not been missing long enough for the police officially to list her as a missing person, so the family had organized their own search team.

The next day local police became involved sooner than protocol strictly required. They learned that while no one in the store had seen Heather talk to anyone except the checkout

girl, a few people on the street had seen Heather after she left the store. They said she was alone and looked untroubled. She’d wandered on foot up the street, apparently window-shopping for Christmas gifts, although no one had spotted her entering any stores, and no one working in the stores had helped her or even noticed her looking around. The search had continued for months. Then the case went cold.

Chyna’s hands turned icy. In fact, she’d begun to shiver all over as she read the newspaper accounts. She remembered when Heather Phelps had gone missing. Ned had mentioned it to her, although her parents said nothing, and every evening their newspaper disappeared before Chyna got to read it, stuck in the trash by her mother, no doubt. She hadn’t wanted Heather’s disappearance to remind Chyna of Zoey’s, yet Vivian had kept accounts spanning for months of the search for Heather Phelps. Why? Because she thought Heather’s experience was linked to Zoey’s?

Chyna sat down on the bed and flipped pages until she came to an article dated in May—the May she had come back to Black Willow to attend her father’s funeral. The article concerned Edie Larson, aged 16, whose backpack had been found about a mile north of town and brought to the police station by two thirteen-year-old boys. When police contacted the parents, Mr. Larson claimed Edie had been gone for two days, but he hadn’t reported her missing because he thought she’d run away with her boyfriend, Gage Ridgeway, age 19, also of Black Willow.

Ridgeway, however, had never missed a day of work at his grandfather’s construction company and told police that for the past few days he had thought Edie was home with the flu, although her father, who did not approve of Gage, would not allow him to speak to Edie when he’d called twice to check on her. Once again, a search was launched, although this time the number-one suspect had been Ron Larson, Edie’s father, who had a juvenile record, two DUIs, and a history of domestic abuse. Three times when police had arrived at the Larson home, they’d found Mrs. Larson sporting black eyes and split lips. Each time, though, she’d come up

with elaborate, if unbelievable, excuses for her injuries and never pressed charges against her husband.

At the time of Edie’s disappearance, though, Mrs. Larson finally admitted that her husband had refused to let her tell the police Edie was missing even though the girl, who’d been alone and on foot as far as Mrs. Larson knew, had not returned from a play rehearsal held one evening at the nearby high school. The teacher conducting the rehearsal confirmed that Edie had attended the rehearsal and left the school alone, refusing a ride from a student who needed to stay later to practice another scene. Edie had said she would get in trouble at home if she were late.

Later Ron Larson defended not reporting his daughter missing by telling police he thought Gage Ridgeway had “knocked up Edie” and she’d simply run off, thereby disgracing the fine name of Larson in town. Larson also suggested that instead of hassling him, police should arrest Ridgeway for “stationary rape,” a quote the town’s newspaper editor couldn’t resist including in the article.

Chyna laid the album on her lap. She remembered Ned mentioning Edie when Chyna had come home that summer, and her mother quickly changing the subject. The last newspaper article in the album, dated May 25 of eight years ago, said police were continuing the search for Edie, who had been missing for ten months. “But I’m sure they didn’t find her,” Chyna said aloud. “Just like they didn’t find Zoey, just like they didn’t find Heather.” Three girls in less than four years. What had the voice coming from the lake said yesterday? “You have to find me, because there were other girls like me.” Chyna knew Zoey was telling her Heather and Edie had suffered the same fate she had.

Chyna slammed shut the album and placed it on the bed beside her. Three girls had died because someone had come to Black Willow twelve years ago, someone dark and deranged, and he’d roamed the area for four years, then … then what? Died? Been killed?

Decided to move on to greener pastures?

No, definitely not the last. The voice coming from the

lake, Zoey’s voice, had told her, “There will be more girls like me if you don’t do something.” Chyna closed her eyes in dread and fear that there was some great plan at work. Was that why her mother had died? To bring Chyna home before more girls vanished to suffer horrors in evil hands?

“Yes,” a voice seemed to whisper coldly through the room. “You’re their only hope.”

With a shudder, Chyna stuffed the album of newspaper articles back under her mother’s bed, pushing it as far against the wall as she could, hiding it, hoping she could forget about it. She didn’t want to think of her mother clipping out those articles year after year and carefully centering them on pages, slipping vinyl covers over them, preserving them. Preserving them for what? For me to read, Chyna thought. Vivian had always expressed worry about Chyna claiming to have “visions,” but Chyna had sensed that perhaps Vivian was acting, and she really believed her daughter had powers beyond normal. Once, when Chyna was around eight and Vivian had drunk too much wine at a Fourth of July barbecue, hadn’t she told Chyna about her own two aunts and her younger, deceased sister who’d “sensed” things?

Later Vivian denied she’d ever told Chyna such a thing, but she’d always had a guilty look on her face during her denials. Chyna guessed her father had overheard Vivian telling the story and for once put his foot down with her mother, insisting she refute her “fairy tale.” But Chyna was certain, just as she was certain of so many things for which there was no proof, that her mother was telling the truth about her sisters.

Her mother did believe in second sight, Chyna thought. Vivian had gone along with her husband when he wanted to take Chyna to doctors after the boating accident and Chyna had begun to make predictions, recall incidents from the past she couldn’t possibly know about, find things no one else

could find, but her mother was only trying to please Edward. She had believed in ESP because she’d seen it at work in her own family, and she’d left this album full of details about the missing girls knowing Chyna would find it because she was meant to save other lives, and not by medical means.

The obligation seemed too much. Chyna felt crushed by the burden she feared was hers. She hung her head. She wanted to cry. She wanted to grab up Michelle and get away from Black Willow as fast as she could. She wanted to abrogate responsibility for any lost girls, past or present. But she knew she couldn’t.

Slowly, Chyna raised her head. The only answer for now was to get hold of her emotions, she thought. She went to her mother’s dresser and looked in the vanity mirror. “I will not think about this again today,” she told herself sternly. “I will not think about the album or that bizarre phone call.” And she would especially not think about the haunting voice at the lake, Zoey’s voice, singing, “Star light, star bright,” which for some reason had frightened Chyna more than anything else that had happened since she came home. She knew she could not run from responsibility. She also knew from experience that if answers were to come, they would come in their own time, in their own way. She could not force them.