The Laura Cardinal Novels (8 page)

They reminded her of the Cabbage Patch craze years ago, only bigger. Much bigger, their long flour-white limbs like sausages. They were dressed in gingham pinafores, dotted Swiss baby-doll dresses, gunny-sack dresses. White, pink, yellow.

“You’ve got a lot of dolls,” she said as Olsen went through the shop turning on lights.

“You like them?”

“Very nice.” Actually, they creeped her out.

She wondered: Could this be the guy? She didn’t get anything from him except matter-of-factness, but she wasn’t psychic.

“Where did you get them?” she asked.

“My girls? I make them.”

“You do?” Her next question would naturally be
Why?
Instead she asked him if anyone had shown interest in the doll in the window.

“She’s not one of mine. She’s plastic. I use only natural materials.”

“But has anyone asked about it? Or any of your dolls?”

“Tourists.”

“Any men?”

“Men?” He stroked his beard. “Usually the men are interested in stuff like that gas pump. I can’t recall anyone …" He coughed up something into a handkerchief that he kept in his gray pants, pants that reminded Laura of the custodian at her high school years ago. “There
was
a guy interested in a dress. Wanted to buy it.”

“Why?”

“People never cease to amaze me. Been in this business for twenty years, and you never can figure out what they’re gonna ask for. He wanted to take that dress up there right off Daisy, but I told him no.”

Laura’s gaze followed his long crooked finger.

The doll wore a pale pink tulle dress with baby-doll sleeves.

“If I sold him the dress, Daisy would have been left in her birthday suit,” Olsen explained. ‘I couldn’t do that. When I explained it to him, he got mad.”

“Mad?”

“He didn’t make a scene, but you could tell he was steaming. Like he was counting to ten.”

“Can I see the doll?”

“Sure." He grabbed a long pole with a hook on the end of it and pulled at a rope hanging down behind him. Laura realized that it was a pulley system, kind of like at a dry cleaner’s, from which the dolls were suspended. He pulled the doll around, then expertly hooked her off by the neck and set her down on the counter. She noticed he had a US Marines tattoo on one arm.

Laura eyeballed Daisy, thinking she was approximately the same size as Jessica Parris—one big damn doll. “What size dress is that?”

“Size 3, junior.”

“What age would that fit?”

“Thirteen, fourteen years old.”

“Tell me about the guy.”

According to Ted Olsen, the man was white, average-looking except for a black mustache, and he had blue eyes. Olsen remembered the eyes because the guy was so mad. Asked to describe his clothing, Olsen thought he might have been wearing a ball cap and “probably jeans.”

“Nothing seemed unusual about him?”

“When he first came in, he didn’t seem like somebody who would get so mad.”

“So how did he strike you? When he first came in?”

“Well, see, I didn’t really notice him until he found me. He was the kind who blends in—just a regular guy.”

“When did he come in?”

“Day before yesterday. I was open that night, which I do sometimes when I’m working on a doll in back. Stayed open until nine o’clock.”

Nine o’clock: three to four hours after Jessica Parris was last seen.

Laura told him she’d be back with a photograph of the dress Jessica Parris had worn, in case he recognized the style. “In the meantime, if you remember anything else about this guy, please call me." She handed him her card.

As she crossed the street to her car, she finally got hold of Buddy Holland.

“Where are you? I’ve been looking for you.”

“Running down some things on my own.”

And avoiding her, she thought. “We need to compare notes. I’m headed up to take some plaster casts on West Boulevard right now, but—”

“I’ll meet you there. I’m going up there anyway.”

“You are?”

“I just talked to Dave Parris. Thought it would be a good idea if we took a look at the girl’s room. Unless you’re too busy.”

The window to Jessica Parris’s room was open, sunlight pouring in along with the warm summer air. It was clear from the posters on the wall that Jessica favored Josh Hartnett, Shakira, and Nelly. Laura had done stupid things in her teenage years, but worshipping a guy who wore a Band-Aid on his cheek wasn’t one of them.

Someone had written all over Jessica’s sheets with permanent markers: “Stay cool!” “You’re my best friend ever.” “You and Cary are the coolest people I know.”

“Her friends wrote those things,” Mrs. Parris said from the doorway. “We had a slumber party and they helped her decorate her room.” She hugged herself as if by doing so she might hold herself together, her nervous gaze straying to Buddy Holland, who was poking around the room as if it were a garbage dump. “Do you need anything else?”

Laura said, “I notice she doesn’t have a computer. Do you or your husband?”

“No. We’re not computer literate around here. Excuse me. I have to check the cookies.”

A dresser drawer screeched as Buddy opened it with latexed hands.

Laura looked up sharply. Holland returned her look, eyes devoid of all expression. She’d seen that look before, had used it herself. Cops who detested each other still had to work together, so they did it with as few words possible, just enough to get the job done. No one did cold as well as a cop.

Laura said, “No computer in the house, but she probably has access to one at school. You really think CRZYGRL12 has something to do with the Internet?”

“Could be.” Then he did something she didn’t expect: volunteered. “Let me check it out. I know my way around the Net pretty well. If she’s there, I can probably track her down.”

It was the longest speech she’d ever heard from him. “What would you do?”

“Check out Internet Relay Chats, see if I can find her there.”

Laura seized on the one word of the three she understood. “You mean chat rooms?”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t elaborate. “You want me to or not?”

She nodded. “I think you should.”

A photograph on the dresser top caught her eye—Jessica and a young man she assumed was Cary Statler. Jessica was pretty in a short denim skirt and halter top. Statler was a skinny, sleepy-looking kid in a black t-shirt and dirty-looking jeans. His hair looked like a pineapple top.

Buddy had gone back to searching, rummaging through a make-up caddy, then moving on to a velvet-lined box holding her earrings, bracelets, and anklets. A tinny sound as an anklet hit the floor. Doing it to annoy her.

“Buddy.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you interview Mr. Parris?”

Shrug. “Fine with me.”

He snapped off his gloves and left the room.

The stillness contrasted with all his banging. Now maybe she could get a feel for the girl.

Jessica had a thing for girly stuff: Flavored lip gloss; smiley-faced colognes with names like Cool Diva and Cha Cha Chica; and at least a dozen tubes of Sungirl—sun care products with glitter.

Laura looked at the photo again, wondering what about it nagged her.

It would come.

She looked through the dresser drawers and closet: Blue jeans, peasant blouses, halters, clogs. Jessica’s underwear was neatly folded in her dresser drawers. Bikini underwear in pastel colors, a couple of bras—Victoria’s Secret type stuff. They looked sophisticated for a fourteen-year-old girl, at least the fourteen-year-old girl Laura had been. A different era. She found a few homework assignments jammed into a bookshelf, most of the answer spaces blank. Round handwriting with hearts to dot the ‘i’s. No diary, unless Jessica kept it in a secret place. No books other than schoolbooks and the Harry Potter series, which was lined up in the bookcase like those leather-bound classics people displayed for show. Laura couldn’t say for sure, but she doubted that Jessica had cracked one of them.

Lots of
stuff
. Laura had read somewhere that tweens—eight to fourteen-year-olds—had so much discretionary income and expensive tastes that they drove the whole economy. Not just the US economy, but the world’s.

She noticed a newspaper clipping from a modeling agency tucked into the frame of the dresser mirror. Mrs. Parris had told her Jessica had wanted to be a model or a rock star.

Now she would be neither.

Laura walked into the kitchen, where the smell of baking cookies was overwhelming. Mrs. Parris fluttered back and forth through the sunny kitchen like a bird trapped indoors, her movements increasingly frantic.

“How are you doing?” Laura asked.

Mrs. Parris checked the heat on the oven. “We’re okay. I mean. It’s horrible, but …" She wiped a strand of red hair from her eyes.

“I’m sorry, but I have some more questions.” Laura set her mini-cassette recorder on the kitchen counter.

“I know you have to ask your questions. We want to find the guy who did this.” She said this last brightly.

“Mrs. Parris, do you know if she used a computer at school?”

Her brow wrinkled. “I think so.”

“She never talked about it? You know, texting her friends?”

“I wouldn’t know email from a hole in the wall. I’m not the least bit technical.” She stared at the oven. “Jessica loved to bake cookies. That’s why I’m doing it today. Kind of in her memory.”

“Where’s Cary?"

“Cary?” Linda Parris looked stunned.

“Her boyfriend. Doesn’t he live here?”

“Oh." She floundered for a moment, as if she’d dropped a thought and had to consciously pick it up again. “We’re kind of like his foster parents, even though there’s nothing official. You must think that odd, but it really isn’t. He needs us. We love him as if he’s our own son.”

“He and Jessica were boyfriend and girlfriend, though?”

“I know what you’re thinking. We had very strict rules, her father did. Cary lives in our travel trailer out back. Not in the house. But he’s a nice boy.”

“Were they sexually active?”

Defiance. “Yes. I found out about that a couple of months ago. And you know what I did? I marched her down to Planned Parenthood and got her birth control pills. You might think I’m a bad mother, but I did what I had to do, and I didn’t want our child
having
a child.”

“I’m not judging you, Mrs. Parris.”

“Please don’t say anything to her father. He’d have a fit if he knew.”

Laura thought that he probably did know. “I see no reason to tell him. So you don’t know where Cary is?”

Mrs. Parris frowned. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“Since Jessica was missing?”

“I’m not …" She didn’t finish her thought.

“You don’t know when he was here last?”

“He comes and goes. He has an uncle in Tucson—sometimes he stays there weeks at a time, especially after—“ she stopped. Her eyes widened slightly.

“After what?”

“After a fight.” Linda Parris looked past Laura, out the window.

Laura took note of the present tense and decided to stick with it. “With Jessica? Do they fight a lot?”

“No, no, nothing like what you’re thinking. Just arguments. Jessica can be—she could get dramatic. Cary just stayed out of her way, let her cool down. That’s all it was.”

“When was their last fight?”

“I know they weren’t talking earlier in the week.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?”

“It’s not like that. David and I would never bring someone into our home that we thought would be dangerous to our daughter.”

“Mrs. Parris, I have to know. When was the last time you saw him?”

“I think it was … two, three days ago. But it’s not what you think. He keeps to himself a lot, likes to go for long walks. Sometimes he stays with friends. That’s what Jessica loves most about him, even though it drove her crazy sometimes. She said he was a free spirit. I know what you’re hinting at and you’re wrong. We would never put our own daughter in danger.”

“I understand that, but it’s important I talk to him. It’s very likely he doesn’t know Jessica is gone. Don’t you agree he should know?”

She nodded reluctantly. Laura asked for the uncle’s address and phone number, and Linda Parris found it in her address book and copied it on paper from the memo pad stuck to the refrigerator, a flag at the top above the phrase “United We Stand”.

Linda moved back to the sink and carefully washed the mixing bowl and set it in the dishwasher. She stared out the window again. “We had so many good times. Last Saturday we spent the morning weeding. Jessie and her dad went to the Arctic Circle for hamburgers. She got mine with mustard, but not ketchup—she knew I didn’t like ketchup. That was a great day.”

She continued to stare out the window.

Something brushed Laura’s ankles. She looked down. A Siamese cat rubbed against her trouser legs.

Laura was attracted to animals the way some people were attracted to babies. She hunkered down and stroked the cat.

“That’s Princess, Jessie’s cat,” Linda Parris’s voice broke. “Jessie found her in a dumpster at the school. Half-starved, sick. Her father told her Princess was her responsibility—she couldn’t keep her unless she did everything. Feed her, clean the cat box, use her allowance to get her spayed …" She was rambling.

The cat climbed up into Laura’s arms and onto her shoulder. It felt natural to Laura; the small vibrating body, the warmth. Comforting.

Holding the cat, she thought of Jessica. Jessica, who liked Josh Hartnett and Nelly. Jessica, who took such good care of her cat. Something crumbled in her chest, and tears pricked the corner of her eyes.

She turned away so the mother couldn’t see and set the cat down.

As Laura left through the front door, she glanced up the street at the roped-off area where the turnouts were. Officer Noone stood in the road, hands on his waist above his heavy duty belt, the yellow crime scene tape quivering behind him. When he saw her he waved. If he was bored by his new duty— waiting for the tire cast to dry—he didn’t show it.

Buddy appeared from around the corner of the house, where David Parris, Jessica’s father, was hammering away at something.