Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (168 page)

“Beach towel! That’s a clue, surely!”

The guidance counsellor paused in his doorway with an indulgent smile. “I’m sure they’re following up on it. But there are a lot of beaches and pools in the city, and maybe she just planned to sunbathe in the park.”

Jenna considered the implications. It was true that in the affluent neighbourhood of Alta Vista alone, there were probably dozens of backyard pools, but if Lea had gone instead to a public park or one of the city’s beaches, there were always perverts lurking around hoping to satisfy their sick fantasies with the unsuspecting young girls who played there. A shiver passed through her. Girls had so little knowledge of—or control over—what they stirred up.

Green managed to wait until ten a.m. before he finally caved. Even in the likely event that Hannah was still asleep, ten o’clock was a perfectly reasonable hour for a parental phone call. There had been no further news releases about the missing girl, but Sullivan had assured him he’d call if anything developed. No phone call meant they were still slogging along, tracking down everyone Lea had ever talked to, following every lead and probably combing every public park within a five kilometre radius of her home. A huge task, but as time passed, hope was surely dimming among all concerned.

To his surprise, Hannah didn’t even answer the phone. When the answering machine kicked in, he dialled again, thinking she might have been slow to wake up. Still no answer. He dialled her cell phone. Voice mail announced the caller was unavailable. He scowled. Hannah carried the phone around on her belt as if it were a lifeline and never turned it off.

He debated whether to leave a message. He and Hannah had been virtual strangers a year ago when, in a fit of pique at her mother, she’d come to live with him. Every seemingly simple decision took on layers of unspoken meaning in the complex dance of feelings between them. Accusations of interference and mistrust would fly, and the closer he inched to intimacy, the more prickly she became.

“Oh, just leave a message!” Sharon exclaimed in exasperation after fifteen minutes of listening to him dither. “Whether she gives you hell or not, she’s going to know you care.”

So in the end he left her a chatty message about their arrival and the news of the missing girl, signing off with a casual request that she give him a ring just to let him know everything was okay.

He took his phone with him down to the dock, where Sharon, in a valiant attempt to make a swimming area for Tony, was clearing weeds from the patch of muddy shoreline that had been billed as a beach. For two hours, he forced himself to build a sandcastle with his son, complete with moat and coloured stones to reinforce the walls. It was a hot, sunny day, and the lake was filled with the roar of speedboats and the high-pitched squeal of small children towed behind on tubes. So much for peace and quiet.

By noon, Tony’s enthusiasm for coloured stones had waned, and a temper tantrum was brewing over the sandcastle that refused to stay standing. What do I know about sandcastles, Green thought irritably as the walls caved into the moat yet again. His parents had come from a small village in Poland, and from their limited immigrant perspective, beaches and water were dangers to be avoided. They had confined family holidays to picnics on the Rideau River in Strathcona Park, where they had all watched the ducks from the safe embrace of a distant shade tree.

With a cheerful announcement about lunch, Sharon scooped Tony into her arms and headed up to the cottage. Green picked up his phone and checked its battery, which was still fine. He dialled home. Voice mail. Hannah’s cell phone. Voice mail. Finally he gave up and phoned Sullivan. To his credit, the man didn’t utter a single gripe about interference.

“No breakthrough yet,” he said, “but we’re narrowing our search down to the most likely spots. Lea works at McDonald’s, and she told a co-worker on Monday that she hoped the weather would stay warm, because she was planning to go to the beach. So we’re focussing on area beaches.”

Green did a quick mental inventory. Ottawa was located at the convergence of three large rivers, all of which had swimming areas. As well, the wilderness playground of Gatineau Park, with beaches on its three lakes, was only a short drive across the Ottawa River into Quebec. He visualized the city map. Alta Vista was bordered on the west by the Rideau River, with its magnificent beach at Mooney’s Bay. He pointed that out to Sullivan.

“Yeah, and Mooney’s Bay has the most parkland, so it’s the best for parties. We’re concentrating there, but according to her friends, she didn’t like the crowds and noise there, so she preferred to go somewhere more private.”

“Like where?”

“Anywhere in the park, as long as it was by the water.”

Which doesn’t narrow it down much, thought Green. Almost all the waterfront in Ottawa was parkland. “Did she have access to a vehicle?”

“Her mother doesn’t own a car, so that leaves out the beaches in the Gatineau Park.”

“Unless someone else had a car. If she has a secret boyfriend, they may have been looking for privacy.”

Sullivan paused. “I’ll ask Ron Leclair to alert the Sûreté du Québec and the
RCMP
, since strictly speaking, Gatineau Park is in the
RCMP
’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, we’ve got guys combing the beaches at Britannia and Westboro for her too. We’ve also got officers at her school trying to shake loose a clue about a possible secret boyfriend, but you know how teenagers are. Misplaced loyalties and all that.”

Despite the blazing noon sun, Green felt a chill as he hung up. Misplaced loyalties, conspiracies of silence, a pack mentality of us against them. How little he knew about Hannah’s friends and the places she hung out. But he did know that, coming from Vancouver, she loved beach parties, and Westboro beach on the Ottawa River was a mere stone’s throw from their house in Highland Park.

It seemed irrational to fear that there was a connection, but why the hell wasn’t she answering her phone?

Jenna accompanied the anxious student from her office and glanced out into the main guidance room. Students, mostly girls, still filled every seat in the waiting area, and the guidance secretary was busy on the phone, fielding calls from parents. Despite the admonition not to talk to each other, the girls were excitedly sharing the rumours they’d heard and the tidbits of knowledge they possessed about Lea’s life. None of them looked too stressed, she noted with relief, but then teenagers could hide a mountain of feelings beneath a flighty façade.

One girl sat apart, staring at her hands and twisting her many rings round and round her fingers. She looked harder than the others, her skin disfigured by acne despite a heavy layer of makeup, and her body stuffed into the trashy clothes that young girls thought they had to wear to gain the attention of boys. The school dress code had been circumvented by a loose-fitting, virtually transparent white overshirt, beneath which was visible a lacy tank top stretched over size D breasts and an expanse of tanned stomach accented by a silver ring through her belly button. Her blonde hair escaped her ponytail in a cascade of ringlets that framed her face. She’d be a very pretty girl if not for the acne, the ton of smoky eye make-up she didn’t need, and the sulky frown.

Jenna walked over to introduce herself.

“Crystal Adams,” the girl responded, accepting Jenna’s hand in her moist, limp grip. Jenna ushered her into the little office the school had provided her. The door had a glass insert which prevented privacy, and the space inside was overtaken by a desk and computer, but she squeezed Crystal into the guest chair and contrived to look as welcoming as she could.

Crystal twisted her rings. Seven, Jenna noted with interest. Some were discreet bands of silver, others gaudy clusters of cheap stones.

“What brings you here, Crystal?” Jenna prompted eventually.

Crystal shrugged. “Have they found her? Do they know what happened?”

Jenna shook her head. “Did you know her?”

“Oh, yeah, we were friends. Kind of.”

Jenna waited, not sure what to ask. Then she remembered her Rogerian training: when in doubt, reflect. “Kind of?”

“No, we were. But like, we weren’t in classes together or anything, but we sometimes hung out. Like at parties and stuff.”

“Are you worried about her?”

“Well...I guess.”

“Any reason in particular?

“Well, you know, just that she’s missing, and that she...” Crystal trailed off and twisted her ring savagely. “I’m wondering if I should go to the police. I mean, I don’t want to get people in trouble.”

“Do you know something about what’s happened to her?”

In answer, Crystal sneaked a glance through the glass panel in the door and slouched lower in her chair, as if to hide herself from the students outside. “This is confidential, right? You can’t tell anybody...?”

Jenna nodded and was just trying to formulate the limits of confidentiality when Crystal leaned forward. “I think she was going to meet someone. I mean, not that I’m saying it was him! He’d never do anything like that. But I think she might have thought there was more going on with him than there was. She was—like—obsessed with him.”

“And he didn’t feel that way about her?”

“It was just a fling to him, you know. That’s the way him and his friends are. She’s pretty, and she’s sexy, and what guy wouldn’t go for her? But he could have any girl he wanted, and he wasn’t going to drop his whole life for her, you know what I mean?”

Jenna knew only too well. How many men had drooled over her own size D breasts and promised the moon just for a chance to get their hands on them? But women were just objects to them, one well-shaped body as good as the next. She’d told them all to go to hell.

“So what do you think happened?” she asked the girl.

“I don’t know what happened. I phoned her cell a bunch of times the day she disappeared, because I wanted to tell her not to push it. But she never answered. Never returned my calls either.” Crystal looked up, squinting through her eyeliner. “Do you think I should tell the police that?”

Jenna weighed the information the girl had provided. Beyond her speculation, she had very few facts. “Do you know the boy’s name?”

Crystal stiffened. “It wasn’t him. He had nothing to do with it.”

“But then...”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. If she didn’t get her way with him, she’d have freaked out. She thought she could get any guy she wanted—she usually did—but this one was different. That’s the point I’m not sure of. I don’t know what she’d do if she got upset.”

Jenna tried to make sense of her. “Then you’re worried she’s done something bad? What?”

“I don’t know!” Crystal burst out. “You’re the social worker. Run away? Killed herself?”

“Wait a minute. You think Lea might have killed herself?”

“Well, tried, you know? Taken a bunch of pills just to get his attention.” Crystal squinted at her again. “It happens, right? I mean, my mother once—”

“Has Lea ever talked about killing herself?”

“No, but then she thought this guy was over the moon for her. Romeo and Juliet, she said they were. And those two killed themselves, right? I saw the movie.”

Jenna sat forward in her chair, preparing to rise. “Crystal, I think you probably should talk to the police about this.”

“But I don’t really know anything.”

“Maybe not, but if it helps find Lea...”

“They’ll want to know the boyfriend’s name, right? He’s got a great future ahead of him. He doesn’t need his name dragged in just because she’s a drama queen.” She shoved her chair back and groped for the doorknob. “I feel better. I don’t think she’d kill herself. She’s too full of herself for that. Even if she swallowed a bunch of pills, she’d be sure to end up on his front doorstep so he’d know what he’d done to her.”

She yanked open the door. “Wait!” Jenna dived to intercept her and laid a restraining hand on her arm.

“She’s going to turn up all innocent surprise once she gives him a good scare. You wait and see,” Crystal said.

With that, she tore herself loose and flounced out the door.

Jenna spent the rest of the morning calming the fears of Lea’s friends and classmates, but she found her mind wandering back to what Crystal had said. Not about Lea’s tendency to play drama queen nor her possible histrionic suicide attempt, but about the boy she’d been involved with. A boy who had a great future ahead of him, who could have any girl he wanted, and who might view Lea’s demands as a mere inconvenience. Perhaps even more, as an obstacle to his pursuit of utter sexual abandon. The more she thought about it, the more she worried.

At noon, she headed down to the staff room to join the clusters of teachers opening their Tupperware lunches. Lea’s disappearance and the heavy-footed presence of the police were the talk of the room. She joined a table of three, including the scary Mrs. Lucas. No one paid her any attention, as a young man, clearly shaken, was voicing his outrage.

“The cops interviewed me three times. Three times! Once yesterday and twice today, the last time calling me out of the room in front of my entire class! That’s how rumours start, I tell you. I just teach the girl. I hardly know a thing about her, but because I’m a man—”

“And cute,” interjected a very pregnant, thirty-something woman. “Let’s face it, Nigel, half the girls are in love with you.”

“That’s hardly my fault,” Nigel exclaimed. “But apparently Lea told some of her friends she had a crush on me, and they told the cops. I’m telling you, I don’t even dare smile at a girl.”

Jenna rolled her eyes but kept her impatience to herself. Men always thought they had it so tough. Instead, she steered the conversation to her own concerns. “Does anyone know if she has a boyfriend?”

“Lea’s had lots of boyfriends,” Mrs. Lucas said. “She’s a pretty girl, but it hasn’t gone to her head. She still takes the time to be nice to everyone.”

“That’s refreshing,” the younger teacher said. “So many girls won’t give each other the time of day once they figure out the pecking order.”

Jenna tried to picture pretty, outgoing Lea in the middle of a group. Would people look up to her or ridicule her for talking to so-called losers? The distant pain of her own high school tinged her thoughts. Along with another memory of a boy even more inept than she was, who had followed her around like a lovesick puppy because she had been nice to him. He had turned up at the end of her laneway, outside her window in the dead of night, and finally on the shortcut through the woods from school to her house.