J. Jance - Skeleton Canyon

Joanna gave Ernie a grateful nod. Officially, Bree O’Brien’s possible disappearance was not yet a missing persons case. Still, Ernie’s diplomatic handling of the situation seemed to filler Katherine some comfort and give her courage.

Sighing and pulling herself together, Katherine stepped into her daughter’s room. Joining her, Joanna was surprised by what she saw. The room was immaculately clean; the bed carefully made. Books on the loaded bookshelves stood with their whines aligned in almost military precision. The desktop held a formidable computer setup, but no stray pieces of paper lingered around it. In fact, the place was so unbendingly neat that, had it not been for the posters and pictures pinned to the walls and for the mound of teddy bears piled at the head of the bed, it would have been hand to tell that a teenager lived there at all.

Jenny’s room stayed neat because she liked it that way, but Joanna remembered all too well the chaotic condition of her own room back when she had been Brianna’s age. The place had been a pit. Once a week or so, and always uninvited, Eleanor Lathrop had stepped over the threshold into Joanna’s sanctum sanctorum. Once inside, she never failed to raise hell. Eleanor, needing to exert control, had wanted the place kept spotless, while a rebellious Joanna had craved and reveled in the very disorder that drove her mother wild.

Based on that scale of value, Joanna’s initial reaction was to see Brianna O’Brien’s room as an indicator of a good relationship between mother and child-one of mutual respect. As always, when faced with evidence that some mothers and teen-age daughters actually got along, Joanna allowed herself to indulge in the smallest flicker of envy. After all, her relation-ship with her own mother was still far from perfect.

“Right this way, Mrs. O’Brien,” Ernie was saying. “If you’ll just take a look at the closet here and tell me if you notice anything in particular that’s missing-something that ought to be here but isn’t.”

The closet was a walk-in affair. It was big enough for both Katherine and Joanna to join Detective Carpenter inside the well-organized little room without even touching shoulders. The closet was as compulsively neat as the room. Clothes were hung on hangers. Paired shoes were carefully stacked in hanging shoe bags. A dirty clothes hamper stood in the corner, but it was empty.

“Her overnight bag,” Katherine said at once, gesturing toward a fool-and-a-half-wide empty space on an upper shelf. “It’s just a little carry-on. That’s all she ever takes with her.”

“Yore don’t see any clothes missing?” Ernie urged.

“Her tennis shoes,” Katherine said.

Ernie grimaced in disappointment. “Nothing else?”

“Not from the closet. It’s summer, though. Bree spends most of the time in shorts and tank tops. Those are kept in the dresser.”

Moving over to the dresser, Katherine pulled open the top drawer. “Some underwear, I suppose,” she said. Closing that drawer, she moved on to the next one. “And shorts. She usually wears cutoffs and tennis shoes.”

“Do you know the brands?”

“Wranglers for the jeans and Keds for the shoes,” Katherine said. “And tank tops. She has several of them. They’re all the same style but in several different colors, so I can’t really tell on which ones aren’t here.”

Ernie scribbled something in his notebook. “Nightgown?”

Katherine walked as far as the bed and lifted the right-hand pillow, spilling the mound of lounging teddy bears off onto the floor. “Her nightgown’s definitely missing,” she said a moment later. “And her diary… her journal, rather,” Katherine corrected. “I think of it as a diary, but Bree prefers to call it a journal. It’s one of those little blank books with lots of pink or blue flowers on the cover. I forget which it is. She buys them at a bookstore in Tucson, and she usually keeps the one she’s working on right here on her nightstand. She says that’s the last thing she does before she falls asleep at night-writes in her journal.”

Ernie made another notation. “What about the bathroom?” he said. “Would you mind checking there?”

Moving deliberately, Katherine headed there next. She stood for some time in front of the bathroom counter. “Perfume, deodorant, makeup are all gone,” she said. “She’s taken the usual stuff. The kinds of things you’d expect. Her hair dryer is here, but I’m sure Crystal has one Bree could borrow.”

Reaching out, Katherine pulled open the top drawer in the built-in bathroom vanity. “Comb and brush,” she reported. Then, frowning, she reached down into the drawer and picked something up. At first glance it looked to Joanna like a light green, oversized matchbook.

“What’s this?” Katherine asked, turning the packet over. Lifting the flap revealed a layer of tiny white pills covered by a plastic shield and backed by foil. To Joanna, the packaging was instantly recognizable. It took Katherine O’Brien a moment longer.

Turning the package over in her hand, Katherine frowned as she read the label. “Birth control pills!” she exclaimed in dismay. “What on earth would Brianna be doing with these?”

Behind Katherine’s back, Ernie Carpenter and Joanna Brady exchanged glances. The usual reason, Joanna thought. Maybe there’s a lot more rebellion going on in Brianna O’Brien’s amazingly clean room than anyone-most especially her mother-ever imagined.

Those thoughts flashed through Joanna’s head, but she was careful to say nothing aloud. Keeping quiet allowed Katherine O’Brien the opportunity to arrive at those same conclusions on her own. “Why, you don’t think…” Katherine blanched. “No. Absolutely not. Bree wouldn’t do such a thing.”

But clearly, Ernie Carpenter did think. “When we were out in the other room and I was asking about Bree’s friends,” he ventured, “neither you nor Mr. O’Brien mentioned a boyfriend.”

Detective Ernie Carpenter had been a homicide cop for fifteen years and a deputy before that. He knew everything there was to know about murder and mayhem. Up to then, his careful handling of Katherine O’Brien had been sensitive in the extreme, but as soon as he made that statement, Joanna realized his knowledge of women was still somewhat lacking. His comment hit Katherine O’Brien hard, especially since the little green package clutched in her hand would most likely rob her of any lingering illusions about her daughter’s supposedly virginal purity.

Rather than believe the evidence in her hand, however, Katherine turned on Ernie. “My daughter does not have a boyfriend, Detective Carpenter!” she insisted. “N-O-T. If she did, don’t you think her mother would know about it?”

Not necessarily, Joanna thought, relieved to note that, at that juncture, Ernie was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

“As for these,” she continued furiously, flinging the offending package of pills back into the drawer and slamming it shut, “there’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. Bree sometimes has terrible menstrual cramps. Maybe she’s taking the pills for that. It’s a common treatment. She certainly wouldn’t be using them for birth control. Now, if there’s nothing else, I need to be getting back to my husband.”

“Mrs. O’Brien,” Joanna said quickly, “would you mind if Detective Carpenter and I poked around in here for a few more minutes in case there’s something we’ve missed?”

Having spent her outrage, Katherine took a deep breath. She considered for a moment, looking back and forth between Ernie and Joanna. “No,” she said finally. “I suppose not, but still, I should be getting hack to David.”

“As soon as we finish in here, we’ll come find you,” Joanna said.