Lorie O - Strong, Sleek and Sinful

Stalking into his kitchen, he grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and returned to his couch and the remote. The beer wouldn’t help. Maybe something harder, with a fierce bite, might numb his aggravation and outrage.

“Goddamn it,” he grumbled, sinking into his couch but unable to get comfortable. Tilting the chilled bottle, he poured half the brew down his throat. He needed to call Kylie and figure out what the hell was going on with her supposedly backing out of dinner tomorrow night. The sooner he had answers the better. More than likely, Dani would tell Megan the same thing she told him; if anything, his niece would use the topic as a shield against her mother to prevent getting yelled at for talking to boys online that she didn’t know.

Megan was one hell of a mother. He’d be the first to admit it. But his nieces were all sharp as tacks. Dani could take Megan on, tell her what she wanted to hear, and have her off her back in a matter of minutes. Perry would bet his paycheck on it.

“It won’t be as easy convincing me of your innocence, young lady,” he said out loud, and downed more of his beer.

His cell phone started ringing and he glanced around, then realized he’d left it in his den when he jotted down Kylie’s number. Once again removing the remote from his belly and pushing himself to his feet, Perry made it to his phone before the caller went to voice mail.

“Flynn here,” he said after noticing the caller was Dispatch.

“Flynn, I thought you might want a heads-up.” Cliff Miller didn’t usually work the night shift, but he spoke quickly, sounding pumped up and riding high on adrenaline, caffeine, or both. “Another teenager has just been reported missing. Her parents are at the station now. Their daughter, Rita Simoli, never came home and didn’t show up for her after-school job.”

“Is anyone doing a report?” Perry hurried to his bedroom and quickly stripped out of his sweats and got back into the jeans he had worn that day. Missing persons reports weren’t filled out until 24 hours had passed. Most cops hesitated in doing even that when it was a teenager.

“One of the clerks is talking to them, but Rad mentioned you were on the Olivia Brown case.”

“I’ll be there in ten. Keep the parents there.”

Barely ten minutes later Perry hurried into the station, nodding when Cliff gestured with his head in the direction of the administrative desks lined in rows in the middle of the station. He pushed the code into the panel alongside the door and shoved it open the moment it buzzed.

Cheryl Parker glanced up at him and looked noticeably relieved when he approached her desk. “Perry, this is Polly and Ricardo Simoli, parents of Rita Simoli.” She picked up several pieces of paper and tapped them against her desk, organizing them, and then handed them over to him. “I’ve taken their personal information but…” She broke off, shooting a side-glance at the Simolis’.

Ricardo stood and then put his hand on his wife’s shoulder when she slowly rose to her feet as well. “You’re going to fill out a missing persons report,” Ricardo Simoli didn’t make it a question.

“You’re going to find our daughter?” Polly asked, her eyes swollen and stained from running mascara.

“Yup,” he said, knowing from years on the force that parents asked the impossible questions first and telling them he didn’t have a clue whether he could find their child or not wasn’t an effective way to begin interrogation. “Thanks, Cheryl,” he said, glancing at her long enough to catch her smile and wink, and then turned his focus on the distraught couple.

“Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” Cheryl offered, never missing a chance to throw shameless suggestive comments in his direction no matter the seriousness of the moment.

He didn’t bother answering but gestured for the Simolis to come with him. “I’ll need you to help me get a feel of where to start looking,” he said quietly. “Do either of you need anything to drink?”

“No, we need our daughter,” Ricardo said crossly.

“We’ll get her,” Perry said without bothering to make eye contact. “Have a seat,” he said, moving around his desk in the “pit” and making a mental note of who all was in the building. Other than Dispatch and a couple administrative people, Franco helped himself to coffee and gave Perry and the Simolis a curious stare before taking his time returning to his desk. If Franco was going to rat him out for filling out a missing person’s report before the 24 hours was up, he could just go to hell. Perry turned his attention to Ricardo and Polly. “Let’s see what we have here.”

“Our daughter didn’t show up for work. She’s never missed a day on the job since she started.”

“At…” Perry glanced at the notes Cheryl had taken, hand written in neat block letters. “At Simoli’s Restaurant.” It dawned on him then why their name sounded familiar. They either owned or worked at a family restaurant that was fairly successful, with an unbeatable reputation for incredible Italian food.

“We let her start working there when she turned sixteen. Our daughter is seventeen now and not once has she missed a day on the job. None of our children are slackers,” Polly said, straightening. “Something terrible has happened to our Rita.”

“Let me ask you this,” Perry said, agreeing with Mrs. Simoli but not seeing the point in saying so. “Does your daughter spend a lot of time on the computer?”

“What kind of question is that?” Ricardo snapped. “All of us do. Part of Rita’s job is entering tickets on the computer.”

“I meant chatting, online chatting. Does she do a lot of that?”

Ricardo looked at his wife, who returned a concerned expression. She focused on Perry first, her expression sadder than it had been a moment before. “There was a time, not too long ago, when she appeared obsessed with talking to this boy on the computer. It wasn’t natural, or proper. Her father and I put an end to it.”

“Do you know who she was chatting with? The boy’s name?”

“Peter, Peter Rangari. We didn’t know his family, and he wasn’t from Mission Hills. There are good boys here from very successful families, plenty for our Rita to choose from.” Polly straightened, tilting her head slightly while pressing her lips together in a very determined-looking expression. “Why do you ask us this?”

“Peter Rangari,” Perry repeated, writing the name down. “I need as many current pictures of your daughter that you can provide, and also, with your permission, I need to look at the computer your daughter used to do her online chatting.”

“Our daughter obeys us.” Ricardo pushed his chair back and stood, then took his wife’s arm and encouraged her to her feet. “Don’t even think she would go behind our backs and meet a boy we demanded she sever all communication with. If you want to send a team over to our home, we’ll cooperate. But you’d better come up with a better lead than that, or I’ll insist another cop be given our daughter’s case, one who knows what the hell he is doing.”

A couple hours later, Perry walked out of the Simolis’ house, a nice two-story country home with a large landscaped yard, his mood more sour than it had been all day.

“Peter is hitting hard,” Carl said, scowling when he reached for the passenger door.

Perry looked at him over the top of the car. “She’d been talking to him for months, too. We’ve got the printed chats, but I think we need to subpoena their hard drive.”

“Going to have to. Mr. Simoli didn’t like us even going through the computer.” Carl slipped into the passenger seat next to Perry. “More than likely he was scared we’d stumble onto all of his souped-up accounting.”