Mariah Stewart - Hard Truth

Lorna paused, then walked around the room, her eyes on the floor.

“What are you looking for?” T.J. asked.

“Melinda’s blanket. It doesn’t seem to be here.”

“Where should it be?”

“It should have been over there, with mine. We used to fold them up as small as we could, and hide them in the back corner, so no one would find them.”

“When was the last time you were down here?”

“When I was nine. I was never too keen on being down here alone, and we-Melinda and I-had sworn to never tell anyone else about our secret place. I never did. I guess I always thought someday she’d come back, and I didn’t want to have to tell her I’d shared our secret.”

“So no one else knows this place is here?”

“Oh, sure, my sister knows. My brother. Probably some of his friends knew it was here, though they all seemed to spend more time over at the home of one of the other boys, who had horses. They all liked to play cowboys when they were younger. So much more authentic when you had a horse to ride.”

“And your sister?”

“Wouldn’t have been caught dead down here.” Lorna laughed. “Spiders, other crawly things. Maybe some with fur and tails. Not Andrea’s cup of tea.”

“You didn’t mention it to the police? Or to your parents?”

“No. I didn’t,” she said somewhat sheepishly. “I should have. As an adult, I know that. But as a child, I couldn’t have broken that promise.”

She wandered around and peered in all the corners.

“Still looking for the blanket?” T.J. asked.

“Strange that it’s not here.”

“Maybe she took it,” he suggested.

“Took it where? It was here the day before she disappeared. We were down here, practicing lines for the school play. We had the blankets on the floor, right there.” She pointed to the middle of the room.

“If she needed a place to hide, would she have come here?”

“What are you getting at?” Lorna asked. “What are you thinking?”

“The theory all along seems to be that Melinda was abducted from the field that night. Maybe she wasn’t taken away by someone else. Maybe she ran away. What do you think?”

“I can’t imagine where she would have gone.” Lorna frowned.

“Maybe she came in here to hide, then left when the excitement died down out in the field.”

“But hide from what?”

“That’s a good question.” T.J. stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips. “Would she have had any reason to hide from her mother that night?”

Lorna shook her head. “No. I already told you, my mother washed her dress so that no one could tell it had gotten dirty. She would have been able to smuggle it into the house, it wouldn’t have been difficult. She wasn’t afraid to go home.”

“Maybe something happened between your house and hers that night, something that made her want to hide.”

“Jason might have known. But of course, we can’t ask him.”

“Fritz didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary that night,” T.J. reminded her.

“I think we need to talk with the others who were there with him. Matt, Dustin… Fritz’s brother, Mike. He was around later.”

“Well, let’s go back into the house and look up some phone numbers, make a few calls,” he suggested. “I want to speak with all of them as soon as possible.”

Lorna looked at her watch.

“How about we grab the phone book and I make the calls from the car? We’re due at Danielle Porter’s in less than a half hour.”

“That will work.”

She walked through the arch and into the wine cellar. T.J. blew out the candle and left it on the floor inside the door.

“Next time we bring lightbulbs.”

Danielle Porter lived in a double-wide trailer on an acre lot surrounded by apple trees and a big flower garden. There was a two-car garage and a child’s playhouse in the backyard, and a mailbox surrounded by weeds at the foot of the driveway. T.J. parked the Crossfire in front of the garage, and he and Lorna walked across new macadam to the worn path through the grass to the front door.

Danielle stepped out of the house to meet them before they could ring the bell.

“You’re T. J. Dawson?” she asked.

He nodded and offered her a business card.

“And you are?” Danielle stared at Lorna.

“Lorna Stiles.”

“Lorna Stiles,” Danielle repeated thoughtfully. “You’re from around here. I know your name. But I don’t have a clear memory of you.”

“I was a friend of Melinda Eagan’s,” Lorna told her.

“Who?” Danielle placed a hand on her hip and cocked her head slightly to the left.

“Melinda Eagan,” Lorna repeated.

“Am I supposed to know the name?”

“You were friends with her, back in grade school.” Lorna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Was it possible Danielle had really forgotten someone she’d been friends with years ago? “She used to stay at your house quite often. Until she disappeared one night and was never seen again.”

“Oh, the girl who disappeared.” Danielle’s expression never changed. “What about her?”

“I’m looking into her disappearance,” T.J. said, stepping into the conversation.

“So why do you want to talk to me? I wasn’t there that night, I don’t know nothing about it.”

“I was hoping you’d be able to give us some information we don’t already have. You spent some time with her back then, maybe you’d remember if she ever told you that someone was giving her a hard time, or frightening her in some way.”

“Only her mother.” Danielle shrugged. “She used to beat up on her something bad, I remember that.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about maybe wanting to run away?” T.J. asked.

“No.” She shook her head and looked down. “We really weren’t that close.”

“She used to spend a lot of time at your house,” Lorna reminded her. “What did you do? What did you talk about?”

“It was a long time ago.” Danielle shrugged. “I don’t remember what we did, or what we talked about. I guess she just didn’t make that big an impression on me.”

She looked from Lorna to T.J. “Was there something else?”

T.J. handed her his card. “If you think of anything, if you happen to remember something about Melinda, give me a call.”

“Sure.” Danielle stepped back into the house and closed the door.

Lorna and T.J. returned to his car.

“That was a waste of time,” Lorna said.

“Not really. We learned something.”

“What, that she was lying?”

“That could be important.” T.J. started to back the car slowly down the drive. “Why would she lie about knowing Melinda?”

“I don’t know, but apparently she can’t wait to tell someone.” Lorna stared at the open window as they went past. “She grabbed that phone and started dialing before we reached the car. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall right now?”

“Nah. But I would like to know whose number she just dialed.” He reached into his pants pocket and took out his phone, then dialed a number. “Mitch, it’s T.J. How quickly can you get phone records?”

“ Cannon Road is the next left, so you’ll want to turn there,” Lorna told T.J.

“It will be interesting to see how Mike Keeler’s version of things stacks up against his brother’s,” T.J. noted.

“Mike was fourteen, remember. Two years younger than Fritz. He might have seen things differently.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Fourteen, you’re still a kid. Sixteen, you’re a little more mature. I think the older you are, the more you’re likely to remember the little things.”

“Two years isn’t so great a difference.”