William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

Possible. But I still didn’t think so.

On the back page of one of the scrapbooks, I found a Web URL. I jotted it down in my notepad. I was putting them away when something spilled out of one of them, something that had been wedged between the pages.

A torn bus ticket. Now that was interesting. She wouldn’t need to ride the bus to get to Trinity Episcopal.

I didn’t expect to find anything useful under the bed. Wasn’t that the first place parents always looked? That was where I’d kept my pot when I was her age. And God knows I’d gotten caught often enough.

But under Helen’s bed, hidden in a small box wedged between the bottom of the mattress and the wooden slats, I found an outfit of clothes. It was all black. A sheer, tight lacy bodice. An equally tight, short leather skirt. Matching bra and shoes. Fishnet hose. A pair of black Ray-Bans with purple lenses. Something that looked like a white shoe polish brush but which I knew (thanks to Rachel) was actually used to put a temporary streak of color in your hair that washed right out once you were home from your revels. All told, a very exotic, erotic, interesting little outfit.

Granger’s investigators would’ve seen this, too, of course, but they wouldn’t grasp the significance. They’d laugh embarrassedly, or maybe make some off-color joke about the little girl getting some action. Then they’d close the box and put it away and proceed to look for bloodstains or something else they could understand. But to me, this box spoke volumes.

Helen was a closet Goth girl.

Downstairs, I found that one of Helen’s friends had arrived. I knew from a picture wedged into the side of the mirror above Helen’s dresser that this was Amber. She was more distraught than the mother, her cheeks still red, her eyes watery. When I asked if I could have a few words with her, I thought she might faint. But she agreed. That only left the more difficult chore of getting rid of Mom.

“I don’t see what you could possibly have to ask that I couldn’t hear. This is about my daughter, after all.”

“That’s just it,” I tried to explain. “Your presence could… inhibit the discussion.”

“This is still my home, and if you’re going to talk to my daughter’s best friend, whom I’ve known since she was six, you’re going to have-”

“If you won’t cooperate with me, ma’am, I’ll be forced to call some uniforms and take her downtown. Is that what you want?”

She stared at me stonily, lips tightly pursed.

“They’ll come with the siren blazing. They’ll put cuffs on her. She’ll ride in the back of the cop car and be processed and printed and strip-searched before being interrogated.” All of which was total bullshit, but I figured this lady wouldn’t know.

She relented. “Very well. But Amber, dear, listen to me.” She took the girl’s hand, and I got the immediate impression the girl wished she wouldn’t. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to tell this woman anything. If at any time you want the questioning to stop, you just call for me. Understand?”

“Yes, Mrs. Collier.”

The woman disappeared herself, leaving us alone. Amber was taller and beefier than Helen had been, with lighter hair and a way of talking that seemed both lazy and smart.

“Kind of controlling, isn’t she?” I said, hoping to break the ice.

Amber shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“I guess you must be, if you’ve known her since you were six. Were you over here a lot?”

“Most times we hung at my house. It’s closer to school, and my dad keeps the pantry well stocked. Over here I was always worried that I might drop a cookie crumb on the carpet and give Mrs. Collier a heart attack.”

I grinned. Mordant Humor R Us. “But you and Helen were tight?”

“Yeah. Best buds.”

“And when the two of you took off on Friday nights, you weren’t going to a church and you weren’t going to any Shirley Temple show either, right?”

Now she became wary. Which I could understand. Why should she trust me? “What makes you think that?”

“My psychic powers. Am I right?”

She didn’t answer.

“I found one of Helen’s bus tickets.”

Still nothing.

“Found Helen’s party suit, too, and I feel certain she wasn’t wearing that getup to any church.”

Amber smiled a little.

“Where’s the Goth scene these days, Amber? Was there a bar you two liked? Maybe something on campus?”

“Nothing like that,” she said quietly.

“Did you go down to the Strip? Pretend to be hookers just to amuse yourselves?”

I was getting warm, but I hadn’t arrived. “We did go to the Strip sometimes.”

“To do what?”

“Whatever. Just hang. Went to shows sometimes.”

“And not tap dancing.”

“Helen was more into heavy metal.”

“But there wasn’t always a concert.”

“Sometimes we’d just walk. Go to the mall at Caesar’s or the Aladdin. See what was happening at the hotels.”

Of course. “The Transylvania. She liked the Transylvania, didn’t she? Where else would a Goth girl go?”

Amber nodded. “She got off on all that creepy stuff. Haunted houses. Horror movies.”

Sure she did. Anything that was the antithesis of her mother. That was her quiet rebellion. “Anyplace else?”

“There was this club near the Transylvania. An Army grunt hangout. Helen was kinda sweet on military types.”

“Do you know where she went the night she disappeared?”

“No. I had to go to Los Angeles with my parents. So I guess she went out without me.”

“Maybe with another friend?”

“Maybe. But I don’t know who it would be.” Her eyes lowered. “I bet she went alone.”

I bet she did, too, damn it. That’s why she’d been so easy to snatch. “Do you have any idea what happened to her?” I asked, but I knew Amber didn’t and I was right.

I left the house excited. I still had a long way to go, but I was definitely making progress. And the bizarre thing was, I wasn’t anxious to get back to HQ and wow O’Bannon. I wasn’t aching to spill the beans to Lisa.

I couldn’t wait to tell Darcy.

I found him more or less where I’d left him, out in front of the house. He was crouched down in the rather bosky garden that lined the north side of the house.

“Do you think Helen wore a size six?” he asked as soon as he saw me. “Because I think maybe she was a size six.”

“No,” I replied. “She was too busty.”

He looked at me, puzzled. I made an explanatory gesture. He blushed, then averted his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Did you know that I was asking about her shoe size?” he muttered, staring at the ground. “I was asking about her shoe size.”

“Oh, geez, sorry.” Pretty adorable really, watching him flush up like a radish over nothing. “Size six, huh?” I remembered the shoes I’d seen in the girl’s closet. “That sounds about right.”

“I think she was a size six,” Darcy repeated, still flapping his hands nervously. “At first I thought maybe her mother was a size six. But I saw her feet when she came to the door and they were like boats.”

I giggled. I thought I was allowed, since my feet were also of the boatish variety. “Why were you wondering about Helen’s shoe size?”

He pulled me into the garden, behind a row of hedges, then crouched down and pointed. Behind the hedge, close to the house itself, there was a faint but discernible impression in the soil. A footprint. The tread looked like some kind of spiked-heel number.

I looked up. We were directly beneath Helen’s bedroom window. There was a drainpipe attached to the wooden siding that could provide some support. Not that much was really required. Her window wasn’t that high off the ground.