Mother's Day Murder. Leslie Meier

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СКАЧАТЬ She could already be miles from home, at the mercy of some serial killer who preyed on young girls. Lucy screwed her eyes shut. “Please, oh please don’t let Sara be the next Corinne Appleton,” she prayed. Opening her eyes, she realized she was all alone. Everybody was gone. She hurried to the car and drove home as fast as she could, trying to think what she should do. Call Bill? Call the police? She had decided to start with Sara’s friends when she pulled into the driveway and hurried up the porch steps. When she opened the kitchen door, the first thing she saw was Sara, standing in front of the open refrigerator, looking for a snack.

      She stood a moment, waiting for the pounding in her heart to slow down.

      “There’s nothing to eat,” complained Sara, shutting the refrigerator door. “Not even a piece of fruit.”

      “Elizabeth took it.” Lucy remembered she’d meant to stop at the grocery store, before she’d been distracted by Sara’s disappearance. “Where were you? I was worried sick when I couldn’t find you at the game!”

      “Oh, sorry, Mom,” said Sara, leaning casually against the refrigerator. “I got a ride home.”

      “Well, I wish you’d called and told me. I got so worried that I completely forgot we don’t have anything for supper. Elizabeth cleaned us out.” She thumped down in a chair, her purse in her lap. “And who gave you this ride, anyway? You’re not supposed to accept rides from strangers.”

      Sara crossed her arms across her chest and hugged herself, a dreamy expression on her face. “It was Chad Mackenzie, Mom, the most popular boy in school!”

      Chapter Three

      Sara was still giddy over her social triumph at breakfast the next morning. Instead of the usual moans and groans, she was positively bubbly as she poured herself a glass of orange juice.

      “Would you like an egg? Some toast?” asked Lucy. She hadn’t wanted to ruin Sara’s mood last night by confronting her about the text-messaging, and now there wasn’t time, but she hadn’t forgotten the matter, either. She intended to bring it up when the time was right.

      “No thanks,” replied Sara, practically singing. “Just juice.”

      “You need more than that to get through the morning.”

      “I want to lose a few pounds.”

      “She wants to get skinny for Chad,” offered Zoe in a singsong voice.

      “That might be a mistake,” said Lucy. “He probably likes you the way you are. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have bothered to give you a ride.”

      “He probably felt sorry for her, standing there all alone like a little lost lemon drop, waiting for her mother to come,” declared Zoe.

      Lucy gave her youngest a sharp look.

      “I was just joking, Mom,” Zoe added.

      “I guess I will have a yogurt,” decided Sara. “It’s got calcium, and that’s supposed to help you lose weight.” She smiled dreamily. “You know what Renee and Sassie think? They think Chad might ask me to the prom.”

      “Oh, my,” said Lucy, who wasn’t sure how she felt about her freshman daughter going to the prom. She was about to add, “Don’t get your hopes up,” but managed to bite her tongue before uttering the fatal phrase. There was no sense spoiling Sara’s happiness, however brief it might be. Especially since her change of mood had infected the whole house; even the dog was wagging her tail more enthusiastically than usual when the girls ran down the drive to catch the bus.

      Lucy, too, felt especially chipper as she drove to work. She was the first to admit it wasn’t easy to have a daughter in high school. It brought back her own memories of adolescent insecurity, to the point that she suffered sympathy pains whenever Sara’s feelings got hurt, and shared in her joy when she scored a coup. It was a real roller coaster, but today, at least, spirits were high.

      Until, that is, she got to work. There was a very different vibe at the Pennysaver, where Phyllis was sniffling and dabbing at her eyes, and Ted was grimly poring through old issues from the morgue.

      “What’s going on?” she asked.

      Phyllis reached for a tissue and blew her nose. “They found Corinne Appleton’s body,” she said.

      Lucy’s happy mood instantly evaporated as she waited to hear the rest of the story.

      “What they think is her body,” corrected Ted. “There’s only a few bones.”

      “And a piece of a bra,” added Phyllis.

      “A hiker made the discovery,” said Ted. “Out near Shiloh.”

      “Her poor parents,” said Lucy. They had been on TV so often, pleading for their daughter’s return, that Lucy felt as if she knew them. She could picture them clearly, the tall, quiet, whiskered father and the frizzy-haired, emotional little mother. Lucy couldn’t help identifying with them, especially when Joanne Appleton appeared wearing the same quilted jacket that Lucy owned.

      “It’s tough,” said Ted, closing one of the big books of bound Pennysavers with a thud. “There’s a press conference at ten in Shiloh. I’ll cover that. Lucy, I want you to write some background. We covered it pretty extensively, so it’s all here, in last summer’s papers.”

      “Right,” said Lucy, wishing she could wiggle out of it somehow. It was hard enough writing about it the first time, and she didn’t want to go over it all again.

      “At least now her parents know for sure what happened,” said Phyllis. “They’ll have closure.”

      “Whatever that is,” muttered Lucy, studying the photo of Corinne that had appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the state, maybe even in the whole country. It was one of those stories that the media, and the public, couldn’t get enough of. She was only sixteen, a pretty girl with a round face and long dark hair. She was smiling in the photo, and there was a dimple in each cheek. Like most towns in the area, Shiloh offered a recreation program for kids during the summer school vacation, which included games, field trips, arts and crafts, and even swimming and boating lessons. Corinne had been a counselor for the eight-to ten-year-olds. It was her first job.

      The rec program started at nine in the morning and ran until noon, but Corinne’s mother had dropped her off earlier, before eight thirty, because that was when she had to be at her job at a bank. “It seemed safe,” she was quoted as saying. “A park, right in the center of town. This is her home, after all. Everybody knew her and she knew everybody. If a girl isn’t safe in Shiloh, she isn’t safe anywhere.”

      Nobody had seen anything out of the ordinary. One moment Corinne was there, sitting on the bandstand, reading a book, and the next time anybody noticed, she was gone. Nobody had thought anything of it. Maybe she’d gone to get a cup of coffee or a bottle of sunscreen; maybe she’d gone inside the supply shed to get balls and bats for a planned baseball game. But when everybody assembled for the morning exercises, when they raised the flag and sang “This Land Is Your Land,” she wasn’t there. The recreation director had noted her absence and assigned someone else to take her place. He’d meant to call and see if she was sick, but nine-year-old Tommy Branson tripped on a rock and fell, breaking a tooth, and what with calling his mother and getting him off to the dentist, the director had forgot СКАЧАТЬ