was voicing his outrage.
“The cops interviewed me three times. Three times! Once yesterday and twice today, the last time calling me out of the room in front of my entire class! That’s how rumours start, I tell you. I just teach the girl. I hardly know a thing about her, but because I’m a man—”
“And cute,” interjected a very pregnant, thirty-something woman. “Let’s face it, Nigel, half the girls are in love with you.”
“That’s hardly my fault,” Nigel exclaimed. “But apparently Lea told some of her friends she had a crush on me, and they told the cops. I’m telling you, I don’t even dare smile at a girl.”
Jenna rolled her eyes but kept her impatience to herself. Men always thought they had it so tough. Instead, she steered the conversation to her own concerns. “Does anyone know if she has a boyfriend?”
“Lea’s had lots of boyfriends,” Mrs. Lucas said. “She’s a pretty girl, but it hasn’t gone to her head. She still takes the time to be nice to everyone.”
“That’s refreshing,” the younger teacher said. “So many girls won’t give each other the time of day once they figure out the pecking order.”
Jenna tried to picture pretty, outgoing Lea in the middle of a group. Would people look up to her or ridicule her for talking to so-called losers? The distant pain of her own high school tinged her thoughts. Along with another memory of a boy even more inept than she was, who had followed her around like a lovesick puppy because she had been nice to him. He had turned up at the end of her laneway, outside her window in the dead of night, and finally on the shortcut through the woods from school to her house.
Her pulse quickened. “Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who adore from a distance that are the most dangerous.”
Heads swivelled towards her around the table. Eyes narrowed. “You’re talking as if something bad has happened to her,” Nigel said.
“Well, aren’t we all?” Mrs. Lucas countered. “I know Lea. I’ve taught her English for two years. She’d never leave her mother without a word. They were extremely close. She wrote me a journal piece once about how they escaped from Bosnia together on foot through the mountains after her father was killed by the Serbs. Lea felt a huge obligation to her mother, for all that she’d lost and given up so that Lea could be safe. She’d never cut off ties of her own free will. I agree with Jenna, she’s been abducted...or worse.”
That silenced the threesome for a moment. As the unspoken words “by whom?” hung in the air, Jenna’s thoughts returned to the boyfriend Crystal had described. The police should be looking for this boy. They should be dragging him down to the station— preferably over hot coals, she thought, indulging a private fantasy about all the sleazeballs she’d known—and they should be forcing him to confess to the part he’d played in her disappearance.
“Does anyone know who she’s going out with right now?” she asked.
Mrs. Lucas grunted. “I gave up trying to keep up with today’s kids long ago. They seem to hang out in groups and try each other out as casually as I change clothes.”
The pregnant teacher laughed. “That’s not saying much, Pat! How many outfits do you have? A sweat suit for winter and a white T -shirt for summer?”
But Mrs. Lucas merely shrugged and brushed imaginary lint from her white T -shirt. “But you know what I mean? Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re dating or just friends.”
“And sometimes it’s not, the way they hang on each other,” the pregnant one said. “I remember hearing she was dating one of the theatre students. But then again, actors and relationships...here today, gone tomorrow.”
“But seriously,” Jenna said, “if we could figure out who her boyfriend is—”
Mrs. Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem awfully focussed on a boyfriend. Do you know something we don’t?”
Jenna felt her face burn. Damn! Just when she was beginning to feel more confident with the woman, her stare reduced Jenna to a small child again. “No, no! I just think...you know how boyfriends can be. Jealous, possessive. He could be the culprit.”
Looking unconvinced, Mrs. Lucas snapped her tupperware shut and carried her coffee mug to the sink. “Well, it’s a stretch. Much more likely that some pervert got her. The jail sentences they get, and the way these girls dress, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
The bell rang, and a collective groan rose from the tables as teachers pushed back their chairs, picked up their papers and filed out the door as if heading out to battle. Jenna sat alone with her thoughts. Mrs. Lucas could be right. Certainly there were enough perverts on the prowl for vulnerable prey. But if Crystal was right, Lea had been going to meet her boyfriend, who did not share her passion for the relationship. He was a successful boy with a great future ahead of him that was not to be derailed by the demands of a clingy, overly possessive girl. Within this school alone, how many boys would fit that bill?
Pleasant Park High School was a large, prestigious school with special programs for the artistically gifted, and among its students were the future authors, musicians, painters and actors of the country. Some never pursued their talents beyond high school, but others went on to headline on Broadway or write a Governor General’s Award winning novel. Talent, promise—and massive egos—abounded at Pleasant Park. What if Lea’s boyfriend had been among that elite crowd? She had been dating an actor who would certainly fit the bill.
Jenna lingered in the now empty staff room. It was really up to the police to track down Lea’s boyfriend, but they were probably narrow-minded jerks with no imagination to see beyond the obvious. No kid would confide in them in a million years. But if she told them what she knew, they would demand to know her source, and her social work standards of practice were clear. Client confidentiality could not be broken just to spread a vague rumour. In fact, she could not even mention Crystal’s name. But that wouldn’t stop them from bullying her to get it out of her. Cops didn’t give a damn about sensitivities or confidentiality, only about results.
She needed an outside source. If she could discover the name of Lea’s boyfriend on her own, she could hand him over to the police without having to mention Crystal’s name. Crystal would be protected, the boyfriend exposed, and perhaps, just perhaps, Lea would be rescued before he could do her any serious harm.
A woman had to do something, Jenna thought as she marched off in the direction of the drama room.
Three
Two o’clock that afternoon found Green inside the car again, hunched over the radio. The news on the missing girl was brief. Dozens of officers and volunteers had been dispatched to search the wooded areas along Ottawa’s waterways, and a photo of the girl had been released to the public with an appeal for anyone with any information to contact the police. Superintendent Barbara Devine, the head of CID, had even secured a ten-second sound bite which she used to assure the public, with a ferocity and confidence she couldn’t possibly feel, that the police had made the girl’s safe return their number one priority. No expenses spared, no resources untapped.
Quite the attitude reversal for Devine, for whom purse strings, bottom lines and promotional prospects were usually the top priorities, Green thought. She must have been pressured by the higher-ups in the food chain, who were ever mindful of public image and positive press. After all, beautiful, blonde, innocent schoolgirls should be safe in their own communities.
All
