The VW bus he had yet to see that was painted in psychedelic designs. Her clothes, not outrageous but subtly standing out. The bright, playful rugs and pillows nobody could call practical. In the snapshots of his mother he could easily summon, she was wearing colorful, swirly clothes, her blond curls unrestrained. He’d never had trouble tracking her down in the house because she was always singing, whatever else she was doing.
Solid, suspicious, conservative in his thinking, he was more like his father than he could ever be like his mother. So he didn’t get why he had responded the way he had to Meg Harper’s comfortable, casual home, or why that silly rug had struck a chord with him. It had to be the small part of him that was his mother’s son, who remembered a time when his own home hadn’t been so sterile.
He swore under his breath.
So, okay, Meg had stuck around to raise her child, more than his mother had done. Because of that, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt—but his fantasies of getting her into bed weren’t happening. Not my type. He’d continue telling himself that. Fortunately, the anger his mother’s repeated phone calls kept simmering was a good reminder to maintain his distance from Ms. Harper.
Thank God he was at the high school, where he could refocus on doing his job.
* * *
THE GANGLY KID glared at Jack. “We used to have a thing. It’s been a long time. Since school started.”
“That would be...about six months.”
Asher Wright got his point, no problem. “It’s not my kid.”
The principal had allowed Jack to borrow a small conference room to meet with students. Sabra’s former boyfriend was the first sent in to talk to him. He had been able to reach the boy’s mother, who had given permission for this interview. Jack sat on one side of the table, Asher on the other.
“And how do you know that?” Jack asked. “Because she told you it wasn’t yours? You sure you want to take her word for it?”
The boy’s eyes darted this way and that. A flush crept up his neck and mantled his cheeks. “Because we never did it,” he mumbled at last. “So it can’t be, okay?”
“You never had sex with Sabra Lee.”
“No! I mean, people thought we were, because, you know, I never said.” The poor kid was fire-engine red now. “But I didn’t. She was my first girlfriend, and...” He trailed off.
How well Jack remembered that painful stage. The guys swaggered when no girls were present, some claiming they got it all the time, most of them at least implying sex was no longer a mystery to them. Even though kids seemed to be having sex earlier than they used to, he bet the majority of freshmen and even sophomores were still lying through their teeth, especially in a town like Frenchman Lake surrounded by a rural county.
Inclined to believe the boy, he crossed his arms and studied Asher. “Do you know when Sabra started seeing someone else?”
“When school started. We hung out all summer, but the minute we were back, she started making excuses. I said what’s going on, and she said nothing, but I could tell. I got mad, and she said what she did wasn’t any of my business.” Indignation rang in his voice. “So that was it,” he concluded with a shrug, but his face twisted at the memory. Either because he really had liked her or because he’d been humiliated. Maybe both.
“Have you seen her with another boy?”
He shook his head. “I figured it must be someone from out of town. Or even a community college student?”
Jack thought he could rule out students at Wakefield College. The kids accepted at the private liberal arts college in town were supposed to be the cream of the crop from across the country. Smarter, surely, than to become involved with a fifteen-year-old girl—and to impregnate her, besides. Plus, the college was pretty insular, in some ways. Why would a guy from there hook up with a local, and a sophomore in high school at that? Jack knew for sure his peers wouldn’t think it was cool.
The community college, now, a lot of those students were locals. This might be a kid who graduated from the high school as recently as last year. Someone who thought Sabra was hot, didn’t give a thought that he might get arrested for having sex with her.
Jack asked a few more questions, but he couldn’t break Asher. The boy never had sex with her, the baby couldn’t be his and he had no idea who she started seeing after she ditched him. As mulish as he was, he came across as sincere.
Jack poked his head out and asked for Emily Harper next, then sat doodling on his notepad.
At a knock, he said, “Come in.”
The girl who entered looked enough like her mother he would have recognized who she was if they had passed in the hall. Meg Harper had an earthy quality the daughter lacked, but some of that was just maturity. Woman versus girl. Emily was almost delicate, with fine bones and a pointy chin that gave her a pixie look.
“Mrs. Seacrest said you’re a cop? Is Sabra hurt, or...or...?” She didn’t seem to want to spit out any other possibilities.
To be polite, he half stood. “I’m Detective Jack Moore. And, no, I’m trying to figure out where she could have gone. Please, have a seat.” He sank back down while she plopped into a chair across from him. “I understand you’re Sabra’s best friend.”
“She can’t have taken off without telling me! She wouldn’t do that.” Big brown eyes beseeched him, and she finished more softly, “Something bad must have happened.”
Despite the high emotion, she sounded genuine. Even so, he found her to be less transparent than the ex-boyfriend had been. In his experience, teenage girls loved secrets and could be sly.
“What kind of bad thing do you think that could be?”
“What if somebody grabbed her? And dragged her into a car?”
“Hard to do that in plain sight, right in front of the school.”
For an instant, she looked a lot more adult and even a little sardonic. “Nobody saw Mom drop her off.”
He spread his hands, conceding the point. “You’d think Sabra would have struggled, though, wouldn’t you? Probably yelled. She could have jumped right out of the car again unless the person shoved her in the trunk. All of that is kind of eye-catching.”
“Mom’s van is, too,” Emily said sullenly.
A corner of his mouth curled. “So I hear. Thing is, people have gotten used to seeing it. I imagine she’s driven you to school plenty of times. A struggle, someone pushing a pregnant girl into the trunk of a car, that’s different.”
She took that in and finally nodded. “What if she went with him, just so they could talk or something, and then he wouldn’t bring her back?”
“I’d say that’s possible,” he said gently, “except your mother and I discovered she’d hidden her textbooks and binder in a drawer so she could put other stuff in her pack. Seems like she planned an outing.”
Unless, of course, Meg Harper had planted the books to make it look exactly like that, diverting suspicion from herself. He didn’t really believe
