Free The Silent Girls by Eric Rickstad Page A

the new budget passed. Jen expected it, too. As she saw it, he should have been Senior Detective long ago, and she was beginning to hint that his lack of advancement had had less to do with a shit budget than it did with him. It pissed him off. Maybe if she wasn’t always after him to be home.
    Fawn came out of the back room, trailing a woman with long silver hair strung in a ponytail so taut it seemed to pull back the skin of her face, as if she’d had work done by a plastic surgeon who received his certification online. Grout had an urge to rip out the barrette holding her ponytail in place to relax her face.
    With a sideways glance, she sent Fawn off on some mission then said, “My office would serve us better. The lobby is chaos.”
    Grout followed her into the office. She did not wear the resort’s black ensemble but a wool dress the rusty orange of an autumn leaf past its peak. “Have a seat.” When she sat behind her ornate white desk, he saw she was pregnant.
    Grout eased into a chair as ornate as the desk.
    “So?” Cynthia Mann clasped her hands atop her desk.
    “A young girl up our way has disappeared. We found a notepad in her bedroom.” He pointed at a notepad on the desk. “Like that one. We need to follow up every possibility. She might have come by the notepad in any manner of ways, of course.”
    “What was her full name?”
    Grout told her.
    Cynthia clicked keys on her laptop, sipped tea from a DBD mug. Waited.
    “No one’s registered in that name the past three months.”
    He asked if she could go back farther than that.
    “These notepads didn’t exist before August,” she said. “We rebranded the entire resort when the new ownership took over and sank 20 million into remodeling.”
    Grout whistled. One more dead end. He should have known not to waste time on such an improbable thread. But what other threads were there? If he could just find one and pull it, a thread of motive, opportunity, means, physical evidence that brought a pattern into clarity, even if, especially if, it proved Mandy was alive. But he needed the single thread to start. Right now, he had squat. At least he’d make Liam’s game.
    “She likely stayed here with someone else,” he said. “She could hardly afford a room.”
    “She and every other Vermonter. I can’t, even at my 40 percent off.”
    “Do you recognize her?” he asked, and slid a photograph across the desk. It was a better photo than the one Rath had; Grout had stopped by to speak with Doris, and she’d given him the best one she could find.
    Cynthia shook her head. “I’d remember her. She’s from where?”
    “Canaan.”
    “She’s darling. A real Boondocks Beauty. She could make it in New York or—” She snapped her fingers. “You know. We get modeling agencies here. Casting calls, too. Out of Boston mostly, they rent a conference room to skim the cream of local talent. We did more of them before the remodeling and the new water park.”
    Another waste of water, Grout thought. Maybe he was a closet tree hugger.
    “We had a casting call for extras in a Ben Affleck movie a year ago. I can look into the list of agencies who booked and get back?”
    Grout told her to keep the photo, make copies and pass it around. He had more.
    As he left, he thought perhaps something was gained. If Mandy had come to one of these modeling or talent-agency auditions, she might have met someone, some Hollywood dipshit, or someone more sinister. It was a long shot. But it was a shot.
    In the parking lot, Grout backed out his Subaru and was nearly clipped by a Land Rover that swept into the space next to his.
    Grout got out as the Rover’s driver, a tall man dressed in a waxed Barbour coat, wide-wale cords, and suede chukkas strode past.
    “Hey,” Grout said.
    The man didn’t break stride.
    “Hey,” Grout said louder.
    The man stopped, his wispy blond hair blowing in the breeze. He looked about to scold Grout, and Grout was about to launch into him when he