was, like, a month ago. Where were you?”
“Out of town on a catering job,” Victoria said.
“Well, Karen came on real strong. I was there too. It was just the three of us. Karen threatened to go to Margie’s mom; she even threatened to go to principal Sherman. I’m surprised she never told anyone. Well, Margie must have done something to make up for it.”
Maybe she had. Victoria thought. But why hadn’t Karen told her about it? That Mustang was one of Karen’s most prized possessions. Yet she hadn’t heard a word.
“So you left early, and didn’t see Margie leave that party, is that right?” Victoria asked.
“Yep,” Rebecca said. “I thought she’d go home with either Byron or Janie. I guess she didn’t.”
Chapter 11
Victoria couldn’t sleep that night. Everything seemed to float around in her mind. The few dreams she had were of Margie, crying or calling out for help over and over, while Victoria tried desperately to reach her from the other side of a wall of flames. Then Margie’s face turned into Anne’s, and some primal instinct made Victoria leap over the flames to reach her.
She woke up with tears on her cheeks. Poor Michelle was her first thought. I’m glad it’s not my child, was her second. Imagine if it was? How would she live? What kind of half-life would she lead, forever waiting for news, wanting to know, and yet not wanting to know because she wanted to keep hope alive?
Victoria hadn’t seen Michelle around, but she knew others who had visited her more often. Within a week, Michelle had also been back at the boutique, trying her hardest to cover up the darkness under her eyes with makeup. Poor woman.
And Jonas. What kind of a man was he? No one in town liked him much. It was a wonder that Michelle loved him enough to stay with him. Had Margie run away because of him?
What about Jay? She remembered him saying that his uncle had recommended he hire a lawyer. Why? Surely, if he had nothing to be afraid of, Jay wouldn’t have done that.
But what if he did? What if he had killed Margie?
If he had, what happened to her body? Victoria asked herself. Randolf was right, bodies don’t simply disappear. If he had dispatched sniffer dogs over a 50-mile radius, well, there was no chance that her body wouldn’t have been found.
Which brought her back to the question, was she wasting her time? Was Margie, even now, perhaps happily settled in some far off city, and putting her past behind her?
No, each day that passed convinced Victoria that something had happened. There were too many ways to get in touch with people and if Margie had been close to her friends then she would have messaged them. Let them know she was safe.
“Bodies don’t go up in smoke.” Randolf had said. She agreed with him. She did not believe in magic, after all.
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” She muttered to herself. Then laughed. Real life was rather different than Sherlock’s stories. For one thing, it was impossible to eliminate all possibilities. It was highly improbable that a limousine had pulled up and whisked Margie off. But could Victoria honestly say that it was impossible?
She sat up in bed and walked to the window. What had happened the night before Margie vanished? She asked herself. Taking a piece of paper, she wrote down all the events she could think of. A web soon formed.
There was Margie at the center of it, and her family on one side, her school friends on another. On top, there were Jay and Byron. Karen underneath with a question mark over “car incident”.
Over and over she found herself putting question marks on the paper. Like the hot springs that dotted Larch, the web seemed like an unending hole.
With a sudden flash, Victoria sprang up. It was barely 5 am now, and the first birds had begun to chirp- but she had to talk to Randolf. In five minutes, she had showered, dressed and run out of the door.
Randolf