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“I need to do this, Luna.”
It was her turn to sigh, long and loud.
She knew I did.
“Call me the instant you get back to your car,” she ordered.
“Roger wilco,” I replied.
“You don’t even know what that means,” she muttered.
“It means I heard you.”
“Yes, it also meansyou will comply with my orders. That’s what wilco is short for.”
See?
She totally read a lot.
“Okay, so, samesies, yeah? I heard you, and I’ll call.”
Another sigh before she said, “You won’t call because either, a, you’ll be tied up in some villain’s basement, and I’ll then be forced to put up fliers and hold candlelight vigils and harass the police to follow leads. This will end with me being interviewed, weeping copiously, naturally, saying you lit up a room in a Netflix docuseries about solved cold case files once some hikers find what’s left of your body at the bottom of a ravine in fifteen years. Or, b, you won’t get anything from the guy, so you’ll start devising some other way of figuring out if it’s him or not. You’ll then immediately begin scheming to implement plans to do that, at the same time you’ll remember you forgot to buy tampons for your upcoming cycle, and you need to pop into CVS, after which you’ll realize you’re hungry and you’ll stop by Lenny’s for a cowboy burger and a malt.”
She was hitting close to home with that first bit, and she knew it. Including when my period was coming, something she always reminded me to prepare for because I always forgot, and as such, was constantly bumming tampons from her. Though, her remembering this wasn’t a feat, since we were together so often, including working together, we were moon sisters.
“I will totally call,” I promised.
“If you don’t, I’m uninviting you to my birthday party.”
I gasped.
“You wouldn’t,” I whispered in horror.
Yes, you guessed it. Luna threw great parties, especially when she was celebrating herself.
“Try me.”
“I’ll call. I’ll absolutely call. Long distance pinkie swear.”
“Lord save me,” she mumbled, then stated, “If you hit Lenny’s,definitelycall me. Since I brought Lenny’s up, I now realize I need a malt.”
After that, she hung up on me.
I leaned forward and put my phone in the back pocket of my pants, my eyes on the house that was just right of the T at the end of the street where I was parked.
There was a light on to the right side of the front door.
He was home.
He was home, and he might be the kind of guy who grabbed little girls to do things it wasn’t mentally healthy to contemplate.
Maybe Luna was right. Maybe this was madness.
Though…
Her name was Elsie Fay. She was six years old. She had a cute-as-a-button face.
And she’d been missing for nine days.
