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Darlie nodded. “I know. It looks like she left of her own accord.”
Hell yeah, it did. Pescoli remembered pulling this same trick herself and then, as a mother of teens, finding a similar bed with a fake body composed of pillows when Jeremy had sneaked out to meet his girlfriend, Heidi Brewster, when they’d both been in high school. “I’d say so,” Pescoli said. She checked the window, found it unlatched, slightly open, as if whoever might have sneaked out of this room had used it for escape and left it open just enough in case she had to hoist herself back in the same way.
“No footprints in the flowerbed,” Darlie said from the doorway of the small room with its circular rag rug, hand-me-down desk, and twin bed covered in a striped duvet. “I checked.”
“Maybe this was the backup plan, to return if she got locked out or didn’t want to make too much noise coming back in.”
“That’s the point,” Darlie said, her voice cracking. “She never came back.” Roy, standing next to her, placed a big arm over her shaking shoulders.
“Even if she did sneak out, she thought she was coming back.”
Roy whispered, “Shh . . . it’s okay, honey.”
She threw off his arm. “It’s not okay, Roy. You know it’s not okay!” Dabbing at her eyes where mascara was starting to run, she said to Pescoli, “Just find her, okay. Find my baby!”
* * *
Alvarez and Pescoli returned to the car. For whatever reason, Lindsay Cronin had waited until her parents were in bed, then sneaked out. They’d been right; there were no footprints in the mulch of the flowerbed, no indication that anyone had climbed in or out of the window. Pescoli called the station and gave Zoller Lindsay’s phone number so that records could be requested, as well as a description and the license plate of her Ford Focus for a BOLO—be on the lookout.
“I hope they’re wrong about her,” Pescoli said. “Maybe she has a wild streak her parents don’t know about and she’s sleeping it off somewhere, not realizing her phone is turned off.”
“Or without battery,” Alvarez said. “What teenager has their phone off?”
Pescoli grunted and the baby kicked again. “We have to stop for lunch before we do anything else. I’m starved.”
A few minutes later, they pulled into Wild Wills, a restaurant in the lower section of town on the river, one of Pescoli’s favorite haunts.
Inside the front door, they passed by “Grizz,” a huge stuffed Grizzly Bear that always wore a perpetual bared-tooth snarl and glass eyes and was outfitted by the staff for the season or holiday. Today he was wearing a pink polka-dot bikini with a matching floppy beach hat.
Pescoli noted the parasol tucked under one of his forelegs and a martini glass with a fake fruity drink tied to one of the huge, furry creature’s paws. Someone had even painted his claws a flamingo pink, and to keep with the theme, a pair of plastic flamingos stood next to him, one sporting a bow tie, the other a choker necklace.
“I have this eerie feeling that all the bears in the county are plotting their revenge for this kind of humiliation, that they’ll pull a Planet of the Apes on us and take over. Put us in cages, make us do all their dirty work and do lab tests on us.”
“That’s only if the rats join them.”
Which made Pescoli think again about the creature that had been chasing Bianca.
What had Farnsby said when she’d asked if the “monster” could have been a bear? “You see any claws?”
Even painted dark pink, Grizz’s claws looked deadly. Long, curved, sharp, and, today, tinted raspberry.
So what had chased her daughter?
Not a Sasquatch. No matter what members of the BFBs thought.
They moved into the spacious dining room with booths lining the walls and tables placed over the old plank floors. Overhead, wagon-wheel chandeliers had been suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling. On the walls, stuffed heads of animals, long dead, had been mounted, so that it appeared a variety of the creatures native to the area were staring down at the patrons as they dined. Bison, moose, bighorn sheep, deer, and elk, were present, along with a full-sized cougar, porcupines, and a beaver. On one wall, over the slowly spinning pie display, geese, pheasants, and ducks flew toward the exposed beams of the ceiling.
Alvarez cast her gaze at the once-living creatures that had become wall decorations. Above them, the huge head of a bison loomed, glassy eyes staring sightlessly. “They do more to squelch your appetite rather than enhance it.”
“Sandy says the customers love ’em. Especially the tourists.”
“Hmmm.”
Alvarez ordered an Asian chicken salad with iced herbal tea, and Pescoli chose a turkey pot pie with a side of fries and sparkling water. The place was crowded, most tables occupied, the waiters moving quickly from one four-top to the next. Alvarez and Pescoli discussed the case, and by the time the food came, Pescoli thought she might faint. She dug in eagerly, making short work of everything on her plate, including the slice of orange that was supposed to be the garnish. Then, while Alvarez was still picking at her salad, Pescoli ordered a piece of peach crumble with ice cream. “You only live once,” she said to Alvarez when the dessert came, piled with vanilla ice crea
m, a dab of whipped cream, and a drizzle of peach syrup.
“You’re eating for two.”
