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Dave said, “You found those photos on her phone. What about her laptop? Was there anything on there that we should know about?”
“No,” said Josie. “It appears she uses it for schoolwork and to play some online games.”
Josie’s cell phone chirped. She looked at the screen. Dave and Shelly Patchett stared at her with heartbreaking hopefulness. “The line search is starting soon,” she said. “Before I go, I was wondering if I could have a look inside Kayleigh’s bedroom. I know my colleague took a look yesterday, but I’d like to see it for myself.”
Dave said, “You’re looking for stuff like those photos, aren’t you?”
“I’m looking for anything that might help us find Kayleigh or direct us to someone who can help us find her.”
Shelly stood up. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
SIXTEEN
Josie followed Shelly out of the living room and up a set of stairs to a long hall. The walls were dotted with framed photos. One or two were of the entire family—at Disney World and at a beach—with Kayleigh unsmiling in each one. The rest of the photos were of Savannah. Candid shots of her dressed up for Halloween, eating an ice cream cone, in a Christmas play at school, holding up a lost tooth, and playing soccer. Toward the end of the hall, there was a single framed school photo of Kayleigh. Again, she was unsmiling. They passed three closed doors before arriving at the end of the hall. There was a doorway but no door. Shelly motioned to the room beyond. Josie stepped inside and looked back toward the hallway to confirm that what she was seeing was correct.
“No door?” she said.
Shelly’s face flushed. “We took it off. Only temporarily. Kayleigh snuck out a few times at night. We caught her coming back in. We gave her a couple of warnings but that didn’t work. Dave got mad and just…took the door. He says he’ll put it back up when he can trust her again. I thought she was going to see Olivia, but now I wonder. Maybe she was out with that boy.”
“Does Olivia live near here?” asked Josie.
“No, but Olivia has her own car.”
“Does Kayleigh drive?”
“No. Not yet. She wants to get her license, but we’ve had so much trouble with her lately—academically, on the softball team, reading stuff she’s not supposed to read, sneaking out—Dave didn’t want to reward her by letting her get her license, he said.”
“What about you?” Josie asked pointedly.
Shelly smiled tightly. “Do you have children, Detective?”
“No,” said Josie, silently adding,not yet.
“It’s a lot more challenging than you think,” Shelly said. “You think you’ve got everything under control and then you realize they’re sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night!”
Josie thought about the texts between Kayleigh and Olivia. It was possible that Kayleigh had used her phone to have Olivia—or the mystery boyfriend—meet her at the bottom of the driveway and then deleted the evidence from the phone. Gretchen had already forwarded the warrant for her phone records to her carrier. They just had to wait for them. Maybe they could get them expedited, seeing as Kayleigh was missing.
“Do you mind if I look in drawers and under the bed and such?” asked Josie.
Shelly leaned against the doorframe, hugging herself. “Of course. Whatever you need to do.”
A full-sized bed took up most of the room. A purple comforter was rumpled at its foot. Beside it was a small wooden nightstand with two drawers. It looked like it had been spray-painted, also purple. Josie snapped on a pair of gloves and began looking through the drawers. It was mostly makeup, chargers, pens, hair accessories, and books. She counted a half-dozen paperbacks, half horror and half romance. Based on the nearly naked men stretched across their covers, Josie wasn’t sure her parents knew she had them. Josie took each one and fanned its pages, looking for anything that might be lodged inside. There was nothing.
Spotting the covers of the romance novels, Shelly’s face flushed. “Oh my God!” she said, striding across the room to get a closer look. “Where did she get these?”
Josie ignored her question and kept searching. She took each drawer from its seat and looked inside the shell of the nightstand. After that, she checked under the mattress, the bed, in and around the small desk in the corner of the room and even among the heap of softball equipment tossed on the floor. In the closet were more books stacked along the floor. More romance and horror as well as mysteries and thrillers this time. Shelly looked on with dismay as Josie checked each one, finding nothing of note. Josie riffled through the clothes hanging up and upended each shoe she found. On the shelf above the clothes was an old blanket, a bin full of nail polish, and a stuffed elephant that looked as though it had seen better days.
“That’s Ellie,” said Shelly as Josie lifted it from the shelf.
“Ellie the Elephant?”
Shelly gave a weak chuckle. “Yeah, it was her favorite stuffed animal when she was younger. She had lots. She gave them all to Savannah except this one. Naturally, Savannah wanted this one the most. We tried to convince Kayleigh to let her have it, but she just couldn’t be nice and do it.”
Josie didn’t think it was too much to ask for Kayleigh to be able to hold onto at least one piece of her childhood rather than give her little sister everything, but she kept silent. She gave Ellie’s body a gentle squeeze, feeling nothing but stuffing. Ellie’s trunk was a different story. Beneath her fingers, Josie felt several small objects. She checked the seam of the trunk until she found the slit. Moving over to the bed, she carefully removed the items from Ellie’s trunk. There were rolling papers, Dutch Master cigars, a lighter, and a baggie, its corner knotted, with what appeared to be marijuana inside it.
“What is that?” Shelly asked, voice going up an octave.
“It’s marijuana,” Josie said.
