Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“Did anyone have any information for you?” Luna queried.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Like my Christina went up”—she clapped her hands—“poof! in a puff of smoke. No one goes up in a puff of smoke. Somebody knows something.”
Somebody knew something.
We just had to get a lock onto that somebody.
“Do you know how to get hold of this Jazz?” Luna asked.
Betsy popped off the couch and walked to a chest that was painted parakeet blue saying, “Sure do.”
Luna and I looked at each other.
It was Luna who asked, “He’s in town?”
“I don’t know, just got his number,” she mumbled. She’d taken a pad of paper out of the bureau and was copying down a number from her phone. She ripped off the top sheet, came my way and handed it to me. “Last time I talked to him, he told me to eff off and called me an old bat. The manners on that man. Awful. I was asking after my daughter.”
“And he wouldn’t answer,” I noted.
“He told me if Christina wanted me to find her, I’d find her.” She lifted a hand and wagged a finger at us before tapping her temple with it. “But I think he knows something. I think he’s hiding something. I told the cops that. They said they couldn’t find him to ask him. And that was that. How hard is it to find a lazy cuss? He probably hasn’t moved from his couch since my Christina disappeared.”
“No address on him?” I pushed.
She shook her head. “No address. Last time—”
She cut herself off and looked out the front window.
We gave her time.
She drew in a breath and turned back to us. “Last time I talked to my girl, we fought about him.”
Yup.
I was right.
That wasn’t something you said to a twenty-year-old woman.
Betsy continued, “She told me I was lonely and should find myself a man so I wouldn’t be jealous of hers. No one believes this either, but I know…”—she leaned again toward us—“I know…”—she leaned back—“that all this time, Christina has been kicking herself those were the last words we exchanged. I know. She loves me, and I love her. She won’t want to have left it at that. She’ll come back, and she’ll be sorry it was left like that, and we’ll get along for a while, and then we’ll start fighting again. That’s our way. And I’ll tell you one thing you can bet the house on. I cannot wait to fight with my daughter again.”
The look on her face, the tears brightening her eyes she refused to shed, I’d take that bet.
“I’m certain you can assure us you already talked with all her friends and acquaintances, and went to places she liked to hang out,” I said quietly.
She sniffed then replied, “Time and again. And the cops did too. At least they tried that.”
Luna stood, already having one of her phone number slips of paper out, and she moved to Betsy to offer it to her.
“Sorry, we’re out of business cards. But those are our numbers. If you can think of anything we might need to know while we search for her, please tell us.”
She took the paper, asking, “Do you think you’ll find her?”
“We don’t know, but we can promise you we’ll try,” Luna answered.
Her shoulders drooped and my heart went out to her.
“Guess that’s something,” she muttered. “At least someone cares.”
I stood too. “We definitely care, Miz Markovic.”
“Call me Betsy.”
We said our farewells and got in the Accord.
Luna pointed us on our way back to the Prius and issued orders.
“You go home and figure out what to say to Cap. I’ll email this in and see if ‘We’ can get us anything on this Jazz character.”
“I’m not gonna call Cap until around nine. He works odd hours. I want him to be home and in a place he’ll listen to me.”
“Good call. I’ll still do the emailing.”
“Right,” I agreed. Then asked, “Is it only me that thinks it’s weird a boyfriend would blow off the mother of his missing girlfriend?”
“It isn’t just you, but maybe she is with him. Maybe it’s a thing with those two, and Betsy telling Christina to scrape him off was the last straw.”
My thoughts exactly.
However…
“She has a shrine to her daughter, Luna. I don’t think she just put that up in the last year either. You don’t put pictures up of people you don’t love. You also don’t call someone every day if you’re not tight with them, even if that tight has no small amount of dysfunction. And even if you’re really into a guy, you figure it out with the mom you love, and it doesn’t take a year for you to figure it out.”
“Yeah,” Luna replied.
I laid it out. “So we have Jazz as a lead, and we still have to find Divinity, and we’re gonna check out The Slide.”