I kicked at the gravel, wondering what this meant.
“You think the same guy who kidnapped her took your friends?” Lisa asked.
I squinted across the parking lot. “The police think Maureen killed herself.”
Lisa snorted. “That sounds like the Saint Cloud police. Three girls go missing, they can’t find two and claim the third did herself in.”
“You know the police?”
“We’re an all-night diner. You get to know everyone.”
I tasted that for a few seconds. “Did Beth have any regulars? Anyone acting strange who came in that night?”
She studied me down the end of her nose. “Police asked the same question. Beth was popular. Everyone loves a redhead. A couple of the regulars set off our radar. One of them, he looked like he was auditioning for West Side Story.”
My heartbeat tumbled, skipped a beat, came back twice as strong. “Was his name Ed Godo?”
“Don’t know his name. Short guy, midtwenties, greased-back black hair, leather jacket even when it was hot as the devil’s crack. Drank cola and popped Anacin like it was his job. Wore lifts in his shoes.”
“You told all this to the police?”
“Yep. Told them he didn’t come in that night, either.”
The back door opened again. “You want a job, you get your ass back to work right now, Lisa.”
“Gawd!” she said, shaking her head, but she stubbed out her cigarette on the side of the building and tossed it into the nearby garbage bin. “Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”
“I appreciate your time,” I said.
She smiled and turned to go inside.
“Wait,” I said. “You mentioned she had a couple regulars who didn’t feel right. Who were the others?”
She stopped with her hand on the door. “Not others. Other. Jerome Nillson.”
The shock kicked me out of my own body, but Lisa kept talking, oblivious.
“Like I said, you get to know everyone. Nillson ended up in Bethie’s section often enough that it couldn’t be coincidence. She said she didn’t like him, but what’re you gonna do?” she asked, shrugging. “Too bad him and the Fonz didn’t get together and cancel each other out.”
CHAPTER 43
The bike ride home felt heavy, like someone had tied rock-filled saddlebags to my Schwinn. Ed Godo and Jerome Nillson had both been regulars in Beth’s life as well as Maureen’s, and they also both knew Brenda. Plus, while they landed on different sides of the badge, both men were dangerous. Their connections to three missing girls, one of whom had been found dead, couldn’t be a coincidence. Still, I didn’t know what to do with the information. Maybe I could apologize to Claude and we could figure this out together.
Except I didn’t think I owed him an apology.
The faraway squeal of an ambulance knit itself into my thoughts, made me think of my mom, how tightly desperate she grew when she had to live in a hospital room, how much it hurt to see her in a place where everything had to be soft edged, where no strings were allowed, even shoelaces. I had a special pair of slippers I wore to visit her.
The ambulance keened closer as I reached the east edge of Pantown, blazing down the main drag. A police car followed immediately behind. I’d been vaguely headed home, but I swung a left to follow the sirens. Toward the quarries. I didn’t want to examine too closely why the emergency vehicles were pulling me like a magnet. Maybe because they’d passed right by me, and the day was hot. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to return to an empty house, or because worry buzzed like bees in my belly, had been swarming there for days and days.
Or maybe because below the wail of the sirens, I’d heard a cadence that sounded like Brenda, Brenda.
I swung my head to shake the rhythm loose and pedaled faster.
It was so thick it was drinkable, the air.
Hot, close, sticky as marshmallows.
It clung to me, holding me back.
I forced through it, though, pedaling so fast down the main drag that my chain smelled like hot oil, biking past the entrance to Dead Man’s, and then past the smaller road that led to Quarry Eleven and the cabin I’d told Sheriff Nillson about, the one Ed claimed was owned by a friend but that I suspected he’d broken into, the one where Ant took my picture.
Two hundred yards beyond that road, a group of officers clustered near a footpath, their vehicles and the ambulance parked just beyond. There were so many quarry trails. I didn’t know where this one led to, but I would bet the two kids crying at the mouth of it did. They were boys, close to Junie’s grade. Not Pantowners.