What She Saw - 12

Sloane

As I drove past the real estate office, I saw Bailey unlocking her front door. I’d not been candid with her when I’d checked in because I wasn’t ready to dive into my questions. I knew she’d gotten drunk and landed in the first aid trailer. She’d sobered up enough to sneak out of the tent by 10:00 p.m., and she’d been spotted with Debra Jackson around midnight. Debra had vanished soon after.

In May 1994, Bailey Briggs had been a popular high school senior. She’d liked to party. And when the remorseless girl got into trouble, her father made the consequences go away. For what it was worth, her parents confirmed Bailey arrived home at 4:00 in the morning.

I parked across the street from Briggs Realty and crossed. Bailey had begun working at the agency after she’d dropped out of college. And when her father took his own life three years later, she’d taken it over. To everyone’s surprise, she’d made the business work.

Bailey had gotten to know Rafe Colton when her father was negotiating the festival dates with him. She’d admitted she thought Colton was hot and charming.

I opened the agency’s front door. Bells jingled above my head. Bailey had not turned on the lights, and she was nowhere in sight. Easy to assume the place wasn’t open yet.

I walked up to her desk and picked up the brass nameplate that read “Bailey Briggs Jones.” When she’d dropped out of college, she’d married her college sweetheart, Danny Jones. Her lack of a wedding band suggested they’d divorced.

Divorce was a tough place to land at any stage of life. My mother never married, and I didn’t plan on taking that path, either. Marriage and dependence on anyone were not in the cards for me. You can’t miss what you never had.

Setting the nameplate down, I spotted several pens that read “Briggs Realty.” I grabbed two and slipped them in my backpack. They were advertising, right? And I always needed a pen.

The files on her desk were property records. I straightened the edges until they were a neat stack. Judging by the height of the pile, whatever slump Dawson had suffered in the 1990s and early 2000s was in the past. Rentals appeared to be booming, as was new construction. Bailey was riding high.

Like Bailey, I’d acted out as a teenager. I didn’t get blind drunk, but I liked to break things. A tipped-over potted plant in an abusive vice principal’s office. “DICK” scratched in the high school bully’s car. A body check against a guy who hadn’t given his seat to an older woman on a bus.

Bailey had done nothing to me. But she annoyed me. Maybe I saw myself in her. Or more likely she’d been Dawson’s princess, whereas Patty had been on Team Outcast.

I placed my hand on the stack and eased it closer to the edge of the desk. I imagined the flutter of papers scattering all over the carpeted floor.

“Hello?” Bailey called from the back room.

I curled my fingers, drawing my hand back. “Hey, it’s Sloane. The renter of the house in the woods.”

Bailey came out of the back room holding a steaming cup of coffee. The Briggs Realty logo was embossed on the mug. I wondered if she had logos on her underwear. “Oh, hey.”

“Sorry to bother you.” I tossed on my best smile.

“Everything okay with the cabin?” she asked.

“It’s great. No complaints.” While some people might have been freaked out by the isolation, I liked it. I did my best thinking in the quiet. Even if there were ghosts.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” She raised her mug.

“Thanks. But no. I stopped by the Depot and had several,” I lied.

“The Depot’s coffee will put hair on your chest.”

I smiled. “I believe that.”

“What can I do for ya?”

“I’m looking for a family that used to live near town, and I figured no one knows the area and the families like you do.”

A half smile tugged her lips. “Not much gets past me.”

“Great. I’m looking for Monica Carr. She was a friend of my mother’s.” Very possible they’d crossed paths but not likely they were friends.

Bailey’s gaze glanced upward, as if she were accessing a data bank of families in her brain. And then her smile softened, and she shook her head. “You said Monica was your mother’s friend?”

“They went to school together and corresponded for many years. Thought I’d say hi, but her number isn’t listed.”

“Your family is from the area?” Her head tilted.

“My mother and grandmother weren’t here very long.”

“Grayson. You remind me of Patty Reed. Was she your mother?”

“That’s right.”

“And Patty was friends with Monica? I don’t see how.”

“Not super close,” I lied. To my knowledge the two women had never met. “But they liked each other. Did you know my mother?”

A detached emotion passed over Bailey’s face. “I saw Patty working at the diner all the time. But we never hung out.”

No, I doubt the town princess would have hung out with the diner waitress with a bastard kid. “I get it.”

Bailey cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize Monica hung out with Patty.”

“They did.”

Bailey’s face tightened as if she were looking back in time. “Monica keeps to herself. She’s not fond of surprises.”

“I’m not a fan of them, either. Do you have a number for her? I’ll text her and give her a heads-up I’m in the area.”

“I can’t give out client information.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize she was a client.”

“I mean, it’s been fifteen years, but I sold her mother’s place after Monica inherited it.”

“Oh. Okay.” Sometimes a curious expression was enough to coax more information.

“Monica had it tough. Her husband left her. Her only daughter died of cancer. And, well, her niece Laurie vanished. And she was barely nineteen.”

“Like Patty.”

“Yes.”

“Damn. Monica could use a friendly face and good news from an old friend.”

Bailey seemed to enjoy holding secrets. “I can’t give you her number, but I can tell you she spends her Saturdays volunteering at the senior center. She hangs around until about three.”

“That’s great. Where’s the center?”

“A few miles from here.” She rattled off an address.

“Got it. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“I picked up a little gossip today,” I said. “I hear the town’s former sheriff shot himself at the cabin where I’m staying.”

“It was a tragic event. It was over two weeks before he was found.”

“Wow. I guess that explains the ghost hunters.”

That startled a laugh. “Seen any ghosts?”

“Not yet. But I’ll keep you posted.”

“Are you going to write about the Mountain Music Festival?”

“Maybe.”

“Do everyone a favor and don’t. The mid-nineties weren’t the best of times for this town. And no one wants to remember.”

“Four women vanished. Don’t they deserve a little space in our memories?”

Her face flushed. “Of course, we need to honor them. But rehashing the case will do no one any good.”

“Even if rehashing means we find them?”

Bailey went silent, as if realizing arguing with one of the victim’s children was a tactical error. “I’m sorry about Patty. She seemed nice.”

Bailey smiled but I sensed she had nothing else to say to me. “Thanks.” I tacked on the word, and it dangled like a frayed afterthought.

Keys in my hand, I left the shop and crossed to my Jeep. Behind the steering wheel, I glanced back toward the agency. Bailey stood at the office’s main window. She sipped her coffee as she stared at me. As she turned, she brushed past the files hovering near the desk’s edge. The stack fell to the floor.

I started the engine and drove toward the senior center. Monica would be getting off in a couple of hours. Better to catch her at the end of the day, when she was tired and thinking about heading home. She’d have let her guard down.

As much as Bailey annoyed me, I felt a kinship with Monica. The way I saw it, we were on the same team. After the Mountain Music Festival ended, both our lives had changed for the worse.

The handful of people damaged by the festival amounted to about two dozen. No one important in the grand scheme. Not enough people to warrant digging up the past. But even if the world had forgotten them, I had not.

My grandmother had never thought of herself as a grandmother and had trained me to call her by her given name, Sara.

Sara and I didn’t talk about Mom often. I didn’t bring the topic up much when I was little because I didn’t think about the mother I didn’t remember. In kindergarten, I began to have questions. Most kids had moms and dads, and some were raised by grandparents like me. Some parents were divorced, a few in jail, a couple dead. But my classmates knew where their parents were. When I asked Sara, she could never tell me exactly where Patty was. And even at five, unanswered questions irritated me.

Around my seventh birthday, Sara’s drinking had gotten worse. I’d wait until she was on her third G&T before asking for anything.

“Where’s my mom?” I asked.

“What?” Ice clinked in her glass as she drained the last of it.

“My mom. All the kids at school know where their mothers are. Gina’s mother is dead, but she has a grave and can visit her and lay flowers. Billy’s mom lives in Vegas and is a dancer. Where is my mother?”

“I don’t know.” Ice cubes clanked. Sara took another long drink.

“How could you not know? She’s your daughter. You always know where I am.”

“That’s because you’re little. I knew where your mom was when she was your age.” She looked in the empty glass, rose, and walked toward the kitchen. “But she grew up, and it got harder to keep up with her.”

I followed, unsatisfied. “Why was it hard?”

She unscrewed the top of the gin bottle. “She fell in love with a bad man.”

“My father?” All kids had a mom and dad somewhere.

“That’s right.”

“Where’s my dad?”

She drained the last of the clear liquid. “Prison. He’s in a big time-out.”

My time-outs were frequent but rarely lasted more than an hour. “For how long?”

“For the rest of his life.”

“Wow. Was he really bad?”

Sara’s eyes grew watery, and the lines around her mouth deepened with her frown. “He was.”

“Does he know where Mommy is?”

“He says he doesn’t.” She filled the glass with gin and dropped in a couple of fresh ice cubes. The clear liquid sloshed around the edges of the glass. “No one knows where your mom is, Sloane. We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find her.”

“You didn’t look everywhere, or you’d have found her.”

I was good at pushing aside memories like this. I didn’t like to think about my grandmother, but she had a way of finding her way into my present.

Shrugging off the unease, I arrived at the Dawson senior center, I saw the elderly residents moving in slow motion. My mind wandered to Patty and the missing. Police and volunteers had searched all areas within fifty miles of the festival. This included fields, ravines, buildings, and forests. They’d sent scuba divers into the quarry lake, searched barns, basements, and ditches. Yet Patty and the others remained lost.

Bodies could be burned, chopped up, or buried deep, but they didn’t disappear. Even the smallest haystack needles were somewhere.

And I hoped the last thirty-one years had shaken loose a few truths. Because someone knew where the Festival Four were.