Jex Malone (6 page)

So I really have to get these girls away from the computer and distract them from this Patty Matthews trip down memory lane.
Think!

Patty Matthews
. You'd think she was a member of our family who went missing, but she wasn't. She was just some teenage girl who lived right around here—around the corner come to think about it—and vanished into thin air one day. My dad worked on the missing persons squad in those days and it was his job to find her.

And he failed.

Her.

Us.

He failed in every way possible.

The sad thing about Patty was that no one really knew what happened to her. She was a super smart and super pretty sixteen-year-old, and one day she was just super gone.

It happened at a bad time in the history of my parents' rocky relationship. We were living in this house and Dad was working all the time, leaving Mom to do everything on her own with me, and rumor has it I was a handful.

My mom had given up her teaching career to stay at home because Dad's schedule was unpredictable at best. She was stuck in the house with this baby (me), bored out of her skull and feeling like she'd spent all those years in school working on her PhD in archaeology for nothing. She wasn't the female Indiana Jones—which is how she'd imagined her life to be. Her days were filled with sitting around, changing diapers, and having the songs of a large purple dinosaur ringing in her head.

Can't say that I blame her for being a bit restless.

According to my-mother's-side-of-family lore, when Patty Matthews vanished, my dad became obsessed with finding her because he was the lead detective on the case. His life was only focused on being a hotshot young detective who would solve the case of the little missing girl from his neighborhood who was so pretty and had such a terrible home life.

She was the perfect victim: blonde, beautiful, and supposedly a really sweet girl who was some artistic prodigy. Every teacher she ever had talked about her being the perfect kid.

In spite of everything.

Mom told me that every night on the Nevada TV news for a year, it seemed like there was a story about her disappearance. When she first went missing, the police department organized these big search parties with guys on horseback trotting out into the desert to look for a body. Her whole neighborhood was covered in purple ribbons to show support for the family, and there were the obligatory candlelight vigils with cameras, tears, and teddy bears. Every afternoon for a very long time, my dad had to hold a news briefing at headquarters saying essentially the same thing.

He couldn't find her.

Gone, baby, gone.

Mom told me once that this was the most humiliating thing ever for him because people were kind of scared and wondered why my dad didn't arrest some lurking neighborhood monster that stole young girls away in the middle of the darkest nights.

In a nutshell, the police could never figure out what happened to Patty or who was responsible for her disappearance.

One of the big things my mom and I never talk about is what happened to Dad when it became clear he wasn't going to ever solve this case. On many nights, Dad wandered in the front door and barely talked to us, opting instead to walk aimlessly into his den. He would lock himself in there until dawn. I remember lying in my bed and hearing my mom plod down the hall, pound on the door, and yell at him to eat dinner or come to bed.

“All you do is neglect your own family,” she ranted. “You're putting someone else's daughter above your own. Hold your own baby. Get to know her.”

My dad stayed locked in his room.

The last memory I have of Nevada is the day we left. The moving truck came and the men picked up the boxes with my toys and clothes and all of Mom's books. I still remember the sound of that metal truck gate rolling down and the loud clang of the latch finalizing it all.

The person to blame for all this is staring out from the computer at me.

Really, Patty Matthews, why did you have to ruin my family?

“I can trust your head to work out a good solution, Judy girl.”

—Judy Bolton,
The Vanishing Shadow

“Hey, wasn't your dad the case detective in the Patty Matthews disappearance?” Nat asks, and the other girls go strangely silent.

There it is.

It is always there.

Somewhere. Lurking.

“That's the biggest unsolved mystery around and pretty much the only interesting thing that has ever happened in this town,” Nat rambles on, obviously delighted to talk about a real case.

She can't possibly know that she's bloodlessly killing me—word by word, just stabbing me in the heart.

“They never even found her body. They're still talking about it at school and kids have these debates at lunch about who offed her,” Nat blabbers, almost choking herself as she tries to get all the information out in one breathless spurt.

Cissy shivers and begs, “Let's totally change the subject because you're upsetting the new girl … and me.”

“All right, little chickens,” Deva sniffs. “Go on and ruin the only interesting thing we've done all day. But you know what—I bet those aren't the only Patty Matthews files our handsome detective neighbor has in his man cave.”

“You know, there are probably other files. Duh. Paper files—before they put things on computers. You know, like the days when people used to have to pay cash for everything instead of using a debit card,” Nat answers.

Obviously, they are not stopping.

“Look, I know how to not leave an electronic trail better than anyone,” Deva promises. “No one can keep track of good ol' paper money. How do you think I avoid those spending limits my parents put on me each month? Petty cash, baby. They think we spend a fortune on cereal at our house,” she says.

I can't even begin to process Deva's logic or her Lucky Charms habit when out of the corner of my eye, I notice Nat is already up on her feet, pulling open the bifold doors of the closet to reveal stacks of identical white boxes.

“Look, case files! Hot dog!” Nat exclaims in reverent tone. “OMG—this is even better than the computer files! I wonder if there are actual evidence bags in here.”

“Oh wouldn't that just make your day to get your grubby hands on some dried blood or a severed limb,” Deva snaps.

I hear a gasp from deep in the closet and wonder if Nat found the actual body, but it's almost worse. “Matthews. I've found Matthews!” Nat shouts, wiggling her backside out of the closet and emerging with a white, lidded box labeled with a black marker:
Matthews, Patty
.
Case No: 01-5774
.

“The 01 stands for the year she went missing. 2001,” Nat informs us, carefully opening the box.

“You know, it was your dad who completely screwed up the case,” Deva snaps. “He was the one who was supposed to figure out who killed her and he didn't or couldn't. He totally messed it all up.”

White-hot anger catches in my throat. It's one thing for me to think these things about my dad and quite another for complete strangers to dis him. I shoot back, “I'm sure it wasn't my dad who screwed it up. He might not be much of a father, but he's a great cop.”

“Calm down,” Nat jumps in, sensing things might get a little ugly. “Jex, do you know anything about Patty Matthews?”

I shake my head—as in no. Suddenly, I'm unsure about trusting these girls, and there is no way I'm going to let on there's an oh-so-personal story behind the Patty Matthews disappearance.

“It happened only three blocks away from here in the middle of the night,” Nat begins, sounding strangely like the guy who narrates the
Dateline
murder mystery shows.

Nat is in her glory now. “It was thirteen years ago. No one saw Patty, who was this sixteen-year-old girl, disappear. But her mom woke up the next morning and Patty wasn't in her room. She was just … gone. Completely AWOL. Vanished into thin air. And there were three people the cops think could have had something to do with it.

“She had this really nasty boyfriend named Billy who supposedly had a very ugly temper. Football player. Thought he was much better than her and then, as these things usually go, she got to be very pretty and could have done much better than him.”

“Pig,” Deva spits out.

“She had this very creepy next-door neighbor, whom we all still hate, named Mr. Foster. A real recluse freak who is out for blood if you step on a pristine blade of his front lawn. Creep-o. Always was. Always will be,” Nat adds. “And then there was her own dad. He was the town's biggest drunk and a really mean guy. He was mostly unemployed. Hit the bottle. Hard.”

“Then there was the real twist,” Deva says, proud that she actually knows more about her town than where the mall is located. “A few weeks after Patty disappeared, her dad got real drunk and crashed his car into one of the canals. He died on impact, so case closed.”

“Since then the police haven't said a word about the case,” Nat, the voice of authority, continues. “Some people think that they've just forgotten about it or that the town spent too much money on it and someone messed it up somehow. No judgment about your father.”

It's like she hit me with a stun gun. “So, what does this have to do with my dad?” I demand.

“All of our parents thought he would solve the case because they
know
him. He's their neighbor. A good guy. Takes care of business,” Cissy says. “It's kind of a weird thing because no one has felt entirely safe around here since this happened. At least, that's what my mom says.”

Staring hard at each of us, Nat slowly pulls out a thick manila file. I don't even try to stop her, but sit silently on the hard floor as she reads, waiting for her to report her findings.

“See, it's a cold case. No one has made any progress on this case in about a million years. It's as cold as a Popsicle,” Nat continues.

“Okay guys, this has gone too far,” I interrupt. “My dad will kill me if he thinks I'm sleuthing around his office.”

Something in the tone of my voice makes the others sit up and listen. Quietly, they relent, and a sour-faced Nat puts the papers back into the file. She even puts the file back in the box and pushes the lid down. Picking it up, she slides it back into the closet, right where she found it. Then she shuts the door.

But not really.

She doesn't really shut the door that tightly.

The four of us look at each other because we know it's not over.

It's not even close.

Suddenly, I have a thought that revolves around insurance. Specifically, I need an insurance policy or a way to make sure that everyone keeps their mouths shut about what we have been doing, because I'm sure that I have crossed about 1,000 invisible lines.
I haven't even been here a whole day and already trouble!
For a split second, I wonder if there are actual penalties for getting into secret police files. I certainly don't want my butt to land in front of another judge.

Of course, I can just ask these girls to keep it quiet, but I know that's pointless. These girls are sixteen going on seventeen. They have mouths—big, ginormous, gossipy mouths.

“Okay. So, nobody say anything about what we did today,” Cissy pipes up. I look at her appreciatively. Cissy doesn't talk much, but when she does at least she is the levelheaded one.

“I think Cissy's right,” I interrupt. “We'd all get in huge trouble for this. I know my dad. He's kind of a letter-of-the-law kind of guy. He'd feel like it was his civic responsibility to tell your parents you were sleuthing.”

“Um, honey, we don't do that sleuthing thing around here,” Deva corrects me. “We were just, um, browsing.”

“Okay, well where I come from, what you did was sleuthing,” I retort. “And I think … ”

“We're pretty good at it?” Nat interjects with a grin. “By the way, the original term was
sleuthhound
and it means to track or trail. It's a term from 1200. A Middle English word—and a very good one.”

How does she know this stuff?

“My brain is about to explode,” Deva announces.

I stop short to think for a moment.
Well yes, you are pretty good at it. I could have lived in this room all summer and not figured out how to find those files on the computer or dug out the ones in the closet.

“Well, yeah—you are pretty good at it,” I reluctantly announce.

“So what do you think about this?” Nat replies. “Hear me out, I have an amazingly great idea.”

“Okay,” I respond cautiously while my stomach does a triple flip.

“I'm suggesting we solve the case,” Nat says, watching three heads, including my own, pop up so hard that it's a miracle we don't have instant whiplash and require neck braces.

“Look, I know you don't know me. But I'm sort of self-taught when it comes to major crime investigations,” Nat says with pride as she stares me down.