“Do you have their contact info? I’d like to talk to them,” Veronica said.
She nodded. “I’ll get it for you.”
“What about a boyfriend? Was she seeing anyone?”
Margie frowned a little. “I know she was dating—she sort of hinted at it. I don’t think there was anyone serious, though. I mean, she would have told me if she were hearing wedding bells, you know?”
Would she though? Veronica looked up from her notepad. “Did you know she was planning to come down for spring break?”
The woman nodded. “Of course. I wanted her to come back to Billings for the week. I thought it’d be nice—she could see her old friends, spend some time with the family. But she wanted to come down here.” She wiped at her eyes. “Well, I understand. She’s eighteen. I can’t expect her to come home every chance she gets. I sent her a little money. Told her to send me a postcard.” She stared blankly into space for a moment. “I wonder if she did.”
“Did any of you speak to her last week?”
“She texted Ella Monday night,” Mrs. Dewalt said, looking quickly at her daughter. “Right, honey?”
Ella nodded but didn’t look up. “She sent me a picture of her drink. It was one of those tall ones, with an umbrella.” She shrugged awkwardly. “We used to send each other random pictures of our food. It started as a joke, because she hated the food at Berkeley. I kept sending her pictures of Mom’s cooking. She’d send me back pictures of whatever disgusting thing she had to eat.”
“Did she say anything else?” Veronica asked gently. Ella just shook her head. Veronica cleared her throat awkwardly. “Was it like Hayley to go out a lot? Was she a … heavy partier?”
“Well, it’s obvious from that picture that she was drinking,” Crane pointed out. “She was probably drunk the whole time she was here.”
“That’s not Hayley, Crane.” Mrs. Dewalt gave him a pale and wounded look.
“Oh yeah? You really think Hayley came down to drink Shirley Temples at Chili’s and get to bed by ten p.m.? You’ve seen how the girls act down here. Wasted. Entitled. Stupid,” he said bitterly. His nostrils flared.
Congratulations, Crane. You’ve just received the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others award. The prize: a full background search and my undivided attention.
Margie’s gaze shot toward him. “What difference does that make? What, are you saying she deserved to be … to go missing?”
“No, of course not,” he said quickly, holding up calloused, stubby hands. He took a deep breath, his voice calmer. “But look, Veronica said she needs to get a complete picture so she can retrace Hayley’s steps, right? I’m just trying to help.”
“Hayley’s a good girl.” Margie sounded almost pleading. She looked on the verge of tears again.
Veronica set her notebook on her knee and glanced between them.
Crane seemed to hesitate, then leaned toward his step-mom. “If we want to find Hayley we need to tell Veronica everything we can about her. The truth is, Hayley’s changed.”
“She has not!” Margie whispered, but Crane continued as if he hadn’t heard her.
“She came home at Christmas and she was like a different person. She was moody, you know? Coming in at weird hours, ignoring the rest of us, hiding out in her room. I don’t know what was up with her, but she sure didn’t seem to be happy.” His voice was neutral, but Veronica thought she saw a vindictive gleam in his eye as he spoke.
Veronica glanced at Margie. Tears started down her face. She half expected Mike or Ella to go to her, to comfort her, but no one moved. “Did you notice anything different about her behavior, Mrs. Dewalt?”
For a moment Margie looked like she wanted to argue. Then she gave a helpless shrug.
“I don’t know anymore,” she said miserably. She put her hands over her mouth and closed her eyes, sobs rolling through her body like waves.
Veronica glanced around the room. Every few moments Mike would lift his coffee to his lips and take an absent sip. Ella looked like a creature huddled in a shell, hard and pensive. Crane kept jiggling his knee up and down. Behind them, on the counter, the digital frame showed a photo of Hayley at twelve or thirteen, her dark hair streaming from beneath her hat. She wore a softball uniform and stood with her arm hooked around her mother’s neck. Margie flashed a peace sign at the camera, her hair cut with the same bangs as her daughter’s.
A personality change at college? Not such a strange thing. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen? You left home and tried out new identities. Jocks suddenly took up clove cigarettes and went to art history lectures, buttoned-down valedictorians traded in books for bongs, until everyone got bored and tried something else. Then again, a lot of psychological disorders showed up in the late teens. Depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. A real shift in behavior could have been a warning sign.
“Did she say anything specific that might lead you to think she was unhappy?”
Crane shook his head. “Not to me.”
“And she didn’t mention anything about her life in Berkeley that might explain it? Anything about school—teachers giving her a hard time, classes that were overwhelming?”
“That’s what I assumed it was,” Margie said, her voice choked. “But she wouldn’t talk to me about it.”
Veronica sat for another moment, pretending to write in her notebook. She wanted to give them another few beats to think about anything they’d seen, anything they’d heard. But nobody spoke. The only sounds were Margie’s soft sniffles, and the air-conditioning kicking on. Finally Veronica closed the notebook and slid it into her bag.
“All right—Mrs. Dewalt, if you can get me those phone numbers I think I have enough to get started with. I’ll leave you my card. You can call day or night if you think of anything that might be helpful.”
Margie rummaged through her enormous quilted purse, emptying its contents on the counter while Veronica waited by the door. Crane had turned the TV back on. The host of the nature show was now describing how a canoe full of schoolchildren had capsized when a monstrous fish rammed against the hull. “There were no survivors,” he said soberly.
Suddenly, Mike Dewalt looked up from his coffee. His eyes, nestled in swollen pouches of flesh, were light blue and surprisingly warm.
“Be careful out there.” He took a shaky breath. “I don’t care what that sheriff says. Someone in this town took my baby. And whoever did it is still out there.”
He held her gaze for another moment, then looked down. Veronica’s heart gave a lurch as Margie shoved a scrap of paper into her hand. A phone number was scrawled on one side.
“That’s the cell number one of them left me. I don’t know which one.”