Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [40]
CHAPTER 11
“Look, there’s nothing more I can tell you,” Cheryl Conway saidover the wireless connection. Jules had tried one last time to reach the missing girl’s parents before leaving for work. Finally, Lauren’s mother, who lived in Phoenix, had taken the call. “Lauren’s still missing, but we’re holding out hope that she’s okay, that we find her soon. Oh, God.” Cheryl Conway’s voice broke at the thought of losing her child, and Jules felt like a real jerk for having forced the woman to talk about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing with her free hand, though she knew the other woman couldn’t see her. “I hope she comes home soon.”
“We all do.”
“I’m calling because my sister’s a student at Blue Rock Academy, and I’m concerned about her.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.” Jules heard another voice—deeper and definitely male—say something in the background, but she couldn’t make out the words, just the admonishing tone. Was it Lauren’s father? Or an older brother? Some authority figure.
“Mrs. Conway?” she said.
“Uh…please…Look, I’m sorry…” Cheryl’s voice became a squeak as she tried to control herself and failed. “I…I really can’t talk about this. I shouldn’t. If you have any other questions, take them up with the sheriff’s department.”
Cheryl Conway hung up, and Jules stood in the hallway near her front door, her cell phone still clamped to her ear, feeling that she was missing something. Cheryl Conway had wanted to tell her more, but her husband had admonished her.
Why?
She slipped her phone into her purse.
What had she hoped to learn by tracking down beleaguered, frightened parents who, though “holding out hope,” were worried sick that their daughter was already dead? The phone call had provided little information. It just reaffirmed Jules’s fears about the school.
“Nancy Drew, I’m not,” she told Diablo. Aside from working for a collection agency as a file clerk while going to college, she had no skills at being a detective of any kind.
Still, she felt an urgency to spring Shay from Blue Rock, and some of her anxiety sprang from Shay. Lord knew she was manipulative. Jules snagged her keys and checked her reflection in the narrow mirror by the front door. Her hair was piled on her head, her white blouse pressed, black skirt straight. Her makeup hadn’t smeared, so she was ready for work at a job she really didn’t mind but wasn’t in love with. There was always Tony, the manager, with his sexual innuendos to deal with. Then there was Dora, a whiny waitress who loved to complain. “But it pays for Tasty Treats,” she told the cat before grabbing her coat for the night shift at 101. The hours were long, the crowd noisy, the prices steep, and the tips great. The best thing was that it was a night gig, so if a migraine interrupted her sleep, or the nightmare returned, she could ignore the alarm clock in the morning.
She was lucky to have the job. “I’ll see ya later,” she promised the cat, then, outside, waved to her neighbor Mrs. Dixon before dashing through the drizzle to her sedan. The car, sometimes stubborn, started on the first try, and she was halfway to work when her cell phone rang. She wouldn’t have picked it up and risked a ticket for driving while talking on a cell, but she recognized the out-of-area number as the one she’d last dialed—Lauren Conway’s parents in Phoenix.
“Hello?”
“This is Cheryl Conway again,” the woman whispered. “I couldn’t talk earlier, not really. My husband doesn’t approve. He wants to do everything by the book, but I can’t stand to think that someone else’s daughter might end up missing if I don’t help. The sheriff’s department…it’s not enough; they don’t have the manpower. Sometimes you have to do more.”
“Do more how?” Jules asked.
But Cheryl ignored her question and just kept talking. “I don’t know you or your sister, but trust me, something’s very wrong at that