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  After a bit of delay, Sally made her way over to take Grace’s order. Her gray hair was coming loose from the pins meant to keep it out of her face. Despite her rush, Sally had a broad smile for Grace, the lines creasing her face into well-worn patterns. She took the order by memory and waved Grace on to her seat.

  As Sally turned to call out the order to the cook, Grace checked her watch. She had a good half hour until her meeting with DL. They had made good time walking from the townhouse, and she had plenty of time before he arrived to enjoy satisfying the hunger her morning run had raised. It would give her time to organize her thoughts for the upcoming conversation. She didn’t like to feel rushed before a meeting.

  Grace walked over to join Danny, who had already slid into the booth marked “Reserved” on a handwritten index card stuck in a tiny metal stand. Danny’s tousled, dark brown hair appeared as if he had recently gotten out of bed. His thin 11-year-old body was bouncing in place with barely contained energy. His blue eyes sparkled up at her as he waited for her to take a seat.

  The aged vinyl creaked as Grace settled in on the right side of the booth. She was careful to avoid the crack taking up half of the seat, not wanting her legs to get pinched.

  Grace laid out the New York Times crossword puzzle face up on the table in front of Danny, who was squirming in his seat, waiting to tackle it. She watched him work the puzzle without a pencil. He did it all in his head, sounding out the answers under his breath while tracing the squares with a thin finger.

  Once Sally delivered the food, it didn’t take long for Grace to clean her plate. She finished by mopping up the loose egg yolks with the last piece of toast. She leaned against the back of the booth and felt the coolness of the cracked vinyl chill the sweat beaded between her shoulder blades. The city had been particularly hot and muggy this summer, and the dim chilliness of the diner was a welcome relief.

  Grace glanced down at the watch on her tanned wrist. It wasn’t like DL to run late, especially when he said it was important they meet. A few seconds later, he entered the diner and stood in the doorway while peering around. She raised her hand and waved until she got his attention. He maneuvered his way past the other customers to slide in opposite her.

  “DL isn’t looking too good.” Grace heard Danny’s voice in her mind as he glanced up from his work on the crossword.

  “Yeah, he looks like he had a rough night.”

  “I mean his aura, Gracie. He’s normally all greens and yellows. But he’s all dirty gray, today.”

  Grace wasn’t sure what to make of Danny’s observations. She didn’t respond to him but studied DL’s tired face.

  She had been friends with DL for the last three years since her parents died. He ran a non-profit center that gave kids a safe place to go after school and provided a place for street kids to get help when they needed it. He was completely dedicated to these kids. She wasn’t surprised to have gotten a call from him late at night when it involved one of the kids.

  DL leaned back against the seat with a sigh, the dark bags under his eyes emphasizing his drawn appearance. He laid his hands on the table, the bright colors of his tattooed arms in sharp contrast to the gray Formica top.

  Grace gulped the last of her drink and pushed the plate and glass aside. She would get something for DL to eat once Sally returned to pick up her used dishes. He looked like he could use it. For now, she gave him her full attention. He wouldn’t beat around the bush about what happened last night with Beth and the emergency run to the hospital.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The police wanted to talk to me some more this morning when I went to check on Beth.”

  “How’s she doing?” Grace asked.

  “Better.” DL’s voice was heavy with tiredness. “She’s stabilized, and the doctors are considering plastic surgery for her face to help repair the damage. The rest of her wounds will heal with the stitches they put in last night. But her face will need work to get her back to looking like a normal girl again. I’m praying she’ll come out of this mess with as little disfigurement as possible.”

  “And how are you doing?” Grace asked.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He waved away her concern. “Like I said on the phone, I’m not only worried about Beth. I’m worried about all my kids.”

  As DL made the statement, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a piece of notepaper folded into a tight square. With care, he unfolded it and placed it on the table to smooth it out with both hands, then he rotated it around so the writing was readable from her position. On it was a list of first names, all female, covering almost the entire length of the page.

  “These are the names of all the girls that have gone missing in the last two years. I suspect something is happening to my kids, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything solid. I believe the attack on Beth was another instance of this, but she was lucky and somehow got away when the others didn’t.”

  Grace read through the list of names, each one with a date inked in beside it. “What makes you think these girls didn’t move on to another place or go back home?” She studied DL’s face.

  “Grace, you know these kids. None of them will go back to the messed up lives they came from. They might not advertise leaving the city, but I’ve asked around. I only put names on the list if I was sure it was unusual for them to disappear.”

  “Okay. What about their friends? What do they say?”

  “For everyone on the list, I’ve spoken to at least one person who can confirm the girls didn’t plan to leave. They simply stopped showing up at their usual hangouts,” he said.

  “What’s going on, then?”

  “I can’t tell you for sure.” He rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.

  “There’s a ton of stuff out there these kids can run into—gangs, drugs, prostitution. They’re expendable on the streets, and most of the ‘bad guys’ don’t bother cleaning up after themselves if the kids get in their way. If anything happened to one of them, there’s at least one person who’s heard something about it. That or a dead body. But not for these girls.” He tapped the list of names with his index finger.

  “They just disappeared, without a trace—gone.”

  Grace studied the names and dates again. The dates covered about two and a half years and did not show an obvious pattern. There were significant gaps, as well.

  “Danny, take a quick peek at the dates on this list for me. Does your pattern-happy brain see anything in these?”

  Danny turned from working the crossword and leaned over to study the list of names and dates. He frowned in concentration as he puzzled over the list, and Grace swore she could hear the cogs in his head turning.

  “I’m sorry, Gracie. I’ve tried applying all the algorithms I can to this, but I’m coming up with diddly-squat. I don’t think there’ll be a simple explanation for what’s happening to DL’s kids just from this list.”

  “Thanks for trying,” she consoled him as he turned back to the crossword puzzle. He appeared engrossed in the effort of completing it, but he was now paying close attention to what she and DL were saying.

  Grace studied DL again, asking the question she already knew the answer to, but had to ask. “Did you go to the police about this?”

  Luckily, DL couldn’t hear her side chatter with Danny and continued on with the audible part of the conversation.

  DL gave her a worn smile. “I tried, Grace. Multiple times. The cops don’t investigate something like this very hard. Homeless girls ‘disappearing,’ but no one has information about it? They write it off, like you suggested, as the kids moving on or going back home. Even if they had the manpower to do a real investigation instead of a cursory probe, which of my kids would talk to them? Who would risk getting locked up for vagrancy or shipped back home?”

  He shook his head. “No, the cops haven’t done much of anything on this.”

  “Even with Beth’s incident? The cops must be trying to figure out who attacked her?�
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  DL snorted. “They think Chris did it. They’re asking questions about Chris and Beth’s relationship and how they can find him.”

  “And you don’t think he did?”

  “Chris may live a rough life, but this isn’t him. And I saw and talked to him afterward. Something strange happened last night, but it wasn’t Chris who hurt Beth.”

  Grace gave DL a silent look, waiting for him to continue.

  “All of these girls are connected. I have this powerful feeling something bad is happening to them, and Beth was the lucky one to escape… thanks to Chris. The police won’t believe me. The only one I could think of who would help us was you. You understand as well as I do, everyone deserves justice, regardless of who they are. You’re a solid private investigator, and you also have the connections with the police to get information I can’t.”

  “Would your kids talk to me?” she asked.

  “Well, being a PI isn’t the same as being a cop, but you’re still ‘establishment’ in their eyes. The best I can do is get some of them to talk to me. You have a great track record of finding people. I hope what I can get from them will be enough for you to solve this thing.”

  “What else can you tell me about the girls on the list?” she asked.

  “The best I can tell is a few were doing drugs, but that doesn’t seem to be the connection between them. It appears all of them were tricking at one point or another. It’s the one possibility I can come up with for us to check out.”

  “Okay, we’ll put aside anything drug related for now,” Grace agreed. “Sounds like that shouldn’t be a primary line of investigation. I think you’ve landed on the best thing we have going for us, right now. The common denominator might be tricking.”

  DL’s face became grim. “It’s not much to go on, Grace. Where do we go from here?”

  “It’s time for me to reach out to Officer Winiarksi.”

  “He’s your cop friend?” DL asked.

  “Yes. Friend first, cop second. But an upstanding guy who would want to help once I’ve told him about what you’ve shown me.”

  DL pursed his lips, his face growing tight.

  At his expression, Grace jumped in. “I understand you didn’t get very far before when you tried working with the police. But Billy is my friend, and we can get further if we get him interested. Can you stop by my place on Tuesday night, around eight? I can get Billy to come over, and we can discuss what you have on the missing girls. We can all work together to figure out the next steps.”

  DL sat, considering it for a moment, wetting his lips before speaking. “What good will it do to have me there, Grace? You have the list of names and dates, already. If he wants to help, that should be enough to get him started.”

  Grace forced herself to let DL finish. She had to remember he had been battling against police apathy for a long time. This recent attack on Beth and the police’s reaction had pushed him to come looking for her help.

  “I think you should be there to walk Billy through it yourself. You know these girls. If he has any questions, you could answer them then and there. And in the meantime, you can find out the last place the girls were seen tricking. That might be important information to have.”

  DL shifted in his seat, his eyes coming to rest on the list of names sitting on the table. Finally, he raised his gaze to meet Grace’s eyes. “I can be there. I’m not sure it’ll make any difference to go another round with the police, but I have to do what I can to stop more of my girls from getting hurt.”

  “I know Billy. If I ask, he’ll be willing to at least listen to what you have to say. And give you some advice on next steps. Plus, I’m wondering whether it’s just your girls that are disappearing. Maybe professional prostitutes are going missing along with the homeless girls turning a few tricks. That might explain the gaps in dates on your list when none of your girls went missing,” she said with a grimace.

  “You mean other women might be disappearing as well as my girls?” DL’s expression grew more concerned.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Grace slid the list back to Eli. “We may have someone out there preying on women—prostitutes and homeless girls, both.”

  Chapter 4

  Grace turned into the cemetery entrance, the wrought iron, decorative gates pushed to the sides against the ivy-covered walls. There were no roses blooming on the trellises bracketing the gates. It was too late in the summer for that.

  As usual, this part of the cemetery was empty of visitors. The cemetery was nestled in the older, quiet part of Dayan Springs, away from the main tourist areas. It was off the radar for tourists site-seeing at the big historic cemeteries and saw little traffic beyond the locals visiting their relatives.

  She drove up the wandering one lane road to the top of the hill at the back of the cemetery. Along the way, she admired the well-kept lawn, spotted with headstones stretching away on both sides of the pavement.

  As soon as she pulled the car over to the side of the lane, Danny jumped out and headed down the hill.

  “Say hello to Samantha and Joshua for me,” Grace said as Danny ran off.

  “Sure will!” His voice rang in her head as he headed back down the road.

  Grace lifted the bunches of flowers from the back seat, careful not to bump them against anything as she exited the car. Clutching the large bouquet of daisies and a double bunch of tulips in her right hand, she walked up the gravel path leading to a lone Japanese maple on the hilltop, shading two matching headstones.

  Reaching the graves, she removed the old flowers from each vase, replacing one with daisies and the other with the red tulips. The second bundle of electric blue tulips, she nestled within the roots of the sculpted tree, placing them alongside a small flat tombstone sunken part way into the ground. With a nod of acknowledgment to the diffuse form hovering near the tree trunk, she circled around to the front of the matching headstones to sit cross legged between them, facing down the hill.

  “Hi Mom,” she whispered, laying one open palm on the grave with the tulips. “Hi Dad.” She repeated the gesture on the grave with the daisies.

  She bowed her head, taking a long breath. Even after three years, there was still an intense sense of loss each time she came for a visit. What if they hadn’t died when they did? Would Danny still be alive? Would Grace still be part of the police force? Would peaceful dreams rather than nightmares of her and Danny’s accident fill her nights?

  Enough! She forced the usual litany out of her mind.

  Acknowledging the ache she felt deep in her heart, she raised her head and relaxed her hands in her lap. She let her gaze wander across the landscape, noting a smattering of living people in the lower part of the cemetery.

  Grace thought back to times her mother brought her to tend the Japanese maple her parents planted for their plots.

  “Rest in peace means just that,” Francene would always say. “We selected our plots here because this little cemetery is never busy with people, even on the weekends. And this tree will grow to give shade for our graves and for visitors when they come. We’re planting it now so it will have years to grow before we need it.”

  Grace appreciated the shade in summer and the beautiful leaves all year long. But she regretted the tree didn’t have a long time to grow before her parents were laid beneath it.

  Grace smiled when she caught sight of Danny playing hoops with a small girl in a gingham dress and a boy dressed like a 1890s newsy. Samantha and Joshua were Danny’s playmates whenever they visited the cemetery. Both ghosts had been at the cemetery for so long, their names had faded from their grave markers. They were happy to find a new friend in Danny. They were shy around Grace but were uninhibited in their games with him.

  They ran laughing and shouting, chasing the hoop as it rolled and bumped over the rough ground and through several headstones. The cemetery was only a half mile at its widest point—she never worried about losing Danny there. It was good to see him playing with children who
were his own “age.”

  As her gaze continued to wander across the grounds, she spoke in the soft voice she used when greeting her parents.

  “Danny is adjusting well, for a kid who’s haunting his sister,” she said. “We’ve finally settled into the new place. Nine months after our accident, and we’ve gotten the rest of the boxes unpacked at last. Now it’s starting to be a real home.”

  As usual, when thinking about Danny and his current “life,” she couldn’t stop the wave of guilt rushing through her. Despite all those times the therapist worked with her on how the accident wasn’t her fault, she still had not gotten rid of the guilt. She couldn’t seem to let go of the idea she should have done something more to prevent the accident from happening.

  She took a few deep breaths, struggling to release her line of thought. With an effort, she turned her attention back to updating her parents.

  “I’m sorry you’ll miss his birthday this weekend. It’s hard to believe this will be the third one since you died. I feel a bit weird celebrating a birthday for someone who will never get older, but it’s what he wants.” She picked at the grass.

  “He’s really excited I agreed to let Sophie know about him. She’s the neighbor I told you about who does the palm and tarot readings down at the strip mall on Lincoln. I’m not certain it’s a good idea to tell anyone about us. But Danny thinks she might be able to help us figure some of this situation out, because he’s convinced she makes her living using some sort of ability. I think he has a bit of a crush on her. He would love the chance to spend time with her in person,” she said with a bemused sigh.

  “It kills me he had to give up on going to college.” The guilt crept back in, making her voice rough. “He was planning on taking his GED and then an early enrollment into MIT this fall. Full ride at the place of his dreams and a career as a physicist all planned out. All destroyed because I couldn’t move fast enough to avoid a damn drunk driver… or save him from getting crushed to death.”