Chapter 17

Maisy reststhe back of her towel-wrapped head against the cedar wall, allowing the hot steam of the sauna to melt away the last stubborn layer of stress that lunch with one of her besties and a fierce cycling class left behind. She relaxes her shoulders and closes her eyes. If this doesn’t do the trick, she’ll listen to that meditation one of her pals emailed her last week.

Gotta email Bodhi back, she thinks languidly.

Her breathing slows and the looping soundtrack of they all lied, they all lied, they all lied fades from her mind. Then her fitness watch buzzes, vibrating on her wrist. She jumps as if she’s received a small electric shock.

“Dang notifications,” she mutters aloud in the empty sauna room.

With no small measure of reluctance, she opens her eyes, wipes the sweat away, and raises the watch up to her face to scan the message.

Someone’s emailed the tip line.

Heart thumping and adrenaline pumping, she slips her feet into her rubber flip-flips and runs from the sauna to the locker room, clutching her towel to her chest.

After the world’s shortest shower, she throws on her clothes and runs a wide-tooth comb through her unruly curls. She’s putting on her shoes when her phone rings on the bench beside her. She glances down. Jordana.

“Did you see it?”

“Hello to you, too,” she tells her producer. “I got the notification that we have a message in the tip box. I’m at the gym, so I haven’t read it yet.”

“I have.”

Maisy can’t tell from Jordana’s inflection whether it’s a nothingburger or a legitimate lead. “And?” she holds her breath while she awaits the answer.

“And I’m leaving the library now. I’ll meet you at your place.”

She exhales with a whoosh. “Don’t be evil. Tell me what it says.”

“It’s a lot.” Jordana’s quavering voice reveals her excitement now.

“On my way.” She ends the calls and grabs her bag from the floor beside her.

She runs home, her mind racing faster than her feet, to find Jordana sitting at the dining room table in front of her laptop.

When Maisy enters the room, she looks up with a wide grin and gestures toward the screen. “You have to see this.”

She dumps her bag and reads the brief message over Jordana’s shoulder:

To: Tips at the Farley Files Podcast

Re: The fight in Dead Man’s Hollow

We were at the bonfire in Dead Man’s Hollow the night Heather Ryan vanished. You should ask people about the fight with the kids from Allderdice.

We don’t know for sure that there’s a connection between the fight and Heather going missing. But she was talking to a guy from Allderdice that night before she disappeared.

Maisy frowns. “Allderdice? That’s a city high school?”

“Yeah. My alma mater.”

“You went there?”

“Right. You know the one—it’s down the hill from Daniel’s Krav Maga studio.”

“The police didn’t interview any students from Allderdice.”

Jordana furrows her brow. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I read all the statements again this morning. Nobody who attended any city school was interviewed. And none of the interviews mention a fight.”

“I’m guessing they don’t mention this mystery guy, either.”

“No, not a word. And neither did Amy.” A flare of anger rises in Maisy’s chest. She told the Ryans she couldn’t help them unless they were completely honest.

“We need to talk to Amy,” Jordana says, her voice serious.

“Oh, I know it,” Maisy assures her. “I’ll call her and tell her we need to meet. You respond to the tip. See if you can get them to agree to an interview on the record.”

“That’s never going to happen,” Jordana protests.

“It might. Look at it again. They use ‘we,’ which means it’s at least two people. One of them might cave.”

Jordana scans the message. “It’s a long shot.”

She’s right, Maisy knows. It is. But it’s also the opening she’s been looking for. It’s the first fissure in the wall.

Amy’s pacingin her driveway when Maisy and Jordana pull up to her house. She jogs down to the car to meet them.

“You said you have new information? A tip?” She’s slightly breathless.

“Let’s sit down and talk,” Maisy counters.

Jordana lifts her equipment bag from the back seat, and Amy’s gaze shifts away from Maisy. “You’re going to record? I thought Kristy’s interview is next?”

“It is. Probably. But we have to be ready to adjust on the fly,” Jordana tells her as she closes the car door.

“Oh. Okay.”

Amy seems uncertain. Maybe worried. This won’t do. Maisy needs her to be relaxed and trusting or she’s never going to open up.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she trills. “Is there somewhere we can sit out back?”

Amy blinks at the question, then she breaks into a smile. “Sure, the patio’s covered. It’s nice out there, and the garden’s in full bloom. Come on.” She gestures for them to follow her to the fenced backyard.

Maisy and Jordana get settled at the glass-topped table while Amy bustles inside to get cold drinks. The last thing she wants is a glass of iced tea made by a Northerner. They never use enough sugar, but one of her rules is to never refuse an offered refreshment from a source. Hospitality breeds connection. And people confide when they feel connected.

“How’d you know?” Jordana stage whispers.

“Know what?”

“That she’s a gardener, and she’d feel comfortable out here.” She gestures toward the rows of brightly colored flowers that line the fence, the baskets of blooms that hang from hooks on the patio’s ceiling and the fragrant flowering bushes along the Marino home’s back wall.

Maisy works her lips and considers the question. She didn’t know. Did she? Then she remembers. “It was a lucky guess. In Amy’s interview with the police, she mentioned that the girls were supposed to help their mother weed her garden the weekend Heather disappeared. At first, she thought maybe her sister had stayed at a friend’s to get out of the work. But she went into a lot of detail about different annuals and perennials in the garden. Much more detail than you’d expect a teenager to share. So I guess I filed her away as a gardener in my mental Rolodex.”

“Smart,” Jordana tells her. “What’s a Rolodex?”

Maisy’s eyes widen.

Her producer snorts. “Just kidding. Caroline has one at the law firm. I was fascinated by it when I first started working for Sasha. Who would keep their contacts on index cards on a spindle? I set her up with a contacts database years ago, but the last time I checked, that Rolodex was still on her desk.”

Maisy is spared from having to defend the humble but mighty cataloguing system by Amy’s appearance at the back door. She bumps the door open with her hip and carefully crosses the patio bearing a melamine tray that holds a pitcher, three ice-filled glasses, and, to Maisy’s delight, a sugar bowl and three long spoons.

Amy takes a seat and pours the iced tea. Jordana pushes the sugar bowl toward Maisy with a knowing look. Maisy heaps sugar into her glass and stirs it until it dissolves. The spoon tinkles against the glass.

She takes a long, sweet drink. “Mmm. Thank you.”

“Sure.” Amy folds her hands on the table in front of her, like a kid who knows she’s in trouble. “So, what did you learn?”

Before answering, Maisy glances at Jordana. “Ask that again so Jordana can test the equipment and then we’ll start recording.”

“Okay.” She waits a beat, then clears her throat. “So, what did you learn?” She asks the question with the self-conscious intonation of someone who knows she’s being recorded.

Maisy holds up a finger; Jordana plays back the line, listening through the earphones she’s slipped on, then nods. They’re good to go.

“Amy, I read the statement you gave the authorities. You told them the last time you saw your sister in Dead Man’s Hollow, you were sitting at the fire. Heather was dancing, and she plopped down on the log next to you to take a break and have a drink. Is that correct?”

Amy draws her eyebrows together. “I haven’t looked at my copy of my witness statement in years, but that sounds right. I mean, that is what happened, so I’m sure it’s what I told the police.”

“I assume she wasn’t drinking iced tea like we are right now.”

The statement might seem out of place to a podcast listener, but Jordana can edit it out if she needs to. Maisy’s goal is for Amy to feel as if she’s having a natural conversation.

Amy gives her a faint smile. “No, she wasn’t. She had a wine cooler. No, wait, it was a Zima. I remember the bottle. And when she finished that, she had a beer.”

“Any other drinks?”

“I don’t know. I left the fire to walk around, and when I came back … she was gone.” Her voice is thick with emotion.

“Was the boy she’d been talking to gone, too?”

There’s a long pause.

Amy swallows audibly, then trails a finger around the rim of her glass, through the condensation that’s gathered there. “Um, yeah. He was gone, too.”

So she did know about the guy.

“Tell me about him.”

Her eyes widen. “There’s nothing to tell. He didn’t go to our school. I’d never seen him before.”

“Oh, that’s right. He was an Allderdice student.”

Amy’s expression is baffled. “Was he? Like I said, I didn’t know him. He was just some guy.”

“Just some guy who was talking to your sister the night she disappeared.”

“They were only talking. He, um, he said he liked her dance moves and offered her a beer. He offered me one, too, but I said no thanks. Then I decided to take a walk.”

Maisy waits. Sometimes not asking a question is the best question of all. Her patience is rewarded.

“They were flirting, and I didn’t want to be a third wheel. A literal bump on the log.”

“You say they were flirting. Both of them? It was mutual?”

“It seemed mutual. That’s why I walked away. If he’d been hitting on her and she wasn’t into it, I never would have left. I’d have stayed and told him to beat it.”

“You’re not the only person who saw them together, correct?”

“No, there were a ton of people at the fire.”

“I’ve reviewed every witness statement your friends and classmates who were in the woods that night gave to the police. Why do you think not a single person mentioned this boy?”

The patio is silent except for the faint buzz of the bees hovering in the planter of pale pink snapdragons nearby and the lazy whirr of the ceiling fan above the table. Amy’s staring at her hands again.

Finally, she raises her eyes. “I don’t know. I mean, I didn’t know that nobody told the police about him. That’s weird.”

It’s more than weird, but Maisy moves on. “Why didn’t you?”

Amy clears her throat and flicks a glance toward Jordana. “You have to understand how things were back then. If I’d have told the police or my parents that Heather was flirting with a Black guy before she disappeared, they’d have jumped to conclusions. I thought … I guess I thought that information would distract them from finding her because they’d have an easy scapegoat.”

Maisy’s meets Jordana’s eyes. The college student hadn’t been alive in 1994, but they both know racism’s still alive and well in the new millennium.

“Do you think that’s why nobody else said anything about him?” Maisy asks.

Amy takes a drink before answering. “I doubt it,” she says, and leaves it at that.

“What about the fight?”

She casts a baffled look at Maisy. “What fight?”

“We received information that there was a fight at the end of the night between some of your classmates and the group from Allderdice.”

“It must have happened after I left. Was the fight about Heather talking to that guy?”

“We don’t know yet. There’s nothing in the police records about the fight. In fact, there’s nothing in the records about the kids from Allderdice at all.”

She frowns. “I know I told the police there were kids from other schools there. But I didn’t know any of them, so there wasn’t much to say.”

“Aside from this boy who liked her dancing, did you see Heather talking to anyone else from a different school?”

Amy thinks for a moment before answering. “No.”

“Who would know about the fight?”

“I’m not sure. Rich, maybe? But I don’t know why he wouldn’t have told the police about it—or at least his brother, if he didn’t want to be the one to dime out our friends.”

Maisy hesitates, not sure whether to trust Amy, but decides she has no real choice. “Nobody wanted to dime out their friends, apparently. It seems clear the statements were deliberately conformed, as if everyone got together to get their story straight before they talked to the police. Do you know anything about that?”

Amy shakes her head miserably. “No, but I wouldn’t have been part of that. I mean, we were dealing with our own stuff. But it wouldn’t surprise me if everyone stuck to the same story so they wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“Sure, maybe, before they realized how serious the situation was,” Maisy agrees. “But your sister’s been gone for thirty years. If everyone lied, why hasn’t anyone come forward?”

Amy looks pained. “Maybe they think it wouldn’t make a difference? And anyway, someone did come forward, right? Your tipster.”

Amy must know this vague information is too little, too late. But the damage is done. Maisy motions for Jordana to stop recording and waits until she removes her headphones and gives a nod.

Then she says, “Talk to Rich. Ask him if he knows anything about the fight or any of the kids from other schools. We’ll also see if we can find out who the anonymous tipsters are and convince them to go on the record. For now, my plan is still to move forward with Kristy’s interview next week and save you for last.”

“You said tipsters, plural.”

“Whoever sent the email used ‘we’ not ‘I.’”

Amy arches an eyebrow. “Start with Lynn Argyle and Michelle Boland. They were best friends in high school and they’re still best friends all these years later. They were both there that night, and I can see them putting their heads together and deciding to come clean.”

Jordana types the names into her phone while Maisy gathers her purse. As she stands to leave, she says, “Thanks for the iced tea.”

Amy reaches across and catches her by the wrist. “Wait, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Me, too. I can’t find her if you’re not completely honest with me.”

“I know.”

She gives Amy a close look. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Amy sighs. “Heather went through a wild phase right before she disappeared. Nothing major, but I guess you should know.”

“For example?”

“She got into a fight with this girl in her gym class. She insisted Kelly stole her bracelet, and she retaliated by spray painting her car. And I don’t know if this is true, but there was a rumor that when Boys for You played a concert in Pittsburgh, she went to their hotel after the show.”

“To catch a glimpse of them in the lobby?” Jordana asks.

“No, the way I heard it, Heather and her friends went up to their room and partied with them.”

“Do these friends have names?”

Amy grimaces. “I don’t see any reason to embarrass a bunch of middle-aged moms. I mean, the concert was months before she went missing. I’m just telling you Heather was rebelling a little. At the time, I didn’t think there was any reason to drag her name through the mud, and I still don’t. But maybe she got mixed up with the wrong people.”

“What do you mean?” Maisy asks. “Do you think she was human trafficked? Involved in drugs? Followed Boys for You around the country?”

“I don’t know.” Amy’s on the verge of tears. “I’m just telling you want I heard. I don’t even know how much truth there is to any of it. Kristy might know more.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, she was just a kid and nobody paid that much attention to her. Kids pick things up. For instance, the rest of us didn’t know Heather had a pager, but Kristy did.” She shrugs.

Maisy nods. “Thanks for telling me. And don’t beat yourself up for withholding the information. Just don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” Amy promises. “And I’ll talk to Rich tonight.”