Read Online Little Girls Lost by J. A. Kerley - Free Book Online Page A

Dickens’-era piece that might have graced the offices of Lloyd’s, it had been crafted five years prior at the cost of seventeen thousand British pounds. The desktop held only a hard leather writing pad, a multi-buttoned communications station, and an antiqueship’s clock of gleaming brass, its spring-driven mechanism replaced with electronics.
    The room would have been dark but for track-mounted spots pinpointing glass cabinets of yellowed scrimshaw. Wall-hung shadow boxes displayed antique navigational equipment, astrolabes, sextants, compasses; Walter Mattoon was a collector of small objects of beauty, utility, or both.
    Mattoon sat in the leather chair behind his desk and opened the top drawer to display a panel of switches. He touched one and the curtains retreated from the windows, the boundless horizon revealed. He touched another and low music fell from hidden speakers, Scarlatti.
    “Dear?” he called toward a curtained doorway at the rear of the main room. “Are you awake yet? Have you dressed?”
    A young black girl stepped into the room. She wore a flowing designer gown, mauve, the décolletage high and demure over the modest swell of her breasts. A red silk orchid floated behind an ear. Mattoon rose in acknowledgement.
    “Shall we take the morning breeze, Dear?” Mattoon said, sliding a slender arm behind her and guiding her toward the door. Though he knew Dear had gone by the name of Darla Dumont for the eleven years of her life in Mobile, he never used it, the name part of a life that no longer existed. She was Dear. They were always Dear.
    The girl’s eyes looked through Mattoon, out a window, across the sea and beyond. She walkedas if in a gray and meaningless dream. Her look troubled him and he stopped. “Dear? Are you all right?”
    She continued staring out the window. Mattoon regarded her with sad eyes; knowing from experience she had started dissolving. His love could do that, Mattoon knew. None of his glorious Dears had endured even a year before dissolving into nothingness.
    “Love is such sweet pain,” Mattoon whispered. “But we are blessed to receive it.”
    The girl had slumped forward. Mattoon sighed and sent her back to her room. He went to his desk calendar and, for the third time that morning, counted the days until the ship reached Mobile.
    The next morning Sandhill pushed his key into the restaurant door when he felt a tug behind the knees of his jeans. He turned and looked down. A little girl, lean as a twig, dressed in pink jeans and a white tee, some current cartoon animal on the shirt.
    “Jacy Charlane?”
    Jacy stared mutely at her sky-blue sneakers.
    Sandhill frowned. “Well, what is it?”
    She shuffled her feet, wrung her hands. Sandhill tapped a finger on Jacy’s head. “Talk, girl. I know you’re in there. The Gumbo King’s got chores to do, vittles to cook. What do you want?”
    Still studying her shoes, she held her hand up and finger-waved him closer. He sighed andlowered to a knee. Jacy cupped her hands and encircled Sandhill’s ear.
    “I have to tell you a secret, your highness.”
    Her breath was warm on his ear. He hoped she wasn’t carrying a cold or some childhood affliction.
    “One quick secret, then I have to get busy. Is today your birthday? Did I guess it?”
    “My birthday’s not for three weeks,” she whispered. “It’s a bad secret.”
    “Did you lose something? A toy? I’ll bet if you retraced your steps—went back where you—”
    “Someone is stealing little girls, Mr King.”
    Sandhill froze. He took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “I’ve, uh, heard about that. It’s a sad thing. Listen, Jacy, I wouldn’t worry too much about—”
    “One was in a burned-down house. On the TV they told her name was LaShelle.”
    “Jacy, uh, maybe your aunt could explain—”
    “Did LaShelle feel the burning, Mr King?”
    Sandhill put his hand on her shoulder and felt her shaking like her breath should be visible in the air. “Jacy, I