Read Online The Girls Are Missing by Caroline Crane - Free Book Online Page B

a mile, I don’t know.” Joyce exaggerated the distance, for Barbara’s sake. Why hadn’t they told her about the second body? “They,” she supposed, being the police.
    “I know exactly how you feel,” she said. “I have a daughter, too, but believe me, these kids stay right around the house.”
    Mary Ellen, holding Adam bundled in her arms, sat watching from the rocking chair in a corner of the room. “Is that my mother?”
    Joyce nodded, and looked out at the sunshine on the lawn, at the bright meadow with its daisies, and the apple tree. It couldn’t be happening. Not here.
    Maybe I should get a dog, she thought.
    Barbara said, “Anyway, that’s not the problem. Is my daughter there now?”
    “Yes, do you want to talk to her?”
    Not the problem? Joyce wondered as she finished dressing Adam. If that wasn’t the problem, what was?
    “No, I don’t want to,” Mary Ellen was saying into the phone. After a pause, during which snatches of Barbara’s voice crackled across the room, she explained, “There’s nothing to do. There’s nothing to do here, either, but at least it’s a little more fun. I helped Joyce give the baby his bath.”
    Moments later she hung up, wrinkling her face in disgust. “I don’t know what’s the matter with that woman.”
    “You can’t really blame her,” Joyce said. “She’s concerned about you. She must miss you very much.”
    “That’ll be the day. She’s got something bothering her. It’s always something.”
    Mary Ellen remained transfixed while Adam was fed his mashed banana. He was propped in a reclining seat on the kitchen table, with Mary Ellen gazing in adoration at his messy face, when footsteps thumped lightly on the walk outside.
    Anita peered through the screen door. “Mrs. Gilwood, did you know they found Valerie Cruz and she’s dead, too? She was in my sister’s class.”
    “I heard,” said Joyce. “It’s horrible. And I’m amazed that your mother allows you to wander around alone, even on the road. Does she know you’re here?”
    “I guess so.” Anita let herself in. “Valerie was a friend of my sister’s, and when they found her, she was all cut up. They cut open her stomach and took out all her, you know, what’s inside. I bet that hurt.”
    “I bet she was already dead when they did it,” Joyce said. Gail, coming into the kitchen at the sound of Anita’s voice, turned ashen. Joyce added, “I’d rather we didn’t talk about those things.”
    “They killed her by choking her to death,” Anita went on. “Like this.” She reached for Gail’s throat. Gail slapped her away.
    Anita was taken aback by Gail’s hostile reaction, but soon recovered. She ran squealing up the stairs, with Gail after her, and brought down the dolls to play with on the lawn.
    By that time, some of the lawn was in shade. Joyce carried a lunch tray outside to a small wooden table under an oak tree. She found the two girls huddled by the zinnia bed. Anita’s voice drifted over to her. “… go back to that place.”
    “No,” said Gail.
    “But I have to get my peacock and my horse. I left them there, remember? And you were there, too, so it’s partly your fault, and you have to go with me.”
    Gail looked at her mother in mute appeal. To distract them from whatever Anita was trying to cook up, Joyce said, “After lunch, maybe we can go swimming. All of us.”
    Gail was delighted, almost to the point of forgetting about
    the murders. They packed away the dolls and ate their lunch, then set out in the car, with Adam’s travel bed in the back seat. Mary Ellen squeezed herself in beside it. Gail and Anita sat in front.
    They stopped at the Farands’ house so that Anita could change into her swimsuit. Sheila came out to the car and leaned on the window.
    “I suppose you heard the news?”
    “If you mean about the other girl, yes. I heard it this morning.”
    “I just can’t believe it. My daughter knew that kid. Joyce, what are we going to