Chapter 4

SINCE WE WERE almost at the forty-eight-hour mark where the police would get involved, I gave Mrs. O’Connell the direct number for Lieutenant McDaniel. Her house wasn’t in his precinct, but at least this way she would have a direct contact with someone in the police department, someone who was guaranteed to give at least a little bit of a damn about her daughter. After a half hour of questions about Julia, her school life, friends, and dating history, Greg and I got in his car and headed to Landmark to talk to Julia’s co-workers. Maybe we’d get lucky, and she’d just be off doing ecstasy with a disreputable boyfriend her family knew nothing about. Yeah, I’m a regular Pollyanna.

“You see anything weird about this?” Greg asked as he backed out of the O’Connells’ driveway.

“You mean besides your complete inability to use your mirrors to back up? No. Why? What hit you funny?”

“Just that she’s working so late at a restaurant at that age. On a Monday. Shouldn’t she be home studying for finals or something?”

“Gee, Grandpa, I don’t know.” I put on my best “little kid” voice. “Maybe we should ask Archie and Jughead down at the malt shop what they think! Come on, Greg, it’s not 1980 anymore. Kids have after-school jobs doing all sorts of stuff. If she was waiting tables to save up for college, good for her.”

“I guess. Just seems awful late for somebody who has to be in school at eight the next morning.”

“What time did you go to bed in high school?”

“I dunno. Eleven or twelve.”

“Then how late did you stay sitting up in bed playing Tetris?”

“Okay, that’s fair. I probably never even tried to go to sleep before two.”

“And this girl was doing something a lot more productive than anything we ever did in high school.” I craned my neck, looking for a parking spot in the always-jammed lot the diner shared with a dry cleaner, a travel agency, and several knickknack shops. Greg slid his Prius in between two cop cars and squeezed himself out of the driver’s door. I’m the skinny one, so I had no problem slipping out of the tight parking space.

“This is another one of those times you wish we could turn into smoke, huh?” I teased as we walked up the concrete steps to the restaurant.

“More than that,” he said. “It’s another one of those times I wish we could still eat.” He gestured past the vestibule doors, and my heart sank at the fluorescent-lit mecca that was the Landmark dessert case.

I knew people when I was in college who would drive all the way home from Clemson to Charlotte on the weekends just to eat a piece of Landmark’s Tall Chocolate Cake. They wouldn’t even drop off laundry at their mom’s place, just go straight to the Landmark, get the chicken parmesan, which was enough food for three days, and order a piece of The Cake. Landmark’s Tall Chocolate Cake is a thing of legend. One slice has been known to feed two normal people dessert for a week. It’s a solid six inches tall, with about half a dozen fudge-and-icing-separated layers of moist chocolatey bliss. Greg was right—this was one time that being dead really sucked.

We stepped into the mostly controlled chaos of The Landmark at night, and a slight woman with a European accent looked up at us and asked, “How many?” She was trim, in her twenties, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dressed in the all-black hostess uniform, she raised an eyebrow when Greg didn’t answer right away.

I stepped up. “We need to speak to a manager,” I said, my voice low. “We have some questions about Julia O’Connell.”

“Yeah, so do I,” the hostess said, frown lines appearing between her eyebrows. “Like where is she? She’s supposed to be here, and this is two shifts in a row she’s missed.”

“Apt choice of words,” I said. I stepped in closer, trying to keep prying ears from overhearing me. “We just came from Julia’s home. She’s missing. No one has seen her since she left here Monday night.”

The hostess stepped back, her hand at her mouth. “Oh no. Did something happen? Is she okay?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Her eyes tightened, and she looked Greg and me up and down. “You don’t look like detectives. Are you from the Eastway station? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” She looked over my shoulder at a big oval table crowded with uniformed police sitting in full view of the door.

“No, ma’am,” I said, drawing her attention fully to me. As our eyes locked, I pushed my will onto her, bending her under my compulsion. “We’re from downtown, but you’ve seen us around a few times. We don’t look out of the ordinary at all. Now we need to speak to the manager. Privately.”

Fully under the control of my Jedi mind trick, the hostess nodded and said, “Let me take you back to Angelo. He was working Monday, too.” She slid between Greg and me, then motioned for us to follow. We walked down a narrow hallway labeled “Restrooms,” then turned to the left as she pushed through a door marked “Employees Only.” We wound our way through the tiled hall, and she knocked on a wooden door at the end.

“Angelo, a couple cops here looking for Julia,” she called through the door.

Seconds later, the door opened and a swarthy man in his early thirties appeared. “Thanks, Liz,” he said to the hostess, then stepped back from the door. “Come on in, fellas.” We stepped into the office as Liz turned and went back down the hall. Angelo’s office wasn’t much more than a closet with a desk and two chairs. His desk was covered with papers and an ancient desktop computer with an actual CRT monitor.

Angelo sat behind his desk. Greg and I stood. “What can I do for you? Liz said it was something about Julia? Is she okay?”

“Do you remember when Julia left here on Monday?” Greg asked.

“I don’t, but I can look it up.” Angelo tapped on the keyboard, then turned back to us. “Looks like she was here until about a couple minutes after midnight. Then she missed her shift last night, and she hasn’t clocked in tonight.”

“Has anyone heard from her?” I asked.

“No, and Liz is pissed. She was supposed to be off tonight, and she had to come in to cover for Julia. We get a pretty good rush after Wednesday night church, so we can’t be short-handed. And the girls don’t let me run food anymore. I spill too much.” He gave us a little self-deprecating grin. “Besides, I got a few things of my own to take care of.” He gestured to the mountains of paperwork in front of him.

“Looks like,” I agreed. “Did Julia have problems with anyone here at work?”

“What, you mean like with the other girls?”

“Or anyone in the kitchen,” Greg added.

“Nah. Everybody liked her fine. She wasn’t like, one of the gang, on account of being so young. I mean, it’s not like they could all go out partying together after work, but most of our people don’t do too much of that anyway.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Most of our folks either have families at home, or they’ve got another job, or they’re going to school. It’s not a big party crowd. I try to keep it that way. This diner is a family place, not a nightclub.”

“So everybody gets along?” I asked, giving him a look. I tried, with my usual lack of success, to raise one eyebrow, but I could tell that he wasn’t intimidated by my attempt at an arch look.

“Nah, I’m not gonna bullshit you. There’s the normal arguments about who’s getting the best tables, who gets stuck with the drunks, that kind of shit. But nothing too bad. Anybody gets real personal, either me or Angelo brings them in here and we talk it out. Then they either get straight, or somebody goes home.”

I looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were Angelo.”

“I am. My cousin is the day shift manager. His name is Angelo, too. Family business, family name.”

“I’m sure that doesn’t get confusing at all,” Greg muttered.

“Yeah, a little bit,” Angelo agreed.

“Did the other Angelo have any problems with Julia?” I asked.

“I don’t think he ever even met her,” the man said. “Julia only ever worked nights and weekends. Angelo only runs weekday shifts. He probably saw her coming or going, but he never said anything about her to me. He’s a manager, but it’s my dad’s restaurant, so I pretty much handle the operations.”

I reached into my pocket and handed him a business card. “If you hear from her, or think of anything that might be helpful, please give us a call. Her mother is very concerned that she hasn’t been home in a couple of days.”

“Yeah, I will. And if you guys hear anything, please call me.” He stood up and handed me a card of his own. “Look, I’m not going to give you any bullshit about this place being a family. It’s a restaurant, and I know most of these girls are only going to be here for a few months. But Julia’s a good kid. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. I’ll ask around to the people that worked with her most, and if they saw anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, Angelo,” I said, shaking his hand. “Hopefully we’ll find out she’s just been over at a boyfriend’s house, and everyone will feel silly when she shows back up.”

“Boyfriend,” Angelo growled. “You talked to that dirty bastard yet?”

Greg and I shared a look. “Her mother and brother seemed to think she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

Angelo sat back down, heavy in his chair. “I guess technically she didn’t, since they broke up last week. But before that, it’s the only thing I ever had to fuss at Julia about. The dirty little shithead would come in here, take up a table for her whole shift, and not buy anything but coffee. He was bad for business. One time, he even brought a bunch of his friends in with him. I had to put my foot down on that one. One filthy little urchin I could stick in a corner booth, and his presence not bother my other customers too much, but when there were five or six of them, I had to throw them out, and say something to Julia about it. She wasn’t happy, but she understood.”

“You’ve said something about them being dirty several times,” I prodded.

“Yeah, they were.”

“What do you mean, ‘dirty’?” Greg drew out the last word into a loaded question.

“What? You think it’s like a race thing? Nah, man. They were dirty. Like homeless and haven’t showered in weeks. They were covered in dirt and crap, and stunk to high heaven. This is a restaurant, man. I can’t have people coming in here all nasty, spreading salmonella and God knows what else. I told Julia her boyfriend couldn’t come back unless he showered, and the same for all his friends. She understood, but when she told Rabbit, he blew up. Made a huge scene about how we were discriminating against him and his people, started yelling, calling Julia elitist and all kinds of crap. I had to get a couple of the cops to stop their dinner and help me throw him out.”

Greg’s voice was quiet and slow. “Did you say . . . Rabbit?”

“Yeah. I don’t know his real name, but that’s what everybody called the scrawny little bastard. He’s strong, too, for such a little shit. Me and two cops barely wrestled him out of here. You want to know where Julia is? I’d start looking under overpasses and behind dumpsters. If something bad happened to Julia, that little rodent had something to do with it.”

I extended my hand again. “Thank you, Angelo. This was very helpful.” I pushed my will onto him. “You will forget that you ever saw Rabbit. Julia did not have a boyfriend to your knowledge, and the disturbance was just a drunk patron.”

Greg and I stepped back out into the hall and looked at each other. “Let’s go home and get our sewer boots,” I said. “Looks like we’re going hunting for some Morlocks.”