I followed my younger sister as she easily loped through a crowd of people taller than I was. I had purposely worn comfortable boots without heels but regretted it now. Julie was tall and willowy and beautiful—just like every other student I’d seen on Graham’s monitor. I wondered if the kids had noticed they’d been chosen on the basis of looks.
But there were more important matters on my mind. As Julie grabbed a bulky cheap pink coat from a hook by the door and stepped outside the dumpy cafe, I caught her arm. “We need to direct the cops to those trenches where the bodies are buried.”
She followed me outside and whispered, “You have to be Ana! Why do you call yourself by this other name?
I grinned at her quickness. “You remember me! I hoped you would. You’ll understand about the name later. Right now, I need to know what to tell the cops. I want those bodies dug up.”
She glanced worriedly toward the dinosaur skeletons. “Do I tell them about the cameras I posted? I was afraid I would be in trouble. The park’s cameras were very poor quality and often went out. I wanted to do a good job on my video so I bought better ones.”
Which was presumably why her cameras had caught the bodies and the park ones hadn’t. Nasty, and I didn’t want to turn the cops loose on that piece of information. Once the cops knew that Julie had photos of the bodies, the bad guys would know too, and they’d want to make certain she didn’t have photos showing their faces.
I thought about it as we hurried toward the ugly group of dilapidated mobile homes. “I know someone with a security company who can feed them the information. Maybe they’ll believe your cameras belong to his company.”
“That would be most excellent,” she said in relief. “Can he search for Esther and Maryam too?”
“Esther and who?” I didn’t need any more lost girls on my list. I just wanted Julie home for Christmas and to enjoy a nice simple holiday for a change. If our political kingpins wanted to embezzle and use each other for target practice, it was no concern of mine as long as my family was out of the way.
“Maryam is my roommate. She didn’t come home last night. Esther shared the trailer with us when I first arrived. She was always angry, although she never really said why. And then one day she packed up and said she was going home.” Julie yanked open the door of a faded blue trailer. The park had evidently not spent money on the students. These tin cans looked older than me.
Girls who didn’t come home overnight weren’t high on my radar, but one missing for months fell into a pattern.
“But Esther never got home?” I guessed. “How do you know?”
“The office would bring us messages from people trying to reach Esther. The office thought she was still living with us. It seemed strange. And I’d asked Esther to call us when she returned home, and she said she would, but she never did.”
I knew I hadn’t wanted to hear about any more lost girls. I needed to yank Juliana out of this hovel and take her somewhere safe. “Pack everything you own. It won’t be healthy to come back here, especially if the gunmen realize you were the one to call the cops. They’ll be afraid you were a witness. There are some really bad men using this place for their own purposes.”
I hated to scare her, but I knew my family. Julie would dig in her heels for her friends otherwise. She had probably already hung around too long looking for her friends—and to uncover the mystery. I sighed in exasperation as I realized this. I should have known.
She threw me a worried look over her shoulder as we entered, but then she shouted for Maryam. Even I could tell the trailer was empty.
“Staying out all night is not enough for panic. Leave her a note with your phone number,” I suggested. “Tell her you’re going home, and she should do the same. I doubt JACAD will survive much longer, so she might as well leave now.”
“I don’t like it that she’s disappeared. It’s not like her,” Julie said, pulling items out of cupboards and from inside the bench seats.
I put my panic alert button on hold. Julie came first. “Is your phone completely disabled? You can call her and arrange to meet her in town.” I found a box and started adding the items she retrieved into it.
“My phone is bugged,” she said with surprising vehemence. “I have quit using it.”
Argghhh, panic alert flashing. What on earth had she got herself into? I needed her out of here yesterday. “Keep it turned off. We can unbug it. Leave your number. Save the burner for emergencies. Zander will be out here looking for us if we don’t return soon. I practically had to tie him to a chair.”
I began throwing things into her boxes as fast as I could.
“Zander is really here?” she asked, finally showing excitement. “He came for me?”
Relieved to have a less stressful subject, I started on the suitcase. “What did you think he would do when you didn’t answer his messages? I think you took years off his life. I’m just glad he had the sense to come to us. I wish I’d known you were here sooner.”
She turned and hugged me. It was awkward. She was over half a foot taller and I didn’t do hugs. But I patted her shoulder and appreciated the gesture.
I had my toddlers back, and my heart felt whole for the first time in forever—although in this family, that might last all of ten minutes. I glanced out the window to be certain no one was watching.
“I didn’t know you were here!” Julie cried. “I had hoped to look for our grandfather. My father left us his address. But then so much started happening. . .” She gestured helplessly and returned to shoving clothes in a suitcase. “It is amazing to see you again! I didn’t think you would remember us.”
“I doubt a day went by that I didn’t think of you,” I said gruffly, hiding my reaction. I quit crying long, long ago, but having my family together again. . . cracked the bomb shelter I’d built around my heart.
“My family still speaks of you with awe,” she said with a laugh. “You must come home with me sometime and meet them. I cannot believe you came for me! Are you really a lawyer?”
I didn’t even have a high school diploma, since we never stayed in one place for me to graduate. I had my GED and my online courses, but a lawyer? In another lifetime. “’Fraid not,” I admitted. “I lie for a living.”
She looked up from her packing to stare. “That can’t be true. You are an honest person.”
I checked cabinets for anything that looked as if it didn’t belong. “What on earth makes you say that? I’m unfortunately like our mother. I am whatever I need to be at the moment.”
“I don’t know our mother, but it’s not you.” She shook her head. She wore her tight curls a little longer than Zander’s, but not by much. Her head and cheekbones were so elegantly sculpted that they didn’t require the disguise of hair. “Perhaps you lie to others, but not to family.”
I considered that. “It’s okay to lie to others if I don’t lie to family?”
“And friends,” she added firmly. “With those close to us, we must be honest, or we cannot trust each other.”
That set a standard I couldn’t promise to keep, but I appreciated the thought.
“Where are we going?” she asked as she zipped her suitcase.
“To our grandfather’s house. He died last spring and left it to all of us.” Already, I was lying. Or half-lying by insinuating the house actually belonged to us. It was so much more convenient than long, involved explanations.
A variety of expressions crossed her face. Unlike Zander, she couldn’t conceal an emotion if she tried.
“I am sorry to hear about our grandfather, but I am very surprised that he left Zander and me anything. He did not know us. We live half a world away. He had no reason to even acknowledge our existence since our parents did not marry. Are you sure he meant us?”
I hefted the box and let her haul the suitcases. “His grandchildren covers all of us. He knew what he was doing. There are many complications still, but we’ll work our way through them. I just want you to recognize the house as yours as much as it is any of ours.”
A single home for all our family had been a goal of mine since Patra was born, and I was old enough to change her diapers as we escaped still another war-torn town on a train in the dark of night. I doubted anyone understood my degree of determination.
Juliana stopped to scribble a note to her friend and laid it in the middle of the table, firmly held down by salt and pepper shakers. “I do not know what I will do with myself if the school closes. My degree in art does me little good.”
“A degree in anything shows that you have a well-rounded education and the ability to work hard for what you want. It’s worth a great deal,” I argued as we left the trailer and locked it behind us.
I checked my watch—just after noon. If we could make it out of here without interruption, the car should have us home before EG.
I scanned the muddy field between us and the gate. Police cars everywhere, yellow crime scene tape tied to winter-bare trees in the distance, a few uniforms blocking the road. I’d called the limo in light of Julie’s urgent message but ordered it to park out of sight. I texted the driver to pull up now.
Graham’s luxuries were corrupting me beyond redemption. I punched in a call to Patra as we trudged toward the gate. Now that Juliana was safe, I was free to wreak havoc.
“News flash,” I said to her voice mail. “Talk to Zander, then start checking into JACAD and Reverend Arden. I’ve got Juliana. See you at dinner.”
“How is the reverend, do you know?” Julie asked anxiously when I stored the phone in my pocket.
“I’d only just heard about him when we received your message. If anyone can find out, we can, but I want you safe under our roof before we start making inquiries. If you want honesty, you'll have more than you can handle once we’re there. You’re not going to like it.”
“Everyone treats me as if I’m a fragile fairy,” she said with a hint of hurt. “I am not. I set up those cameras on my own. I knew when my phone wasn’t right. I wanted to find out what was going on by myself.”
“And we respected that,” I reminded her as a policeman blocked our way. I flashed my fake lawyer business card. “Detective Hobbs said we could leave,” I said in my best voice of authority.
He made a call, then opened the gate to let us pass. People had begun to gather outside. I figured some might even be reporters, but the limo rolled through, nudging them from the road. Sam, Graham’s driver, leapt out to load our box and suitcases, and I shoved Juliana inside before most of the lookie-loos thought to whip out cameras or snap phones.
As the limo rolled back to the highway, I pulled out my phone, connected with my cloud account, and produced the screensaver photo Graham had sent. “I don’t know if you can recognize anyone on this small screen, but do you see your friend Esther in this image?”
She enlarged the image and steadily worked her way around the buffet table. She punched some buttons and handed back a cropped image of a chestnut-colored chignon. The head was slightly turned so I could see a rather emphatic chin and tan complexion. What I noticed most was that this was the pretty young thing George Paycock, the Embezzler, had his arm wrapped around.
“That could be Esther,” Julie said. “She wore her hair like that once when she went to a concert. The coloring looks right. Why?”
I fought a nervous shiver, saved the image, and opened it back to the larger one. “Because two of the women we’ve identified in this photo were JACAD students. One of them died. The other is living with an older, wealthy man, one of the development’s supporters. And you’re telling me Esther and maybe your roommate are missing. As far as I can determine, a large number of the men around this table are contributors to Jesus World.”
She took the phone back and studied the image some more. “I did not accept the one invitation I was offered to the theater, but the other students sought them eagerly. They would tell of the concerts, but no one mentioned parties.” She zoomed in again. “But I think I recognize three, maybe four of these women as students I have seen. This is a small school, but our classrooms are scattered, and the second year students are in different offices around town. I’ve probably talked to them in the canteen.”
“What about the men? Did you ever meet any of the development’s sponsors?”
She shook her head and handed the phone back. “No, never. I do not like parties. I am most surprised that these students in the photo owned gowns and jewels.”
“I suspect that the men bought them what they wanted,” I said cynically, returning the phone to my bag. “I think it’s a good thing you don’t like parties.”
She made an inelegant noise. “I am not white enough for parties like that. I cannot pass for European. Even Maryam, who is half English, half Pakistani, was not invited, even to a concert, until recently. I thought at first I was being ignored because I had not worked hard enough. Now I see the truth.”
I frowned, trying to work that out. “The students here come from all around the world. They are of every color, and from what I have seen, they are all beautiful. You are saying only the white ones were invited to concerts and parties?”
“Only the whiter women. There are no male students at that table.” She leaned wearily against the headrest. “I made videos to promote the park which I’ve been told are very successful—possibly because everyone here is photogenic. I had not given that much thought until now. I just thought I’d been lucky in my choice of shots, but you’re right. In all my classes, there is probably not one person who would not look good on camera. It probably helps in fundraising.”
As did showing off the students at concerts and dinners, I thought cynically. And girls willing to be used in that way . . . were either naïve or looking for a sugar daddy.
“So whoever chose students to study or work at Jesus World did not choose by color but looks, and one hopes, by education and inclination?”
She nodded agreement. “Their applications were very rigorous, which is why I did not think so much about how we looked. All of us are college graduates, many of us at the top of our classes, all recommended by our churches and communities. This is a very small but prestigious program.”
“How long has the program been in place?”
She wrinkled her nose—Magda’s patrician nose—in thought. “Reverend Arden’s church was building schools in our village when I was very young, so at least for fifteen years, probably longer, well before Jesus World existed. I know the workers who built the school in Zimbabwe that I worked on weren’t beautiful. What would be the purpose?”
“I think the park makes the difference. Whoever is sponsoring it hopes beautiful people will help raise funds and work at the park after it opens,” I suggested. “They want good-looking representatives for marketing purposes.”
“All good Christians are handsome?” she asked in disbelief. “Is such blatant discrimination not illegal in this country?”
“Discriminating by religion is illegal, so they’ll have a tough time working around that law when it comes time to hire—another good reason to have all of you on board already. Hiring based on looks. . . that’s not illegal, unless it’s obviously race, which it isn’t. I’d like to talk to whoever did the student screening, but that’s only because I’m nosy. I can’t see how it affects anything else.”
“I should have found work in the administration department instead of marketing and learned more about their acceptance policies,” she said with a sigh.
“Then you wouldn’t have had those camera images. And you had no way of knowing the reverend would be shot and that you’d have to leave so precipitously. One thing at a time. Once you tell me as much as you know about Esther, we’ll dig around and find out more.”
“Do you think I am the only one on the entire campus who did not understand that rich old men might gift us with gowns and jewels if we smiled on them?” she asked.
“Did Rebecca and Melissa and Esther and the others you recognized in the photo know each other?” I asked, guessing the answer just from her frown.
“They were second year students. This is not a university. There is a limited number of classes for learning how to build schools, depending on which direction one takes, so yes, they would have shared a class or two and known each other.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. “I cannot accept that Reverend Arden knew we were being used in this way. He kept telling me that hard workers ought to be rewarded with occasional time off. The office never offered me tickets, as they did the others. He was the one who offered me tickets.”