reading about a kid who survived longer than a week.. '
She cut him off. 'Yes, you told me, in Pakistan.'
'It was India,' Jason said, slightly glad he could trump her on something. She'd hurt his feelings and it was a tiny payback. It felt just a little bit good.
Emily Kenyon got that, even on the tiny cell phone.
'Yes, India,' she said. 'I'm on my way. Be there ASAP.'
She hung up, put on a shirt, and ran a brush through her hair. A rubber band was the only remedy. The ponytail was ridiculous at her age, and Emily knew it. But there was no time for anything like washing and blow- drying, which on a good day was a fifteen-minute chore. Not when there were two bodies west of Cherrystone and two kids missing.
Need to cut this mess, she thought, thinking of her mother's advice that a woman should cut her hair when she reaches forty. And, if you ask me, that's stretching it, Emily, her mother had added.
She didn't have the heart to wake Jenna as she passed her room. Leaving her alone again wasn't right, but Jenna had school. Besides, somebody deserved some rest around there. She wrote a note and stuck it on the refrigerator-the first place Jenna was sure to go.
'Come home right after school. Serious case. Love, Mom'
And Emily was out the door.
Chapter Four
Tuesday, 7:35A.M, Cherrystone, Washington
Jenna Kenyon grabbed a Stawberry Pop-Tart and started for the door. There was no time for the toaster to do its thing that morning. She'd have to eat it gummy and cold. Jenna hastily wrote, 'See you after school. I love you, too, Mom,' and added a smiley face to the note her mother had left on the fridge.
It was after seven and Shalimar Patterson, her best friend since she moved to Cherrystone, was never late. Jenna locked the door behind her, and stood in front of the old house on Orchard wondering just what her mother had been up to all night and this morning. The past few days had been anything but routine. With school and work, routine was always a little on the fragile side. But the storm was completely unexpected, and her mother had thrown herself into a 24-7 schedule. What with her breakup with that jerk Cary, and her dad's constant button pressing, Jenna knew her mother was enduring what she called a 'bad patch' It would pass. They always did.
Shah's classic VW bug-cream with a slightly tattered black ragtop-lurched into the driveway. The car radio's volume was cranked up loud enough for Jenna to make out the song lyrics from the Kenyons' front door. Not good. But that was Shalimar Patterson to the nines. In your face, but forgivably so. Jenna hurried to the car. A half-empty bag of kettle corn and a backpack occupied the passenger seat. She was also anything, but neat.
'Sorry about that' Shali revved the engine. 'Oops, foot slipped.'
Jenna smiled and scooted both items to the backseat. Popcorn fell on the driveway.
`Birds will eat it,' Shali said.
'Yeah. Hey, something's up at Nicholas Martin's place.' Jenna slid into the duct-tape-repaired bucket seat as Shali, a decidedly ordinary girl with a name that always promised so much more, grinded the gears as she found reverse.
'You mean that freak with the black eye makeup?'
Jenna fished for the seat belt, wincing as her fingertips touched an apple core stuck between the door and the seat. Got it. She pulled the belt across her lap. Her mom was a cop and she followed every rule. It irritated some of her friends, but that's the way it had to be.
'I had that art class with him,' Jenna said. 'He was kind of cool in the obviously tortured-soul-seeking- attention way.'
Shali checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, permanently tilted toward her for just that purpose. The blush on her right side was heavier than the left, so she evened it out with her palm.
'What did he do? Meth?' she asked.
Jenna shrugged, but Shali kept pushing for details. She did that even when she didn't know Cherrystone's criminals and losers, but had merely read their names in the paper and knew that Jenna's mom had the dirt on someone.
'I'll bet it was meth' She spat out the words. 'Or pot. He comes to school baked half the time. Must have been doing a lot of it if your mom's on the case'
Shali's Volkswagen sped by kids without wheels who'd lined up to catch the bus to the high school a few miles away. A few stared hard at the car as if they could stop it and get a ride. Anything was better than the bus even a ride with Shali Patterson behind the wheel.
'Probably. But I don't know. My mom's been out there all night.'
'Yeah? Cool.' Shali scrunched her long dark hair, over- gunked with a hair product she'd ordered from a TV shopping channel. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and a baby-T, cropped pants, and chunky gold ankle bracelet (also from the home shopping channel) she had put on in the car. Jenna wore her uniform 7 blue jeans and a sweater. If Shali was the ho' in the video-or at least an all-talk wannabe-Jenna was the good girl who never got any airtime.
Their friendship worked because Jenna was confident about who she was. A friend like Shalimar Patterson could be over-the-top annoying, the type that sought the spotlight whenever she could find it. Jenna wasn't like that. She just didn't feel the need to sell herself so hard. Shali did.
Jenna changed the subject. 'Want to get a latte? I could use a boost'
'No kidding. Me, too. A white chocolate soy mocha sounds kind of good'
Shali pressed the pedal to the floor as they drove the short stretch of roadway to the school. They passed a place where the twister had set down. Shali scrunched her hair again and made a face as the splintered house zoomed from view.
'Never liked the color of that house anyway,' Shali said. 'What were they thinking?'
Jenna nodded in slight agreement, though she hadn't really felt that way. Shali could be such an idiot. The people who owned that house were without far more than good taste. They no longer had a place to live.
'You can be such a bitch,' she finally said.
Shali knew that. This almost a game between the two best friends. She smiled.
'You got a problem with that?'
'No. Not really.' Jenna hesitated. 'Maybe sometimes.'
'Make up your mind.'
Jenna reached for her coffee card as they pulled up to the window of Java the Hut.
'Just sometimes. Like after a tornado trashed someone's house. Times like that'
'I can be harsh. But that's why you love me'
Jenna looked out the window as Shali gave the kid at the drive-through their espresso orders. Her thoughts had turned back to her mother. She must be beyond frazzled. She got that way every now and then. As cool as her mom could be, she could also unravel. She did that more than once during the divorce. It might have been justified but even so it wasn't pretty. She hated seeing her mother cry or talk bad about herself and her life. It stung deeply. She wished she could run a triple tall latte to her. She'd need it. What was going on over at the Martins'?
Tuesday, 7:46 A.M., Martin farm, east of Cherrystone
The morning sunlight poured itself slowly over the striated hillside like syrup, exposing the shattered ruins of the Martin house and a parking lot of Cherrystone police cars, two aid cars, and assorted sedans, including Emily Kenyon's much-maligned Honda ('an American cop ought to drive an American car,' Sheriff Kiplinger had said, but didn't press it further because the officer's car allowance was less costly than leasing a new vehicle). None of the observers of the scene had ever taken in such a disturbing sight as the remains of Mark and Peg Martin's farmhouse.
And it was about to get worse. Far worse.
'Can I get the photog over here?' a call came from one of the Spokane police techies. He was about thirty- five, tall and lanky, and had arrived on the scene with a pristine lab kit and an unmistakable countenance of superiority. The look on his face just then, however, was utter horror. He stood about twenty-five yards into the
