turns.
Finally we pulled up to a gate, and I looked around. Crystal Pines, the planned community that had eaten the little town of Piney Mountain, was nestled at the base of a hill and surrounded by tall brick walls, or at least that’s how it appeared. I later found the walls only extended for about a half mile on each side of the gate to allow for expansion. Lonna pulled up to the gatehouse and spoke with the guard, and the gate swung inward to let us through. I followed her down a tree-lined road to the center of the cute little town, which certainly looked familiar, but not exactly how I remembered it. She parked in front of the diner.
“This is weird. Everything looks smaller.” I got out, stretched, and took a deep breath. Summer in Memphis had been oppressive, and I was grateful I wouldn’t have to go back to the sludge that passed for August air. Maybe living up here in lower humidity wouldn’t be so bad after all.
“The guard was more excited about you being here than me,” Lonna said. “Didn’t you see how he craned his neck to see the ‘old gentleman’s heiress’?”
Only a few people, a waitress, cook and a couple of customers, were in the diner. At Lonna’s words, all activity stopped, and they turned to look at me.
“Shhh,” I told her, but it was too late. Luckily the scrutiny didn’t last long.
“Lonna, over here!” A tall gentleman waved us over to a booth. I guessed this was the social worker Lonna told me about. As she’d said, he was well into middle age with friendly eyes in a rugged face.
“Matt, it’s great to see you.” She shook his hand. “This is my friend Joanie Fisher. Doctor Joanie Fisher, actually.”
“Oh, a doctor?”
We slid into the booth across from him.
“PhD.” I looked at Lonna, who was eating up the attention. She even winked at the man in the next booth over, a tall blond with a narrow chiseled face whose briefcase contents were spread out in front of him. He curled one side of his mouth in a smile and turned his eyes back to his work. A shiver went down my spine.
“A PhD? In what?” He held up his coffee cup for a refill. The waitress, who could have walked straight off some television show from the 50s, gave him the ”one moment” sign with her index finger.
“Behavioral epidemiology.”
“That’s impressive. You must be in research, then?”
“I was.”
“I guess you won’t have to worry much about working now.” There was no envy in his tone, only polite interest. Nothing to spark the resentment that rose in my stomach. It’s not like I’d asked to inherit my grandfather’s fortune.
“Guess not.”
“Mind if we have something to eat, Matt?” Lonna broke in. I hadn’t realized it, but I was hungry. The cup of coffee and peach had been a long time ago.
“Please.” He gestured to the menu. “If I can get Louise over for some coffee, she’ll take your order.”
“Now Math-yew,” the woman drawled as she walked over to the table, her white shoes squeaking on the floor. “You know I can’t move that fast with this Arthur-itis.”
She refilled Matt’s coffee and plunked down a couple more cups, and Lonna and I ordered bacon and eggs with toast. This place seemed a world away from Bistro and chocolate mousse.
Matt leaned in and lowered his voice as Louise shuffled away. “Her grandson is one of the children who’s missing.”
“Oh,” breathed Lonna. “Poor woman.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I gazed out the window. The original town of Piney Mountain looked much the same as it had twenty years before when we’d drive through to visit my grandfather. The main differences were some of the shabby little buildings had been renovated, and expensive cars seemed to have replaced the pickup trucks. Someone had even straightened the leaning statue of General Lee in the middle of the square. There were also signs at the main intersection pointing to the pool, clubhouse and driving range.
“Your thoughts, Joanie?”
“I don’t understand how somebody can just swallow a whole little town. Wasn’t there a protest?”
“Lee Franz, the mayor, convinced everyone it would be for the town’s best,” Matt replied. “He said it would help keep the children in the area if there was more opportunity for them.”
Louise appeared with more creamers. “He didn’t count on them not being here for the opportunities.” She sighed, and her exhalation expressed more than a tirade could.
I turned away to avoid the uncomfortable feeling that somehow this was my fault even though I had no idea what was going on.
A movement outside the window caught my attention, and I spotted a familiar face. “Who’s that?” It was the distraught, handsome Leonard Bowman from Lawrence Galbraith’s office, walking out of the City Hall building across the square. I wanted to know more than his name. I wanted to know why he was up here. Had he followed me?
“Leonard Bowman,” Matthew told me.
“Very nice-looking.” Lonna followed him with her eyes.
“He and his brother Peter, the blond man you winked at, Lonna, are like night and day in more than just coloring.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Peter Bowman is a lawyer and the one in charge of the legal aspects of the community planning. He lives in one of the cul-de-sacs with his wife and their son.”
“And Leonard?”
“He moved in with them about a year ago, right after the rest of the houses on their street were completed. He was a medical resident at the university and VA hospitals in Little Rock, but then he had some health problems and had to take a break.”
“He’s a doctor?” He didn’t look like any I’d worked with.
Lonna seemed to read my mind. “Research doctors are different, Joanie.”
“I guess.”
Leonard disappeared into another building—some sort of shop.
“So, what is it, exactly, you wanted me to come up here for?” Lonna asked.
Matt’s answer was forestalled by Louise’s arrival with our breakfasts. Bacon, cooked crisp but not too stiff, just the way I liked it, lay over a bed of fluffy yellow scrambled eggs beside two pieces of whole wheat toast. My stomach growled in appreciation.
The food momentarily distracted me from the conversation, and when I tuned back in, Matt was saying something about when the strange disappearances had started.
“It was about a year ago,” he told Lonna. “The first phase of Crystal Pines was underway, and some of the families were moving off of their homesteads into new apartments to make room for the larger estates.”
“They were relocated?”
Matt stirred more sugar into his coffee. “They were offered huge sums of money for their land that most were too poor to refuse, especially those who wanted better for their kids. Education is expensive.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered.
Lonna elbowed me. “So what happened?”
“One of them, a friend of Louise’s grandson, was taking a box through the woods on a shortcut the kids all knew from the farmsteads to the apartments. He just disappeared. The box was found on the trail, but he wasn’t.”
Lonna took out her notepad and a pen. “How old was he?”
Matt frowned as he tried to remember. Louise, who had come by with coffee refills, answered for him. “Eleven, just a year older than Johnny.” A tear trickled down her cheek as she poured.
“That’s right. It was in August. Then, about every month after that, a new one would go. Well, not every month. People were real careful the next month, then relaxed their guard and let the kids out again. That’s when Johnny disappeared. There’ve been about six or seven in all.”
“Any idea what time of the month?”
“Every four weeks.”
