Read The Girls She Left Behind for Free Online Page B

peaked roof and a propane tank hunkered under the bathroom window at the other, both illuminated by a pole-mounted yard light that shone bluish white onto the roughly graded bare earth between the driveway and the house.
    The yard lamp lit up the graveled dooryard. A snow shovel propped hopefully against the lamp pole was beginning to rust. Lizzie’s boots crunched on the gravel as her shadow lengthened alongside her, then fractured on the pressure-treated porch steps.
    “Peg?” The porch light came on, the door opened, and the missing girl’s mother appeared, looking haggard.
    “Thanks for coming,” Peg said, leading Lizzie in. “Coffee? Or a beer?”
    In the kitchen, a small TV with the sound muted flickered from atop the refrigerator. At the center of a round wooden table with two wooden chairs pulled up to it, a gray cat with a notch out of its ear sat on a sheet of newspaper, washing its face.
    “No, thanks.” The missing teen’s mother was a chunky woman in her early thirties, wearing jeans and a turquoise Bearkill High sweatshirt. Her short bleached-yellow hair was still damp from a recent shower, and her face was taut with worry.
    “What’s going on?” Lizzie asked, looking around. A heavy canvas jacket hung by the door, flanked by a yellow nylon vest whose back panel was crossed with Scotchlite tape.
    A Pathmaker radio stood in a charging base on the counter by the coffeemaker. Lined up under the coatrack were a pair of steel-toed boots, their cap soles heavily scuffed and the yellow cord laces threaded through their metal-grommeted eyelets frayed from use.
    “Nothing,” Peg replied dully, though her call twenty minutes ago had sounded frantic.
    In a shoe box on the counter in a nest of flannel, a striped kitten slept. Beside the box was a saucer that held an eyedropper and a tin marked MILK REPLACEMENT—FOR VETERINARY USE ONLY.
    Two cats, but the house smelled utterly clean and fresh, Lizzie noted. “Nothing new, anyway,” Peg amended. “I got scared, was all, just so scared, and I didn’t have anyone to—”
    She pulled out one of the chairs and sank heavily into it. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be wasting your time.”
    Then don’t be,
Lizzie thought. If she’d known this was only a social-support visit, she wouldn’t have left Dylan Hudson alone to deal with the woman who’d showed up unexpectedly in the office.
    She’d have handled it herself.
And if you were really so worried, you’d have pushed for that Amber Alert,
she thought at the woman slumped defeatedly at the kitchen table.
    Instead Peg had balked at the measure. It was as if she didn’t want any official publicity about Tara being missing, but why would that be?
    It didn’t add up. Yet there was no sense antagonizing the woman. “It’s okay,” she said. “Show me Tara’s room once more, why don’t you? Who knows, maybe I missed something.”
    Not that she really thought so. She’d seen enough missing persons’ rooms to know what needed looking at and what didn’t; the first time had been enough.
    But it had been a pain in the ass to find this place again in the dark. So she might as well make this second trip worthwhile, she thought as Peg led her down a hallway lined with unprimed wallboard, past a bathroom furnished with economy-grade fixtures and unfinished tile.
    “You doing this work yourself?” Lizzie asked.
    Because it occurred to her suddenly that even way out here in the boondocks, a handyman with the hots for the teenage daughter was a classic perp candidate.
    “Some. Tara’s been helping with a lot of it, actually, she’s good that way. And Pup Williams is working on it when he can, you know him?”
    “Yeah.” Pup was a Bearkill man, ninety years old and maybe ninety pounds soaking wet, whose high-quality work and low rates for carpentry were famous all over the county.
    Pup was harmless, though. And anyway, in the unlikely event of a struggle Tara could’ve taken him one-handed.
    The