I first got involved on the Saturday following the Wednesday that was officially “the last time anyone saw the missing girl.” I got involved because of Charlie.
It was a clear mid-autumn afternoon. Around Moorebridge, where I live, that means field after brown field cleared and prepped for winter. It also means vast expanses of crimson, lemon, umber, pumpkin and tangerine in the tree breaks between fields and in the woodlots and forest that surround the town. We were on a road that hugged the perimeter of a stretch of forest north of town, we being Charlie, Ashleigh and, of course, me.
“You can’t be serious.” The aggrieved expression on Ashleigh’s face was a perfect match for her whiny tone of voice. She’d been complaining more or less all morning, which was starting to drive me crazy, and Charlie looked ready to strangle her. “What would she be doing way out here?”
Charlie spoke through gritted teeth. “Someone might have seen her. They might have seen if she was with someone.”
“At the Trading Post?” Ashleigh shook her head impatiently.
“It’s possible,” Charlie said.
“And the Pines—which, may I point out, closed for the season two weeks ago? Or Broom’s Corners, population fifty-three. Unless someone died recently.”
“You can always turn back,” Charlie said. If I had to bet, I’d bet he was hoping she would.
She didn’t. “Tell me again why we’re doing all this,” she said instead.
“You know why we’re doing it.” Charlie is generally a Clark Kent type. Mild mannered. Even gentle. But not at that exact moment. He spoke slowly, through clenched teeth, as if he was trying to tamp down the exasperation that had been evident from the first moment Ashleigh decided to join us on our outing. “We’re doing it because Alicia is missing.”
We had been out on our bikes all morning, delivering Have You Seen This Girl? flyers around town, and now we were heading out of town.
“But it’s a long way to Broom’s Corners,” Ashleigh said, “and there’s zero chance that Alicia would ever go there.”
Charlie’s jaw clenched.
“If you want to wait here,” I said quickly, “I’ll go with Charlie and you can take a break.” Anything to restore the peace between the two of them or, at least, cut down on Ashleigh’s incessant grumbling.
“No, no, I’ll come.” She said this with a heavy sigh, as if she were doing us a huge favor.
Charlie glanced at me, rolling his eyes. All I could do was shrug helplessly and hope that Ashleigh’s mood would improve.
We rode roughly two miles along a tree-lined, two-lane blacktop until we reached the tiny hamlet of Broom’s Corners. It consisted of a dozen or so houses spread out along the east-west and north-south crossroads. It also had a gas station (the vacant-eyed guy at the cash register barely looked at the photo on the flyer), an antiques store that sold mostly old farm furniture and knickknacks from estate sales and wood from old torn-down barns and farm sheds, an agricultural-implements dealership (the sharply dressed salesman promised to put the poster up right in the showroom) and a bakery, where the two women behind the counter, one old, one young with a small child clinging to her, studied the flyer with concern. A dental office and a real estate office flanked a burger place in the smallest strip mall I have ever seen. We papered tiny Broom’s Corners with flyers.
From there we rode back on a different road that ran beside the farthest edge of a large wooded area that bordered Moorebridge to the north.
“Are we going home?” Ashleigh asked, her voice buoyed with hope.
“Not yet.”
Instead we rode about a mile to the Trading Post, which consisted of the Trading Post itself and its burger shack, where you could buy burgers, hot dogs, fries and onion rings and eat them at the picnic tables on the adjacent lawn. Across the parking lot was a laundromat that was heavily used by campers, RVers, tourists and truckers. Charlie pulled some flyers out from under the brick in the milk crate attached to the back of his bike and handed a couple to each of us. “Laundromat,” he said to Ashleigh. To me, “Utility posts. I’ll do the Trading Post.”
Ashleigh scowled at the face on the flyer. “What does that even mean—missing? So she’s not home. Big deal. She’s sixteen. She has free will. Maybe she even developed a spine. She could be anywhere.”
“Developed a spine?” I knew from Ashleigh’s body language, comments and general lack of enthusiasm that she was not as concerned about the possibility of missing Alicia Allen as Charlie was.
“She sucks up to everyone,” Ashleigh said. “There are two reasons people do that, Riley. To manipulate. Or to please, in order to be loved. Alicia is definitely the latter. She’s one of those girls you just want to kill. Little Miss Perfect. Since kindergarten, no less. Teacher’s pet since then too.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What was she doing in your kindergarten class? She’s older than you. She’s graduating this year, isn’t she?”
“We had a joint junior-senior kindergarten class,” Charlie said.
“Then, of course, Miss Perfect skipped a grade or two,” Ashleigh added. “Not that it’s at all relevant to my point.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“Which is that there were four parts to the show.”
“The one in kindergarten?” I asked.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? There were two musical numbers and two skits. Our class spent a whole month rehearsing for a show for our families. Everyone was supposed to have the chance to participate. But guess who was in all four parts?” Ashleigh’s face turned red with remembered resentment.
“Come on, you’re not still upset about that, are you?” Charlie shook his head in disbelief. “Ms. Farmington, our teacher, didn’t realize until nearly performance day that Ashleigh didn’t have a part,” he explained. “You could have spoken up, Ashleigh. You could have told her.”
“I was five years old! And anyway, what does that have to do with Alicia getting four parts?” A spray of spit filled the air between them. This was turning into a serious argument.
“Whoa, you two. Time-out,” I said.
“No one has heard from Alicia in over two days.” Charlie directed this to me, as if he needed to justify himself. “She’s not answering her phone. Her parents are worried sick. They live on our street, Riley. I’ve known Alicia my whole life.” He glowered at Ashleigh. “It’s not like I twisted your arm. You volunteered to help.”
“I didn’t know it would take all day.”
“We’re almost done,” Charlie said. “There’s just this place and the Pines.”
Ashleigh’s eyes bugged out. “The Pines is at least a mile down the road! And it’s closed. Why bother?”
“Maybe the caretaker saw her.”
“Oh, come on, Charlie. What are the chances?”
“You didn’t have to come,” Charlie said with barely contained frustration. I didn't think he realized it, but he was crushing the flyers as he curled his hands into fists.
“I have an idea,” I said. One that would get me away from the two of them for a little while. “Why don’t you two paper this place with flyers and then get a hot chocolate at the Trading Post? I’ll ride down to the Pines.”
“You don’t know how to get there,” Charlie said, at the exact same moment that Ashleigh said, “Terrific. Thanks, Riley. I owe you big-time. And don’t worry. You can’t get lost. You just go down the road that way”—she pointed—“until you get to the big sign that says The Pines with the arrow pointing to it.” As she said this, she shot Charlie a withering look. “It’s not exactly hard to find.”
I mounted my bike before Charlie could speak again. “Wait for me here,” I called as I pedaled off.
The air was redolent with the slow decay of autumn. The woods on either side of the road were silent. It was a pleasant change from Ashleigh and Charlie’s sniping at each other.
I had to agree with Charlie. No one had strong-armed Ashleigh into joining us. Nor had either of us suggested in any way that we would think badly of her if she chose not to come. But that wasn’t what had happened. She’d said okay, and then she’d started to grouse. I was glad we were almost done.
The road to the Pines was more uphill than I would have liked, but that meant it would be a downhill coast back to Charlie and Ashleigh. I’d worked up a sweat by the time I saw the sign with its huge red arrow pointing left, and it was a relief to reach the cabins at the end of the resort’s long driveway. I stopped and took a big gulp from my water bottle.
I set my bike on its kickstand and walked toward the cabin with Office over the door. I turned the knob and stepped inside. The front counter, which divided the small room in half, was unstaffed. The door behind the desk was ajar, giving me a glimpse of a tidy desk and an old-fashioned beige telephone.
“Hello!” I called.
No answer. I tried again. Louder.
“Hel-lo-oh!”
Still no answer.
I slid a couple of flyers onto the counter, grabbed the pen that was chained down and began to compose a note on the back of an out-of-date What’s Happening In and Around Moorebridge brochure. A voice behind me made me jump.
“Can I help you with something?”
I spun around. A man in faded denim overalls, a plaid flannel shirt and a plaid hat with the earflaps turned up stood behind me, toolbox in work-gloved hand. He had the ruddy face of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. His sharp blue eyes went to the counter where I had started to compose my note.
“Oh, hey. My name is Riley. Riley Donovan.”
“Gord Cooper.” He set his toolbox on the counter and pulled off one glove. We shook. His hand was large and warm and smooth.
“We’re handing out these flyers.” I gave him one. “A girl is missing. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her, have you?”
He stared at the picture before shaking his head slowly.
“Afraid I haven’t seen her. But then we haven’t had much traffic down here since we closed for the season. How long has she been missing?”
“Since Wednesday.”
Gord Cooper looked at the photo again. “Well, I’ll keep my eyes open. But from what I hear, no one comes here this time of year except by accident.”
“Well, if you do happen to see her, her parents’ number is there.”
“Okay.”
Before I was ready for it, it was time for my rendezvous with Charlie and Ashleigh. I found them sitting on the Trading Post’s front porch, both clutching large takeout cups of hot chocolate. Mercifully, they weren’t squabbling. Unfortunately, this was because they had stopped talking to each other completely. They were faced away from each other, and both were scrolling through their phones. All in all, it was an improvement.
Charlie was the first to look up.
“They’re putting together a search party for tomorrow,” he said.
Ashleigh managed to show her disapproval without taking her eyes from her own phone. “Her folks should learn to relax.”
“It’s not her parents who are organizing the search party. It’s the cops. A truck driver saw one of these flyers. He thinks he saw Alicia going into the woods. The cops are asking for volunteers. You’ll come, right?” He was looking at me.
“Sure,” I said.
Charlie didn’t ask Ashleigh, and Ashleigh didn’t say a word, not then and not any time later in the day, even though we texted back and forth a couple of times. So I was surprised to see her at the muster location first thing the next morning, bleary-eyed and clutching a takeout latte.