Lance pulled his keys from his pocket. Now that he’d made his decision, his interest in the case was piqued. Plus, working with Morgan was going to be . . .

Interesting. She stood and collected her giant purse. “Maybe there’s a connection. Jamie and Tessa were friends. One is hiding. The other is dead.”

Chapter Sixteen

Morgan couldn’t imagine having one of her girls missing for two months. Just the thought of it made her queasy.

In the tiny living room of a two-bedroom apartment, Vanessa Lewis sat on a plaid love seat and stared at the picture of her daughter. She wore no makeup, and her straight brown hair was cut in a short wash-and-wear cap. “I can’t believe this was taken last Thursday night. Why would she still be in Scarlet Falls and refuse to come home?” She blinked a tear from her eye.

“We’ll find her.” Sitting next to her, Vanessa’s fiancé, Kevin Murdoch, reached for a tissue box on the end table and handed it to her.

Morgan and Lance sat in two wingback chairs on the other side of the glass coffee table.

“Did something unusual happen before Jamie ran away?” Morgan asked.

Vanessa nodded. Her eyes and nose had reddened. “Kevin asked me to marry him. I was so happy. But when I told Jamie he’d be moving in with us, she exploded. She’s always been difficult. Moody. Explosive. Oppositional. She has ADD. When she was younger, she took medication, but she didn’t like the way it made her feel. Once she got too old for me to force her, that was the end of that. I always wondered why she was so difficult to handle, but when she hit puberty, she got much worse. I took her to a new psychiatrist who said she was also bipolar. While the diagnosis was hard to take, it explained her terrible mood swings and anger issues.”

Kevin reached for her hand. “This isn’t your fault. You couldn’t predict that Jamie would react the way she did.”

“I’m a night manager at the diner,” Vanessa said. “At least five nights a week, I don’t get home until two in the morning.” She sniffed. “I thought this was going to be a good thing. Kevin is an accountant. He works from home. I know Jamie was sneaking out to parties while I was at work. I’d hoped having an adult in the house in the evenings would be the end to the drinking and pot smoking.” She looked at her fiancé. “Kevin warned me that Jamie might not see the end to her freedom as a positive outcome.”

“We won’t stop searching until we find her.” Kevin lifted their joined hands and kissed her knuckle.

At fifty, Kevin was an average-looking middle-aged guy with a receding hairline and a small paunch, but Vanessa looked at him as if he were Brad Pitt.

“I don’t know what I would have done without Kevin. He’s been my rock.” She gave him a weak smile. “I keep telling him he should move in. He’s here all the time anyway, but he won’t do it.”

Kevin shook his head. “No. Not while Jamie’s gone. It wouldn’t be right. She’d feel like you moved on without her in just two months. We’ll wait until she’s home and settled.”

Lance leaned forward. “How long have you been dating?”

Vanessa smiled. “Two years.”

“How do you and Jamie get along, Kevin?” Morgan asked.

Kevin’s gaze met hers for a split second, then flickered to the left. He scratched his nose. “Fine.”

Pausing before answering a simple question, the inability to maintain eye contact, and touching one’s face were all classic examples of a liar’s body language. So, what was Kevin lying about?

Morgan circled around the topic of his relationship with Jamie. “Do you have any children of your own?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Lance picked up on Morgan’s line of questioning. “Teenagers can be difficult. Do you have any experience with kids?”

“Um. No.” Sweat broke out on Kevin’s forehead. He dropped his chin and shook his head. “I do the best I can with Jamie, but I admit sometimes I don’t feel up to the task.”

Vanessa jumped in. “Jamie and Kevin get along as well as could be expected. They don’t fight. Kevin is extraordinarily patient with her—more patient than I am sometimes. Most teenagers are difficult, but Jamie takes that to a whole new level. Anyway, she seemed fine with our relationship right up until I told her we were getting married.”

“How does Jamie get along with her father?” Lance asked.

“They talk on the phone once in a while.” Vanessa frowned. “He just goes through the motions. Jamie knows he isn’t interested. He has a new wife and a baby on the way.”

“That must be hard on her,” Morgan said.

“She should be used to it.” Bitterness echoed in Vanessa’s voice. “He walked out on us when she was eight. He couldn’t handle her. He wanted two kids, a white picket fence, and a dog. We were hardly living the American Dream. We were broke most of the time. We were paying out of pocket for a lot of Jamie’s therapy. And money aside, he just couldn’t deal with the volatility.”

“Has Jamie run away before?” Lance asked gently.

Nodding, Vanessa blotted her eyes with a tissue. “Yes, but she was always easy to find, which made me think she didn’t really want to run away. Usually it would happen after we’d had a fight about her treatment. Getting her to therapy was a nightmare every single week. Last time she ran away, the police found her in a friend’s shed. The parents had no idea Jamie had been sleeping in their backyard for two days. Her friend brought her food and clothes and let her into the house when the parents were at work.”

“Does Jamie have hobbies?” Morgan asked. “Does she like music, shopping, sports . . . ?”

“She listens to music, but she doesn’t play an instrument or anything.” Vanessa focused on her crumpled tissue. Her breath caught in her throat.

“She likes comics and she draws,” Kevin finished for her.

Morgan had kept one eye on Kevin throughout the interview. As long as she wasn’t asking him direct questions, his nerves seemed to settle. She turned to him. “What kind of drawings?”

More sweat popped out on his head. “They look like dark comic books.”

Lance’s gaze swept from Kevin to Vanessa. “What does she do after school?”

“She locks herself in her room.” Vanessa sighed. “I do my best, but I’m lost as to how to get through to her.”

“Did she have a cell phone?” Every teen Morgan knew had a phone.

“No.” Vanessa shook her head. “I had to take it away. She was using it to access chat rooms and engage with strangers. Here at home, I have software that limits her online activity to approved educational websites.”

Lance and Morgan fished for more information, then looked around Jamie’s bedroom. The walls were covered with classic rock posters.

“She has good taste in music.” Lance nodded toward a Rolling Stones poster. He opened the closet. “All jeans and sweatshirts.”

“No nail polish or makeup either. Jamie isn’t a girly girl.” Morgan sat at the cluttered desk. The drawers were full of the usual junk: pens, pencils, paperclips. Notebooks. Morgan opened one. “She does draw her own comics.”

Lance looked over her shoulder. “She’s pretty good. Sharp took her photo to the local comic book and art supply stores but didn’t have any luck.”

“Look at these.” Morgan leaned over to see the photos stuck in the frame of the mirror over the dresser.

“These look like some of the kids from the video.” He took one down. “There’s Tessa.”

It was a selfie of Tessa and Jamie printed on computer paper.

“It was taken right here.” Morgan pointed. “There’s the Rolling Stones poster.”

They took the photo to the living room and showed it to Vanessa and Kevin. “Do you know this girl?”

They both nodded.

“That’s Tessa.” Vanessa started to cry again. “She tutored Jamie in math last year. The school arranged the match. It didn’t help her grades all that much, but the friendship was good for her. Jamie really liked Tessa. I can’t believe what happened to her.” She sobbed.