Thirty-five
Lori parked at the curb in front of one of a block of
dilapidated three-room bungalows. The woman who answered the door was
roughly Lori's own age, but graying prematurely and heavier by at least
fifty pounds. Without waiting for an introduction, Janice Winters invited
her into a small, dimly-lit living room filled with cheap furniture and
worn linoleum. She turned to face Lori, solemn and unhappy. "Maggie
called. She said you have been asking about Robin."
"I'm sorry for the intrusion. I stopped at Maggie's
to see if she could identify some old pencil drawings. I'm not certain of
their source. I just thought they may have been of local women. Maggie
recognized Robin."
Janice glanced at the papers Lori had clutched in her
hand. Lori handed the drawings to the woman.
Janice Winters scanned each face in turn and gave a
cold chuckle. "How quaint. Pencil drawings? Not some of Trent's
photographs?"
Lori's mind went blank. "What?"
The cold chuckle repeated itself. "Trent is quite a
man with the camera. You didn't know about that?"
"I had no idea," she said in a shocked whisper and
fought to stay on track. "Maggie said that Robin disappeared."
The woman's voice was briefly animate. "Do you know
anything about that? Anything at all?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
The momentary light in her eyes faded. "I doubt if I
have anything much to add to what you must already know. I've gone out
with the man myself. In fact, Trent and I were an item at one time, but
Robin was always so much prettier and she usually managed to take my
boyfriends away from me.
"I was going with someone else about the time Robin
was having problems coping with Trent's photography. She saw his models
as competition. They weren't. They were tall and slender and beautiful,
but not his type at all. If you can believe it, Robin tried to make Trent
jealous by taking away my new boyfriend, but she went out one night and
never came back. I lied and told Walt that she had run away with another
man. With Robin gone, we got back together and eventually married."
"Did you know Laura Scarelli?" Lori asked.
"We all heard about her disappearance."
"Was Robin reported missing?"
Janice Winters gave a nervous shrug. "I talked to
the police, but we all figured she hitched up with someone passing through
and left. She was always threatening to do exactly that."
"But she never contacted you to let you know that she
was okay?"
"Believe me, she would never have been that
considerate."
Lori was dumbfounded. There had been two
disappearances, not just one.
Janice Winters gave her a cool smile. "Maggie says
Trent's womanizing may have upset you, but he's a nice man, Mrs. Malcolm.
He didn't have anything to do with Robin disappearing like she did, and
he's not a womanizer like Maggie says. His visitors are models. They
drive from Chicago. He has an agent there, you know."
Lori's curiosity gathered steam. "Is he that good of
a photographer?"
Janice wrinkled her nose and chuckled. "The models
aren't that good, but Trent's got a reputation for making the best of
whatever they've got. He'd never otherwise make it out here so far from
the mainstream. It’s a four-hour drive from Chicago."
"Would you look at the other drawings and tell me if
you recognize anyone else?
Janice's right eyebrow lifted. "Certainly."
She studied the drawings while Lori tried to catch
her breath, dwelling on Robin's image for a forlorn moment. He held
another out suddenly. "This is Kim Roberts. Robin and Kim were a lot
alike. Kim was younger, and a genuine slut. She turned eighteen and she
was gone like a shot, too."
Lori stared at the woman, appalled.
Janice laughed at her expression and shook her head.
"It's not what you think. It happened three years after Robin's
disappearance and it wasn't at all unexpected."
Janice went back through the drawings, then handed
them back. "Mrs. Malcolm, these busts may have been derived from some of
Trent's photography, but please don't let anyone fill your head with nasty
ideas. Trent loved his wife, and he was never all that emotionally
involved with my sister. She was his type, petite and pretty. Like you.
Like me when I was thinner, but Robin was a very self-centered young
woman, and Kim was worse. If it bothers you that one or two of Trent's
old flames left Sorrel without telling anyone, I wouldn't read anything
too sinister in it. All the young people leave this neck of the woods.
Why in God's name would anyone want to stay?"
Lori gazed at the drawing Janice had identified as
Kim Roberts. "She'd be about our age now."
"Looks like they’d all be about our age. I would
never have remembered Kim except that Trent found her attractive, and as
you can probably tell, that little bit of arrogant fluff infuriated me to
no end. Girls throw themselves at men like Trent, Mrs. Malcolm. If he
succumbs to the temptation from time to time, who's to hold it against
him? I can tell you from personal experience that Laura was the only
woman who ever really mattered to him."
"Thank you," Lori said. "Thank you very much for
helping me." She started to turn away with the drawings clutched in her
fist, anxious for some fresh air and a private moment to sort out her
feelings.
"If you find out anything about my sister's
whereabouts, please let me know?"
"I will," she called back. "I promise."
She felt Janice's eyes following her on the way back
to the car. Her knees felt wobbly. She sat behind the wheel feeling sick
to her stomach. What would Maggie and Janice Prentice have thought had
they seen Ronnie's original bondage drawings? If she took the drawings to
Sheriff Danielson, would he suspect foul play? Would Trent Scarelli be
his major suspect?
She reminded herself that Ronnie had drawn six faces
counting Wendy and Gloria, but had attached each to an identical body. If
the body had not belonged to Wendy or Carol, she had no right to assume
that it belonged to any one of the others. It was still possible that the
drawings did not portend the horror that appeared to be so insidiously
apparent.
She drove to the library in Clayton and spent the
next hour thumbing through high school yearbooks beginning ten years
earlier, meticulously comparing each photograph to the two unidentified
drawings remaining. Halfway through her ordeal, a picture in a yearbook
from five years back matched. She spend all the time she needed to
convince herself that Melissa Peterson was the name to fit one of the last
two drawings. She thumbed through the remainder of the year books without
matching the fourth and last image.
She phoned Carol from a pay phone in a musty corner
of the library with the cold afternoon sun beaming down upon her through
high windows. "Highway Thirty Diner," Carol answered with music in her
tone of voice. "How may you be of service to me, please?"
"Melissa Peterson," Lori said. "Who is she?"
Carol took a moment to orient herself. "Lori, is
that you? You sound awful."
"Have you ever heard the name before?"
"Melissa Peterson? I knew of her. I never met her."
"You wouldn't recognize her if you saw her picture?"
"No. I just remember the name. What are you doing,
Lori?"
"Did Trent know her?"
Carol gave a cold chuckle. "Why else would I
remember the name? They dated briefly a few years ago. She put Trent
through hell."
"What happened to her?"
"What happened to her? Lori, nothing happened to her
as far as I know. I mean, I've never heard anything, and I sure as hell
would have heard something, if there had been anything to hear. She was
just a wild little number that went after Trent and didn't quite make the
grade."
"Did you know that Trent is supposed to be a
photographer on the side?"
Carol groaned. "I was hoping you wouldn't find out
about that so soon. Trent asked me not to give him away just yet. Lori,
you're going to have to let him explain about that. At least give him a
chance. It isn't as bad as you think."
"Does it sound on the level to you?"
"He showed me his basement studio once a long time
ago, and I've seen some of his pictures in magazines. I mean, I had to
order them, but the pictures were there, and they're not dirty, nothing at
all like the ones Ronnie drew. Erotic, maybe, some of them, but not
obscene. What the hell. What more can we expect of men, being the
hormone-driven bastards they are?"
Lori didn't know how much more she could handle, but
she resisted the temptation to confide in Carol and inform her that three
of the four images were of Trent's missing girlfriends.
"You should at least let Trent show you his studio
and tell you about his business," Carol said.
She would, except that she wouldn't dare ask Trent
the most important questions left for her to ask. Where had Ronnie seen
an image of a naked women bound ankle and wrist to a table surface? What
had happened to the original model of those horrible drawings, the woman
who owned the body? And how had Ronnie managed to memorize the faces of
at least three of Trent's old girlfriends to pin to that one body? There
had to be photographs to explain his access to those images, and who else
but Trent could have provided them?
"Lori, are you still there?"
"I'm still here."
Someone was yelling in the background. "I've got to
go. Call me after work."
The phone went dead.
