Glamorous - A Grace Bishop Novel - Chapter 2
© Denise Bossarte
Together Grace and Danny
entered the diner, but they split apart once inside the door. She moved to the
counter while Danny headed to their usual booth at the back of the restaurant.
Grace stood at the counter until she caught Sally’s
eye as she was finishing taking an order from another regular.
While she was waiting on Sally, Grace removed the scrunchy
holding her dark hair in a ponytail. The thick hair settled across her
shoulders and she ran her fingers through it to try and dry out the remaining
dampness. As usual, she had jumped in the shower after her morning run. She had
pulled up her hair on the way out the door, anticipating the hot morning air
would dry it most of the way as they walked to the diner.
After a bit of delay, Sally
made her way over to take Grace’s order. Her gray
hair was coming loose from the pins that normally kept her hair out of her
face, so Grace knew it was had been a busy morning. Despite her rush, Sally had
a broad smile for Grace, the lines creasing her face into well-worn patterns.
She took the order by memory and waved Grace on to her seat.
As Sally turned to call out
the order to the cook, Grace checked her watch. She had a good half hour until
the meeting with DL. They had made good time walking from the townhouse and she
had plenty of time before DL arrived to enjoy satisfying the hunger her morning
run had raised. It would give her time to organize her thoughts for the
upcoming conversation. She didn’t like to feel
rushed before a meeting.
She walked over to join Danny
who had already slid into the booth marked “Reserved”
by a handwritten index card stuck in a tiny metal stand. His tousled dark brown
hair looked as if he had recently gotten out of bed. His thin 11 year old body
was almost bouncing in place with barely contained energy. His merry blue eyes
sparkled up at her as he waited for her to take a seat.
The aged vinyl creaked as she
settled in on the right side of the booth. She was careful to avoid the medium
sized crack taking up half of the seat, not wanting her legs to get pinched
since she was wearing shorts. Her usual place was on opposite side of the
table. But she didn’t want DL to fight the broken seat when he
came to meet her.
Grace laid out the NY Times
crossword puzzle face up on the table in front of Danny, who was waiting with
anticipation to tackle it. She watched him work the puzzle without a pencil. He
did it all in memory, sounding out the answers under his breath while tracing
the squares with a thin finger. To anyone else, it would appear she had set the
puzzle aside for later. They would not see a whiz kid who was completing one of
the toughest puzzles of the week without writing down a single word.
Once Sally delivered the
food, it didn’t take long for Grace to clean off her
plate. She finished by mopping up the loose egg yolks with the last piece of
toast. She leaned against the back of the booth and felt the coolness of the
cracked vinyl chill the sweat beaded up between her shoulder blades. The city
had been particularly hot and muggy this summer and the dim chilliness of the
diner was a welcome relief.
Grace glanced down at the watch on her dark tanned wrist,
checking the time again. It wasn’t like DL to run late, especially when he said
it was important they meet. A few seconds later, she saw DL enter the diner and
stand in the doorway while peering around. She raised her hand and waved it
until she got his attention, then he maneuvered his way past the other
customers to slide in opposite her.
“He isn’t looking too
good,” Danny observed, glancing up from his work on the crossword.
“Yeah, he looks like he
had a rough night,” Grace agreed.
“I mean his aura, Gracie.
He’s normally all greens and yellows. He’s all dirty gray, today.”
Grace didn’t know exactly what to make of Danny’s comments. She
didn’t respond to him but instead studied DL’s tired face.
She had known DL for the last
three years since her parents died. DL ran a non-profit center that gave kids a
safe place to go after school and provided a place for street kids to get help
when they needed it. DL was completely dedicated to the kids the center served.
Grace had done some part time security work for special functions at the center
over the years. Danny had often stayed there after school when Grace needed to
work through the afternoons.
DL came from a broken home himself and spent time in jail for
crimes committed in his youth while part of a gang. He was in jail for his
second strike when he found a book on Buddhism in the prison library and taught
himself meditation from it. After his time in jail, he decided to get his life
together to develop a career as a tattoo artist. Now he ran the Dhamma Ink
tattoo parlor popular across all the city’s demographics. He was a walking
testament to his art, with tattoos over most of his body for Buddhist
iconography and other symbols of faith and mysticism spanning the world’s
religions.
DL leaned back against the
seat with a sigh, the dark bags under his eyes emphasizing his drawn
appearance. He laid his hands to rest on the table, the bright colors of his
tattooed arms in sharp contrast to the gray Formica top.
Grace gulped the last of her drink and pushed the plate and
glass aside, deciding to get something for DL to eat once Sally returned to
pick up her used dishes. He definitely looked like he could use it. For now,
she gave her full attention to him. She knew he would not beat around the bush
about what happened last night with Beth and the emergency run to get her to
the hospital.
“How’s Beth doing?” she asked.
“Better,” DL said the tiredness heavy in his voice. “That’s why
I’m running late; I waited to get a chance to speak with her doctors before I
came over here. She’s stabilized and they are considering plastic surgery for
her face to help repair the damage. The rest of her wounds will heal with the
stitches they put in last night. But her face will need some work to get her
back to looking like a normal girl again. I’m praying she’ll come out of this
mess with as little disfigurement as possible.”
“And how are you
doing, DL?” Grace asked.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, waving away her concern. “Like I
said on the phone, I’m not only worried about Beth. I’m worried about all my
‘kids.’”
As he made the statement, he reached into his back pocket and
pulled out a piece of notepaper folded into a tight square. With care, he
unfolded it, and placed it on the table to smooth it out with both hands. Then
he rotated it around so the writing was readable from her position. On it was a
list of first names, all female, covering almost the entire length of the page.
“These are the names of all the girls that have gone missing in
the last two years. I suspect something is happening to my ‘kids,’ but I
haven’t been able to come up with anything solid. I believe the attack on Beth
was another instance of this, but she was lucky and somehow got away when the
others didn’t.”
Grace read through the list of names, each one with a date inked
in beside it. “How do you know these girls didn’t move on to some other place
or go back home?” she asked, gazing up to study DL’s face.
“Grace, you know these kids. None of them will go back to the
messed up lives they came from. They wouldn’t advertise leaving the city,
necessarily, but I’ve asked around. I only put names on the list if I was sure
it was unusual for them to disappear.”
“Ok. What about their friends? What do they say about these
girls?”
“For everyone on the list, I’ve spoken to at least one person
who can confirm the girls didn’t plan to leave. They simply stopped showing up
at their usual hangouts,” he said.
“What’s going on, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said rubbing his face and eyes with his
hands, trying to focus his mind. “There’s a ton of stuff out there these kids
can run into: gangs, drugs, and prostitution. They are expendable on the
streets and most of the ‘bad guys’ don’t bother cleaning up after themselves if
the kids get in their way.
If anything happened to one of them there’s at least one person
who’s heard something about. That or a dead body. But not for these girls,” he
said, tapping the list of names with his index finger. “These just disappeared,
without a trace – gone.”
Grace studied the names and dates again. The dates covered about
two and a half years and did not show an obvious pattern she could discern.
There were significant gaps in the dates as well.
“Danny, take a
quick look at the dates on this list for me. Does your pattern happy brain see
anything in these?”
Danny turned from working the crossword and leaned over to study
the list of names and dates. He frowned in concentration as he puzzled over the
list, and Grace swore she could hear the cogs in his head turning as he ran
through the possibilities.
“I’m sorry, Gracie.
I’ve tried applying all the algorithms I can to this, but I’m coming up with
diddly squat. I don’t think there’ll be a simple explanation for what is
happening to DL’s kids by looking at this list.”
“Thanks anyway for trying,”
she consoled him, as he turned back to the crossword puzzle. He appeared
engrossed in the effort of completing it. But she recognized he was now paying
close attention to what she and DL were saying.
She studied DL again, asking
the question she already knew the answer to, but had to ask. “Have you gone to the police about this?”
Luckily, DL could not hear her side chatter with Danny and
continued on with the audible part of the conversation.
DL shook his head and smiled
a worn smile. “You know the cops wouldn’t look into
something like this. Homeless girls ‘disappearing’ but no one has information
about it? They would write it off, like you suggested, as the kids moving on or
going back home.
Even if they had the manpower to investigate, which of my kids
would be willing to talk to them? Who would risk getting locked up for vagrancy
or shipped back home?”
He shook his head.
“No, I haven’t talked to the cops about this. The only one I
could think of who would help us was you. You understand as well as I do
everyone deserves justice, regardless of who they are. You’re a solid Private
Investigator and one who’d be willing to take my case. You also have the
connections with the police to get information where I can’t.”
“Would your kids talk to me?” she asked.
“Well, being a PI isn’t the same as being a cop, but you’re
still ‘establishment’ in their eyes. The best I can do is to try and get some
of them to talk to me. I know you
have a great track record of finding people. I hope what I can get from them
will be enough for you to solve this thing.”
“What else can you tell me about the girls on the list?” she
asked.
“The best I can tell is a few were doing drugs, but that doesn’t
look to be the connection between them. It does appear all of them were
tricking at one point or another. It’s the one possibility I can come up with
for us to check out.”
“Ok, we’ll put aside anything drug related for now,” Grace
agreed. “Sounds like that shouldn’t be a primary line of investigation for us.
I think you’ve landed on the best thing we have going for us, right now;
knowing the common denominator might be tricking.”
DL face became grim. “It’s not much to go on, Grace. Where do we
go from here?”
“It’s time for me to reach out to Officer Winiarksi, take
advantage of those police connections you mentioned. I am wondering whether
professional prostitutes are going missing along with the homeless girls
turning a few tricks. That might explain the gaps in dates on your list when
none of your girls went missing,” she said with a grimace.
“You mean other women might be disappearing as well as ‘my
girls?’” DL asked, obviously finding the idea upsetting.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Grace confirmed. “We may have
someone out there preying on women – prostitutes and homeless girls, both.”
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