“Morning, Opal.”
I lift a hand and smile at one of the center’s social workers walking through the small cafeteria.
It’s been a frustrating couple of days.
Sally has been wonderful, managing to get me a volunteer position as kitchen help, and I’ve been able to chitchat with some of the staff and kids, but it hasn’t really given me a chance to ask many questions. I would’ve preferred a job where I’d be in closer contact with the kids, but the program director apparently decides on those, and he’s supposed to be back from vacation today.
Most of what I know comes from Sally, who apparently didn’t stop poking around after she called GEM. She was able to tell me Melissa had not been the only kid who stopped showing up all of a sudden. She found three others who dropped off the roster in the past year. One of them, fourteen-year-old Georgia Braxton, a kid from a broken home and a regular for a meal and counseling with one of the social workers at the center, has apparently missed her last few sessions.
Sally talked to the counselor, who reported trying to get in touch with the father without any luck. Sally was ready to go knock on his door, but I immediately told her to cease and desist her sleuthing. If there’s any truth to the disturbing pattern she paints, she may well be putting herself in danger.
I passed the information on to Janey right away, with the additional name to look into. She messaged me this morning to let me know the girl’s mother had contacted law enforcement. Knowing my team is on the case, I can focus on my job of gathering as much information as I can on this end.
The backstory we’re working with is simple. I’m an old friend of Sally’s from her college days at Ohio State in Columbus, new to town. My fictitious twenty-year marriage just ended and I’m looking for something meaningful to fill my life. The center’s volunteer coordinator swallowed it whole and fit me in to the kitchen rotation on the spot.
I put the last of the muffins for the kids’ after-school snack in the basket and carry the baking tray back into the kitchen. Brian is sitting on a stool at the long stainless-steel counter, peeling a bucket of potatoes for dinner.
The center has two cooks on rotation and I’m one of a handful of kitchen volunteers. Brian is one of the cooks, a sixty-seven-year-old former restaurateur, who retired two years ago and passed his restaurant to his son. Widowed only eight months later, he quickly got lonely and ended up at the youth center for something to fill his days.
Why people spill their stories to me without much prompting, I don’t know, but Brian sure had me up to speed on his life fast my first shift with him. He’s a nice man, adores his children and grandchildren, and deeply grieves the loss of his wife. If there is a connection to be found between the center and the disappearing kids, I have serious doubts Brian would turn out to be in any way involved.
“Need a hand with those?” I offer, slipping the baking tray in the large double sink.
“Grab a peeler and pull up a stool.”
So far, I’ve let Brian initiate all conversation, something he does naturally, but today I plan to probe a little.
“So I hear the program director is back from vacation today,” I start, as I pick up a potato and start peeling.
The only response I get is a snort. I wait to see if more is forthcoming but he remains silent, so I push a little.
“What? Is he not nice? Sally seems to like him.”
“Oh, the women like him just fine,” he mutters under his breath but doesn’t expand on that. Instead, he seems lost in thought.
I toss the potato in the big pot and put my peeler down, touching my hand to his arm.
“Brian? What do you mean?”
His eyes flick up. “Just be careful with that one. That’s all I can—” He stops talking abruptly, his eyes focused over my shoulder.
“Brian, I see you’re keeping our new volunteer busy.”
The voice seeps like ice water in my veins, freezing me on the spot.
I know him.
It feels like minutes go by, when in fact, it’s a fraction of a second before my training overrides my paralysis. I’m not the same person I was then and besides, I’ve altered my appearance for this assignment. The wig I’m wearing is a mousy brown bob, barely able to contain my own hair, and the glasses I have on conveniently distort my eyes. On top of that, I carry around an extra fifty or so pounds I didn’t have back in the day.
I’m also not afraid. Not anymore.
I square my shoulders and turn around, expecting to be confronted with the familiar handsome face that haunted my nightmares for years. Instead, I find a stranger. A man I would’ve sworn I’ve never met in my life if I hadn’t heard his voice.
Then he looks at me, the cold blue eyes staring back at me, familiar in a stranger’s face.
“Ms. Berry, I believe? Welcome to The Youth Center.”
“Opal, please, Mr. Kramer,” I respond, placing my hand in his offered one. I fight against the shiver of revulsion his touch triggers in my body.
“Opal it is. What a lovely name. Please, call me Mason.” I resist the temptation to rub my palm on my pants when he finally lets go of my hand. “Why don’t we have a chat in my office. Brian? You can spare her for a few minutes?”
The look he throws the older man is everything but friendly.
“Of course,” Brian answers, adding, “you’re the boss.”
“Yes. I am.”
With a last look at Brian, I follow Mason down the hall to the offices in the back of the one-story building. As he waves me into his office and closes the door, I wish I’d at least had the foresight to wear a wire. I sit down in the chair he indicates on the other side of the desk and wait for him to speak.
I don’t have to wait long.
“So, Opal, Sally tells me you’re new to Lanark?”
“I am. I’ve only been here a week.” I try hard not to fidget in my seat.
“What made you come here?”
I dive into my role as a recently jilted wife, and even manage to squeeze out a few tears for authenticity as I share my recent woes. As expected, the man looks uncomfortable and quickly changes direction.
“Why The Youth Center?”
“I’ve always wanted to work with children,” I gush. “I’ve always worked administrative jobs but when Sally mentioned volunteering at the center, I thought perhaps it might be a good way to test the waters.”
He leans his elbows on his desk and tents his fingers under his chin.
“I see.” He purses his lips in a way that has bile surge up my esophagus. “Well, I don’t have openings on any of the programs we run at the moment, but we could use some help in the office. Filing, correspondence, scheduling, those kinds of things. You wouldn’t be working directly with the kids, but you’d interact with them daily.”
That might work. The closer I can get to what this sick bastard is up to now, the better, and maybe I can sneak a peek at his files when he’s not around. He wants me to come in from one-to-five daily during the week, because those are the high traffic hours.
“I need you to look into someone,” I tell Janey when I step outside the center to make the call.
“Who?”
“Mason Kramer. The program director.”
“I already did, along with the rest of the staff. Clean as a whistle. The man doesn’t even have a parking ticket to his name.”