Hi, sweetie. How did your math test go?
Fine.
Fine … is there a numerical value attached to that assessment?
3.1415926 … you want me to keep going?
Pi, Teresa wrote back. Very funny.
Ellery hid her smile. She would’ve punked her mother with some similar non-answer at Chloe’s age.
“They teach you the facts of life in school and warn you not to get pregnant,” Teresa said to Reed. “They make it sound like if a boy even looks at you wrong, you’ll get knocked up. I used to break out in a cold sweat when my date tried to hold my hand. Then I took a serious biology course in college and found out how supremely difficult the whole thing is. It’s such a narrow window of conception each month. The egg can get lost. The sperm basically start dying the minute they’re released. Then, even if it takes, that cell has to divide and divide, each new cell knowing where to go and how to form a body with hands and feet and lungs and a brain.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder it ever works at all. A miracle, really. With Trevor, we weren’t trying. I was in med school. Not a convenient time to be pregnant. Later, with Chloe, I was older. It wasn’t so easy then. She was high-risk, even from the start.” A tremor crept into her voice at those last words.
Look. Snuffles is going to be a social media influencer. Chloe had sent a picture of a white froufrou dog posing for the camera in a pink scarf and sunglasses.
Are those my sunglasses? Teresa had texted back.
She has 111 followers already. How many do you have?
No social media for you OR the dog. Not until you’re thirteen.
Snuffles is 55 in dog years. Practically a grandma.
Do you know how old I am?
Chloe had texted an emoji batting its eyelashes. No. We haven’t studied how to date fossils yet.
“She’s a good kid,” Teresa said, her voice cracking. “Smart. Funny. Oh, she was a beautiful baby. Strangers would bend over the carriage and gasp out loud when they saw her huge blue-green eyes and tiny dimples. She had smiles for everyone back then. I could hardly believe she was mine, that I got this lucky after … after what happened before.”
“To Trevor,” Reed said, his voice gentle.
She answered with a tight nod. “He wasn’t supposed to be home alone,” she replied, just above a whisper. “I got called in on an emergency cabbage.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ellery slid the phone back to her and returned to taking notes.
“Sorry. It’s a coronary artery bypass graft procedure—CABG. Trevor would be home alone after school, which wasn’t usual but also wasn’t something we thought would be a problem. He was in the seventh grade, like Chloe. He never got into trouble. He’d do his homework and then play video games or watch TV. We’d left him on his own for a few hours many times before this and nothing ever happened. We lived in Spring Garden, one of the safest areas of the city.”
She stressed this last part, her palm flat against the table. “Go on,” Ellery said.
“The police, afterward, kept pressing us on what was unusual about that day, but it was all minor stuff. I got called to the hospital because there was a flu going through the unit and they were short staffed. Not normal, but not out of the ordinary, either. Our housekeeper, Carol, came by that afternoon when usually she didn’t come on Tuesdays. She’d been with us for years—not live-in, but helping out a couple of times per week. Ethan, my husband at the time, was teaching at Penn as he typically did.”
“So, Martin Lockhart wasn’t Trevor’s father?” Ellery asked, taking notes.
“No. My marriage to Ethan … well, it didn’t survive. I met Martin later.”
“Where is Ethan now?” Reed asked.
“Still at Penn, the last I heard. We don’t keep in touch.”
“Understandably,” Reed replied. “Please tell us more about what happened to Trevor.”
“Well, that’s the worst part,” she said, blinking rapidly as tears threatened again. “No one knows for sure. They tell me he was suffocated in his bedroom with a plastic bag. The back door was unlocked, but it usually was. Nothing was stolen that we could see. It’s like the person came to the house that day specifically to hurt Trevor. Whoever it was, Carol tried to fight him off. He threw her over the stairway railing in his effort to get to Trevor’s room. She was still breathing when Ethan came home and found them, but she died before regaining consciousness. We hoped she might be able to tell us who … or why.”
Reed pushed a box of tissues toward her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
She took another fistful but didn’t use them, merely clutching them into a ball. “Thank you. When I got the message that Chloe’s missing, I felt like I traveled back in time right to that moment. You have to find her. You have to.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Ellery said. “The police must have investigated Trevor’s death.”
“They tried, yes. They looked for sex predators and grieving families of patients who died on my table. They even interviewed students dissatisfied with the grade Ethan gave them. Can you imagine? Murdering a little boy because you failed an economics class?”
Ellery had nearly died for the sin of being out alone on the street at night. “They had no leads at all?”
“Nothing that they told us.”
“We’ll look into it.” The cops often withheld theories and developments from the family prior to an arrest. Philly PD would be able to give them the background on the case. Rich white family, murdered kid. Ellery would bet they’d need a truck to bring in the case files.
“Whoever did it, they’re still out there.” Teresa’s voice took on a renewed desperation. “That’s why we’ve been so careful with Chloe, why we told Margery never to let her out of her sight, not even for a moment.”
“Maybe Chloe gave her the slip,” Reed suggested.
“No, never. She knew what happened to Trevor. She knew to be careful.”
“Kids don’t think the way we do,” he countered. “The risk of something remote, which they have no personal experience of, may seem trivial compared to daily concerns like a schoolyard bully or not making the soccer team.”
“Chloe was on the soccer team and she wasn’t bullied.”
“Still, it would be helpful to think of where she might go if given the opportunity. Most often in these cases, kids just aren’t considering how worried their parents might be. They head out for some fun and then maybe get into a sticky situation if they can’t figure out how to get home again.”
“Where would she go? She can’t drive. She doesn’t even have a bicycle.”
“There’s the T,” Ellery pointed out. “Her phone was recovered near one of the stops.”
“She doesn’t take the T. We pay for a car service to take her and Margery anywhere they want to go. Please, I’m telling you. I know my daughter. She makes straight A’s and has never given us an ounce of real trouble. She’s a good kid who wouldn’t disappear like this without telling us or Margery where she was going. Someone must have taken her or lured her away.”
“We’re interviewing possible witnesses near the intersection where we found Chloe’s phone. We’re also asking nearby shops to share any security video they might have from this afternoon, so we’ll hopefully have an idea soon of where Chloe went. In the meantime, it would be helpful if you could take this paper and write down a list of all of her friends, relatives, teachers, tutors—anyone she has contact with—so we can start running them down.”