“Hello?” His voice had the same high-pitched, though slightly less hysterical, edge Jake had heard the first day they’d spoken.
“Norm?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Jake. We met the other day.”
“Oh, Jake.” Norm’s voice lowered a bit as if some helium had rushed out of him. “I thought you might be the police. They’ve called me half a dozen times. They think I had something to do with Petra’s disappearance.”
“Really?” Jake feigned surprise. He’d had the same thought. “Listen, I’m feeling kind of plagued by this whole thing with Petra. Would you be up for meeting me so we can talk?”
“Yes, please,” Norm answered quickly. “Me too. And nobody gets it. Petra was my best friend. I would have talked about this stuff with her and now… Oh, God. I can’t even say it.”
“You name the place and I’ll come to you,” Jake told him.
“Hmm… Oh, I’ve got it. Petra and I love this martini bar in downtown Bay City called the Pink Drink. Meet me there at seven?”
“See ya then,” Jake agreed.
The Pink Drink was a corner bar with a neon-pink sign depicting a lit pink martini with a laughing woman perched on the edge of the glass. The bar was mostly dead on Thursday night, though a group of likely coworkers occupied one table wearing suits and stilettos.
Norm was already there, perched on a high chrome barstool and sipping from a pink martini not unlike the one on the sign.
Jake paused next to him.
“The pink lady is the best,” Norm said, nodding at his drink. “Petra and I always order them.”
Jake grinned and shook his head. “No martinis for me. What do you have on draft?” he asked the bartender.
The man, who really looked more like a boy and couldn’t be much older than twenty-one, rattled the list off from memory.
“I’ll take an MGD,” Jake told him.
The bartender filled a frosted glass and pushed it across the bar.
“Maybe we better grab a table?” Jake suggested, inclining his head toward the empty tables deeper into the bar.
Norm looked ready to disagree and then seemed to understand. “Oh, yeah, good idea. Privacy.” He grabbed his martini and followed Jake to a little table next to a mirrored wall.
“Do the police have any idea what happened to her?” Jake asked, skipping the small talk.
Norm sipped his drink and shook his head. “Not that they’ve told me. They talk to me like I did something to her. One minute, the nice detective calls—Jasper is his name. And then an hour later the mean one calls—Bryant. They’re trying to confuse me, but my story’s not changing. I got home from work on Tuesday at five o’clock. I walked into my apartment, took off my shoes and left my keys on the counter and then walked across the garage to Petra’s. We usually watch Friends in her apartment because she has a nicer TV. I opened her door and…” He trailed off, blinking down at his cup as if he still couldn’t make sense of what he’d seen. “I thought it was paint,” he whispered.
“When did you realize it was blood?” Jake asked.
Norm frowned. “I… I smelled it.”
“Do you have any idea what might have happened, Norm? Was Petra having issues with anyone? Did anyone have it out for her?”
Norm sipped his drink. “Petra could be a little edgy. She had a hard life. You know?”
Jake shook his head. “No, not really. I met Petra on Tuesday. She came into my office.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” Norm sighed. “Well, Petra didn’t grow up with the Little House on the Prairie kind of life. She said her family was more like the Munsters and even they were too nice.”
Well, that explained the lack of family presence on the news. “They’re not around then?”
“Oh, God, no,” Norm exclaimed. “Not at all. Petra hasn’t spoken to her parents since she was a teenager. She grew up somewhere in the middle.” Norm held up his right hand as many Michiganders did and pointed toward his palm. “A real dump, I guess. She had a brother and a sister. But the mom had a lot of boyfriends. Petra’s dad split when she was young. The boyfriends…” Norm frowned. “They abused her. Touched her and stuff, probably worse than that. When Petra told, they sent her away. Eventually she ran away, but…” Norm shrugged. “You don’t get over that. You know?”
Jake paled. “She was molested?”
“Yeah, and I feel like that’s a nice way of saying what happened to her. She didn’t tell me the details. I don’t blame her. But she did some work with a psychiatrist, and, over the last few months, she’s been working with a hypnotherapist, trying to heal the past.”
Jake frowned. “Is there any chance she confronted some of that family? Maybe threatened legal action for what they did?”
Norm’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“You’re a lot closer to the situation than I am. Sometimes an outside perspective helps.”
“She might have. I mean a year ago, I would have said no way. She hated those people and never wanted to see them as long as she lived, but, well… The last few months, she’s been angry. She used to be just sad and hurt. I mean angry too, but not the kind of angry that would go after someone.”
“Did you tell the police all this?”
Norm shook his head. “They didn’t ask. All their questions have been about me. I mean, they asked if she had a boyfriend or anything.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
Norm shook his head. “Not for a long time. She dated a guy last year, but it ended after a few months. Before she moved into the duplex, she’d lived with a guy for a few years, but he’d get drunk and hit her. He was a real asshole. He showed up one time a few months after she moved in. He smashed her car with a baseball bat. She ran to my door crying, and I let her in. We became best friends that night.”
“Whoa, that’s crazy. Maybe it was that guy.”
“He’s in prison. Got arrested about five months after he came to the apartment. He hit his new girlfriend with his truck. She lived, but she was in bad shape. They convicted him of attempted murder.”
“Good grief,” Jake murmured.
“Yeah, it’s really not fair. I mean, Petra’s entire life has been hard and now…” Norm pressed his lips together and started to cry. He wiped at his tears with his sleeve. “Sorry. I’m just… I’m afraid something terrible has happened to her.”
“Where does she work, Norm? Does she have other friends?”
Norm waved at the bartender and pointed at his glass. The young man nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.
“I tip him good,” Norm confided. “Normally they won’t deliver right to your table, but since Petra and I are regulars…” He didn’t finish the statement. “She works at a boutique clothing store downtown. It’s called Jessica’s. They sell high-end stuff, clothes and shoes and scarves. The owner, Jessica Larson, has already offered a five-thousand-dollar reward for any information that leads to her whereabouts.”