Molly Brown Read Free Page A

this morning, said they’d look out for her, and to let them know if she turned up.”
    Connell had sat outside in his car and watched them leave. He’d assumed it was a return visit, hadn’t realized it was the first response. “They weren’t worried?” Since when did cops think it wasn’t a big deal when a child went missing?
    “Kids go missing, most of them come home ... that’s what they said. Maybe there was a game on, or a sale at Dunkin Donuts. They were in a hurry.”
    Oh yeah, they’d be in a hurry when he caught up with them. “Did you tell them about Terry?”
    She avoided his gaze. “They didn’t ask.”
    He glanced back at the pathetic little room and thought of the child who’d slept in that bed, imagined how she must have felt curled up under thin dirty covers with no light and no comfort. He couldn’t bear the thought of Joe in similar circumstances.
    But tha t wasn’t why he was there or what he was getting paid for. He should just leave it to the locals and back off, but he’d never been very good at backing off, even when he’d been told to.
    He turned back to the girl with a sigh. “Have you been smoking today?”
    “Some.”
    “You need to stop now. You need to get your head in gear and go get cleaned up. You need to be ready when your sister comes home. Is there someone who can stay with you until your parents come back?”
    “I’m doing okay on my own.”
    Connell looked her up and down and shook his head sadly. “No, kiddo, you’re not.  You let strange guys into your home. Think about it, you let me walk in off the street and you still haven’t asked for ID. Strange guys have a habit of doing strange things and they usually won’t be good things. How long have your parents been gone?”
    She shrugged, looked away and he realized they weren’t on a trip. They’d been gone for some time and Lydia had been playing mommy, unsuccessfully as it turned out. “Who’s been paying the rent?” he asked , though he already knew the answer.
    “I have,” she answered with a defiant glare.
    “For how long?” Maybe Lydia wasn’t putting on an act. Maybe she had to be stoned to do what she’d been doing.
    “I don’t know, weeks, months, maybe two months.”
    Two months! What’d they do, go out to the store for cigarettes and forget to come back? Okay, so it wasn’t uncommon for guys to run off and leave their women, or ladies to take off on their men, but it was unusual for both to walk out the door without saying goodbye to their kids.
    “They happen to mention where they were going?” asked Connell and she answered with a shake of her head. “ … or when they’d be back?”
    “They left in a hurry. I guess they’d had enough of her too.”
    “Enough of whom?”
    “The Bookworm, who else? ”
    “And what did Molly think about it?” She was a kid. Her mom and dad had disappeared and her sister was probably a whore. He was getting a bad feeling about this whole situation.
    “Molly doesn’t say much. Like I said, she reads a lot.”
    “But she does understand that they’ve gone?”
    “Who knows? She doesn’t exactly sit around making small talk.”
    “Do you think she may have gone to look for them?” It was a possibility but the thought of a little kid wandering around the city, looking for her parents, did things to his gut that hurt.
    “I doubt it. W e’re better off without them.” Lydia reached down, and with one hand securing her to the door frame, she undid her shoes, slipped them off and shrunk by four inches and a couple of years.
    “W hy? Because they’re bad parents or because they walked out on you?”
    “Both.”
    Connell acknowledged that she was right. Good parents didn’t walk out on their kids. Of course that was supposing they had walked out and weren’t currently laying unclaimed in a drawer at the morgue.
    He shot a final glance at the little room. “Where do you think she is?”
    The girl cocked her head and gave a sad smile.