“I know. Kate left a note.” That she’d thought to leave him a note had seemed a positive step at the time; now he realized she’d been avoiding him, as she had at school all day. “I hope she’s still just avoiding me, maybe gone to a friend’s place or to one the kids’ favorite hangouts, but that doesn’t explain why Casey missed soccer practice and isn’t answering your calls.”
“My daughter has a good head on her shoulders, but I’m getting scared. She always sends me a text message after school, after practice, when she’s on her way home, when she gets home. Now it’s almost five o’clock and...” Sarah shrugged. “This isn’t like her.”
“I drove around before I came here,” he told her. “I checked the pizza place, the community center, even the library.” Although that was the last place he’d expect to find his daughter. “I didn’t know where else to look.”
Unless...
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open. Kate’s credit card was gone.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“Before Kate’s mom moved to Europe, she gave her a credit card. There’s no way I would let her carry it around with her so I keep it in my wallet.”
“And?”
“It was here yesterday afternoon. Now it’s gone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. At first I thought she might have ordered that handbag online so I took out the card and called to check on the balance.”
“Any chance you didn’t put it back?”
He shook his head. He clearly remembered putting it away. He knew exactly when it went missing. “I don’t carry my wallet when I run in the morning. She must have taken it while I was out of the house.”
“We need to call the police.”
“The police? Won’t they tell us we need to wait a few hours to see if they show up on their own?”
“That might be what they do in the city, but not here. Everyone knows me, and they know Casey. If I say something’s not right, they’ll believe me.”
“Then let’s call.”
He followed her through the foyer and the short hallway to the kitchen, thinking, as he had the one other time he was inside, that this house seemed brighter, more welcoming than his. More of a family home.
In the kitchen, he stood on the opposite side of the island while Sarah put her phone on speaker and made the call.
“Sunshine Coast RCMP Detachment, Constable Merriweather.”
“Gayle? It’s Sarah Stewart.”
“Hi, Sarah. Good to hear from you. I mean, as long as everything’s okay.”
“You, too. And no, it’s not. Casey missed soccer practice after school today and she’s not answering her phone or responding to text messages. No one’s seen her since classes were over, and we think she’s with Kate Marshall, the daughter of the new teacher at SBH.”
“Does Kate have a cell phone?”
“Yes. She isn’t picking up, either. Her dad has looked around town for them, and now we just discovered that Kate has a credit card with her. We’re both really worried.”
“Any reason you can think of why the girls would up and disappear like this?”
Sarah glanced up at him.
“Constable Merriweather? Jon Marshall here, Kate’s dad. My daughter and I had a bit of a...a disagreement last night, and she was supposed to come straight home after school.”
“So, grounded?” the constable asked. The tone of her voice suggested she was smiling. “You have my sympathies, Mr. Marshall. I have two teenage girls, fifteen and seventeen. I’ve witnessed my share of hissy fits.”
“You’re Melissa’s mom? She’s on the soccer team.”
“That’s right. She told me practice was canceled today. Now I understand why.”
Sarah gave him an eyes-wide look that said, seriously? Our girls are missing and this is the conversation you’re having?
“Right,” he said. “So—”
“No need for explanations. We want to find those girls as much as you do.”
He doubted that but felt somewhat reassured nonetheless.
“Give me their phone numbers. If the phones are on, we should be able to get a location for them. And if you can email recent photos of the girls, I’ll circulate those to everyone who’s on duty tonight.”
Sarah tore a sheet from a notepad on the fridge door and jotted down the email address. “Thanks, Gayle. We’ll send those right away and then we’ll go out and keep looking for them.”
“Sarah, I know you’re worried and you want to do everything you can to find them, but the best thing right now is to stay home so you’re there when the girls do show up. Nine times out of ten, they come home on their own and their reason for being ‘missing’ is something completely innocent.”