Girl Missing (The Messenger Series) Chapter 5: Junkie Bonds, a hardy boys/nancy drew fanfic

5 – JUNKIE BONDS

It's late afternoon by the time I knee open the front door and wheel my bicycle into the house. I prop it up in its alcove under the stairs and hang my rain splashed helmet up on the coat stand.

Spock rushes in to greet me, tail wagging his entire body, claws scratching at the floorboards. He acts like I've been gone a year.

'Hello, gorgeous,' I say, leaning down to ruffle his ears and scratch his neck.

Spock covers me in kisses and nearly knocks me over.

There's a bump from the adjoining study and I pause from my laughter. 'Dad, you home?'

I hear Dad clear his throat. 'Yes. Noa, is that you?'

'Do you have any other daughters?' I straighten up and walk over to the study doorway. Dad is hurriedly closing a drawer to his desk and rubbing his face to clear it of its creases. He looks at me with bloodshot eyes he cannot hide.

'Where've you been?' He tries to disguise his slurred speech, but we've been here too often. I know he's just hidden his gin.

'Do you want some tea?' I ask.

Dad looks flustered, and nods. 'Yes, I think that would be lovely. Coffee though, if you're making. I'd prefer coffee, strong coffee.'

In the kitchen I prepare a tea cup and coffee cup while the kettle boils. I don't know what has sparked this recent lapse in Dad's behaviour. He's not an alcoholic, of course. I know that. Dad has a job, he keeps himself clean and shaven, he's responsible. He can't have a drink problem. But there has to be a reason for his reliance on gin lately. I blame Mr and Mrs Winslow. Dad shouldn't have had to take on such a case when they weren't going to let him investigate it properly. And now he blames himself for not bringing Holly home.

I dip into the cookie jar, and chew thoughtfully. I have a responsibility to help Dad. Spock whines at my feet and I absent-mindedly give him a cookie too.

I put Dad's steaming coffee on his desk and drop a couple of headache tablets beside it. Dad gives me a grateful, almost sheepish, smile.

'Thanks, Noa. What would I do without you?'

I don't answer. I have spotted Holly Winslow's box pulled out from under the desk. I talk a gulp of my tea and scald my throat. Holly's photography portfolio and about half a ream of Dad's notes are still in my bedroom. Trying to distract both our attentions from the box and the missing documents, I point at a photo on Dad's desk. It is of a tiny cupboard-like bedroom with a sloping ceiling.

'What's that?'

'Came in an email from Henry Winslow. It's from Holly's bedroom. Apparently they were burgled yesterday. He wants me to reopen the case.'

I inwardly cringe. I don't particularly want to prompt questions about the missing folder and notes. I perch on the corner of his desk and sip my tea, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. 'Sounds like they've got it tough. But that doesn't excuse emotional blackmail.'

Dad shakes his head. 'I should never have taken on the case in the first place. You know me, I'm much happier with things like this Ackerman case.' He gestures to the photos on his corkboard of the farm arson-insurance fraud case.

I glance at the photos of Farmer Ackerman, a tired man in his fifties, no immediate family, no wife or children. Another social reject.

Dad heaves a great sigh and looks at me in despair. 'How am I meant to tell them Holly is dead?' His gaze flitters to the drawer he'd been fiddling with earlier. At a guess I'd say that's where his old friend, the gin bottle, is stashed.

'I might be wrong. There's no hard science behind these visits, so who's to say this isn't just a glitch?' I avert my eyes from the helpless look on Dad's face, drawn back to the photo of Holly's bedroom. I pick it up to take a closer look.

'Have you ever been wrong before?' Dad asks.

I shrug. 'Well, no, but I've never had a spirit visit me like this before. She was different, like she was further away.'

'Further away?' Dad prompts.

'Yeah, like not as immediate as they usually are. Like the transmission was faulty.'

'Do you think she could still be alive then?'

I squirm. I doubt very much whether a spirit could visit – regardless of their 'immediacy' – unless they were dead. 'I don't know. It might have just been because it was raining. Max is as puzzled as us. Usually, he knows who's going to visit before they come. I don't know how it works on that side of the flatline, but generally I have to tell him if the message has been delivered so he can pass it on.'

Dad frowns at me in puzzlement. 'And he didn't know Holly was going to visit you?'

I shake my head. 'No. Weird, huh? So, maybe, it's all a mistake.' I smile at him. 'Maybe I'm just mad and I'm conjuring them up now by myself.' I give him a goofy lunatic look to make him laugh and he rewards me with a small smile. But it's short-lived. He looks down at his hands. There's an ever so subtle tremble to his long dark fingers. I look down at Holly's photo again. It's messy, not like normal messy, but really messy. Is that from the burglary or was Holly just a particularly untidy teenager, I wonder?

'Henry Winslow's trying to prove to me that she's run away,' says Dad. 'He says all her make-up and hair products have gone.'

I take a closer look at the image. There are the usual posters on the wall, a collection of porcelain rabbits on the dresser, but it is bare of other usual accessories.

'During the burglary or before?'

Dad shrugs. 'Before I think.'

I refrain from saying it would be easy enough to get rid of those things to imply a runaway had occurred. It would be equally easy to imply a burglary had taken place too. I'm about to toss it aside when my eye is caught by a framed picture sitting on the bedside table. It is too small to make out properly but I don't need a magnifying glass to recognise it. It's the same photo of Holly and Emilie that was hidden in the portfolio.

I can't help my curiosity. How much of a coincidence would it be if both friends died within a couple of years of one another? Surely, it was worth looking into?

'Who's that?' I ask, feigning ignorance.

Dad takes the photo and looks closely. 'Holly and an old friend from Germany, I believe.' He looks at me and shakes his head. 'I know what you're thinking, but she couldn't have gone back to her. That friend OD'd a couple of years back.'

'OD'd?' I say in surprise. 'As in suicide?'

Dad shakes his head, his brow furrowing. 'No, no, nothing so selfish.' He pauses for a moment, his eyes flitting to the framed photo of my mother he always has on his desk. 'It was accidental. Heroin. Sad, isn't it, that drugs are responsible for so much pain and suffering?'

I seriously doubt, if her best friend died from an overdose, that Holly was ever into drugs. It just wouldn't make sense. Why get involved in the very thing that killed your best friend? I think of Mr Winslow, how insistent he was that Holly was into drugs. Was he lying or did he seriously believe what he said? I suppose Holly hanging around with Jonathan wouldn't have helped. And parents do just assume things sometimes.

Dad's trembling hands become more noticeable and he hides them in his lap. I can see he's itching to get at the gin bottle in his drawer. I try to mask my disappointment. Frustration too. Why can't he see there is no difference between drugs and alcohol? They are both used for the same purpose – to relieve the same pain and suffering he said they caused.

I gesture to his paperwork with my mug and slip off the desk corner. 'You've probably got work to catch up on.'

Dad looks relieved.

I leave him to it with Spock at my heels and close the study door behind me. I can already hear the scratching of tin against glass as he unscrews the top off the gin bottle.