Max twisted his neck and pressed his face against the glass, looking at the figure on the mattress. His heart rate quickened as the boy processed what he was seeing. He climbed off the wagon and went toward the house.

Chapter Fifty-one

March 30, 9 a.m.

Port Orchard

It was slightly foggy when Kendall Stark showed up at Maggie Thompson’s two-story wood frame house on Baby Doll Road, up Mile Hill Road from downtown Port Orchard. The queen mother had been in the middle of a quilting project when she answered the door. She carried strips of aqua and green pieces of fabric in her slightly nicotine-stained fingers.

“The piece I’m working on for my grandson is called ‘Under the Sea,’” she said, leading Kendall into a living room cluttered with fabric, batting, and a large tracing that laid out the scheme she was following, a quilt depicting King Neptune and various sea creatures in gaudy hues.

“Pretty,” Kendall said, gently scooting aside a stack of rumpled material to take a seat on a tan leather recliner.

Maggie grinned, her teeth a buttery yellow. “I won a rosette last year at the fair, so I’m pretty good at this.”

“I can see that,” Kendall said, indicating the gold and blue ribbon hanging above the jumbled fireplace mantel. Before Maggie could launch into quilting tips, Kendall quickly turned to the reason she’d called for an interview appointment.

“Did Paige say anything to you that will help us find out where she’s gone?”

“At first I figured she just skipped school and went to Seattle for the day. A lot of these kids around here do. They complain about how boring Port Orchard is and how there’s nothing to do. Boring here, you know. Pepsi?”

“No thanks,” Kendall said as Maggie popped open a can of diet soda. “If she was bored, did she say where she’d go?”

Maggie shook her head. “Look, I’ve been doing this Fathoms gig for years, and one thing I’ve learned is, you can’t trust these girls one iota. Over the years they’ve gotten more and more deceptive. They say they care about the homeless, the environment, and what have you. All they care about is getting some money and being able to brag they were a beauty queen.”

Maggie Thompson was on a roll, and Kendall just leaned back and let the woman go on.

“Paige was a phony. I guess they all are. I honestly don’t know why I bother carting them around, getting them to look classy, when they’re just some backwater girls with no ambition. Not like Shelly Monroe.”

Kendall knew Shelly Monroe. She was the Fathoms Queen in the late 1970s and used it as a springboard to a semi-successful television career. She’d been a weather girl in Seattle for a few years before landing a long-running gig on a game show on which she rolled oversized fuzzy dice. She had even written an autobiography called Double or Nothing: My Life in the Wacky World of Game Shows.

“Not everyone is a Shelly,” Kendall said.

“I get that. But honestly, the girls of the last ten years or so seem to think that everything should be handed to them. They want this. They want that. Their constant requests are so tiring, and there’s no end to them. Can you tell I’m a little burned out?”

Kendall nodded in agreement. “Yes,” she said, steering the subject back to the reason she was there. “Let’s talk about Paige. Had she said anything at all to you to indicate a problem? Boyfriend troubles? Something she was planning on doing? Anything at all?”

Maggie sipped her soda and thought for a moment. “I heard her talking to Danica, one of the other girls, about how she wanted to do some modeling. I think she signed up for an agency online…”

Danica Moses was still bitter that she’d been first runner-up in the pageant and made no bones about it when Kendall found her at her job at the Wendy’s restaurant in the Wal-Mart parking lot on Bethel Avenue. She was a pretty girl with brown eyes and long cinnamon hair that she wore in braids she’d twirled together herself. She wore a blue polo shirt with the word TRAINEE embroidered over the left breast in flamboyant script.

She sat with Kendall in a booth near the salad bar.

“I took my duties seriously,” she said. “Paige didn’t. That’s the truth. She didn’t care about winning the title, and I’m glad that she showed her true colors by skipping out.”

“You don’t seem to like her much, Danica.”

Danica looked over at her boss, an Indian with piercing dark eyes that reminded her that, despite the police interest, she was still on the clock.

“Don’t get me started. She just thought she was better than this town, that’s all.” Danica looked around. “Do you think she was even that pretty?”

Kendall wasn’t there to discuss whether there should be a do-over of the Fathoms Queen pageant. “Pretty enough to win, I guess.”

Danica made a face. It wasn’t the answer she was hoping for. “Well, I love this town,” she said, catching another glimpse of her boss. “I love this restaurant. I would have served my time as Fathoms Queen before doing anything to harm the good name of Port Orchard.”

Serve her time? Was being a beauty queen like being a prisoner?

“Maggie Thompson told me that you and Paige talked about a modeling opportunity.”

Danica’s face went scarlet. “It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t interested in being a model. I want to go to college and get a nursing degree. I actually care about people. Paige was all about the easy way out of Port Orchard. She found some modeling agency on the Internet. I saw it on her laptop. I asked her about it. She didn’t say much.”

Danica seemed antsy, as if she had to use the restroom or get back to work. Kendall figured the latter. The boss was drumming his knuckles on the gleaming countertop.

“Well, then, what did she say?”

“Not much. Like I said,” Danica went on, “she bragged a little like she always did. She thought that she was so much better than the rest of us because she won first place. She picked out an ugly crown, if you ask me.”

Kendall hadn’t. “Did she say she was going off to meet anyone?”

“No, she didn’t. I expect she wouldn’t tell me that anyway. You know, in case things didn’t work out. I don’t think she trusted me.”

On her way back to the office, Kendall ate a hamburger she’d ordered off the Wendy’s dollar menu. It wasn’t that great, but it certainly wasn’t overpriced. If Paige Wilson had gone off to Seattle to meet with a modeling agent, she’d come home soon enough. There was no way to check her laptop to determine which Web site Danica had seen when the two girls were talking about Paige’s modeling plans.

Kendall learned from Josh that Paige Wilson’s laptop was missing, along with her cell phone and car. Skye’s cell phone had been missing too. She wondered if there was some connection.

Or if she was merely grasping at straws.