He hit Windows Explorer and put her files in date order, to see what she had worked on most recently. Aimee had been writing songs. He thought about that, about this creative young woman, about where she was now. He scanned through the most recent word processing documents. Nothing special. He tried checking her downloads. There were some recent photographs. He opened them. Aimee with a bunch of school pals, he guessed. Nothing obviously special about them either, but maybe he’d have Claire take a look.
Teens, he knew, were huge with instant messaging online. From the relative calm of their computers, they had conversations with dozens of people sometimes at the same time. Myron knew plenty of parents who whined about this, but in his day, they’d spent hours tying up the phone gossiping with one another. Was IMing any worse?
He brought up her buddy list. There were at least fifty screen names like SpazaManiacJack11, MSGWatkins, and YoungThangBlaine742. Myron printed them out. He’d let Claire and Erik go through them with one of Aimee’s friends, see if there was a name that didn’t belong, that none of them knew about. It was a long shot, but it would keep them busy.
He let go of the computer mouse and started to search the old-fashioned way. The desk came first. He went through her drawers. Pens, papers, note cards, spare batteries, a smattering of computer software CDs. Nothing personal. There were several receipts from a place called Planet Music. Myron checked the guitars. They had Planet Music stickers on the back.
Big wow.
He moved to the next drawer. More nothing.
In the third drawer, Myron saw something that made him stop. He reached down and gently lifted it into view. He smiled. Protected in a plastic sleeve… it was Myron’s rookie basketball card. He stared at his younger self. Myron remembered the photo shoot. He had done several dumb poses — taking a jump shot, pretending to pass, the old-fashioned triple-threat position — but they’d settled for one of him bending down and dribbling. The background was an empty arena. In the picture he wore his green Boston Celtics jersey — one of maybe five times he got to wear it in his entire life. The card company had printed up several thousand before his injury. They were collector’s items now.
It was nice to know Aimee had one, though he wondered what the police might make of it.
He put it back in the drawer. His fingerprints would be on it now, but then again they would be all over the room. Didn’t matter. He pressed on. He wanted to find a diary. That was what you always saw in the movies. The girl writes a diary, and it talks about her secret boyfriend and double life and all that. That worked in fiction. It wasn’t happening for him in reality.
He hit an undergarments drawer. He felt yucky but he persevered. If she was going to hide anything, this could be the place. But there was nothing. Her tastes seemed on the wholesome side for a teenage girl. Tank tops were as bad as it got. Near the bottom, however, he found something particularly racy. He pulled it into view. There was a tag on it from a mall lingerie store called Bedroom Rendezvous. It was white, sheer, and looked like something out of a nurse fantasy. He frowned and wondered what to make of it.
There was a smattering of bobble-head dolls. An iPod with white earbuds was lounged out on the bed. He checked the tunes. She had Aimee Mann on there. He took that as a small victory. He’d given her Aimee Mann’s Lost in Space a few years back, thinking the first name might pique her interest. Now he could see that she had five of Aimee Mann’s CDs. He liked that.
There were photographs stuck onto a mirror. They were all group pictures — Aimee with a slew of girlfriends. There were two of the volleyball team, one in classic team pose, another a celebration shot taken after they’d won the counties. There were several pictures of her high school rock band, Aimee playing lead guitar. He looked at her face while she played. Her smile was heartbreaking, but what girl that age doesn’t have a heartbreaking smile?
He found her yearbook. He started paging through it. Yearbooks had come a long way since he’d graduated. For one thing, they included a DVD. Myron would watch it, he guessed, if he had the time. He looked up Katie Rochester’s entry. He’d seen that photograph before, on the news. He read about her. She’d miss hanging with Betsy and Craig and Saturday nights at the Ritz Diner. Nothing significant. He turned to Aimee Biel’s page. Aimee mentioned a whole bunch of her friends; her favorite teachers, Miss Korty and Mr. D; her volleyball coach, Mr. Grady; and all the girls on the team. She ended with, “Randy, you’ve made the past two years so special. I know we’ll be together always.”
Good ol’ Randy.
He checked out Randy’s entry. He was a good-looking kid with wild, almost Rastafarian curls. He had a soul patch and a big white smile. He talked mostly about sports in his write-up. He mentioned Aimee too, how much she’d “enriched” his time in high school.
Hmm.
Myron thought about that, looked again at the mirror, and for the first time wondered if perhaps he’d stumbled across a clue.
Claire opened the door. “Anything?”
Myron pointed to the mirror. “This.”
“What about it?”
“How often do you come in this room?”
She frowned. “A teenager lives here.”
“Would that mean rarely?”
“Pretty much never.”
“Does she do her own laundry?”
“She’s a teenager, Myron. She does nothing.”
“So who does it?”
“We have a live-in. Her name is Rosa. Why?”
“The photographs,” he said.
“What about them?”
“She has a boyfriend named Randy, right?”
“Randy Wolf. He’s a sweet kid.”
“And they’ve been together awhile?”
“Since sophomore year. Why?”
Again he gestured to the mirror. “There are no pictures of him. I looked all over the room. No photos of him anywhere. That’s why I was asking about when you were last in the room.” He looked back at her. “Did there used to be?”
“Yes.”
He pointed to several blank spots on the bottom of the mirror. “This all looks out of sequence, but I bet she removed the pictures from here.”
“But they just went to the prom together, what, three nights ago.”
Myron shrugged. “Maybe they had a big fight there.”
“You said Aimee looked emotional when you picked her up, right?”
“Right.”
“Maybe they’d just broken up,” Claire said.
“Could be,” Myron said. “Except she hasn’t been home since then, and the photographs on the mirror are gone. That would imply that they broke up at least a day or two before I picked her up. One more thing.”
Claire waited. Myron showed her the lingerie from Bedroom Rendezvous. “Have you seen this before?”
“No. You found it in here?”
Myron nodded. “Bottom of the drawer. It looks unworn. The tag is still on it.”
Claire went quiet.
“What?”
“Erik was telling the police how Aimee’s been acting strangely lately. I fought him on it, but the truth is, she has. She’s grown very secretive.”
“Do you know what else struck me about this room?”
“What?”
“Forgetting this lingerie — which might be relevant and might be nothing — the opposite of what you just said: There is almost nothing secretive in here. I mean, she’s a high school senior. There should be something, right?”
Claire considered that. “Why do you think that is?”
“It’s like she’s working hard to hide something. We need to check other places where she might have kept personal stuff, someplace that you and Erik wouldn’t think to snoop. Like her school locker maybe.”
“Should we do that now?”
“I think it’d be better to talk to Randy first.”