LITMIR.BIZ

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together and having a great time. Two brunettes, one bottle blonde.”

      “Chantal,” Al interpolated. “The blonde. Turned eighteen two months ago. Hard worker. Never heard a complaint out of her about cleaning my kennels. She did love the animals, though. Talked about wanting to be a veterinarian.”

      Kelly drank in the facts, but wondered why Al felt it necessary to add them. To make Chantal seem more real to Rusty?

      Maybe it had worked, because Rusty’s frown turned really dark. “Yeah, she stood out. The other two were cute, too. Having a great time together.”

      “Jane wanted to be an EMT,” Kelly volunteered.

      Without another word, Rusty leaned his hands on the bar and looked down, eyes closed. He appeared to be straining to remember the night before. After a minute, he looked up and called, “Martha? Those teen girls who were here last night?”

      The woman, carrying her electric match, came over to the bar. Her fading red hair was caught neatly into a netted bun, and the harsh sun and wind had given her a few wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. “Blonde and two brunettes? Youngest gals in here? Yeah. They was cute.”

      “Some guys talked to them. I can’t remember who. Maybe one was Don Blevin?”

      Martha shook her head. “I saw a couple of guys. Let me think. Dang, Rusty, we had so many folks in here last night.”

      “I know,” he answered heavily.

      Martha’s eyes suddenly widened and she looked at Kelly’s uniform. “Is these the girls what’s missing? Oh my God...”

      “That’s why it’s so important that you tell us everything you can remember,” Kelly said. “Everything. How did they get their drinks? Who talked to them? Did anything seem...off?”

      Understanding dawned on Martha’s face. “You think they coulda been drugged?”

      “We’re just theorizing here,” Al hastened to say. “Call it a wild idea. We don’t know. We can’t know.”

      Martha nodded, her expression as sober as a judge’s. Then she turned her head a bit. “Jack, you got a minute?”

      Shortly they were joined by the young man who’d been pushing the broom.

      “Jack knows the younger set,” Martha explained. “Who was them guys who stopped by the table of the three teen girls who was sitting over there last night. You know the guys?” She pointed at the table.

      Jack’s forehead creased and a lock of greasy hair fell over his forehead to make a small curl. “Sure. First it was Hal Olsen.”

      Kelly had pulled out her patrol book and wrote quickly despite recording all this. “Tell us about Hal?”

      Jack shrugged. “He ain’t nothin’. Maybe thirty. His wife left him two months ago and he’s pretty much been living here. He likes to get hisself a dance with the pretty women. The girls didn’t want any so he walked away.”

      “And after that?” Al asked.

      “He got hisself a dance with Margot Eels. Pretty enough so I don’t think he was feeling dissed.”

      “Who else?” Al asked.

      Jack worked his mouth as if it would help his brain to think. “Art Mason. He’s another regular. Drinks too much sometimes and Rusty has to cut him off, but I don’t think he was sober when he talked to them gals.” He flashed a faint smile. “Was kind of weaving. The gals laughed a bit after they sent him on his way. I think he landed in a chair near the dance floor. Then there was Keeb Dustin. Everybody knows the guy. Got hisself the service station east of town.”

      “Never causes trouble,” Martha agreed. “He comes one night a week, either Friday or Saturday. He occasionally hits on someone, but not in a way that makes them complain.”

      “Anyone else?” Al asked.

      “Don’t know,” Jack said. Martha shrugged.

      “How’d the girls get their drinks?” Al asked.

      “I brought ’em,” Martha said promptly. “Fill up my tray with drinks at the station there, then pass them around to the tables. Keeps the bar from getting too crowded.”

      Kelly looked at Al for the first time. She saw awareness in his gray eyes, too. “Martha? You ever set your tray down with drinks on it?”

      “Have to,” she answered. “Gotta rearrange those bottles and glasses so I don’t spill them all over anyone.”

      “But you’re watching it every minute?”

      “No,” Martha answered. “People wanna talk. That’s part of my job.”

      Kelly’s stomach sank like a stone. So it was possible the girls had been slipped a drug. “How about,” she said slowly, “you three make a list of everyone you can remember was in here last night. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

      All three were agreeable, but Rusty looked positively dour. “I can’t keep my eye on everything,” he said to Kelly.

      “Of course you can’t, Rusty,” she said reassuringly. “You folks have been a ton of help. And as for this suspicion, it’s just that. Keep it quiet. We don’t know that anything happened here at all. We just need every bit of information we can find.”

      Outside in the cold night, hearing Bugle call to her from the slightly open window of her truck, Kelly tried to keep her step steady as she walked toward him. Other cars were arriving now, but the flow wasn’t heavy. Most of the interest would be down the highway around the crime scene. Folks had gathered to help, or out of curiosity. Who could say? But the crowd, the tape, the lights would draw attention. Wetting one’s whistle could wait a short while.

      When she laid her hand on the door of her vehicle, however, she froze. Then she tilted her head back and looked up at the amazingly clear star-filled sky.

      She hoped that somewhere out in those desolate spaces there weren’t three young women looking up at the stars with dead eyes.

      Al was suddenly beside her, touching her arm. “Nobody would go to all that trouble just to kill them.”

      She lowered her gaze to his face. “Maybe that’s even worse.”

      “Then we have to keep going, push as hard as we can.”

      “Yeah.” Her answer was short, but she squared her shoulders and shook off the despair that wanted to overtake her. They had to find them as quickly as possible. Somewhere there had to be an essential clue.

      She just wished she knew where to look beyond this tavern.

      “Let’s go,” she said. “We have at least three guys to track down and get someone out to them for interviews.”

      The car felt too hot when she climbed in, but a glance at the dash thermometer told her it was sixty-eight. A good temperature for Bugle. He woofed a welcome.

      As soon as Al was in the passenger seat with the door closed, she reached for her radio. Velma’s scratchy voice answered.

      “Hey, Velma,” Kelly said. “Is Gage around?”

      “Yeah, in the conference room working out a plan for tomorrow’s search. You need him?”

      “Please.” She waited a couple of minutes, then heard the sheriff’s gravelly voice.

      “What’s up, Kelly?”

      “We were talking to employees at the tavern. I need someone to hunt up three guys and question them about the interactions they had with the three missing girls last night at Rusty’s.” Flipping open her notebook, she read the names to Gage.

      “Slower,” he said. Then, “Okay, got it. I know two of them. I’ll send some deputies out to talk to them. Thanks, Kelly. Good work.”

      “Thank

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