say. That is, if anyone had missed me when I went away with Luther. My own father didn’t even try to find me. When I called him after I came back to Haywood he said he’d assumed I’d get in touch when I ran out of money. We haven’t been in touch since.
“I mean,” Lucinda says, “Noreen Bagley was asking questions about the missing girls and she went missing. Now that girl Lila Zeller was asking about the missing girls and she shows up dead.”
I shiver at Lucinda’s choice of words. Shows up dead. What a ghoulish way of putting it. This whole place is ghoulish. I’m suddenly anxious to be gone. “Would it be possible for me to get a copy of this section of Cora’s diary?”
Lucinda bites her lip. The two red spots return to her cheeks. “Well, the director’s not here to ask but . . . I suppose since you’re connected to Haywood it would be all right. Just wait here a moment.”
She leaves the room, those hard-soled saddle shoes clattering on the parquet floor in the hallway. I look at the photographs while she’s gone. There’s one of the cliff at Maiden Island and a framed newspaper article about Noreen Bagley’s disappearance with a picture of the girl. She’s squinting at the camera from under heavy bangs, wearing a blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a plaid skirt under a duffel coat. She looks like she’s flinching, as if someone just said something mean to her, or as if she knows something bad is going to happen to her. That it will take three days before anyone will even notice she’s gone.
“At least they did notice,” I say aloud to her.
“What did you say?”
I turn, embarrassed that I’ve been caught talking aloud to a photograph of a dead girl, and it’s like Noreen Bagley is standing in front of me. The same heavy bangs, Peter Pan collar, plaid skirt, and saddle shoes. Lucinda Perkins is dressed just like Noreen Bagley—down to the white kid gloves, which I realize now match the soiled one in the display case. She’s turned Noreen Bagley into a fetish. This whole place has made Noreen and the other girls into a cult—a museum of lost girls.
“Here’s the copy,” she says, handing me a manila envelope. “I was wondering if I could ask for something in return.”
“What?” I ask warily. Does she recognize me as one of the lost girls that belong in this creepy museum?
“Since you were Lila’s teacher you might have something of hers. Might you consider donating some memento—a handwritten essay or piece of clothing—to the museum? After all, she’s part of this story now.”
What I consider is slapping Lucinda’s painted doll’s face, but before I can respond I catch a flicker of movement from the window. One of the Foresters is pulling away from the curb. I’ve been so busy with this nonsense that I missed Rudy coming back.
I snatch the envelope out of Lucinda’s hand and grab my coat. “Lila’s story is her own,” I say. “You can leave her that at least.”
Chapter Sixteen
When I get outside I find a note under my windshield wiper.
Don’t bother following me. The words smear in the rain as I read them. I’m going straight home.
Crap.
I try Rudy’s phone but it goes to voicemail. I could tell him it was a coincidence that I showed up here. That Lila had mentioned the Cora Rockwell House and I’d come to see if its employees could shed any light on her last days—
At seven in the morning? I imagine him saying. Stalker.
The back of my neck prickles with the shame of being caught in the act. It feels like being watched—
I look up from the phone with the sudden feeling that I am being watched. The windows of the Rockwell House glare back at me, opaque in the rain. I can’t see through them, but I do catch a movement in one of the street-level windows, like a shark moving through murky water. I turn around and see a black Saab turning the corner. I hadn’t noticed it approaching. Had it been idling across the street with someone inside, watching me?
Could it be Luther?
I get in, start my car with shaking hands, and pull away from the curb without stopping to put on my seatbelt. The Forester pings indignantly. I turn the corner and spot the Saab three blocks away, idling in the rain at a green light. It moves as