Shooting Star

9

Carmen Geary didn’t seem to be in shock over the disappearance of her friend. She looked me over as if I were applying for a position for which looks were important. Her own looks put her closer to twenty than any fifteen-year-old should be, a long-legged girl-woman with gleaming dark hair that had continually to be pushed away, theatrically, from her face.

‘The man,’ I said. ‘Can you describe him?’

She blinked her lashes at me. ‘Sure. Old. Sort of dirty looking, glasses with thick lenses…’ ‘Dirty. What, like unshaven?’

‘No. Not unshaven, just sort of dirty, y’know.’

‘The glasses. Shape?’

‘Big old-fashioned ones, squarish, with thick black frames.’

‘Thick lenses?’

‘No, don’t think so.’

‘How far away?’

‘Close. Over there, sort of.’ She pointed at the window wall.

‘Anything else about him?’

‘The cap. A red cap.’

‘A baseball cap?’

She nodded. ‘Makita logo on it.’

We were upstairs in Pat Carson’s mansion, in a comfortably furnished sitting room with French doors to a balcony. Carmen’s mother, Lauren, was next door, in an office with filing cabinets and a computer on a neat desk. ‘It’s like running a medium-size hotel,’ she’d said on the way upstairs. ‘I was housekeeper at three Hiltons. This is much the same.’

‘Although in hotels even the most troublesome guests eventually leave,’ I said.

She laughed. It was a deep, good-natured laugh. ‘There is that to look forward to in hotels,’ she said.

I asked the question on my mind. ‘Does the remuneration here include school fees?’

Lauren laughed again. ‘That was Mr Pat Carson’s idea. He said, “When you live with the family and look after the family, you’re part of the family. And so your child goes to school where the Carsons go.”’

Now I said to Carmen, ‘You saw him three times and he was there when you went into the store and still there when you came out.’

Hair brushed away, fingers flicking outwards. ‘No. He was still there the first two times. The third time he wasn’t. Frank. Trams come all the time, so he wasn’t waiting for a tram.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘On Thursday.’

‘What time was that?’

Carmen shifted in her chair, recrossed her legs in her short skirt.

‘Twenty past four, around then.’

‘That wouldn’t give you much time in the store.’

‘No. We’re only there twenty-five minutes, something like that.’

Hand flicking hair. ‘How old are you, Frank?’

I ignored the question. ‘What sport do you play at school, Carmen?’

‘Sport? Oh, tennis.’ She was scratching her head. ‘And swimming. We swim. What do you play? Do you work out?’

‘Does Anne have anyone special she talks to at the record shop?’

‘Special?’ She smiled, head on one side, lips well apart showing perfect teeth, a cover-girl smile, asked the mock-naive question.

‘You mean, like a boy?’

‘Something like that, yes.’

‘Not really. Well, boys are always coming on to you. I bet girls come on to you. Do they?’

‘Not since I stopped washing ten years ago,’ I said, unsmiling. ‘So there’s no boyfriend?’

She had her right hand at her face. ‘Boyfriend? No. No boyfriend.’

‘And you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

She spoke from behind her fingers, the other hand running up and down her left thigh. ‘Wouldn’t everyone? This place’s a jail. Everyone’s paranoid.’

‘On Thursday, you came out about 4.50 when you couldn’t find Anne.’

‘Yes.’

‘Crowded, the store?’

‘Yes. Lots of kids.’ Carmen was moistening her upper lip with a tongue tip, a perfectly pink arrowhead.

‘Often get separated when you’re in the store?’

‘Well, if you’re talking to someone else, you don’t notice what the person you’re with’s doing. But quarter to five’s when Dennis picks us up, so I looked around, couldn’t see her, went all over the place.’ She looked down. ‘I got a bit scared.’

‘That’s being paranoid, is it?’

Carmen sniffed. ‘Bit, I suppose.’

‘Happened before? Couldn’t find Anne?’

Wide eyes on me. ‘No.’

‘What did Dennis do when you went to the car and told him?’

‘Double-parked. We went back in and looked again. Then Dennis got the call on his mobile.’

‘The call?’

‘From Graham. About the kidnap call to Anne’s grandpa.’

I sat back, elbows on the chair arms, fingers interlocked, and looked into her eyes.

‘That’s the chaplain’s look,’ said Carmen. ‘He does that, he’s a spunk, a girl in another class saw him in St Kilda at one in the morning with this like real tart…’

‘On a mission of mercy, no doubt,’ I said, standing, feeling the pain in my leg. ‘Thanks for talking to me, Carmen. Think about Thursday, anything could be important.’

‘You’re a Capricorn, aren’t you?’ she said, head on one side again, all front teeth on show. ‘Can’t be faithful.’

‘Can’t even be hopeful,’ I said. ‘There’s one other thing I just remembered. The school says neither of you has played any sport this term. On Tuesdays or Thursdays. So you’d have to be doing something else on Tuesdays and Thursdays, wouldn’t you.’

I gave her a while to answer, held her eyes, not smiling. Then I said, ‘It’s what you don’t tell me you’ll be sorry about.’

Her pink tongue came out again and licked a lower lip as red and full as a late-season plum.

‘His name’s Craig,’ she said. ‘That’s all I know, I swear.’