Expecting to Die

CHAPTER 19
B
arclay Sphinx was waiting at a round table in a meeting room off the lobby of
the motel. Three window shades were open to a spectacular view of the parking
lot, where shafts of sunlight were bouncing off the single row of cars parked next
to the fenced-off swimming pool.
Dressed in a black T-shirt and another jacket and jeans, he wasn’t alone. Not
only was Michelle seated in one of the chairs but also two men and a woman,
Fiona, whom she’d been introduced to at the meeting the night before.
Michelle was beaming, her makeup fresh, her sleeveless white dress hugging
her curves, her hair twisted into some kind of braid that reminded Bianca of Elsa
in Frozen. How long she’d been there, Bianca didn’t know, but she was seated
right next to Sphinx.
“There they are now,” she said as Lucky held the door open for her.
“Bianca!” Sphinx said, getting to his feet and reaching out to grab her hand.
His handshake was firm and warm, his smile wide, his little soul patch perfect in
his otherwise clean-shaven face. “So glad you could come. Your dad and
stepmom tell me that you’re in for the pilot of Big Foot Territory: Montana!
Perfect!” He waved her to a chair next to him, and Lucky sat one over. Fiona
Carpenter moved to sit across from Bianca. The other two guys filled a couple of
the remaining chairs.
Everyone had a small laptop on the table in front of them. And, again, there
was a spread of food—three trays filled with a variety of cold meats and cheeses,
breads, and sliced fruit and vegetables, with dips and butter-filled bowls
scattered nearby. In the center of the display were two pots of coffee—regular
and decaf—and some bottles of water.
“Help yourself,” Sphinx said when he caught Bianca eyeing the pineapple
spears and strawberries dipped in chocolate. “Fi, get her a plate, would you? And
for the dad—Luke, right?” At Lucky’s nod, Sphinx continued, “Get him
something, too.” Fiona promptly began filling two small paper plates. “I
apologize,” Sphinx said, and glanced at Michelle. “As I already told Michelle
here, I have to leave tonight. I’m working on a new series about ghost towns in
Oregon, so I’m swinging down to Darby Gulch and won’t be back here for a
couple of days. At that time, we’ll begin filming, just as I outlined at the meeting
last night. I’d want you to star in the first episode for certain, possibly the second

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depending upon how long I can string out the story line of the murdered girl.”
Napkins and a variety of the refreshments were set in front of Lucky and
Bianca. “Anything to drink?” Fi asked.
Bianca settled on a water, and Lucky poured himself a cup of coffee. Sphinx
barely missed a beat as he continued, “The production crew will arrive
tomorrow, legal’s working to get everything set up, someone will be a liaison
between us and the police department. I was hoping that your ex”—he looked
over the tops of his glasses to Luke—“would be that person, but I got a real
resistant vibe off her last night.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Luke said, picking up the suggestion. “She’ll probably come
along.”
“Excellent. Her insight and the whole cop angle would be great. And the
gritty, tough-as-nails pregnant cop angle would really connect with some of our
viewers. Yeah, I like it,” he said, rubbing his soul patch as he thought, his eyes
narrowing on some inner vision. “I like it a lot.”
“The baby is due soon,” Bianca pointed out.
“Well, we’ll be pushing this fast. As early as the end of this week, or the
weekend. The sooner the better.” He was thinking out loud and said to Fi, “Take
notes.”
“Always do,” she replied, typing on the laptop in front of her.
“Let’s get the whole town involved in this, yes? Some sort of celebration.” He
fluttered his fingers, caught up in his vision. “Something like Big Foot Daze.
How fast could we put that together? We’d need a little run time for publicity,
but we could get the town involved, have a celebration.”
“That’ll take some time,” Fiona warned him.
“Maybe, maybe not. We’ll talk to the press. There’s a local newspaper guy
who wants an interview, Manny Something or Other.”
“Manny Douglas. Got him on file. Just sent his info to your phone,” Fi said.
“We can print our own flyers. Maybe Bianca could do a radio or TV interview
or two—?” He glanced at Bianca, who didn’t know what to say.
“We could make that work,” Lucky said, nodding and grinning.
Michelle, too, was smiling.
“We’ll get the mayor involved. You’ve got her name?” Sphinx asked.
“Right here,” Fiona replied, glancing at her computer screen. “Carolina
Justison.”
“I’ll need that number.”
“Just sent it to your phone.”
“Good. Include the cop’s, Bianca’s mother, and the sheriff’s number as well.”
“I did.”

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“God, love ya, Fi,” he said.
“Sure, sure.”
“Mom won’t like it,” Bianca said, earning her a reproving look from Dad.
“I said I’d take care of it,” Lucky reminded her a bit tightly.
“Good, good. And even if she’s not a believer, which I sense she’s not, we can
make that work, too. It’ll add a little tension to the story line.” He glanced at
Bianca. “I’m loving this. All we need to get started is a contract.” With a nod to
Fi, he said, “I’ll pass the baton to my assistant and she can get through all the
legal stuff. You’ll be paid, of course, as will all of the extras, people from the
club last night, I’m thinking. Like those two or three guys who were mixing it up
at the end of the meeting?”
“Ivor Hicks and Fred Nesmith?” Luke asked.
“Sure. Or guys like them. Local color. We need passionate people, very . . .
rural, almost backwoodsy. Authentic. People that would be fascinating to our
demographics, so no accountant or insurance salesman types, if you know what I
mean. We want to see the raw side of Montana, the real gun-totin’ cowboys and
hunters and maybe some anti-government folks. Fi will take over, and when
we’ve nailed down the contract, we’ll talk story line and character
development.”
“Character development?” Luke asked.
“I’d like to work out Bianca’s character.”
She said, “Uh . . . I’m me.”
“Of course, of course, but maybe a . . . more condensed version of you, if you
will, a stronger, more potent version.” He turned his gaze from Bianca to his
assistant. “Fi, why don’t you . . . ?”
Fiona smoothly segued into the point woman, directing them all to look at
their computer screens. She laid out everything. All explained neatly and
concisely.
And in the end, Bianca and Lucky signed.
She was, Michelle insisted, on her way to being a star.
Bianca wasn’t sure about that, but she did know that, when she got home and
admitted to her mother what she’d done, there would be hell to pay.
* * *
The Cronins hadn’t seen or heard from their daughter since the night before.
“Normally, I wouldn’t worry,” Darlie said as she sat on the edge of a worn
couch next to her husband. Pescoli and Alvarez were in chairs on the far side of
an oval coffee table. “But this is so not like Lindsay.” Darlie folded her hands

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over her lap, then refolded them nervously. Petite and blond, she wore a skirt and
lacy top and kept glancing at her husband, a round man with a paunch, thinning
brown hair, and a clipped mustache. Today he hadn’t shaved, and silvery stubble
covered his jaw and chin. He was in jeans and a T-shirt and he stared, for the
most part, at the floor.
She handed Pescoli a neatly typed list of Lindsay’s friends. She swore she
knew of no one who would want to hurt her daughter. At that statement, she
reached silently to her side, and her husband’s large hand clasped over her
outstretched palm.
“I keep telling myself she’ll come home, that her phone is out of battery or
turned off or lost or whatever, but . . .” She swallowed hard, the cords of her
neck straining as she thought of the direst of consequences. Clearing her throat,
she said, “We just want her back. We’ve called her brother. He’s studying at
Boise State, and Malcolm offered to come home, but we didn’t see any reason
for that; not unless he hears from her.”
After taking her statement, they all walked through her room, saw the open
window and the pillows bumping up under the covers.
“This is how you found the bed?” Pescoli asked.
Darlie nodded. “I know. It looks like she left of her own accord.”
Hell yeah, it did. Pescoli remembered pulling this same trick herself and then,
as a mother of teens, finding a similar bed with a fake body composed of pillows
when Jeremy had sneaked out to meet his girlfriend, Heidi Brewster, when
they’d both been in high school. “I’d say so,” Pescoli said. She checked the
window, found it unlatched, slightly open, as if whoever might have sneaked out
of this room had used it for escape and left it open just enough in case she had to
hoist herself back in the same way.
“No footprints in the flowerbed,” Darlie said from the doorway of the small
room with its circular rag rug, hand-me-down desk, and twin bed covered in a
striped duvet. “I checked.”
“Maybe this was the backup plan, to return if she got locked out or didn’t
want to make too much noise coming back in.”
“That’s the point,” Darlie said, her voice cracking. “She never came back.”
Roy, standing next to her, placed a big arm over her shaking shoulders.
“Even if she did sneak out, she thought she was coming back.”
Roy whispered, “Shh . . . it’s okay, honey.”
She threw off his arm. “It’s not okay, Roy. You know it’s not okay!” Dabbing
at her eyes where mascara was starting to run, she said to Pescoli, “Just find her,
okay. Find my baby!”

---

* * *
Alvarez and Pescoli returned to the car. For whatever reason, Lindsay Cronin
had waited until her parents were in bed, then sneaked out. They’d been right;
there were no footprints in the mulch of the flowerbed, no indication that anyone
had climbed in or out of the window. Pescoli called the station and gave Zoller
Lindsay’s phone number so that records could be requested, as well as a
description and the license plate of her Ford Focus for a BOLO—be on the
lookout.
“I hope they’re wrong about her,” Pescoli said. “Maybe she has a wild streak
her parents don’t know about and she’s sleeping it off somewhere, not realizing
her phone is turned off.”
“Or without battery,” Alvarez said. “What teenager has their phone off?”
Pescoli grunted and the baby kicked again. “We have to stop for lunch before
we do anything else. I’m starved.”
A few minutes later, they pulled into Wild Wills, a restaurant in the lower
section of town on the river, one of Pescoli’s favorite haunts.
Inside the front door, they passed by “Grizz,” a huge stuffed Grizzly Bear that
always wore a perpetual bared-tooth snarl and glass eyes and was outfitted by
the staff for the season or holiday. Today he was wearing a pink polka-dot bikini
with a matching floppy beach hat.
Pescoli noted the parasol tucked under one of his forelegs and a martini glass
with a fake fruity drink tied to one of the huge, furry creature’s paws. Someone
had even painted his claws a flamingo pink, and to keep with the theme, a pair of
plastic flamingos stood next to him, one sporting a bow tie, the other a choker
necklace.
“I have this eerie feeling that all the bears in the county are plotting their
revenge for this kind of humiliation, that they’ll pull a Planet of the Apes on us
and take over. Put us in cages, make us do all their dirty work and do lab tests on
us.”
“That’s only if the rats join them.”
Which made Pescoli think again about the creature that had been chasing
Bianca.
What had Farnsby said when she’d asked if the “monster” could have been a
bear? “You see any claws?”
Even painted dark pink, Grizz’s claws looked deadly. Long, curved, sharp,
and, today, tinted raspberry.
So what had chased her daughter?
Not a Sasquatch. No matter what members of the BFBs thought.

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They moved into the spacious dining room with booths lining the walls and
tables placed over the old plank floors. Overhead, wagon-wheel chandeliers had
been suspended from a twenty-foot ceiling. On the walls, stuffed heads of
animals, long dead, had been mounted, so that it appeared a variety of the
creatures native to the area were staring down at the patrons as they dined.
Bison, moose, bighorn sheep, deer, and elk, were present, along with a full-sized
cougar, porcupines, and a beaver. On one wall, over the slowly spinning pie
display, geese, pheasants, and ducks flew toward the exposed beams of the
ceiling.
Alvarez cast her gaze at the once-living creatures that had become wall
decorations. Above them, the huge head of a bison loomed, glassy eyes staring
sightlessly. “They do more to squelch your appetite rather than enhance it.”
“Sandy says the customers love ’em. Especially the tourists.”
“Hmmm.”
Alvarez ordered an Asian chicken salad with iced herbal tea, and Pescoli
chose a turkey pot pie with a side of fries and sparkling water. The place was
crowded, most tables occupied, the waiters moving quickly from one four-top to
the next. Alvarez and Pescoli discussed the case, and by the time the food came,
Pescoli thought she might faint. She dug in eagerly, making short work of
everything on her plate, including the slice of orange that was supposed to be the
garnish. Then, while Alvarez was still picking at her salad, Pescoli ordered a
piece of peach crumble with ice cream. “You only live once,” she said to Alvarez
when the dessert came, piled with vanilla ice cream, a dab of whipped cream,
and a drizzle of peach syrup.
“You’re eating for two.”
“What I’d really like is a Diet Coke, cigarette, and a beer . . . not in any order.
Oh, yeah, and a corned beef sandwich, but I’ve got to wait until the baby’s
born.”
“Maybe you could throw in some sushi, too.”
Pescoli took a bite of ice cream and shook her head. “No raw fish for this girl,
pregnant or not.”
“Don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Don’t know and really don’t care.”
As she finished her dessert, they discussed the case and the new wrinkle of
Lindsay Cronin’s disappearance. Disturbing, yes. But connected? Hard to say.
Alvarez’s phone made a little bubbling noise. She looked at it, got a quick
message, and nodded. To Pescoli, she said, “They got the records for Destiny’s
phone. Zoller’s already going over the texts and calls, comparing them to her
social media accounts, and the statements from everyone who knew her.”

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“Maybe we’ll get something.”
“Let’s hope.”
By the time Pescoli scraped off every last bite, she felt satisfied, her blood
sugar restored to order, the baby no longer kicking. They paid the bill and drove
directly to Northwest General, the hospital where Destiny Montclaire and
Simone Delaney volunteered, the very hospital in which, months earlier, Dan
Grayson had died. Neither Alvarez or Pescoli said anything about it, but it was
as if his ghost were there between them.
Grimmer than they had been, each lost in her own thoughts, they didn’t speak
as they made their way to the cafeteria where Destiny had once worked part-time
as an unpaid volunteer. No one within the kitchen staff had a bad thing to say
about her. She was friendly and efficient, punctual and responsible, if at times
quiet. Never did her supervisor worry that she would be late or not show up.
She’d helped the cooks at the busiest times of the day, was always available to
clean tables.
From the cafeteria, Alvarez and Pescoli made their way to the children’s ward.
Destiny had transferred to the children’s wing about six months earlier. Here,
they were told, she read stories or played with the kids or, once again, helped
clean up.
No one in either food services or the children’s ward had any idea who would
want to harm her. Everyone was upset that she’d been killed and completely at a
loss as to who would do anything so vile. To a person, they claimed no one had
seen her since her last shift, which had happened two days before she went
missing. Also, no one had known she was pregnant.
Alvarez and Pescoli ended up with a big fat zero in the information
department until they were on their way out, when Pescoli checked with the
personnel director and learned Simone was currently working.