Chapter Three – Molly

 

Eyes squeezed tight, I stretched languidly on the living room couch, wiggling a little bit as I snuggled deeper into my nest of two afghans and an old quilt. I pulled them more tightly around my head, nuzzling my soft pillow as I took in the warmth and security. Sun shined in from one of the front windows, perfectly illuminating and warming the top of my head. At any other time, it would have been annoying. But right now? It just added to my laziness.

Saturdays and Sundays were really my only days to sleep in. To enjoy myself in bed. Didn’t matter that it was just a couch, I didn’t play favorites. Just me and errands all day long, then some nice relaxing time in front of the television again as I tried to relax.

I could do another ten minutes, though. What was ten minutes on a lazy day like today? As I took a deep breath and sank deeper into my blankets, though, something seemed to wiggle at the back of my brain, competing for my attention. Something, I don’t know, really important. That I was forgetting.

I sat upright on the couch, bursting from within the depths of my varied blankets like a zombie emerging from its grave, my adrenaline kicking in as I realized what I’d been missing. “Oh, shit!”

Hands flailing at the coffee table, I snagged my nearby phone, a whole litany of curses coming from my mouth. If anyone had been in the house with me, they’d have thought a sailor or dock worker had passed out on the couch, not a nanny. I unlocked my phone and checked my notifications for missed calls or angry texts.

“What the hell?” I asked the room when I didn’t find any. No messages, no calls, no notifications from my social media, no emails. There was nothing, and it was already eight in the morning. “Are you kidding me?”

Blinking away the sleep in my eyes, I groggily dropped the phone in my lap.

Heidi hadn’t even bothered to call me last night.

I turned and, as if I could look through sheetrock, pictured her passed out in bed still. Maybe she’d gotten a cab, or an Uber, or a ride back with one of the girls, and I just hadn’t heard her come in?

I struggled up from my blankets, untangling my long legs, and tramped down the hall still wearing my pink fuzzy socks from the night before. I gently rapped on Heidi’s bedroom door.

No answer.

No big deal. She was a heavy sleeper.

“Heidi?” I asked in a sing-song voice, knocking again. “Heidi? You awake yet?”

Still nothing.

With my mouth suddenly feeling like I’d just tried to eat a bunch of raw cotton, I licked my lips and knocked again, this time hard enough to rattle the door in its frame. “Hey, Heidi!”

Nada.

This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. I opened the door and let myself in.

Her bed was perfectly made, just like she did every morning. The clothes she’d been wearing the day before, the ones prior to the party, were still draped over the back of her vanity chair. A pair of skinny jeans and a tank top.

“Okay,” I said, nodding to myself as I looked at the phone still in my hand, at the way my knuckles were whitening around my viselike grip. “Maybe she stayed the night there? Yeah. I’ll just call her.”

I pulled up the last text I’d received from her as I closed her bedroom door behind me, heading back into the kitchen. It was something inane and innocuous, asking me if I wanted Chinese food Thursday night.

I typed out a quick text. “Still need a ride? Haven’t heard anything.” I hit send as I walked into the kitchen and started to get the coffee maker going. I pulled down the beans and the grinder, scooped some of the fragrant little caffeine nuggets into the motorized pulverizer. I stared out the window over the kitchen sink as I pushed down on the lid and ran them through.

As I stared out at the neighbor’s desert-friendly lawn, with its cacti and rocks, I thought back to that man’s eyes from the night before. Thought back to that ravenous hunger deep inside of them, and the way he’d looked at me.

My heart raced as, for a moment, I saw them again as clear as day. Perfect, pitch-black orbs of contempt and want. Like I was subhuman, and nothing but a piece of flesh to him. The metal blades inches from my hand, chewing away at the roasted coffee beans, reminded me of the kind of thing that man must be.

The grinder stopped, but I continued to stare for a long moment. To swallow down the revulsion I felt at the memory. I opened up the lid, finished preparing my coffee, and set the little appliance to brew. As I went to put the coffee paraphernalia back where it all belonged, I glanced at my phone.

Still no messages. No missed calls.

Where the hell was she?

Was Heidi giving me the cold shoulder because I hadn’t tried calling her last night? Or was she just not paying any attention to her phone? Come to think of it, maybe her phone wasn’t even on.

I picked it up again and navigated to her number, put the call through.

There was no ring on the other end of the line.

Oh, crap! Her phone actually was turned off! I wrapped an arm around my waist, hugging myself tightly as I leaned back against the sink, my shoulders hunched in.

“Hey guys,” her voicemail message began, “it’s Heidi! Sorry I missed your call! Just leave me a message, okay? Or not! It’s your call, after all! Follow your bliss!”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered at the last part, my words mingling with the beep as it sounded. “Hey Heidi, it’s Molly! Um, it’s almost eight already, and I still haven’t heard anything from you, girl. We hadn’t really talked about you staying all night, or anything, so I just wasn’t sure what was going on, and wanted to make sure you were okay, and everything was fine, and you were safe. Um, all right? Please, please, please call me back, okay?”

I hung up the phone and dropped it on the counter. Silence in the house, with just the low gurgling of the coffee maker as it dripped inky blackness into the carafe.

“What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?” I asked the kitchen, drumming my fingers on the counter to either side of my phone as I stared down at it, willing Heidi’s number to appear on the screen in front of me. Call again? Go up there?

I thought of that creepy guy again, shuddering at his memory.

Call again, definitely. No sense in driving all the way up there, just so I could look like a scared, frumpy mother hen. Heidi needed to keep looking like a professional. All I needed to do was make sure she was safe. That was all.

“Call, Heidi,” I whined.

A hissing spit of steam split the air to my left.

I let loose a little scream as I nearly jumped from my skin, frantically looking around.

Beside me, the coffee maker seemed to chortle as it sent out a little spitting gout of steam from its water tank, as if to say, “Got you!”

“Oh, shut up, Mr. Coffee,” I growled.

I picked up the phone, called Heidi’s number again.

“Hey, Heidi! Just, you know, checking in. Let me know what’s up, text me or whatever!”

“Heidi! Hey, girl, Molly again. Ummmm, still haven’t heard from you.”

“Heidi? You’re really freaking me out. Why can’t you at least check your goddamn messages?”

“Heidi! Heidi? Heidi, call me. It’s Molly. Call. Me.”

“Call me!”

I sat there, drumming my fingers to either side. Eight-thirty already, and my untouched coffee was going cold. I eyed the phone, with its complete lack of messages. I picked it up, brought up the call function again.

Biting my lower lip, I pressed the nine.

Chewing a little, I pressed the one.

I put the phone back down, letting out an exasperated sigh as I locked the screen. What was it they always said? Someone had to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before the police took it seriously? And, for a woman in Heidi’s line of work, it would probably have to be even longer.

What was I going to say, anyways, if I called them? “Hey officers! So, I dropped my best friend off at a high-dollar sex party last night, and she still hasn’t called me for her ride home. Would you mind swinging by and knocking on the door to see if she’s still in bed with some rich dude who took too much Viagra? Yeah, I know, I’m kind of an accessory, so please don’t tell the people I work for as a nanny! Thanks bunches!”

No, that wasn’t going to work. Even after the twenty-four-hour window, they probably weren’t going to take me seriously. And, besides, that meant Heidi’s parents would get involved, her friends, and everyone else she’d been trying to keep this part of her life hidden from. All because of what? The fact that I was a little scared right now and on the verge of a full-blown, screaming, sobbing, crying panic?

No, that wasn’t going to work, either. I couldn’t risk ruining my friend’s life until I was completely sure she was missing.

I straightened up, running both hands up my face and back through my hair. I put my hands together in front of me like I was praying. “Think, Molly. What do you do?”

I groaned as, in a flash, it hit me. I needed to go back up there. That was the last place I saw her. That was the first place I needed to go.

All I needed to do was get dressed and make myself presentable, then I’d just go up there.

Right.

Perfect.

God, this was such a bad idea!