Beauty to Die For and Other Mystery Shorts by Lauren Carr Read Free Book Online

have you have been up in the Allegheny Mountains?”
    “Everyone around here has been up there.” Susan glared at him. “Why do you ask?”
    “I was just wondering,” he replied. “As deep and thick as the woods are in those mountains, you can dump a body and no one would find it for years.”
    Her lips, caked with pink lipstick, quivered. “Good-bye, Mr. Thornton. Next time you have questions, I think you should call my lawyer.”
    It was time for lunch when Joshua Thornton pulled off the Pennsylvania turnpike to take him and Cameron to the University of Pittsburgh.
    “She’s lying,” he told Cameron the dozenth time since they had left for their road trip. “She looked me straight in the eye and lied.”
    Cameron agreed. “There’s no way Linda Pryor would have mentioned Charley with her in the room if she wasn’t aware of what she was talking about.”
    Since the University of Pittsburgh was where the three women had met and created a lifelong bond, it was the logical place to start toward uncovering their secret.
    The state park police at Allegheny National Forest was of little help to fill in the blanks about the unidentified body from the newspaper article. The officer Cameron spoke to on the phone was unfamiliar with the case. After leaving her on hold so long that she thought she had been forgotten, the officer returned to say that the case was still open. They believed Jane Doe had been killed by a blow to the head and there was no record in the case file about how long ago she would have been killed.
    “Does the ME still have the remains?” Cameron asked.
    “Sure,” the officer replied.
    “Then you must have the DNA or dental records for comparison if that body is the remains of who I think she is,” she said.
    “Who do you think she is?” the officer asked.
    “I have no idea,” Cameron replied.
    On the way up the twisting road toward the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, Joshua noticed a two-story red brick colonial home with green shutters that reminded him of his uncle’s farmhouse in Chester. A painted sign in the front yard read: Halston Center for Clinical Counseling. Below the phone number and website, in italic font, it read: Students Welcome.
    Joshua drove on past the building to the library on the other side of the campus.
    The librarian at the university library appeared to have been up too late the night before. Through sleepy eyes and lines on her face, she almost glared at Cameron for interrupting her zombie nap to ask where the school yearbooks were shelved. With a grunt, she pointed to a corner as if to order her and Joshua to detention for bothering her.
    Susan, Linda, and Rachel had entered the university in 1993. They graduated in 1997. The college yearbooks for that period seemed like a worthwhile place to search for Charley or Charlene.
    Joshua found Charley in the third yearbook: 1993. It helped that Ronald Pryor had been University of Pittsburgh’s star quarterback. In the 1993 yearbook, he found Ronald’s picture with a brunette with long wavy hair. The picture appeared to have been taken in a radio station where Charley Halston, a communications major, was interviewing the athlete for the university radio station.
    “Charley Halston?” Joshua asked Cameron. “I wonder if that’s the same Halstons that own that clinic we passed on the way here.”
    On her mini-laptop, Cameron connected to the free wi-fi to do a search of the Associated Press website for the name Charlene Halston in news items published during the years 1994-1998.
    A moment later, the site came up with a handful of articles. The first in the list was dated October 13, 1996: Co-ed Disappears After Univ of Pitt-NYU Football Game
    The article went on to report that Charlene Halston, a University of Pittsburgh junior, disappeared in Syracuse, New York. Reportedly, the twenty-one year old, brunette, had gotten separated from her friends while clubbing after the game. Hours later, when her friends