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

were unable to locate her, they contacted the police.
    “Charley is a missing persons,” Cameron said.
    Joshua suggested, “Maybe she was found in the Allegheny Mountains.”
    “Based on the tone in Rachel’s voice on that recording,” Cameron said, “they know what happened to her.”
    Joshua slowly shook his head. “That’s what we assume. Nowhere on that recording does it say that they killed her.”
    “Well, someone certainly killed Rachel Burke,” she said.
    “A defense attorney can argue that the meaning in what Rachel said, ‘end up like Charley’ could be to end up missing,” he said.
    “Spoken like a lawyer.”
    “Do you like arresting people only to have them get off?” he asked. “Keep reading.”
    None of the articles that had come up in the search named the friends that Charley Halston had been traveling with.
    “Syracuse, New York, is north of Allegheny National Forest,” she said. “They would have gone right past, if not through, the Allegheny National Forest. Angela Jarvis must have suspected that Charley Halston was the Jane Doe whose body was found in the mountains.”
    Joshua stood up. “We need to find out who Charley’s friends were.”
    “If those friends were the ones who killed her,” Cameron said, “Charley didn’t need any enemies.”
    “When did I get so old?” Cameron whispered to Joshua.
    “About seven years after me,” he whispered back.
    Sitting in the waiting room at the Halston Counseling Clinic, Cameron could not help but notice, how each of the three other people waiting were all young enough to be her children. The laugh lines on her face that jumped out at her in the mirror on the wall didn’t help any.
    Like the others in the waiting room, Joshua scanned the Internet on his tablet to see if he could find more information about Charlene Halston and her disappearance in Syracuse, New York in 1996. The receptionist at the clinic had confirmed their assumption that the owner and chief psychologist at the Halston Clinic was Charley’s sister. She had been a college freshman when Charley disappeared.
    This was further confirmed by a picture of Charlene and a younger version, equally pretty, of her in a frame up on the wall. “She must be the sister,” Cameron noted.
    After almost an hour of waiting because they didn’t have an appointment, a young woman who looked barely old enough to be driving hurried down the stairs and out the door. She had her face buried in a tissue and made squeaky noises during her departure. They were still wondering at what had sent her running when the receptionist told him that Dr. Halston could see them and directed them to the top of the stairs.
    Dr. Halston wore her long dark hair straight and had soft features. In keeping with her status of doctor, she wore a pale blue dress with a jacket accentuating her feminine curves. “You two look more like professors than students.” She offered Cameron her hand. “You can call me Sam. I know most of the professors here on campus, but I don’t believe we met.”
    Joshua shook her hand after she had finished shaking Cameron’s. “That’s because we’re not. I’m a lawyer from Chester, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia; and this is my wife, Detective Cameron Gates. She’s a homicide detective with the Pennsylvania State Police.”
    A flicker of fear crossed Sam’s face before she led them to her office in the corner of the upper floor. As with downstairs, Charlene had left her mark in the form of pictures on the psychologist’s desk and on a shelf on the bookcase.
    “What brings you here?” In her office, Sam took the upholstered chair while directing them to the sofa as if they were a couple in for marriage counseling.
    Joshua took the lead.
    Not wanting to waste her time with the details of how they had come to this point in their case Joshua told her that he was working on another case for a client in Chester, and had come upon the case of Charley Halston’s