Women’sshelter.
The woman behind the desk emphasized “shelter,” and my mind skipped right over, thinking it was some charity and not the sort of place a woman might come to get away from a man who might hurt her.
My gaze returns to the woman behind the desk. “I get it. Sorry. I’ll go.”
And I walk away, giving the wary brunette a wide berth on my way out the door.
“I was about to call you. Any luck?” Vonn approaches from the other side of the road, his eyes flicking to the door I just stepped out of.
I make a face. “Going into a women’s shelter to look for Byrdie wasn’t the best idea I ever had.”
Understanding sweeps across his face, and Vonn winces. “Ah.”
“She might have gone in there, but they wouldn’t tell us if she had. I felt shitty enough for even asking. Where’s Nash?”
Vonn is looking around when Nash, halfway down the street, pops out from an alley and motions us over. “I have something.”
Vonn and I glance at each other and hurry toward Nash.
A woman wearing a million layers stands beside a shopping cart full of cans.
“This woman saw someone matching Byrdie’s description,” Nash explains.
“Information I’m happy to pass on once you pay me for it,” the woman says.
She wants cash for it, and she’s going to tell us whatever we want to hear that will keep her getting paid.
“And we should believe you because…” I let my voice trail off, seeing where this is going: Nash down a couple of hundred bucks with little to show for it.
She rolls her eyes at me. “Believe me or don’t believe me, but I saw the girl getting a donation from the church down the street. They give out free food.”
Vonn catches her eye. “What was she wearing?”
“Where’s my money?” she asks Nash.
Nash pulls out a twenty from his wallet and passes it to her.
It’s gone quick as a flash, buried within the multiple layers of clothes keeping her warm. “She was in a light blue Amish dress.”
“Amish dress?” I frown. “She was wearing jeans when we saw her.”
“Well,” the woman says sarcastically, “considering I walked her into the women’s shelter myself, I figure they didn’t have a spare Amish dress lying around, so a pair of jeans would have to do instead.”
This might be Byrdie, especially since the homeless woman took her to the women’s shelter, but to know for sure, we need answers. If this woman can give them to us, I can swallow my sarcasm for the next five minutes.
“Did you see her again?” I ask her.
Her eyes slide expectantly to Nash, and he pulls another twenty from his wallet and hands it to her. It disappears within her layers of clothing, and she turns back to me.
“I didn’t see her,” she says, and when I glare at her for ripping off Nash, she rolls her eyes at me. “Buta couple of guys were going around flashing her picture a few days later. I was doing my thing on the street and got a peek. She was in some old-fashioned wedding dress.”
“Wedding dress?” I echo.
I remember Vonn saying she was married and hadn’t agreed to it. More and more, I’m sure this has to be Byrdie.
“Was there a guy in the picture?” Vonn asks.
The intensity of Vonn’s demand means she forgets to ask for more money before she answers, “Just her. Picture could have been ripped in half or something. Never saw the girl again. Those guys were showing her picture at the bus station, and they disappeared soon after. Hope they never found her. She seemed a sweet girl. A little too skittish to survive on the streets, but maybe the streets would’ve hardened her up if she’d been on them long enough.”
