Chapter Twenty-One #2
Hattie Bellanger reached into the drawer of a table next to the couch and extracted a red journal.
Her hand shook as she held it toward Zach.
Confused, Zach took it. “It’s my daughter’s diary,” she said.
“I didn’t even know she kept one.” She sniffled, blotted her nose.
“As I’m sure you know, she lived in the dorms at UC, but she had spent the night here a couple of days before she disappeared.
I…” Her face crumpled slightly, but she took a deep breath, gaining control of her emotions once more.
“I can still smell her on the pillowcase. I go in there sometimes just to…feel her presence.” Her voice faded away for a moment and Zach waited.
She pulled her shoulders straighter. “Anyway, this morning I lay down on the bed and caught a glimpse of something red behind the bed, through the wrought iron slats. When I pulled the bed from the wall, I found that”—she nodded to the journal—“on the floor against the wall as though it’d fallen there the last time she’d slept in that bed. She probably hadn’t even realized.”
“Have you looked through this, ma’am?”
Mrs. Bellanger nodded, her face taking on a strange expression.
Guilt? Almost as though, even in death, she feared she’d invaded her daughter’s privacy.
Or maybe she was disturbed by what she’d read.
“It sounded like she was sleeping with someone,” she said, her eyes downcast. “But she hadn’t said anything about a boyfriend, and she was usually open about that stuff… dating and whatnot.”
“Did she give a name?”
“No, but she apparently met him on Wednesday nights.”
Wednesday nights. “Any indication why that night in particular?”
“No, but she had to have met him after class. Wednesday night she took an English literature class from five to seven. It was the only time the class was available, even though she preferred to take morning classes and study in the evenings. Miriam had a learning disability. School was always a bit of a struggle for her. But we were so happy when she got accepted to UC. It’s a good school, she’d worked hard, and it was right here in town.
” Grief passed over her expression, and her eyes welled with tears.
Zach tapped the notebook on his knee. “Thank you for this, Mrs. Bellanger. It could help.” They both looked incredibly tired, haunted.
He would ask only the most important questions and then leave them to their family.
“And it will help me understand Miriam’s state of mind prior to her disappearance. ”
“There are personal things in there, Detective, things that—”
“No one will look at this journal except the people investigating this crime, Mrs. Bellanger, you have my word.”
Mrs. Bellanger nodded. “I’d lain down on that bed before, Detective,” she murmured, her eyes going distant, “and I’d never seen the journal.
At some point, it must have shifted from where it’d fallen so I could see it.
It almost felt like Miriam was reaching out from the grave.
Giving us the clue we needed to find the person who took her from us. ”
* * *
Zach sat at his desk, reading through Miriam Bellanger’s personal account of her last months on Earth.
Most of the entries were short, listing the date, where she’d gone, the initials of the people who had been there, and a brief description of the event.
Zach referenced her case file as he used a sticky pad below the entries to write out the whole name of each friend the police had interviewed when Miriam was reported missing.
She had a regular crew, it seemed. Her roommate, two female friends who also lived in the UC dorms, and a couple guy friends who lived in a fraternity house off campus.
Included among the bar and club outings, parties, Zumba classes, hair appointments, and dinner dates were indications that she was meeting someone at least once a week and that they were having sex. Zach tapped the page that read: Feb. 8, Sex on PMs desk, so hot. W. almost caught us. Oops.
PM. Zach leafed through her case file again, looking for someone with the initials PM, but didn’t find anything.
Wednesday nights. English lit. He’d need to get a class list from three months ago, see if anyone she’d attended class with had those initials.
Maybe Miriam had met someone in her class who she hadn’t mentioned to her parents because she wasn’t interested in dating him, per se, but in a casual hookup.
Not exactly the kind of thing a college girl tells her mom and dad about.