Page 116 of Avenging Angel

Luna and I used the time between our shift ending and going to see Betsy to sit out in front of Eat Up Drive In, snarfing down an early dinner of sandwiches (Luna, Main Chick, me, braised BBQ short rib) and discussing what Clarice and Cap knowing each other back in the day in Denver might mean.

Unsurprisingly, we came up with no answers, so we decided I should confront her with that.

As such, we called to make another appointment with her.

Her assistant told us, considering it was the end of the business day (which it was, it was two to five,oops!), she’d need time to consult Clarice’s diary, and she’d get back to us on that.

We moved on to debating if we should recruit Harlow and Jessie into our thing, and we decided that we were too new to it, we shouldn’t involve them just yet.

So it was going to be Luna and me hitting The Slide strip club as soon as we could. And that would be after I had dinner with Dad and knew what my plans were for his visit to Phoenix (he was leaving on Sunday), and after I smoothed things out with Cap (or, God, I hoped I did).

But we figured it might need to be a late-night thing, after I spent some time with Dad, and we preliminarily set that for Thursday.

We then shifted to the intel we were given about Betsy.

Her name was Betsy Markovic. She was fifty-two and single mom to Christina, who was now twenty-one.

Apparently, Christina was a handful growing up, and this went into overdrive when she was a teen.

The sitch got out of hand, and the two parted ways when Christina was twenty.

Once she left home, Christina didn’t bother asking for an application from J. Crew. She hit the streets right away. She disappeared from those streets not long after, about a year ago.

The police didn’t look too deeply into Christina’s “disappearance” (the quotes were how the officials looked at it). Betsy and Christina had been going at each other for a while, getting so loud at one point when Christina was eighteen, the cops were called to calm things down.

The police didn’t put a lot behind it because, first, they weren’t entirely sure she was missing, but instead, they thought it highly likely she’d just taken off. She had a boyfriend and he was nowhere to be found either, so they thought the two of them drove off into the sunset, and since she didn’t get along with her mom, she didn’t let her know. And second, they didn’t have a ton of resources to waste on a twenty-year-old woman who might have just left town with her guy.

This was a point to ponder, and Luna and I pondered it.

Because it could be that the police weren’t falling down on the job.

People moved. Circumstances changed. Mothers had hip replacement therapy, and you had to go home and take care of them. And if you worked on the street, you didn’t put formal notice in to your manager to share what was going down.

Luna and I didn’t have a lot of experience, and maybe the girls were a lot closer than what we’d observed last night. But it might be these gals, especially if they were new, hadn’t made connections in order to share they were taking off with their man or to look after their mom or whatever.

We made note to ask for info on Christina’s boyfriend, because if we could track him down, we might find Christina, or get something else to go on. Whichever way it swung, he was definitely a lead we could follow.

We also took some time to marvel at how much information was provided in such a short period of time, again realizing just how much “We” was not messing around.

We then took Luna’s Prius to go switch out cars, debating along the way if we should do Mercedes or Accord.

Since Betsy lived in a not-great neighborhood on the west side of the city, we decided on the Accord.

Luna driving this time, we headed her way.

We parked out front of her house, which was tidy, but Betsy should consider a xeriscape, since, taking in the massive dead patches intermingled with green ones, it was clear some of her sprinkler heads had given up the ghost.

I had Christina’s picture on my wall at home. I got it from theRepublic. She had dark hair, blue eyes and a snarky look on her face.

When we knocked on the door and the woman opened it, I saw immediately that Christina took after her dad.

Perhaps, since he was absentee, this was one of the issues these two had. Not fun to confront the man who left you alone to raise your daughter every time you looked at said daughter.

Betsy was a flaming redhead with light-brown eyes, an upturned nose, and a pear-shaped, petite frame.

She also had a kind, but haggard and sad face. A face that didn’t screamI fight with my daughter all the time!So, to me, it was also a surprising face.

“Can I help you?” Betsy asked.

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