Once in a Blue Moon (Large Print)

Excerpt

Reno, Nevada 1981

The first time Kerrie Ann disappeared was only the warning shot, as it turned out. Lindsay was fixing them something to eat and looked up from scraping scrambled eggs on to their plates to ask Kerrie Ann if she wanted ketchup with hers, to find the folding chair in which her three-year-old sister had been sitting just moments before, swinging her small feet in their dirty pink Keds back and forth, back and forth, in that annoying ways of hers that caused the chair's hollow aluminum frame to squeak like a rusty hinge, empty. The only indication that she'd been there were her stubby crayons, strewn over the tabletop next to the open Washoe County yellow pages, where she'd been coloring an ad for pet supplies-a cartoon dog begging for treats. It was as if she'd vanished into thin air: Tabitha playing games on Bewitched.
 
"Kerrie Ann?" Lindsay kept her voice low, so as not to wake their mom. Crystal's shift ended when most people were getting up to go to work. Often she didn't get home until the sky was light, and then she would sleep straight through until the following evening. Crystal's one ironclad rule was that she not be disturbed during those hours. Damn it, Linds. I bust my ass for a few lousy dollar bills off the craps tables and I'm supposed to wipe your snotty little noses on top of it?

Kerrie Ann wasn't in the living room when Lindsay checked. There was no muffled giggle from behind the sofa-an old, nubby-beige one that smelled of mildew and had a coffee-colored stain in the shape of the African continent on one of its cushions--where at night they slept, toe to toe, Lindsay with her knees tucked up to give her sister more room. No singsong voice calling, "See if you can find me!" The only sounds were those of a car engine firing noisily in the parking lot below and the asthmatic gurgling of the window unit as it sluggishly stirred the hot, close air of room 22 in the Lucky Seven Motel without doing much to cool it.

There was only one other place her sister could be.
 
Lindsay crept to the bedroom door and cracked it open as quietly as possible. Pale fingers of light poking through the drawn blinds traced the outline of the figure sprawled face-up atop the unmade bed. Crystal was still dressed in the clothes she'd worn to work the night before-tight white jeans and a stretchy purple top with spangles sewn across the front-her makeup smeared and her platinum hair mussed. Something winked at Lindsay in the darkness: the toe of a patent-leather high heel peeking like a shiny black nose from the hamster's nest of discarded clothing on the floor beside the bed.
 
There was no sign of Kerrie Ann.

- From the book, Once In A Blue Moon.