Page 94 of No Ordinary Girl
“My sister Daniela,” he said and then pointed to the other pictures. “And that’s Natalia and Natasha.”
Oh… the sisters. I should have known. I smiled, laughing quietly at myself. I took in the rest of the space; lots of books, a textbook, a clock radio, guitar magazines, a guitar in the corner, and up high, on top of his shelf, next to a Rubik’s cube, a photo and a few books, was my origami swan. He’d told me he kept it so I wasn’t surprised to see it there.
“It likes it up there,” he said with a playful smile. I went a bit weak in the knees. I mentally scolded myself -- I wasn’t there for funny business -- I was there for one reason only, for Haley.
“Bummer about the case,” I said.
He picked at the edge of his desk absentmindedly. “Yeah, it’s a bummer.”
“There must be something else we can do?”
“Yeah, I was actually thinking--”
“What?! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking of checking her out on social media… Natalie Foster,” he said. “She must be on there… maybe we could find something.”
It was an excellent idea -- I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. “Yes!”
“Can you read images?” he asked. “Could you get something off someone’s feed?”
“Maybe…” I wasn’t sure. “The police are probably doing the same thing, I’d imagine,” I said, playing the devil’s advocate.
“Well, more eyes couldn’t hurt, could they?”
“True,” I agreed.
We practically ran to the media center. We only had an hour. “I really hate these rules and restrictions,” I moaned as we sat in front of a monitor. “Don’t you?”
“Yep, I’m with you,” he agreed, clicking away on the sleek silver keyboard. We clicked, Googled, creeped, and stalked Natalie Foster for the next hour or so -- turns out there are a lot of Natalie Fosters out there.
We only had about twenty minutes to go when we finally hit the jackpot. We’d already found Natalie’s Facebook page -- typical page; lots of photos of her cat (he was super cute), her nails, her shoes, inspirational quotes, and a few pics of hairstyles she’d created. Strangely though, there weren’t too many photos of people. My intuition told me that she was a lonely woman. As expected, there were no photos of Mason Henderson.
We dug deep though, and went a few years back down on her feed. “I wonder if Facebook ever crashes when you creep someone too much,” I joked.
“I doubt it… wouldn’t know,” he said, his eyes fixed to the screen. “Oh wait…” He scrolled back to a photo of a young man; handsome, dark hair. His name was Peter. “Who’s this?”
Judging from the various photos of them together, he appeared to be an old boyfriend. And interestingly, around the same time, there were a few photos of her baseball team; a bunch of smiling faces in yellow and red uniforms. Mason was there.
What had happened to Peter?
Of course, we checked out Peter’s page. Typical guy. He liked to party with his buddies, he dated a blonde for a while, before then, a brunette. He wore a suit for work -- he worked in finances. Had a nice car, and a weakness for expensive wine. And he also had a cute little green cottage. We went all the way back to his time with Natalie. They were definitely a couple back in the day. There were tons of photos of them, the same ones we’d seen on her page. Smiling selfies, in fancy restaurants, hanging in the city, and at the cottage. They seemed happy, like they had the whole world at their feet.
“I wonder if she broke up with him because of Mason,” I said. She was clearly happy in these photos, but Peter seemed like a boy-next-door; handsome but not gorgeous, fun but not dangerous, not too intoxicating. Mason Henderson, on the other hand, with his model-like looks and striking blue eyes, was that guy. When I’d first met him, he’d reminded me of Ace.
“Probably,” Leo said as he scrolled through the photos. “Wait!” he suddenly blurted out. “I get something from this photo. There’s something there.”
I studied the picture carefully. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it. It was a nice photo of the two of them standing in front of the green cottage. The leaves had turned yellow and orange -- it was obviously fall. They were both wearing puffy vests; his was orange and hers was black. She wore a cute pink winter hat. She looked pretty and happy. It was a wide shot -- someone else had taken the photo.
“I don’t see anything,” I said. “It’s just a photo of them standing in front of a cottage.”
The caption above the photo read:So sad to say goodbye to this beauty soon. :(
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked. “Was he planning to break up with her?”
Leo laughed. “No… my uncle, Will, has one of those little cottages,” he told me. “Every year he needs to close it up for the winter. He was probably talking about the cottage.”
Oh… I felt like an idiot.
