The Vanishing Girls by Callie Browning (read this if txt) 📕

the side before saying soberly, “Good luck with de new job, sweet girl. This life ain’t for everybody.” Behind the closed door, the rotary phone rang with a muffled jangle like it was underwater.

Clifford screwed the cap on the jar and raised an eyebrow at her. “That phone like de Grim Reaper he-self. I suggest you answer it.”

Eileen spun around and rushed to her desk. She lifted the black rotary phone’s receiver, her pen poised over a notepad as Clifford came into the room behind her while wiping his hands on a clean cloth. He was impassive as he watched the colour drain from her face. He waited until she’d hung up and asked, “Where am I headed?”

Eileen stared back at him, her fingers and face numb with shock. “Huxley.”

Chapter 2

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The month of May might have been rolling to a close, but the harvest season was in full swing. Every factory buzzed with activity as Bedford trucks rolled in, their cargo beds stuffed with fat stalks of sugar cane. Managers paced in front of chalkboards filled with quotas and yields that haunted them at night. A sick engineer or broken down truck brought out cold sweats and ulcer pills. But sometimes, these mundane obstacles paled in comparison to life’s more grisly problems.

Such was the case when a short, slim manager with a balding pate, named Herman Walkes, pulled out what was left of his hair after he got the disturbing news. Walkes slammed a red helmet onto his head, stormed across the yard and into the factory. He marched past the massive roller where the aroma of pressed cane juice wafted into the air, past the boilers, and into the engine room where the scent of molasses gave way to the stench of engine grease. Behind the heavy iron door, a small crowd gathered next to the controls. They looked up in unison as Walkes threw up his hands and huffed, “What the ass happen now?”

Gibson, the line supervisor, stepped forward. He clutched his clipboard and said, “Well… I loaded the cane on the belt and everything start moving down the line. I ain't see nothing funny ’til John shout that something catch up in the number three press and tell me to stop it. I hit the override the same time.” Sweat beaded on Gibson’s top lip, and he shuffled his feet as he glanced at the press from the corner of his eye. “Then I see something on the belt.”

Walkes squinted at Gibson. He’d barely heard him over the puffing and squealing of the machinery, but the story made no sense. His irritation grew as Gibson spoke again.

“So I call you because you is the man in charge.”

“Gibson, stop talking all over your face. Show me the problem!”

The tall, stocky man pointed at the belt leading to the cane crusher’s heavy iron teeth. There, intertwined among the tangle of canes, was a woman’s bent leg under the hem of a yellow dress.

Walkes stepped gingerly toward the body, the engine’s clanking and wheezing fading around him as though he’d fallen headlong into an alternate reality. A light breeze swept through the vent shaft and across the conveyor belt, fluttering the woman’s dress and making his heart skip a beat. After a few seconds, sure that the young lady would never move again, he fainted.

By the time Walkes came to, his head throbbing from the generous bump on his noggin, production at Huxley Sugar Factory had been ground to a halt and the police had been summoned. Every piece of machinery was silenced, their motors put to rest as the plant was declared a crime scene and investigations began. Walkes gave his statement to an officer, conveniently leaving out the time he’d spent sprawled on the floor. He shouted every word of his account, his mind unable to reconcile the fact that Huxley was quiet for the first cane season in over thirty years.

Police milled about in the yard, questioning workers as investigators with gloved hands collected anything that might be connected to the woman’s discovery. Photojournalists wiggled camera lenses between rusty chain links, searching out the best angles to capture the unfolding saga on film and guarantee healthy newspaper sales the next day.

The funeral home’s unmarked van arrived and removed the body around noon. Just down the road in a freshly cut field, uniformed officers combed through rotting heaps of cane trash for clues, a more daunting task than searching for a needle in a haystack.

It was the second body discovered in a cane field that year, both of them young women who had gone missing shortly before their bodies had turned up. The first victim, Anna Brown, had disappeared one sunny Thursday morning after she’d waved goodbye to her neighbour and said she would return later that day. But it was not to be. The neighbour promptly went into labour and delivered a bouncing baby boy the next morning. She didn’t notice that Anna hadn’t returned until days later when the phone in the apartment above kept ringing and waking her newborn.

That murder had perplexed the public for days before being swallowed up by the news cycle. Anna had been relegated to the annals of history until the discovery at Huxley. Now Anna’s name was being dusted off, and new life breathed into her murder case. Word spread like wildfire that another body had been found, renewing the public’s thinly veiled zeal for mystery and intrigue.

Eileen had expected Clifford to return with a sad face and drooped shoulders when he came back around closing time, but his lope was as measured as it was when he left. Clifford seemed to sense Eileen’s nerves; he smiled at her, but his face sobered when he looked across at Holden. Clifford flicked his eyes to the right and went into the viewing room. Holden took the hint and followed, closing the door softly behind him.

Eileen eased her chair as near to the door as she could,