It was a long shot but it was a lead if Jamie ever saw one. A missing girl, teenage and of the upper class. It wasn’t exactly the ideal case when considering what young, privileged girls in uptight towns were known to do, but it was enough to spark Jamie’s interest. If he was right, then all the missing kids in Gravewood were linked and Vanessa Birkenshire was most definitely a connection to Alfie Caldwell and Stella Ascott.
With the way the club was progressing, Jamie’s hopes didn’t rise but rather plummet to new depths. The manpower he had hoped for ebbed and flowed like a leaky faucet with various obligations getting in the way that weren’t there when they were kids. Jobs, hobbies, familial debt. In a way, Jamie was glad. For all the leadership classes they forced him to take at Alberione, he never thought much about delegating tasks or taking time to teach others when he managed to do most things on his own and from the looks of how far they’d gotten together, he was right to do so.
Kaz had been the only one persistent on abandoning his responsibilities during a weekday afternoon. Although Jamie would’ve argued that he needed the schooling more than any of them, claims of a sports scholarship and something about touchdowns made him acquiesce before he got an earful of sports jargon.
‘Meet me at Marie’s’, Jamie’s text read. He added a burger and shake emoji in case Kaz had trouble reading it.
The old diner had always been center of town, smack dab in the middle of the north and south of Gravewood with it’s garish, neon pink sign reading ‘MARIE’S’ in bubbly cursive. History had it that the place was erected in the late 50s by a black family in hopes of diminishing the class discrepancy during a time where the townsfolk were less tolerant of each other over things more petty than God. Now, Marie’s was a landmark that persisted against time. A place that stood as the backdrop to many milestones, whether it be a birthday, date or a missing person’s investigation.
Jamie waited outside by the door, looking like a troll who’d begrudgingly come out from under his bridge. The bags underneath his eyes were especially heavy under his eyes in the daylight. It’d been a while since he’d been awake during normal people hours.
Patrons who came in and out of the diner gave him wary glances before insisting that they had no change, to which Jamie responded by giving them the bird.
“What happened to lightning fast feet?” he asked, when Kaz finally arrived. He narrowed his eyes at the brightness that he brought with him in proud Ghoul green.
“This is just the first place, pal. We’ve only got ‘til sundown before the others all close.”