Bianca lifted her shoulders. “She really didn’t have a boyfriend, was, you know, just part of the group.”
“She didn’t date?”
“She hooked up with Austin a couple of times, I think, but that was a while back. It never became anything. I think she likes him because he’s rich and his dad helped him get into some big Ivy League college.” She glanced back at the screen to the frozen image. “She really wants to go away to a four-year school, like her brother did. But he got some kind of athletic scholarship and her folks told her they really can’t afford for both of them to go away to school or something. They want her to live at home for a while until Malcolm graduates, and she thinks that’s crap.”
“But she gets along with her folks.”
“Yeah, oh, yeah, I think so.”
Two more texts had chimed in during their conversation and Bianca glanced at her phone.
“If you hear anything, let me know, okay?”
Bianca nodded, glanced at the phone. She chewed on her lip and looked tense.
“You okay?” Pescoli asked, sensing more.
“Sure.” No enthusiasm.
She prodded. “So how’s the ankle?”
“It still hurts.”
Pescoli started to get up but paused. “Are you sure about this—?” She motioned to the tablet and the frozen footage of the television show.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m sure,” Bianca snapped, suddenly defensive. “I know you don’t like it, think it’s a ‘crock’ and a ‘fake’ and whatever else, but I think it’s interesting and fun and might be, like Michelle says, a start of my acting career.” She jutted out her chin, her eyes focused on her mother’s face, almost daring her to engage in a fight.
“I think it’s a mistake.”
“I know.”
Pescoli wanted to go off the rails on the show, Barclay Sphinx, the whole preposterousness of the situation. She was tired of pretending she understood. “There is no Big Foot.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Bianca countered as she hit the button on her iPad to start the program going again. “Because there is going to be a TV show about it.”
“And that’s what matters?”
“Exactly.”
There was no use arguing. Her daughter was as stubborn as she was, and when Bianca set her mind, there was no changing it. So arguments about integrity or what was “real” in reality TV were going to fall on deaf ears. “Just let me know if you hear anything about Destiny or Lindsay, okay?”
But Bianca had already tuned in to the apparently fascinating story line of Big Foot Territory: Oregon!
So what was next, Pescoli wondered with an inward sigh, after Sphinx’s new series on Sasquatch? Something like The Real Housewives of Grizzly Falls?
She made a strangled sound and padded downstairs to the den and Santana.
* * *
Alone in her room, her ankle throbbing, Bianca was bummed.
Nothing seemed to be going right.
Destiny’s murder was always right there. Everyone was still talking about it, and there was even a vigil scheduled for later tonight.
Bianca wondered what had happened to her. Why had she been killed and left or dumped in the stream? It was unnerving. She glanced out the window to the fading sunlight. She couldn’t help but think she might know the killer. Wasn’t that what Mom thought, kept hinting at?
Worse yet, now Lindsay had disappeared. Had she really been kidnapped as some people thought? Or had she just taken off, tired of her parents butting into her life?