The Villas at Yorktown wasn’t bad. That isn’t to say it was good, just that it wasn’t bad. Off a highway I didn’t recognize, it was one of those apartment complexes that drapes advertising banners across multiple units to advertise their “amazing deals!”
“Don’t January’s parents live around here?” Jess said. Her voice was still a bit raw and dull from her crying jag this morning.
“Not here. They’re somewhere else in the city. I barely remember which highway we took from the airport,” I replied, as we parked our cloud high up.
My human parents, and really, the only parents I knew, were mostly journalists, save my stepmom, who did billing at a doctor’s office. After my brother and I had moved out of the house, my dad and stepmom grew roots and became fixtures of their neighborhood, while my mom and stepdad continued to follow their careers, which took them to Phoenix, then Tulsa.
“Do you want to see them?” Jess asked.
The question felt loaded. Of all my family, I probably got on best with my mom and stepdad, but that wasn’t saying much. Though my brother and I were learning to enjoy each others’ company as we got older, things had been strained in my immediate family since I came out- fully out. It wasn’t that they disapproved, they were just investigative journalists and all they could see were the statistics, which included me dead in a ditch because some asshole decided today was the day to trash the butch-looking lesbo.
Oh, how the stakes had risen.
Glancing at her, I saw her expression was more reserved than usual. Wary. Was Jess probing me? Looking for flashes of January or Blossom? I didn’t know, but I knew she wanted an honest answer.
I mulled it quietly for a minute, strapping on half of her utility belt with my phone and a multitool in it.
“I do,” I said. “But not right now. Mom didn’t take my... Coming out so well. I’d want to call ahead for this.”
Jess gave me a look that I translated as “You’re just putting off how you don’t want to call ahead to tell her that her daughter is dead and a stranger pony is in her place.”
I didn’t comment, instead indicating down with my head and diving from the cloud.
“Okay...” I muttered. “You absorb enough detective fiction. Get your Sherlock on, girl.”
We found Rhea’s apartment easily enough. Second floor, away from the parking lot and in the back, just like Carlisle had described. A rusted “27” hung on nails on the apartment’s door.
I looked around. Details were going to be the things that spoke here. What could they tell me?
I didn’t see any police tape, nor did I see any sign that anyone had been there recently.
“Wrought iron going to rust, but still sturdy...” I said softly. “Leaves and debris, water damage on siding... Concrete steps on both sides...”
“New locks,” Jess pointed out.
I turned to the deadbolt on 27 and it shone where the handle didn’t. I couldn’t see any patch job on the frame so...
“She lost her key recently or they’ve evicted her already. I’m leaning toward the former since I don’t see picked apart furniture or a dumpster with fresh things.
“Nobody’s done a missing person’s either...” I continued. “There’d be tape. More signs of police.”
“So what next?” Jess asked.
“We knock,” I said, smiling.
She cocked her head at me.
I went to the door and knocked my forehoof against it.
“Rhea? Hello? Hi, I’m Blossom Jane! Fellow pony! Look, a friend of yours, Carlisle, was looking for you so if you could, I dunno, shout through the door or something? We just wanna make sure you’re okay!”
Silence.
“Rhea?” I raised my voice.
“No answer,” Jess said, her ear flicking.
I nodded. Looked around again. C’mon, c’mon... Ah. Duh.
“Hey, remember how we were all thumbs with our hooves at first?”
Jess cocked her head again and I flapped so I was at door handle height. Reaching my neck out, I bit down and twisted. The door opened easily.
“That’s good,” Jess said, dread coloring her voice.
“New deadbolt that wasn’t turned, and now we’re at the cusp of criminal trespass,” I grumbled, drolly.
“Rhea? Hello?” I called out, sticking just my head in the apartment.
Jess flapped over me to land in the living room. She looked over her shoulder, expression a bit smug. I sighed.
“Um. Didn’t you hear me say ‘criminal trespass?’” I said.
“Yes. I also heard you tell Carlisle you’d check up on Rhea.”
“To see if she was home, file a missing person’s... What if she’s at work?”
“Then we’ll see signs of it rather than the shattered glass in the kitchen I’m looking at.”
I scrunched my face, my intrigue overriding my urge to follow a law I was already uncertain of given the circumstances. Intrigue won out, so with a worried grin I came into the apartment, softly kicking the door shut behind me.
It was small and not made for company.
One bedroom, one bathroom and a living room that was only separated from the kitchen by a partition. Wall scrolls and posters of dour and contemplative-looking characters were the prime decoration. So were a few dashing dude figurines and Friendship is Magic fan made posters with most depictions being of Luna. Beyond that, pretty spartan.
What looked like a third-hand couch in the living room across from an okay TV. Kitchen was supplied by Wal-mart from what I saw. Bathroom looked more like my parents’ guest bathroom than something personal. Bed was big enough for one with a dresser nearby. If not for all the geeky and brightly colored wall hangings, I’d have thought we’d entered a military cookie-cutter apartment that hadn’t seen a dusting or vacuuming in recent times.
“Someone left messy,” Jess commented from the bedroom.
A pile of clothes that looked like they’d been yanked from the hangers rather than taken off normally were bunched on the bottom. An empty space toward the back most likely was a knapsack or small carry-on.
“What do you see?” I asked, still looking around.
“Geek,” Jess said. “She’s got a thing for Luna.”
“She’s got a thing for the socially awkward ones,” I said. I recognized one of the girls on a wall scroll in the living room as Hinata from Naruto- an anime series I only half knew about thanks to fan osmosis and Tumblr.
“And dashing men,” I added noting the penchant for figurines of smiling rogues in suits. “What else?”
“Are you doing that Sherlock thing where you test me because you already know?” Jess said, her voice pinching in annoyance.
“I’m doing that me thing where I check with you because I’m too busy thinking about the girl and who she is rather than looking for indications that she hello!”
“What?” Jess asked.
“Did Rhea have silky, blue hair in that picture Carlisle showed us?” I asked flapping over to the bed.
Jess came out of the closet. “No, why?”
Lifted my hoof and draped across was a shed mane hair.
“The broken glass, the way everything’s sort of strewn about, the state of the bathroom...”
“The purse dump,” Jess said.
I raised an eyebrow.
Rolling her eyes, Jess said, “Those of us who don’t just get jackets with pockets and actually use purses know what happens when they get upended.” She indicated a trail near the bedroom door I had taken as part of the apartment’s mess. It was tissues, pens, some gum- Oh. Duh.
“Upended purse stuff,” I agreed. “Like... If she slung it on automatically and it started dragging and dumped?”
Jess nodded, liking my assessment.
“Well, I may be going out on the limb, but couple all that with my smoking hair here and I’d say... Pony,” I said.
Jess rolled her eyes. “Good catch, Sherlock. Whatever would we do without you?”
~
Before we left the apartment, we also found hoofprints around the doorknob, which, on top of the hair, really drove home what had happened.
“Why all this trouble?” Jess asked as we flew back to Suzy.
“She didn’t have support,” I responded.
Jess looked at me as we settled on Suzy and I pulled up the iPad.
“You saw all the evidence we needed for pony as well as her habits, right?”
Jess nodded. One of my favorite things about her was how brutally intelligent she was. She’d introduced me to Locked Room games and while I was good at spotting the weird things, Jess was dynamite at actually figuring out the puzzles.
“Well, I saw the girl,” I said. “Did you?”
“Geek, kinda lonely. Didn’t look like she had a lot of friends over.”
“She didn’t have any friends over,” I replied, tapping out my message to Carlisle.
I could feel Jess looking the question into the back of my head.
“Tiny space, third-hand furniture, nicest thing in there was the TV and DVD player and all the characters that weren’t dude candy were socially awkward in one way or another. That’s a lot of isolation and empathy. There was a pony fan in that apartment, but there was also a nerd girl who didn’t call anyone for a day nor make a post about turning into a pony online. Either through her own inability to work her body or, my guess, crippling social fears.”
“And you know about those?” Jess said.
I stopped typing and looked up. “Yeah. My roommate before you. I hid in my room whenever she was around. I didn’t go out, I didn’t invite people over because I was ashamed of the mess she left. Rhea didn’t have the roommate, clearly, but I’d bet my blood feathers that space was for her and her alone to hold off the big wide world.”
Jess looked at me and turned away. Her face looked pained.
“I’m letting Carlisle know that we’re ninety-percent certain she’s gone pony and is on the run. I’m asking if she had any haunts or anyone he thinks she’d go to.”
Jess nodded, moving to the side of the cloud and plopping down. I put the iPad away.
“I’m going to want to check in with the police if we can’t find her at a bus stop or something,” I said, going across the cloud to her.
“Sounds good.” The life was out of her voice again. Now that she wasn’t focusing on Rhea, she was back to wherever she’d been this morning.
I sat next to her, put a wing around her.
“Thank you,” she said. “For being kind. Like she was.”
I didn’t say anything. Tightening my wing’s grip around her, I waited for Carlisle to respond and give us something else to focus on.