The first room Max unlocked was Christine’s. Sophia went in cautiously.
“I’ll go unlock the other rooms while you look around,” Max said.
“OK, sounds good, thanks,” Sophia answered.
Christine’s room was pretty messy. Not ran-sacked messy, but teen-ager messy. Clothes were thrown on the floor and empty wrappers and food all over the place. Sophia poked around in the mess to see if anything looked like a clue, but she didn’t really know what to look for. She went into the bathroom and there was make up all over the counter and wet towels on the floor. “This room’s a mess,” she thought to herself. She left the bathroom and walked around the bed and sat by the pillow. Just then Max poked in his head to let her know all the rooms were unlocked and that he would be waiting for her down the hall.
Sophia said “OK,” then she proceeded to open the bedside table to look at the contents. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. She moved a couple things around and came across a piece of paper that was sticking up. She picked it up and opened it, it was a note. It said “Please meet me for a walk on our beach at 4:30…. our little secret!” with a little smiley face. “Wow, what was this? And who was it from?” she asked herself quietly. Irene had said that none of the girls had boyfriends. This was important she decided. She opened up a bag that she had brought to put evidence in and sealed it up and labeled it. Then she snapped a few pictures of the room and made her way on the Lea’s room.
The first thing Sophia noticed when she entered Lea’s room was that it was immaculate. Not one thing was out of place and everything was put away. The room was decorated very chic and sophisticated and even the bathroom was neat and tidy. There wasn’t anything to suggest a struggle in here or even to suggest foul play.
Just like in Christine’s room Sophia opened the bedside table. She found a wallet and a cell phone. Tucked into a little pocket of the wallet was a small picture of two young adults holding a little girl, presumably Christine’s parents. They looked like a very happy family. Not finding anything else that looked important and knowing Luke would want to take a look at the phone; she put it in a bag with the wallet and sealed it, then labeled it. Sophia then took a few pictures of the room and headed over to Bella’s room.
Walking through the door of Bella’s room, Sophia thought the room looked relatively clean. Some clothes were on the chair, but for the most part things looked tidy. She did notice, however, the absence of any personal décor other than a framed picture of a large family and a bible on the desk. “That’s really odd,” thought Sophia. Irene said that Bella had told her she was an orphan. So who was this family? She took some pictures of it to show Luke later and then thumbed through a few pages of the bible. It had someone’s family history in the front. Sophia took some pictures of that too. Also tucked in the front of the book was a photo of a young handsome man with blonde hair. Sophia thought that might be useful so she took a picture of it on her phone and replaced the picture. Then she moved on to Susanna’s room.
Susanna’s room had the least amount of items in it as far as clothing and décor than all of them. She had been here the shortest time of all the missing women so that was understandable. Sophia had thought that Susanna must not have had time yet to go shopping or to decorate. She walked into the bathroom and saw a large bag/purse on the counter. It was loaded with make-up and brushes, and girly type primping products. Sophia looked through some of the pockets in the bag and pulled out a note card. It said” Let’s take a walk in your favorite spot. I’ll meet you at 5. Don’t tell anyone. We don’t want to get in trouble. *smiley face* See you soon.”
“Oh, no!” whispered Sophia. “Not another one.” What was going on here she thought. She put the note in a bag and labeled it and went in search of Max. She saw him at the end of the hall taking to a few girls. They were questioning him about what Sophia was doing in the rooms.
“I’m done Max if you want to lock up the rooms,” Sophia indicated.
“OK. Can I walk you back to the conference room when I’m done?” asked Max. “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure I’ll wait right here,” Sophia answered.
Max came back shortly and they started walking out of the building.
“What did you want to talk about Max?” Sophia asked.
‘Well, I was talking to some of the girls and they thought it was important that I should know that Bella was seen sneaking a tall blonde man out of her room about a week before she went missing…”