‘What’s that, honey?’ Carol asked, surprised.
Jenna’s eyes widened, recalling the day. ‘Well, of course you don’t forget a day when a girl was murdered who lived next door. You don’t forget that.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Blair.
‘But now that I think about it …’ She was pensive for a moment, taking a swig of her apple juice. She set the bottle down on the kitchen table. ‘We were playing hide and seek. It was raining, but I sneaked out the front door and ran down the driveway to the shed. I figured they would never find me there.’
‘It’s no wonder you were always getting a cold. Did you even wear a coat?’ asked Carol, shaking her head.
‘I remember,’ Jenna mused, ‘that Connor was looking for us, just yelling all over the house. I was out there in the shed, crouched down behind two bicycles, trying to be real quiet, so he wouldn’t find me. But while I was in there hiding, I did hear something from next door, over where the Sinclairs lived.’
‘What did you see?’ Blair demanded.
‘Well, I didn’t actually see anything,’ Jenna corrected her. ‘I didn’t want to get up or look out the window of the shed, cause Connor might find me and I’d be “it”. But I could hear something. Somebody was banging on the door of the Sinclairs’ house and making these terrible sounds, like crying and pleading.’
‘Somebody like … a man, a woman, a child?’
‘A woman, I think. But it was faint. I couldn’t hear the words. Just the sounds. But they sounded … desperate.’
‘You didn’t look out?’ Blair cried, incredulous.
‘No, cause of the game. I was hiding. But Connor found me anyway. I could hear him coming down the drive and then he came in and began tossing stuff around, until he spotted me. Then I was it. So I ran back up to the house with him chasing me.’
‘And you never went next door?’ asked Blair. ‘To find out why somebody was banging on the door like that?’
Jenna shook her head. ‘Nope,’ she said solemnly. ‘I guess I forgot about it. I was only ten. All I was thinking about was the game.’
FOURTEEN
‘What do you think?’ Blair asked. ‘Was it Molly?’
‘Honestly,’ said Jenna. ‘I don’t know. Connor came bursting in saying that I was “it”, and I said “no fair” and he began to chase me up to the house. I didn’t think any more about it. Not till all the police were there.’
‘Did you tell the police?’ Blair asked.
Jenna shook her head. ‘We heard that they found Molly in the woods across the road. Why? Do you think it matters?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Blair. ‘At this point, anything I can find out about what happened could matter.’
‘Well, that’s what I heard,’ said Jenna.
‘Thanks,’ said Blair. ‘I guess I’ll …’ she rose from her chair at the kitchen table and pointed to the back door.
‘If we think of anything …’ said Carol, and then her voice drifted away.
Blair thanked them both and then went out to get in her car. She got a message from Rebecca as she was buckling her seat belt.
‘Made some progress. Let’s meet,’ she wrote.
For a minute Blair couldn’t help feeling excited. Maybe they were getting close. It was like a treasure hunt and then she reminded herself of Molly, who had been murdered. This was not a party game.
‘Sure. Where?’ she wrote.
‘How about Cascade?’
It was a new restaurant that was one of those farm to table places, very trendy. Maybe Rebecca was trying to impress upon her that despite the fact that she lived back in the old home town, she had once been in the big time.
‘Sure,’ Blair said. ‘Half an hour?’
‘See you then,’ Rebecca said.
Blair put the car in gear and headed for Cascade and, despite her resolve to focus on the seriousness of her task, she felt undeniably excited and hopeful.
From the outside, Cascade was a combination of wood and glass perched above a waterfall, nestled in the trees. Blair had passed by it often, but never actually been inside, and she wondered, for a moment, if she was properly dressed. She reminded herself that she was a modern entrepreneur. People her age never dressed up for the occasion. It was almost a religious tenet that jeans and running shoes went everywhere. She walked in and glanced over at the bar which ran the length of the front windows. She didn’t see Rebecca there. Could she have gotten a table already? She thought uncertainly. She was about to ask the hostess, when she heard someone call her name from the direction of the bar. She turned around to look.
A woman in a business suit with a short skirt and silk shirt, her hair loose and coiffed in waves, was gesturing to her. It took Blair a moment to realize that this was Rebecca. Rebecca’s perfect legs were crossed at the knee. She wore dark hose and high-heeled shoes. Blair walked over to the barstool where Rebecca sat and had to consciously close her mouth which was hanging open. Rebecca laughed at her reaction.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said.
Blair shook her head. ‘What happened?’
‘Opportunity knocked,’ she said. ‘Here, sit down. What do you want to drink?’
Blair turned to the bartender and named a cocktail.
‘I can still clean up well,’ Rebecca said.
Blair stared at her. She looked like those pictures on her phone. Sophisticated and … sleek. Something about this transformation made Blair feel uneasy; her cocktail arrived and she began to sip it.
‘So what does that mean?’ she asked. ‘Opportunity knocked?’
‘Oh, just a phrase,’ Rebecca said dismissively. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to today. We’ll compare notes.’
‘Well,’ said Blair wryly, ‘while you’ve been at the hairstylist and the boutique, I’ve been talking to people.’
‘I’ve been talking to people too,’ Rebecca protested. ‘And what have you learned in your travels?’
‘Not as much as I’d like,’ Blair admitted. ‘I spoke to Yusef and he definitely remembered leaving Molly at the foot of the driveway.’
‘Ok, that answers that,’ said Rebecca.
‘The people who lived next door, on one side, have only been there a few years. I have to get the name of the people who lived there before them and track them down. He gave me the realtor’s name. The people on the other side are the Knoedlers … one of their daughters was there. She remembered playing hide and seek with her brothers and sisters on the day that Molly died. She heard someone banging on the door to Molly’s house that afternoon. Sounding frantic according to Jenna Knoedler.’
‘Who was it?’ Rebecca asked.
Blair shook her head. ‘Don’t know. The kid was hiding. She didn’t look out.’
‘Hmmm …’ said Rebecca. ‘Well, that might be important.’
‘By the way, about your article in the paper. You were kind of jumping the gun, weren’t you?’ Blair chided her.
‘You would be amazed at all the calls I got about that article today,’ Rebecca said enthusiastically. ‘People coming out of the woodwork.’
‘Anything useful?’
‘Yes. Did you go to the post office like we said?’
‘I did. But the mailman was out on his route.’
‘Yeah, well, it turns out that he read my article and he called me. He’s a guy named Jim Fox. It seems that Jim was in the woods that afternoon, taking a catnap. He was working a double shift that day, cause it was getting close to Christmas. So he pulled the mail truck off the road through the woods, into a little clearing, just to catch forty winks in between shifts.’
‘Did he see anything?’ Blair asked.
‘He said he was woken up by a thud, like something toppling over. But he was groggy. He wasn’t sure if he dreamed it or not. The rain was coming down so he couldn’t see much. Anyway, he was getting ready to leave when he saw a vehicle leaving the woods. Not Yusef’s car. It was a truck, a pickup truck.’
‘The most common
of all vehicles around here,’ Blair observed. ‘Why didn’t he tell the police?’
‘He was sleeping on the job,’ said Rebecca. ‘Besides, the police were only interested in Muhammed’s sedan. He had been seen picking Molly up.’
‘True,’ said Blair.
‘But I got to thinking,’ said Rebecca, ‘what if somebody killed Molly elsewhere, and brought her to the woods to dump her body. That would cause a thud.’
‘That’s true,’ said Blair. ‘But why would they …?’
‘Well, there are still more questions than answers,’ Rebecca admitted.
Blair nodded. ‘So what is our next move?’ she asked.
Rebecca hailed the bartender and asked for her tab. ‘Well, my next move is to drive up to New York. But you might want to have dinner here. It’s really very good.’
Blair looked at her in confusion. ‘Aren’t you …?’
‘I can’t stay, but I recommend it,’ she said as she slid off the barstool and gave her a little salute. ‘Enjoy it. We’ll talk tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Blair, facing another lonely dinner. ‘Thanks.’
She waited until Rebecca pulled away before she left the bar. She wasn’t going to eat an expensive meal alone in this trendy place. It made her feel stupid and friendless. She went out to the parking lot and got into her car. She drove back to Ellis’s house and went inside. Ellis was sitting at the table, finishing off a plate of food.
‘Is Malcolm back?’ Blair asked, looking in the refrigerator.
‘From where?’ Ellis demanded.
‘He went ATV riding with Amanda and Peter. I left you a note.’
‘I didn’t read it,’ Ellis said.
The cat came up to her and mewed, brushing against the legs of Blair’s jeans.
‘This cat seems hungry.’
Ellis shrugged. ‘Cat’s always hungry.’
‘Did Malcom feed Dusty before he left?’ Blair asked, noticing the cat’s empty bowl beside the counter.
‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ said Ellis, dumping his empty plate into the sink. ‘Not my cat.’
Blair shook her head. This wailing cat was going to drive her crazy. She got out her phone and punched up Malcolm’s number. The call went directly to voicemail.
‘Malcolm, it’s Aunt Blair. Did you feed Dusty? Cause the cat seems to be hungry. Call me back.’
She managed to put together something for dinner and then went into the living room where Ellis was seated in his stained, oversized chair, actually reading the newspaper.
Although he did not look up from the paper, he spoke up when Blair entered the room.
‘I hope you’re happy having our private business splashed all over the newspaper,’ he said.
‘You mean the article about Molly,’ she said.
‘This is that reporter that called here the other day,’ Ellis said accusingly.
‘Yes. She wants to find out the truth about what happened to Molly.’
‘She doesn’t seem that concerned with the truth to me,’ Ellis said angrily, shaking out the paper between his hands.
Blair ignored him. She took out her phone and did something she had been meaning to do for several days. She googled Rebecca Moore a second time. And almost as soon as she did, she felt queasy.
There were a number of articles about Rebecca, dating back three years or so. They all told the same story. Rebecca had been a reporter at a network in L.A., her rise meteoric by all accounts. But it had seemingly not been fast enough to suit her. She had been reporting on an underage sex scandal with Hollywood connections. She interviewed a witness, seen only in a darkened profile, who named some big names in the entertainment business. When she was questioned about her sources, Rebecca cited her first amendment protections. But another reporter from the same network finally outed her with the truth: Rebecca had created the witness, enlisting an actor and scrambling his voice to name the names involved. Rebecca was fired and forced to leave town. No station with a big demographic would hire her. Not in L.A. Not anywhere.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Ellis.
Blair looked up from her phone, startled that even Ellis had seen the dismay on her face.
‘Nothing.’ The cat continued to yowl and jumped up on the arm of her chair. Blair stood up abruptly and the cat leapt away.
‘I’m going to go pick up Malcolm. He should be back by now.’
‘He won’t like you following him around,’ said Ellis.
Blair ignored his advice. She just wanted to get out of the house and away from what she had just learned about Rebecca. She went out, got in her car, and drove to the Tuckers. Uncle Ellis was probably right, she admitted to herself. Malcolm wouldn’t be happy about her showing up before he had summoned her, but she needed to get out and think.
The Tuckers lived in a recently built, single story house with a two-car garage, in a cul-de-sac only a short distance from where Ellis lived. The large yard was raked and the front porch had a seasonal display of pumpkins and mums, arranged on a bale of hay. Blair parked behind the SUV, slammed the car door and walked up to the front door of the tidy house. She knocked on the door. In a few minutes, Amanda answered the door.
‘Hi Blair,’ she said, surprised.
‘I figured while I was out I’d come and pick up Malcolm. I know he could walk home but I thought I’d give him a ride.’
Amanda stared at her. ‘He’s not at your uncle’s house?’
‘No,’ said Blair. Blair felt a shiver of alarm.
Amanda’s forehead wrinkled into a frown. ‘He left hours ago. He said he was going to walk home.’
Blair wondered if she had somehow misunderstood. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, I’m sure. I wanted to drive him back. I offered to give him a ride. He wouldn’t have it. He said he wasn’t a baby and he didn’t want to be treated like one. I mean, he’s walked home from here a million times. But today he was angry …’
‘Angry about what?’ Blair asked.
Amanda’s cheeks were pink. She shook her head. ‘He and Zach had a little … argument. Here, come inside.’
Blair followed her into the tidy living room. She felt her heart start to hammer. Amanda indicated a chair. Blair sat down. Don’t panic, she thought.
‘An argument about what?’ she asked.
Amanda sighed and squeezed her hands together anxiously. ‘Well, everything was fine on the trail ride. Peter had to cut it short and go off to work unexpectedly. The boys were a little disappointed, but Peter said next time … Anyway, we came home, and while I was fixing lunch, Zach started talking about Malcolm and when he was coming to live with us. Before I knew it, they got into a fight over how it was gonna be and who was gonna have the better room. It was just stupid, kid stuff. But Malcolm suddenly decided that he wanted to leave.’
Blair tried to smile. ‘Well, it doesn’t sound terribly serious. Just a misunderstanding.’
‘I probably shouldn’t have let him go,’ Amanda said anxiously, ‘but … he doesn’t live here yet. And he’s always walked over here in the past. Not even any roads to cross. So I didn’t want him to feel like a prisoner.’
Zach emerged from the back of the house and came up to stand beside his mother. He was a smaller, thinner boy than Malcolm, with an open expression on his face.
‘What’s up?’ he said.
‘Zach, Malcolm didn’t go home this afternoon when he left here.’
Zach’s eyes widened. ‘Where did he go?’
Blair and Amanda exchanged a glance.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Blair.
A wary expression replaced Zach’s normally guileless aspect. He suddenly, belatedly realized that they thought he was to blame.
‘He started it. I didn’t want him to go.’
Amanda adjusted her tone, dialing down the anxiety. ‘We’re not blaming you,’ she insisted. ‘But do you know where he might have gone? What did he say?’
Zach seemed to squirm from an inte
rnal debate. Blair held her tongue and waited, realizing it was no use pushing the boy. Finally, he shook his head.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’
‘We should make some calls,’ said Amanda.
‘Yes,’ said Blair, feeling helpless. ‘I suppose. Although I don’t know who to call.’
Amanda was already punching in a number. ‘I do,’ she said grimly.
FIFTEEN
Amanda called the mother of one of Malcolm’s classmates, who knew nothing of Malcolm’s whereabouts, but gave her another suggestion. Blair listened anxiously as one dead end led to another. She knew that she had to make a call as well. She dialed Uncle Ellis, explaining the situation and asking if Malcolm had arrived home since she went out. Ellis exploded at her on the phone, cursing at her and saying he was going out to look for the boy. He hung up on Blair before she could lodge the faintest protest.
‘This is my fault,’ said Amanda. ‘I shouldn’t have let him leave when he was angry like that. It just seemed to come out of the blue.’
‘He’s so … confused,’ said Blair. ‘He’s just … weighed down, between his sorrow over Celeste and all these changes. Look, would Peter know anything?’
Amanda shook her head. ‘He got a call and he had to go back to work. There was a fire on the mountain. We took the ATVs back and another ranger picked him up since we were already in the area.’
Blair looked at Zach. ‘Is there anywhere you can think of that Malcolm might have gone? Might be hiding?’ she asked.
Zach shrugged. ‘He always wanted to go hunting. He could be out in the woods.’
Blair suddenly had an image of Molly, face down in the wet leaves. She looked helplessly at Amanda.
‘I think I’m going to call the police,’ she said. ‘My uncle never would, but I think I will.’
Amanda’s face was pale. ‘It might be a good idea.’
That was all the encouragement that Blair needed. She called the police and made the report. They promised to send a squad car right away. Blair asked them to meet her at Uncle Ellis’s house. She stood up and pulled on her scarf and jacket.
‘You don’t have to leave,’ said Amanda.
The Girl in the Woods Page 12
