“I’m going to tell you something, Leigh Ann, but you can’t tell Gavin. Understand?” She glanced at her watch. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning. She’d interrupted her friend’s Grape-Nuts.
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“You’re going to have to decide who you trust here, Leigh Ann.”
“Can’t I trust you both?”
“I need to settle this once and for all. I need to know if Gavin has been telling the truth.”
“He has,” Leigh Ann insisted. “Whatever he told you, it’s true.”
How could she be so sure? Gavin wasn’t.
“Promise me, Leigh Ann.”
A loud groan came across the line. “All right, I promise.”
Jennifer wished she could see her, wished she could check for crossed fingers and crossed toes. She had to tell somebody. She didn’t dare go out there alone with nobody knowing where she was. Not that it had saved Jimmy Mitchell. But who could she tell? Sam would try to stop her, and Dee Dee would call Sam. Or the police.
Still, she had to know. Was Jimmy Mitchell really dead?
“I’m going out along the Ocmulgee tonight, after dark.”
“Are you out of your mind? Why?” Leigh Ann sputtered. “Why would you—”
“To find Jimmy Mitchell’s body.”
There was another long pause on the other end of the line. “I always suspected you were crazy, Jennifer, but I loved you anyway. But now you’ve gone over the edge. You need professional help. You can’t—”
“Gavin told me he buried Jimmy’s body somewhere along the river, not too far from the high school. There’s only one area that’s accessible from the road, so it’s got to be in that stretch.”
“Buried his body? Are you nuts? Gavin didn’t kill—”
“I’m not saying he did, and neither is he. Just trust me, Leigh Ann. If we can do this, we can settle what happened to Jimmy once and for all. Then maybe Gavin can find some peace.”
“You talked to him? I told you where he was in confidence. How could you?”
“Don’t worry about it. He wouldn’t have told me if he didn’t want someone to know.”
“But why go at night? People in those creepy horror movies always wait until dark to go poking around. The ones who are hunting vampires—you’d think they, at least, would have the sense—”
“It’s public property. I can’t go digging on public property in the daylight. I’ll get arrested, and I certainly don’t want to have to explain to the police or anyone else what I’m up to.”
“There are lots worse things than getting arrested,” Leigh Ann reminded her. “What I do for you. Okay. What time do we go?”
“No, Leigh Ann. I’m going alone.” Her protest was more for show than for anything else. She’d been hoping from the beginning that Leigh Ann would volunteer to come along. She just couldn’t admit it, even to herself. She wasn’t the bravest person in the world. Or the stupidest.
“Give me a time, Jennifer. I don’t want to have to wait down there in the dark for you to show up.”
“How’s ten sound to you?”
“Late.”
“I know, but the days are getting longer.”
“Where do you propose we park?”
“There’s no access to that area by car. I say we park at the high school and walk down through the woods.”
“That’s a long way.”
“Got any better ideas?”
“Nope. I’ll bring some flashlights.”
“Good.”
“Okay. See you then.”
Leigh Ann hung up. Just like that. Leaving Jennifer committed to wandering the banks of the Ocmulgee. In the dark. Looking for a dead body.
Chapter 33
Jennifer rolled her little Beetle into a parking space, cut the engine, and checked again to make sure the doors were locked. The parking lot of Riverside High School was deserted. She felt a shiver raise the hair on her arms, and wondered why coming to look for Jimmy’s body had seemed like such a much better idea in the daylight.
Muffy snorted and plopped her head between the bucket seats, resting her jaw on the parking brake. Jennifer was counting on the dog’s instincts to alert them to danger, both of this earth and otherwise. So far Muffy only looked bored. That had to be a good sign.
Leigh Ann had better not be late. She wanted to get this over, before she had too much time to think about it.
She checked to make sure the ski mask was still snug in her pocket. She’d donned a black turtleneck and black jeans. She would put on the mask, if necessary, and would simply disappear in the dark. Or so she hoped. Okay, it was a ridiculous idea, but she’d brought it anyway. There certainly was no way to make Muffy disappear or even be quiet.
Lights flashed in the rearview mirror, and she heard the soft crunch of gavel on asphalt. She flipped her head around so she could see out the left side of the car. A white Lincoln slid up next to the Beetle. Leigh Ann? She knew she’d be driving a loaner from the garage, but hardly imagined it’d be a Town Car. A place Leigh Ann did business with would more likely supply a rent-a-wreck.
As she watched, all four doors burst open at once. Panic washed over her. She’d seen too many gangster movies. Heck, she’d seen too many movies, period.
She shoved Muffy into the backseat, turned the key in the ignition, prepared to stomp the gas pedal, and twisted her head to the back too rapidly. A sharp, cramping pain shot down her neck. It stopped her long enough to get a glimpse of the four figures, also dressed in black, rapidly surrounding her car.
There was something familiar about them. A curve here, a movement there. She could tell they were all female.
She switched off the motor and got out, almost shutting Muffy’s nose in the door. “What the heck are all of you doing here?” she demanded angrily of Teri, Monique, and April in a whisper so loud she shouldn’t have bothered. Leigh Ann crouched in the background.
“You can hardly expect us to allow you and Leigh Ann to go off on some ill-considered expedition on your own,” Monique declared, leaning a pickax up against her knee and adjusting black leather gloves. “Grave robbing requires a certain expertise.”
“I told you not to tell anyone,” Jennifer barked at Leigh Ann, more than a little irritated. Then she suddenly wondering exactly what kind of grave robbing experience Monique had.
“No, you told me not to tell Gavin,” Leigh Ann said defensively, coming forward. “You know I’m staying with Monique. Exactly how did you expect me to slip out of her house at night without her knowing?”
“Safety in numbers,” April declared. She was carrying an insulated bag about the size of a vanity case.
“What’s with the luggage?” Jennifer asked.
“Provisions. Who knows how long it may take us to locate the remains?”
Jennifer could only shake her head and hope none of them brought a tent. She hoped to prove whether Gavin’s memories were real—she was still holding hard to the Jimmy-in-Vegas scenario—not actually find “the remains.”
Teri held flashlights in both hand, each longer than her forearm. She hefted them in such a way that it was obvious they could serve as blunt instruments should the need arise. “We need to move out before the authorities get wind of what’s going down,” she said, handing one of the lights to Jennifer and adjusting the camp shovel slung over her shoulder.
She had to be dreaming, Jennifer told herself. Maybe she’d fallen asleep in the car waiting for Leigh Ann, and all of this was merely a nightmare. She’d envisioned a discreet search of the riverbank, not a weekend bivouac with Monique as commanding officer.
Muffy barked loudly from the car. Jennifer could see her nose pressed against the small back glass, her tail flipping back and forth in the shadow. She wasn’t about to be left out.
“All right, ladies, I want us all back here in no less than two hours,” Monique ordered, checking her watch. “Remember, no wandering off. Should you become separated fro
m the group, blow one of these.” She stuffed whistles attached to neck bands in each of their hands.
Part of Jennifer wanted to salute. Another part wanted to go AWOL.
“Jennifer, retrieve Muffy from your car,” Monique ordered.
Grumbling under her breath and wondering how she could have so completely lost control, Jennifer went over to the Volkswagen, pulled the dog from the backseat, and clipped a leash to her collar.
April followed after her. “Leigh Ann seemed a little vague on the plan. All I heard was something about a dead body.”
“Where are your babies?” Jennifer asked, not at all ready to address the idea of grave digging, and hoping against hope that April’s children weren’t waiting in car seats inside the Lincoln. She could only imagine them strapped, one on each of April’s hips, as they trekked through the woods.
“Craig’s got them. I left formula for Colette,” April explained, spraying the hems of Jennifer’s jeans with a healthy blast from an aerosol can.
“What’s that?” Jennifer asked, dodging the spray as best she could while wrestling with Muffy.
“Tick spray. Can’t go walking in the words without it,” April declared.
She was having a nightmare, all right, just not the sleeping kind.
Chapter 34
Down among the trees, away from the light of the parking lot, it was country dark. It would have been impossible to negotiate the fifteen-minute hike to the river without Teri’s flashlight, although Muffy did a fair job of pulling her along. She only got her leash tangled around one tree.
Once out of the foliage and its treacherous roots covered by underbrush, they all switched off their lights. The moon, on the wane, still glowed enough so they could move about without stumbling over rocks or debris.
“We need to develop a systematic plan for searching the area,” Monique told the group. Then she singled out Jennifer. “We haven’t got all night. Which way, Jen? Up or down the river?”
“Up.” She pointed north. “We’re looking for a large tree with an overhang in front of it that’s been broken away.”
With her wet tongue, Muffy found Jennifer. Then Jennifer took the leash back from April who had come up behind her and who promptly shoved a Power Bar into her hands. “To keep up your strength.”
“No dice,” Monique declared, slinging the pickax back over her shoulder.
“It looks like this should be the place,” Jennifer insisted. “You can see where the bank used to jut out.”
“And this water poplar is huge,” Leigh Ann declared, patting its trunk, “just like you said Gavin described it. Its roots helped hold the dirt to form the overhang.”
“Maybe so,” Teri agreed, lying on her back in the crook of the bank just beneath the tree. She swept the area one more time with the beam of her flashlight. “But if something was ever concealed under here, it’s long gone now.” She pulled herself up and out, brushing off the back of her pants with her hands as she held the flashlight under her chin.
“Maybe this isn’t the place. Maybe ours is further up,” Leigh Ann offered.
“We’ve already been up as far as the bank will let you walk,” April reminded her.
“But—” Jennifer began.
“We’re moving out,” Monique declared. “Police your area. I don’t want any litter left on site.”
No wonder Monique was so good at dialog, Jennifer mused. She fell into character as though she were born to it.
“But—” Jennifer tried again.
Leigh Ann put an arm around her shoulder and tugged her along. “We’ll get the answers, Jen. I promise. Just not tonight.”
Chapter 35
“He almost had me,” Jennifer admitted the next morning, pacing back and forth in front of Sam’s desk at the Telegraph offices. “Gavin lied and I believed every word.”
“So you didn’t find a body. What he told you might still be true,” Sam pointed out, reared back in his chair.
She stopped abruptly and leaned toward him, pinning her with her look. “That body didn’t just walk away.”
Sam leaned forward, too. “Probably not, assuming it was there at all. Twelve years is a long time, and there is wildlife in the area.”
“True. But wouldn’t someone have noticed if a dog or a raccoon or whatever the heck lives near the river had dug out some human bones?”
A colleague passed by, stopped to stare, then smiled and moved on when Sam nodded at her. “They think we’re fighting.”
“Well, they’re wrong,” she snapped, throwing herself into a straight-backed chair. “Now we’re right back where we were. We still don’t know if Jimmy Mitchell is dead.”
“His folks think he is.”
She stared at him. “You talked to them?” If so, he had more courage than she did.
He nodded. “They’re a close family. His mother insists that even if he didn’t contact them for whatever reason, he would have gotten in touch with Gavin or Ben. He wouldn’t have let Ben be persecuted the way he was.”
“Unless—”
“No unless if he were alive. Jimmy had his whole future planned out. His grades and his PSAT scores were excellent. He wanted to attend the University of Georgia for an undergrad degree in political science, then on to law school and eventually wind up a judge.”
“His cousin drank and smoked pot.”
“And he didn’t.” Sam shrugged.
“But he ran away several times.”
“Not far and only to stay with friends. He always called to let his parents know where he was.”
“What did Jimmy’s parents have to say about Gavin? I’m sure you asked.”
“He’s basically a good kid. Doesn’t handle pressure well.”
“No kidding.” She was getting sarcastic, and Sam didn’t deserve it. “Look, I’m sorry. Seems I’ve been saying that to you a lot lately. I appreciate what you’ve done.”
“No problem. Tell you what. I’ll speak to one of the local wildlife enthusiasts. Maybe he can suggest some other place along the river that might match Gavin’s description. He could have been confused.”
“Good,” she said, pulling the straps of her purse up onto her shoulder, “but we searched every inch of that bank that’s accessible from the path down from the school.”
“You leaving?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got another question I need answered.”
“What’s that?”
“Why Jimmy was meeting someone that night.”
“Monique’s not happy about you stopping by and taking me for lunch and not asking her along,” Leigh Ann told Jennifer as she unwrapped her chicken sandwich.
“I know. I saw her face. I promise to make it up to her, but I need to talk to you alone.” Jennifer pulled out a napkin just in time to catch the mayonnaise that was about to drip onto the tabletop.
“You really ought to try one of these,” Leigh Ann gushed. “They are so good. Oh, sorry. I forgot. You can’t. It’s just that you look so pitiful with only your salad.”
Didn’t matter. She wasn’t hungry anyway. Lunch was only an excuse to get Leigh Ann out. All she wanted was a cold drink and some answers. Fast food places didn’t cater to non-meat eaters.
“Leigh Ann, you knew Jimmy.”
“Sure.” She took another big bite of sandwich.
“Did you know he and Candy were friends?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it, but she kept that relationship on the QT. Why he wanted to hang with her, I have no idea.”
“You’re kidding. Candy was adorable.”
Leigh Ann rolled her eyes. “She was one of the biggest bitches—”
“No way. She’s so polite—”
“Maybe now and maybe before. But when Jimmy was with her, no way would I go near them. She’d bite your head off if you looked at her funny. That is, when she wasn’t crying.”
“She was having trouble with Al.”
“That jock she married?” Leigh Ann shook her head. “He was
a real...fill in your favorite insult. But he worshiped her. He didn’t mind screwing over everybody else, but not Candy. He treated her like gold. He wanted her back really bad.”
“So why’d they break up?”
“The usual teenage I’m-too-young-to-be-so-committed-I-need-to-date-other-people routine. As if love were valid only between certain ages of life. People should have figured this out by now. The greatest love story of all time was between two fourteen-year-olds.”
“Romeo and Juliet. That ended badly,” Jennifer pointed out, poking at her salad. It was wilted and totally unappetizing.
“No lie. You’d think old Will could have lightened up just a bit, cut the kids a break.”
“So if it was Candy’s idea to give the relationship a rest, why was she so sullen?”
“Beats me. She had the biggest man at school knocking on her door. You’d think that might ease her mood.”
“Who?”
“Seth Yarborough. But then he dropped her flat after the second date.”
“How do you know that?”
“They didn’t date again. I can’t imagine her, or anyone else, turning that hunk down. That was about the time she got really bad. Gavin told me Jimmy was afraid she might kill herself.”
“Candy.” Jennifer knocked again and called through the closed door. “I only need a minute of your time. Please.”
The door opened a crack and Candy peered over the security chain.
“Can I come in?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I need to know about Jimmy, who he was going to meet the night he disappeared.”
“I already told you I don’t know.”
“I believe you. His cousin Gavin told me Jimmy had found out something, something he had to take care of. I think he was doing it for someone else.”
Candy blanched, her pale complexion becoming a startling white. “Oh, God. Don’t you understand I can’t?”
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