by Raven Snow
That might explain why she hadn’t answered her parents’ phone calls. Maybe she had been sober enough to know that she couldn’t hide her inebriated state in her voice. Either that or she didn’t get reception out here. Rowen certainly didn’t. “Do you know if she was with anyone?”
“When you’re here, you’re with everyone.” Jeff threw his arms wide and leaned his head back. “Can’t you feel that positive energy?”
Rowen felt hangovers, mostly. She had shielded herself psychically before coming here and she could still feel it throbbing in her head. She wondered if Amber had felt the same. If she had, she probably hadn’t stuck around here for long. “Did she seem to be here with anyone in particular, though? Is there someone she arrived with? Someone she left with, maybe?”
Jeff’s gaze went distant again, but this time he shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“Well, what made you notice her in the first place?”
Jeff’s thick brows came together. “Hmm,” he grunted. “I guess it was because some guy was yelling at her.”
“Yelling at her?” Now that got Rowen’s attention. “Do you remember what he was saying?”
“Something about her owing him and how selfish she was being. I don’t remember the specifics, but it was really uncool stuff.”
“Do you remember what the guy looked like?”
“I didn’t really get a good look at him.” Jeff shrugged. “He stormed off right after that, right when he was starting to attract attention. Some people converged on the girl. They tried to cheer her up. I don’t really know what happened after that. The drama was sorted, so I just stayed out of it.”
Rowen nodded. She got the impression that was all that he knew. “Thanks for the help.” She wasn’t sure how much of a help he had actually been. She would have to see what Eric found out. Geez she hoped this trip hadn’t been a total wash.
“Speaking of familiar faces.” Jeff looked Rowen up and down. “You look familiar. Have you ever been to one of these bonfires? You have, haven’t you?”
Rowen felt her face growing warm. “No, but my mother probably has. Her name’s Tiffany Greensmith.” Rowen didn’t really think they looked a whole lot alike, but maybe she just preferred to think that. They both shared the same reddish hair, similar full lips, the same Roman nose.
Jeff’s eyes lit up. “Tiffany Greensmith!” he sang. “How’s she doin’?”
“She’s all right. She’s in town right now.”
“Seriously? And she’s not here?” A hand flew to Jeff’s heart like that physically pained him. “I can’t believe that. She used to come every year before she left, set out on her own journey.”
“I’m sure she’ll swing by some time tonight.” Rowen didn’t trust her mother to stay away from this place just because that was what Rowen wanted. “She was the one who directed me here.”
“Then you should stay too! It’ll be fun. I know it’s a little dead right now, but things really get started once the sun goes down.” Jeff ribbed Rowen with his elbow. “What do ya say?”
“I say I should go find Eric.” Rowen managed what she hoped looked like a genuine smile. “Thanks again, though.” She headed out from around the cabin and scanned the area for her husband. This definitely wasn’t her kind of scene. Rowen wasn’t someone who partied, period. She didn’t see the appeal of this sweaty, hungover, glorified sleepover.
Eric didn’t seem to be having much luck with the photo. Most people were either disinterested, too drowsy, or the night before was just a complete blur to them. Mostly, it was the last one. “I had one guy say a man was yelling at her, but he couldn’t say what the guy had looked like. It was dark,” Eric told Rowen once he was finished.
Rowen nodded. “That’s what I got from Jeff.”
“Let’s head back to the car.” It seemed that this place was starting to get to Eric as well. They carefully picked their way through the crowd and made it back to their vehicle without stepping on anyone. “So, we have a slightly clearer picture now,” Eric said with a sigh. “Still no Amber, but we have a better idea of what’s going on.”
Rowen nodded in agreement. “She might have a male accomplice. It sounds like things are deteriorating between them.”
Eric turned to Rowen and raised an eyebrow at her theory. “I think it’s more likely that she has a boyfriend she doesn’t want her family to know about.”
“This isn’t high school,” Rowen countered. “Why would she hide a boyfriend?”
“Because her family is so strict. They have expectations of her.” Eric gave Rowen a look that said she should know this. Rowen did, but she didn’t want to back down from her own theories. “You want this to be a murder case. Right now, that’s not what it is. It’s a missing person case, and that’s the angle that we need to focus on.”
“It could be both,” Rowen said in her own defense.
“You’re too obsessed with this. We need to focus on one thing at a time.”
That hurt. Rowen had known that Eric wasn’t as sold on the murder case as she was. Hearing him tell her in no uncertain terms that she was reading too deeply into things was genuinely upsetting. “Maybe I should take what I’ve found to the rest of my family,” she said, turning to look out the window.
“I wouldn’t,” said Eric. “You’ll just get them worked up too. And it’s not like you have a whole lot of evidence to bring to them.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Rowen glared back at her husband. “My family, we get these gut feelings about things. Sometimes, there are just things that we’re sure of. We don’t need evidence; we just know.”
“Then why doesn’t anyone else in your family just know?” Eric countered. Rowen turned back to the window. “I’m sorry.” He really did sound like he regretted his last few words. “Look, we’ll go investigate your angle on this after we sort out where Amber is now. Maybe the two cases will even overlap.”
He was just saying all that to humor her. “Sure,” Rowen said, but she knew the truth. Eric really thought she had lost it this time. Was it really so ridiculous to think that one of the Stonewalls had murdered her Grammy? It wasn’t like she was even as distrustful of the Stonewalls as the rest of her family was. The car began to pull out, and Rowen felt tears sting her eyes. It felt like everyone had already moved on from Grammy’s death. Was she the only one who couldn’t let it go? Even Grammy had moved on.
***
Rowen spent most of the drive-in silence. She stared out the window, watching the countryside roll by. Gradually, it became more populated by people and buildings. Eric asked her the occasional question but couldn’t really seem to get a conversation going. After a while, he just gave up.
Rowen was finally stirred from her gloominess by both of their phones pinging repeatedly and in quick succession. It seemed they had just come back into civilization. They had reception. “Who is it?” Eric asked, glancing at his own phone in the cup holder but unwilling to answer it while he was driving. He was a bit of a stickler when it came to car safety.
“Flint.” Rowen moved her thumb, swiping recent texts onto the screen. “It says here that… Amber came back home?”
Eric looked at Rowen, nearly swerving off the road in the process. “What? When?”
“A couple hours ago from the time stamps on these things.” Rowen was still scrolling through messages. “Meaning about the time we were getting to that bonfire festival those people had going.”
“Great,” said Eric, like Amber turning up was a bad thing. “Now I feel really good about how I spent my day.” After a few moments, he seemed to realize that was a catty thing to say. “I mean, obviously, it’s a good thing she made her way back home. Where did she say she was?”
Rowen was still scrolling through the messages. “She said she was at the apartment of some woman she volunteers with. She got food poisoning and slept on her couch. She says that she really thought she called her family before that. She says she must have been really out of it. F
lint says she’s lying.”
“Obviously.”
“So, do we confront her?”
“No,” Eric said quickly. He said it too quickly, like he was afraid Rowen would up and call her right then and there. “At least, I wouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s a grown woman. She has the right to a boyfriend she doesn’t want her family finding out about. Confronting her or her family about it just seems like it’s none of your business.”
Rowen felt like it was her business if Amber and a male accomplice had murdered her Grammy. She understood now more than ever how alone she was during this investigation. “You’re probably right.” Rowen felt her husband’s eyes on her and knew he didn’t quite buy that response. “You should give your great grandparents a call, tell them you’ve stopped looking. I’m sure most of your missed calls are from them.”
***
They made it back home. Rowen waited until Eric was on the phone with his great grandparents before she made a call of her own. “Hello, Dear,” Aunt Lydia answered the phone. “Did you find that Stonewall girl you were looking for?”
“She sort of wandered home on her own.” That received a disinterested grunt from Lydia. It wasn’t a very climactic resolution to their investigation after all. “But she lied about where she had been.”
“Oh?” Aunt Lydia’s interest had been renewed. “And, where was she?”
“I can tell you about it in person if you don’t mind meeting with me.”
Now that really piqued Lydia’s interest. “I suppose we can meet. I’m about to leave work now. I’ll see you at the house.”
“I would rather keep this just between us.” Rowen couldn’t believe she was going to Lydia with information she wanted to keep quiet, but she was. Lydia was the most likely to actually do something about it.
Lydia was silent on the other end of the phone, like she was just as surprised as Rowen was. “Did you have a place in mind?”
“That bench in the park, the one that’s across from that weird modern art sculpture.” That seemed like as good a place as any.
“I hate that sculpture.”
“Can you meet me there, though?”
“Oh, of course.” Aunt Lydia had lowered her voice to a whisper, like there was some need to be very quiet and secretive about all of this. “When do you want me there?”
“Twenty minutes or so. Is that all right?”
“I’ll make it work. See you there soon.” Lydia hung up without a goodbye, her voice still low like they were in some spy movie. Was Rowen really sure that what she was about to do was the best course of action? No. No, she wasn’t sure at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Rowen told Eric that she had to swing by the Lainswich Inquirer for after-hours business. That had gotten her out the door without too many questions. It wasn’t a lie. She did plan on stopping by the Inquirer. It was on her way to the park, and she did need to swing by there. She had made a second call after the one she had made to Lydia.
Margo came out the front of the building, not really looking the part of a top-secret meeting. Her skinny jeans and heels looked very constricting as she strutted her way out the front door and down to the car. She got in on the passenger side. “Just for the record, I think telling Aunt Lydia about this is a mistake.”
“Who else can I tell?” Rowen had given this a lot of thought. She had a lot of pieces to a very vague puzzle. She needed someone else on her side who wouldn’t jump to conclusions… Unless she was wrong, Margo was right, and this was a terrible idea. All of this hinged on Rowen’s theory that a Stonewall killed her Grammy being correct.
“Hey, this is your thing.” Margo threw up her hands.
“I’d like to think the death of Grammy concerned the both of us.”
That sobered Margo a bit. She lowered her hands sadly and turned to look out the window. “You’re right… Involving Aunt Lydia was still your decision, though.”
“Fair enough.” Rowen pulled the car away from the curb and headed for the park. “Are you still in touch with Jasper?”
“Since when? Last night? You saw me go home with him.”
“You went home with him?” Rowen glanced at her cousin. “Seriously?”
“Well, I sat in the driveway while he went into his home,” Margo corrected. “Then he came back out, and we drove around the city for hours looking for her.” Margo groaned. “She volunteers at a lot of places. It was really annoying.”
“Where were you when she got home?”
“I was in the middle of a meeting with Channel 2! He called me three times in a row, like maybe I just didn’t hear him the first time.” Margo rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. “I haven’t talked with him since I called him back.”
Rowen couldn’t be sure of what Margo thought about Jasper. It was difficult to tell. Today, she was in a bad mood. She seemed to be mad at the world, which was a far sight better than just being mad at Rowen. She couldn’t have had an easy time of things lately.
***
Aunt Lydia’s old, beat-up car was already in the parking lot when they got there. Rowen hoped she hadn’t been waiting too long. She got out of the car and followed the sidewalk. Lydia came into view soon enough. She was seated on the bench, frowning at the sculpture ahead of her. She must have heard her nieces approaching. “I really don’t care for that thing.” She turned to look at Margo. “Now this is a surprise. Did Rowen invite you too or did you just show up all on your own?”
“Rowen called me.” Margo’s tone was guarded. She hadn’t seen Lydia since she’d had her falling out with the family. It was hard to tell who thought what about her cheating.
Lydia slid over so that there was room for all of them to take a seat. Rowen took the middle. “So, I have some… ideas I’ve been holding on to.” Rowen had been thinking about this for a while now. She wasn’t sure quite how to put it. “I don’t want you to overreact or anything.”
Lydia’s eyes grew wide. “That’s just about the worst way to keep me from overreacting.”
“I just need your help and expertise here.” Rowen tried appealing to Lydia’s ego. Maybe if she did that, Aunt Lydia would keep her wits about her and react in a sane manner. She took a deep breath. “I think that the Stonewalls might have had something to do with Grammy’s death.”
Aunt Lydia stood. So much for her not overreacting. “I knew it!” she announced, beginning to pace on the stretch of sidewalk in front of the bench. “I absolutely knew it!”
“You did?” asked Rowen, interested to hear any theories Lydia had of her own.
Lydia nodded. “I did, but your Aunt Nadine and Uncle Norman shot me right down. They thought I was overreacting just because I didn’t have any proof.”
“Proof does tend to be important,” Margo said, sarcastically. “We totally have a whole wealth of that.”
“We have some,” Rowen countered. She proceeded to relay to both her family members everything that she had found out. Unlike Eric, they seemed interested in every word, every idea. Amber had something to do with all of this, surely. But how deep did it go?
Aunt Lydia stopped her pacing and sat back down on the bench. “I can see why you came to me.”
“I can’t,” Margo muttered, earning herself an elbow jab from Lydia.
“I came to you because I thought you would believe me,” said Rowen, before they could bicker. “And I figured you were the most likely out of any of us to actually do something about it.”
“Well, I can’t just sit on my thumbs, can I?” Lydia frowned at her nieces. “I really wish you girls had come to me with this sooner. We could have been working together this whole time.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Margo, unwilling to go down for anything else. “I only just got brought into the fold on this one.”
“It’s entirely my fault,” Rowen admitted. “I’m sorry. I thought it would be better if I looked into it myself at first. I was afraid you wou
ld overreact.” She still wasn’t sure that wouldn’t be the case. At this point she was just feeling out of options. “So, do you have any ideas?”
Lydia scoffed. “Of course I do.”
“And?”
“We need to invite the Stonewalls over for dinner. If we get them in our own house, we might figure out everyone involved. Sure, we know this Amber girl is involved, but what about the parents? We need to meet them face to face and on our own turf. That’s all there is to it.” Lydia hesitated and nodded, like she was mentally double checking this plan. “Yes, that should work.”
“Do you have any other plans?” asked Margo, earning herself yet another glare from Lydia.