Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

“I know. It’s terrible. Her family lives here and the whole town has been holding out hope that she’d turn up, but now that her body’s been found, it’s very bleak. I think we’re all a little depressed. Of course, what we’re going through is nothing like what her parents are experiencing.

  “Anyway, her family knows she went to the Gulf Coast in December, to Destin. They thought she only went to Florida. And as far as I know, the investigation only checked out her activities in Florida. If she did go to your B and B…well, it raises some interesting questions. Like why would she go to Mississippi and why aren’t there any charges on her credit cards or bank statements in Mississippi?”

  “That…I’m shocked. She was…” She cleared her throat and said, “I’m speechless, which is something for me. What did you want to know?”

  Before I could repeat my question, she cut me off. “You’ll call the police when you hang up with me, right? Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Well, I don’t remember everything, but of course, she asked about Katrina and that got me rolling. You see, we rode out the storm here. The house had been here since 1912. It survived Camille and we thought it would ride out anything. We were wrong.”

  “What happened?”

  “The short version is that the house basically broke in half. At first, it was only rising water, and then the ocean swept through. It was a huge surge because we were so close to the beach. It ripped the house apart like it was a dollhouse. You have no idea how much faith and security you put in your house. I always felt like I was safe there, but that day I saw how truly fragile everything is. I spent the rest of the storm clinging to a tree branch down the road.”

  “It sounds like it was awful.”

  “It was,” she said flatly. “It was worse after the storm passed because we could see the devastation. Just foundations where houses had been. Clothes and blankets tossed up in trees. Scraps of people’s lives scattered around like confetti. And that’s not counting the human loss.”

  I flicked out another towel, folded it, and added it to my growing stack. “Were you alone?”

  “Oh no. My aunt was here and we had three guests who were stranded here because of the exodus of people trying to get out of the way of Katrina. The gas stations ran out of gas or closed down and a lot of people were stuck. Vincent was a businessman on his way to Jackson and there were two women traveling to an art show. I told them they were welcome to stay here and ride out the storm with me. Those girls were a riot. They kept us entertained in the beginning before everything went bad. We played so many games of charades and poker. They looked so much alike they could have been sisters. I kept getting them mixed up, saying the wrong name.” Her tone softened. “So sad what happened.”

  She shifted topics and her voice picked up. “Vincent was a godsend, let me tell you. When the water destroyed the house, he caught my aunt before she was swept away. They grabbed on to a bit of wood and floated on that until they managed to climb onto the roof of a house several yards inland. I didn’t know they were alive until after the storm passed through. They had to walk back.” Her tone went soft again and I almost missed what she said next. “We all made it except for one of the girls.”

  “The girls?” I picked up a pile of washcloths and began to fold them.

  “See, there I go, trying to avoid it and it can’t be avoided. I still don’t like to think about it. Mary Bertram and Topaz Simoniti. I still can’t believe Topaz didn’t make it.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I dropped a washcloth. “But Topaz can’t be…”

  Theresa rolled on, not even aware I’d spoken. “It took three days to find her body. By then, the big refrigerated semitruck trailers had arrived to hold the bodies they’d found. That’s where Mary found her. She identified the body, then left that same day on a bus taking evacuees to Georgia or Alabama, I forget which. She’d found their car a day before and was able to salvage some artwork. It was so sad. Topaz told me before the storm that she’d hired Mary to be her assistant a few weeks earlier. Apparently, she was getting so many orders that she couldn’t keep up.” Regret laced her tone as she went on. “I know I should have done more, but it was such a horrific time. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. We were scrounging for survival and life became basic. Where could we find water and food and stay safe?”

  “What happened to Topaz?”

  “It must have happened when the surge came through. She probably got knocked unconscious by a piece of debris, then drowned. It sounds awful to say this, but Mary was one of the lucky ones. At least Topaz’s body was found. So many people didn’t have that closure.”

  Questions raced through my mind. “So, did you tell Jodi about Topaz and Mary?”

  “Yes. She was very interested. Took notes and everything.”

  I got the feeling that Theresa talked so much that most people in her life didn’t pay that much attention to what she said.

  I leaned against the dryer, trying to work it out. Topaz couldn’t be dead. Topaz was playing a board game in my living room. But the name Mary, that was one of the names on Jodi’s list.

  “Are you still there?” Theresa asked.

  I stood up straight. “Yes. I’m here. Just trying to process all this information. Did you keep in touch with Mary?”

  “No. I haven’t heard a word from her. I can’t blame her. That’s really all I can tell you. I told Jodi about Katrina and she left. She took down all my contact information and said she’d call if she had any follow-up questions, but I never heard from her.”

  “No. You wouldn’t have. She disappeared a few days after arriving back here in North Dawkins. I’m going to call the sheriff’s office here and give them your phone number.”

  I hung up and thought about everything I knew about Topaz. Not the stuff from high school, but my interactions I’d had with her here in North Dawkins. The first thing I thought of was her reaction when Kyle shouted the name “Mary.”

  What I knew shifted, like a kaleidoscope, and the pieces rearranged themselves into a new pattern. I realized she hadn’t volunteered any information about high school. She always followed my lead when we talked about it. She hadn’t remembered the Saints and Sinners quizzes or any of our classmates, like Jeremy Hoskins—that memory lapse should have tipped me off right there. No one in their right mind could forget Jeremy Hoskins. I’d never seen Topaz draw or sketch during class either.

  And the name Mary. She couldn’t control her instinctive reaction, turning toward the person when she heard her name called, her real name. The first time I’d seen her at the Base Exchange it had been the name Topaz Simoniti that I’d recognized, and when I saw her I’d accepted her as Topaz because that was who I was expecting to see. Her coloring and body type were close enough that I didn’t question my assumption. If I’d seen her face first, would I have assumed it was her?

  I glanced down, surprised to see I’d folded all the towels on autopilot. I stacked them in the basket, thinking that Jodi had written a profile about Topaz and then she’d written down the story idea about Hurricane Katrina evacuees who’d been relocated to middle Georgia. Had Topaz said something in the interview that made Jodi curious about her or her past?

  I ran through what I knew and it made sense. Theresa said Topaz and Mary had a similar appearance. Everything was in disarray after Katrina. All their documentation was gone. What was there to prevent Mary from switching places with Topaz? If she identified the body as Mary and relocated with other evacuees, there was no one to question her identity. She even had some of Topaz’s artwork to establish herself in a ready-made career. The “Topaz” I’d met never went to the Gulf Coast for art shows and never went back home to Texas, a smart move if you didn’t want to run into anyone who’d known the real Topaz.

  Jodi had to have figured this out, too. Why hadn’t she exposed Topaz? Had she confronted her, giving her the option to turn herself in, and laid the gr
oundwork for her own murder? Where were Jodi’s notes of her interview with Theresa? And why did Mary want to become Topaz in the first place? There were too many questions, but I knew I couldn’t figure them out standing in my laundry room.

  I opened the door and pulled out the phone book, then headed back to the laundry room. It was the last place someone expected to find the hostess and I might get a few more minutes of quiet to make my call to Detective Waraday. Lord knew, I was going to need all my wits about me to attempt to explain this turn of events to him.

  I ran into Dorthea in the kitchen and stopped abruptly. “Dorthea,” I said, and drew her away from the crowd. “When you saw Jodi the night she disappeared, that Friday, what exactly did you see?”

  She frowned at the abruptness of my question and shifted Nathan higher in her arms. “Well, like I said, I saw her, working at her desk.”

  “Did she wave or see you?”

  “Oh no. Her back was to me. I could tell it was her. She still had on her baseball cap that she’d been wearing earlier.”

  “So you saw someone in her office. A woman in a baseball cap.”

  “Yes.” Dorthea frowned. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Back in a minute.” I shut the laundry room door and leaned against it.

  I flipped through the pages until I found the number for the sheriff’s office. I dialed and was surprised that when I asked for Detective Waraday, I was put through and he answered after one ring.

  “Ah—Detective Waraday. Sorry, I didn’t expect you to answer. Friday night and all.”

  “Paperwork.”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’ve just talked to a woman named Theresa La Rue who lives in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. She says Jodi interviewed her in December for a story she was doing on Hurricane Katrina.”

  “Jodi was in Destin, Florida, not Mississippi.”

  “Why couldn’t she have driven over to Mississippi? She got gas in Pensacola, right? I saw that charge on her credit card. Wouldn’t that have been a rather circuitous way to get back to North Dawkins when she could have just driven straight north and caught I-10 in only a few miles? Why would she drive out of her way?”

  “Maybe she got lost. Or maybe she simply went for a drive. Don’t complicate things.”

  “I’m afraid this is going to get more complicated.” I summarized what Theresa had told me and the discrepancies I was beginning to think weren’t coincidences, including Topaz’s reaction to hearing the name “Mary” called out at the party.

  “So you think this Mary…Bertram is impersonating Topaz? That Topaz is the one who died during the hurricane?”

  “Yes. It all works out. Jodi found out about Topaz and either Jodi tried to give Topaz, well, the woman we know as Topaz, a chance to come clean on her deception, or somehow Topaz found out what Jodi knew and killed her during her nightly run on the gravel path.”

  My stomach churned as I pictured what probably happened. “It’s a fairly isolated area. She could have parked her car somewhere in the neighborhood and walked in. She would have had to bring the shovel and the tarp, but once she’d hit Jodi”—I swallowed and forced myself to go on—“she must have dragged her body down the cleared path that branched off the main one. She took Jodi’s cap and went back to her house through the backyard. I know it’s possible because I walked it myself not long ago. There’s a back gate to our property. She could get in and out without anyone seeing her.

  “She went to Jodi’s office and found her notes on the interview with Theresa and then she sent the e-mail saying she was going out of town. That’s when Dorthea saw Topaz and assumed it was Jodi since she had on the same hat.”

  “Hmmm…possible, but what about the purchase at the Quick Mart later that night?”

  Okay. He had a point. That didn’t make sense…unless…“That had to have been Topaz, too. What better way to throw everyone off? First she confused the time of Jodi’s disappearance with her appearance in the house and her e-mail. Then she took a credit card—there would have been one in the house, I doubt Jodi took those on her run—and went to the Quick Mart on the other side of town, where she made the charges and then returned the credit card later that night, using the back gate again so that no one saw her.

  “Then earlier this month when the search was about to shift back to Magnolia Estates, she planted the purchases she’d made in the field to draw attention away from the neighborhood. Of course, she had no way of knowing Scott was about to have his lot cleared. That was the one variable she couldn’t control.”

  “So she saved the water bottles and the PowerBar all this time?”

  “I guess so. Why not? No one suspected her at all. She only had the barest connection with Jodi. Why wouldn’t she keep the purchases in case she needed them later? She’s probably got the hat and map stowed away somewhere else, too.”

  I could barely make out Waraday’s mumble, but it sounded like he said, “Along with her purse and keys, too.” Then louder, “Hold on.” There was a long silence and I could hear drawers slamming; then he reluctantly said, “All right, I’ve got Jodi’s notes here. I’m going to read through them again and check out that name.”

  He took down Theresa’s contact information and hung up. I’d done what I could. Now all I had to do was not stare at “Topaz” and get through the rest of the party.

  I opened the door and it was like surfacing from underwater. Conversation, laughter, and music washed over me. Someone had turned up the music. I blinked as four kids zipped past me. More people had arrived and the room was packed. I checked on Dorthea and Nathan. They were fine. Nathan was enthralled with her long beaded necklace, which she’d given him to play with. I managed to glance at “Topaz,” subtly, I hoped. She was still in the group gathered around the game board. I had a hard time thinking of her as Mary. In fact it was probably better to keep thinking of her as Topaz so I didn’t give anything away.

  “Come on, Nathan, let’s get you some food,” I said, and carried him to his high chair. I cut up food for him into bite-size portions and had a little of the turkey myself, since Mitch had been right—it really was the best turkey I’d ever had. The phone rang and I snatched it up.

  “Mrs. Avery?”

  I recognized Detective Waraday’s voice. There was a tension in his tone that hadn’t been there before.

  “Is she still at your house?”

  “Topaz?” I shot a quick glance at the game group. “Yes.” She rolled the dice with flair.

  “And there are still other people there?”

  “Yes, probably between thirty and forty, right now.”

  “Stay put. Don’t do anything. I’m on my way with backup.”

  “Did you find out—”

  He interrupted me. “A Mary Bertram was reported among the dead after Katrina. Prior to that, she was last seen leaving the apartment she shared with her boyfriend in Lubbock, Texas. She was wanted for his murder. He was found the week after she disappeared when neighbors complained about the smell coming from the apartment. He’d died from blunt trauma to the back of the head.”

  “Just like Jodi,” I whispered.

  He went on. “Mary Bertram was arrested three years ago during a domestic dispute at the same location. She does have similar facial characteristics.”

  I swallowed and felt light-headed. It was Topaz. No, actually, it was Mary who’d killed Jodi. She’d been here all along, nudging the investigation just enough in one direction or another to keep it away from her. So that meant Topaz really was dead. I felt a coldness settle over me. How awful to die alone, but then it seemed worse somehow that no one knew she was dead. Not even her family.

  “Mrs. Avery? Ellie!” Waraday said sharply. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” I said faintly and glanced at the group playing the game. Topaz wasn’t there. “I don’t see her. She was there just a minute ago.”

  “Don’t do anything. Do you hear me? Do not look for her. Don’t d
o anything.”

  “I won’t.” My feet were practically bolted to the floor. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, even if I’d wanted to.

  “Sit tight. It’ll take me about fifteen minutes to get there.” He hung up and I stood there a moment, dazed.

  I replaced the phone and absentmindedly began cleaning up, clearing away a few used plates and cups that had been left on the countertop. I picked up the last plate and saw Topaz’s favorite earrings. They were still there on the counter where she’d left them after she took them off to keep Nathan from pulling them out of her ears. The bits of metal, keys, were suspended on several hoops to make quirky chandelier earrings.

  They looked different splayed out on the counter, each metal piece separate and distinct. There were tiny keys on the top that looked like the key I’d once had that opened a locked diary. The lower tier had heavier, larger keys. I touched one, running my finger down the rough edge. The color, faded gold, and the small three-triangle cutaway at the top were familiar. It looked like the old key to my front door.

  I went over to the key rack beside the garage door and angled out the house key we’d used before we had the locks changed. It was a shinier gold, but it was the same shape. I ran my finger down the rough edge. Four small grooves, one deep, then one more small groove.

  I went back into the kitchen and counted the grooves in the key on the earring. Four small, one deep, then one small.

  I swallowed, feeling numb. It had been Topaz who’d cut the gas line and keyed my car, too, then stolen it and set fire to it. And she’d probably called the reporters with the anonymous tip about Jodi coming home before Nita’s birthday, too. It had kept the reporters busy and sidelined me.

  Topaz appeared at my left shoulder and I jerked like I’d had an electric shock. “Ellie, can I borrow your phone? My cell phone is dead. Oh, my earrings! I can’t forget these.” She hooked them into her ears and the keys fell together, the other keys covering the larger house key.

  I’m sure I had that deer-in-the-headlights expression, but I managed to croak out, “No, that’s fine. Go ahead.” I handed her the phone. She smiled a bit uncertainly at me, then dialed and put the phone to her ear. She wandered over to the refrigerator. After a few seconds, she hung up and handed the phone back. “I have to go. I’m meeting a friend in Atlanta later tonight, so I have to get on the road. Thanks for inviting me.”