Mom Zone Mysteries 04-Magnolias, Moonlight, and Murder

by Sara Rosett

  “I’m curious. She lived in our house and…” I trailed off, not wanting to talk about the bones I’d found.

  “You don’t have to explain to me,” Nita said. “I’ve learned that some people care. You’re one of those people. That’s why I asked you.”

  Nita looked over my shoulder and her face switched into neutral. “Scott. How are you?”

  “Fine. Fine. How are you, Mrs. Lockworth?”

  “Good. How is everything at STAND?” Nita asked, clearly making an effort to be nice to him, but I could tell from her stilted speech that she really didn’t want to talk with him.

  “Busy.” Scott transferred his small plate from one hand to another and then pushed his dark-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Actually, that’s why I came over. I wanted to talk with Ellie about some organizing help at the office.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you two. I can tell you that Ellie is a wonderful organizer. Consider me a reference. She’s whipped the flyer program at Find Jodi into shape.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I’d never had a corporate client before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but inside I was giving myself a high five. My business might survive the transition to North Dawkins after all.

  “We have stacks of boxes we need sorted, a whole storage room of them. The papers keep piling up and we can’t get to them. Would you take a look and give me an estimate of what it would take to get it organized?”

  “Yes, I could do that.”

  “Great. How about Tuesday?”

  I did a quick mental scan of my schedule, which was wide open, except for taking care of Livvy and Nathan. I knew Mitch was scheduled for a weeklong trip beginning Monday, so I wouldn’t be able to count on him to back me up with the kids.

  “Could we meet in the afternoon around four?” I was sure I could call Anna, a teenager who lived in the neighborhood, to watch the kids for an hour.

  “That should work,” Scott said. I confirmed that STAND’s office was in the new business office park near the interstate; then I said good-bye to my neighbors, who were still chatting. I pulled the front door closed and set a brisk pace down the driveway.

  The sky was inky except for a sliver of moon. The air was perfectly still. I peeled off my denim jacket, which I’d needed at the meeting. Most houses and businesses had their thermometers set to the “freezer” temperature to combat the muggy heat that had come back after our too-brief taste of cool temperatures. A dog barked at me as I hurried past dark clumps, the brick mailboxes that loomed at the end of each driveway. I almost wished I had driven. Or at least waited for Dorthea.

  Headlights spotlighted the road beside me as a car approached behind me. I moved over as far as I could to the side of the road, glad I was wearing a white T-shirt. At least I was visible to the driver.

  The car hung back, slightly behind me. I kicked my pace up a notch and rushed along, ducking under the waxy leaves of a magnolia tree.

  The car hovered behind me. I glanced over my shoulder quickly, but I couldn’t see anything except the blazing headlights.

  Great. Why didn’t the driver pass me? It wasn’t like I was taking up the road. There was plenty of room to get around me, but the car continued to linger. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. Was this what happened to Jodi? Had she raced along, unable to see into the blackness past the headlights?

  I bit my lip and scanned the houses on my side of the road, fleetingly thinking of turning up one of the driveways and ringing the doorbell. I didn’t know anyone who lived on this street and every house near me had the buttoned-up, we’re-not-home look. The houses’ windows were dark and I wasn’t even sure where the driveway ended at the closest one because trees shrouded the lawn.

  The car veered closer and the headlights angled toward me. Not good. I broke into a jog as I hopped onto a lawn and dodged around the nearest mailbox.

  The engine accelerated behind me.

  I sprinted, my feet thudding through the grass. Since I didn’t jog and I never sprinted, I knew I couldn’t keep up the pace long. Almost to the corner. If I angled across the lawn at the corner, I’d be on our street, almost home.

  I flew across the corner yard, my breath choppy. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the car pause at the stop sign, then roar into the turn, cutting off my path.

  I wasn’t going to make it to my street. I froze for a second, then reversed and headed back the way I’d come. Better to get back where there were plenty of people. Why hadn’t I done that first?

  I ran, breath heaving now. Instead of going on, the car reversed, curving back around the corner. I heard a honk and a shout.

  Was that…my name?

  Another honk and, yes, that was definitely the driver calling my name.

  I stopped sprinting and turned. Now that I was behind the headlights, I could make out the car, a small hybrid, but I didn’t recognize it. The passenger window slid down. “Ellie! It’s me, Colleen.”

  The car backed up even with me and I walked over on wobbly legs. I braced one hand on my knee as I bent down to look in the window. “Colleen? What were you doing? You scared me to death.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if it was you. That’s why I was going so slow. I thought you were wearing blue, not white, so I wasn’t sure.”

  I was still panting, so I held up my denim jacket I had clutched in one hand.

  “Oh, sorry. I’m really sorry. Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

  The cool air blasted out of the vents in her dash and I angled one toward my face. “No, that’s okay. I need to get home.”

  “Come on, let me drop you at home. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Okay,” I said, and collapsed into the seat. “Turn at the corner and about halfway down.”

  “Right. Look, I’m really sorry. Nita told me Scott wants to hire you for an organizing job and I wanted to tell you to be careful.”

  “Got it. You don’t like him. Don’t trust him.” I pointed at the mailbox. “This is mine.”

  Colleen pulled into the driveway, then stomped on the brakes. “You don’t get it, do you? Scott could be very dangerous. He may have gotten away with…” She closed her eyes and reluctantly said, “Murder. At the very least, kidnapping.”

  “Colleen, of course, I’ll be careful, but if the sheriff’s investigated and Scott has an alibi—”

  She tossed her head back and her wiry hair trembled as she said, “I don’t even want to talk about the sheriff’s office. They are so stuck on her ‘boyfriend’ they can’t see anything else.”

  “She had a boyfriend?” I asked, surprised.

  “No,” Colleen said derisively.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just that Dorthea said she wasn’t dating anyone.”

  “She wasn’t.” Colleen’s tone had lost its sharpness. “She met this guy—Peter Yannis—at one of the online dating sites. They e-mailed a few times and talked on the phone. Jodi said he seemed nice. He was a physical therapist who lived in Florida. After a couple of weeks, he mentioned he was driving up to a conference in Atlanta and they decided to meet for dinner since he’d be practically driving through North Dawkins to get to Atlanta.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They met for dinner, they talked, and he went on to Atlanta, but he didn’t stop again on the way back home to Florida. Jodi said he was extremely enthusiastic.”

  “Enthusiastic about meeting her face-to-face?”

  “Yes, she said he was excited about that, but apparently, he was like that with everything, his work, his hobby. What did she say it was? Oh yeah, deep-sea fishing. I think he came on too strong. Jodi is”—Colleen waved her hand in the air and shrugged slightly as she searched for the right word—“self-contained. No, that’s not a good description. Reserved. Self-sufficient?” Colleen tried out the words, testing them. “That sounds very lonerish, doesn’t it? Jodi doesn’t need a lot of noise and flash to be happy, and I got the feeling that Peter was very extroverted an
d overpowered her. Anyway, whatever happened, one date doesn’t make a relationship. I wish I could make Waraday understand that.”

  “So Waraday knows about this Peter—what was his last name?” I reached for the door handle and tucked my jacket over my arm.

  “Yannis. Yes, Waraday knows about him. That’s all Waraday wanted to cover when he questioned me. He’s stuck on Peter Yannis. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s that thing about ‘it’s usually the husband who’s guilty when something happens to the wife.’ Since Jodi isn’t married, that only leaves a boyfriend and Peter Yannis is the closest thing Waraday can find to a boyfriend.”

  “So, what does Peter Yannis say about all this? Does he have an alibi like Scott?”

  Colleen frowned. “That’s the problem. Waraday hasn’t been able to find Peter.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I released the door handle and twisted around to face Colleen. “You mean he’s disappeared, too?” This story got stranger and stranger.

  She held up her hand, fingers splayed. “I know, I know. On the surface it looks like there might be a connection, but she wasn’t attracted to him. She wouldn’t run off to see him and not tell anyone. She’s not like that. She’d never worry her family like that.”

  “You have to admit that it does sound like more than a coincidence.”

  “I know, but I know Jodi. She’d never do that, no matter what showed up on her credit card. That stupid charge combined with Peter’s disappearance have derailed the whole investigation,” Colleen said, frustration vibrating through her tone. “The night she disappeared, she charged some bottled water, an energy bar, and a map of Florida at a convenience store on the interstate. Waraday’s focused on that trivial charge and assumed she headed off to Florida to meet Peter Yannis, but that’s not logical. Not for Jodi. She doesn’t do things on the spur of the minute and she’s considerate of other people. She’d never go off like that.”

  “Why wasn’t there anything about that in the newspaper, I wonder?”

  “They kept it out of the news and I only know about it because Mrs. Nita told me. I was so frustrated with Waraday and how he wouldn’t do anything else about Scott.” Colleen leaned back against the headrest and blew out a deep breath. “She wanted to help me see why the investigation was focused on Peter Yannis. Sorry I get so worked up about this, but it’s important. You do need to be really careful around Scott.”

  “I will be. Thanks for the lift home,” I said as I stepped out of the car. I shoved the door closed and gave a quick wave.

  I went through the automatic motions of punching in the code on the keypad, but I hardly noticed the rumble of the garage door as it rose. So Jodi had a conflict with Scott and she’d met a guy through an online dating service. Neither bit of info was that exceptional. People had arguments all the time and online dating was downright common, but combining those factors with her disappearance put them in a new light. I couldn’t really blame Waraday for his interest in Peter Yannis, especially since he couldn’t locate the guy. And Colleen’s fixation on Scott as a suspect, that was a bit excessive. I shook my head, mentally telling myself it wasn’t my problem and it didn’t have anything to do with me.

  Well, except for the fact that I was going to help Nita match up the notes to Jodi’s articles. That was all I was going to do. I stepped into the house, expecting everything to be dark and quiet, but I heard giggles coming from the kitchen. I found Mitch and Livvy huddled over bowls of ice cream, playing High Ho! Cherry-O.

  Livvy put a finger to her lips and said, “Shh. Nathan’s sleeping. We don’t want to wake him up.”

  “I bet you don’t,” I said, and reached for a bowl.

  I dropped onto the overstuffed chair and propped my feet up on the huge ottoman, listening for a moment to make sure the house was going to stay quiet. Nathan was sleeping—of course. There was no doubt he was deep in dreamland, but I was sure my little night owl, Livvy, was still awake. As long as she stayed in her bed, she could stay awake as long as she liked. Rex collapsed on the floor beside me with a gusty sigh and I said, “I hear you, boy. I’m exhausted, too.” My shoulder muscles ached from carrying Nathan, who seemed to be putting on a couple of pounds every week. It felt so good to sit down. I flexed my feet back, stretching my calf muscles. I’d never been so worn out in my life. The sheer physical exhaustion I felt after a day of chasing two kids and running a house surprised me. No workout I’d ever done in the past had the effect of basically turning me into a puddle. Mitch had left this afternoon for his weeklong trip and I was on my own.

  It had been a crazy day. Sometimes I thought Sundays were the most stressful day of the week. The morning had been a mad dash to get everyone dressed and out the door for church. We’d gone to the park after lunch and exhausted everyone, including Rex. Then, I’d squeezed in another hour in the box room between washing laundry so Mitch could pack. His trip had been moved up and he had to leave this afternoon, which meant we had to cancel our date.

  A chime sounded from my computer. I checked the new e-mail and could tell from the address it had been sent through the Find Jodi Web site and was from Nita. She wrote:

  Hello, Ellie.

  I’ve attached the first set of transcriptions from Jodi’s notebook. It was slow going, but after a few pages it began to flow more quickly. If you could match these up with her articles, that would be terrific.

  I opened the attachment and printed it, but I didn’t let myself read it. I put it in a folder with Jodi’s articles because it was late. If I got into the transcription of Jodi’s notes and articles now, I’d be up until after midnight. I set it down, but kept my hand on it. I was torn. I wanted to open it, delve right in, and sort out the details, but was reluctant to do it.

  I was getting deeper and deeper into the search for Jodi. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t get mixed up in it, but here I was coordinating flyer distribution, volunteering for searches, and digging into Jodi’s articles for clues. I put the folder down. I’d go through it, match up the articles and notes, then give it back to Nita and that would be it.

  I went back to flipping channels. I knew I should go to bed, but I’d never mastered the art of going to bed early when Mitch was gone. Livvy wasn’t the only one who had trouble falling asleep and I figured it was better to fall into bed totally beat and get a couple of really good hours of sleep than go to bed early and toss and turn most of the night. I settled in to watch a rerun of a home improvement show, but after thirty minutes of watching designers bicker and make outrageous choices, I went back to channel-surfing.

  I paused on a classic movie station when I saw the title of the black-and-white movie was His Girl Friday. This was the movie that Jodi had liked, the one that inspired her to be a reporter.

  I edged the sound up slightly and tried to follow the rapid-fire dialogue. I’d never seen the movie and it took me a little while to work out that Cary Grant in his role as Walter, a conniving newspaper editor, was using a story about a pending execution to lure his star reporter, Hildy—who also happened to be his ex-wife—back to reporting and, not incidentally, also back to him before she married a nice but dull insurance salesman and went off to the suburbs to have babies.

  I watched Hildy stride into the press room, confident in her abilities and comfortable even though she was the only woman. She joked with the boys, who couldn’t believe she was going to leave journalism, interviewed the condemned man, and then banged out an eloquent story on her manual typewriter with the ease and speed of a professional.

  At the commercial break, I snuck into the kitchen to make popcorn and pour a tall Diet Coke. I was into the movie. No way was I going to bed any time soon, so I didn’t worry about the caffeine. I grabbed a few Hershey’s Kisses, too, for good measure.

  I snuggled back into the chair and settled in to watch the movie. I was halfway through my popcorn when the sirens went off in the movie and I turned down the sound. The reporters scrambled from the pressroom to track down the story of a
jailbreak. Instinctively, Hildy called in the news, then took off after the story, hiking up her skirt so she could chase the prison warden. She brought him down with a flying tackle so she could interview him.

  No wonder Jodi had wanted to be a reporter after watching the movie. I was so immersed in it that by the time the credits rolled, I realized I hadn’t eaten my chocolate Kisses. I untwisted the foil. The end of the movie had hit the perfect note. Justice was served and Hildy realized she was a reporter to the core and gave up her romanticized version of domesticity. She also realized she was still in love with Walter, which was no surprise since I didn’t think there was a woman out there who could resist Cary Grant.

  I rolled the foil into a ball and tossed it in the bowl with the popcorn kernels. Why couldn’t they make movies like that today? I couldn’t think of many recent movie roles that showed a woman that strong and confident. And as the acknowledged expert, too. Hildy was the best at what she did. She’d been a little mixed up about what she wanted in her personal life, but hey, that wasn’t uncommon. At least she wasn’t portrayed as a bumbling fool in every aspect of life, a movie formula that made me cringe.

  I saw it was past midnight and groaned. I gathered up the dishes and went to coax Rex to bed in his kennel, still thinking about Jodi wanting to be like Hildy.

  The next morning, I pulled into the garage and breathed a sigh of relief after dropping Livvy off at Mother’s Day Out. We’d both been a little slow this morning, me because of my late night and Livvy because she spilled milk on her favorite shirt and didn’t want to change clothes. I’d relaxed my parenting standards quite a bit since Nathan’s arrival, but I had to draw the line at letting my daughter wear a wet, smelly shirt.

  I climbed out of the car, unstrapped Nathan from his seat, then went around to the passenger side of the car to get the diaper bag.

  “Not again.” Another thin scratch wavered down the other side of the car.