“Then how …” Violet started. “How could they be connected? I don’t understand.”
Whitlock leaned toward her, his voice gentle. “We believe the young woman who was murdered spent some time at a cabin just outside of the Harvest Creek subdivision. We’ve found some interesting things there.”
“Like what?” Eugene asked.
Whitlock tipped his head toward me, as if suggesting I do the honors.
“The young woman’s name is Audrey Ashford. She was walking through the woods not far from the cabin on the night she was murdered. I searched the cabin and found what I believe to have been your daughter’s initials carved into a wood beam.”
“Tell her about the locket,” Whitlock said.
“When Audrey died, she was dating a boy named Logan. In one of his sketchbooks, I found a drawing of a locket. It was silver and oval in shape. Along the outer edge was a delicate ring of hearts, and in the center was Anne’s name.”
Violet’s eyes filled with tears. “She never took that locket off. Not once. It was a gift from her aunt. Will you excuse me for a moment?”
We nodded, and Violet pushed her chair back and left the room.
She returned with a framed photo, which she handed to me. “Is this the locket the young man drew?”
I stared at the picture for some time, even though I recognized the locket in an instant.
“It is the one he drew, yes.”
“But how … after all this time?”
“I have a theory, which I haven’t proven yet. My gut tells me Anne and Audrey had both been to the cabin before, even though it was decades apart. I was there yesterday, and it looked like someone had tried to tidy it up in recent months. I think Audrey found the locket inside the cabin, and she got curious and decided to try and find out who Anne was and what happened to her.”
“Georgiana’s theories are almost always right,” Whitlock said.
Violet lowered herself into a chair and drifted into silence, the air seeming to tighten around us as we waited to hear what she’d say next. When she spoke again, the words landed like a sharp blow. “I believe your theory about Anne visiting the cabin, and I know who built it.”
16
“The cabin was built by my grandfather,” Violet said. “He inherited the land from his father, and back then, part of it looked much like it still does today, I imagine. My grandfather loved those woods, and when he was a teenager, he built that cabin as a place to go when he wanted to be alone with his thoughts.”
Whitlock shook his head, staring at Violet in shock. “Why didn’t you tell me this when your daughter went missing?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant. The last time Anne was seen was at the Boathouse Diner in town, which, as you both know, is miles away from the cabin. At the time, I didn’t know about Anne’s interest in the cabin or that she’d been to it.”
“I feel like I’m missing a good deal of this story,” I said.
“I apologize,” Violet said. “Let me start from the beginning. When my grandfather was in his sixties, a developer approached him about buying the land to build a subdivision.”
“Are you talking about Harvest Creek?”
Violet nodded. “Those woods were just as much a part of him as the breath he drew. Still, he needed money. So, my grandfather agreed to sell part of the land to the developer and to preserve the other part for future generations, with a clause in his will that it would never be sold.”
“You said you didn’t know your daughter had any interest in the cabin, but when we were talking before you said you believed Anne had been there,” I said.
Violet crossed one leg over the other. “A few years ago, my sister Glinda came for a visit, and we got to talking about Anne and the last summer they spent together. That is when I learned about Anne’s fascination with our family history, and Glinda told her about the cabin, and why our grandfather built it.”
“Why hadn’t Anne ever heard about the cabin before?”
“I was three years old when my grandfather died, and I have no memory of him. Glinda was much older and much more sentimental in nature. After she told Anne about the cabin, she warned her not to go inside, since it’s no longer, what you would call, ‘structurally sound.’”
“But you believe she went there anyway.”
“Anne was curious in nature. When you showed up here today, talking about the cabin and the locket Audrey may have found, I was in shock. I never would have considered the cabin a place to look for clues. How naïve I’ve been all these years.”
