Page 37

She flicks one hand dismissively. “People lie.”

I stare at her.

Marj stares back, eyebrows raised, looking entirely too pleased with the direction this conversation has taken.

“You want me to suspect you.”

A smile threatens at the corners of her mouth. “I think it would be irresponsible to rule anyone out prematurely.”

“Right.”

“I was here at the time.”

“Very compelling.”

“I knew Casey.”

“So did the rest of the town.”

She folds her arms. “I have access to several large kitchen knives.”

“I’ll keep you in mind.” I take another bite of my apple.

Her entire face brightens. “Thank you.”

Marj hums, a pleased sound. “Parents always get the side-eye first. But Mara and Evan?” Her expression shifts, some of the amusement slipping away. “They were close to her. Real close. Funny how the town cops are the ones who were in the thick of it back then, isn't it?”

That gets my attention. “They were friends?”

“Friends,” she says, her voice dropping an octave. “Or the teenage equivalent involving heavy petting and a complete absence of frontal-lobe development. They stopped talking to each other after she vanished. Fractured like a dropped mirror. Pieced it back together now, it seems.”

Two teenagers close to a missing girl aren't inherently suspicious. Two teenagers who stopped speaking immediately after she disappeared are at least worth looking into.

She watches me for another second, undoubtedly recognizing that she has my full attention now.

“But if you want the real grit, you need to talk to Elaine Turner,” she lowers her voice as if she’s sharing a state secret. “She’s the town’s unofficial record keeper. If it happened in Stillwater, Elaine saw it, heard it, or probably wrote it down in one of the floor-to-ceiling binders she keeps in her living room. She’s been collecting local history since before the internet was a glimmer in anyone's eye—including a string of robberies that happened the same week Casey went missing.”

“Robberies?” I straighten up. My headache recedes, replaced by the electric hum of a lead. “The police didn't link them?”

“The police were busy looking for a girl by the week’s end. A few missing jewelry boxes didn't seem like the headline. And between you and me, the cops we had around here back then weren’t exactly burdened by an excess of investigative rigor.” She pulls a scrap of paper from her apron and scribbles an address. “Maple Street. Third house past the pharmacy. You can’t miss it—blue siding, a leaning fence, and Elaine on the porch, likely waiting for the mailman so she can see who’s getting what.”

She taps the paper. “Go before noon. And for the love of your digestive tract, don't let her feed you. If she brings out the lemon bars, you’ll be trapped there gorging until the next census.”

I take the paper, the ink still wet. “Appreciate it, Marj.”

“Just doing my civic duty,” she winks. “And I want a shout-out on the next episode.”

I kill the engine on Maple Street, and every curtain on the block shifts in unison—a flicker of fabric pulled back, then dropped—as the neighborhood clocks my arrival. Out here, a car slowing down is an anomaly; a barking dog would probably trigger a call to the sheriff.

The house is exactly as described: Blue siding, a fence with a fifteen-degree list to the left, and a bird feeder currently being defended by a squirrel that seems to be on several types of performance-enhancing drugs.

I walk up the steps, adjusting my mental script. Polite. Persistent. Charming. I knock.

The door flies back with a violent thwack against the interior wall. I expect a grandmotherly woman in a floral apron, the smell of something baking.

Instead, it’s her. I blink, wondering for a split second if the exhaustion has finally caught up to me—if I’m hallucinating a high-definition fever dream.

She looks exactly the same as the last time I saw her—composed in a way that suggests she’s perfectly comfortable being the smartest person in the room and mildly irritated by the fact that she usually is.