“No,” she replies, “you didn’t and for that I should be mad or threaten your job or something. You gave me enough clues, and you’re not the only one who can do research. The most obvious was the use of your company credit card. Justin in finance came to me. I never knew you were such a Dollar Store fan.”
“Shit,” I mutter. “There aren’t a lot of options.”
“Listen, small-town secrets are best learned by the insiders.”
Is that me?
“I’m not pulling the plug on this,” she says, “however, you don’t have an open-ended research trip either. I need something. Tell me what you’ve learned.”
Settling onto the sofa, I stare out the large windows toward the lake. The temperature outside is rising. The forecast is for much warmer days over the next week, which is unseasonably warm.
Is Marty still alive?
Is she locked in a place like Julie was?
I begin to think about how hot it would have been for my sister.
“Jill?” Echo prompts.
I turn my attention to the woodstove, and the way the dark glass reflects the hearth. “Let me start at the beginning.” I mean the beginning of this saga. We don’t have enough time to go all the way back. “Craig Gilbert was the high school football coach and physical education teacher. He was reported missing when he failed to report to work. At first, not much was done.”
“Is he married?”
“Yeah.”
“And his school reported him missing? Not his wife?”
“Right. It seems that at first there were some rumors that he might have left of his own accord. The wife denied the possibility. Three days after his disappearance, she made an impassioned plea for his return.”
“I heard about that on one of my podcasts.”
“A week after he was reported missing, the high school organized a search. His body was found by two members of the high school football team in a swale near a country road. Their names weren’t announced, but I have learned their identities.
“The whole thing has apparently put the local police, a sheriff’s department, in a bad light. I know most of the force. Many of them have been there since I was young.”
“Oh my stars. The kids found their own coach?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“That’s awful. Do they know what happened to him?”
“His death is officially ruled anaccident.”
“What the hell? Falling from a building could be an accident,” Echo says. “The victim could have slipped, or he could have been pushed, or maybe he jumped. All very differentaccidents.”
“That’s why I came here, to try to learn if he slipped, was pushed, or jumped.”
“What have you learned?”
“I’m getting nowhere, mostly because yesterday morning a new incident has taken the spotlight.”
Even discussing Julie made my stomach queasy.
“What new incident? Is it related to the coach thing?” she asks.
“No...” I hesitate, giving that more thought. “I don’t think it is. I guess...it could be...but how...? No...”
That’s a correlation I hadn’t considered. Could they be connected?
