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Besides, there was a story to write.
And it was still hers, damn it. No matter what Metzger thought.
She’d already seen news reports on TV. With the bodies identified, reporters were already on the scene, not only at the Beaumont estate, but had collected at the home and business of Tyson Beaumont, who along with his father, Baxter, owned the property where the bodies of the Duval sisters had been found.
Nikki should have been there. In the crowd. With questions and a microphone. It was all so frustrating. When she should have had a damned exclusive. She’d even read Metzger’s account of the discovery of the bodies. It had been accurate, but, in her estimation, thin.
She could do better.
She would do better.
Besides, she did have an ace or two up her sleeve. And not because of Reed. First, there was the boat she was certain she’d seen beneath the willow tree. It had been red and hard to distinguish, but she kept mixing it up in her mind with the prow of the boat that had struck Morrisette. Different boats, right? Had to be, but she wasn’t certain; that part of the tragedy was still murky in her mind. And then there was Bronco Cravens. So far she’d seen no interviews with him. His anonymous tip to the police department hadn’t yet been leaked to the press, but she knew about it.
That, though not much, was something.
A different angle.
The Cravens and Beaumont families, though from vastly different social strata, had been connected for years, and no one, so far, had delved into that side story.
And she knew Tyson Beaumont, who was a year or possibly two younger than Andrew but, she thought, had played ball with him in high school. Way back when.
She hadn’t really known the Duval girls, though Holly hadn’t been that much younger than her, maybe a couple of years? She’d have to check. There was a chance that she might have been friends with someone Nikki had hung out with in junior high, though that was a stretch. She certainly didn’t remember it.
Also, so far the victims’ mother, Margaret Duval Le Roy, had not spoken to the press despite the small group who had collected on the lawn in front of her house. But that would probably happen. And soon. Nikki only wished she could be the first reporter to interview the victims’ mother, but considering the fact she was still laid up, it seemed unlikely. She tested her arm, felt a painful twinge in her shoulder and silently swore at her bad luck.
But a sore shoulder didn’t mean she was bed-bound.
Nor did a miscarriage, sad as it may be.
“So do something,” she said aloud. As if she needed any motivation.
On the bed, Jennings stretched and yawned. His pink tongue curling, his needle-sharp teeth visible.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, but couldn’t resist patting him on the head before she made her way to the steps leading to the third-floor loft and her office. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she flopped onto the daybed with her laptop, then started scouring the Internet for more information on the bodies located at the Beaumont estate. All she knew was that they’d been ID’d as the older two of the long-missing Duval sisters, Holly and Poppy. But Rose, the youngest, was still missing. So what happened to her? Was she buried elsewhere? Or were her remains scattered, found by animals? No, that didn’t make sense, not if the reports were accurate because the other two bodies hadn’t been disturbed. So—had she escaped? Was it possible the youngest sibling alone had survived? What were the chances of that?
In her mind she was already writing her story, using her unique perspective as a person who had been at the historic home as a child. She knew a portion of the history of the old home, most of the rumors and scandals, secrets and lies. Those that she didn’t, she could find out. If Google couldn’t help her, Charlene probably could. All she had to do was ask her mother....
Her heart sank at that thought. She’d barely spoken to Charlene since losing the baby. One quick call delivering the heartbreaking news and a promise to phone again when she was feeling better.
“No time like the present,” she said aloud as she heard Mikado’s nails clicking on the stairs as the old
dog came up to join her. As the phone rang in her ear, he looked up expectantly and Nikki patted the mattress beside her. He sprang onto the bed and settled in beside her. “We need to go outside, you and I, to get some exercise,” she said as the phone call went to voice mail.
Relieved, Nikki left a quick message saying she was feeling better and would call Charlene back. Then she dived into the information her laptop provided. A lot had happened since she’d been laid up, the essence of the information as she sifted through it that the two bodies had been identified, as many had speculated, to be the two older Duval sisters. Holly and Poppy. The youngest girl wasn’t in the basement, her whereabouts unknown.
Dead? Or alive? If dead, where was she buried, and would she be found? And if alive, where was she? Did she remember? Was she living another life and didn’t realize who she was? And what about the older half brother, Owen, Margaret’s only son. He’d been the prime suspect in his sisters’ disappearance. What had happened to him? Was he around? Did he know that Holly’s and Poppy’s bodies had been discovered? What, if any, connection did the Duval family have with the Beaumonts?
Dozens of questions swirling through her brain, she accessed the newspaper’s archives remotely and pulled up story after story about the Duval sisters and started making a list of people to interview. At the top of the list was Owen Duval. She didn’t know much about him, only that he’d been adopted by Harvey Duval soon after Harvey married Margaret. So where was Owen’s biological father? She made a note to track him down.
She spent over an hour searching through the files she could access, as well as online yearbooks, cross-checking the pictures and names with a list of the acquaintances she’d found in old newspaper articles. There were several names of classmates that rang distant bells with her. When she’d looked up those names in old yearbooks, she vaguely remembered some of the kids, all of whom would be in their midthirties now. She noted a few of the names and was about to call Millie when Mikado placed his nose on her leg and whined.
“That’s right. I promised,” she said, and reluctantly climbed down the stairs to the kitchen and opened the slider. The dog shot outside. He sniffed around the backyard, chased a ball she threw with her good hand, then flopped on the flagstones in a patch of sunlight to sun himself. “Feel good?” she asked, scratching his scruffy head behind his ears, though she was thinking of the case and how she would unravel the mystery. She’d need the help of the police department but didn’t dare talk to Reed. Not yet. She knew other people at the department but figured she was persona non grata with the PD. At least for now.
She left the dog snoozing in the warm sunlight and returned to the third floor again.
She dialed Millie’s cell number and put her phone on speaker while her fingers flew over the keyboard. Yeah, her left hand twinged, hurting as she typed, but at least it still worked.
Millie clicked on before the phone rang twice, but Nikki didn’t wait for her to answer. “I see the bodies have been ID’d.”
