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“She said so and I’m just confirming. She’s Owen Duval’s alibi.”
“I heard.” He shrugged. “I dated a lot of girls back then. Ashley was one of them. And for the record, she dated around a lot, too. If you could call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
He raised an eyebrow. “These days I think they refer to it as ‘hooking up.’ And she was always with Owen. Not necessarily a sexual thing, I think. Even back then when everything was, but she and Owen—it was weird if you ask me. But what does this have to do with anything? Who I dated? Who she dated? Geez, that was a lifetime ago.” He picked up his toolbox, snapped it closed and loaded it into the back of his vehicle. “So what’s with all of the questions?”
“Just for the story.”
“About the Duval sisters?” he asked, but before she could answer his cell phone rang and he yanked it from his pocket. “I gotta take this,” and he answered the phone, effectively ending the interview. “Tyson Beaumont,” he said, slamming the back door of his SUV shut, then getting into the driver’s seat and turning on the ignition.
She got the message.
And she knew that if she wanted to go back to the grounds and see the house for herself, she’d have to do it quickly before the new security system was activated. She couldn’t tip off the Beaumonts, or her husband.
That part bothered her.
As she drove toward Savannah, past the open fields and into the city, slowing with traffic, she thought about what Tyson had told her, about the timeline of his family living at the estate; something about it nagged at her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Before heading home, she stopped at Wilda’s Ribs for takeout, her stomach growling at the spicy scent of barbecue sauce filling the interior of the SUV. She pulled into the garage and cut the engine. As she reached for the door handle and was about to pick up the white sack on the passenger seat, her phone rang. She recognized the number, so she picked up. Andrea Clancy, one of Holly Duval’s friends from junior high, was returning her call. “Hello.”
“Nikki? Nikki Gillette? You called me?” a woman inquired. She was speaking loudly over a cacophony of background noise and breathing hard, as if she were moving fast. “It’s Andrea Clancy and I’m at the airport, here in Cincy.”
“That’s right, Andrea. I did call you. Thanks for calling back.” Nikki remained behind the wheel of her Honda, unwilling to take a chance that the wireless connection might fail if she moved from her spot in the garage. “I’m a reporter with the Sentinel.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know that. Look, what is it you want to know? I’m on my way to Seattle for a conference and I’ve got a tight connection.”
“I’m calling about Holly Duval.”
“I figured. I saw online that they found her body. And her sister’s. I . . . I just can’t believe it. I mean, I knew everyone kind of assumed that they might not be alive but . . .” Her voice faded for a second.
Nikki heard the roar of a jet engine and a woman’s muffled voice instructing passengers about boarding. “Anyone with small children or needing assistance please . . .”
“I’m just having trouble processing it. That she’s actually dead. Murdered! Dear God. I just hoped there would be a different ending,” Andrea said a little breathlessly. “Look, the connection’s kind of crappy here. I just got through security and am heading to my gate—oh, excuse me—Sorry. Nearly ran down a woman with a stroller. God, I’m late.”
“But you two were close?” Nikki pressed on for fear the connection would be lost. “You and Holly?”
“BFFs as they would say today. But that was in junior high school, of course, because . . . well, you know she didn’t get to go on. Didn’t get the chance. It was sad, so sad, all of it.” She was still walking it seemed, bits of conversation playing in the background, a crying baby audible. “But then Holly hadn’t been happy in a long time. No one in the family was. Still, this is bad. I mean, murder? Really? Scary stuff.”
“No one was happy?” Nikki asked.
“I don’t think so. Not according to Holly. She always thought her parents were on the verge of divorce, you know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was always tense there. She said her mom and dad were never all that happy and things just got worse.”
But the parents had stuck together for a while, after their daughters had disappeared.
“I thought that Harvey and Margaret split because of the pain of the girls going missing.”
“Well, that didn’t help, I’m sure, but according to Holly there had been trouble all along, well, at least in the last few years. Her mom and dad were always fighting.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know . . . Maybe it was money . . . or her job.”
“Hers? Margaret’s?”
