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He told himself it was information anyone could know. The fact that Vincennes was Harrison’s home had been printed on one of the signs as they were coming into town.
Nell headed for the produce department, still chatting about William Henry Harrison and his successor, John Tyler. He watched her happily examining a display of blueberries, then admiring cartons of strawberries as if she’d never seen them before. This whole grocery store thing was way too domestic for him, and he started feeling claustrophobic. The feeling got worse when the Demon sighed and tucked her head under his chin. “Daaa . . .”
“Take her, Lucy. I’ve got to go buy some . . . some . . . guy stuff.”
“EEOOWWW!”
“Never mind,” he sighed. “I’ll take her with me.”
They left Vincennes and almost immediately crossed the border into Illinois. Nell hummed as she stood at the counter, swaying with the motion of the Winnebago while she made sandwiches. She looked so happy that he was glad he’d come up with the idea of having a picnic.
His hand crept back to the radio when he heard one of Mrs. Case’s old college friends being interviewed.
“. . . we knew we could count on Nealy to have the best class notes when it was time for an exam . . .”
Nealy? He’d forgotten that was Mrs. Case’s nickname. The press seldom used it. Nealy. Nell. Close.
Forget it. He was a journalist. He dealt in facts, not fancy. He’d always been proud of having no imagination, and only someone with a big imagination could believe that the First Lady of the United States would take off across the country in a Chevy Corsica, then hook up with a man hauling around two kids who didn’t belong to him so she could change diapers, put up with a teenager’s sass, and practice tongue kisses.
But the nape of his neck was still tingling.
Toni peered through a magnifier to study the proof sheet the photographer for the small West Virginia newspaper had given her. There wasn’t a single clear shot of the Cornelia Case lookalike. A shoulder here, the top of her head, part of her back. That was it.
She handed them to Jason. “Does anything strike you as strange?”
While Jason took his time studying the photographs, she moved restlessly around the newspaper photographer’s tiny office. Their interview with Laurie Reynolds, the promotion manager at WGRB radio and the person who’d been running the contest, hadn’t given them much to go on.
According to Reynolds, the woman who’d called herself Brandy Butt had only spoken Spanish and seemed to have been forced into the contest by the teenage girl who was with her. Afterward, she’d run off the stage and Reynolds had seen her leave the mall with a good-looking dark-haired man, a baby girl in a pink cap, and the teenager.
Jason set down the magnifier. “It looks like she was deliberately dodging the camera.”
“Hard to tell, but it does seem that way.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. A husband, a baby, a teenager. Highly unlikely this woman is Aurora.”
“I agree. But—this is a small town. Why doesn’t anybody know who she is?”
“She was probably just traveling through with her family. The girl said she was from Hollywood.”
“Nobody in Hollywood even knows where West Virginia is. And why did she dodge the camera, then disappear so fast afterward? Even more interesting—why did the teenager give a phony address when she picked up the prize?”
&nbs
p; “Because Brandy Butt or somebody in her family doesn’t want to be found.”
She picked up the proofs again. “And she only won second place. Let’s not forget that.”
“Yeah. Pretty hard to forget.” He pulled a tin of Altoids from his pocket and slipped one in his mouth. “So do we agree that we have exactly nothing?”
“I’d say that’s about right. Still, this morning we had less than nothing, so we’re working our way up.”
* * *
Nealy vetoed two potential picnic spots before she found a location that pleased her. It was in a park on the edge of one of the small farming towns that lay just west of Vincennes across the Wabash River. She chose it for its duck pond, baby swings, and nice open space where they could throw a Frisbee around.
“We don’t have a Frisbee,” Lucy said when Nealy mentioned this.
“We do now.” As Nealy pulled one from a grocery bag at her feet, she saw Mat’s frown and knew he was about to announce that they didn’t have time. “Lucy and I are throwing a Frisbee,” she said firmly. “If you don’t like it, you can go to Iowa without us.”
