Page 36 of Heartbreak Bay

As with most rural towns around here, it’s seen better days. Most of the small downtown is shuttered; the rest is filled with junk stores and nostalgia for a past that was never as good as it seems in the rearview. Kez has sent me the address, and I find it easily enough, though GPS is predictably unreliable around here, and Valerie doesn’t much believe in investing in street signs. Why should they, when everybody who lives there knows where everything is?

I slow in front of Sheryl Lansdowne’s address. There’s a TBI van parked on the curb, so they’re likely inside processing the place. I leave that alone and head down the street. Kez has updated me on her conversation with the immediate next-door neighbor, so I skip him for now and text Kez and Sam to let them know that I’m starting at the house one down.

I get a timid little old woman with a mild, seamed face and frizzy gray hair who seems to live in her housecoat. She invites me in for iced tea, that grand southern tradition, and I accept. It’s a good decision. The tea’s just standard Luzianne, but she’s an avid gossip, and she has homemade cookies. Perfect.

I tell her who I am, of course; I show her my private investigator’s license, which she thinks is fascinating, and after we get the usual questions about what I do out of the way, she’s quick to tell me about the flaws of people living on the block.

But not, I notice, Sheryl. When she finally pauses for breath and a sip of her iced tea, I ask about that. She gives me a sharp look. “I don’t speak ill of those who are gone to rest, and Lord knows, she may be. Missing, ain’t she? And those two darling girls of hers gone?” She shudders and shakes her head. “Don’t know what this world is coming to—these things just never happened when I was younger and people feared God and believed in America.”

She’s wrong, of course; I could reel off a solid dozen hideous crimes from the 1950s onward that happened just in this county, but I’m not going to change her mind, and I’m not interested in wasting my time.

“Well, Mrs.Gregg, it sure would help if you’d tell me something that could help me find Sheryl,” I say. “And anything might do that. Anything at all.”

“Would it? Really?” Her pale-brown eyes go wide behind her old-fashioned glasses. “I don’t know anything much except that her husband lit out on her some time ago. Damn shame when a man does that to an expectant mother, don’t you think? Abandoning her and the children?”

I can tell she’s poised for anotherback in my daylecture, so I head her off. “Absolutely,” I say firmly. “Damn shame. Did you see him go?”

“Seehim go? Well, I really don’t know, now, do I? I didn’t see no suitcases, but I did see him get in his truck and leave, and I don’t recall him ever coming back.”

“And Sheryl was home then?”

“Lordy, how would I remember a thing like that?” But she puts a finger to her lips and taps it thoughtfully. “Well, maybe that was the day she went for her doctor visit. I just don’t know. I don’t write it down, you know. And I’m not a snoop.”

“Of course not,” I lie smoothly. “You’re just interested in your neighbors. That’s normal.”

“It’s just being friendly,” she says. “Unlike these young folk. All they do is stare at the TV and their damn phones and such. Don’t even go out on the porch in the evenings like normal people. I just don’t know—”

What the world is coming to,I finish mentally, and jump in. “Do you know who Sheryl’s obstetrician would have been?”

“Only one around here,” she says. “Dr.Fowler, and he’s even older than I am, probably still pushing cod liver oil on those poor babies.” She makes a face. “Your mother ever make you take that stuff?”

“Past my time,” I tell her, and she pats my hand.

“Well, good for you, dear, good for you. Anyway, Dr.Fowler would be the only place she’d go if you’re asking about that.” She gives me a too-sharp look. “You know some folks ’round here think her husband didn’t just leave, don’t you? That it was something else?”

“Like what?”

She leans over the table, and her eyes are bright with interest. “Some say he wasmurdered.”

“No!”

“Well, that’s what I heard. Not that I’d know for sure, of course. But some folks say it sure was convenient how she got his money and house and car easy as pie. He weren’t wealthy or nothing, but she came here poor as country dirt, and now she’s got a roof over her head and a car to drive and money to spend.”

“You knew her when she first came?”

“Before she got married? She came in on the bus, just some rough little baggage. Got herself a job at that Sonic near the edge of town. That’s where she met Tommy Jarrett, and I guess that was all it took. Don’t know anything about her other than that, though. Maybe she was just down on her luck. I was born just before the Depression, did you know?”

“I didn’t,” I say, and I listen politely to her tales of growing up amid poverty even more desperate than it is today. I don’t know how much of it is true, but it doesn’t matter, and it makes her happy. I leave her my card, in case she thinks of anything else. Mrs.Gregg is nice enough, and a busybody is always useful.

I’m on my way out the door when, out of the blue, she says, “And you know about that man, don’t you?”

I turn to face her. “What man?” I feel my heartbeat kick up to a higher gear.

“The one in the white van, of course. Used to drive by her house quite regular. Always at night.”

“And did he stop at her house?”

“Never. But he always slowed down.” Mrs.Gregg looks very pleased with herself. I want to kiss her.

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