“Nah,” he said, shooting a glance at the building’s picture windows.
Roberta was standing in front of the window, dancing . . . or I thought it was dancing. A lot of booty shaking was involved.
“Should I be jealous?” I asked with a laugh.
“Very,” he teased, blowing Roberta another kiss.
I reached up and grabbed his face, giving him a kiss to remember me by for the rest of the day. When I sank back on my heels, I grinned up at his dazed face. “Just remember who kisses you like that.”
He laughed, then pulled me into his arms for a tight hug. “I wouldn’t mind if you kept remindin’ me.” He laughed, then pulled me into his arms for a tight hug. “I wouldn’t mind if you keep remindin’ me.”
But as he pulled back, his smile quickly began to fade, worry lines wrinkling his forehead. “What do you plan on doin’?”
“I’ll take advantage of the Ewing library. It’s easier to get computer access here.”
“You going to look up Cassie Carpenter?” he asked.
“Yeah, and maybe Louise too,” I said with a frown. “Plus I’ve been wanting to send an email to my mother’s friend Tiffany.” I hadn’t had much time to think about her, but my past had been nagging at me since finding out about Hardshaw. I guess I was done with patiently waiting, all the way around.
“That’s a great idea,” he said. “If you have time, maybe we can have lunch together to discuss everything?”
I smiled up at him. “Yes, please.”
“Maybe you can pick up lunch, and we can meet at the park so we can talk in private?” Uncertainty washed over his face. “Or maybe you’d rather eat at a restaurant. We haven’t really had a date.”
“I consider the street party last week a date, and there’ll be plenty of time for more dates,” I said. “The park’s a good idea. We’ll want to talk freely, and I’m happy to get lunch.” When he started to reach for his wallet, I frowned. “I’ll get it. I’m good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.” I was making decent money at the tavern, and although I’d sunk some of it into helping Hank with household repairs, I’d been trying to save the rest. I had nearly a thousand dollars in my savings account at Drum Savings and Loan, but I’d started hoarding my money in cash in case I needed to run again.
I gave him another kiss, then waved to Roberta, who was still at the window. She looked like she was trying to twerk.
“You need to leave before she hurts herself,” I said with a laugh and gave him a little push.
He grinned from ear to ear. “You’re the woman for me, Care.”
“Good, but I feel no need to kill the competition. Go.”
He laughed again, then got in his Explorer. I followed him out of the parking lot and toward the center of town until he turned in the direction of the sheriff’s office.
Sure enough, I had no trouble getting access to a computer at the library. I started off by searching for Louise.
Most of the hits were in relation to her arrest and guilty plea for her husband’s murder. Now that she’d admitted to taking the fall, it was unsettling to see it in print, to read about her ready cooperation, even more so because everyone seemed to have accepted her story. Her account was that she’d come home and found Walter trying to drown Lula. When he refused to stop, she’d shot him with a 12-gauge shotgun. I’d been in Drum long enough to know that most people would agree that a man who’d attack his own child deserved to be shot, but some of the articles had quotes from Drum residents saying Louise had it coming to her.
Thelma had insinuated Louise had her own system of favors, one that had involved making a lot of male “friends,” and Louise herself had alluded to sleeping with men to get what she wanted. Seemed like a good way to make enemies, both of the men themselves and their scorned wives and girlfriends. Maybe the townsfolk hadn’t cared that Louise had allegedly saved her daughter. Maybe they’d just wanted her gone.
Was that why Louise had made sure her return was so low-key?
Other than the stories about the arrest, there wasn’t much about her. She apparently hadn’t had any kind of social media presence. I was about to give up when I found a small article about the marriage of Walter Baker to Louise Norton, daughter of Samuel and Maggie Norton.
Armed with her parents’ names, I plugged in Samuel Norton and saw that he’d died before Louise’s arrest. He’d been shot and killed in a disagreement between friends in Ewing. I wrote that in my notebook.
His obituary listed that his wife Maggie was deceased, but he had two living daughters, Louise and Clara Clancy, a widow with no children. Another search dug up an obituary for Maggie, who had died in childbirth. I knew that after Louise’s arrest, Lula had gone to live with her mother’s sister who’d died a few years later, and sure enough, Clara’s obituary showed that she’d been killed in a car accident when Lula was sixteen.
I took a moment to make sure I’d taken adequate notes, then turned my search to Walter. Hits with his name were mostly related to his murder, but then I found his obituary, which listed his parents—both deceased—and a sister, Georgia Carpenter, who was married to Joe Carpenter, They had a daughter Cassie and a son named Derek.
I had to wonder what Walter’s sister thought of her brother’s murder. Had she thought Louise was guilty or that the real murderer had gone free?
I searched for Georgia Carpenter. Most of the hits were about other women with the same name, but I found some relevant ones. None of which made any mention of her brother’s murder, which I found odd. Not even any comment about hoping justice was served.
A few articles named her as the mother of Derek Carpenter, who’d played Little League baseball way back when. Based on the number of posts in the Ewing Gazette, she seemed very active in her church. The most recent article said she was in charge of this year’s vacation bible school at the First Baptist Church of Ewing . . . the same church that Jim Palmer had volunteered at as a part-time youth group leader. Given that Jim had been murdered a couple of weeks ago by the mother of the teenage boy he’d molested, I suspected I’d have to tread lightly when I talked to Georgia. She’d probably shy away from anything that could be construed as scandalous.
Unfortunately, there were no direct hits for her daughter, Cassie.
I checked my phone. Marco hadn’t texted yet, so I plugged “Tiffany Olson” and “Atlanta” into the search bar. It turned up the website for Simply Stunning Cosmetics where I found a customer support email, but a few minutes of poking around turned up another, more promising address. The website had a page devoted to Tiffany, with an email address that supposedly went to her. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that she read all of her emails, but I figured I had a better chance of getting past a personal assistant or screener than a low-level customer service rep.
I opened the email account I used to communicate with Rose, disappointed she hadn’t written back yet. Maybe it was for the best, though—I didn’t want anything to distract me. My heart hammered as I opened a new message window, pasted in the address from the web page, and then typed Mary Caroline’s Daughter in the subject line.