And he’d come through in spades. Apparently, my favorite cowboy likes a smoked piece of meat, and he’d thrown some sausage in his smoker before breakfast. He’d also made macaroni and cheese (Southern style), and potato salad.
All were not only welcome, but delicious, leaving both Uncle Darling and me deeply impressed.
Now, as we stood by an outdoor heater waiting for the mayor to light the Christmas tree, I looked for Patricia Fowler. I wasn’t sure what we could learn from her. We sure weren’t batting a thousand in the suspect department. Evan’s death was a long time ago, and though I’m not a mother, I fully understand how the pain of losing a child never goes away.
She was stuck in the time of her son’s death, but I didn’t really think she had anything to do with Gable’s murder, especially with Kerry Carver’s lipstick in the mix.
The dots simply didn’t connect, but I wanted to talk to her anyway. Maybe she knew someone else who wanted Gable dead, and they knew Kerry Carver? It was the longest of shots, but it was the only scrap I had.
Her most recent Facebook post said she was excited to be meeting her daughter, Cherry, and her grandchildren for the tree lighting. After discussing it with Hobbs, we decided to try to carefully approach her.
The tree lighting in Marshmallow Hollow Square was something everyone looked forward to each year, and from the looks of it, the falling snow and the bitter cold weather hadn’t deterred the locals.
The town had made sure there were plenty of standing heaters and everyone, including us, had bundled up and gathered around them.
I loved the square at Christmas. From the Edison lights hung from the large gazebo where, in the spring and summer, weddings were held and lobster boils were a bi-monthly event, to the evergreen boughs strung around the octagonal-shaped perimeter, it was gorgeous and joyful.
The mayor, Greta Bader, a stout woman with a happy laugh and smiling eyes, tucked into a long coat with a furry collar, was doing the honors tonight. There was a huge digital display with the time and date on it so the children could see how long until Santa arrived from the moment Mayor Bader lit the tree.
We all had battery-operated candles, creating a sea of light. As we waited for the mayor to start the ceremony, I scanned the crowd, looking for Patricia Fowler and her daughter, but hadn’t seen them so far.
“Here Comes Santa Claus” played on the sound system while the kids from the high school bell choir played along to the music. The tree, an enormous Douglas fir of at least fifty feet and decorated by the children from the elementary school, sat dark in the center of the square.
Hobbs tipped his cup of hot chocolate, filled to the brim with marshmallows, toward the crowd. “Man, I love seeing all these people. It reminds me of my little town in Texas where most everybody knew everybody.”
“Except I bet you guys didn’t have to wear ten layers of clothes to keep from getting hypothermia.”
Hobbs chuckled as the snow fell around him in fat white flakes. “True. Hey, where’s Uncle Darling? I thought he was going to meet us here?”
“He decided he was going to pop in on Uncle Monty and try to catch the lighting from the window of his hospital room. The glow from the tree, if it’s clear enough, can be seen from pretty far away.”
Hobbs wrinkled his nose as he looked up at the deep velvet of the starless sky. “I dunno if he’s going to see much tonight with the snowfall. How about I videotape it with my phone and we show it to him later, so he doesn’t entirely miss out?”
I fought a girlish sigh. Hobbs was the nicest, most thoughtful guy I’d ever met. Really. That was the truth. He had it all. Thoughtful, considerate, a gentleman, loved animals, made a killer smoked sausage and mac and cheese, he listened, he communicated. And more than anything, I wanted to trust him with my secret.
Well, at least part of my secret. But for all the amazing things Hobbs is and does, I wondered if he was amazing enough to believe in my visions. They were a huge part of my life, but I had to feel safe enough to share them.
“Kitten?”
I turned to find Stiles smiling down at me, dressed in a thick jacket and scarf, with an earmuff cap on his head. “Oh, hey, Fitzi! How goes it?”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “Got a second?”
“Yeah, sure.” I held up my finger to Hobbs to indicate I needed a minute before letting Stiles lead me to a corner by the gazebo. “What’s up?”
“Any more visions?”
“Nope. Other than the one where I smelled cigarette smoke, nothing. Can you believe I suddenly have smell-o-vision?” Then I laughed because the idea was positively absurd.
But he gave me his “quit fooling around, Hal” look. “I’ve got some new information.”
“Are you afraid to share? Because of the lipstick leak?”
Stiles squeezed my shoulder. “I know that wasn’t you, Hal. But somebody has a mole. I don’t know if it’s in Marshmallow Hollow or one of the other stations, but what I can tell you is, it’s not a good look no matter who has the leak.”
Well, at least my best friend in the whole wide world didn’t think I was a traitor. “So what’s up? I know this is tricky for you, and we can’t ever tell your buddies at the station about my visions, but I think you know they’ve been helpful and that you can trust me. Always. No matter what.”
He chucked me under the chin and grinned. “’Course I know that, Kitten. But I have to be careful, is all. I can’t afford to be caught, even if I know, without a shadow of a doubt, your visions are never wrong. Otherwise, they’ll be labeling me the mole.”
Rubbing my mitten-covered hands together, I nodded. “Then if you’d rather not tell me, I get it.”
“We found a smashed taillight in the parking lot of Feeney’s, buried under the snow.”
“How does that relate to the crime? It could be anybody’s.”
His chiseled features held concern. “It has Kerry Carver’s skin on it… I don’t know how it managed not to end up damaged in the snowfall, but it’s her DNA. No doubt.”
My blood ran cold. “Holy coconuts. Does that mean she tried to kick her way out of the trunk? Can we hope maybe she got away?” I prayed that was true. I prayed Kerry had put up a bloody stink of a fight.
“That’s one theory. We have someone checking the make and model of the car it came from, but it would be a new-ish car. Older cars weren’t designed the way they are nowadays, with abductions in mind.”
Abductions…
Another chill attacked my spine and my arms, making me shiver. Those missing girls had taken up a fair amount of space in my head, their faces floating around in my mind’s eye.
Which reminded me, I needed to tell Stiles about our meeting with that weasel Westcott. Maybe it could help the police with something we’d missed. He’d constructed a possible pattern that at least made sense.
“So are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He clucked his tongue as people passed by and the excitement for the tree lighting grew. “How about you tell me what you’re thinking, and I’ll tell you if it’s what I’m thinking.”
I paused for a moment, hoping to get my thoughts together and convey them in full sentences. “Do you think Kerry’s abduction was on that SD card or maybe Gable saw her with the killer? But that makes no sense because nothing was reported. I have to believe if Gable thought something was amiss, he’d have called the police, Stiles. But maybe he was somehow in the way of the killer getting the SD card? Like, wrong time, wrong place? I mean, maybe she was in the trunk of the car and the killer realized he’d be caught on camera so he went back the next day to get it? Mr. Feeney did tell you he only checks the tapes every two or three days, right?”