“I guess you haven’t seen Toby, have you?”
The cat barely regarded the man and continued on its path over the grass, onto the flagstone, and then off under the dark green of a precision-trimmed yew hedge.
“Toby!” he called once more. “Where are you, boy? Come here. Come home!”
Mitch pulled the covering taut and pulled himself to his feet.
As Mitch turned to go inside his oversize empty house, an indistinguishable dark shadow at the bottom of the pool near the cascading Jacuzzi caught his eye.
“Oh God! No!” he cried out. “Please!”
Chapter Seven
Emily looked out the window of her office and a smile came to her face. It had snowed for two hours and Cherrystone that December looked as if it had been dipped in white glitter. Main Street had been decorated by city crews the day after Thanksgiving, but the decorations—faux fir boughs with big plastic ribbons that had been a fixture on the streets since the 1960s—had long passed from kitschy to charming. They looked even better with a touch of frosting.
The rest of the world—the more sophisticated cities in which she’d lived or visited—could keep their fancy holiday accoutrements. Emily still saw what she’d seen as a child—the sparkle of a fake fir bough and the whimsy of an oversize red plastic bow.
And yet, this year brought with it a touch of the melancholy, too. Jenna was a grown woman with a real job. Certainly, she’d be coming home for Christmas. But that wouldn’t always be the case. At some time, in a flash like all of life had been, she’d be waiting for Jenna, a husband, children—maybe even a dog—to come visit.
At forty-four, Emily knew she was far too young to give up on herself and live through her daughter. But she’d screwed things up with Chris Collier and probably had missed her chance at a happily ever after. It had been her fault, and she knew her inability to move their relationship forward had been a crushing blow to Chris. Over Thanksgiving, she suspected that he was going to ask her to marry him, and she was right. She loved him, no doubt, but she said she wasn’t sure about getting married again.
“We need to move this forward,” he said, without any anger, but with the calmness of a man who knew what he wanted. “Or end it and get on with our lives.”
Cars slowly passed by through the sparkle of the snowfall when the phone rang, snapping Emily away from her thoughts. It was Jenna, calling from Memphis, her first stop on a three-college tour to promote the Beta Zeta Sorority.
“Hi, honey,” she said.
“Hi, Mom,” Jenna said, her voice buoyant. “Just thought I’d check in with you.”
Emily loved that she and Jenna talked nearly every day; the only exception was on the occasion when the day had gotten away from them and it was late at night. In that case, they’d text
“How’s it going with the Crawford case?” Jenna asked, knowing that her mother lived and breathed an investigation on a 24–7 basis.
“We’ll sort it out, but until we find her, we’re a little stuck right now.”
“You know that jerk killed her.”
Emily could hear her own voice coming from Memphis and it brought a wry smile. Jenna didn’t cut a suspected killer any slack. She’d make a good prosecutor someday.
“What we know and what we can prove, as you know, are completely different.”
Jenna murmured something that Emily couldn’t quite make out.
“Sorry, Mom, I’m between recruitment planning meetings and the chapter president here said I could get some privacy in the TV lounge, but these girls keep barging in with their complaints and criticisms about what they did last year and how they are sure that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m from up north and I have a regional bias. They won’t give me a minute.”
“What happened to the good manners of the South?” Emily asked.
“Gone like everywhere else. This is the most self-centered bunch yet. Seriously, Mom. All they care about is drinking and looking like they’re Paris Hilton.”
“Sounds like your sisters at Cascade University.”
“These girls are over-the-top in everything they do. We were never so bad as these girls. I’m not kidding you.”
“That’s not what I remember,” Emily, said, a slight edge to her tone, meant to remind Jenna of life’s lessons learned the previous year as the chapter president of her BZ sorority. She remembered the time Jenna had to kick a girl out of the house for stealing money from the cook’s rainy-day fund. Or the time one sister came home so drunk that she was found on the couch the next morning with her thong on backward. And nothing else. There were other incidents that made Emily wonder if sending her daughter to CU had been the right thing to do—scholarship or not. She held David responsible. He’d promised to send Jenna to a top-tier school out of state, but Dani, his new wife, balked. They were going through a major house remodel and she was sure there wouldn’t be enough cash for Jenna’s education.
“She can get a job,” Dani had told David. “I had to.”
Emily played that back in her mind, and almost lost the feeling of joy she had at hearing her daughter’s voice.
“P.S., Mom, these girls are driving me crazy. They really are the worst. Ever!”
“How so?”
“Mostly the same old, same old. Disorganized. Selfish. Boyfriend troubles. One told me she thinks
Her daughter’s comment amused Emily. “I didn’t know stalking could be a group activity.”
Jenna laughed. “That’s what I thought. There’s also this girl who spends all day crying that her brother gets all the attention, and her dad, some meatpacking bigwig out of Oklahoma, doesn’t do anything but send her money.”
“I wish someone would send me money,” Emily said, teasing Jenna.
“Gotta go. I have a P.S. for you.”
“What’s that?”
“P.S., I had an airport layover in Chicago and got you your Christmas present.”
“A snow globe or a Graceland T-shirt? I know,” she said drawing out her words as she pretended to ponder it, “a Graceland snow globe. Will I love it?”
“Did you raise me right?” Before Emily could answer, Jenna cut in. “Love you, Mom. Back to the bitchfest in the dining room.”
“Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Good luck with the case, Mom. You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
