She poured him a glass then returned to kneading her dough at the kitchen table. The drink was cool, refreshing.
‘Where
‘Digging a hole.’ She allowed the ambiguity to linger a moment. ‘Swimming pool for some city folk over on Egypt Lane. All this water and still they want more. Eli used to fish some, but the fear got him since Lizzie…’ The words died on her lips.
‘Did he ever fish with Conrad Labarde?’
She looked up. ‘You know Conrad?’
‘A little. I see him from time to time.’
‘He’s a good one, always was, even as a boy, running all over being fresh with the older folk, him and his friends, always laughing.’
It was hard to picture, and she could see he was struggling.
‘You known him late,’ she said. ‘He’s changed some since them days. Couldn’t see the Devil lying in hide for him back then.’
‘You mean, his brother?’
‘Near broke him when Antton drowned. That and the war, then losing his pa…I don’t know, you got to wonder what a man done to deserve it. Takes a heap off me just thinking about it sometimes. I don’t like to say it, but it’s the truth.’
‘He seems to be holding up okay.’
‘The moment he leaves that house of his, you’ll know.’
‘How’s that?’
‘His brother drowned off the beach there. He went and built that place right at the spot.’
Hollis hardly had time to ponder her words before she laid the dough aside and said, ‘But you’re not come here to talk about Conrad.’
‘No.’
‘Then it’s Lizzie.’
He’d worked out his line of approach on the drive over, though having got to know Sarah Jencks a little he wasn’t so sure she’d buy it.
‘It’s routine to revisit unsolved cases after a year or so,’ he said. ‘You’d be surprised how often it throws up something. I just wanted to talk through some stuff.’
‘What…stuff?’ she said with that look of hers.
Okay, so she’d smelled a rat, but she hadn’t shut him out.
‘You said at the time, you and your husband—I’m going off the files here—you said then that you had no idea what Lizzie was doing out at that time of night.’
He watched her reaction closely. It revealed nothing.
‘That’s right.’
‘You weren’t aware of it happening before, her going out like that?’
‘She was a poor sleeper, even as a wee one. Nothing to be done about it.’
He noted that she hadn’t answered the question.
‘So it’s quite possible it wasn’t the first time.’
‘I suppose.’
He took a sip from the glass. ‘And your son—Adam, right?—did he share a room with Lizzie?’
She stiffened slightly. ‘Not by then.’
‘So I guess he didn’t know either, about her wanderings?’
‘Isn’t that in those files of yours?’ she said tersely.
‘As it happens, Adam wasn’t asked to give a statement at the time.’
It had been one of Milligan’s many oversights.
‘Then I guess he had nothing to add.’
Hollis took another sip from the glass. ‘Can I speak to him anyway? Like I say, you never know.’
This time she shifted uncomfortably.
‘He’s not here.’
‘I can come back later.’
‘Won’t do much good,’ she said. ‘He’s in Carolina. Least he was, last we heard…working the croaker boats.’
He didn’t know what a croaker was, but he got the general impression.
