Olivia promised to phone again in a few days, and she and Laurel walked to the door. Laurel, who had reclaimed the lawn service flyer, held it up to April. “Can I keep this?”
“I guess. You can only use it once anyway.” Now that the interview was over, April seemed to deflate. Holding herself together for over an hour had taken its toll. She leaned heavily against the door frame and rubbed her eyes.
Laurel squeezed the widow’s hand in farewell and then she and Olivia walked down the front path to their cars. “It’s a cliche, Olivia!” Laurel whispered as they drew alongside the Range Rover. “Do you think it’s simply coincidence?”
“No,” Olivia answered. “And neither will Rawlings. Bring the flyer to him, Laurel. This is your discovery. I believe you were born to do this job.”
Flushing with pleasure, Laurel tucked the paper into her purse. “I won’t be needing any of Michel’s food tonight. I came clean to Steve over the phone and I don’t care if he doesn’t believe I’ll even get the job, I’m submitting every article I’ve written about these robberies to the
Laurel thanked Olivia and got into her car.
Olivia watched her friend drive away. “Brava, Laurel,” she murmured as the minivan disappeared around a bend.
Chapter 13
Her room was still filled with shadows when the ringing of the phone jolted Olivia awake. A few weak rays of sunshine crept through the windows, striping Haviland’s black fur so that he looked like an exotic species of antelope or zebra.
Olivia grabbed the receiver and managed a raspy hello.
“Sorry to wake you, Ms. Limoges.” Olivia recognized the voice of Will Hamilton. “For days I had nothing to report, but I have something now.” He paused for effect. “Your pink envelope was passed on. Rodney Burkhart drove down to the port here and handed it off to the crew member of a fishing boat. I couldn’t exactly leap aboard, but I found out the vessel was bound for Okracoke Island.”
“Okracoke?” Olivia flung off her covers and headed downstairs.
Will explained that he’d immediately set about hiring a charter boat, but was warned that the trawler
“The charter boat captain told me to save my money. For a few bucks, he’d make some calls on his radio to determine the ship’s destination. Sure enough, the
Olivia traced an imaginary line from Oyster Bay over the Pamlico Sound to the shores of Okracoke Island. The distance was approximately fifty miles.
“Are you going to be there when she docks?” Olivia asked Will.
Will’s next words were a surprise. “I’m actually calling you from the island. If the envelope is on its way then your father might actually be here. I thought I’d find out for myself, but the locals are a tight-lipped group. I’m going to pose as a vacationer and keep my ears open until the
Olivia was pleased with Will’s doggedness and told him as much, but after she’d hung up the phone, anxiety began to surge through her body. As she stared at the skinny green smudge that was Okracoke on her map, she had a powerful feeling that her father was there, that he’d been there all along.
“So close,” she murmured, experiencing a fresh bout of grief and resentment. “If you’ve been this close all these years . . .” The possibility was too painful to acknowledge and Olivia slammed the book closed.
Haviland joined her in the living room, but he ignored his mistress and headed straight for the door leading to the deck. Olivia followed him outside. She sat in one of the deck chairs and let the burgeoning light wash over her, wishing that it held the power to burn all her memories away.
As she sat there, breathing in the salt-tinged oxygen and releasing her anger with every exhalation, her thoughts eventually turned to yesterday’s writers’ meeting. She went inside, poured herself some coffee, and returned to the deck chair.
“The dolls,” she said to the waves. “The thieves must have felt the dolls’ eyes on them. Why would they care? Do they feel guilty about stealing? Over having committed murder?”
The water rushed to the shore.
“No.” Olivia shook her head as though the ocean had disagreed with her. “They killed a man and buried him on the beach, leaving him naked to the elements. It’s not a moral dilemma, so why did the glass-eyed stares of the dolls bother them?”
As she ruminated, Haviland trotted up the dune path, his black fur covered in wet sand. He politely shook himself off at the bottom of the stairs, but his long nose and forehead were still caked with sand. Olivia grabbed a dishtowel from inside and brushed him off, smiling at how odd he looked with his mask of gritty white. The poodle stayed quite still until she was finished and then jerked away in order to take up an eager stance by his dinner dish.
When Olivia didn’t come back indoors, Haviland barked to signal that he was ready for breakfast, but his mistress was staring down the beach toward the area of the Point where they’d discovered the buried body.
“It’s something physical, I’m sure of it,” she said, rushing back into the house and picking up the phone. “They don’t like to be on the receiving end of stares, but why?”
Rawlings answered his cell phone immediately and listened as Olivia presented her theory. “Something like a birthmark or burn scars?” he asked rhetorically. “It might explain the connection between the victims. Perhaps the children ridiculed our thieves at an athletic event. I’ll have to find out if anyone who came in regular contact with the families had some kind of physical deformity.”
“Did Laurel bring you the lawn-service flyer from the Howard residence?”
“Yes, and we moved on the information immediately,” Rawlings assured her. “Each victim received a similar flyer over the course of the summer. However, the name of the lawn service and the overall appearance of the flyer were altered. Every family had been given a unique flyer.”
Olivia considered the implications of this statement as she put Haviland’s breakfast in the microwave. “The thieves put in some serious effort to get to these families. What were the other names of these lawn service companies?”
“Green Thumb Lawn Care, Down the Garden Path Landscaping Service, and Neat as a Pin Yard Care,” Rawlings said.
“Such obvious cliches! How did I miss them?” She tried to recall the names of the lawn services Harris had typed onto their spreadsheet.
“You didn’t.” Rawlings soothed. “In every case, the families took advantage of the free yard cleanup offered on the flyer, but none of the homeowners were impressed enough by the work to hire the men again. The Ridgemonts were the only ones who tried to call and set up another job, but after no one replied to their voice mail messages, they forgot all about the subject.”
Olivia chuckled. “That certainly sounds like Sue Ridgemont. Lovely, but a bit absentminded.” She grew serious again quickly. “So this was how the thieves were able to break into the homes in broad daylight. They posed as yard men and parked their truck in the driveway. One of them broke into the house while another crew member mowed the lawn. The neighbors wouldn’t hear a thing over the noise of a mower or weed whacker.”
“Precisely,” Rawlings agreed. “And the free service included a tune-up of the irrigation system. Therefore, in nearly every case, the homeowners willingly left their garage doors open. In these subdivisions, the sight of a landscaping truck and unfamiliar men testing the sprinklers would be totally commonplace. Though they were working in plain sight, they were nearly invisible.”
