Marco gave me a reassuring smile after I told him my concerns. “How about you let me take the lead at first? Then we can suss out how she’s feelin’ and go from there?” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Heather’s been missing for nine years. While I’m sure she’s upset, it’s not like her niece has been part of her everyday life. It might actually give her closure to know why she hasn’t heard from her.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s true.”
We walked toward the front door together, and Marco knocked, holding the flowers in his other hand.
The door opened right away, and an older woman answered with a cautious look on her face. “Hello?”
“Hi, Miss Hilde,” Marco said in his friendly voice. “I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m Marco Roland, Beth Roland’s son.”
She clasped a hand to her chest. “Beth? Oh, my word! How is she? I haven’t talked to her in years.”
“She’s good,” Marco said. “After she heard about Heather, she wanted me to come by and offer condolences on her behalf.” He held up the bouquet.
Tears filled her eyes. “Gerbera daisies. They’re my favorite.”
“A little birdie told me,” I said. “A birdie named Thelma Tureen.”
“You know Thelma?” she asked in surprise.
“Carly likes to visit some of the residents at Greener Pastures,” Marco said. “And she wanted to come offer condolences on Thelma’s behalf.”
Hilde turned her attention to me.
“Hilde,” Marco said, “this is my friend, Carly Moore. I hope it’s okay I brought her along.”
“Of course,” she said, backing up. “Where are my manners? Come in. Come in.”
We followed Hilde inside, and she gestured to a worn sofa against a wood-paneled wall. Marco handed her the flowers and she took them into the small kitchen, opening a cabinet and pulling out a vase.
“Is Beth still in Wilmington?”
“Yep,” Marco said, resting his hands on his knees. “She got remarried. Did she mention that?”
“She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I was sorry to miss it.” She put the flowers in the vase and filled it with water.
“Well, it was pretty short notice,” Marco said, glancing around the room. “I had trouble getting time off work to go.”
“Is she happy?” Hilde asked, setting the vase on the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living room.
“Yes,” Marco said. “She and Herb are very happy.”
“And your father?” she asked, sitting in a recliner across from us.
“He’s got his head in the clouds in Knoxville. Just like when he was here in Drum.”
She shook her head, clucking. “That man never realized what he had.”
Marco didn’t respond, but his body tensed, and I wondered what had happened in his past to make him close up like that. He rarely talked about his childhood, and when he did, it was usually about Max.
I covered his hand with mine, and he flipped his hand over and linked our fingers. He gave my hand a squeeze, then released it.
“We were surprised to hear that Heather had been murdered,” Marco said. “Everyone thought she left town.”
Hilde nodded. “Me too.”
“You didn’t find it strange that she never contacted you after she left?”
“That’s just it,” Hilde said. “She did contact me. She sent a postcard about a month later. She told me she was in Tulsa and had gotten a job at a Walmart.”
“Did you keep the postcard?” Marco asked.
“I did, but the sheriff’s deputy took it,” she said. “I told them about it when they came to tell me that they’d found her.” She sucked in a breath, as though struck anew by the news of her niece’s death.
“You never suspected she’d been killed?” Marco asked.
“No. Never. Not hearin’ from her wasn’t all that unusual. I never once heard from her directly after she left for college. Not until she showed up on my doorstep, askin’ to move back in.”
“Thelma told me that Heather gave you trouble when she lived with you back in high school,” I said.
She nodded. “That girl was as wild as a banshee and a compulsive liar. I can’t say I was sorry to see her go away to college. The only one of her friends who was ever respectful to me was that Drummond boy.”
“Wyatt,” Marco volunteered.
She nodded.
“Who else did she spend time with?” I asked.
“In high school or once she came back?” Hilde asked.
“Both, I guess.”
“Abby Atwood and Mitzi Ziegler were her closest friends, along with Wyatt. But she had a parade of boys and girls comin’ and goin’ in high school. There were fewer of them once she came back. I think many of the kids had moved out of town …the smart ones, anyway. Mitzi was still around though, and she added a few new friends. May McMurphy. Dick… I can’t remember his last name.”
“Stinnett?” Marco asked.
She nodded. “Yep. And a couple of others whose names escape me. Most of them never came here. She went to them.”
“And Wyatt?” Marco asked.
“Yeah, and her other boyfriend. The one at the end before she left.”
My brow shot up. “She had another boyfriend? Todd Bingham?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure she was sleepin’ with that Bingham boy during one of her breakups with Wyatt, but no, not at the end. She claimed he was from Ewing.”
“You don’t have a name?” Marco asked.
“No. She was secretive about him. I think she met him at her job.”
“What was she doin’?” Marco asked.
“After she flunked out of college, she lived with her parents and went to beauty school in Virginia. When she moved back, she got a job as a nail technician at Carolyn’s House of Style in Ewing.”
“What makes you think she met him at work?” I asked. Ewing didn’t seem progressive enough for men to get mani-pedis, especially nearly a decade ago.
“She was still with Wyatt when she first mentioned him. One of the beauticians cut his hair, and Heather talked to him while he was waitin’. She got a kick out
