I shifted sideways in my seat, holding the phone over the console. “May, when I heard about people who hung out with Heather, your name kept coming up.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I know she was hoping Wyatt would propose to her that Christmas. Did she ever talk about it?”
“Wyatt didn’t deserve her,” she said, “or at least she had me convinced of that. Heather was really good at convincin’ people she was right. I bought the whole ‘no one understands me like you do’ story hook, line, and sinker. She convinced me that we were best friends and she couldn’t handle her life without me. She called or showed up at my doorstep at all hours of the day and night, expecting me to give her my undivided attention. And I did, because she had this gravitational pull that had a way of grabbing hold of you and not letting go. But it seemed like a kryptonite kind of thing. The more time you spent with her, the more the need to be with her increased, but if she drew back, you started to realize you didn’t need her after all. That being around her was emotionally draining.”
“May,” I said, “are you speaking of your own personal experience or in general?”
A moment of silence, then she said, “Both. We’ve all discussed it over the past nine years. Compared our experiences with her. We think she’d have had hundreds of followers if she’d started a cult.”
I cast a glance to Marco again and he mouthed, You’re doing great.
Marco had been right about body language. I wish I could see her facial expressions. If she was nervous or reluctant, I couldn’t tell. “When you say we, who do you mean?”
“Mitzi, Dick…Anna Faith.”
“What about Abby Atwood?”
“I met her that Christmas when she came home from vet school. She wasn’t back for very long because she had a job back in Knoxville. She was goin’ to vet school and needed the money for her rent. I remember Heather was furious about her leavin’.”
“Why?”
“Because Heather hadn’t dismissed her. She dared to leave Heather’s orbit without permission.”
“Do you know who Heather’s boyfriend was?”
“Everyone knows Wyatt was her boyfriend,” she said slowly, like someone speaking to a child.
Was she insinuating there hadn’t been another boyfriend? But if Mitzi was right and May and Heather had been sleeping together, I could understand why she’d dodge the question.
Ask about Wyatt and the tavern, Marco mouthed.
I nodded, then asked, “Did Heather tell you much about Wyatt’s plan to ask Bart Drummond for the tavern?”
“She was the one who cooked it up. She manipulated Wyatt for weeks until he gave his father an ultimatum—either give him the tavern or he would walk away from the family. Neither one of them expected Bart to call them on it, which was shortsighted on their part. Bart doesn’t let other people control him. Anyone from Drum knows that, but I think Heather had convinced Wyatt that his father had invested too much time and energy in him to just let him go.”
“It backfired,” I said, “but Heather had a plan B. Or she made one.”
May didn’t say anything for several seconds.
I decided to lie. “We already know that Heather set Wyatt up with the DUI and breaking and entering arrest.”
She was silent for longer this time, and when she spoke, her voice was shaky. “Who told you that?”
Not an admission, but it was pretty far from a denial. “Someone who chooses to stay anonymous.” It didn’t take a genius to see I was scaring her off, so I switched gears. “The Drummonds paid Heather to leave town, but Mitzi told me that Heather said she had an idea for getting a bigger payout. Do you know what it was?”
“No, she wouldn’t tell me, but she insinuated she was workin’ with someone. While I wasn’t crazy about the idea of manipulatin’ people, I was happy she might be stayin’, even if she was defyin’ Bart Drummond. She said she wasn’t afraid of him.”
I took a moment, knowing that I needed to be careful with my next question. “How would you describe your relationship with Heather?”
“I know what Mitzi likely told you, but it ain’t true,” she said angrily. “I like men. Did I love her? Yeah, in a messed-up way, because she made me alienate everyone else in my life until there was only her, but we weren’t like that.”
“May, I don’t care about your sexual preferences,” I assured her. “Who you chose to love or sleep with is your own business. I’m just making sure I have all the puzzle pieces so I can figure out what really happened.”
“Okay,” she said in a softer tone. “Heather hooked up with some guy from her salon, but it only lasted a few weeks. He broke it off after his wife found out, but she didn’t tell a lot of people because she didn’t want anyone to know he’d rejected her. She was talkin’ about someone called Peep by then. Most people thought it was some cute name for the salon guy, but I think it was the person helpin’ her. Maybe even someone she’d found to get drugs for her.”
“Drugs?” I asked in surprise. Marco looked just as shocked.
May was silent for a moment. “I heard her talkin’ to someone on the phone, telling them she needed enough to make a grown man unconscious so she could put him in a compromisin’ position without wakin’ him up.”
“She was planning to set up Wyatt?” I asked.
“No,” she said slowly. “I think she was talkin’ about Bart. She pulled me aside before she left the party. Said she’d been plannin’ to blackmail Bart, but she was startin’ to chicken out. She’d decided it would be best if she really did leave. I begged her to stay, but she said I’d been a good friend and then told me goodbye.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?” I asked.
“No, but her aunt Hilde told me that she got a postcard
