“No records of school or anything?”
“None.”
“Driver’s license?”
“She was issued one here three years ago. She passed the test, which means she took it without transferring a license from somewhere else. I can’t run the background checks we can at home, because Darla doesn’t have the software.”
“And we can’t ask Coleman to do it for us.” I arched one eyebrow. “Can we?”
“No, we can’t,” Tinkie said. “Unless we pretend Darla asked us to find the information so she can write Kathleen’s obituary.”
Oh, Tinkie was bad! The best kind of bad.
“In fact,” Tinkie said, “we can call DeWayne or Budgie to do this for us without involving Coleman.”
“You can do that.” I wasn’t about to cross that line with Coleman. He was easygoing, but that was a bridge too far.
“Okay.” Tinkie pulled out her cell phone and placed the call to Zinnia. DeWayne answered, and she put in our request, asking if there were any police records for Kathleen Beesley.
“How are the critters?” I asked in the background, trying to sound normal, to act as I would act if I weren’t deceiving Coleman.
“Everyone is good. Pluto is really, really miffed at you. Sweetie Pie likes fried chicken tenders. Miss Scrapiron let me ride her without any quibbles. All is good.”
“That warms my heart. If you make my dog fat, I’m going to come after you.”
“Sweetie Pie will always be svelte, and she will be glad to see you tomorrow. I’ll get after this info as soon as I finish up the paperwork on an armed robbery at the vape shop. Tell Coleman no one was hurt and I’ll be following a lead as soon as I hang up. Budgie’s got my back.”
“I’ll tell him.” I was disappointed DeWayne couldn’t drop everything and look up the information I needed, but stopping local crime had to come before helping out a couple of private dicks.
I hung up. “I wonder who would know more about Kathleen’s history?”
“No one who is going to help us,” Tinkie wisely said. “Did you give Darla Kathleen’s journal?”
“No.” I still had it. I’d leafed through it, but it was poetry, scribblings of emotions and thoughts, even a couple of grocery lists. Nothing in it seemed useful.
“Maybe there’s a clue in there.”
I hated trying to decipher cryptic clues, but Tinkie was rather good at it. “We’ve got an hour before we have to be downtown for the parade. Let’s give it a try.”
I got the journal that I’d taken from Kathleen’s house and we began going through it. I’d started, originally, at the back, thinking the more recent entries might give us more information. This time we started at the front, wondering if we could find a clue to Kathleen’s past.
“Look at this reference to what has to be suicide. Like she intended to go overboard into the water,” Tinkie said. “‘The river pulls the flow of goods from the north down to New Orleans, a city born in a crescent of river. We are water born. The river is my mother. Now that I am orphaned, I return to her sweet embrace.’”
“You think she meant to drown herself?” I flipped through a few pages. “That was three years ago.”
Tinkie shrugged. “It could mean anything. It could be part of a poem that was never finished.” She flipped through a few more pages.
“This one is dated January three years ago. ‘The lioness, betrayed and beaten, has been killed, yet no one takes notice. A mother is gone without even a whimper of justice. Before she is through, C. will kill the lion. It is her nature. I wonder how she’ll accomplish it.’”
One page over. “‘Soon the cycle of life—and death—will continue. The huntress will arise from the stars. All sins finally come home to roost.’”
It struck me then. “Aurora Bresland was killed in January. Her husband died the next month while hunting deer. That’s the lioness and the lion. And Artemis is the goddess of the hunt. I just can’t figure out what any of this means.”
Tinkie tapped the page with her finger. “It fits, yes, and we considered the idea that Clarissa had killed both Breslands to inherit. But what is this to Kathleen? As far as we know she doesn’t have any connection to Oxford or the Breslands.”
I pointed out the use of the word mother in the earlier passage. “Could that be the connection? Are Kathleen and Darla somehow related, maybe to the Breslands?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know. But we don’t really know anything about Kathleen Beesley. According to what we can find out, she didn’t exist up until a few years ago.”
“About the same time that Aurora and Johnny Bresland died so unexpectedly.”
I still had the number of Deputy Len Ford of Tippah County in my phone. I made the call, even though it was the Saturday before Christmas. He answered with a warm hello. “I’m on my way over to Columbus,” he said. “Please tell Millie I’ll see her at the parade.”
Well, okay then—now that we had Millie’s personal business out of the way. “Deputy, when you were investigating Johnny Bresland’s shooting death, did he have any relatives? Any at all?”
“He had none.”
I admired that he didn’t ask why. “Did Aurora have any relatives?”
“Aurora Bresland had been married previously. When she was very young. I believe there was a child that was put up for adoption.”
“Did you look for her?”
“Remember, I didn’t investigate Aurora’s death, but I did talk to the deputy who did. The woman who inherited, Clarissa Olson, said that the Breslands had severed all ties with the child. There was nothing for her in Aurora’s will, no way to find her or contact her. No information about the adoption agency—that’s what the Lafayette County sheriff’s office told me. I did interview Clarissa Olson, and she said it was a past better left buried,” he said. “To be honest, it always kind of nagged at me, but a lot of people who put children up
