This was far from an assurance that Sarah was the one who left the flowers at the Save-More memorial, but it did give probable cause.
But who’s to say there wasn’t a sale on yellow tulips somewhere and half the town had vases filled with the same exact flowers this very moment?
I would have to look into it further.
Back inside, the piglets were roaming around, sniffing this and sniffing that. I put out a water bowl, and they both took a few cautious laps.
They both gazed up at me as if to say, “This isn’t as good as that other stuff.”
I checked the time on my cell phone.
“Another hour and you guys can eat again.”
I made myself some food, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then swallowed down three of the Tylenol.
I grabbed a couple pillows from upstairs, pushed the oval coffee table off the rug in the living room, and lay down. Pink immediately ran over and sniffed me and licked my hand. She rolled over on her side and I tickled her tummy.
A short time later, Tan came over. He was a bit more hesitant, but after a while, he too gave me a couple licks.
For the next hour, I skimmed the printouts on how to care for the piglets. I looked at Tan and said, “Did you know you guys don’t sweat?”
That’s why the mud in a pigpen was so important, it’s what the pigs used to regulate their temperature.
“Sorry, this place doesn’t have any A/C,” I told them.
At 5:00 p.m., I fed the piglets.
Tan let me hold him like a baby and suckled away.
We were bonding.
Then I took them outside where, to my utter amazement, both of them went potty.
Back in the living room, I lay back down on the ground. My body was devastated, and I was drained from the day’s events.
Ten minutes later, I was asleep.
When I woke up, both piglets were snuggled into my side.
I checked the time on my cellphone.
11:51 p.m.
I’d slept for almost seven hours. I grabbed two more bottles of formula and fed the hungry pigs.
How does that taste?
Oh, you guys were hungry.
Come on, Pink, just a little more.
Dang it, Tan, that’s your sister’s.
I shook my head, realizing I couldn’t call them Pink and Tan forever. I picked Tan up and gave him a good once-over. He was bald except for a whisper of hair on his forehead. Plus, he was kind of cranky. Just like him.
“I christen you Harold.”
I set him down and picked up Pink.
“Now you, my dear.”
She was so delicate.
And sweet.
I racked my brain for a name.
“Trisket?”
“Latifah?”
“Spammy?”
“Little Heidi Klum?”
“Jennifer?”
“Mable?”
“Piglet?”
“Beyoncé?”
“Ruth?”
“Molly?”
“Polly?”
“Dolly?”
“Tina?”
“Winnie?”
“Sara?”
“Sara Lee?”
“Pound Cake?”
“Mindy?”
“Cindy?”
“Destiny?”
“Hermione?”
Nothing fit.
I looked at the phone.
It was 11:59 p.m.
Just one minute left in the month of May.
I smiled.
That was it.
I held up Pink and said, “You will be Miss May.”
Chapter Six
The first day of June was a Wednesday.
After eating breakfast and feeding the piglets, I drove into town. There were a couple of errands that needed doing. I needed to stop by the feed and supply store to buy more formula for Harold and May. I needed to get some lumber from the hardware store so I could repair the pigpen fence. I needed to buy some more Tylenol from the supermarket to numb my aching body. But first, I needed to get on the internet.
The Tarrin Public Library was across the street from the high school. It was an aging red brick building, two stories tall. There was a small parking lot, which at 11:00 a.m., was half-full.
I parked and walked inside.
There were a few people sitting at tables reading and another few on laptops. Like all libraries, the lighting was low and there was a pervasive smell of carpet deodorizer. There were a few computer terminals against the back wall, and I settled in behind one.
I tried to log onto the internet, but I was unsuccessful. A young man next to me informed me that I needed to first have a library card and then I could create a login.
Ten minutes later, I was the proud owner of a Tarrin Public Library card.
I logged onto the internet and searched “Save-More murders,” then skimmed the same article Lacy read to me over the phone the previous day. I found the list of the victims—Peggy Bertina, Will Dennel, Neil Felding, Tom Lanningham, Odell McBride, Victoria Page—and looked at their pictures and read their bios.
Nothing jumped out at me until the fourth one.
Tom Lanningham.
He looked to be in his fifties, with receding gray hair and thick glasses. His bio read: Tom Lanningham was fifty-eight years old. He was a veterinarian for almost twenty years, all of them in his hometown of Tarrin. He is survived by his daughter, Sarah.
Was Sarah, Sarah Lanningham?
It would make sense, the age seemed right, and maybe she’d followed in her father’s footsteps.
This was more circumstantial evidence Sarah was the one who left the flowers at the memorial. Of course, in this technological age, it would be easy enough to verify the daughter Sarah was also the veterinarian Sarah.
I’d been in such a rush with the piglets that I hadn’t noticed the name of the vet clinic.
I searched “Dr. Sarah Lanningham.”
A moment later, I clicked on the link for the Big and Small Vet Hospital. The website had a picture of Sarah. I found myself grinning at the sight of her. In the picture she was wearing the same white jacket and holding a kitten.
The mystery of the yellow tulips solved, I returned to the article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. At the bottom of the article, there was a blurb about the killer.
His name was Lowry Barnes. He was twenty-nine years old, married, a father of two. He was a convicted felon for burglary, with minor offenses for DUI and drug possession. He did a couple small stints at the county jail then a two-year prison sentence
