“Of course not,” Marigold said quickly. “We’ll just ask people if they’ve heard about any other breakins around town.”
“That’s straightforward,” I said.
Lizzie nodded in agreement. “Always best to keep it simple.”
“But that brings up another question,” Emily said as she refilled our wineglasses. “Don’t you think if someone else was burglarized, we’d have heard about it already?”
“Well, yes,” Marigold allowed. “Ever since the police department Web site started listing the local crimes, everybody knows everything.”
To be honest, we didn’t need a Web site to spread the news. Our local grapevine was amazingly effective. But the Internet did speed things up a little.
“In that case, we can just look online,” Jane said.
I sipped my wine. “But there might be someone who didn’t bother calling the police. It couldn’t hurt to ask around.”
“No, it couldn’t hurt,” Jane said.
Marigold grinned. “It’ll be fun and it might lead to some interesting conversations.”
Jane chuckled, and I savored the sound. She turned to the other three. “I’m still surprised you guys didn’t hear the gory details before you got here.”
“I heard that he died,” Lizzie said, “but nothing about the possible breakin.”
“I’m still disappointed in Vesta,” I said, then added, “Oh, but I hope she feels better soon.”
“She thought it might be a twenty-four-hour bug,” Lizzie said.
“But think about it,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “Vesta knew, Mrs. Higgins knew, half the police force knew, and word still didn’t get around town?”
Marigold’s eyes widened in mock horror. “That sounds like one of the seven signs of the apocalypse.”
I snickered. “All the best gossips knew and said nothing. It’s definitely a sign from above.”
“I should’ve come down and told you all myself,” Jane said, glancing around the table. “But I’ve been such a space case all day. I can’t focus on anything.”
“Nobody expects you to, love,” Emily said, her soft brogue a soothing balm. “You’re grieving, after all. I brought you some special tea that’ll calm your nerves and help you sleep. I’ll brew some right now.”
*
The next day I ran around to three jobsites where I had crews working. I had planned to get in at least a few hours of work, but my foreman chased me away the second time I messed up a template for replacing the decorative wood shingle siding on the old Victorian we were rehabbing. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking straight. Since I couldn’t focus on work, I drove home and decided to get the ball rolling and survey some of my neighbors about Jesse. It turned out that Mrs. Higgins wasn’t the only one who’d heard a driver gunning a car engine. Several neighbors reported hearing the sound of tires screeching down the street around two in the morning the night before. But when I asked my neighbor Hester, who lived four doors down on the corner, if she’d heard the same noise, she smiled ruefully. “Yeah, sorry about that. Lisa has a new boyfriend and his car makes an awful racket. It woke me and Joe up, too, so we’ve both warned him to either get a new muffler or stop seeing Lisa.”
I laughed. “Does Lisa know you told him that?”
Hester confessed that she’d rather have the guy dump her daughter than keep coming around. “He’s from San Francisco and I’m scared to death she’ll move away with him.”
“I thought she wanted to go to Cove College.”
“She does,” Hester said, shaking her head. “But he’s got those sexy eyes that reel a girl in and make her forget her goals and dreams.”
So that answered the puzzle about the loud car in the night. Nobody else had heard the pounding that Mrs. Higgins had mentioned, but perhaps the sound had carried directly from Jesse’s house to hers. Or maybe she had imagined it.
But Eric hadn’t imagined the hole in the wall in Jesse’s bedroom.
By the time I got back home, the only thing I knew for sure was that my innocent questions would send the gossip levels soaring over the next few days. That wasn’t such a bad outcome.
“My work here is done,” I murmured, smiling inwardly. But before I could make it down my driveway and escape into my backyard, Mrs. Higgins flagged me down. “Yoo-hoo! Shannon, dear! Can you come here, please?”
“Hi, Mrs. Higgins.” I crossed the street to the picket fence, where she was watering her roses. Today she wore a bright green housedress covered in purple plumeria. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, there’s just so much to think about and do in any given day.”
“There sure is,” I said amiably.
“But weighing most heavily on my mind is the fact that my birdbath is leaking.”
For two longs seconds, I was befuddled. Then I remembered who I was talking to.