The only thing Jenna managed to say sounded defensive and petty. “I’m not a member of that country club. I’ve never even been there.”
“The country club may not be a connection. There may be no connection.” Naomi studied the screen for a moment, then slipped the phone away. “So far it doesn’t look like Celia and Holly Crenshaw knew each other. Maybe they were passing acquaintances and nothing more. Holly worked in human resources, so she probably didn’t have a lot of contact with the members.”
Jenna looked around the lobby. More people came and went, and she studied the faces, wondering about each and every one of them. Did they all carry pain and regret like hers? “So there could be some kind of killer in the area, someone who is preying on women? Do you think it’s Benjamin?”
Naomi was shaking her head. “We don’t know any of these things. The town’s nervous enough as it is. This is going to dial that up even higher. We can’t jump to any conclusions.”
But Jenna already knew people would. She could imagine the field day someone like Reena Huffman would have with that kind of news. A killer on the loose, beautiful women being targeted in small-town America. What tagline would she come up with next? Maniac in the Heartland? Killer in Kentucky?
“Don’t jump to any conclusions?” Jenna said, repeating Naomi’s words and adding her own sarcastic edge. “I’ll stay nice and calm when the creeps call me on the phone. Or the next time I get summoned to a crime scene.”
“You’re still getting those phone calls? You know we can look into them again.”
“I got one last night, but that’s only because of my performance on CNN.”
Jenna wondered if Naomi would say anything about that, but she didn’t. She directed the conversation an entirely different way, still sounding casual. “Any other thoughts on Celia’s marriage?”
Naomi made it sound as though the two women had just been discussing the topic a few minutes earlier.
“Other thoughts? I answered fifty questions about their marriage when Celia disappeared.”
“I know.” Naomi looked calm, unruffled. “But sometimes I like to check back with people close to the case in the event something new has occurred to them. The mind is a tricky thing. Thoughts can emerge from places we aren’t even aware of.”
“I’d tell you the same thing now I told you then. They weren’t perfect, but they seemed happy. I hate to say it, but I felt maybe neither one of them was paying enough attention to Ursula. Ian worked a lot. Celia had an active social life. And all of that was going on right when their daughter was hitting puberty and adolescence. But I’m a single mom. I’m not home when my son gets out of school.” She’d seen the Jim Beam bottle in Jared’s room the night Celia disappeared. Her interruption of Jared and Tabitha just the day before. No, she couldn’t throw stones at any other parents. Everyone did their best. And then they hoped. “Some people have suggested that Celia ran away and wasn’t taken. There’s no way that’s true. She wouldn’t leave Ian or Ursula.”
“Who’s suggesting she ran away?” Naomi asked.
“People online mostly. I go to those message boards sometimes, especially the one at the Dealey Society.” As Naomi well knew, the Dealey Society was an organization, founded by Paul and Pam Dealey, dedicated to discovering answers about missing persons cases involving adults. The site featured a clearinghouse of names, photos, and other information, as well as a message board where anyone could log on and discuss active and closed cases. They’d gained national attention over the past five years when members of their online community helped solve a couple of long-cold cases. The Dealeys started the site when their twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Sheila, was kidnapped and murdered. “I know I shouldn’t. I know it just stirs up difficult emotions. But there’s something comforting about talking to other people. It feels like there are individuals who really care.”
“And you feel like you’re being useful,” Naomi said. “You’re helping.”
“Yeah,” Jenna said, her voice trailing away. It hardly seemed like any form of real help. And it also required interacting with the occasional crazies who made the creeps on the phone seem normal and well adjusted. More than once, Jenna made vows to never go back, to stop dipping her toe in the online waters of the Dealey message board. But she inevitably went back, drawn there by the constant stream of new information, the ongoing sense that a group of people were trying to keep Celia’s memory and case alive.