I relay Molly’s thoughts to Taylor and take a closer look at the rest of the drawing. The area around the house is heavily wooded, and beyond the first ring of trees, there’s a section that’s shaded in with the side of the pencil so that it looks smooth.
“What’s that?”
“Water,” Taylor says after chugging down the last of the flat orange soda. “I think the house has a swimming pool, too. That’s the smaller square near the second building. This is farther away, though. Maybe a quarter mile. Much bigger, too. Might be a lake, but I think it’s a river. Pretty sure that darker spot—kind of tear-shaped—is an island. And that thing?” She taps a section in the top left corner of the page. It’s shaped like a long-necked squash or maybe a pear tipped on its side, outlined with concentric ridges. “Don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely within a mile or two of the house.”
“And you’re sure the bag is still there?” Aaron asks.
“No. But if we can find this place and you can get me in closer, I’ll know for certain.”
“What . . . bag?”
She pushes the pencil bag toward me. Now I remember where I’ve seen it. “Molly had something like this. I saw a flash of it last night when you asked her about a . . . some-letter-I-can’t-remember purse. But it was square.”
“Because she kept it folded in her jeans pocket. And it wasn’t a letter . . . I asked if she was carrying her Elle purse. Like the character in Legally Blonde?”
That rings a distant bell. I’m guessing one of my tenants watched it at some point, and I’m pulling up blonde, chirpy, and pink all on my own, so I nod.
“Mom came in while we were watching this Disney Channel sequel a few weeks before Christmas when we were what? Nine? Ten, maybe? It was supposed to be about that Legally Blonde woman’s cousins or something. They had pink everything. And . . . well, I guess Mom thought we were finally getting into girly stuff. We got these matching sparkly pink purses from her as gifts. We didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so we both found a way to use them. Molly folded hers in half and used it as a wallet. I use mine to carry my pencils, even though I had to sharpen half an inch off each pencil to make the damn things fit. They didn’t find the purse on Molly’s body. So when she told me that she was carrying it that night, I thought I’d try to get a read on it.”
Taylor rips a page out of the sketch pad and leaves it on the table. “And now I’m going to do the same thing with Deo’s ear cuff. I can’t promise anything. I knew Molly her entire life and I just met Deo. I’ve done readings with total strangers before, but it seems to work best with people I know, so even with something as recent as the jewelry . . .”
The bag of Doritos goes with her when she heads upstairs, and she pokes a finger at Aaron as she passes. “Find my pizzas, mister.”
Between Taylor’s sketch and Molly’s information about the highway exit, Aaron and I pinpoint the location of the house before the pizzas arrive. The pear-shaped thing is a quarry. The island is in the Susquehanna River. Finding the specific house was a little tougher, because it’s at the end of a long private drive. We had to go with only the satellite images, rather than street view. But this one is in the right position in relation to the other things in Taylor’s sketch, the landscaping is right, and it’s the only one nearby with a smaller structure out back. No pool, though.
Another couple of minutes on the state property tax website, and we’ve learned the place is owned by HLMC Corp. Aaron runs some searches, but he can’t find anything about an HLMC Corporation, or anything close to it, that’s connected to the Creggs or to Decathlon Services Group.
I stack the last two pizza boxes on the counter. “You ordered enough to feed a football team.”
“Maybe a chess team.” He frowns at the slice I’m eating. “You took one with anchovies?”
I nod, tossing a few bits of sausage from my slice into the disposal. “Anchovies are good. I told you I was fine with anything. I just pick off the stuff I’d rather not eat . . . like sausage.”
“When people say that, they usually don’t mean anchovies. Go easy, okay? Taylor said pizzas . . . plural. Although to be fair, she picks half of the anchovies off herself. I think it’s less that she likes them and more that she’s marking that box so everyone will keep their paws off her slices.”
“Do you really think she’s going to eat two large pizzas? She’s barely five feet.”
“Most of the time she’d put away four slices tops. When she’s viewing, though . . . Mom joked about taking out a second mortgage to pay the food bill during the months Taylor was trying to find Molly.”