“Hi,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “This is Sadie, right?”
She glanced down at her dog, tugging on the leash slightly. “Yes? Do I know you?”
“No,” I said. “Listen, this is going to sound nuts. I’m a private investigator and I’ve been trying to locate a woman matching your description.” I showed her my license and gave her one of my cards.
“Really,” she said. Now she seemed amused. “My husband is going to love this, he reads nothing but mystery novels. What did this woman who matches my description do? Allegedly.” She had a wicked little grin. I liked her.
Her name was Jillian Pizzuti. She lived three streets over, and routinely came by the gas station, both to fill up her car and when she walked her dog. “There aren’t sidewalks on the residential streets,” she explained, “and people around here drive like maniacs. I’ve almost gotten hit more times than I can count. So I stick to Clover as much as I can.”
I asked her if she remembered the night of November 2. “It was a Thursday,” I added. “Clear skies, if that helps.”
“That was two weeks ago,” Jillian said.
“I know.”
“It’s possible,” she said. Sadie whined, straining against the leash as another woman with a dog walked past us. “I really have no idea.” She pulled out her phone and opened her calendar for that night, but it revealed nothing. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you drive a red sedan?” I asked her, thinking of what Danielle had told me about the cars. “Or a green pickup truck?”
“White hatchback,” she said.
I knew it had been a long shot, so I wasn’t exactly disappointed, but it felt like a door closing in my face. I thanked her for her time and patted Sadie on her curly head.
“I hope you find her, whoever she is,” Jillian said.
I went back to my car—using the crosswalk this time—and slumped inside. It wasn’t the same as definitive proof. But it did seem likely that Danielle had seen Jillian Pizzuti that night, not Sarah, which meant that my one solid lead in this case was a done deal already.
*
The plumber’s van sitting in my mother’s driveway should have told me to steer clear, but it didn’t. When I went into the house I could hear my mother and her neighbor Rita talking at the kitchen table. “Oh, Gen, I know,” Rita was saying, “but his heart was in the right place.”
“I told him, I didn’t want a new sink,” my mother said, her voice thick.
I froze, hand still on the doorknob. I considered sneaking back out. But I was here on a mission. “Hey, Mom,” I called. “Hey, Rita.”
“Hi, love,” my mother said coolly as I crossed through the kitchen. “Rita brought pizzelles, you remember how you used to go nuts for those.”
“The almond ones are a little soft,” Rita said, “but the anise came out perfect.”
I shoved a cookie into my mouth and looked at the sink, which was partially disassembled on the counter and floor. “Are they just putting in new pipes?” I said.
“New everything,” my mother said. “New pipes, new faucet, plus something to do with a P-trap and compression washers. Did you know your brother was doing this?”
I looked at her. I knew better than to answer that. “I think once it’s done, you’ll like it,” I said.
Rita took that as her cue. “I’m leaving the anise pizzelles for you, Roxane,” she said, pulling on her coat. “Genevieve, I’ll call you later, sweetie.”
After she left, my mother stood up and cleared away the coffee cups. But the sink was only a sink in theory at the moment, so she put them on the stove and crossed her arms. “Someone came by for you this morning,” she said.
“Someone?”
“I didn’t catch his name. A boy you knew growing up, maybe.”
I broke another pizzelle in half and nibbled the lacy edge of it. “What makes you think that? Did he look familiar?”
“Well,” my mother said, “no. But he asked if you were home. I told him you hadn’t lived here since high school and he got a little bit sheepish. He said, right, that makes sense. Then he left.”
I thought about that for a second, chewing. “What did he look like?”
“Oh, I don’t know, he had one of those piercings in his eyebrow.” She reached for a cookie. “And his tongue, too. He kept clicking it around in his mouth. Isn’t that bad for their teeth?”
“Probably,” I said, impatient. “What else? What was he wearing?”
“A jacket, a camo jacket with leaves on it, like hunters wear. And a knit hat.”
The individual she was describing didn’t sound like anyone I knew. But my thoughts snagged on the camo jacket. Like hunters wear. The knife Garrett and Elaine Cook had been killed with was a hunting knife. A random connection, maybe. No doubt hunting jackets were just as common around here as Ohio State bumper stickers. But I still didn’t like the thought of this person looking for me, especially not after the car-rifling incident last night. “So he just knocked on the door and asked if I was home?”
“He didn’t really knock, I guess,” my mother said. “I was just walking by the front door and I heard someone opening the storm door. I was expecting a package, so I thought it was the mailman. Why—do you know who it was?”
I ate the rest of my second cookie and shook my head. I didn’t want to worry her. She’d dealt with enough this year, and she had never been happy with my career choice anyway. “Probably someone from school, like you said. If he comes back, let me know?”
My mother nodded. Her chilly expression had warmed up a bit, until she said, “So what brings you over here again?”
I sighed. I knew she wasn’t going to like my reason for coming. “Dad’s files, his notebooks and stuff,” I said anyway. “What happened to all that?”
“What?”
“You know he kept everything. What did you do with his old case files?”
My mother’s expression went tight. “Well, I suppose it’s all still in his office.”
“What do you mean, you suppose?” I said.
She crossed the kitchen and began searching through her purse. “I don’t know what all is in there. It’s locked.”
I stared at her. “You mean you haven’t been in the office since—” I stopped. “Since February?”
“No, Roxane, I have not,” my mother said. “I’m going out to smoke.”