All Good People Here(30)

“Mr. Jacobs!” Margot called, hurrying down the stairs to the sidewalk. But Billy just continued walking fast in the opposite direction. “Mr. Jacobs! Billy!”

Finally, he stopped, hesitated for a moment, then turned.

Margot walked quickly to catch up with him. “Hi, I’m Mar—”

“I know who you are,” he said not unkindly. “You’re the Davies girl.”

She smiled. “That’s right. I grew up across the street from you. I was friends with January.” His eyes softened at his daughter’s name. “I’m a reporter now,” Margot continued, and it was only after she’d said it that she realized it was no longer technically true. “I’d love to talk, if you have a minute.”

But at the word reporter, his expression had closed again. “I don’t know anything about that message on my barn. I didn’t even find it. One of my employees did.”

“That’s okay. I’m also looking into the Natalie Clark case, trying to find out if there’s any connection between hers and January’s.”

“Natalie Clark…”

The name seemed to mean very little to him, but Margot knew he’d heard it, because the missing girl had been the subject of that morning’s sermon. The pastor had used her disappearance as an opportunity to talk about faith during times of hardship and the mysterious nature of God’s ways. Margot had paid little attention from her seat in the back, her gaze flitting around the heads of the congregation, wondering if inside any of them was the brain of a kidnapper, a killer.

“I wish I could be more help,” Billy said, “but I don’t know anything about Natalie Clark.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to. But if you’d be willing to talk about January’s case, it could help me understand if there’s anything connecting them.”

Billy stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets and squinted over Margot’s shoulder as if hoping to find someone to pull him away from the conversation. “Listen, Margot, I don’t mean any offense, but I haven’t had the best experience with reporters in the past. It’s nothing personal, but I just don’t think I should be talking with one.”

Margot nodded. “I understand. But those reporters back then—they didn’t know you or your family. They were trying to sell a story.” She paused. “I knew January. I remember playing in your backyard, having snacks in your kitchen. I’m not out to spin anything, I promise. I just want to understand what happened to my friend.”

Maybe it should have felt wrong using this as leverage, but everything she’d said was true. And although she knew that the weight of January’s death had probably never gotten easier for Billy to carry, and that reliving it again would be painful, there were new developments in the twenty-five-year-old case. If rehashing his memories could help find his daughter’s killer, didn’t he have some sort of obligation to do so?

“This is an opportunity for you to set the record straight,” she continued. “And if it all comes to nothing, at the very least, it could be nice to sit down and talk with someone else who knew her.” She held his gaze. From the look in his eye, she could tell he was starting to give in. “Oh!” she added, unhooking one arm from her backpack, then twisting it around to her front. She dug a hand around inside, and after a moment, pulled out the box she’d bought earlier at Granny’s Pantry. “And I brought apple pie.”

Billy’s eyes widened in surprise. He looked from the pie to Margot’s face, then let out a small, stuttering laugh, as if the action was rusty from lack of practice. “Oh, all right,” he said. “But not here. Let’s go to the house.”



* * *



—

The Jacobs place was no longer the bustling crime scene it had been the day before. The few members of the press who’d covered the story of the barn message had disappeared, as had Pete, his partner, and the yellow line of caution tape blocking the driveway. Margot parked along the curb, followed Billy up the front porch stairs, and then, for the first time in her life as an adult, she stepped over the threshold into the Jacobs home.

It was like walking into a memory. Margot had spent countless summer afternoons running through these rooms, and she marveled at how unchanged they all were, as if the house were a time capsule of 1994. The sitting room chairs were the same floral they’d been back then, the floors the same hardwood. As she walked through, long-forgotten details of the house began popping into her head—how the right side of the staircase creaked more than the left, how one of the whorls in the railing looked like a face, how, if you crawled beneath the dining room table and looked at its underside, you’d be able to see her and January’s initials carved into the wood.

Margot followed Billy into the kitchen, and as he reheated a pot of coffee and selected plates and forks for the pie, she couldn’t help envisioning the room as it had looked that July morning twenty-five years ago. That bitch is gone spray-painted in garish red against the white walls. Who had written that message? she wondered. Was it the same person who’d vandalized the barn?

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Billy said as he sliced two pieces of the pie and placed them onto little porcelain plates. “I didn’t mean to be rude, I just…I haven’t had many friends in this town for a long time.”