All Good People Here(82)

“There. The doors are unlocked. I’m not holding you prisoner. I just want to talk.”

Margot grabbed the handle, pushed, and the door clicked open. She sat there, staring at the little sliver of night between the door and its frame for a few seconds before closing it again. Then she turned to the woman in the driver’s seat. “If you just wanted to talk, why the hell did you kidnap me?”

“I’m sorry. I was trying to protect you. I need you to write your story and I can help you with it, but you’re not safe here. Plus…to be honest, I didn’t think you’d come with me otherwise. I know you’ve seen me following you.”

Margot shook her head. “What are you trying to protect me from?”

The woman chewed her bottom lip.

“Jesus Christ. You say you’re protecting me because I’m in danger, and now you won’t even tell me what that danger is?”

The woman held up her hands. “I’ll tell you. I will. But you haven’t listened to any of my warnings yet, so I don’t think you’re going to just start now. Not until you understand some things first. You need to understand who I am and how I know what I know. Otherwise, I don’t think you’ll believe me.”

Margot hadn’t needed confirmation to know that this woman was the one who’d sent her those threatening notes, those warnings, but now she had it. Seething with anger and frustration, she stared at the woman’s face. This woman had terrorized her for days, and suddenly she wanted Margot to calmly hear her out? And yet, her door was still unlocked. Her only injury was a throbbing lip. And now that Margot’s panic was starting to ebb, curiosity was filling its place. “Okay then…Who are you?”

“My name’s Jodie Palmer. I was…friends with Krissy Jacobs before she died.”

Margot narrowed her eyes. Something about the way the woman said this made her suspect it wasn’t entirely true. “Listen, Jodie? You’re the one who just threw me into the back seat of a car. You’re the one who wants to talk. So why don’t you start telling me the truth?”

Jodie hesitated. “If I do…this can’t be part of your story.”

“Okay. Off the record then.”

“No, not just that. This can’t get out at all. In any way.”

Margot studied Jodie’s face. She looked both fierce and a little bit scared. Margot nodded. “You have my word.”

“Good.” Jodie inhaled a shaky breath. “Krissy Jacobs and I were in a relationship.”

“Wait. What?” Out of everything the woman could have said, this was the last thing Margot would have guessed.

“We were together for five years.”

Jodie went on to tell Margot the details: how she and Krissy had grown up together in Wakarusa, how they’d reconnected years later at a bar in South Bend, how they’d been together until Krissy’s untimely death. “She didn’t kill January,” Jodie said when she’d finished. “Krissy and I told each other everything, and the night of January’s death destroyed her. She loved her daughter. She never would have killed her. The reason the police suspected her—”

Margot held up her hand. “I already know what Krissy did that night. I know she didn’t kill January.”

“You do?”

“Jace told me. About their letters—everything. But what I don’t understand is if you just wanted to tell me Krissy is innocent, why stalk me? Why not just approach me?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Well…first of all, I didn’t know if I even wanted to. I knew everybody in this town would tell you that Krissy killed January, and I needed to see if you’d believe them or if you’d dig deeper. Then I saw that press conference on TV, the one about Natalie Clark, and I heard you ask that question—you know, why the police weren’t looking into connections between Natalie’s case and January’s. I wanted to reach out to you then, but, well, to be honest, I didn’t trust you. Not yet anyway. And I couldn’t go to the police, because…” She shook her head. “I’m still with my husband. We have three kids. I knew if I went to the police, the whole town would know everything in a matter of days.”

“What does Natalie Clark have to do with you and Krissy?” Then, something hit her. “Wait a second. The morning after the press conference, that message appeared on the Jacobs barn. Did you write it?”

Jodie hesitated, her brow furrowed.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“I was trying to help. January’s murderer is still out there. Which means that whoever he is could’ve taken Natalie. No one was even entertaining that idea, except for you. And no one was taking you seriously. I thought it would help you and the police make the connection. Although,” she added bitterly, “they were still so convinced of Krissy’s guilt they couldn’t recognize a clue when it was spray-painted in two-foot-tall letters.”

Beneath Margot’s whirling confusion, she also felt a tiny grain of vindication. She’d been right. The author of those words on the barn had been trying to connect January’s death to Natalie Clark’s. It may have been convoluted and misleading, but it had kept Margot on that path. Yet so much of what Jodie was saying still didn’t make any sense. “You said you couldn’t approach me because you didn’t trust me? Why? I’m an out-of-town reporter. I was the only one asking all the questions you apparently wanted to get asked, the only one you thought was on the right track.”