Mother May I(73)

The more Marshall thought about the story, the more it curdled in his guts. If a perp had tried to float this fairy tale by him in a small gray room?

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

But then Trey was not some perp. Trey was, by any measure, a decent person. He had his faults, like anyone. Impatient at times. Definitely used to getting his way. But he was a loving dad and a faithful husband, generous with friends and charities. An excellent employer, fair and good-humored. So yeah. There was all that.

What if the story, then, was simply . . . mostly true?

The mind revises, Marshall knew. He’d always believe a fingerprint over an eyewitness. As time passed, events became mutable. People justified their actions, and the more shame they felt about a memory, the more they chewed it over, fretting and defending and editing, until they could live with it. Trey’s very decency made him more apt to reframe a story like the one he’d told Bree. At least a little.

Or a lot. Or maybe Marshall only thought that because he was so stupid in love with Trey’s wife.

He was in Dawsonville proper now, getting close. He had to pay attention to his GPS. Anyway, his reaction to Trey’s story would not help him find Lexie, so screw it. It was a problem for tomorrow, or the next day. When Robert was safe home.

Bickford Independent Living Community was three long, slightly run-down buildings full of single-floor apartments, each with its own door. There was a shabby clubhouse and a small pool, but no office where he had to check in. The parking spaces were numbered, but every five slots or so there was a space marked visitor. He found an empty one close to Mariah Denton’s place and went to knock on her door.

It opened almost at once. She’d been waiting for him. He recognized her from the picture. Clearly the same woman, but shorter and rounder. Her brown hair had thinned and silvered, but it was still long, wound up in a crown of slender braids. She wore a hot-pink lounge set that could have been pajamas or a tracksuit and had bright green reading glasses on a string around her neck.

“Mrs. Denton? I’m Marshall Chase,” he said, holding out his hand to shake. Instead she grasped his forearm and pulled him in, smiling.

“Come in, come in, young man. Anything I can do to help Lexie and Coral Lee! I’ve been racking my poor brains, trying to think where they might be staying. I’m sure I don’t know.”

A disappointment, but not a huge one. He hadn’t expected it would be that easy. Just hoped. Mariah Denton was assuming that the two of them were together, though. They weren’t. Coral, who read mysteries and thrillers, would be too smart to let her daughter stick a toe inside the room or house where she was holding a kidnapped infant. Lexie was a felon, with fingerprints and probably DNA logged in the system. Coral wouldn’t want Lexie anywhere near Funtime tomorrow either. She had no way to know if Bree would bring Trey or the cops to meet her.

Mrs. Denton was still talking. “Oh, the bad luck that family has had, I tell you. It’s so nice a good thing is happening, and with Coral Lee so sick, I know they could use the money.” She was a chatterbox. That could be good or bad, depending on how well he could keep her on topic. He let himself be tugboated to the small kitchen behind the breakfast bar while she nattered on about the fictional inheritance. Gabrielle had prepped her well. A three-seater table with a floral plastic cover was pushed against the wall. She deposited him by one of the ladder-back chairs, and he obediently sat down. She hovered by him. “I was thinking I might make myself some cocoa, if you give me the excuse?”

“I’d love some.” It was late, and she was elderly. Sugar and caffeine would buy him more time with her. “Do you have a way to contact either of the Pines?” he asked before she could start up her monologue again.

She went toward the fridge and got the milk out. “Well, I thought I did. As soon as I got off the phone with the young lady at your law firm, I tried the number Coral Lee left. It’s not connected anymore. I thought for a moment she must have passed on. She was very ill. But Lexie surely would have contacted me about the funeral. More likely it’s off because of money troubles, so an inheritance would be an answered prayer. Is it enough money to be useful?”

She had bright black eyes, shiny as buttons, and she hardly paused for breath or answers.

“I can’t give you specifics, but it’s a comfortable amount. Can I see the phone number?” he asked. “When did she give it to you?”

“Why, it must be five or six months back, at least. When she was staying here. I have a guest room, you know. . . .” As she told him every detail of her small apartment’s layout, she opened a kitchen drawer and got an old-fashioned paper address book, the kind with three-hole punch pages that could be changed out. It looked almost as old as she was. She flipped through the crackly, yellowed pages, then set it down in front of him, wishing aloud that she had a two-bath unit instead of just a half bath in the front. Coral Lee had had to come through the master to shower.

The address was for the old house with the carport, the one he’d so recently visited. A phone number was crossed out and a new one had been written above in fresher, brighter ink. Area code 762. Was that Georgia? It was probably a burner, but he took a picture of the whole page anyway and sent it in a text to Gabrielle that said, CLP’s most recent number. What’s this area code? Cell phone? Traceable?

While he was doing this, Mariah got out a pan and poured milk into it, not measuring, talking on, unchecked. Something about a cat now. He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten there.