“Back for more, huh?” she asked.
“Just picking up Maddie again,” I told her.
She smiled as she looked me over. “Better fashion choices this time, I see.”
“I stripped myself of all Moose River references before driving over.”
“Good thinking,” she said, missing my sarcasm. “Will you be at the competition?”
“Uh, I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess we might come to watch Maddie. But my girls aren’t competing. Or in cheerleading of any kind.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Coach Mathisen said. “Because we are just going to blow the doors off of old Moose River this year.”
I nodded. “Yes. You told me that before.”
“And it doesn’t look like Amanda’s going to be making a reappearance before the competition,” she said, chomping hard on a piece of gum. She grinned. “So that pretty much seals it for us.”
“Might as well not even hold the competition, I guess.”
“Exactly,” she said, then caught herself. “Wait. That was a joke.”
“A small one.”
She made a noise, something between a sigh and a chuckle. “Well, I’m just saying that I don’t think there’s anyone in this part of the state that can beat us now,” she said, watching the girls on the floor. “With my coaching, we’ve really improved. And when your biggest rival is missing their most important cog, it’s almost inevitable.”
“Almost. Yes.”
She glanced at me. “You haven’t heard anything else about Amanda, have you?”
I thought about my conversation with Detective Hanborn. “Nope. Nothing.”
“She hasn’t shown up for your little play or whatever it was?”
I didn’t think the play was any littler than her regional cheer competition. “It’s a production of Snow White. And no. She hasn’t.”
“Good, good,” she said, then caught herself. “I mean, that’s too bad.” Her cheeks flushed. “You know what I mean.”
I waved at Maddie, making sure she saw me waiting. I didn’t want to stick around any longer than we needed to. “Sure.”
“I don’t think she’ll be back,” Coach Mathisen said.
“No?” I turned to look at her, frowning. “And why is that?”
Greta Mathisen’s entire face flooded with color. “Oh, I just mean that I think that if she was coming back, we’d have heard something from her by now. And I haven’t heard of anyone who’s heard from her. So I think she’s going to be well-hidden for the competition.”
“Hidden?” I asked.
Her face colored again. “Poor choice of words. Absent. Not present. Whatever. Anyway. I have to go. Nice to see you, Moose River.”
I watched her walk to the other end of the gym and start up another conversation with several moms waiting on their daughters.
Hidden. It was a strange choice of words. And it occurred to me that if Eleanor and Madison Bandersand had something to gain from Amanda’s disappearance, so did Greta Mathisen.
But I hadn’t mentioned her to Jake or to Detective Hanborn. She hadn’t made my suspect list.
I sighed and reminded myself that I didn’t need to be making a suspect list because no one was interested. Not even the detective assigned to the case. If there was a case. Which Hanborn had made clear there pretty much wasn’t.
“Hey,” Maddie said, smiling at me. Her face was flushed from exertion and her entire body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. She pulled on her sweatshirt. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“No problem, kiddo,” I told her.
She bent down and retied her shoelaces. “I saw Coach Mathisen talking to you.”
“She was,” I said. “She’s...interesting.”
Maddie laughed. “My mom says she’s crazy.”
I glanced down the gym to wear Mathisen was chatting up the other moms. She was waving her hands, talking animatedly, her eyes wide.
I wondered just how crazy she actually was.
TWENTY SEVEN
“Daisy, I need a word with you,” Eleanor Bandersand said, lifting her chin and looking down her imperious nose at me.
I’d gotten Maddie dropped off and made it home with enough time to throw together a fast dinner before I had to get the two younger girls to their rehearsal. Rather than run back and forth, I brought my laptop with me and decided to work on the program while I sat in the back of the theater for the two-hour practice. Rehearsal was halfway over when Eleanor approached me and asked me to step out in the hall with her. I closed my computer and set it on the empty seat next to the one I’d been sitting in and followed her out of the theater.
Her thumb and forefinger stroked her chubby chin. She looked at me through her false eyelash. “Daisy. Well, this is just somewhat awkward for me.”
“Talking in the hallway?”
She gave me a condescending smile. “Such the...jokester. But, no. I’m very comfortable talking in the hall. I’m actually comfortable talking anywhere. It’s my theater training.”
Of course it was.
“We have... a bit of a situation,” she continued.
“We do?”
“Yes.” She paused. “And it involves you.”
I folded my arms across my chest, my defensive instincts immediately kicking in. “Alright.”
“Let me first state that I am oh so grateful for your willingness to assist with the design and production of our program,” she said. “Joanne Claussen has assured me that your work thus far has been nothing short of spectacular.”
“Joanne might be overselling it.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But I trust her judgment and she has praised your efforts. So I want you to know how much I appreciate your work.”
“Okay,” I said, still wary. “You’re welcome.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, still stroking her chin, like a professor. “And I’ve very much been charmed by the acting abilities of your two daughters. They are lovely young ladies and we are lucky to have them.”
“Thank you,” I said. Normally, this type of praise would have thrilled me but her words were as hollow as her expression.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “But now we have...a situation.”
“So you’ve already said.”
She pursed her lips. “My daughter says that the two of you had a bit of a...run-in recently.”
A tiny knot formed in my stomach. “Okay.”
Eleanor raised her eyebrow. “Can you confirm that?”
I shuffled my feet against the tiled hallway floor. “Yes. We did. I found a backpack she’d left behind in one of the classrooms.”
She nodded. “So you did indeed find her knapsack?”
Knapsack? Who said knapsack?
“I did,” I said. “Joanne and I were here working and she asked me to close up the classrooms. I found it in one of the rooms.”
“I see,” Eleanor said, nodding slowly. “I see. And then what occurred?”
“What occurred?” I shrugged. “She came back to the room. I gave it to her. We left. That’s what occurred.”
She stared at me for a long time. It reminded me of the way I stared at my own kids when I thought they were holding something back or not telling the truth. Eventually, they would cave under my stern gaze and give up whatever they were withholding. Jake sometimes was able to do the same to me.
But there was no way in heck I was going to cave to a condescending pain in the rear end like Eleanor Bandersand.
“That’s what occurred,” she finally said. “That’s what happened?”
I shrugged. “More or less, yes.”
She held her index finger to her lips. “Ah, yes,” she said, tapping her lower lip. “It might be the ‘more’ part I’m interested in.”
“Eleanor?”
“Yes?” she said, leaning in.
“Can you stop talking like you’re on Masterpiece Theater and tell me what exactly we’re talking about?”