"We've spoken. He's on his way back from the hospital but gave me permission to reexamine JoLynn's room. But first," I said, "if you could direct me to where Simone lives, that would be great. I understand she and her mother and stepfather live on the property?"
Estelle pointed left, where the drive wound behind the barn. "You take that road. It travels around the edge of the property. Mr. and Mrs. Hunt live in the very first house you'll come to, a stone house set back in the woods."
"Thanks. Mr. Richter might be home by the time I return." I started for my car.
Estelle called, "Would you like me to call, see if Simone is there? She could be out."
"No. I'd like to drive around the property anyway. Beautiful place, Magnolia Ranch. If she's not home, I'll come right back here." Showing up unannounced might give me an advantage, especially if Simone was hiding the fact that she'd followed JoLynn around, taken pictures and then somehow hooked up with the charming, good-looking Kent Dugan—a man who liked young, naive women.
Cement gave way to gravel as soon as I reached the barn and the Camry crunched along for about a half mile. To my left, I saw horses in a rolling pasture that was growing brown from lack of rain. On my right, woods filled with pines, maples and oaks shaded the bumpy road. I came upon a fieldstone two-story house with a green slate roof, though I nearly missed the place, since it was set back so far from the road.
I thought about parking in the narrow driveway, but a red Corvette already occupied the spot closest to the door. And if Adele and Leopold came home, they might be annoyed if they had nowhere to park. I pulled over onto the small stone shoulder.
I wanted to surprise Simone and got my wish.
When she opened the door, she said, "What are you doing here?" Her crazy hair was bound into a ponytail on top of her head. She wore a Coldplay T-shirt nearly hiding her cutoff jean shorts.
"You mind if I come in?" I said.
She shrugged and opened the door wider. "Whatever. But I'm pretty busy. And the parents aren't home."
"I came to see you," I said.
She sprinted up the stairs before I was even inside, and yelled over rock music coming from above for me to follow her. As I went after her, I caught a glimpse of an elegant formal living room off the marble foyer. It was filled with the kind of furniture Aunt Caroline likes. Nothing comfortable, everything pretty.
Seconds later, standing in the doorway of Simone's bedroom, I was thinking this could have been declared a state disaster area. Besides pictures clipped to a thin clothesline strung from one end of the room to the other, and larger photographs covering every available space on the walls, there were clothes, books and shoes piled on the bed and heaped on the floor. CDs and DVDs spilled out of several laundry baskets. Lots of CDs. The music was blaring from the entertainment center opposite the cluttered bed.
The walk-in closet behind Simone appeared to have empty shelves and racks, so I assumed all this came from in there.
Simone pointed a remote at the entertainment center and the music stopped abruptly. She dropped the remote, then stood with her hands on her hips in a small clearing in the center of the room. "I'm leaving for school in a few weeks and as you can see, I have way too much stuff. This is a disgusting example of my past materialistic life. I'm giving most of it away."
I nodded. "Good idea. You couldn't fit half of this in a dorm room anyway."
"My mother wants me to live in an apartment. She networked with future Longhorn moms and had my roommates all picked out. But I'm living in the dorm. Period." She sounded a little defiant, like I might actually argue with her.
"Sounds like you know what you want," I said.
She seemed to relax then and said, "Why are you here?"
"I'm hoping you can help me. Did you know that the man JoLynn used to live with is the person who tried to kill her?"
"Are you kidding me? So they caught him?" Simone pulled a giant black garbage bag from a box near her bare feet and shook it open.
"They didn't catch him. He was murdered."
She stopped shoving clothes into the bag and stared at me. "Really? That's a giant coincidence."
"Which probably means it's not a coincidence. Mind if I sit down?" I nodded at a chair by the computer desk stacked with what looked like yearbooks.
"Go ahead." Simone sat cross-legged on the floor, her eyes never leaving me as I stepped carefully over to the chair, placed the yearbooks on the floor and sat.
I noticed her camera bag on the desk before I swiveled the chair to face her. "This is serious business, Simone."
"You don't think I know that?" Her defiance was back, but this time it was tainted by fear. Why?
"I know your photography is very important." I glanced around. "Did you take all these pictures?"
"Yeah. So?"
"You're good. I was wondering if you took any pictures of JoLynn, because I don't see any in here."
"Why would I take her picture?" Simone started peeling blue polish off her ragged fingernails.
"Because from what I saw in the hospital and what I'm seeing here"—I pointed at one wall where there were photos of Scott sitting at a computer, her uncle riding a horse, her mother wearing a ridiculous hat and Matthew kissing Piper at their wedding—"you take pictures of everything."
Beneath her pale makeup, the redness of a flush began to break through. "Maybe I did take a few pictures of JoLynn. So what?"
"No problem. Except for the ones she didn't know you were taking. That's kind of invasive, wouldn't you say?"
She took a deep breath and rubbed thumb against index finger so hard I thought she might take off a layer of skin. "She was an interesting subject. She was like this . . . enigma."
"You followed her?"
Simone nodded.
"Where did you follow her?" I said.
"Not many places. She didn't leave the property much. Usually Scott drove whenever she wanted to go somewhere."
"Tell me where she went."
Simone let out a huge breath and shifted her gaze from her hands to my face. "She went to that old cemetery, okay?"
"And you took her picture there?"
"Bad pictures. I couldn't get close and I'm not good with the telephoto lens yet."
I noticed that my heart had sped up, that I could feel my throat pulsing. "What did you do with those pictures, Simone?" I didn't add, Sell them to your new friend with the six-pack abs and the pretty-boy face?
"I think I threw them away," she said. "They were awful. After I printed a few straight from the camera and saw them, I didn't even load them on my computer— they were that bad."
"You think you threw them away? Come on, Simone. You're a very smart girl. You can do better than that."
She held up her hands. "Okay, okay."
Ah, here it comes, I thought. The Dugan connection to this family. A very bad connection for Dugan, though. One that led to his death.
But Simone said, "I lost them. Lost my camera, too. That's why I don't even have any copies to look at and learn from my mistakes."
"What? I saw you with a camera at the hospital the other day."
"That's my new camera. I replaced the one I lost with the exact same model, got the money from Uncle Elliott. And you can't tell my mother. She doesn't think I can make it as a photojournalist—which is what I want to do. If she found out I was stupid enough to lose my camera, she'd say, 'Simone wants to be a photographer and she can't even keep track of her equipment.' "
"Were any other photos missing?" I asked.
Simone thought for a moment. "Just the ones on the camera. There were more of JoLynn I hadn't downloaded or printed out. No matter how spoiled rotten my relatives all are, they make for some great shots, and I had a few pics of them, too. I'm always catching little arguments, Scott and Matthew getting into it over a poker game, Uncle Elliott's face getting dark as night when someone doesn't hop when he says hop, my mother being, well, my mother. She's the only one who doesn't understand that I have to do this."