“I can rig that up for you,” Frank said. “Won’t take me long. I can probably do it first thing tomorrow morning, since I’ve finished grading finals. Is that soon enough?”
“Yes,” I said, “but will I be able to find the equipment you’ll need by then?”
Frank chuckled. “You don’t need to buy anything. I think I can manage with what I have. If you decide at some later point that you want a permanent camera on the front door, then you can look into buying what you need.”
“I really appreciate this.” I knew better than to offer to pay him for his time and effort. Instead I would buy a couple of bottles of the wine he and Laura liked. They rarely bought it for themselves because of the expense. The bottles could be part of the Christmas presents I had already found for them.
“You know I don’t ever mind helping you out,” Frank said. “I’ll be there before you leave for the library in the morning.”
I thanked him again and ended the call. With that camera installed—if it did the job properly—I might soon have an answer to the question of the child’s identity.
One thought did strike me, however. The child had lurked around the living room windows, probably more than once, to see how the kittens were faring. I had to hope she wouldn’t be doing that tomorrow morning while Frank was here. I thought she was probably smart enough to figure out what he was doing, and that might scare her away.
Feeling better now that I had a plan to solve this one riddle, I found my mind irresistibly drawn toward another one. Who was Gerry Albritton? I would have accepted her at face value had it not been for Melba’s dogged insistence that Gerry was not really a part of the extended Albritton clan. According to Melba, it was a large clan, and I suspected there could be offshoots that Melba knew little about. Gerry could have belonged to one of those.
For some reason I suddenly thought of property records. They were public, available through the tax collector’s office. Even better, they were online, and I could easily search them to see whose name was on the deed to Gerry Albritton’s house. If Albritton was not her legal name, only an assumed one, then her legal one would be on the deed.
I grabbed my laptop and turned it on. Diesel stretched out on the sofa beside me, and I stroked him while I waited for the computer to boot up fully.
I typed in the URL for the county website and followed the links to the property database. Options for searching included the owner’s name, street address, and lot number. I used the street address. I certainly had no idea what the lot number was, and I didn’t know what name was on the deed.
The record popped up on the screen, and I scanned it quickly. My eyes focused on the name of the owner.
Well, looks like Melba was right after all.
The owner’s name was listed as Ronni Halliburton.
NINETEEN
I wondered if Melba knew any Halliburtons in the Athena area. I would ask her later. At the moment I was wondering what to do with this information. Should I communicate with Kanesha and tell her what I had discovered? Or was this something she would have checked on herself?
Let’s take it a step or two further.
I opened a genealogy database and searched for Ronni Halliburton. I found many, many more results than I had expected, and I started going through the list. There were variant spellings for the surname: Haliburton and Halyburton. I found Janes, Janas, and even Johns. The exact matches on the name Ronni Halliburton didn’t jibe with what I knew of Gerry Albritton’s age.
That was not an encouraging start. Next, I searched for Geraldine Albritton, and once I narrowed down the results to search for the exact name, I was left with only a few from which to choose. Again, none of the birth dates worked for the woman I had known. She would have had to have been in her seventies or eighties to match these entries, and even if she’d had extensive plastic surgery, as had been suggested, I didn’t think any surgery could take twenty to thirty years off someone’s age.
Who was Ronni Halliburton then?
Was there a third, as-yet-undiscovered name for this woman?
Kanesha could get fingerprints and use those, I supposed, to find out whether the dead woman had a police record. That might yield her real name, but that was information I doubted Kanesha would share readily.
Next, I searched the name Halliburton on the Internet in conjunction with Athena. Turned out there was a Halliburton or two in the county, but not anyone I knew. Melba might know them, of course.
Recalling Gerry’s interest in buying houses in my neighborhood, I went back to the county property site and did a search using Ronni Halliburton as the owner. This search yielded four results: the house across the street, two other houses in my neighborhood, and a house in another part of town.
I set the laptop aside and got up to retrieve a pen and a notebook from my desk. I jotted down the addresses, and when I had done so, I stared at the page. Now that I had this information, what was I going to do with it? I had adjured myself last night to stay out of this investigation, but I had allowed my curiosity to pull me in, at least this far. I revisited the question of whether I should share with Kanesha the information I’d found.
Another possibility occurred to me. What if Ronni Halliburton and Geraldine Albritton were two different people? Maybe Halliburton had the money and Albritton did the buying. That was certainly possible—not the first time the money person chose to stay in the background.
If they were two different people, though, it was odd that I couldn’t find either of them, with any certainty, in the genealogical database. Surely there was a birth certificate—or two—somewhere. Not all birth and death records in Mississippi had yet been digitized. I knew because I had searched for my own online and came up with nothing. The records existed, no doubt. They simply weren’t available online. I had no legal authority to obtain copies from the state Department of Health office. Kanesha could do that, I imagined, and would if necessary.
As if she knew I was thinking about her, I received a text from the chief deputy. She had more questions for me, the text said, and wanted to know when I was available to meet with her. I responded to let her know that I was at her disposal, and she answered that she would come to my house within the next half hour.
I checked the time. Nearly five o’clock. Azalea would be leaving soon, and that was just as well. Mother and daughter strongly disagreed over Azalea’s continuing to work for me, particularly since Azalea could retire whenever she wanted. She didn’t appear to want to, and that was fine with me. Considering the fact that they were almost exactly alike when it came to temperament and stubbornness, I didn’t think this was a battle either would ever win. I didn’t enjoy being caught in the middle. I certainly wasn’t going to fire Azalea to make Kanesha happy, and I wasn’t going to ask Azalea to tell Kanesha to back off. As long as they managed to maintain a truce, I would be happy.
“Come on, boy,” I said to Diesel. “Let’s go see if Azalea is still here. Then we need to give the little monsters their dinner.”
Azalea was about to walk out the back door when we strolled into the kitchen. “Roast in the Crock-Pot,” she said. “It’s been cooking since first thing this morning. Give it another hour, and it should be ready.” She nodded in the direction of the stove. “Mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread ready to be warmed up.”
“Thank you,” I told her. Azalea’s pot roast was always a treat. “Have a good evening.”
Azalea nodded. “See you in the morning. Bye, Mr. Cat.” She headed out the door.