“Whatever you’re making smells wonderful,” I said.
“I was going to make a pot roast, but we got home too late, so I decided on pork chops with mashed potatoes. I stuffed the pork chops with my cranberry stuffing and put them in the oven rather than frying them. I love the way the cranberries and the walnuts complement each other.”
“It smells fantastic. I’m going to run upstairs and change. I’ll call Cass and confirm he’s still going to make it by six. He loves your stuffed pork chops, so I know he won’t want to miss them.”
By the time I took a quick shower and put on clean clothes, Cass had arrived. I could hear him downstairs talking to Tom, which probably meant that everyone was waiting for me. I brushed out my wet hair but didn’t bother to dry it. I jogged down the stairs and joined the others just as Gracie was calling everyone to the table.
After dinner, Paisley went upstairs to do her homework, and Tom helped Gracie with the dishes. I offered to help, but they shooed Cass and me away and insisted that we’d been working all day and should take it easy. It was too cold to sit outside, so I suggested we retire to the living room where we could enjoy the fire Tom had built.
“So, how was your day?” I asked.
“Frustrating,” Cass said. “I talked to a lot of people and followed up on a lot of leads, but none of them really panned out.”
“You still can’t figure out where Robert was before he was shot?”
He shook his head. “There are only a limited number of possibilities, so this shouldn’t be so hard, but I’ve talked to everyone who lives on the south side of the old highway, and no one will admit to knowing a thing about Robert’s death. It doesn’t make sense that anyone other than the killer would lie about having seen him in the area. Most folks didn’t even realize he was in town, and most had no idea that Harrison Roberts, the actor, was actually Robert Harrison, the science geek, who lived in the area more than a decade ago.”
I supposed I wasn’t surprised by that. If not for the fact I’d been assigned to cover the filming, I most likely would never have made the connection either.
“And his car never showed up?” I asked.
“No. And I looked through every barn and outbuilding in the area. Either Robert got a ride out to the location where he was shot or whoever shot him moved his car. For all I know, someone could have run the darn thing into one of the dozens of lakes in the area.”
“There are a lot of places one could dispose of a vehicle in this area,” I agreed. “Did you have a chance to follow up with Jeri?”
“I called and spoke to her. She didn’t overhear enough to give me anything tangible to act on, but based on what she said, it does sound like it was Robert’s opinion that Bill had done something to cause his own death. Something that had something to do with someone Bill and Robert both knew in the past. That actually fits the other clues that have presented themselves to date. The thing is that if someone from Bill’s past ran him off the road after he reopened old wounds, why now? Bill has been back in the area for years. Assuming the person he hurt was someone that both he and Robert knew from back when Robert lived here, what could Bill have done to cause this person to act now and not at any point in the past decade?”
“Good question,” I said.
“And if Robert was shot by the same person who ran Bill off the road, assuming he was run off the road, why would Robert do anything to antagonize this person if he already suspected them of being responsible for Bill’s death? And if Robert did suspect someone of running Bill off the road, why wouldn’t he say something to me about it?”
“All good questions,” I agreed.
“I feel like there’s an important piece to this puzzle we’re missing. The problem is that I really can’t figure out what that missing piece might be.”
“Maybe we should go back through our yearbooks,” I suggested. “Perhaps something will occur to us if we review what was going on back when Robert and Bill both went to high school here.”
Cass nodded. “That might be a good idea. Do you have yours handy?”
“They’re up in the attic. Go on up, and I’ll let Gracie know what we’re doing in case she has any ideas.”
When I’d first returned home to Foxtail Lake after having lived in New York, the attic had been a mess, but I liked spending time up there, so one of the first things I’d done, with Paisley’s help, was to clean and organize things. There were still boxes stacked against the walls, but I had set up a desk to house my computer and work files, and the window seat where I loved to sit with Alastair had a new cushion and pillows.
The yearbooks were in a box labeled Callie’s high school stuff, which not only held my yearbooks but items such as my cap and gown, class ring, and various photo albums as well. I was tempted to dig out the photo albums for a walk down memory lane with Cass, but I wasn’t friends with either Robert or Bill, so I doubted I’d have photos of either. Cass took the yearbook from our junior year, which was the year Robert and Bill were seniors. I thumbed through the one issued when we were sophomores.
A lot of the individuals pictured had moved out of the area at some point. There were still a few classmates living in the area, but for anyone with big plans for their future, Foxtail Lake offered limited opportunities. We didn’t have a college, so anyone who wanted to attend college left the area. It seemed like most young adults who chose to leave also chose to stay gone.
I paused when I came across the individual photo of Evie Johnstone. I barely remembered her from high school, but now that I’d found her photo, certain memories were beginning to return. Evie had been in the same class as Cass and me. As far as I knew, she’d never gone away to college and had never married. She’d inherited a midsized farm from her father when he passed away. I’d heard that her mother had remarried and moved to Atlanta, but Evie still lived alone on the isolated property.
“Did you ever track down Evie Johnstone?” I asked Cass.
“No. She lives on one of the farms on the north side of the road, which I haven’t gotten around to canvassing yet.”
“Evie was at the decorating party for the haunted barn Thursday two weeks ago, and she told me her grandmother was sick and that she was heading out of town. She’d been painting epitaphs for the tombstones, which she shared that she had been working on all night the night before the barn decorating party.”
“Which would have been the night Bill died.”
I nodded.
“Is there something that makes you believe that Evie might have had a reason to harm Bill?” Cass asked.
“No. As far as I know, Evie and Bill weren’t friends, although I suppose I really don’t know Evie well enough to know who she is and isn’t friends with. What I do know is that Harrison’s name came up at the barn decorating party. Evie told Dave, the man I was working with to set the tombstones, that she’d known Harrison Roberts back when he was Robert Harrison. He also told me that Evie had made a comment about not being a fan of the guy.” I paused to think back. “She told him that she’d had an experience involving Robert during her junior year that left a bad taste in her mouth.”
Cass flipped the yearbook to the page with individual photos of the juniors. “Evie was a junior when we were. Robert was a senior that year. If Robert did something to Evie that she still resented all these years later, then I might suspect that she was the one who shot Robert.” He paused. “That’s if she was back in town last Thursday. We know she was in town when Bill died.”
“Bill did have black paint on his hands, and Evie had been using black paint for the tombstones,” I pointed out. “I suppose it’s possible that Bill visited Evie the night he died, presumably to apologize for whatever he and Robert had supposedly done to her in high school. If whatever had been done to her was really bad, I suppose bringing it up might have opened old wounds, so she might have followed Bill when he left and ran him off the road.”