Lorna looked at her watch.

“How about we grab the phone book and I make the calls from the car? We’re due at Danielle Porter’s in less than a half hour.”

“That will work.”

She walked through the arch and into the wine cellar. T.J. blew out the candle and left it on the floor inside the door.

“Next time we bring lightbulbs.”

Danielle Porter lived in a double-wide trailer on an acre lot surrounded by apple trees and a big flower garden. There was a two-car garage and a child’s playhouse in the backyard, and a mailbox surrounded by weeds at the foot of the driveway. T.J. parked the Crossfire in front of the garage, and he and Lorna walked across new macadam to the worn path through the grass to the front door.

Danielle stepped out of the house to meet them before they could ring the bell.

“You’re T. J. Dawson?” she asked.

He nodded and offered her a business card.

“And you are?” Danielle stared at Lorna.

“Lorna Stiles.”

“Lorna Stiles,” Danielle repeated thoughtfully. “You’re from around here. I know your name. But I don’t have a clear memory of you.”

“I was a friend of Melinda Eagan’s,” Lorna told her.

“Who?” Danielle placed a hand on her hip and cocked her head slightly to the left.

“Melinda Eagan,” Lorna repeated.

“Am I supposed to know the name?”

“You were friends with her, back in grade school.” Lorna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Was it possible Danielle had really forgotten someone she’d been friends with years ago? “She used to stay at your house quite often. Until she disappeared one night and was never seen again.”

“Oh, the girl who disappeared.” Danielle’s expression never changed. “What about her?”

“I’m looking into her disappearance,” T.J. said, stepping into the conversation.

“So why do you want to talk to me? I wasn’t there that night, I don’t know nothing about it.”

“I was hoping you’d be able to give us some information we don’t already have. You spent some time with her back then, maybe you’d remember if she ever told you that someone was giving her a hard time, or frightening her in some way.”

“Only her mother.” Danielle shrugged. “She used to beat up on her something bad, I remember that.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about maybe wanting to run away?” T.J. asked.

“No.” She shook her head and looked down. “We really weren’t that close.”

“She used to spend a lot of time at your house,” Lorna reminded her. “What did you do? What did you talk about?”

“It was a long time ago.” Danielle shrugged. “I don’t remember what we did, or what we talked about. I guess she just didn’t make that big an impression on me.”

She looked from Lorna to T.J. “Was there something else?”

T.J. handed her his card. “If you think of anything, if you happen to remember something about Melinda, give me a call.”

“Sure.” Danielle stepped back into the house and closed the door.

Lorna and T.J. returned to his car.

“That was a waste of time,” Lorna said.

“Not really. We learned something.”

“What, that she was lying?”

“That could be important.” T.J. started to back the car slowly down the drive. “Why would she lie about knowing Melinda?”

“I don’t know, but apparently she can’t wait to tell someone.” Lorna stared at the open window as they went past. “She grabbed that phone and started dialing before we reached the car. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall right now?”

“Nah. But I would like to know whose number she just dialed.” He reached into his pants pocket and took out his phone, then dialed a number. “Mitch, it’s T.J. How quickly can you get phone records?”

16

“ Cannon Road is the next left, so you’ll want to turn there,” Lorna told T.J.

“It will be interesting to see how Mike Keeler’s version of things stacks up against his brother’s,” T.J. noted.

“Mike was fourteen, remember. Two years younger than Fritz. He might have seen things differently.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Fourteen, you’re still a kid. Sixteen, you’re a little more mature. I think the older you are, the more you’re likely to remember the little things.”

“Two years isn’t so great a difference.”

“I just remember Fritz as being the more serious of the two. Mike was always clowning around. Nothing ever seemed to affect him. Fritz was more intense about things.”

“Interesting observation.”

“And that’s all it is. Just an observation.” She ran a hand through her hair to get it out of her face. She could only imagine what it looked like by now. T.J. had pulled to the side of the road to put the top down after they’d left Danielle’s, and had taken Lorna on a zippy ride through the countryside. “Slow down so I can read the numbers on the mailboxes.”

He eased up on the gas.

“It must be two houses up from here.” Lorna pointed to the bright yellow mailbox at the top of the slight rise in the road. T.J. slowed even more so she could read the name on the side of the box. “Yes, that’s it.”

T.J. turned into the drive just as a young child in white shorts and a bright red T-shirt ran around the corner of the garage, which, like the ranch-style house attached to it, was pale gray siding with black shutters. She stopped next to a bright red crape myrtle and stared at the little car with the big man behind the wheel.

T.J. turned off the engine and got out.

“Hi,” he called to the little girl. “What’s your name?”

“I can’t tell you,” she replied. “You’re a stranger and I can’t talk to you.”

T.J. nodded. “Good answer.”

A man in khaki shorts emerged from the garage. “You must be Mr. Dawson. And hey, Lorna Stiles. Good to see you again.”

Mike Keeler gave Lorna a quick hug and offered his hand to T.J.

“Good to see you, too, Mike,” Lorna replied.

“Kayla, I want you to go inside and tell Mommy she’s going to have to take you and your sister to the soccer field. I’ll be along later,” Mike told his daughter, then turned back to his visitors. “So, Lorna, Fritz tells me you’re putting the farm up for sale.”

“I will be, yes.”

“You have a Realtor yet?”

“No, but it’s on my list of things to do.”

“I only ask because Sarah, my wife-you remember Sarah, she was Sarah Watts in school…”

Lorna nodded. She remembered Sarah Watts, though she hadn’t known her well.

“Anyway, her brother, Jim, is a Realtor, he owns Watts Real Estate out there on Route One. Maybe you could give him a call.”

“I’ll do that. Right now, the police are still all over that back section, and they’re not letting anyone past about mid-field of our land.”

“I guess they’ll be going over the rest of the property, too,” Mike said. “The vineyard, down around the pond, out around the orchard.”

“Maybe, if they keep finding bodies, they’ll expand the search. So far, they haven’t done so. Although they’re being really meticulous, taking their time.”

“Probably afraid of missing something.”

“It pays to be thorough.”

“So tell me what I can do for you.” Mike shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Well, as you know, there’s been a lot of activity out at my place. The FBI is involved now, as I’m sure you’ve heard, and T.J. is working with them,” Lorna told him, stretching the truth a bit. “We’re hoping that once we find Jason’s killer, maybe we’ll be able to figure out what happened to Melinda.”

“You working with the FBI, too?” Mike asked her.

“No.” She shrugged. “But I am an interested party, since the bodies were found on my property. Or my former property, at least.”

“From what I’ve heard, the boys they found buried were all about the same age, all died from the same type of head injury.” Mike was facing into the sun and he squinted, his eyes becoming little slits. “Why would you assume the same thing happened to Melinda? She disappeared first, right? Those FBI profilers you see on TV are saying that whoever killed those boys had a thing for boys. Why would a killer who only went after teenage boys kill a nine-year-old girl?”