Grave Secret Page 0,89

that pickup voluntarily, then I might as well forget about tracing her. Not only would that make her a stranger to me, but there would be no body to sense, unless something had happened to her in the meantime. If Cameron was dead, ironically enough, one of these days I might find her.

I wondered if Ida Beaumont was still alive. I'd been so young then, she'd looked positively tottering on the edge of her grave. Now, I realized she had been no more than sixty-five.

Obeying an impulse I couldn't fathom, I called information in Texarkana and discovered that she still had a listing. My fingers punched in the number before I could even explain to myself why I was doing this.

"Hello?" a creaky voice said suspiciously.

"Mrs. Beaumont?"

"Yes, this is Ida Beaumont."

"You may not remember me," I said. "I'm Harper Connelly."

Dead silence.

"What do you want?" the voice said.

That wasn't exactly the question I'd anticipated.

"Are you still in the same house, Ms. Beaumont? I was thinking I might come by to visit you," I said, making this up on the spot. "I was thinking I might bring one of my brothers."

"No," she said. "Don't come here. Don't ever come here. The last time you came, I had people knocking on my door all day and night for weeks. And the police still come by. You stay away."

"We have some questions to ask you," I said in a voice that I hoped was pitched somewhere between anger and simple determination.

"The police have already asked me plenty of questions," she snapped, and I knew I'd gone the wrong way. "I wish I'd never answered the door that day when you come knocking."

"But then you couldn't have told me about the blue truck," I said.

"I told you, didn't I, that I didn't see the girl clearly?"

"Yes," I said, though in my mind, over the years, I'd pretty much disregarded that. I was missing a girl, she'd seen a girl get into a pickup, and Cameron's backpack was there on the spot.

Over the line, I heard a deep sigh. Then Ida Beaumont began speaking. "A young woman started coming by from Meals on Wheels about six months ago," she said. "Those meals, they're never any good, but at least they're free, and sometimes they bring enough to last another day. Her name's Missy Klein."

"Okay," I said, since I had no idea what else to say. My heart was sinking into my stomach, because I knew this was going to be bad.

"And she said to me, she says, 'Mrs. Beaumont, you remember all those years ago when you saw a girl getting into a blue pickup?' And I says, 'Yes, sure, and it was a curse to me.' "

"All right." The dark feeling grew inside me.

"So she tells me it was her, getting into the truck with her boyfriend, who she wasn't supposed to be seeing because he was in his twenties."

"It wasn't my sister."

"No, it wasn't. It was that Missy Klein, and now she brings me Meals on Wheels."

"You never saw my sister."

"No, I didn't. And Missy, she tells me that the backpack was sitting there when she came along and got in his truck."

I felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me. "Have you told the police?" I said finally.

"No, I don't go calling the police. I suppose I should have, but-well, they come by to see me every so often, take me back over that day. Peter Gresham, he comes by. I figured I'd tell him the next time he stopped in."

"Thank you," I said. "I wish I'd known this before. But thank you for telling me."

"Well, sure. I thought you'd be mad at me," she said, which I thought was kind of amazing.

"I'm glad I called. Goodbye," I said. My voice was as numb as my heart. Any minute now, the feeling would come back. I wanted to be off the phone with this woman when that happened.

Ida Beaumont was saying something else about Meals on Wheels when I clicked my phone shut.

Lizzie Joyce called me then, before I could think through the implications of what I'd just heard. "Oh, my Lord," she said, "I can't believe Victoria is dead. You were a friend of hers, right? You-all went way back? Harper, I'm so sorry. What do you think happened to her? You think it had anything to do with looking for the baby?"

"I don't have the slightest idea," I said, though that wasn't the truth. I didn't think Lizzie Joyce