to confess that part of me was happy she was goin’.”
“But you threw her a going-away party anyway?”
“Yeah,” she said with a sniff. “I’d just lost my job at the Mountain View Lodge after snatchin’ a key and lettin’ Heather use a room to meet her guy from the salon. They’d taken to meeting there, I guess, but she was running short on money and she seemed desperate when she asked me for a room that night.”
What if she wasn’t meeting the salon guy? What if she’d been meeting Paul? Or what if they were one and the same? It would fit with the timeline Tammy had given us. Although Tammy hadn’t recognized the picture of Heather, she’d likely seen her in the dark. For all I knew, she’d been wearing a hat or her hair had been up. “And you have no idea who he was?”
“No. I tried to pry it out of her, and she would only tell me that he was a forty-three-year-old banker having a midlife crisis. She’d hoped he’d be her next ticket to livin’ high on the hog.”
Had Heather told her the truth? If so, that would definitely strike Paul out as her boyfriend. I’d guess him to be in his late thirties, early forties now.
“Do you know if she left Wyatt a note saying she was pregnant the day of her going-away party?”
“Yeah,” she said with a frown. “Said she did it as a joke—one last way to get Wyatt. But I didn’t know about it until after he left the party. I’d overheard them arguing in the room.”
“Did you think she was really leaving town?” I asked.
“She acted so excited about it, but it was hard to imagine she’d just go. I knew five thousand was much less than she’d hoped for. I figured she still had something going. A plan to get more money. She admitted as much to me before the party. Said she might not have to leave after all if it worked out.” She sighed. “But something changed. After the party, she collapsed on the sofa and said she was tired of it all. She just wanted to leave and get a fresh start. And for the longest time, I thought that was exactly what she’d done.”
“Who else was in the room when she said it?”
“May. She really didn’t want to see Heather go.” She cast me a strange sidelong look.
“You want to tell me something else.”
“It seems wrong to say it. Especially since Heather’s dead.”
“I won’t say who told me,” I assured her.
“It’s not a fact, more like a suspicion.”
“I understand,” I said, “and I’ll treat it as such.”
She stopped pushing her cart and lowered her voice. “It’s just that I got the feelin’ May had an unhealthy attachment to Heather. She was furious with Heather when she said she was leavin’. Seemed invested in gettin’ Heather to stick around and beat the Drummonds.”
“When you say unhealthy obsession…?”
“I think she was in love with her.”
I stared at Mitzi for several seconds. “Do you think Heather knew?”
She started to say something and stopped, cringing a little, and then said in a whisper, “I suspect May was Heather’s boyfriend.”
“Really?”
“The more I’ve thought about it, the more it fits. They started gettin’ close, closer than Heather and me. And Abby was gone most of the time, so May took her place.”
“So you think she made up the salon boyfriend?”
“Oh, I think she had him for a week or so, but then she started talking about her ‘boyfriend’ differently. Sweeter. Calling him ‘Peep.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if she went from the salon guy to May and just kept up the ruse as a cover.”
“How did May react at the party when Heather said she was really going to leave?”
“She started cryin’, and the two of them talked outside by Heather’s car for about ten minutes before they both left.”
“In separate cars?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Abby said you’d told her Wyatt showed up drunk to the party, and that he and Heather had sex in the bedroom.”
She was silent for a moment. “Really? I don’t remember tellin’ her that, but to be honest, when we finally talked and compared notes about everything, I was pretty drunk myself.”
“How did May behave after Heather left?”
“She was really depressed for quite some time. Until she started datin’ Tater.”
Was it just sadness because Heather had left, or had May struggled with a guilty conscience?
A shadow crossed in front of us, and I glanced up to