Leave No Stone Unturned (A Lexie Starr Mystery, Book 1) (4 page)

What to do? What to do? I rubbed my temples with the tips of my fingers as I considered
my next move. I didn't think Wendy knew that Clay had been married before and that
his wife had mysteriously disappeared. She wasn't the kind to have given him the time
of day had she known he was a murder suspect.

Wendy was also not one to watch the news or read the paper, except on rare occasions.
She found the news depressing, she'd told me on numerous occasions. But being oblivious
to current events could have made Wendy vulnerable in this situation. Yes, I concluded,
it was entirely possible that, living in Massachusetts, she'd have no knowledge of
events happening in New York. Keeping up with the crimes taking place in New York
could become a full-time job. The more I thought about it, the more I was certain
that Wendy was completely unaware of Clay's past. The question was whether or not
it was my responsibility to make her aware of it. Didn't Clay, himself, owe it to
his new bride to fill her in on what most people would consider important events from
his past? If he were truly innocent, would he hide the details from her? It didn't
seem likely.

If I didn't warn my daughter and she became his next victim, could I live with that
on my conscience? If my intervention caused a rift in their marriage, and Clay turned
out to be completely innocent, could I live with that instead? But, I asked myself,
wasn't it something I had to risk to make sure no harm came to my child?

I gave it serious thought on my way over to Wendy and Clay's new home in Kansas City,
Kansas, just seven or eight blocks north of my own. I was hoping I'd come to the right
decision on the way and that Clay would not be home when I arrived.

* * *

Unfortunately, Clay was home, talking in the front yard with his friends. He appeared
more evil than ever to me, and even his friends had taken on a sinister look in his
presence. I chickened out and fled home to hide in my own humble abode while I pondered
the situation.

Sitting in my family room later, my feet propped up on the coffee table, a cup of
espresso in my hand, I found myself almost wishing I'd never accidentally run across
the newspaper article about the murder. But I believed nothing happened by accident,
and there are no coincidences. I'd always felt things happen for a reason.

I was the one who'd been given the message, and I couldn't live with myself if I sat
back and did nothing. I had to do whatever I could to protect my only child. I had
to make a trip to Schenectady, New York. I helped people with research all the time
in my volunteer work. Now it was time to do a little in-depth research and investigating
for myself. It was time to find out what really happened to Eliza Pitt.

Chapter 4

I spent the next few days getting ready to make the trip to New York. It seemed like
a good excuse to refresh my wardrobe, so a lot of my time was consumed at the local
mall and at several of my favorite boutiques. I had my hair trimmed and drew cash
out of the bank. I scoured through about a month's worth of the
New York Times
from April and May of 2001. I was disappointed to find only a few more short articles
about the Eliza Pitt murder case.

"Battered Body Identified as Eliza Pitt" was the headline that really caught my eye.
The article stated that dental records and DNA tests had positively proven the body
to be that of Clayton Pitt's wife. Eliza's brutally abused body had been found two
weeks after her disappearance by a hiker from nearby Schenectady. The hiker had stumbled
across the remains of Clay's first wife in the Adirondack Mountains, north of Schenectady.
There'd been little progress in determining who'd been responsible for her death.
There'd been no irrefutable evidence linking her husband, Clayton, to the murder.
As of yet, no polygraph test had been given or requested. Why were they giving him
the benefit of the doubt? I wondered. Wasn't the victim's spouse always the primary
suspect in a murder case like this one?

I hoped to get a lot more information from the local police department when I arrived
in Schenectady. I even purchased a notebook to record all the details I uncovered
about the case.

All that remained to do was to come up with a good excuse for my intended absence
of undetermined length. I knew if Wendy were to try to contact me and be unsuccessful,
she'd panic. I didn't want to scare her, but I obviously couldn't tell her I was going
to Clay's hometown of Schenectady without raising a red flag. I'm sure Schenectady,
New York, is a very nice town, but why would I go there on the spur of the moment,
and then stay there for an extended amount of time? Off the top of my head, I couldn't
think of one good falsehood that would be believable. I'm not a very accomplished
liar as it is. Like Wendy, I could never look someone in the eye and tell a bald-faced
lie. When attempting to deceive someone, we both become intently fascinated with our
fingernails. And that happens even if we're only slightly stretching the truth. We
both seem to stutter and, if it's a real whopper, we become afflicted with an involuntary
reaction of popping our knuckles with an intensity that could crack walnuts in half.
Wendy never could get away with anything as a child because I knew all the signs to
look for. If I couldn't come up with an excuse that had at least some measure of truth
in it, Wendy would know I was fibbing. She knew all the telltale signs too.

To force myself to think of something else for a while, I went up to my computer room
to check my e-mail. I'd recently turned my third bedroom into an office when I realized
I had too much space for company. It's not that a volunteer library assistant is in
dire need of a home office; it's just that I have a few high-maintenance relatives
who have a maximum appeal period of about three days. After three days I'm struggling
to remember why I invited them to visit me in the first place. Three days of schlepping
around, looking bored and hungry, rearranging my knickknacks, and leaving dirty towels
on the bathroom floor is occasionally more than I can handle. And sometimes it's just
nice to be able to highly recommend the Comfort Inn up the street.

I logged on and was surprised to have only three unread messages. One of them offered
me a lower interest rate on my home mortgage, a mortgage that's been paid off for
almost two decades. The second was a diet promising a thirty-pound weight loss in
three weeks or less. Not interested. I could accomplish that in about three seconds
by firing up a chainsaw and lopping off a leg. Right now, while I'm relying heavily
on comfort foods, lopping off a leg sounded less painful than giving up ice cream
and potato chips. Hey, I had another one, didn't I?

The last e-mail was in response to a query I'd sent out earlier in the day. It was
from Stone Van Patten, a representative of an online jewelry company called Pawley's
Island Jewelers. In his message he assured me they carried very nice twenty-four-carat
gold bracelets. Although I hadn't asked him to, he said he'd also be happy to help
me try to replace Wendy's charms if I could send him a list and description of the
lost ones. He said they may not be identical, but they'd be similar and every bit
as nice. In closing, he stated it was very sweet of me to go to all the expense and
trouble to replace my daughter's bracelet and charms. I must be a very special mother,
he said.

"Very special mother?" Gee, I liked Stone already. I liked anybody who considered
me special. I could use a little more "Stone" in my life right now. I'd been feeling
a little neglected and out of sorts since Wendy and Clay's wedding. It was as if I'd
suddenly realized that my baby had truly left the nest, and I was now on my own forever.

I tried to brush the sense of melancholy aside as I clicked on the "reply" icon. I
thought it was very considerate of Mr. Van Patten to offer to assist me, and I told
him so in my response. I hadn't figured out yet how to replace the charms without
actually revisiting about two dozen cities scattered across the entire United States,
not to mention Paris. I thanked him sincerely and included a description of all of
the charms I could recall.

"Where is Pawley's Island?" I typed at the close of my reply. I didn't recall ever
reading about that island in any of my travel literature.

When I checked my e-mail once more before going to bed that evening, I had another
message from Mr. Van Patten-Stone, I should say. "Call me Stone, please," he'd requested
in his last message.

Stone wrote that replacing most of the charms, if not all, would take a few weeks
but shouldn't present any big problems. He'd enjoy working on the assignment as a
break from his normal routine. He ended with, "Pawley's Island is just south of Myrtle
Beach, South Carolina, in the Grand Strand area. It's not the typical island you might
visualize. Have you ever had the opportunity to visit here before? I noticed that
your daughter had no charms from South Carolina."

Before signing off I sent another message of appreciation and a negative reply to
his question. Although I knew it to be a beautiful state, I'd never visited Myrtle
Beach or Pawley's Island or any other part of South Carolina. But someday I would
make it there, I promised.

* * *

I spent a restless night tossing and turning, counting sheep until I was sick of them.
After I crawled out of bed in the morning, I took a long, hot shower and then took
even longer reading through the morning paper. I drank nearly a full pot of coffee
and forced myself to pour what little remained in the carafe down the sink only when
I was tempted to do cartwheels down the hallway. I was keyed up, but still procrastinating
on my phone call to Wendy. I'd yet to come up with a reason to leave town that I thought
she'd believe. I found myself reading a less than titillating article about future
renovation plans for the building that housed the local chapter of the boilermakers
union. I decided I was carrying procrastination a bit too far.

As a more interesting stall tactic, I laid down the paper and went upstairs to check
my e-mail. One message told me I was pre-approved for a platinum MasterCard and another
involved spy cams and farm animals. I immediately deleted both and read the other
message from Stone, the jeweler.

"I'll get right to work on locating the replacement charms and will let you know from
time to time how I'm coming along on the project. Someday, when you arrive in South
Carolina, call me and I'll be happy to be your tour guide. Take care, Stone."

His phone number was included at the end of his note. I started to delete the message
but then had a twinge of guilt. For some neurotic reason, I felt as if he could see
me through the computer screen and was waiting for me to record his number. I jotted
his name and number down on a post-it note and stuck it to the side of my monitor.
I'd ignore it for a week or so, and then discard it without remorse.

"Thank you, Stone. Someday I might just take you up on your tour guide offer. You
take care too. Sincerely, Lexie," I typed, and then clicked on "Send."

Yeah, of course I would. And some other day, while hell was freezing over, I might
just bungee jump off the Kaw River Bridge. Anything was possible, wasn't it? Stone
certainly seemed like a decent, pleasant individual, but I wasn't looking for complications
right now. I had enough on my plate as it was.

Yes, anything was indeed possible, I told myself again. And then it hit me. I now
had a viable excuse for leaving town. Wendy wouldn't like it, I was certain, but it
was the best I could come up with at the moment. My excuse would have at least a grain
of truth to it, if but a very tiny grain. I'd met a man on the Internet and was going
on a trip East to get to know him better. Well, I had met Stone on the Internet. And
I'm sure that in the course of communicating with him about the charms, I'd get to
know him a little better. The fact that I didn't plan to be within five hundred miles
of the fellow was just a minor detail.

Chapter 5