Mariah Stewart - Hard Truth

T.J. shuffled through his files, then, finding the one he was looking for, opened it and took out a sheet of paper.

“The cop who signed this report was a Duncan Parks.” He looked at Lorna. “Do you know if he’s still around?”

“I have no idea. Chief Walker would know, but I’d prefer to keep my face out of his for a few days. I’ve pissed him off enough for one week.” She tapped her fingers on the side of her chair. “Fritz might know, though.”

“Fritz, who is on the list of witnesses we wanted to talk to?” T.J. asked.

Lorna nodded.

“This gives us a real good excuse to pay him a visit,” he told her. “Know where we can find him?”

“I know where to start.”

“Let’s do it.”

“I’ll stay here and wait for Mitch,” Regan said. “He told me he’d be here around dinnertime.” She smiled. “Typical Mitch.”

“We should think about dinner,” Lorna said as she stood.

“Pizza would be good,” Regan suggested. “Got beer?”

“Got a state store about three miles down the road,” Lorna told her.

“Excellent. I’ll just sit here with my book while you two fetch food and drink.”

“Any preferences?” T.J. asked.

“Nope. As long as the pizza’s hot and the beer’s cold, I’m a happy woman.” She leaned back in the rocker and opened her book. “I’m starting to feel a little like I’m on vacation here, and I like it. At least, till Mitch arrives and shakes things up, as he usually does. So you two just go on and see what you can pry out of Fritz, and I’ll stay right here and enjoy what’s left of the afternoon.”

“Fritz, I really appreciate you making time to see us on such short notice,” Lorna said as Fritz led them into his living room.

“Hey, I’m just glad you were able to catch me before I left town,” he told his visitors. “Is it okay if we talk in here, or would you rather go out to the sunporch?”

“I’d love the sunporch,” Lorna replied. “I’ll bet there’s a beautiful view of the garden from there.”

“The best.” He winked and gestured them to follow him through the house to the back. “Some areas are starting to fade out now, sadly. The daylilies, for example, peaked a few weeks ago. July was spectacular, and we did have fabulous roses this year, if I do say so myself.”

“You mentioned leaving town,” T.J. said. “Vacation?”

“Just a mini. I don’t have time to take a full week off right now-the store is always so busy in the summer, you know, with all those people using Callen Road as their shortcut out to I-95. From there it’s just a short hop to the Delaware beaches.”

Fritz led Lorna and T.J. through a white louvered door onto a screened-in porch that overlooked the backyard. “Sit,” he instructed. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

Lorna and T.J. took the chairs on either side of the door, leaving Fritz to sit on the sofa.

“You really outdid yourself this year,” Lorna noted, looking out the back screen to the lush gardens beyond. “The colors are just wonderful.”

“Everything came up as planned. That doesn’t always happen. And of course, my mother always took great pride in her roses. I try to keep them going in her memory.” He looked from Lorna to T.J., then said, “But you didn’t come to talk about gardening.”

“You’re right. We came to talk to you about Jason Eagan,” T.J. told him.

“Right. You’d be Lorna’s private eye, then.” He nodded knowingly. “What is it you want to know?”

“Just your recollections of the night Melinda disappeared. Your name is on the list of people interviewed, though the notes on that interview and several others appear to be missing.”

“Probably because I didn’t tell them much of anything. I had nothing important to say.” Fritz shrugged. “We were over at Matt Conrad’s, just hanging out in the backyard.”

“Matt’s house was that big white clapboard one on Callen Road, the first house past our fence,” Lorna explained to T.J. “It’s the only house between our farm and the house the Eagans lived in at the time.”

“Right. We used to all hang out there a lot because Matt’s parents both worked and we usually had the house to ourselves till seven o’clock or so, when they got home from work, then we’d all leave.”

“Tell us about the night Melinda Eagan disappeared,” T.J. prompted.

“Matt and I were in his backyard, then Jason stopped by. He said he was on his way to get his sister but he’d stop by after. He was back in maybe five, seven minutes. It hadn’t taken him very long.”

“Did you see his sister?” T.J. asked.

“No, I didn’t. Matt and I were sitting on the stump of a tree that had been cut down, smoking cigarettes Matt had swiped from his mother’s purse before she left for work that morning. Our backs were to the field. As I said, Jason joined us a few minutes later. He had a bag with some of his sister’s birthday cake, and we polished that off. Then, maybe after he’d been there for ten or fifteen minutes, we heard Jason’s mother calling him from their house. He handed me the cigarette he’d just lit and took off like a bat out of hell.” Fritz glanced at Lorna and added, “Mrs. Eagan had quite a temper. When she told Jason to jump, he jumped.”

“So he went home, and you stayed there for how much longer?”

“Maybe another fifteen, twenty minutes after that. Then my brother, Mike, came by to get me home for dinner, and Dustin stopped over. But before we could leave, Jason came back and asked if any of us had seen Melinda. We hadn’t, but we all started looking for her.”

“How did you go about doing that?”

“We just all went through the field, calling her. I went down to the pond, thinking maybe she was there, then back through the orchard. Everyone pretty much fanned out.”

“Were you able to keep track of where everyone else was?” T.J. asked.

“Nah,” Fritz replied. “Most of the corn had been cut by then, but in spots it was still maybe knee high or a little better. And of course the field is hilly, so you didn’t have a good straight-on view of where anyone else was. And by then it was getting dark. You couldn’t see much of anything.”

“So if someone had been hiding there, you could have missed him,” Lorna said.

“It’s possible, but we covered that field pretty well. And then after awhile, the police came, and they covered it, too. If anyone had been hiding back there, I think they would have been seen by someone.” He stopped for a minute, then added, “I seem to recall your mother and father were there, helping us search.”

“That’s right,” she said, nodding.

“There wasn’t a sign of that kid. Later, after we’d been through the field for what seemed like about the tenth time, the police went in to talk to Mrs. Eagan. We gave our statements-pretty much what I just told you-then we went home. It was all anyone talked about for the next couple of months, though. Melinda Eagan disappearing like that, then Jason…” Fritz glanced at Lorna. “You might have been too young to remember, but I’ll never forget the sense of panic that went through the school back then. That anything like that could happen around here was inconceivable.”

“Did Jason ever talk about his sister?” T.J. asked.

“Not really. Oh, he liked to give her and her friends a hard time. Creep them out, harass them a little, nothing that would really hurt them. I had the feeling he really did like his sister, but he never would have shown it. It wouldn’t have been cool, you know?”

“Creep them out, how?”

“Just do things to scare them a little. One time, I remember, he caught a couple of little garter snakes and put them in her room to scare her and that other girl she was friends with, the one from Arnold?” Fritz looked at Lorna.