Small-Town Secrets

Dana shook her head. Her mother didn’t know she was here. She would be extremely distressed if she heard.

“I’m certain we’ll see you again while we’re here,” Spence offered.

“Why sure you will,” Bellomy insisted. “I expect you two to come to dinner. Why not tonight?” He looked from Spence to Dana and back. “Unless you already have plans. The diner’s ’bout the only place around here to get a decent meal, and it’s nothing to compare with the wife’s.”

Spence looked to Dana for the right answer. “That would be nice, Mr. Bellomy,” she managed to squeeze out. Nice was nowhere near the proper description, but she couldn’t be rude to the man. Not after what he’d done for her—and her mother—all these years. They hadn’t wanted to sell the home that had been in her father’s family for three generations. Her mother paid the property taxes, insurance and utilities while Mr. Bellomy took care of everything else. He’d done so for sixteen years. The least she could do was accept his kind invitation.

“Right fine,” Bellomy said with a nod. “I’ll let the wife know, and we’ll expect you folks around six-thirty if that’ll work.”

Spence said something else…yes and maybe goodbye. Dana wasn’t sure if she said goodbye or not as Mr. Bellomy walked away. She could only watch the big bear of a man stride toward his truck. The same one he’d had sixteen years ago.

He would tell his wife Dana was back in town. His wife would tell her friends. By sundown everyone would know.

The only survivor of the town’s tragic murders was back.

And just like sixteen years ago, it was obvious that she still wasn’t right.

That was another thing Dana hadn’t worked up the courage to tell the Colby Agency.

Most folks in her hometown thought that night in the woods when her sister was murdered had stolen her sanity.

Poor, crazy little Dana.

She wouldn’t ever be right again.

Chapter Four

Spence stared into the dusk outside the motel window. The case file had given him crime scene details and backgrounds on the victims but nothing truly useful in the way of suspects.

All three victims had grown up in the area. All three were thirteen. There was no trace evidence that connected anyone to the scenes other than the victims. A single hair belonging to Dana Hall had been discovered on the clothing of one of the first two victims. That had been easily dismissed considering the victim had spent the night at the Hall home the night before her death. The four had friends, teachers and neighbors in common. But not one of those common denominators appeared to have had a motive for committing the crimes. The girls were simply murdered for no apparent reason.

But Spence understood that wasn’t the case. No one was murdered without reason. He’d considered the victims’ families and found nothing documented in the way of enemies or recent problems, financial or otherwise. From the reports taken at the time of the murders, each one represented the perfect family. No readily detectable skeletons in the closet. Nothing.

There had to be something the investigation had missed. The fact of the matter was that small-town murder investigations rarely looked very hard at friends and neighbors. Everyone knew everyone else, just as Chief Gerard had said, and it was unthinkable that anyone would commit such a heinous crime. Therefore no suspects.

But Spence didn’t know any of these people. Each one was as much a suspect as the other in his opinion. And from what he’d learned so far there was only one way to go about solving this mystery.

Start at the beginning. Nudge the players and watch for the reactions.

He gathered his notepad and pen and headed for the room next door. Dana’s room. She had blocked the memories of the events that night. But the memories were there. His goal was to cautiously prod those memories loose from the layers of fear and disbelief that had them buried.

Cooperation was key.

To cooperate she had to get past her fear.

Just like the kids he had worked with for the county. Guide them away from the fear and toward the light of truth.

They still had more than half an hour before they were to arrive at the Bellomy’s. Time enough to topple that first domino.

Spence rapped on the door of the room next to his. A moment later, probably after visually identifying who had knocked, the door opened.

Dana Hall looked tired and pale. Interaction with the chief and her former neighbor, Mr. Bellomy, had shaken her. They’d barely arrived in town. His investigation had scarcely gotten out of the gate. If she wanted the truth, she was going to have to rally the necessary courage to go the distance and face her past.

Her lack of cooperation was the one primary stumbling block to getting the job done.

“I’d like to go over a few details with you.” He indicated the pad and pen. “We have a little time before dinner with the Bellomys.”

She looked past him, then at the pad he held. “I’ve told you everything I know twice already.”

There was some truth to that. She had gone over all she claimed to remember at the agency and then again en route. But there was much more she didn’t want to remember, and that was what he needed.

“This part of the investigation can be tedious, but it’s necessary if we hope to succeed.”

She considered his statement for a moment before relenting and allowing him into her room. That one instant of hesitation, like so many others he had noticed since meeting her, was the part of this mystery that puzzled him the most.

If she didn’t want the truth, why come to the Colby Agency looking for it?

He understood how difficult this was for her, but murder was never easy.

As she sat down on the edge of the bed, he settled into the chair at the nearby desk. He placed his pad on the desktop and clicked his pen into writing position. “Start at the beginning.”

She licked those plump lips and took a deep breath. “It was our birthday party.” She stared at the beige carpet as she spoke. “The party was okay. Mom insisted on having it in spite of what had happened. Not so many kids came, but there was lots of laughing and presents and two cakes. One for each of us.”

Her silence dragged on until he prodded, “After the party, what happened?”

“We had a late dinner with our family and went to bed.”

“But your sister wasn’t ready to sleep.” Dana had consistently maintained that it was her sister’s idea to leave the house that night.

She nodded. “It was really late but not late enough to deter Donna. She was always the outgoing one. I was the quiet bookworm.” Dana clasped her hands in her lap. “She loved walking in the woods. It was a full moon. She said we’d go to the stream and look at the stars. We did that a lot in the summer.”

“But this was October. Had to be pretty chilly.”

She nodded. “We bundled up, grabbed a blanket and sneaked out of the house.”

“Was this the first time you’d left the house at night without telling your parents?”

A quick shake of her head. “We’d done it a couple times before. We’d meet Joanna and Sherry at the stream. Sometimes Lorie would come, but not that last time.”

There was a name he hadn’t heard. “Who’s Lorie?” This was exactly the reason for going over and over the details. Something new eventually surfaced.

“Lorie Hamilton. She was a friend of my sister’s. Most of our friends were really my sister’s friends. I guess I was a little too boring for them. Too shy. Too much of an introvert.”

Spence could see the remembered pain in her eyes.

“Lorie and my sister didn’t hang out together often. Lorie was fourteen and had friends her own age.”

Spence hadn’t seen an interview report on a Lorie Hamilton in the case file. “Did you mention to the police that Lorie occasionally came to the stream with you?”