Page 7

Chapter Seven

“N eerie thought something was going on at Tamlin’s school?” Naida asked in disbelief as she shifted in her chair. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what?”

We were all in the murder basement on very little sleep, tired from a long night of going through Neerie’s texts. Some more outrageous than others, but the ones with Thad? Probably the scariest.

Amidst all their arguing—over everything from the payment for the landscaper, to putting the kibosh on him taking Tamlin to Aspen with his latest “tramp”—there were the texts about something going on at the school.

Unfortunately, she was as cryptic about whatever she thought was going on there as she was about the basement she mentioned in her text to Earl.

Naida had come over, and she brought Tamlin with her to play with Olivia and Sam for a bit, to take her mind off missing her mother. Now we were trying to squeeze even a drop of information from her.

Leaning over my desk, I asked, “Did Neerie ever mention anything about a basement to you?”

Naida wrinkled her nose. “A basement? Hers, maybe? Can you give me some context?”

Nina clicked on the TV, pointing to it with the remote. “She sent a text to one of her Bigfoot-hunting buddies that read, ‘I have to go to the basement’. We can’t figure out if it means something important.”

Naida gripped the arms of the chair, the multiple rings on her fingers clacking against the wood. “She has a basement for sure. I guess we can look there, but I can’t think of another basement she might mean.” As she looked around our space, she cocked her head. “Where was her phone and how did you get into it?”

“If we told ya, we’d have to kill ya,” Nina joked, leaning back in her office chair and putting her feet up on the desk, but Naida blanched.

“Nina!” Marty admonished with a quick smile of reassurance. “She’s joking, of course. Our sources are confidential for obvious reasons.”

I gave Nina my “knock it off glare” before turning back to Naida. “What do you know about Tamlin’s biological father, Will?”

Now she sat up straight and made a face—an angry one. “That dirty dick? I know all I need to know about him to know he shouldn’t be anywhere near Tamlin. Neerie keeps her from him for a reason.”

My ears perked up. “Did you know he emailed her and threatened to make her life a living hell if she didn’t let him see Tamlin?”

Naida’s eyes narrowed. “Right. Know what that means? It means, he probably has a new chick in his life who has kids. He likes to use Tamlin as a prop and play at being a good father. It’s how he sucks ’em in. Then he does what he always does. He screws up the new woman’s life and leaves her when something shinier comes along.”

“That has to be hard on little Tamlin,” I muttered.

“You bet it is. It’s why Neerie won’t let Tamlin see him. Because he only needs her when he wants to put on a big show. Then he skips out and disappears, leaving Tam confused and feeling abandoned. When she finally asked why Daddy Will hadn’t seen her in a long time, she assumed it was because she’d done something wrong. That was it for Neerie. She put the kibosh on future visits.”

“How long ago was that?”

Naida shrugged, yanking at the bottom of her short leather jacket. “At least three years ago. She’s long-since forgotten he exists, so for him to pop up now means something fishy’s going on.”

I asked something I’d been wondering for no particular reason. “Is he fae?”

Her snort was filled with disgust. “Yep. He’s fae. A disgrace to the fae, but he is.”

Marty looked as though she were measuring her words before she asked a direct question. “Was he ever abusive? Physically or even mentally? Would he hurt Neerie to get to Tamlin or because she said he couldn’t see her?”

Naida’s jaw tightened, her eyes fiery, the tips of her pointy ears red. “He never hit her, if that’s what you mean, but he was plenty mentally abusive. He was always drunk, and when Will drank, he was meaner than a racoon cornered in an attic. Neerie kicked him out when Tamlin was only two because of it. From that point on, he drifted in and out of their lives.”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I tapped my pen against the pad on my desk. “How about Thad? Her texts with him were pretty argumentative. He said she was obsessed, and he seemed pretty angry about whatever she was obsessing over.”

Naida sighed, and it was sad and long. “Like I said, Neerie was paranoid about everything , so it could have been about anything. But Thad was a good guy. He was nothing like Will. He’d never hurt either her or Tamlin. In fact, I thought they were happy. I felt like their divorce happened so fast. Almost out of the blue.”

“Didn’t your sister talk to you about what happened with them? Isn’t that what sisters do?” Nina pressed, her eyes hard.

Naida toyed with the rings on her fingers. “That’s what most sisters do, I guess. We’re not like most sisters. Neerie’s not like me at all. I’m easier going, I guess. She’s always wound up so tight. We don’t have a lot in common and never have, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I just love her from afar, and I’m there when she has a problem—like this one, where she dumps poor Tam and runs off.”

Marty’s eyes were suddenly very alert. “Has she done something like this before? Run away and left Tamlin with you?”

Naida’s lips thinned. “Only once and it was when she and Thad broke up. She showed up, no explanation, said she needed a minute to breathe, asked if I’d look after Tam, and split. But she kept in touch the whole time, checking on Tamlin, making sure I wasn’t feeding her garbage and so on. She wouldn’t tell me why she was so upset or what happened between them. She came back like three days later as if nothing had happened. Thad moved out and she went on, business as usual.”

Rolling her tongue along the inside of her cheek, Nina asked. “We’re gonna need to talk to this dude Thad. You think he’ll cooperate?”

“I’m positive he will. He loves Tam. He’d do anything for her. I haven’t said anything to him yet because I don’t want the fae council to get wind of Neerie’s disappearance, but I know he’d help.”

That was another problem. “We’re getting to the point where we can’t keep this a secret, Naida. In order to conduct a proper investigation, we need to talk to the people she spent her time with, like the PTA mothers. You do realize, that’s a hotbed for gossip, but it can’t be avoided if you want to find your sister,” I pointed out.

Naida ran a hand over her hair, the gesture one of exhaustion. “I know that. I do. I realize not many people like Neerie. I know you have to do your jobs. I guess I’m not sure if I’m prepared to hear how many suspects you might find because of how awful she can be, but I don’t want Tamlin taken from her. She’s a good mother, despite her bossy, judgmental nature. Yet, what choice do we have if I don’t know whether she left herself or someone took her?” Her eyes began to fill with tears that, despite the sisters’ differences, felt genuine.

I reached over my desk and grabbed her hand. “I wish there was another way, Naida, I do. Are you sure you can’t think of anyone who might want to harm her? Anyone at all?”

Naida tightened her fingers around mine. “Believe me, I wish I could. I just don’t have any answers. She’s isolated herself for so long since her divorce from Thad, I can’t think of anyone who’d go to this extreme.”

Nina rose from her desk. “Did you bring the key to her house? We’re gonna go over there and sift through what we can, see if we can find a clue. Then we’ll set up a meeting with the PTA moms and see if they know anything.”

Naida frowned. “You didn’t find any texts between her and the PTA ladies?”

“Nuh-uh,” Marty said with a shake of her head. “Well, not ones that involved conspiracies, anyway. It was all just PTA-related stuff.”

Naida blew out a long breath. “She obviously doesn’t want anyone to know she’s been holed up in her house day and night, going down the rabbit hole of conspiracies. I hoped maybe she might have shared her concern about the school with one of them, but I guess she’s keeping her whacky on the inside.”

“She never mentioned anything to me about the school or any conspiracy.” Shaking my head and rubbing my eyes, I fought a yawn. “I think the next thing we need to do is construct a timeline of her whereabouts for the last few days before she went missing, at least. Do you know if she’d gone anywhere new, somewhere she normally wouldn’t go?”

“Neerie hardly ever left the house for anything other than Tamlin related stuff. She has her groceries delivered, and the only other reason she goes anywhere is to take Tamlin to ballet and twirling, her fae instructions, and of course, whatever she’s doing at the school.”

My cheeks puffed out. “Okay, then. We’ll work on figuring out where she’d been before going to the woods with the Bigfoot hunting club—because that was the last place anyone saw her. Maybe that’ll help us find her. Also, I’ll text the PTA moms and call an emergency meeting. I’m going to have to let the cat out of the bag, Naida.”

“I get it. I mean, if she disappeared, and it’s not her fault, surely the fae council will understand, right?” She put her face in her hands. “God, I don’t know what’s worse. Her being kidnapped, or that she might have run off on some bonkers whim.”

The sympathy I felt for Naida burned in my gut. She was trying to hold everything together and care for Tamlin. “We’ll go to Neerie’s house and go over it with a fine-tooth comb. Are you all right with that?”

She rose, digging in her jeans to pull out some keys and hand them to me. “I’m fine with whatever will help find her. Do what you have to do. She has a security code. She always said you can never be too careful. I’ll text it to you. She has security cameras, too. Maybe that’ll help? For now, I need to get Tamlin to her ballet class. I swear, this kid’s day is filled up from start to finish.”

I understood that well. We all did. It made me think about reconsidering how many activities my children were involved in and if it was pushing them too hard. “No one gets that better than we do.” I rose and moved to give her a quick hug. “Remember, if you think of anything, anything that might help us locate Neerie, text me, please?”

We sent Naida on her way and headed over to Neerie’s house. Set at the end of a quaint cul-de-sac, her small white-brick house with wood shutters and arched windows was lovely. It wasn’t the mansion she lived in with Thad, but it was plenty for only Neerie and Tamlin.

Her car was still in the driveway.

Huh.

“Her car’s still here. Why is that, if she was meeting the Facebook group?”

“Maybe she fucking flew? She is a fairy, Wanda. The meeting was at night. She could have easily stayed under cover.”

I turned toward the walkway, covered in the recent snowfall and dotted with pathway lights, glistening under the sun that led to a warm, French oak wood door that matched her shutters.

Marty eyeballed it, tucking her hands in her skirt pockets. “Cute place, huh?”

I nodded. “Very cute, but I expected nothing less from Neerie. I mean, look at the front porch. I love that swing with the pillows on it.”

Marty nodded and pointed at a little wrought-iron stand with a ceramic snowman. “She’s done like a little winter wonderland scene. Love it!”

Nina draped her arms around both of us. “Okay, Chip and Joanna. Could we skip the decorating digest and get a move on? We have a bunch of bitchy PTA moms to face in like two hours and it would be nice if we could find a damn clue.”

I squared my shoulders and gave Nina a curt nod. “You’re right. But we hit the basement first.”

As Nina punched in the security code and I unlocked the door, we pushed our way inside.

“I always wondered where the hell Strawberry Shortcake lived,” Nina joked.

“Said the woman who would live in a mausoleum with tapestries of people killing each other if not for us,” I reminded her.

“Ohhh,” Marty breathed as we stepped onto the hardwood flooring at the entryway. “How adorable!”

And it was adorable. Done in a cottage core vibe with French country accents, there were lots of gingham pillows and willowy curtains. An overstuffed couch in pale blue with a toile throw, aged vessels in all shapes and sizes displayed in the arched window overlooking her backyard and gardens.

“Would you just look at that armoire, Marty?” I squealed, pointing to the corner of the room where an antiqued French blue armoire sat, an enormous wicker basket of flowers on top, the stems draping gracefully down over the sides.

“To die for,” she whispered.

“Smells like a damn candle store in here,” Nina groused, her nostrils flaring.

“Lavender,” I commented. The scent was light but pleasing. “Okay, basement first.”

We strode through the kitchen, a pretty mixture of pale green and ivory cabinets with wood shelving and accents.

When we got to the basement door in an alcove off the kitchen, we all fell silent.

Nina toyed with not one, but four or five of the bolt locks. “What the fuck is she hiding down there? Frankenstein?” She threw her hands up. “If fucking Frankenstein is real, I’m out. Hear me? If this is some sort of kooky science lab with brains and eyeballs in mason jars, I. Am. Out.”

I laughed out loud. “If that’s true, I am, too. Now, can we pop these locks, please? I don’t know what she has down there, but I want to find out.”

Nina turned each of the locks and pulled the door open with a creak. We made our way carefully down the steep steps with me in the lead.

I stopped short, gripping the wood bannisters and gasping out loud.

Nina was the first to speak as she took in exactly why I gasped. “Holy fucking looney-toons. That’s just shy of crackers.”

I stepped into the basement…filled with whiteboards.

Covered in one conspiracy theory after another. Each lush with red string, pictures of locations, and photos of people involved in the conspiracies. Coordinates, theories tying each alleged conspiracy together.

It was madness.

Nina gave Marty a nudge. “I think you’ve got some pretty hefty competition, Murder Board Queen.”