Page 55 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“So after Rachel moved to town, she and Lila became best friends?” I asked. “Did Bethany feel excluded?”

“Well,” Nancy said, “it wasn’t like we were all that friendly, but we saw them at school. Bethany used to always have lunch with her sister, just the two of them in the corner of the lunchroom. But then Rachel moved here, right before Christmas of our junior year, and she started sitting with the two of them toward the end of the school year. But then after summer break, Bethany started sitting by herself in a different part of the lunchroom.”

I exchanged a quick glance with Dixie.

“Can you show us where Rachel’s farm is?” Dixie asked. “Is it close to the Brewer property?”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” Linda said. “Their properties used to touch until Rachel’s father started selling off the land.”

“And you don’t know why Bethany started sitting alone?” I asked.

All three women shook their heads. “No idea,” Gayle said.

Bolstered to know that Rachel likely knew a great deal and was still in town, I was eager to find her.

“Well, this has been very helpful,” I said, starting to get up from my seat, but Linda gripped my arm and pulled me back down.

“We haven’t gotten to the best part yet,” she said with a smug look in her eyes.

“Do tell!” Dixie said, leaning forward and propping her elbow on the table.

“Around that time, Chuck Petty ran away.”

“Wait,” I said. “The guy who tormented Lila?”

“That’s the one,” Nancy said.

“Well,thatseems pretty coincidental.” Dixie eyed me with a questioning look. She and I must have been thinking the same thing—Chuck Petty’s name was nowhere on the police reports.

“So why wasn’t he considered a suspect?” I asked.

“Because he never paid that girl any attention,” Nancy said. “He may have tormented her sister Lila, but he never said a peep to Bethany.”

“Did either one of them have boyfriends?” I asked.

“Shoot, no,” Nancy said. “They didn’t catch any of the boys’ attention.”

“So you think there’s no way Bethany fell on his radar?” I asked.

“I don’t see how,” Linda said, “which is likely why he was never a suspect, but Bethany was killed over spring break. His parents told everyone that he went to visit his grandmother in Atlanta. Only he never came home.”

“Is that why people thought he ran away?” Dixie asked.

“Yeah. But he sent postcards to his folks,” Gayle said. “From Florida. Virginia. He even sent one from Mexico. He sent them for a few years and then they stopped.”

“Why did he run away?” Dixie asked.

“No one really knew,” Linda said. “He said he wanted to see the world, but why didn’t he wait until he graduated in another month? It was all very fishy.”

“And yet he was never a suspect in the murder?” I questioned again.

“People talked, of course,” Linda said. “That’s what people in small towns do. But the police and the sheriff must not have thought he’d done it. He was never arrested.”

“Would his parents or siblings still be around to talk to?” I asked.

Linda narrowed her eyes. “Why on earth would you want to talk to them when you’re investigating the Brewer property?”

Why indeed. I couldn’t imagine they would be too excited to talk to me.