10. Margot
CHAPTER 10
Margot
A s I write a check for the final bill owed, I lean back in my chair and smile.
Monday morning came quickly, and even Matty seemed to be in better spirits this morning despite everything that happened with Chad. Of course, hearing from Beckett that she’s taking the case in front of a judge to ask for it to be dropped entirely—and has high hopes that it will be—certainly helped.
Chad has no grounds to ask for partial custody when he signed away his rights.
Add to that his infidelity and the mountain of debt he left behind? According to her, he has literally no grounds, and the only reason he was able to get a lawyer to take it on in the first place was because he was sleeping with her.
I open a spreadsheet and make one final note about the deduction, then stare at the number left. It’s what I owe Jaxson, and even though the number I owe is just as high now as it was before, knowing it’s him I’m paying back versus multiple companies makes it easier to breathe.
The bell at my front desk dings, so I get to my feet and head into the foyer, a smile on my face. It fades as soon as I see the woman on the other side. Lanetti’s mother looks beyond nervous as she fiddles with the strap of her purse.
“Patty, what can I do for you?”
Her swollen, red eyes narrow on me, but she doesn’t speak right away. Instead, she takes a deep, steadying breath. “I would like to speak to you about my daughter.”
“Of course. How are you holding up?”
“Not well,” she replies. “As you can imagine.”
“I can.”
Her expression hardens. “Can you?”
“Not entirely, but if anything were to happen to Matty?—”
“Yes, sweet Matty. If anything were to happen to him, I imagine the entire town would be in an uproar. But because it’s my girl. Because—” Tears start streaming down her face.
“Patty, what’s going on?” I come around the desk and wrap an arm around her shoulders, then guide her over towards the couch to sit down.
She sits, and I drop down beside her, keeping my arm around her. I’ve known Patty Ester a long time. And even though we have a significant age difference, we’ve always gotten along.
“I found Lanetti’s journal and thought it might be helpful, so I gave it to Sheriff Vick. I should have read it first, but I was so happy to find something—anything.” She chokes up.
“That’s good, right? Did he find something?”
“There were a lot of things in there about the town. Things she observed working at the diner, and a few passages about how she wishes she lived in a big city. Then she wrote a lot about that detective that moved here?—”
“Jaxson?” I interject.
“Yes. It’s clear she had affections for him.”
I don’t respond, even though it was clear to anyone who had been around her whenever Jaxson was near that Lanetti had a crush on him.
“Then there were a few passages revolving around you.”
“Me?” I sit back, surprised. “What about me?”
“She assumed you and the detective had something going, and she was jealous. Her last entry said that she wanted to get away from the town, somewhere she would never have to see the two of you.” She chokes on her words.
“There’s nothing going on between me and Jaxson.” Not that it would matter if there was, but I don’t add that because I don’t see how it would be entirely helpful.
“He suggested that she might have run away. That it’s a possibility.”
Her response honestly catches me off guard. “Sheriff Vick thinks she ran away?”
She nods .
I recall the card found at her house. How would that make sense if she took off?
“He says it’s a possibility. But I can’t help but think they’re looking in the wrong place. What if they miss something?”
“The sheriff isn’t the only one looking for your daughter,” I remind her. “Knight Security is, too. And I know for a fact that Jaxson doesn’t think she ran away.”
She closes her eyes tightly. “Did she say anything to you? Did you say something to her to make her leave? Is it possible she did run away?”
“Patty, you know I’ve always liked Lanetti. I never would have done anything to hurt her.”
“Her writing is so angry. She was so mad when she wrote about you and Jaxson at the diner together. It was dated just last week. How did I not know she was so mad? I know she’s an adult now, but we live together. How did I miss it?”
“Sometimes people are good at hiding what they don’t want others to see. She probably didn’t want you to know she was so upset.”
“I miss my girl.”
“I know you do.” I wrap my arm around her again. “I am so sorry, Patty. I wish I could help.”
“I just don’t want to be alone, and I’m so alone. With Sean gone—” She sniffles, and I think back to her late husband who’d passed when Lanetti was in high school.
I recall Lanetti being broken up about it, but Patty had been a complete and total mess over his passing. She’d retreated into herself, becoming a shell of who she’d been.
“Now Lanetti’s missing, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on.”
“We lean on God in times like these, Patty, it’s all we can do.”
“How can He let me suffer so much?”
“I don’t know,” I answer her truthfully. “But I do know that when everything is burning around you, the best thing you can do is pray. And I hope you know that this entire town is praying right alongside you.”
With two fresh to-go cups of coffee in hand, I make my way up the front steps and into the lighthouse that serves as Knight Security’s main office.
After I managed to calm Patty down, I’d called Andie to see if she could come in and watch the front so I could go tell Jaxson everything Patty had told me. I could have called him, but it just felt weird telling him over the phone.
So, I’d grabbed us both cups of coffee and headed over since he’s on monitor duty today. According to Andie, he’s the only one in the office right now as everyone else is out on an install.
The door is unlocked, so I step inside. Jaxson looks up from the computer he’s sitting behind and smiles at me. But that smile fades almost instantly. “Is everything okay?” He pushes up .
“Yes, fine. I brought you coffee.” I set it on his desk as he sits back down, then take a seat beside him.
“Thanks. I actually was just thinking about how badly I needed a caffeine boost, and this is much better than what I would have made for myself.”
“Good.” I set my purse down on the floor beside me. “Patty Ester, Lanetti’s mom, came to see me at the B&B.”
Jaxson’s expression reflects his understanding that the conversation likely didn’t go well. “Sheriff Vick talked to her already.”
“How can he think she ran away? You found the card.”
He sighs heavily and leans back. “At this point, he’s not sure what to think. He didn’t tell me what was in the journal, but that it implied heavily she was unhappy here.”
“Patty told me what was in it.”
He arches a brow.
“Lanetti had feelings for you, which you already suspected.”
“More than suspected, but yeah.” He runs his hands over his face. “She was angry that I didn’t return them?”
“More than that, I’m afraid. According to Patty, Lanetti wrote pretty heavily about how angry she was at the relationship you and I seemed to have.”
He stares back at me. “She thought we were dating?”
I nod. “She was mad and wrote about how she’d rather be anywhere but here and forced to see us together.”
“Oh, man.” He jots something down on a notepad sitting on the desk beside him. “I see why Vick thought she might have run away. ”
“But you don’t think so.”
“If we hadn’t found the card, then I would,” he replies. “The trouble is, there’s no evidence to suggest Morah had anything to do with anything that’s been going on, and even though I pulled all the old case files and had them sent over—” He shakes his head. “I know she didn’t run away. I know this is all connected, I just can’t figure out how. Normally by now, we’d have a call. Something.”
“What do you mean?” When he doesn’t respond, I reach over and place my hand on his arm. His gaze locks with mine, and the air charges around us. “Sometimes it helps to run things by another person, right?”
He swallows hard and breaks the connection when he pushes up from his chair. “In all the other cases, he left a riddle of some kind. Whether it was a note left at the crime scene or a phone call made after the abduction. And with Lanetti, there hasn’t been one. No one has tried to make contact with me.”
“Yet. It could still happen, right?”
“Sure. But every minute that passes makes it more unlikely we’ll find her.”
“Does Lance think she ran away?”
“No. Honestly, I don’t think the sheriff believes it either. My guess is he told Patty that to try and give her some hope that her daughter was out there somewhere of her own volition.” He drops back down into the chair. “I think she was grabbed because I was talking to her outside the bakery.”
“It’s not your fault, Jaxson. ”
“It feels like it is.” His gaze meets mine again. I see his pain, and I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him in an attempt to take at least some of it. “How are things going this morning? I could use some good news.”
“Well, my lawyer is moving to have the case Chad filed dropped before I even have to go to court.”
He arches a brow. “That’s good news.”
“It is. Maybe then he’ll leave for good.”
Jaxson’s expression shifts again. “When did Chad get to town?”
“About a week ago? It was the day you picked up the paint.”
“Which is the same day Kleo Finch’s parents called in a missing person report.” He walks over to the board. On it, I note he has my strange phone calls written down under a possible connection column. Seeing it, I stand and walk over to join him. “Were you getting these calls before he got into town?”
“No.”
“And you said Lanetti and Chad got along?”
“Sure.”
“Enough that he could get her to go somewhere with him?”
“Sure, but—” I try to follow his train of thought—and then it clicks. “Chad isn’t a killer, Jaxson. Though he may be a lot of things.”
“So far, we have no bodies. ”
“But the cards, you said that was the killer you put away.”
“It was his calling card, sure.”
“And how would Chad know that?”
“Deep research?” he asks. “He could have looked up my old cases and found the information somewhere. It wasn’t made public during the trial, but it was definitely in the file. And we both know that if you know the right people, those aren’t too hard to get your hands on once the case has been closed.”
“But how could he have gotten it? And why? Chad is a lot of things, but it seems far-fetched that he’d be capable of this.”
“I don’t know, Margot, but he’s the best lead we’ve got.”