Eve’s cottage was tiny—and absolutely adorable. It was almost a dollhouse, and somehow seemed so perfect for a soon-to-be mother. As Mr. Melton had explained, her landlady was an older woman who lived next door but “didn’t pry.”
“Mrs. Otis is a good soul,” he’d said. “Outlived all her family, and I get the idea she really dotes on Eve. Might be good to check with her, too.”
As we took in the cottage and the “big house” in front of it, Tinkie said, “Let’s talk to Mrs. Otis first. I don’t want her to think we’re burglars.”
A neat brick path led from the cottage to a large-frame house that would have been called a plantation owner’s “town house” in an earlier time. When the Mississippi Delta was cleared and settled, wealthy planters often had a plantation house on the vast stretches of agricultural properties and another, smaller house in town for social events and soirees. The families stayed in town for the social season and for loading and selling the cotton that was harvested in the fall.
Tinkie had the whole registry of historic homes lodged in her brain. As the head Daddy’s Girl in the Delta, she knew the pedigree of families and properties.
“Who built this house?” I asked as I took in the gingerbread trim around the curved front porch that graced the house on three sides. It was certainly a porch for sipping juleps and regaling guests with stories of the glory days.
“It’s the Otis house. Been in the same family since it was built back in the 1850s. Myrtle Otis is the last of her line and she inherited this property plus five thousand acres of farm land. She sold the plantation to Chamblee Agricola about three years ago, and I think it’s almost driven her insane. They’re planting GMO corn and soybeans and she’s been to several protests saying they’re poisoning the crops, the ground, and the people. No one listens to her. They treat her like she’s a crazy old lady. I feel bad for her. She couldn’t keep up the plantation, but she never expected to see the land abused.” Tinkie’s expression reflected her sadness. “Time leaves us all vulnerable and outdated.”
“I know what you mean.” And I did. I lived with one foot in the past, and it was hard to straddle both worlds. “Let’s take off the mourning clothes and have a chat with Myrtle.”
“You’re too perky for your own good,” Tinkie admonished as we climbed the steps to the front door and rang the bell. Unlike our reception at Ricky Belvue’s home, the owner opened the door. There were no maids or butlers or silver calling-card trays. It was Myrtle Otis who met us in a floral lavender dress that screamed 1960, a string of elegant pearls, and a smile.
“Ladies, what can I do for you?” she asked.
Tinkie gave her a business card. “We need your help, Miss Myrtle. Eve’s cousin, Cece Falcon, has hired us to look for Eve. We’re all a little worried about her. We wanted to ask if we could search her cottage and see if you might know where she went.”
She pushed the door open. “Come in. Thank goodness someone is looking for her. I’ve been worried sick. I’m Eve’s partner in the Lamaze classes. We’ve been working together for the past two months. I was supposed to go into labor and delivery with her. And then she just disappeared.”
Myrtle Otis’s home stopped me in my tracks. It held the warmth and love of history that I’d missed since my aunt had passed on. The gracious old furniture gleamed under a careful polishing. The crystals on a tasteful chandelier sparkled. A large fireplace centered the front parlor, and logs had been laid, ready for a match when the evening chill crept in. Even the smell of baking cookies floated from the kitchen.
“I was making a batch of Toll House cookies for Eve. She’s had a real sweet tooth for the past three months, though she complained about the weight gain. I told her, ‘Honey, you’re carrying a baby. Eat.’ So I decided to bake a batch today. I had to do something constructive while I was waiting to hear from her.” She inhaled raggedly. “She’s hurt, isn’t she? Something has gone wrong.”
“We don’t know,” Tinkie said. “She is missing, and we’re worried.”
“Sit and I’ll get some coffee. I just made a fresh pot. And some cookies.”
“I’ll help,” Tinkie said, giving me the eye. She wanted me to poke around, and I was happy to oblige. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust Mrs. Otis, but sometimes people knew things and didn’t know they knew. If something was obvious, maybe I’d stumble across it.
I did a quick walk-through and found something extremely helpful—Myrtle had rigged her grounds with surveillance cameras. And one was pointed at the cottage where Eve lived. If I could work the conversation around to that, she might give us permission to look at any footage she had.
When Tinkie and Myrtle returned with a huge silver tray that held a sparkling coffee service, with lovely, fragile china cups, and a platter of cookies that made my mouth water, I was seated on a brocade sofa that was probably worth at least five grand. The house was furnished in antiques and artwork that even I recognized as valuable. Some of the portraits of Otises from generations long past were exquisite.
“That’s my grandmother, Bella Schaffer Otis,” Myrtle said as she handed me a cup filled with aromatic coffee. “She was from Virginia, and she was Wickham Otis’s third wife. The first two died in childbirth. It was during Reconstruction, and times were hard. There was little food and worse health care. Pregnancy was a very dangerous time. It still can be.”
“Eve was taking care of herself, wasn’t she?” I asked. Tinkie looked too upset to talk. The whole pregnancy/baby topic was tough for her because she wanted a child so badly.
“Yes, Eve made every doctor’s appointment, took her vitamins, ate properly. I made sure of that.”
“You were very good to Eve.” I had to be blunt. “Why?”
Myrtle nodded as she passed the cookies around. I took one because I couldn’t resist. I was still full of tamales, but the cookies smelled like heaven.
“My daughter was killed coming home from Ole Miss. Freak car accident. She was the light of my life. Eve reminded me of her.”
I sipped my coffee, unable to say anything for a moment. Myrtle’s grief and sorrow were palpable, but she was not a woman who would be beaten down by loss, no matter how acute.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“She was a remarkable young woman. You would have liked Rebekah.”
Somehow, I thought I probably would have. “Did Eve ever mention the father of her child?” I asked. Tinkie was blinking back tears.
“I asked her, and she only said that he was a good man and that she was happy to have the baby on her own.”
“Could the baby have belonged to her boss, Mr. Belvue?”
Myrtle almost snorted her coffee. “Absolutely not. Eve didn’t suffer fools, and Mr. Belvue understood that she ran the bank. He was too smart to fart in his own scuba tank.”
I almost choked on a bite of cookie. Tinkie put a napkin to her mouth to control her surprise.
“I’m twenty years older than you girls, but I still have vigor, and Freddy Teddy isn’t brilliant, but he’s business smart. Eve was his best asset. He took care of her.”
“Then who might the father be?” Tinkie asked. At last she had gained control of her emotions.
“I don’t know.” Myrtle sighed. “I didn’t want to know. I had this idea that Eve and the baby would live in the cottage and I’d keep the baby during the day while she worked. I had it all planned out in my head. To be honest, the daddy would have been an inconvenience, so I never pressed hard for information. I should have. I was selfish, and now she’s been taken away.”
Tinkie moved to the sofa beside Myrtle and put a hand on her arm. “She’s not been taken away. She’s just missing, and we’re going to find her.”
“There’s been a ransom note, hasn’t there?” Myrtle asked. She was sharper than anyone else we’d talked to.
When we didn’t deny it, she continued. “I’ll pay it. Whatever it is.”
“We have the amount covered,” Tinkie said. She glanced at me and I nodded. “It was an unusual amount. One hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Do you have any idea who might think Eve could raise that kind of money?”
She thought a moment, passing the cookies again. “Do you believe it’s the father of the child?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“It isn’t. No, I can’t see that. It’s someone else.”
“Who?”
“Someone who would risk Eve and her baby’s well-being. I never got that impression about the father. Eve never said much about him, but she let me believe he was a decent man who might not know he was a potential father.” She paused with the coffee cup almost to her lips. “But there was a young man lurking around her cottage a week ago.”
“Tell us.” I clicked on the recording button on my phone just to have a record if she happened to give a good description.
“I can show you. I have video.”
And that was that. We followed Myrtle into the small office where she’d set up screens to view the surveillance camera recordings. “Before my husband died, he had these cameras installed. A lot of houses in this area were being burglarized and he was worried about me. At first I thought he’d lost his mind, but now this gives me a sense of safety. I know exactly who’s roaming around my property. I even saw you two earlier.”
She went back through several CDs. “I don’t keep the footage, normally, but this bothered me. Eve said the same guy was watching her at the bank.”
This was exactly what we needed. “Did Eve know him?”
“No. She said she didn’t.”
“But you didn’t believe her completely,” Tinkie said softly.
“She was curious about him. And not in the way you’d be if someone scared you. He was a puzzle to her and she was intrigued.”
Oh, I knew that sort of curiosity and how dangerous it could be. Especially to a woman. We watched the video of a young man walking around Eve’s cottage and peering in the window twice. There was never a clear view of his face, though. It was almost as if he knew where the cameras had been placed and could avoid them.
“I don’t know him,” Myrtle said. “I know most of the younger people from the county, but not this man. Maybe if I had a clear view of him, but all I can tell is that he has dark hair and seems to be tall and slender. He has good posture.”
“Eve said she didn’t know him?” I asked again.
“I don’t think she did, but she wanted to. That’s what concerns me.”
The guy didn’t behave furtively, but he was poking around while no one was home. That in itself was suspect—even though Tinkie and I did it all the time when we were on a case.
“He’s wearing that hoodie and we can’t see his face,” Tinkie said.
“I’ve studied the images,” Myrtle said. “I don’t know who he is.”
“The morning she disappeared, was he hanging around?” I asked.
Myrtle expertly scrolled forward to the morning of Eve’s disappearance. We watched Eve on the footage as she came out of the cottage, got in her car, and drove away. I noted she had a blue Ford Focus.
“May we have those CDs?” I asked. “We’ve been warned not to go to the police, but if Cece changes her mind, the sheriff might be able to enhance the images of the stalker.”
“Sure. Take them.” Myrtle popped them out and handed them to us.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Tinkie asked.
“Only that Eve loved that baby more than anything. She had everything arranged, planned out, ready. She’d even named her.”
“Her?” Tinkie said.
“Yes, she was having a girl. Eve never missed her medical appointments.”
“What was … is the baby’s name?” Tinkie corrected, but we’d all heard the slip.
“Sally. She said it was an old-fashioned name for an old-fashioned child. She wanted Sally to grow up with all the love that she’d never had, with a mother and auntie who baked cookies and decorated for Halloween and made Christmas special. Eve never had that.”
“Eve’s mother doesn’t believe in Christmas.” I remembered the story Cece had told me about Carla burning the bicycle. “I think Carla Falcon doesn’t believe in anything soft or pleasant. Eve really got cheated.”
“That’s why she’s so determined that little Sally have all of that. Not material things, but the important things like time and love and knowing she’s wanted.” Myrtle stood up. “Please find Eve. I love her like she’s my daughter. I’ll pay any amount.”
I put my arm around her and gave her a hug. I knew how hard it was to want to help a loved one and not be able to. “We’ll do everything we can. And as soon as we know anything, we’ll be in touch. Now would you mind if we went through her cottage? Maybe there’s a clue as to where she’s gone.”
“Just leave the key under the doormat,” Myrtle said, handing us a key painted bright red.