Despite being awake much earlier than normal and with the heavy weight on her heart that came with the visit to the crime scene, Molly was determined to make sure she contacted Shannon and, if her cousin didn’t answer her phone, go to her house yet again and wait. She’d promised Claudia that she would.
After returning home, Molly slipped back into bed with Scott and slept in until eight thirty. After some breakfast, she sat on the deck in her reading chair with the notes she and Claudia had made the night before. She had reviewed them five times and knew by heart the points she wanted to make. The rose-gold hoop earring was sitting next to her on the side table. She picked it up and flipped it around, deep in thought. It was only nine thirty. Was that too early to call someone on a Sunday morning? Did Shannon sleep in like a teenager? Molly didn’t know, but she didn’t want to put it off any longer. Flattening her lips with determination, she deposited the earring back on the table and tapped Shannon’s number on her phone.
It went directly to voicemail.
That was okay. Molly and Claudia had a plan for voicemail. Molly concentrated on not being too chatty and also not allowing her nerves to edge into her voice. She knew what she was going to say this time and had to stay on topic.
“Hey, Shannon. It’s Molly. Hope you’re having a good weekend. Just wanted to check in about the earring I found. It’s really pretty. It looks expensive, and I think it might be yours. And what will I do with just one earring? I might just throw it away if I can’t find the owner. Call me when you can.”
These were all Claudia’s ideas: play to Shannon’s ego and compliment the beauty of the piece of jewelry. Threatening to throw away the earring seemed like a good idea to make it more urgent, but very unlike Molly’s habits. She’d never throw away something so valuable in the trash. Shannon probably didn’t really know that, though. Molly knew the two points were likely to spur her cousin to respond.
She picked up the earring again, stared at it, and willed it to give her new information about where it came from and what it knew. Molly was about to stand up to go over to Shannon’s house.
She did not expect Shannon to call her back almost immediately.
“Hello, Molly, I got your voicemail. I am actually missing an earring.” Shannon bulldozed over Molly even saying hello. Molly was happier than she had ever been to hear Shannon’s voice. She was still relieved that Shannon wasn’t missing, but she needed to figure out what was going on with the earring and whether Shannon had something to do with Trevor’s last hike on the Buckeye Trail.
“Great! Did you see the picture I texted you? It’s a rose-gold hoop that needs an earring back. I didn’t find the back, of course. It kind of has a twist to it, two strands looped together like a rope.” Molly wasn’t keeping to her script anymore; she was too excited that Shannon was claiming the earring as her own.
“Yes, I believe it’s mine,” Shannon replied, with no friendliness in her voice.
“That’s great. I found it the day after you were in the store last time. I found it on Friday morning. You were there Thursday.” This was the start of the bait.
“That’s fine. Will you have it at the shop tomorrow? I can swing by and get it then.” Shannon didn’t even respond to the day it went missing. So frustrating!
“I can leave it there. It’s at my house now. Did the hoop go missing on Thursday?” Molly picked up the earring again and lined it up so she could see her neighbor’s chimney through the hoop. She closed her left eye and mused how the chimney moved. Claudia and Molly’s plan was to be as persistent as she had been with Archie to get to the answers. Ask a different way. She was ready to sit for a while and keep asking.
“Actually, yes. I believe I was wearing it when I was at the store, and it went missing then. I recall talking about the pink plant I bought and how tall it would grow.” Persistence paid off!
“We did. Yes! Coneflowers can grow really tall!” Molly sat up straighter, pleased that Shannon remembered something about flowers, because she absolutely never took an interest in the shop's contents, just the profit and loss numbers.
“He did seem to appreciate the plant,” Shannon replied. Molly heard the boredom in Shannon’s voice. She lined up the earring with the lilac bush in her backyard now.
“I’m so glad your boss liked it. That’s wonderful. But the thing is, I didn’t find the earring in the shop.” Mic drop. Molly leaned back in her chair, smugly.
“Well, where did you find it? In the parking lot?” Shannon was growing annoyed, mic drop not even acknowledged.
“No. I found it on the trail. On the Buckeye Trail behind the shop.”
“Oh. Well, that's odd.” Shannon’s tone of voice changed and might have even faltered. “I don’t know why you’d find it there.”
“Did you go on a hike Thursday before you visited the shop?” Molly sprinted through her prepared question.
“Whyever would I go on a hike in the middle of the workday?” Shannon’s voice turned heated. “I’d like you to return my earring and stop with the interrogation. I’ll be by after I’m done working for the day tomorrow. You can leave it at the checkout desk, and I’ll just get it from the high school cashier.” Shannon’s anger deflated Molly’s enthusiasm about continuing the conversation and keep prodding. Her cousin always used the wrong jargon. All the shop staff called the area where they checked out customers “the counter,” not the checkout desk. And Molly was sure Shannon didn’t know the names of any of their evening staff.
“That’s fine. Maybe I’ll see you then.” They both hung up without saying goodbye.
Molly let out a long breath and let her head rest on the chair cushion. That was not how she’d wanted the conversation to go.
This rogue rose-gold earring had to be connected to Trevor—Molly knew it. How would it get on the trail if Shannon wasn’t on it herself? Her cousin had admitted it went missing the same day that Trevor did. May seemed to think that Shannon couldn’t be believed to say anything truthful, and Molly would not disagree. Was she lying? Plus, Shannon hadn’t said a word about Trevor yet, hadn’t even acknowledged that Trevor had anything to do with their garden center business. No one from the shop had talked to her about it yet. And Shannon had never returned her first voicemail that Molly left on Friday afternoon. Was Shannon avoiding the issue? It all just seemed so bizarre. She wished Shannon was a normal person she could just talk to. Molly stood up to put the earring in her bag to bring to work with her the next day.
Later that morning, Molly got an excited text from Archie saying he had a wonderful time on the Buckeye Trail, with some pictures of mushrooms and an extremely large tulip poplar tree. She sent back a smiling face emoji, a mushroom emoji, and a tree emoji. Molly was glad someone was having a good morning and happy that Archie had finally gone on his hike. She told him she hoped he found a great hiking destination in Boston too. Things felt a lot better between them in her mind after these short, friendly exchanges.
A few hours later, Molly got a phone call from Joe, May’s detective husband. She knew something was amiss right away since Joe was not one to call her and they were all planning on having dinner with Molly and May’s parents that evening at their house. In the milliseconds between seeing who was calling, lifting the phone to her ear, and answering the call, Molly’s mind raced from images of May in a car accident to one of the kids in the emergency room. Instead, Joe was calling about Trevor. They had found his body in the river. And so daylight was thrown on Trevor’s disappearance, just like the daylight that had dappled the trees on the morning she found the missing earring. For the rest of the day, Molly felt like fog had descended over her life.