Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
—Babe Ruth
“WHERE DID YOU find Norma’s paperwork?”
“Not where it should have been,” Sadie said excitedly. “That’s why it took me so long. But I found it!”
“Did you check for her sister’s name and address?”
Sadie shook her head. “Not yet. I thought we could do it together.”
“It’s on the back of the application—”
“I know, I know,” Sadie replied. “Let me get my reading glasses on. Norma’s handwriting is like chicken scratch as it is.”
I vibrated with impatience as Sadie blew lint from the spectacles hanging around her neck and slipped them carefully over her ears. Finally, she turned the application over and peered down her nose at the handwriting.
“Dorothy Jane Willard,” she read. “109 Forest View Road, Millstone, Rhode Island.” Sadie squinted as she deciphered the handwriting, Finally, she looked up from the paper.
“Norma left the zip code and phone number spaces blank.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “That should be enough.”
“So should we call Deputy Chief Franzetti?”
“Not yet. I think we should find out if the address is real.”
“What are you saying? That Norma made up the address?”
The anxious expression on my aunt’s face rivaled Spencer’s. I could tell she wanted to keep believing the best about Norma, as much as Spence wanted to believe in his favorite teacher. But in Norma’s case, the circumstantial evidence was mounting to a distressing level.
“Don’t worry,” I told Sadie, retrieving my laptop from the bedroom, “we can easily check the address on Google Maps.”
I could only hope Norma hadn’t done the same, and then used some random name and address when she wrote down her “next of kin.”
“It’s real,” I confirmed, after typing in the address. “There’s even a street view.”
I called up the picture of the property, which was over two years old, the last time Google had photographed that tiny hamlet. A small garden fronted a two-story white clapboard house with lace-curtained windows on both floors. Two evergreen trees stood on either side of the entrance, partially blocking the first-floor windows.
“Now we know the address is real. Next, we have to find out if Dorothy Jane Willard is also real.”
“In the old days, I would just check the local phone book,” Sadie said.
“There are still phone books, Aunt Sadie, they’re online now. The search engines use public records.”
Unfortunately, my public records search came up with a dozen Dorothy Willards across the country. Only two were listed as Dorothy J. Willard.
“I found one in Palm Beach, Florida, and one in Vermont, but none in Millstone.”
“Maybe she moved to Millstone recently,” my aunt speculated. “She could be living with a friend or relative—one of her children or grandchildren.”
“You know what? We don’t have to guess.” I powered off the notebook.
“You want to call Eddie?” Sadie assumed. “He can drive over to Millstone.”
“He can, but if Norma is there, the sight of his police uniform will spook her. I won’t. That’s why I’m going over there myself. I’ll leave for Millstone as soon as I get dressed . . .”
As I explained to my aunt, I was about to take the same advice I’d given to Spencer. Like Mr. Burke, his favorite teacher, Norma could be the victim of circumstantial evidence. And even if she was guilty, I still wanted to help her—or at least hear her side of the story and try to convince her to turn herself in.
Sadie nodded but she didn’t look happy. “I’ll take care of the shop. But I would be happier if you weren’t going alone.”
“Why, for goodness’ sake?”
“Because you don’t know what you’ll find.”
I took Sadie by her arms and looked her in the eye. “I’m going to talk to Norma—if she’s there. That’s our Norma, remember? She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Sadie’s frown only deepened. “You may be right about Norma, Pen. But what if she has an accomplice?”
IN AN EFFORT to ease Sadie’s fears, I made two phone calls.
Seymour said he’d be happy to go to Millstone with me, but only in the late afternoon, when he was done with his postal worker duties. I thanked him, but time was of the essence, and I didn’t want to wait. Brainert had morning and afternoon classes and an evening lecture, so he was out of the picture.
Though my aunt offered to come, I insisted she open the shop.
“There’s no need to be overly dramatic. I have a mobile phone with geo-tracking and I’m completely capable of calling 911.”
Of course, I couldn’t tell Sadie that I wouldn’t really be going out to Millstone alone. I’d have a ghost detective with me. Okay, so Jack was still silent, after the dream he gave me had exhausted him, but I was sure he’d wake up if I really needed him. (Pretty sure, anyway.)
“Call me as soon as you know something,” Sadie insisted thirty minutes later, as I headed out the door with Jack’s Buffalo nickel tucked into its special little pouch next to my heart.
Though the highway was faster and more convenient, I decided to take the back road to Millstone—the one that ran past the abandoned fire tower and into the woods. It was the route Norma herself took yesterday afternoon when her van sideswiped Brainert’s car.
The midmorning air was damp and cool, but the driving storm of the night before left cloudless blue skies in its wake. Once out of Quindicott’s town limits and on the rural route, things turned a bit rugged. Dips and valleys in the road had been transformed into muddy pools, and I was forced to drive around several fallen branches.
Once I reached the outskirts of Millstone, I followed their main street through what passed for the business district. A poor stepchild of Quindicott, the hamlet of Millstone never recovered after its primary employer, a textile mill, shut down. More than half the businesses here were closed. Some buildings were even boarded up. Unlike thriving Quindicott, there was no movie theater, no library—the state had turned it into a records depository—no sign of economic activity in sight.
I turned off Millstone’s main drag onto Whippoorwill Road. After buzzing by a row of dingy federal-style buildings of faded red brick, I reached Forest View, a narrow road that circled a tall hill on the edge of town.
Forest View was aptly named. On one side of the narrow street was a sheer wooded embankment, on the other side were the houses spaced widely apart, with more woods crowding the edges of their grassy yards.
I instantly recognized the white clapboard house from the Google image. The screen door was closed, but the interior door stood open, presumably to let in the cool morning air. The twin evergreen trees looked a little taller now, and someone had planted a late autumn bloom of purple flowers around the entire house.
I kept on driving, right past the house. The property had no garage or even a driveway, so I decided to circle the neighborhood in search of Norma’s van. There were only a few houses along this road, a few late-model cars parked in front of them, and I quickly concluded that if she were here, Norma had hidden her vehicle well.
Returning to my original destination, I parked in front of the clapboard house and left the car, wondering what I was going to find. The street was deserted, the only sound the chatter of birds coming from the woods.
As I climbed the concrete steps to the front door, I noticed a sunporch was attached to the right side of the house. An evergreen tree had obscured it from the street view—and the Google car cameras. Like the rest of the house, the sunporch was fringed with purple flowers. Through the porch screens, I spied a jumble of potted plants. I saw movement, too. Someone was in there.
When I reached the front door at the top of the steps, I paused for a moment, just to listen. No sound came from the interior of the house. Taking a deep breath, I pressed the doorbell.
That’s when all hell broke loose!