CHAPTER 3.
Sarah had called Mike to see if the paper had been delivered yet and if he had brought it in while she was on the phone. She didn’t hear an answer so she went to find him. She wanted to read about yesterday’s events firsthand.
Mike had already come in from the back yard with Lucy. “I put the paper on the dining room table,” he said. He had been about to pour himself a cup of coffee when Sarah entered the kitchen.
His back being turned to her, she hadn’t heard him so she asked again about the paper. This time, hearing his answer, she turned around and left the room to get it. She picked the paper up from the dining room table where she found it and looked at the headlines.
BODY DISCOVERED IN GROTTO AT JEFFERSON POOL
On Monday, September 20, 2004, the body of Maggie Robertson was found near the grotto at Jefferson Pool. She had been severely beaten and strangled. At this time there’s no evidence of any sexual attack.
The body was found by two young hikers who had stopped to rest. It had been placed between two large rocks. When the hikers climbed to the top of the rocks to sit, they discovered the body. The authorities say the body hadn’t been there for more than eight hours.
Miss Robertson worked in Tanglewield for a private firm after being transferred from Shreveport, where she had worked for the state government. She had only recently moved here so she hadn’t yet made many friends. She was not married, but not much else is known about her at this time.
The police are asking anyone who has any information about her, or her whereabouts over the weekend to please come forward.
“Oh, my God!” she screamed. She dropped the paper onto the floor.
Mike came running into the room. “What’s the matter? What happened? Did you hurt yourself?”
Sarah should have known better than to yell out, “Oh, my God!” like she did. Mike just never seemed to get used to her outbursts and always thought something was wrong. Even after all these years of being married to her.
“Look at this,” Sarah said, picking up the paper and pointing to the article she had been reading as she handed him the paper. Her hands had started shaking. “Ruth told me about it, but it just didn’t sink in the way it does when you read it for yourself in the paper. This just makes it so much more real.”
“Do you remember when you and I took a ride down there last summer? We took lunch. You know, you saw all those big rocks in the grotto and commented that they almost looked like caves? That’s the place they’re talking about here in the paper. That’s where they found the body. Maggie’s body, the woman who lives down the street from Ruth and George.” He stared at her for a moment trying to put it together and then he took the paper from her.
As Mike took the paper from Sarah he put on his glasses and read the article.
As he looked up after he had finished reading the article Sarah said, “I was there yesterday with my hiking group. We didn’t walk around the grotto like we usually do. But if we had, Oh, Mike, any one of us could have found the body instead of those young boys. That or even have run into the killer when he was putting her there.”
Mike put his hand on Sarah’s shoulder and led her to a chair. He told her to sit down and have her coffee. He said he thought she looked a bit shaky. To tell the truth, she felt a little shaky.
Sarah did as he said and sat at the table with the paper in front of her. She was having a hard time believing what it said. It seemed more real now that she had read it than when Ruth had called and related the story to her. That was more like a bit of gossip, but this, this was the real thing. There had been a MURDER AT THE GROTTO.
“They must have found her just after we left the area. It could have been one of the people we saw coming down the path as we were heading back up to the parking lot,” Sarah said in a hushed voice. She picked up her coffee cup with shaky hands and took a sip, trying to calm her nerves.
Mike picked up the paper again. “It doesn’t give a time when the body was found, just that it was in the afternoon. So it could have been even hours after you left,” He said. Sarah knew he was trying to make her feel calm and was grateful to him for it.
“Ruth just called and told me about it, but I didn’t realize just how close we were to the body, she said as she clasped her arms together in front of her chest. I guess I just kind of sloughed it off because of the way she gets so excited about everything.”
“Why, we were just a few feet away,” she stammered. “It just makes me almost sick to my stomach. When I think about it, any of us might have found her if we had walked up on the Grotto. I don’t know what I would have done if it had been me who found her body.”
Sarah got up, walked into the kitchen, and picked up the phone. “I have to let everybody know. I’m sure they haven’t read the paper yet or one of them would have called.”
She almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang just as she placed her hand on it. It was Olivia calling.
“Sarah, have you read the paper yet?” Olivia asked. “Did you see what happened at Jefferson Pool yesterday while we were there?”
“Yes, Ruth called me a while ago to tell me. She’s as mad as a wet hen that she didn’t go. She’s blaming George because he wouldn’t take Ginger to the vet yesterday. She had to take her so she couldn’t go with us. She said she had one of her feelings that something was going to happen and she should have listened to it. She said that Ginger could have waited another day. It wasn’t anything life threatening anyway.”
“Well, she really didn’t miss anything,” Olivia said, “As a matter of fact, it wasn’t any of us that found the body.”
“Oh, my God! Don’t even think that way!” Sarah said. “Can you imagine walking up to those rocks and finding Maggie like that?”
“No, I can’t imagine. I don’t even want to try,” Olivia said in a shaky voice.
“Well, I hardly knew her, but no one knew her well since she hasn’t been here long. I had met her a couple of times just to say hello. You know she lived right down the street from Ruth? She would know more about her than any of us,” Sarah said as she picked up her coffee and took another drink. She looked at the cup and made a face, it was getting cold.
“I think I heard she was transferred here from Shreveport. Why would anyone single and as young as she was want to come here from Shreveport?” Olivia asked.
“Well, maybe she didn’t ask to be transferred,” Sarah proposed. “Maybe she was sent here for a special purpose. You never know, she was with the government when she first got here. She went to work for a private company after she had been here awhile, I think.”
“What reason could even the government have for sending someone to a place like Tanglewield? Ha, you don’t think we have a link to the mafia in the commissioner’s office, do you? Or maybe some big money laundering thing going on,” Olivia laughed. “That’s it; I’ll bet there’s a lot of money floating around in this town that’s coming in from Shreveport. Why, we could be the biggest little money laundering capital of Louisiana.”
“Well, stranger things have happened, but no, I don’t think it’s anything like that. I did wonder if there was any special reason for her coming here rather than staying in the city. You know most people don’t come here unless they want to retire, or they’re here because they were born here and just never left. After all, this isn’t exactly a booming metropolis, you know,” Sarah said a little stiffly.
“Why don’t you ask Barbara?” Olivia suggested. “If anyone can find out what’s going on, it’ll be her. She’s always happy to get information out of Lyle when she can. Everyone should have an inside source like her.”
Barbara St John was married to the local sheriff, Lyle St John. If any of them ever had any questions pertaining to the law, we would go to her. She in turn would ask Lyle about it and when he had the time would get the information for whoever had requested it. That is to say, if it wasn’t something that would jeopardize his jo
b. There wasn’t much any of them could ask that would interfere with his job.
This was the first time they had ever wanted to find out about anything that had to do with a murder. In fact, Sarah couldn’t remember anything like this ever happening in the six years since she and Mike had retired here. The worse thing she would remember was a bank robbery gone wrong four years prior. The amateurs didn’t make it to the third cashier before the sheriff was standing behind them with his gun drawn.
Barbara played cards with several of the hikers on Thursday, but Sarah didn’t want to wait until then to talk to her. She told Olivia, “I’ll give her a call this morning. That way Barbara will have time to quiz Lyle about whatever is going on before the Thursday game.”
“She would have to find out without raising his suspicions. Naturally, she would be interested in a murder that had happened to someone who lived right there in the community, but still,” Sarah said, “Lyle would never tell her a thing if he thought for one minute she was going to tell us.”
Sarah would caution her to be careful how she questioned him.
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