CHAPTER 6
It seemed like every one of the gals from the group who had not been with them on Monday were gathered at their table wanting to know every bit of what the five other group members had seen. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t tell them much. All five thought it was a pretty good thing they didn’t know any more than they did. They were beginning to feel it would have been a lot better if they had just gone somewhere else that day.
Somehow, everyone made Sarah feel like she was holding something back. Again she just wished she had stayed at home and to hell with the fried fish. She could have fixed some Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and not have had to answer all these questions over and over again.
Olivia told them, “I’m just glad we’re not able to tell you firsthand about finding the body. It’s bad enough knowing poor Maggie was lying behind that rock all the while we were hanging out, eating and enjoying ourselves.” They repeated all they knew which was little to nothing.
Olivia had just started talking about the murder with someone for what she felt like was the tenth time. She stood up, told them about how they had started across the bridge and the rude guy had almost knocked the group down. She was going to tell hikers how she would have liked to trip the guy when it seemed to hit both of them at the same moment. Olivia and Sarah, thought collectively, “God, are we stupid or what?”
Why hadn’t any of them even thought of this before now? Just how dumb can you be?” It was like a light going off in both of their heads at the same time.
Olivia turned around and looked at Sarah, realizing she was thinking the same thing, but Sarah said it first, “I guess we had better let Sheriff St John know about the guy on the bridge. I just thought of him when you started talking about it.”
“You know I never gave it a second thought either just until now,” Clair Ann answered. “If I hadn’t turned around, he would have knocked me off the bridge. I don’t know how we could have gone this long without even remembering it.” Even with telling the story a dozen times this is the first time it had occurred to any of them that the man on the bridge might be involved in some way.
“I guess it was all of the excitement,” said Olivia. “Hearing the two of us I suddenly realized that neither one of us had thought about the bridge incident.”
“You’re right, I guess in all of the excitement, we just forgot about him. We were so happy it wasn’t one of us who found the body. We didn’t want to remember something that could involve us. I’ve read that you can block something out of your mind if you don’t want to remember it. I’ll bet that’s it. That’s the only explanation for none of us remembering the incident. Maybe it was something like that because it never once occurred to me until you started telling the girls about what happened on the trail. Then all of a sudden it was there, the guy on the bridge. I can’t believe we could forget something so important,” Sarah said.
“Well, we all forgot and it really could be nothing at all, you know. After all it is a public beach and that guy could have just been in a hurry to get somewhere,” Olivia said.
“That’s true. But we still have to tell the sheriff about it and let him decide if it’s important or not. If the guy hasn’t come forward himself the sheriff may ask us to give him a description. It just may be that we’re the only ones who saw him. We don’t know for sure if he did anything, but we don’t know for sure that he didn’t either,” Sarah said. “If you remember he was the only other person we saw at the pool that morning.” That caught their attention. Getting up from the table, she started looking around for Mike.
“I probably won’t be much help because I don’t know if I can remember what he looked like,” Clair Ann said. “In fact, if you stop to think about it, I really didn’t get any look at him. From where I was on the bridge and the way he went by me so fast, for all I know he could have been a woman. I wouldn’t have known it. When I saw him come running I turned around so he wouldn’t hit me and knock me down, but I can’t describe him physically.” Still, she got up too and waited to see what the others were going to do.
“Do you think they can hypnotize you like they do in the movies and bring it back to your mind?” Becky asked.
Becky was listening to everything that was being said. She had missed going yesterday and was in a tizzy about it. Now she hung on every word from the beginning to the end. Of course she was the one who came up with the idea of being hypnotized so they could all remember the runner on the bridge. Sarah knew it had been done in the movies and on T.V. But she was not really sure this was what they did in real life. Maybe the sheriff would be able to tell them.
“Well, you’ll have to go into Shreveport for sure. They won’t have anyone around Tanglewield who could do it,” Becky informed them. (She had knowledge about this)
”If you do have to get hypnotized, I want to know all about it. You have to promise to tell me. It’s bad enough I didn’t get to go Monday. So, I want to know everything you have to do if they tell you that you have to go into the city. OK?” Becky insisted.
“OK, Becky.” They all answered in unison. No one actually gave it any thought.
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What’s next?
The girls are undecided about what to do…
They discuss going to the Sheriff, but remembered the last time they went to Sheriff St. John about the ‘Roofing Scam’, and how the sheriff reacted… While they didn’t feel they should be silent about their encounter with the running stranger at the pool, they did not have much else to go on, other than their intuition.
They had more questions than they had answers…
• Why was he in such a rush to get out of there?
• Did he have anything to do with the murder?
• Had he seen the body and just didn’t want to get involved?
• Did he see anything strange and was that why he was running?
Are the girls going to keep silent or are they going to get more deeply involved in “The Murder at The Grotto”?
Stay Tuned…
Shirley Quinlan…
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