Ozarks Missing Person, page 4
Kelli Simon returned a few minutes later with an enormous paper cup in hand. She settled into the seat across from Grace and clasped the coffee between her fingers like she needed it to warm them despite temperatures already inching into the nineties.
Grace made note of the young woman’s defensive posture and smiled as warmly as she could. “Thank you for seeing me today.”
“You’re welcome. I took my lunch early,” she explained, glancing over her shoulder at the spa.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Grace assured her, slanting a glance at the other woman’s grip on the cup. “I’m only going to ask a few questions.”
“Sorry.” The apology seemed to be her usual opening gambit to any conversation, but she released her stranglehold on the cup. “They keep it freezing in the spa, and my hands are always wet. It can be hard to get them warm.”
“Ah, I see.” Grace nodded and offered another encouraging smile. “I totally understand. I’m often one of the only women in whatever office I’m working in, and the men tend to set the thermostat to meat-locker level. I keep a heater under my desk, and I’ve been known to run it all summer long.”
Her confession seemed to help the younger woman relax. Lifting the cup, she took a quick sip, then placed it back on the filigreed metal table with exaggerated care.
“I still haven’t heard anything from her,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Grace responded. She clicked open her pen and made a note on the pad. Mallory Murray still missing as of Tuesday 11:24 a.m. “No contact from anyone looking for her or asking about her?”
The other woman shook her head. “We didn’t have friends in common. I’m not sure anyone she knows would have my number.” She shrugged. “I did go through some of her things,” she offered hesitantly. “In her room.”
Intrigued, Grace leaned in. “Oh?”
She let the single syllable hang out there between them, knowing the other woman would feel compelled to fill the silence.
“Yeah. I didn’t find a whole lot, but I can tell you her brother’s name is definitely Matthew. I found some paperwork that had both of their names on it.”
Grace nodded but didn’t offer up the fact she had already tracked down Matthew Murray. “What kind of paperwork?”
Kelli shrugged. “Legal-looking stuff? I think it had something to do with the sale of a house. Maybe their parents’ house?” She opened her hands in a gesture to show she was guessing. “I don’t know. I’m no expert.”
“How long have you and Mallory been roommates?”
“About three months?” Again, she phrased her statement like a question. Grace wouldn’t be able to refute any fact she put out there; she simply nodded and made note of it.
“And you guys met through...”
“A roommate service,” Kelli answered, looking slightly abashed. “You know, online?”
Her pitch climbed again, and Grace wondered if the girl ever spoke in anything but interrogatories. “What kind of information did you exchange prior to deciding to sublet to her?”
“You know, the usual. Where she had a job, where she lived, if she had any problems with other roommates, if she smoked.” She threw the last one out there as if this line of inquiry should be obvious to anyone.
“None of her answers raised any red flags? You said she’d been dodgy on paying some of the bills?”
Kelli nodded but shifted it into another shake of her head. “Not at first, but yeah. It was always something like she was in between paychecks or her tips weren’t as good on a Saturday as she thought they would be. Usually, she would only need me to float her for a day or two,” she explained. “But she always paid...eventually,” she was quick to add.
Grace got the distinct impression Kelli Simon thought if she said anything too negative about her relationship with Mallory Murray, or showed any discord between them, it might make her a suspect. Hoping to build rapport, she set her pen down and nodded as she leaned in.
“I had a roommate like her in college,” Grace informed her. “It’s never their fault, but they can never get it together. That type of thing?” She let her voice rise on the last part, imitating Kelli’s speech pattern in the hopes of ingratiating herself to the young woman.
“Exactly,” Kelli responded immediately, sitting up straighter.
Grace smiled, pleased her ploy had worked. “I think we’ve all been there.” She scribbled the words late paying bills on her notepad. “You said she might be seeing someone. When you looked through her stuff, did you find anything more about this guy she was seeing?”
Kelli bit her bottom lip, clearly wrestling with a decision. Sensing the other woman’s desire to spill, Grace pressed gently.
“Anything at all.”
“I cleaned the apartment the other night,” the younger woman began. “I usually do on Sundays. I like to start the week fresh, you know?”
Grace thought of her own somewhat haphazard housekeeping. “Yeah, totally.” When Kelli hesitated again, she pushed harder but focused her gaze on her notepad. She didn’t want to scare the girl off. “Did you find something? Maybe something related to this mystery guy?”
“Well...” She drew on her poor abused lip again, then blurted, “I found a pregnancy test.”
Grace’s head popped up. “A pregnancy test? A used one?” This case might’ve been a whole lot more involved than what she had initially believed.
Kelli nodded but did not speak.
“And did it have a result?”
“Positive,” the other woman whispered.
“Was it only the one test?” Grace asked, her gaze locked on the younger woman. “I believe some people take multiples to be sure.”
“The box in the trash said there were two tests, but I only saw one of the stick things in it,” Kelli asserted.
Grace let the information sink in. If the second test had come back positive as well, it was entirely possible Mallory had held on to it to show the father of her baby. And if the father of her baby was not the kind of man to be excited about such news, things may not have gone the way Mallory had planned.
“But you didn’t find anything in her room? Nothing identifying the guy she was seeing by name? No cards or notes or anything?”
Kelli shook her head. “Nothing.”
Grace made a note in her book. Pregnant? She underlined the word twice, drew arrows stemming from it. At the end of one she wrote the word yes, and at the end of the other she wrote the word no.
“Did she talk to you about this guy? Has she posted anything about him on social media? Given any indication as to whether he might be serious about her?” she hedged.
“No.” Kelli wagged her head hard. “Like I said, we weren’t friends at all. I sent her a request on PicturSpam not long after she moved in, but she never confirmed the follow. I got embarrassed and deleted the request.”
Grace nodded. Social media was a minefield on multiple levels, but often in her line of work it turned out to be a gold mine.
“Okay. Well, I was able to locate her brother yesterday and reached out to him. He hasn’t heard from her, either, but like you said, he told me they weren’t close. I’m heading over to Bentonville when I leave here to talk to him, but I’m wondering if you would mind if I took a quick peek at your apartment.”
Kelli looked taken aback by the suggestion. “My apartment?”
Grace raised one eyebrow. “Yes.” She closed her notebook. “I realize you’re on your lunch hour, but I would appreciate it if I could at least see her room. Maybe you could show me the papers and box you found? I assume you kept them.”
Kelli nodded. “Yes, I did. I didn’t know... I wasn’t sure if I should tell you. Heck, for all I know, it might not have even been Mallory’s. She could have had a friend over or something.”
Grace forced herself to smile and nod. Not a reasonable scenario, but she didn’t want to slow her down. “Right, we don’t know for certain.”
Kelli inclined her head. “Okay, but I’ll have to make it quick.” She checked her phone. “I have an appointment booked in at one, and I need to get back to set up.”
The metal feet of her chair scraped the sidewalk as Grace rose. “Do you live far from here? I can drive if you’d like,” she offered.
Her search on the address Kelli had given showed they lived close to the spa. Still, she didn’t want Kelli to feel like she was the one under investigation.
Kelli shook her head. “No need. It’s only a few blocks. We could probably walk there faster.”
Grace allowed Kelli to lead the way. “Must be nice to live this close to your work,” she said as they turned onto a side street. Hoping to find a common thread with the now-skittish young woman, she offered some information of her own. “I have about a ten-minute drive every day, but some mornings it feels like thirty.”
“We don’t open until after ten, so most people are already at work,” Kelli said. “But yeah, I like being able to walk to work. I used to go home for lunch just to get out for a while,” she said with a shrug. She cast a shy glance at Grace. “Lately, I’ve been taking my lunch to work more often. It’s kind of awkward to come home while she’s there.”
“Mallory didn’t work during the day?”
“Her schedule changed a lot,” Kelli replied. “Mostly evenings, but on weekends she’d pull a double because she liked the tips.”
Grace matched her stride to Kelli’s hurried pace. “And when you said it was awkward...?”
Again, the girl let one shoulder rise and fall. “She was there,” she said, feigning nonchalance. “I, uh, I like to eat my lunch alone. I have to make conversation with clients all day long, and lunch is about the only hour I get to, you know, just be.”
“I see.”
Grace hummed. She did understand the younger woman’s need to have space to breathe during the workday. She often felt the same herself. It wasn’t easy being the only woman on her shift. There were days the conversations in the break room made her uncomfortable. Not because the guys said anything overt. They were all too well trained to go too far, but because she knew she didn’t quite fit in. Even if she could talk baseball, football or basketball with most any man, she was always the token female in the conversation.
“Well, I appreciate you meeting with me today. And for caring enough to make the call to the police to start. It’s not easy trying to piece together what you know about a person you barely know. I spend my days doing it, and it can be frustrating.”
Kelli pointed to a brick duplex on the right. “This is me. Us, I mean,” she corrected quickly. “And, yeah, it’s kind of weird. I guess I thought maybe we’d become friends?”
Again she finished on a high note. Grace got the feeling she was asking if her expectations had been unrealistic.
“I get you.”
“Anyway, early on, Mallory made it pretty clear she had her own thing going on and didn’t want to get too friendly.”
“What do you mean by her own thing?” Grace asked as the other woman unlocked the door to the duplex.
Kelli led the way into an apartment Grace would have said was decorated in early-twenty-something chic. The furniture was mainly comprised of castoffs or hand-me-downs, but dressed up with colorful paint or, in the case of the sofa, an artfully tucked slipcover.
“She preferred to hang out with the people she knew from work, I guess,” Kelli said, sounding dejected. “Most of the people I work with are married or engaged. I’m not seeing anyone right now, and I thought she wasn’t, so I figured we could hang out or go out together, but Mallory wasn’t interested.”
Grace bobbed her head in understanding. “Too bad. You seem pretty nice. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was probably her loss.”
Kelli clutched her coffee cup to her chest. “Yeah, her loss.” She nodded to the narrow hallway off the living room. “Mallory’s room is the one at the end of the hall, right across from the bathroom. There’s not much in there, but I guess it won’t hurt for you to take a look around.”
“I did get her brother’s permission, if that makes you feel better.”
She stepped back and gestured for Grace to proceed. “I put the box with the test in the medicine cabinet. I figured if she showed up, I’d toss it in the trash and she’d never know I saw it.”
Grace headed down the hall. “Thank you, but I’ll want to take it with me in case we can get any forensic information from it.”
Behind her, Kelli gasped. “I didn’t think about fingerprints. I didn’t touch it, I swear. I mean, I touched the box, but not the test thingy. I used a tissue,” she amended as she hurried after Grace. “I mean, she, uh, urinated on it, and I didn’t want to touch anything, you know, kinda gross,” she babbled.
“It’s okay,” Grace assured her as she stepped into the bathroom.
She opened the medicine cabinet and eyeballed the box. Sure enough, it claimed to include two tests. Rather than reaching for it, she turned to Kelli, who hovered in the doorway clutching her coffee cup.
“Do you have a plastic bag handy? Something with a zip top? Like a freezer bag?” She had a couple of evidence bags in her purse, but asking Kelli to find one would send the young woman to the kitchen and give her a moment alone in the space.
“Be right back,” Kelli promised.
Grace leaned in and caught the open end of the box with her pen. Turning it in her direction, she could see Kelli hadn’t been wrong. There was only one plastic stick in the box. She tipped the box over and peered down at the window on the wand. Plus sign.
A montage of different scenarios played in her head.
Mallory was unhappy about the pregnancy and had gone off to determine if she should go through with it?
The boyfriend was happy about the possibility of a baby and they’d hopped a plane to Vegas?
The boyfriend was unhappy and Mallory was now consigned to parts unknown?
The younger woman returned holding a gallon bag with a slider top, and Grace jerked herself out of her reverie.
“Perfect. Thank you,” Grace said as she used the pen to lift the box from the cabinet and secure it in the bag. Then she dropped the whole thing into her tote and craned her neck to peer over Kelli’s shoulder toward the room across the hall.
“Her room?”
“Oh.” The young woman moved to let Grace pass. “Yes, this is hers. I kept the master because I pay more in rent, and—”
Not needing to hear more, Grace held up a hand as she passed. “I won’t be long, I promise.”
Kelli hadn’t exaggerated. Mallory’s room contained a mattress and box spring on the floor. The dresser and nightstand appeared to come from one of those kits you have to put together with a wrench that doesn’t fit anything else in the world. The rest of the space was filled with clothes.
Tons of clothes.
Stepping over the mounds on the floor and ignoring the cascade of apparel spilling out of the closet, Grace immediately went to the nightstand and opened the drawer. There she found the usual detritus—hair elastics, bills, receipts, a couple of condoms in wrappers, a paperback romance novel and assorted lip balms. But beneath it all there appeared to be a folder embossed with the logo of a title company.
She pulled it from under the rest. “Was this the paperwork you found?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Kelli.
The younger woman blushed, obviously embarrassed to have been caught trying to cover up her snooping. “Yes.”
Grace opened the folder and scanned the documents. They did indeed reference Mallory and Matthew Murray as the owners of a piece of property near Garfield, Arkansas.
“You’re right. Looks like they sold some property they owned jointly.”
Kelli nodded. “She told me she’d grown up over near Beaver Lake. I didn’t put it together until I saw that folder.”
“Put what together?” Grace asked, curious.
“You know, living here in Eureka but working at a place like Stubby’s. She’s into the whole lake life thing. Likes hanging out with the people who come up for the weekends.”
“Like guys named Chad or Troy?”
Kelli wrinkled her nose. “Well, yeah. I mean, they sound like rich-person names, don’t they?” Kelli gave a snort of derision. “All the guys I knew growing up were named Junior or Bubba or something like that.”
Kelli had a point. Her mind flashed to Treveon, and she couldn’t help marveling at how much weight something as seemingly innocuous as a name could have.
“You’re right. Good thinking. I’ll ask her brother if he has any ideas.”
She did another circuit of the room, peering into the cluttered closet, then returning to the nightstand drawer and checking through it again. Convinced she had the most pertinent of clues stashed in a plastic bag, she smiled at Kelli Simon as she nodded her satisfaction with her search. “I’ll get out of your hair and let you get back to work.”
The younger woman exhaled, the tension in her stance visibly dissipating for a moment. She glanced at the fitness tracker strapped to her wrist and snapped to attention again. “Oh. Yeah, I’m sorry. I really do have to get back,” she said, eyes widening.
Grace gave the apartment’s common areas another once-over as they passed through. None of the chaos from Mallory’s room spilled over. Either Kelli Simon had done an excellent job of her Sunday cleaning or her roommate rarely availed herself to the rest of the space.
As they exited the duplex and Kelli turned to lock the door, Grace gave the other woman a more deliberate inspection. Kelli was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way. She possessed none of the languid beauty Mallory Murray projected in the photos emailed to her. The two seemed an odd pairing. Then again, Kelli herself had admitted they weren’t actually friends.
