LITMIR.BIZ

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driving through a time warp from 1950 to present day.

      I suppose the trade-off of not having a picture postcard town square was that North Dawkins had used the tax dollars that flowed in with its most recent growth boom to construct a modern county government complex. City hall, the sheriff’s department, the courthouse, and the library were all built around a central concrete courtyard with a huge fountain and curved benches. What would be shade trees in fifty years were now barely taller than me. I turned into the library parking lot and went to find Meeting Room B.

      Light and airy with soaring ceilings, the library had every up-to-the-minute detail—wireless Internet, a coffee cart, racks of books on tape, and self-checkout kiosks. Oh, and books. Sometimes I wondered if the books were getting lost in the shuffle of all the newfangled gadgets and gizmos. But it looked like the books themselves were pretty popular since the aisles were crowded with people browsing the titles, even on a Friday night.

      I found the meeting room in the back. It was crowded, too, with about thirty people pressed into the small room. I took a seat about halfway to the front. Nita Lockworth was at the front, setting up a map on an easel. A tall, solid man who was probably in his fifties stood near her, situating the feet of the easel so it didn’t wobble. He had a fair complexion and one of those awkward tufts of hair at the forehead and a thinning spot on the top of his head. And I thought I had bad hair days. At least I didn’t have to deal with bald spots and tufts of hair.

      There was something about the way Nita and the man moved, a sort of nonverbal communication, glances and gestures, that made me think they were married. He adjusted the map on the easel; then she patted his arm and nodded toward a stack of boxes lining the wall. He moved them to the table. If he was Nita’s husband, then he was the one Dorthea had said built homes. He certainly looked the part in his work boots, jeans, and slightly worn plaid shirt. The sunburn and creases on the back of his neck indicated he spent many of his hours in the sun.

      A young woman with short hair dressed in a white oxford shirt and black pants sat down beside me. She held an iced coffee in one hand and was sipping from it as she sent a text message. I went back to watching the room.

      More people flowed in, greeting each other. Most people made their way to the front and talked to Nita. One woman, a statuesque black woman in a lime-green shirt and brightly patterned pants, sailed into the room and broke through the crowd around Nita. The two women embraced.

      The woman beside me put her phone away and I heard her say something under her breath that sounded like “…the only one who really understands.”

      She noticed me glancing her way and said, “Sorry to be talking to myself. I didn’t realize I was doing that.” She pushed her frizzy mustard-colored hair behind her ear and said, “Seems I do that a lot, talk to myself, I mean. Hi.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Colleen Otway.”

      After I’d shaken her hand and introduced myself, she said, “Have you been here before? I don’t remember you, but then I’m terrible with faces. And names, too, actually.”

      “No, I haven’t been here before. I’m new. Well, fairly new. We moved to North Dawkins in January. I met Nita Lockworth the other day.” I’d been about to say, “after I discovered the bones in the old graveyard,” but I stopped myself in time. Better to just leave it at that, I decided.

      “Military?” Colleen asked, like it was an inevitable conclusion.

      “Yes. My husband is a pilot at Taylor. You don’t sound surprised.”

      “Practically everyone who lives here is connected with the base in some way. Even me, I teach seventh-grade science, but my dad’s a contractor at Taylor.”

      “It’s the most military community I’ve ever lived in, and that’s saying something because we’ve moved around a little bit.”

      We sat for a few moments in silence and watched more people enter the room; then Colleen tilted her head to the front of the room and said, “I worry about Mrs. Nita. Even though she hardly ever shows it, all of this has to be taking a toll on her and Mr. Gerald.”

      “Is that her husband?” I asked, looking at the man in the plaid shirt steadily moving boxes to the table.

      “Yes, that’s Jodi’s dad, Gerald,” Colleen said. “He’s a great big bear of a man. He used to scare me when I was a kid. He’s so tall and has such a deep, rough voice. It took me a while to figure out he’s actually a teddy bear.” The smile left her face when Gerald opened one of the boxes. You could see the familiar Find Jodi flyers stacked to the brim of the box.

      Colleen sighed. “With all this rain, so much is going to have to be redone. Any flyers that were out in the open aren’t readable now, even if they’re still there.” We both looked back at the two women at the front of the room. They’d stepped apart and Nita was running her fingertip gently below her eyes. The other woman handed her a tissue.

      Colleen said, “We’re going to have to blanket the whole town again. And last time it was kind of haphazard. Some parts of town had five flyers tacked to the same telephone pole, and other parts of town didn’t have anything. There were even letters to the editor in the paper complaining about litter.” Her tone turned indignant on the last word.

      “A system might help. If you divided the town into sections, then assigned different people to each section, you could cover the whole town pretty quickly. Another option might be to only focus on businesses. If you posted the flyers in the windows of businesses, you wouldn’t have to worry about the rain anymore.”

      “That’s a great idea. You should mention it during the meeting.” Colleen’s gaze drifted around the room and she shook her head. “I can’t believe we’re still doing this. It’s been almost a year. I know the first anniversary will be a good way to get her name back in the news, but it’s so discouraging. I can’t believe she’s been gone this long.”

      “So you knew Jodi?”

      She grinned. “Yeah. You could say that. She’s been my best friend since she rescued me in fifth grade from the snotty girls.” She gave a mock shudder. “Fifth grade was awful, so cliquey, you know, and I was the new kid, which made everything ten times worse. My dad had just gotten the job at Taylor, so there I was—the geeky, short kid with the frizzy hair. At the end of my first day at school, Jodi caught up with me and asked me if I wanted to go to the mall with her that weekend. We got our ears pierced. BFF ever since.”

      I had to smile at the acronym for “best friends forever.” Funny how acronyms were becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. I was used to deciphering them when it came to Mitch’s job—the military had an acronym for everything—but now with text messaging and e-mail shorthand we had more acronyms in our conversations than ever.

      “She sounds like she was a really nice person.”

      “She is,” Colleen replied with a slight emphasis on the present tense.

      “My neighbor, Dorthea, knew her and said she was very athletic, that she worked with the youth center on base.”

      “Yes, we made quite a pair back in school. I’m a klutz. Zero athletic ability, but Jodi—she can do anything she tries.”

      It struck me as a bit odd that Colleen talked about Jodi in the present tense, since the possibility was very high that I’d found Jodi’s remains just a few days earlier. Surely, Colleen knew about that? Remembering the sight of the bones, I felt a shiver creep down my spine. It sounded like Jodi was a nice, kind person. Why did she go missing and, possibly, end up in an abandoned graveyard?

      “You know, normally she’s the type of person you’d hate, or at least be inclined to be jealous of,” Colleen continued. “She’s beautiful and smart and talented. And it’s not just sports she’s good at. She’s an excellent writer. She was working as a part-time reporter for the North Dawkins Standard and even as a stringer for the AJC.”

      “That’s an interesting combination,” I said.

      “When we were kids

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