LITMIR.BIZ

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a huge house to live in rent free. What’s to run away from? And it’s not like she had anyone to run to either. No boyfriend in the picture, according to Dorthea.”

      Mitch transferred the last patch, then balled up his dirty flight suit. “Maybe everything wasn’t so great in her life. Appearances can be deceiving. You know that, better than most people,” he said with a smile as he dumped his flight suit in the hamper.

      He was right. I’d run across people who gave one appearance to the world, but inside, they were completely different. I went back into the bathroom, pulled out moisturizer, and slathered it on my face. “You could be right, but I didn’t get the feeling that her parents were hiding anything and everyone seemed so genuinely upset that she’d disappeared. So if everything was fine in her life and she didn’t have a reason to leave, then that leaves the other option, someone either kidnapped her or killed her.”

      “Or both,” Mitch inserted, his voice floating out of the closet. He tossed his gym bag on the bed, and then his workout clothes landed by the bag.

      “But that doesn’t make sense either.” I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed. “No one disliked her. Apparently, she was a kind person. Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

      Mitch packed his gym bag and zipped it up. “There may not ever be an answer,” he said, his voice serious. “Her parents don’t think it was her remains in the cemetery?”

      I traced a finger along the stitching on the duvet. “I think they’re afraid that it is her, but they’re going ahead with their plans for a search, hoping that it’s not her.” I looked up. “If it is her, then why kill her and leave her so close to her house? Why not bury her miles away?”

      “I’m sure it’s not the easiest thing to move a dead body,” Mitch said. “The gravel path is fairly deserted and there’s not much activity.”

      I swallowed, thinking that if what Mitch was saying was true, then Jodi would probably have been killed close to that area. Maybe even in our house. I felt the hairs rise on my arms as I mentally ran through the rooms of the house; then I told myself to calm down. The police had been over this house, they’d searched here. If she’d died here they would have found evidence.

      I thought back to the path. It was usually pretty quiet. And the graveyard was abandoned. No one would be up there, looking around. Really, it was a brilliant solution to the question of where to dispose of a dead body. What better place was there than a grave in a forgotten cemetery?

      I nearly jumped off the bed when a knock sounded on our door. Even though I knew that knock, my heart was still fluttering when I opened it. Livvy stood there in her pajamas with her hair damp around her face. “I had a bad dream.”

      I picked her up and she wrapped her arms and legs around me as I carried her back to bed. “I’m sorry,” I said.

      I tucked her back in and smoothed down her hair. We said a prayer to chase the bad dream away and then I stroked her back until I felt her body relax and her breathing slow down. She’d wanted to sleep in her tiara and gloves, her party favors along with a huge bag of candy and a real china teacup. I’d managed to convince her to leave her tiara on her nightstand. Her gloves were spread out beside her bed on the floor and I carefully stepped over them before I walked down the hall to check on Nathan.

      Now, there was a boy who loved his sleep. Livvy hadn’t been a baby who liked to sleep, but Nathan was the opposite. He always settled down to sleep with hardly a whimper and I’d wondered if something was wrong in those first few weeks after he was born. It was just one of the first things that I discovered that was different about my two kids. I peered into his room and could barely make out the soft fuzz of his hair from the hall’s night-light. His tiny snore made me smile.

      I went into the kitchen and turned on the computer. I didn’t want to go to bed right away in case Livvy woke up again, and I had too many thoughts and questions in my mind to sleep right now.

      I went to the Web site for the North Dawkins Standard to do a search for articles by Jodi Lockworth. The page loaded with a headline that read REMAINS IDENTIFIED. I leaned forward and scanned the article.

      The remains of two bodies found in an open grave last week have been identified. Sources with the Dawkins County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that one body was that of Albert Clarence Chauncey, who died in 1919. The other remains are William James Nash. Nash, a resident of North Dawkins, has been missing since 1955.

      I’d been reading so fast to get to the names of the people that I had to go back and read the first lines of the story again. Then I leaned back in the chair. Two men? The bodies were two men? I couldn’t imagine how Nita felt about this news. I knew I’d been hoping the remains didn’t belong to Jodi because that would mean she was possibly still alive, but at the same time, the news would also mean that Nita and Gerald didn’t have any more answers this morning than they had before I’d stumbled across the open grave.

      I ran the name Nash through my mind, but I couldn’t come up with anyone I knew with that last name. Who was he? There hadn’t been anything in the news about him. There were two pictures with the story, one of a white man and another of a black man. Both were young, probably in their late teens or early twenties. The caption under the white man read Albert Clarence Chauncey. His dark hair was parted down the middle of his head and pressed flat. He wore a suit and tie and a serious expression. Even with the formal clothes and the solemn face, he looked so young. There seemed to be a tentativeness in his gaze.

      The name under the photo of the black man was William James Nash. He was also dressed in a suit and tie, but he was smiling, one arm flung out along the roof of an old car with wide white-sidewall tires and generous sloping curves along the wheel wells. I read the rest of the article. William Nash was born in North Dawkins in 1937. He lived with his widowed mother and worked in the paper factory. He disappeared in 1955 when he was eighteen years old. I scanned the article, then went back and studied the pictures again. He was last seen during his shift at the paper factory.

      I shook my head. I guess it had been a bit foolish to assume that Jodi was the only missing person in the history of Dawkins County.

      The article went on to describe Albert Chauncey’s short life. He was raised in North Dawkins and left in 1918 to fight in World War I. He contracted tuberculosis, was discharged, and returned home. He died a year later and was buried in the family cemetery. A firsthand account of his return and subsequent death could be found in his sister’s diary, which was located in the North Dawkins Museum.

      I frowned over the last paragraphs of the article. The sheriff urged people to remain calm while the Nash case was investigated. Why would the sheriff say that?

      I looked at the stack of flyers I’d picked up earlier with Jodi’s smiling face. She was still missing. The person everyone seemed to like and who didn’t have any serious troubles in her life. It didn’t fit. Since no one seemed to be the least bit upset with Jodi personally, maybe she made some enemies with her reporting. I typed her name in the paper’s search bar.

      The first articles that popped up in the search were the most recent ones and they weren’t articles she had written, but articles about her disappearance. I read through a few of them because I didn’t remember the news coverage. I’d been so busy with our move and taking care of a newborn that I hadn’t been paying attention.

      The stories covered the fact that Jodi was a hometown girl who ran the youth sports program at Taylor. They also mentioned she was employed part-time at the newspaper. One article under a picture of our house ringed in yellow crime scene tape focused on the neighbors and their reactions. Of course, everyone was shocked and worried. The official search had turned up nothing and after a few weeks the articles shifted focus to Jodi’s parents and the formation of the Find Jodi campaign.

      I ran another search, this time using the search terms “Jodi Lockworth” and “reporter” with an older date range, which brought up a list of stories with her name in the byline. I printed her articles and then went to the Web site for the Atlanta paper and did the same search. Only three articles came up and a quick scan of those showed

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