She pulled out a legal pad and the Haverstan file from her briefcase, uncapped a black pen and drew a vertical line down the center of a page from the pad. In an organized fashion, she listed what she knew about Haverstan on one side of the paper. The list was regrettably short. On the other side, she wrote a much longer list of questions she still needed to answer, most notably, who was behind Haverstan and were they the ones who had drugged her last night. At that, her pen stilled. Until she got back home, there wasn't much she could do. Unless…
Digging her phone out of her briefcase, she ignored the unease swirling around in her stomach and punched in the number she'd first memorized in sixth grade. This would not be a comfortable conversation, but there were only a handful of people in Dry Creek, Nebraska, who knew where most, if not all, the bodies were buried.
“Layton residence.”
“Hi, Mrs. Layton, it's Beth.”
“So Hank tells me you're not my daughter-in-law,” Hank's mother said without preamble. “What kind of foolishness have you two been up to? Imagine if the Junior Leaguers got ahold of this information. It would be all of town in an hour flat.”
Yep. This was going as expected, but if she'd learned anything growing up as Claire's best friend, it was the best way to deal with Glenda Layton was to be blunt. “Nothing. It was just a mix-up. No wedding. No divorce. No nothing.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Translation: You're full of it.
“Speaking of gossip—”
“Gossip? I've never gossiped a day in my life.”
Beth shook her head. Glenda could easily operate a clandestine intelligence-gathering operation in her sleep. “You're right, I misspoke. I'm trying to get some information about a company called Haverstan, they've been buying up the land around my grandparents’ place.”
“Interesting. I haven't heard that name in forever and a day.”
“You've heard of them?”
“Sure.” Her strong voice turned wistful. “When I was growing up, there were Haverstans all over Dry Creek County. Cecil Haverstan, he was the cute one, died in Vietnam. Two of the cousins died of fever when we were in grammar school. Most everybody else scattered to the four winds in the seventies.”
“So no one's left?” So much for old-school intel.
“Let me think…Cecil's cousin, Robert Reynolds, died a few years back, so that leaves only Sarah Jane Hunihan.”
Beth straightened and glanced up at the door Sarah Jane had walked out of minutes ago. “What?”
“Oh yeah, she's a Haverstan on her grandmother's side. You'd never know it to look at her now, but that one was a hellion in her younger days. Had boys from six counties mooning after her, but she ignored them all. That girl had her eyes on a bigger prize than a bunch of cowhicks.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, I never really paid attention to the talk. You know what Dry Creek is like now; imagine how bad the gossip was before reality TV and the Internet.”
Beth waited, certain Glenda wouldn't be able to help herself from spilling the beans.
“Well, I can tell you this much. Sarah Jane had her eyes on moving into the big houses in the Big Horn Hills. She had a plan, I don't know what it was but that girl changed herself—from the shoes on her feet to her big blonde hair—into the spitting image of a country club wife, just without the husband. Then one day she chopped off her hair, bought the place near your grandparents and became the scrapbooking fiend she is today.”
“What happened?”
“I have no earthly idea, but I think the question you need to answer is who happened. Not that I would know, because I don't gossip.”
In a knee-jerk reaction to Glenda’s proclamation, Beth rolled her eyes.
“Wow.” Who would have ever thought? Could Sarah Jane be the one behind Haverstan, the threats and the drugging? Improbable didn't even begin to describe her level of doubt, but she couldn't shake a sinking feeling that the monster behind everything carried a plaid tote bag filled with stamps and scrapbooking pages.
“People your age never seem to realize that us old folks had lives before you came along, and continue to even after you're here.”
Mind spinning, Beth took a sip of lukewarm coffee. “Well, thanks for the background, Mrs. Layton. I’d better go now—”
“Oh no you don't. I want to know what's going on with you and Hank.”
Damn. Glenda wasn't about to let her get off easy. The problem was, Beth couldn't even explain to herself the two-steps-forward-and-three-steps-back relationship she had with Hank. “I wish I knew.”
“Well, you'd better figure it out soon. That boy's been making a public spectacle of himself chasing after you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.” Her voice softened. “I love you like my own daughter, Beth, but you need to either take him up on his offer or put him out of his misery because I want some grandbabies before I'm too old to spoil them properly.”