“Well, I hope not. I always kept an eye out for her, you see. Sometimes I thought I heard noises in her backyard when she wasn’t around. I’d poke my head out the window and have a look, but I never saw anything. Probably just a cat.”
“I see.”
She raised her brows, her gaze still focused on Celeste’s house. “Have you checked inside her place? If someone was stalking her, maybe they got in at some stage and left some DNA behind, or something like that?”
I nodded. I’d received permission from the landlord to check out the house a few weeks ago, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. A bit messy, perhaps, but that wasn’t particularly strange. Certainly nothing to suggest any sort of break-in close to Celeste’s disappearance, and the only stray hairs and prints came from either Celeste herself or Samara. “Yes. No leads there. Can you think of anything else?”
Cora looked to the left, her thin eyebrows furrowed. “No. I never saw anyone at her house. Unless….” She trailed off, and I waved a hand to prompt her to keep going. “I did see a strange car parked around the corner a few times over the last couple of years, when I went for my evening walks. Not right across from Celeste’s block, but up the road a bit, by one of the empty lots.”
“What made you notice this car?”
“Well, I’ve lived here a long time. I know some people think I’m a nosy old biddy, but I like to know what’s going on. So I’ve gotten used to the general comings and goings around here. I know what cars belong to which people, and I notice when things are different. This car… it was only here every few months, so it didn’t belong to someone who lives here, and to be quite frank, it was too nice for the neighborhood. Most folks around here don’t bother driving anything quite that nice, because they’d just be asking to get it stolen. Shame, but it’s true. Although I will say, the area has picked up a bit recently. It’s getting better.”
“But you still found this car to be out of place?”
She nodded. “Yes. And it isn’t just that it didn’t belong… it was always parked in that spot when Celeste was out on a night shift or studying late at college. I suppose I always thought it was slightly odd, but I didn’t make that connection until just now, when you said she may have had a stalker. But now I wonder if maybe the person who drove it knew when she would be out, and came over here to sneak inside and go through her things while she wasn’t around.” She shuddered and pulled her black woolen scarf tighter around her neck. “I suppose it could all just be a coincidence. Could’ve been someone visiting another person in the neighborhood, which is what I thought back then.”
I pulled out a notebook and a pen. “It could be nothing, but it could also be something. So anything you can remember would be very helpful. Make, model, color. Any other details.”
She scrunched up her face in thought. “Silver Mercedes. New-looking. Not sure on the exact model.”
“Anything else?”
“I remember part of the plate.”
“Yes?” My pulse picked up. If I was religious, this would be the time I got down on my knees and said a prayer to every god in history: please, just give me this one lead.
Cora nodded. “Not the letters, but the numbers. 3941. It always stuck out like a sore thumb to me, because that same number combination was my Frank’s birthday. March 9th, 1941.”
“Frank was your husband?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “He’s been gone a while now. But yes, I remember that plate number clearly, all because of his birthday.”
I jotted down the number. “Thank you, Ms. Rossi. You’ve been very helpful.”
She waved her hand. “Oh, no, I didn’t even remember the whole registration.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry, even partial license plates can help. Really, they can.”
She gave me a sad smile of her own. “You think it could help to find Celeste?”
“I hope so,” I said firmly. “I really hope so.”