Page 72 of Half Baked

She shot him a reproving look. “You’re not goin’ in their house, are you?”

“No, I just want to compare it to a key Maddie found.”

Relief swept over her face. “Oh, thank goodness. Let me get it.” She walked over to a drawer in her kitchen and pulled out a key while Noah pulled a folded evidence bag out of his pocket.

Mrs. Lebowski gave him an odd look as he unfolded the bag, then took the silver key from her and placed it side by side with the gold key in the bag.

He shook his head and looked up at me. “They don’t match.”

Which meant it was one more mystery for us to keep poking at, one more mystery that might go unsolved.

“Thank you,” Noah said, returning it to the older woman. “That was very helpful.”

Mrs. Lebowski looked worried, probably because the word “evidence” was on the bag, clear as day, but she kept her concerns to herself as we walked out the door.

We went outside, and when we reached the sidewalk, Noah asked, “Do you want to go to the other neighbor’s house?”

I shook my head. “No, Mom was much closer to Mrs. Lebowski. I doubt they know anything she doesn’t.”

“If you change your mind, we can always come back.” He held out his hand. “Let me drive. You’ve had a shock, and you need to be able to sort through it all.”

I didn’t argue; I pulled the keys out of my jacket pocket and handed them to him.

He turned on the car once we were inside but didn’t pull away from the curb. “I texted Lance to ask him to look into a few things she mentioned. One, her friend Annemarie. If she worked at the high school, we should be able to get her last name fairly easily. Two, it’s a long shot, but I’m having him search for arrests for men named Gordy anywhere from thirty to eighteen years ago.”

I nodded, still nearly frozen in shock.

“And lastly, this morning I asked him to look for the police report for when you were found on Mrs. Lebowski’s porch. He hasn’t sent it yet, so I reminded him to pull it up.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice barely audible. “Good idea.”

“It will probably take him a bit to get back to me, but we can look into Annemarie ourselves. We can either go to the high school and ask for the records or go to the library and look up the yearbooks.” He paused. “We could ask Dawn, but she’s in school, so she likely won’t see our message until it lets out for the day.”

“Library,” I said. “They’ll want to know why we’re asking at the school, and I don’t want to explain it.”

“Good point.”

“What about Bergan?” I asked, turning to face him. “Should we go see him again? He must have known about the connection to Mad Hatter’s if he wrote ‘white rabbit’ on the box.”

Noah’s lips pursed as he considered it for a moment. “Let’s look at some different angles before we question him again. If we find more things he kept from us, we can use it to our advantage to try to coerce him to talk.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, still numb. “Okay.”

He hesitated, then said, “I know you’re feeling unmoored right now, but she’s still the mom you knew. She just had layers you didn’t know about.”

“Yeah, I know. It just feels weird.” I searched for the right words. “Like I remember a lie.”

“Not a lie, Maddie. Just part of her life. The part she kept to herself.” His jaw flexed. “Parents always keep things from their children, and it sounds like she did it to protect you, not because she wanted power over you.”

“It still feels like a lie.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he drove to the library, and we both sat in silence. I was thinking about my mother, reexamining my memories in light of this new information, looking for any clues I might have missed. Sure, I’d been living in my own world of teen angst, but I still couldn’t believe I’d missed the signs that my mother was in love. And involved with a thug, as Mrs. Lebowski had called him. Had he been mixed up in the Brawlers? Had their group even existed back then?

I glanced over at Noah, who seemed lost in his own thoughts. He caught my gaze and gave me a soft smile as he reached over and placed a hand on my leg.

While I’d been prepared to do this on my own if necessary, I was glad he was with me, keeping me anchored. I wanted to do the same for him if he’d let me.

He parked outside the library, and we went in. Noah asked the librarian at the counter for the location of the high school yearbooks, and we headed in the direction she pointed.

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