Page 73 of Half Baked

We searched for the year my mother was killed and looked through the staff, but we didn’t find an Anne, Annemarie, or a Marie in any of the photos.

Noah grabbed another yearbook from ten years earlier and flipped pages until he found the staff photos.

“Found her,” he said softly, then held the book toward me.

I instantly recognized Annemarie Bonay’s warm, smiling face. “That’s her,” I said, pointing to the image, surprised at the broken fragments of memories that popped up in my head. “I remember her coming to our house. She was fun, always laughing.”

“Let’s look at the yearbook from two years earlier and see if she has the same name. This could be her maiden or married name.”

“We don’t know that she got married,” I pointed out. “Only that she had a boyfriend.”

“True, but it will be easier to find her if we know her most recent name.”

I frowned. “Don’t you have databases to find that stuff out?”

“We do, but I’m on leave, and I can’t very well go looking people up.”

“Which is why you’re having Lance do it.”

“True, but he’s working his own cases, so we’re doing what we can without his help.”

We searched more yearbooks and discovered she used to be Annemarie Pope and later became Annemarie Bonay. As we continued searching chronologically through the years, we found her up until about five years before my mother’s death. She wasn’t in any yearbooks after.

“Time for some internet sleuthing,” Noah said after he’d taken photos of the yearbook pages. “We could go to my house, but we might as well take advantage of the Cockamamie library computers.”

We each sat at a screen and started looking up Annemarie—Noah doing an internet search while I looked for her on Facebook and Instagram. We both found hits within five minutes.

“She’s on Facebook,” I said. “And she’s living up in Galena. She’s married to Mel Bonay, and they have two kids—teenage boys.”

Noah lifted a brow. “That fits with what I found on the internet. She got married when you were seven, so a couple of years after, she and your mother stopped hanging out. Her husband has been arrested for several DUIs and a petty larceny, by the way. The last arrest, his third DUI, was three years ago.”

“Theydolive in Galena,” I said as though it explained his history with the law.

“True.” He looked at his screen. “Since Lance is tied up, I’m going to ask Neil to look up any other priors either of them might have.” He leaned over to take in my screen. “Does her profile happen to say where she works?”

“She’s a proud stay-at-home mom,” I said with a sly grin. “And she posted ten minutes ago she was spending the afternoon reading in front of her fireplace until her kids come home from school.”

“We could grab some lunch and head back up to Galena to see if she’s open to talking about your mom.”

I glanced at my phone. It was barely after noon. We had time to talk to her and perhaps chase a lead that she might give us before I took Noah to my house and then went back to work. “Let’s do it.”

ChapterTwenty

Maddie

Noah called in an order to the diner downtown, and we picked up our sandwiches and ate while we drove to Galena. We were five miles out of town when Lance called Noah back. He answered the call on speaker.

“Whatcha got for me, Lance?”

“Sorry. I’ve been busy with interrogations, so I don’t have much.”

“Anything you’ve got would be helpful.”

“I found the police report for when Maddie wandered to the neighbors’ as a kid. No charges were filed, and it was deemed an accident. I’ve sent you a copy of the report in an email.”

“Perfect. Thanks.”

“Neil dug into Melvin Bonay’s record. As you found out, he has three DUIs and a petty larceny charge. He stole some tools from a neighbor, and the neighbor pressed charges. He was fined and received six months’ probation. With the DUIs, he did six months in the county jail on the last stint and lost his license. He’s had other arrests, but those didn’t stick.”

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