Page 25 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“Maybe. Maybe not. I got the impression she didn’t want to hireanyone. It was her sister-in-law who set up the appointment.”

“What did she want to hire you for?”

“Between you and me?”

“Of course.”

“Apparently, her mother left Sweet Briar after she graduated and never came back. Magnolia just found out that her mother owned land north of town. She wants to know why she left.”

“I take it her mother’s deceased?” he asked gingerly.

“If I remember right, her mother died of cancer about a week before that serial killer tortured Magnolia, when she was forced to kill her father.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That poor woman has been through hell and back. At least she doesn’t have to go through a trial.”

“Yeah. She’s been through trauma after trauma, and that stupid podcast can’t be helping. She looked like a walking ghost, Luke.” I took a breath. “In any case, I think she’s sick of secrets, and it’s just one more hanging over her head, you know?”

“Yeah. That’s why I hope she hires you. You understand her.”

“I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m going to hang out here at the office and go through potential clients for when we start filming in a few weeks.”

He laughed. “You liar. You’re going to start looking into Magnolia’s mother.”

I straightened my back. “Now, why would I go and do that when she hasn’t even hired me yet?”

“Because we both know she will, and you’ll get a head start. Besides,” he said in a teasing tone, “you can’t help yourself.”

“We’ll see,” I said, refusing to commit myself one way or the other. “But since my morning’s clear, it looks like I’m good for lunch.”

“How about we meet at my place?” he said.

My body flushed, and I was tempted, but I had something else in mind. “What do you say we meet at Maybelline’s? It’s a good place to ask some discreet questions.”

Releasing a chuckle, he said, “That’s my girl. Want me to stop by your office before we head over?”

“See you at noon.”

We hung up, and I sent Dixie a text, asking when she’d be back in Sweet Briar and telling her that we might have a potential client. She texted that she’d be in town between one and two, which meant she hadn’t left Atlanta yet, which worked out fine as there was no point in her getting back any earlier.

I’d only been half truthful when I’d told Luke I planned to go through the list of potential clients, because I planned to do it with Dixie. She’d started off as my assistant, but at my encouragement, she was working on becoming a PI too. After her arrest and incarceration as a teenager, coupled with the fact that she’d long thought she’d killed her parents and our grandfather, Dixie’s self-esteem had been pretty much nonexistent when I’d come back in April. She hadn’t considered herself qualified or capable of doing much with her life, and I was pleased she’d started to believe differently.

Instead of opening the list, I pulled up a contract template, inserting Belinda’s name and the rates, as well as a projected time I expected the investigation to take. Surely no more than five or six hours. Maybe even less. People liked to talk in this town, which made me think nothing nefarious had happened with Magnolia’s mother; otherwise people would be bringing up her name a half second after they mentioned Magnolia’s.

On second thought, the case might only take an hour or two. It just depended on who had the answers and how willing they were to spill.

But first I needed information about Magnolia’s mother. Maybelline, the owner of the café, had told me Magnolia’s maiden name when I’d first come back to town, but I’d been too irritated to pay attention. Which meant I was starting at square one.

The best place to start was the internet.

I typed inMagnolia Steele mother, and article after article about Magnolia’s ordeal popped up. Most of them only had a mention or two of her mother. After nearly an hour of reading, I had her mother’s name—Lila Steele. She’d been in her early sixties when she died from complications due to leukemia. She’d been the co-owner of Southern Belles Catering, based in Franklin, Tennessee, with a woman named Tilly Bartok. She’dmarried Brian Steele when she was twenty-three and had two children—Magnolia and her younger brother Roy Steele, who was married to Belinda. A quick search of Roy Steele told me he’d been a financial planner at his father’s firm, but it was now closed. Brian Steele’s original partner had been murdered the week before Brian was killed. I couldn’t find any information about what Roy was doing now, but a search of Belinda’s name showed she owned her own wedding planner shop and was in the process of divorcing Roy.

There had to be a story there…

But I reminded myself I wasn’t interested in any of that. I was looking for information on Lila Steele.

Unfortunately, most of the articles focused on Magnolia and her father, and the more I read, the more horrified I became. I could see why the media—and the public—was fascinated. Magnolia had run off after her own high school graduation, eventually performing on Broadway as part of the chorus and in secondary parts until she got her big break and her first lead role. Everyone knew how it ended—with Magnolia fighting another actress on stage and ultimately flashing the world, then going home to lick her wounds. But I hadn’t realized she’d run away because she’d been kidnapped by the serial killer—Tripp Tucker—and forced to watch him murder a woman only to be dropped—alive but traumatized and fearing for her life—in the woods behind her house. Her father had disappeared when she was fourteen, after embezzling millions of dollars and ostracizing the family from the community. Yet, her mother had carried on, running the catering company with her best friend.

I closed the tabs and sat staring at the screen. While part of me felt sorry for Magnolia, more of me was impressed by her. Instead of seeing her attitude and abrasiveness as insulting, I now saw it as strength. The world may have knocked her downover and over again, but she kept getting up and telling it to go to hell.

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