Page 20 of The Witch's Orchard
Mandy shakes her head.
“She’d been just about to start kindergarten, though she was alreadyreading a bit. I’d been helping her with books I got from the library. I’d taken her up to the school, got her registered; I was so excited for her. And a little worried too. She was small for her age. Almost six when she was taken.”
“What happened between the time Jessica was taken and the time Olivia Jacobs went missing?” I ask. “I heard something about a donation fund.”
Mandy’s cheeks redden and her mouth pulls together in an angry frown before she lets out a puff of air and says, “Tommy started an online donation fund basically the day after Jessica was taken, which I didn’t even know about. He said later on, when I asked him about it, that we couldn’t trust the cops and that’s why he did it. But I never saw a single cent of that money and we never did hire a PI. Still, I can’t say he was wrong about trusting the cops. I was shouting the whole time that they should’ve called in the FBI right from the start but nobody listened to me. Not until after Olivia Jacobs was taken did anyone pay a single bit of attention. Before that, plenty of people were going around town whispering about how Tommy and Dwight—that’s Tommy’s cousin—had cooked up the whole thing to get rich and betting Jessica would turn up in our backyard like nothing ever happened.”
“Were they questioned?”
“Of course,” she says. “But it didn’t come to anything. And then Olivia Jacobs went missing and suddenly everyone realized it was real. That someone was taking our babies.”
“Why did they suspect Dwight?” I ask.
“I just told you—”
“Right, but why him specifically? Were he and Tommy close?”
She hesitates. I wait. Outside, the rain lets up a little.
Eventually, she says, “Well, it turned out the donation campaignhadbeen Dwight’s idea, at least according to Tommy. And, well, he’d done something similar before. Kidnapped his own little girl.”
“Kidnapped her?”
“Well, you know what I mean, not like arealkidnapping. Not likewhat happened to Jessica. The common kind. Dwight and his wife split up. She took the daughter, moved back in with her mama, and got a lawyer to handle the court stuff. Then, one day he picked the girl up from school to stay with him for the weekend and he just didn’t bother bringing her back. His ex-wife called him and asked what was going on and he said if she wanted her daughter back, she’d have to takehimback too. Well, she wasn’t having it for a second. She went straight to the sheriff’s office, and they went over there and explained he’d have to go sit in jail if he didn’t hand over the kid.”
I nod. Mandy is right. This kind of kidnapping is depressingly common. The sort of thing ex-spouses do to hurt each other when, mostly, it only really hurts the kid.
“So, what happened?” I ask.
“Well, she got her daughter back, took full custody, and moved out of state. She lives all the way up in New Hampshire, if you can believe it. But this was years ago. Dwight is older than Tommy by seven years. He’d already gone and got remarried to Elaine Davis by the time Jessica was taken. But everyone knew about what happened. Still remembered it. You can’t keep something like that quiet in a town this small and nobody was shy with their accusations.”
She sighs, looks back at the photo of Jessica, and says, “Then, later on, I remember Dwight had something to do with the last kidnapping.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something about the day Molly was taken,” Mandy says. “He was at the Andrewses’ farm that day fixing a pipe. When they went around interviewing people, I remember Elaine being worried they’d try to pin it on him and the rumors would start all over again, but it never came to that. All Dwight had to do was give a statement. He’d been called over there to fix a pipe and that was the end of it. But after that, I think they’d sort of had their fill of small-town gossip. They moved to Charlotte not long after.”
“Can I get their number?” I ask. I’m not sure what help they can be, but if Dwight was a witness on the day Molly was kidnapped, I can’t ignore it.
“He’s not there anymore,” Mandy says. “He and Elaine moved back.”
“When?”
“Oh, a couple months ago, I guess. Beginning of summer.”
“Why’d they come back?”
“Elaine’s mama passed. Left them the house. I guess they figured taking over her old place was cheaper than paying city rent.”
“You don’t talk to them?”
“I don’t hardly have the time. Besides, gone this long, I barely know them. They come into Ellerd’s—the diner where I work—but I don’t much get to speak to them since they always come during the dinner rush. They didn’t bother to keep in touch—even to ask how the search for Jessica was going—and I suppose I understand. But I never felt the need to reach out, if you know what I mean.”
“Can I get their address?”
She gives it to me and I fish inside my bag for a moment and pull out a card, hand it to her. She looks at it.
“If you think of anything else…” I say.
