“You don’t believe that a little boy or girl left a piece of candy on the hood of her car by accident?” Sylvie asked, doing her best to keep her skepticism to a minimum. Anyone could have dropped a piece of candy when walking past the car. “Was there a note left behind with it?”
“No. And at first, Grace didn’t make the connection, either. But a couple of days later, the plants on her porch had been rearranged, her car keys wouldn’t be hanging on the hook near the front door when she would go to leave for work, and she thought someone followed her home one day. It wasn’t until one evening that she arrived home from work to find a jack-o-lantern on her front porch that she decided to call the police and file a report.”
There had been no events or deeds that would suggest with certainty that someone had been stalking Grace Willow. Every single occurrence had a reasonable explained, which was what the police had almost certainly said on the night in question.
“Go back to the car keys not being on the hook,” Sylvie suggested, hoping to get a little more information than what had been dictated in the criminal report. “Out of all the instances that Grace had listed to the police as to why she believed that someone was stalking her, the movement of the car keys was the only occasion that something happened inside of her residence. Why was Grace so sure that someone had broken into her home and moved her keys? She could have forgotten that she’d placed them somewhere else, her husband could have moved them, or maybe even a family member or friend who had mistaken the keys for theirs and then simply set them down elsewhere.”
“You had to have known Grace,” Sidney said with a half-smile mixed with fondness and regret. “You know those homes where you wonder if anyone lives there? I mean, so clean and neat, you think that it’s a show house prepped for sale? Well, Grace was that person. Not so much Beau, but he grew accustomed to her quirks. Trust me, Grace didn’t put her car keys anywhere else but that hook...ever.”
Sylvie could understand the need to be organized, not that her home took the air of being staged. While she was neat, there had been numerous times that she’d misplaced her keys and glasses.
“Did Beau and Grace have a lawn service?”
“No. Beau cut the grass, and Grace loved to garden. They were trying to start a family when…”
“A jack-o-lantern isn’t a calling sign that most stalkers would leave behind,” Sylvie explained when Sidney’s eyes misted over. “Rose petals, daisies, or maybe even greeting cards…but a carved pumpkin?”
“The face that had been carved into the pumpkin was pretty frightening,” Sidney revealed as she clasped her hands together. “I pulled up to her house a little before six o’clock that evening. I thought it was odd that a jack-o-lantern had been set out on their porch, because it was the middle of summer. Anyway, I walked into the house to find Grace on the phone talking with Beau. She was asking him why he would put something so horrible looking on their porch, but he kept denying that he had anything to do with it. He even mentioned to her that it was probably the new kids in the neighborhood. They’d been caught ding dong ditching a few times, but Grace just couldn’t get into the mindset that it was just kids. Turned out that she was right.”
“You walked into Grace’s house that night?” Sylvie asked, needing clarification. Most people who lived in the city locked their doors, but Grace and Beau had lived in a middle-class suburb. The reason that the MPD had taken the missing person’s report was due to the fact that she’d been abducted from a downtown bakery. “You didn’t knock?”
“I was like her sister,” Sidney said defensively, shifting in her chair before giving a more in-depth explanation. “I never knocked, and neither did their other family members. She—“
“Sid?” Jarod had entered the breakroom. He placed a hand on her shoulder before pulling out a chair. “You doing okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sid shot him a quick smile of reassurance. “Listen, do you mind prepping Laura’s color for me? The numbers are in the system, and she’s probably already sitting out there. I shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“Of course, I will.” Jarod glanced at Sylvie with a frown. “Sid’s been through a lot, and she—“
“I only have a few more questions,” Sylvie replied with a tight smile. She didn’t care for the man, not that she could put a finger on why. “We’ll be done shortly.”
Sylvie waited for the door to completely close behind Jarod before addressing their relationship.
“Are the two of you serious?”
“Jarod? No. I mean, we went out once or twice when I first started to work here, but now we’re just close friends.”
Sylvie couldn’t recall if there had been specific dates associated with Sidney’s employment at the salon in the background report.
“How long have you been working here?”
“Closing in on four years now,” Sidney replied as she pulled her feet underneath the chair and crossed them at her ankles. “Grace and I celebrated my new job at the bar across the street until we had to call Beau to pick us up. She was so excited for me.”
“What did the police say about the jack-o-lantern? Did they take it with them?”
“No,” Sidney responded with a quick shake of her head. “Grace threw it out after the police left. They said that there wasn’t much that they could do, because no threats had been made. They even suggested that she was blowing things out of proportion, because nothing that had taken place was unusual. She went missing three days later.”
The police could only do so much when an individual claimed someone was stalking them. Without an actual crime, it was hard to prove that someone’s life was in danger.
Hindsight was always twenty-twenty.
“Did you happen to know Debbie Horton, Jean Goldwyn, Felicia Rhimes, Heather Krinsky, or Jenny Capshaw?”
“I know of them because of the news, but I didn’t know any of them personally.” Sidney leaned slightly forward in her chair. “Do you know who kidnapped them? Have you found their bodies? Is there a chance that they are still alive?”
“I’m sorry, Sidney. We don’t have any answers yet, but we won’t stop until we’ve exhausted every avenue,” Sylvie reassured the woman with a supportive smile. “Can you think of anything else that might have happened to Grace back then that the police weren’t privy to? Anything at all? Even the most mundane thing could have special meaning behind it.”
Sidney slowly shook her head in response, but then paused with her chin slightly tilted, as if the foggiest of memories had started to clear.