Cordero made it back to the B&B at seven o'clock the next morning. Audra was caught off guard by how scruffy he looked with no apparent grooming since the day before besides what she imagined being a splash of water on the face and a quick comb through his hair. They bumped into each other when he was on the way in and she was on her way back to her room with breakfast.
She watched as Cordero silently assessed the double portions of everything on the tray she carried. He nodded his peace with the facts and rubbed his tired eyes.
"Please ask Sheriff Cole to begin the proceedings necessary to exhume the body of Abigail Stevens," he said and hurried on to his room, Audra presumed, to shower and change before she could answer. She went back to her room and gave Ethan a gentle nudge awake.
"Cordero is back," she informed him and he jumped up. "Take it easy, he's too tired to care about you and me at the moment."
"At the moment," Ethan repeated raising his eyebrows.
"He asked if you would prepare the proceedings to have the body of Abigail Stevens exhumed."
Ethan nodded as if he'd been expecting such a request. "I'll just have a quick bite with you, then hurry home to change. I'll have the body exhumed and sent over to the morgue of the hospital by the end of the day. Will you give a call and let me know how the meeting goes? I'll be on my cellphone working from the jailhouse. I'll also be interviewing contractors I talked to yesterday about building a new sheriff's station."
"Really? You're not going to just order another doublewide trailer?" Audra was surprised.
"Nah, that place was too small for me and Sheriff Miller's ghost," Ethan admitted. "If I'm going to hire a deputy, and possibly a secretary, I better use the opportunity to upgrade. Especially after what the Sheriff and the Doctor said about whatever's coming next."
Audra nodded, allowing the revelations of the night before to rest in the back of her mind as she remained focused on the case at hand. Ethan quickly pulled on his clothes and sat with her to eat breakfast for the next ten minutes.
After eating, Audra took a quick shower and changed into her FBI appropriate attire before picking up her report and heading down the hall to the command post. When she stepped in at seven thirty everyone was seated at the table ready to go.
Cordero sat through the debriefing silently but Audra could see that powerful thoughts were passing through his head as her eyes registered his reaction to everything. They concluded the debriefing by showing him the less than twenty minute video of the town hall meeting debacle and relaying last night's message about the end times. Cordero nodded at the conclusion of the presentation.
"Good work," he commented. "Eric, I want you to go to the bank today. Sit and wait for Annie to produce that print out of Abigail's bank statements. Thomas, I want you here to field phone calls from the public and hack the vital statistics records. Find Abigail's marriage license. We've already had no luck finding birth certificates of the victims, how about looking into the deaths of women within twenty-four hours post delivery in the same city the children were surrendered, found, and adopted?"
"Right," Thomas said.
"Yolanda and Audra, you need to go shopping for clothes to have dinner with the Shelleys. Shop the square; act as natural as possible, chat the people up. See what small town gossip you can find out about Abigail, Gwyneth, and the Shelleys. Follow Yolanda's lead on this, Audra. Take Joshua's glasses with you and record the interactions."
Audra nodded and Joshua passed his glasses to her over the table.
"Joshua, you come with me to retrieve the delivery of our equipment from the post office."
Joshua stood and straightened his tie.
"Sheriff Cole will have the body of Abigail Stevens exhumed and at the hospital morgue by the end of the day," Audra remembered to relay to Cordero who nodded.
"Be careful everyone, let's keep our lips tight. Now is the time to observe and connect the dots. No more information about this case goes to the public. I think Audra had the right idea yesterday; don't even discuss this case outside this room since the shield protects it. We have more coming in this afternoon but for now, keep your mouths shut tight."
Audra and Yolanda took Yolanda's car and headed to the town square.
"I guess at some point we need to head back to the hospital and get my car," Audra said, remembering the letters and photographs that she still needed to take a closer look at.
"Yes, ma'am," Yolanda said. "Cordero was in a fairly decent mood."
"Yeah," Audra agreed.
"I guess he didn't take your suspicions personally," she probed.
"I don't know," Audra admitted. "He's not always easy to read. He's been in the FBI longer than any of us. Even when we know he's pissed he doesn't yell like a normal person. Anyway, what do you think we should wear to this dinner?" Audra changed the subject. "Who do you think we should take with us?"
"Well, I'm sure Ethan would like to go," Yolanda offered. "I was thinking about asking Joshua."
"So, the two of you are together?" Audra asked, remembering the moment they'd had in the high school auditorium.
"We're dancing around it, I guess," Yolanda said less than enthusiastically.
"That sounds romantic," Audra said, sarcastic.
"Well, I'm a realist. After observing so many people for so long, and recently ending a doomed-from-the-start romance of my own, the one thing that I've learned is that romantic relationships almost always come to an end." Yolanda sighed. "I like what we have right now. I don't want to go down the road to false expectations, misunderstandings, back biting and breaking up."
Audra looked at the young agent with a mixture of admiration for her maturity and sadness for her jadedness. Audra was sure that Yolanda caught both sides of her look as she shrugged.
"It's human nature," Yolanda explained. "We are all flawed people and, when we fall in love, we fall in love with other flawed people. Rarely does it end well."
Audra nodded, thinking about the way things had ended the first time around with Ethan. She credited it to their lack of honest communication.
"It's just not a good idea to ignore statistics and bypass sound judgment for the slim chance at real love," Yolanda concluded, giving Audra the same double-sided look she'd received. Audra smiled, appreciating her meaning.
When they pulled into the square, Audra looked at the slim options. There were three stores that suggested possible clothing they would need for dinner. One with the word Fashions, another with the word Boutique and the last one with the word Dresses in it.
"Eenie-meenie-miney-mo," Audra said, already bored with the shopping experience ahead. The last time she'd even bothered with formal evening wear she'd spent the night holding up the wall at her senior prom when her date realized that he had no chance of getting lucky.
"Okay, I say we start with the less likely places first," Yolanda offered as a game plan. "We can begin with Dresses for Less, then make our way to Bishop's for lunch. We can follow that up with looking in Fashions Today, then head over to Pearl's for ice cream dessert. After dessert we can go into the Chic Boutique and get the dresses we need before heading back to the hospital to get your car."
"Sounds like a good plan to me," Audra agreed as she hooked Joshua's camera glasses onto the front of her shirt.
Yolanda led the way to Dresses for Less, bouncing like an excited teenager through the door and to the first mannequin with a garish purple sequined disaster.
"That is so pretty." Yolanda switched into an eager wide-eyed persona that impressed Audra. She watched the young agent engage a young sales clerk who stood no taller than five feet, with a swollen, pregnant abdomen, and a flushed red face, despite the air conditioning.
"We were invited to have dinner with the Shelleys tomorrow but, as you can imagine, we didn't bring a thing to wear," Yolanda almost gushed.
The young sales associate, Brenda, smiled brightly as she pushed her thick mane of black hair off of her shoulders.
"I'll be more than happy to help the both of you," Brenda assured them. "What sizes are you?"
Yolanda and Audra exchanged faux conspirator looks.
"Everyone's a size six," Brenda winked at them. "Come this way."
Brenda waddled to the back of the store where a rack of equally garish sequined monstrosities waited.
"Everything is marked down fifty percent," Brenda let them know. "We also have shoes just over there." She pointed to a rack of left sided dress shoes. "If you see one you like, I'd be happy to go in the back and get the match for you."
"Wonderful." Yolanda picked up three dresses that were definitely not her size. "I'll start with these," she said, making her way into the dressing room.
Audra remained amazed at the level of enthusiasm Yolanda displayed over the horrible dresses.
"I'll just browse for a moment," Audra told the sales woman, unable to even pretend she was interested in trying on the selections displayed. She knew Cordero would be disappointed that she did not take Yolanda's lead as instructed, but she was quite sure any false attempt at trying on these dresses would sour everyone's mood. As she strolled over to the rack of left shoes, the door to the shop opened and a beautiful, leggy, middle-aged woman wearing clothes from the junior miss section of a trendy store and sporting a spray on tan entered.
"Brenda!" the woman sang out with the deep voice of a veteran smoker who'd never even once thought of quitting. Audra tried not to look as if she were listening as she lifted a blue high heel and pretended to examine it.
"Magic!" Brenda greeted her enthusiastically. "You need a new outfit?"
"Girl, you know it. The zipper on the last one finally gave out. I'm attributing it to the poor foreign handiwork and not to the five pounds I put on this summer," Magic responded. "What is a boy-girl to do?"
Audra could not resist the urge to look up at that statement and found that the woman called Magic was staring directly at her.
"Aren't you the FBI woman looking into Gwyneth Miller's murder?"
"I am," Audra acknowledged.
"I saw you over at the ghetto apartments the other day too, with that hunk of Sheriff Cole. I'd gladly take him in my stocking, Santa." Magic laughed at her own joke. "I guess I should thank you for coming by. Delluca had a pro janitorial and landscaping service out there the same day." Magic paused. "He said you were asking after Candy."
Audra tried to remain emotionless as Yolanda stepped from the dressing room in a nightmare dress that seemed to be eating her alive. She walked happily enough to the full-length mirror and gave a fully committed three-sixty twirl as she seemed, even to Audra, to give her reflection a critical gaze.
"I did," Audra confirmed. "We ran into a few coincidences involving her and wanted to find her, but she'd died."
"Yes, she OD'd. Poor dear," Magic said. "I found her on the floor of The Scoop. Terrible sight."
"The Scoop?" Audra quizzed.
"The strip club, girl!" Magic said doing a little dance, as if she should know that. "That's where respectable men can meet ladies of the night and scoop them up, for a price of course, with no strings attached."
"I see." Audra swallowed. "How long have you worked there?"
"Hmmm," she smiled flirtatiously. "A lady never reveals or even hints at her true age, but if you're wondering if I was there the same time as one Abigail Stevens, as brief as that time was, then yes. I was there the night her sailor-boy came into town and the day he rode her off into the sunset."
Audra tried not to look surprised that Magic had tied her questions to Abigail's case.
"This is a smaller than small town, Ms. FBI. Everyone is talking about your every move, from your fainting spell at the hospital, to your night in the country with the Sheriff. And I hear tell a body is being exhumed."
"What do you remember about Abigail?" Audra deflected.
"Sweet girl." Magic took a moment to get past a surge of emotion. Audra waited as she delicately wiped the corner of her eye with the edge of her shirt. "I always say there are some souls that are too good for this earth."
"Abigail was one of them?" Audra asked.
"Sure was. Poor girl was dealt a hell of a hand, as Tupac said. But, she was so nice, doing what she could for her family. Not giving a piss about what the people of this rank town thought or said about her."
"You saw her with a sailor. Do you recall seeing her with anyone else?"
Magic cleared her throat and nodded. "Of course, Dear. It is a strip club. I saw her with plenty of someone elses."
"Right." Audra wasn't sure if she were deliberately holding back information or not.
"Well, enough about the past, on to the future! Like tonight, at midnight, come see my show, I'm sure you've never seen anything like it. Maybe I'll remember a little more about Ms. Stevens."
Magic smiled but Audra noticed that she swallowed somewhat nervously as she turned from Audra and headed for the garish rack of dresses. At the same time, Yolanda turned from the mirror and reentered the dressing room.