“A little birdie told me,” I said. “A birdie named Thelma Tureen.”

“You know Thelma?” she asked in surprise.

“Carly likes to visit some of the residents at Greener Pastures,” Marco said. “And she wanted to come offer condolences on Thelma’s behalf.”

Hilde turned her attention to me.

“Hilde,” Marco said, “this is my friend, Carly Moore. I hope it’s okay I brought her along.”

“Of course,” she said, backing up. “Where are my manners? Come in. Come in.”

We followed Hilde inside, and she gestured to a worn sofa against a wood-paneled wall. Marco handed her the flowers and she took them into the small kitchen, opening a cabinet and pulling out a vase.

“Is Beth still in Wilmington?”

“Yep,” Marco said, resting his hands on his knees. “She got remarried. Did she mention that?”

“She sent me an invitation to the wedding. I was sorry to miss it.” She put the flowers in the vase and filled it with water.

“Well, it was pretty short notice,” Marco said, glancing around the room. “I had trouble getting time off work to go.”

“Is she happy?” Hilde asked, setting the vase on the peninsula separating the kitchen from the living room.

“Yes,” Marco said. “She and Herb are very happy.”

“And your father?” she asked, sitting in a recliner across from us.

“He’s got his head in the clouds in Knoxville. Just like when he was here in Drum.”

She shook her head, clucking. “That man never realized what he had.”

Marco didn’t respond, but his body tensed, and I wondered what had happened in his past to make him close up like that. He rarely talked about his childhood, and when he did, it was usually about Max.

I covered his hand with mine, and he flipped his hand over and linked our fingers. He gave my hand a squeeze, then released it.

“We were surprised to hear that Heather had been murdered,” Marco said. “Everyone thought she left town.”

Hilde nodded. “Me too.”

“You didn’t find it strange that she never contacted you after she left?”

“That’s just it,” Hilde said. “She did contact me. She sent a postcard about a month later. She told me she was in Tulsa and had gotten a job at a Walmart.”

“Did you keep the postcard?” Marco asked.

“I did, but the sheriff’s deputy took it,” she said. “I told them about it when they came to tell me that they’d found her.” She sucked in a breath, as though struck anew by the news of her niece’s death.

“You never suspected she’d been killed?” Marco asked.

“No. Never. Not hearin’ from her wasn’t all that unusual. I never once heard from her directly after she left for college. Not until she showed up on my doorstep, askin’ to move back in.”

“Thelma told me that Heather gave you trouble when she lived with you back in high school,” I said.

She nodded. “That girl was as wild as a banshee and a compulsive liar. I can’t say I was sorry to see her go away to college. The only one of her friends who was ever respectful to me was that Drummond boy.”

“Wyatt,” Marco volunteered.

She nodded.

“Who else did she spend time with?” I asked.

“In high school or once she came back?” Hilde asked.

“Both, I guess.”

“Abby Atwood and Mitzi Ziegler were her closest friends, along with Wyatt. But she had a parade of boys and girls comin’ and goin’ in high school. There were fewer of them once she came back. I think many of the kids had moved out of town …the smart ones, anyway. Mitzi was still around though, and she added a few new friends. May McMurphy. Dick… I can’t remember his last name.”

“Stinnett?” Marco asked.

She nodded. “Yep. And a couple of others whose names escape me. Most of them never came here. She went to them.”

“And Wyatt?” Marco asked.

“Yeah, and her other boyfriend. The one at the end before she left.”

My brow shot up. “She had another boyfriend? Todd Bingham?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure she was sleepin’ with that Bingham boy during one of her breakups with Wyatt, but no, not at the end. She claimed he was from Ewing.”

“You don’t have a name?” Marco asked.

“No. She was secretive about him. I think she met him at her job.”

“What was she doin’?” Marco asked.

“After she flunked out of college, she lived with her parents and went to beauty school in Virginia. When she moved back, she got a job as a nail technician at Carolyn’s House of Style in Ewing.”

“What makes you think she met him at work?” I asked. Ewing didn’t seem progressive enough for men to get mani-pedis, especially nearly a decade ago.

“She was still with Wyatt when she first mentioned him. One of the beauticians cut his hair, and Heather talked to him while he was waitin’. She got a kick out of flirtin’ with him. She said he flirted back. Honestly, I think she was foolin’ around on Wyatt before they broke up. I caught her wearing low-cut shirts the days she mentioned that he came in, and sometimes her clothes would smell like men’s cologne. Wyatt never wore cologne.”

He still didn’t.

Marco shifted on the sofa. “Did the detective who came to talk to you ask you about her other boyfriend?”

“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “He never asked anything about that. He only wanted to know about the last time I saw her, whether I’d talked to her after she left, and whether she felt threatened by Wyatt.”

“And when was the last time you spoke to her?” I asked. Part of me wondered if we were being too obvious in our approach, but I felt the pressure of time bearing down on us. With that warrant out for Wyatt, we needed to move fast.

“The night before she was supposed to leave. When she went to her goin’-away party at Mitzi’s.”

“She didn’t come by to get her things?” Marco asked.

“I suppose she did, because they were gone. She must have grabbed them after the party and then just left without sayin’ goodbye.”

Marco’s chin lifted slightly. “Is it safe to say you’re not sure who picked up her things?”

She shuddered. “I guess you’re right. It gives me the creeps to think a murderer might have been in my home.”

“We don’t know that they were,” Marco assured her. “Heather could have picked up her belongings and then encountered the person who killed her.”

Hilde nodded.

“Did Heather feel threatened by Wyatt?” I asked.

She snorted. “No, and I told the detective that. She thought she was playin’ him. I heard her tellin’ someone on the phone right before Wyatt was arrested for drivin’ drunk and breakin’ into Earl Cartwright’s garage.”

“Do you know who she was talking to?” I asked.

She gave me a penetrating look, as if to determine why I was asking her, then said, “I told the detective I wasn’t sure, but after he left, I spent a good amount of time thinkin’ about it, and now I suspect it was her other boyfriend.”