Free Laina Turner - Presley Thurman 08 - Vows & Victims by Laina Turner

Bethany Granville. You used to work with her at Clermont City Realty.”
    Celeste frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure …”
    I decided to interrupt her before she could try and lie and say she didn’t know Bethany, which would then make it more difficult for us to get the truth. “You worked with her and someone named Rachel Andrews. Then Bethany moved to Alkon to work with another real estate agent, I’m assuming after you were arrested. I’m sure you’ve heard that Bethany was murdered? That’s what we care about.”
    Her eyes got wide. “Bethany was murdered?”
    “Yes. Last night.”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to say about Bethany. We weren’t very close. Now, I have to get ready for work and don’t have time to talk,” she said in a rush and started closing the door in our faces. I put my hand up to the door to stop it and she looked at me as if she couldn’t believe I would try to stop her from closing her door.
    “Listen! I don’t have anything to say and I really need to go.” This time, she closed it hard. I was thinking it was good thing I hadn’t stuck my foot in the door. I probably would have broken a few toes with the way she slammed it.
    I tried knocking again and the dogs went crazy, but she didn’t come back to the door again, even to try and get rid of us. Nor did I hear her yelling at the dogs, so maybe she had some sound proof room because that’s the only way I would have been able to tolerate all that yapping.
    “I don’t think she’s coming back,” Tobey said to me after about the fifth time I knocked.
    “Yeah. I don’t think she is either. Well, at least we know she must have something to hide or else she wouldn’t have literally slammed the door in our faces when we mentioned Bethany,” I said as we walked down the sidewalk back to the car.
    “It doesn’t help us any though.”
    “No, but we can try the other people, and we can always come back here and try again if we have to. I can be very persistent. So where are we headed to next? Rachel Andrews?”
    “No, I mapped them all out geographically. Jeff West is next.”
    We made the short drive to our next stop, which was a modest house in a subdivision, definitely a few steps down from the house we had just left. Not bad by any means. More what I would consider normal, not opulent like Celeste’s.
    We pulled up in front of the house we were looking for and I had a bad feeling it was empty. The lawn was overgrown and the lack of curtains on the windows made it pretty easy to see the house was in fact empty, or at least had no furniture in the living room.
    I opened the car door to get out.
    “What are you doing?” Tobey asked.
    “Going up to knock on the door. You coming?”
    “Umm, it’s obviously vacant. They must have moved and this was their last address.”
    “They?”
    “Jeff West, his wife, and three children.”
    “Well, let’s knock anyway. Just in case.”
    As expected, no one answered the door and peering through the side windows confirmed that the house was bare and had been vacated fairly recently, as there wasn’t that film of dust that you would expect after a month or so of no cleaning.
    “Hey! What are you two doing?” a voice yelled, startling both of us.
    We turned around to see an older woman, probably mid–seventies, a grandmotherly type. Though the scowl on her face was anything but grandmotherly.
    “You’re trespassing! Now get before I call the police,” she said, holding a baseball bat and not looking at all afraid to use it. The sight of her might have almost been comical, but I didn’t dare laugh for fear I would be hit by the bat. She looked like she meant business.
    Tough old broad. She clearly wasn’t the type to take any crap from anyone and I also bet she was the type who knew everything that was going on here in the subdivision.
    “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we weren’t trespassing. I mean, technically we were, but we aren’t intentionally. We