Subj: Shadows of the Past part 10
Date: 8/20/00 1:19:35 AM Central Daylight Time
From: KimD
The next day brought with it a new direction. Vicki hadn’t considered Mrs. Johnson before, but she would have been here at the same time as Moreen. No one else had been willing to tell her much, but maybe she could. “Yes,” Mrs. Johnson said frowning, “I remember Moreen very well. She never took orders well, and always did things her own way. She came here from no where, over twenty years ago alone with a baby. Miss Collins felt sorry for her and gave her a job as a servant.”
“Miss Collins? Do you mean Mrs. Stoddard?”
“Yes, but she was still Miss. Collins then. Mr. Stoddard didn’t come until a few months later. He seemed to watch Moreen quite a bit. And he drank worse than any of the Collins family.”
“What was Paul Stoddard like?” Vicki asked with a great deal of curiosity. Nobody ever spoke of Paul Stoddard.
“He was tall and broad shouldered, he had brown hair, and a mustache. I remember he first came here looking for a relative of his. I don’t remember if he ever found her or not.”
“Was Laura ever here during that time?”
Mrs. Johnson pauses for a moment. “No, I don’t think so. I remember when Mrs. Collins moved in here that one of the first things she did was order some remodeling to be done. Moreen wasn’t around for that.” Vicki remembered the newspaper article she had read. There hadn’t been any break in when Moreen disappeared. Either Laura didn’t do it or she fond someone else to murder Moreen.
“Do you remember anything about Moreen’s disappearance?”
“Not much. I remember that soon before Moreen vanished that she got a few visits from a young man. He was a stranger, but he seemed to know Moreen well. Mr. Stodard didn’t seem to like him very well. I used to wonder why he let the man in. Why are you so curious about Moreen?” Vicki realized, from the letters she had read and her dream last night that the strange man must have been Moreen’s brother, Ryan.
“I found some of her things a few days ago, and I was just curious.” Mrs. Johnson’s description of Paul Stoddard sounded familiar. She mentally compared the description to different people, and then she realized who it sounded like. It was the stranger that she had been seeing around lately. Both men had brood shoulders, tall, wore a mustache, and the stranger was now gray, but still had evidence of having brown hair at one time.