Interviewing the friends and family of Eliza and Lessie was almost a waste of time. I barely found out any information on either woman and nothing was useful for the case. Eliza’s family said her name was never spoken, which I found odd, and Lessie’s only heard word-of-mouth that she disappeared. One theory was she fell in the bayou and her body was never recovered.
“From what I heard, she was basically gator food,” her great niece, Sadie, said.
“Any idea why she was around Cyprus Manor?” I asked, jotting down the gator food comment while trying not to wince.
“No idea. All I know my great grandma refused to talk about her.”
It was when I met up with Theresa Cannette’s cousin that I finally hit on some pay dirt.
“Wow, I haven’t heard that name in years,” she said as she handed me a tall of iced-cold lemonade.
“But you have heard the stories?”
“Of course I have. My cousins and siblings liked to tell them to each other during sleepovers. It was our version of a scary story.”
“What’s the story? If you don’t mind telling me,” I added.
Sadie’s eyes were shrewd, and they looked like she had stories of her own to tell that nothing to do with her missing family member. “You said on the phone her disappearance was probably connected to another missing person. Care to expand on that?”
I hesitated, not sure how much I should tell her. Finally, I decided to gloss over the details and keep it as vague as possible. “We have reason to believe there are a few similarities between this missing person and your family member that keep the cases from being a coincidence.”
“I see. Well, if any information I give you can help find this missing person, and bring my family some closure, as well, then I’m happy to help.”
“I appreciate that, and I’m sure their family does, too.”
“It was so long ago. 1936 from what I was told.” I nodded. “The story goes that Theresa was meeting up with some friends for an evening picnic. But later, it came out that one of her friends had a boat, and they were sneaking off to Cyprus Manor to ‘ghost hunt.’”
“Ghost hunt?”
“Yes. Surely you’ve heard the stories surrounding that place, and the bayou?”
I shrugged. “But they are just stories.”
“Sure they are, but how many kids like to brag they went inside that house or on the grounds?”
I pursed my lips as I thought back to times in school when people would brag about sneaking around the area during Halloween or on nights there was a full moon. I never bought into it, and just chalked it up to kids trying to look cool to their friends. Even if I wasn’t someone who was easily frightened, I knew how dangerous the bayou could be, especially at night. Gators weren’t the only things out there you needed to worry about. Walking around a dilapidated house in the middle of the night was a stupid thing to do.
“Who all was with her?”
“Her best friend, Julie, and their boyfriends Donny and Reed.”
“Last names?” I asked, jotting down the names.
She waved me off. “Don’t bother. They’ve all passed away since then.”
“It still helps.”
She rattled off the last names, and I quickly scribbled them down. “Anyway, Reed had the boat. A rowboat of all things. Can you imagine? Rowing through a bayou in the middle of the night to the manor?” she shook her head.
“I can’t. Even I know that airboats are the best way to get across the bayou.”
She chuckled. “Exactly. But were those even around during that time?”
“I don’t know. What happened after they got there?”
“They did the dumbest thing a group of young people could—they split up.”
I startled. “What? Why?”
“According to Donny, Reed and Julie thought it’d be more romantic to go by themselves. Looking back at it, they probably wanted to sneak off to do more than investigate the grounds.”
I shook my head. “I see. And when did Theresa disappear?”
“Donny wasn’t too sure. He said they had stepped inside the house, he turned around to investigate a scuffle he’d heard behind him, and in those few seconds his back was turned, she was gone.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. He claimed to look everywhere, but there was no sight of her. He even found Julie and Reed to get their help, and after searching as long as they could, they had to make the difficult decision to leave and seek help.”
“What doesn’t make sense to me is that they were all in their twenties. Why lie about what they were doing?”
“Julie and Theresa were still living at home while attending college. And Theresa’s mom didn’t approve of Donny. He came from the wrong side of the tracks, and as long as she lived at home, it was forbidden for him to see her.”
“I see. Was he investigated for the disappearance? Or any of them, for that matter?” He didn’t remember seeing anything in the file.
“Only for a very short amount of time. There was no evidence any of them were involved, and since there was no body…”
“True.”
“The bayou was searched for days, but eventually the police had to give up. During that time there really wasn’t a way to drag the waters, and it was too dangerous given all the alligators. Eventually they had to give up and the case went cold. Her body was never found, and everyone moved on with their lives—as sad as that is to admit.”
“It is.”
“There is one more thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Donny swears he saw a woman in the woods. It was too dark, but her body had a strange glow around it, and he felt like her eyes were staring straight through him. And that they were blood red. He said he felt fear that he’d never felt before and was too frozen to move. Like something was holding him in place. It only lasted a split second, and then she was gone.”
“Glowing eyes?”
“He knew how crazy he sounded, but it was something that shook him to the core and he never forgot for as long as he was alive.”
“Interesting.”
Long after I returned to the office, I sat at my desk waiting for Kade to return to see if his interviews came up with anything.
“How did it go?” I asked when he finally shuffled into the office and sat down heavily on his chair.
“Not much. Most of the relatives are long since gone or really don’t have much to tell. Cassandra’s friends all pretty much say the same thing: that they had gone to the bayou for a party, and when they all got back into the boat to return home, she wasn’t with them.”
“No one noticed her missing before it was time to go?”
Kade shook his head. “There was alcohol involved, which was stupid since that place is so hazardous. They left that part out, of course, since no one wanted to get in trouble. I basically had to bribe them that it’d stay between us and I wouldn’t report it to the police.”
“I see.”
“How about you?”
I recanted what Theresa’s cousin had told me, and when I was done, he sat back against his seat and ran a hand through his hair.