Page 44 of The Homewreckers
“Creedmore. That sounds familiar.” She typed the name into the search bar on her phone. “Oh yeah. This town is crawling with Creedmores.” She held the phone so he could read the search engine results.
“Holland Creedmore Senior was president of the Rotary Club, on the Savannah Board of Aldermen.…”
She raised an eyebrow. “President of the Cardinal Mooney Alumni Association.” She laughed. “And Mavis Creedmore. That’s how I knew the name. A real crank. She writes indignant letters to the editor about unleashed dogs pooping in the city squares. Typewritten, in all caps. Like on a monthly basis. Once got arrested for chasing down a tourist whose chihuahua shit in front of the cathedral. Assaulted the poor guy with her cane.”
“Sounds like quite a distinguished family,” Mak said. “I think I need to talk to Holland Junior. Maybe Senior, too.”
“What’s your theory about Lanier? Usually it’s the husband who did it, am I right?”
“It’s too early for me to have a theory,” Mak said. He looked down at his notes and what he’d copied from the incident reports in the old police file.
Frank Ragan states he was reluctant to contact police when he initially discovered his wife missing because he thought she might have left “because she was pissed at him for drinking too much at a Super Bowl party the night before.” Ragan said he asked a neighbor to watch their young daughter, who was still asleep, while he drove around looking for his wife’s car, a white 2001 Nissan Altima. After he returned home, he called his wife’s closest friends, as well as her mother to ask if they’d seen Lanier. His mother-in-law then urged him to call the police, as it was unlike her daughter to go off and leave like that.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to the husband yet,” Mak said. “We’ll see.”
“Any chance she might still be alive?” asked Molly.
“You say you’ve been following this story for years. Tell me what you think.”
“Definitely dead,” Molly said. “I’ve talked to some of her former students at St. Mary’s, a couple teachers who worked with her at theschool, even her college roommate at Ole Miss. Everyone agreed, even if the marriage was in trouble, she never would have walked off and left her little kid like that.”
“Wasthe marriage in trouble? Lanier’s mother said in the statement I read that Frank spent too much time with his team and drank too much, but had never gotten violent.”
“I don’t think it was perfect. Frank was this macho, alpha male type. Lanier, from what I hear, was sort of a dreamer, loved books. They were an unlikely couple, and she was barely twenty-two when they got married.” She started to say something else, but stopped.
Mak pounced on it. “What?”
“The last time I wrote a story, I think it was on the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, I got a phone call at the office. This was before our phones had caller ID. It was a woman, she wouldn’t tell me her name. She said she was sick of hearing everyone talk about Saint Lanier. That’s what she called her. She hinted that Lanier was running around on Frank. I asked her flat out—who was she running around with? And she laughed and said I wouldn’t believe it, but it was her boyfriend. Herhigh schoolboyfriend.”
“Lanier’s high school boyfriend?” Mak asked, confused.
“No. This anonymous woman’s boyfriend. Who was in high school at the time, and played football for Frank Ragan.”
“And you never passed that along to the Savannah cops? Or wrote about it?”
“You might find this hard to believe, but I don’t write stories based on rumors or anonymous tips,” Molly said. “I asked around, couldn’t verify it.”
“Do you think it could have been true, even considering the source?”
“I didn’t think that much about it at the time, but you know? Back in the spring I did a story about a production ofLittle Womenthat was put on by a local theater group. I was chatting with the director, a woman named Deborah Logenbuhl, who used to be the drama teacher at St. Mary’s. As soon as she told me that, my ears perkedup. I asked her if she knew Lanier, and she looked like she might cry. Turns out she and Lanier were best friends.”
“And?”
“She was pretty cagey when I asked her if the rumor about Lanier could be true. She said Lanier changed in the last few months before she disappeared. She was moody, secretive even.”
Molly leaned forward. “They used to have a standing Saturday morning coffee date. But she said Lanier no-showed a couple times that fall.”
“There’s nothing like that in the Savannah PD files,” Makarowicz said. “Why didn’t she tell that to the cops working the case?”
“She was on maternity leave at the time, her baby was very preemie, spent six weeks in the ICU, and nobody ever contacted her to ask her about Lanier.”
“Some investigation,” Makarowicz said, shaking his head. He tapped his pen on his notepad. “Do you have contact information for this drama lady?”
“Deborah Logenbuhl,” Molly repeated, taking out her phone again. “I’ll text you her contact info.”
“Good,” Mak said. “That’s a pretty decent start for me. You got what you need?”
“Are you kidding? Lanier Ragan’s billfold turns up in an old beach house on Tybee, seventeen years after her disappearance? Yeah, that’s front-page stuff. Guess I better get back to the office and start working the phones.”
