She told her fiance, a boarder in her mother's house at 126 Nassau Street, that she was going to visit her aunt, Mrs. Downing, uptown on Jane Street. Daniel Payne promised to meet her that evening at the omnibus stop on Broadway and see her safely home. Daniel never met Mary at the omnibus stop. Her body was found three days later in the Hudson River near the shore of Hoboken, New Jersey. She had been tied with strips of her own clothing.
Nobody knows what happened between then and the time they rode up to the Leeds farm.
Joe Mulliner was a thief, but he was a gentleman thief, so, of course, never said. But it was springtime in the Pine Barrens and no place more beautiful. Blueberry blossoms, Orchids, Lady Slipper, Dogwood, Swamp Azalea and Magnolia, Sundew, and Rose Pogonia, just everywhere you look. Suffice it to say no silver haired girl could have resisted the charms of handsome dancing Joe Mulliner in the circumstance of springtime in the Pine Barrens. The parking lot was big enough for a truck stop, she considered, looking out the window.