Breaker's Reef (3 page)

Her life was full now, much fuller than before, when her mother was in jail and Sadie spent her days trying to protect herself and her baby brother from his rabid father. She had come here physically and emotionally broken, and found refuge at Hanover House. Morgan and Jonathan Cleary had taken her into the home that housed other of life’s refugees and had become foster parents to her and her little brother, Caleb, until her mother was released from prison a year ago and joined them here.

With all the adjustments, Sadie didn’t have time to mope over her status in school anymore. And since she’d stopped caring, she’d found herself with friends and she’d become less of a curiosity to those she avoided.

The front door opened, and Sadie sat up. Police were coming out of the house. She jumped out of the car and snapped pictures while the officers were still elevated on the porch. She joined the cluster of reporters at the foot of the porch steps and pulled her small tape recorder out of her pocket. She held it among the microphones and other tape recorders.

An officer stepped forward. “I’d like to make a brief statement on behalf of the Tybee Island Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. At approximately 4:00 a.m. this morning, May thirtieth, a body was discovered in a boat floating between Tybee Island and Cape Refuge. The body was pulled out on the Tybee Island side of the river, and has been identified as sixteen-year-old Emily Lawrence. Cause of death was a gunshot wound. At this time, we are treating it as a homicide and we have no suspects. The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow. We’d ask people in the community to call the police if you have any information that might relate to this crime. The family will not be making a statement at this time. They ask that you please respect their need for privacy today and clear off of their lawn. That’s all.”

He and the other officer pushed through the crowd and moved to their cars as reporters shouted questions.

Letting her camera drop around her neck, Sadie pulled the notepad out of her back jeans pocket and began jotting some notes. Her three new “friends” headed toward her again.

Amy had tears in her eyes. “It’s terrible, just terrible. Who’d ever think one of our own class could be murdered?”

Sadie swallowed her emotion back and looked up from her notepad. “Do you guys know who Emily hung out with mostly? When she wasn’t at school, I mean?”

“Sure, yeah,” Steve said. “She, like, spent a lot of time with Danny Brewer and Lourdes Grant, and that bunch.”

Sadie made a note.

Sadie made a note.

“Are you going to interview them?”

“Maybe.”

“You could interview us.” Courtney smiled hopefully at her.

Sadie shrugged. “Okay, do you have anything you’d like to say about Emily?”

“Yeah,” Courtney said. “Put that she was a nice girl. That people liked her and stuff.”

Original
, Sadie thought.
The stuff of awards.

“And spell my name with an
e
instead of an
a.
G-R-E-Y”

“I’ll do one,” Amy piped in. “Say that it’s a creepy feeling to know that somebody’s out there murdering your friends. Makes you scared to go out at night.”

That was one she could use. She jotted it down. “Anything else?”

Steve was ready for his fifteen minutes. “Yeah, I talked to her last week, and she seemed fine. She let me use her cell phone. She didn’t seem depressed or weird or anything.”

“And what’s your last name?” She knew his last name as well as she knew her own. Who didn’t? But she didn’t want him to think she’d ever noticed him.

“Singer,” he said. “S-I-N-G—”

“I got it.” She flipped her notebook shut. “Well, thanks, guys. I have to go now. I have a story to write.”

She left them standing there and headed back to Blair’s car.

Matt Frazier had pulled up behind the car in his father’s florist van and called out to her.

Sadie smiled at him. “Hey, Matt.”

He’d been her very first friend on Cape Refuge. The day she’d been dropped off at the door of Hanover House, and no one had been home, he had come up to bring a floral wreath for the door. They had gotten to know each other better over the last year and a half.

“Sadie, have Emily’s parents come out to make a statement?”

She shook her head. “No. Just the police.”

He looked up at the door. Some of the press still milled around in the yard, unwilling to leave. “My dad wanted me to bring them a wreath. I’m just numb. How could this happen?”

Sadie shook her head. “Poor Emily.”

They both stood there, quiet, and Sadie saw the look of helpless anger in his eyes. Finally, he looked down at her. “You okay?”

She smiled up at him through unshed tears. “Yeah, thanks.”

“I know she was in your class. She was a cool kid. I used to see her at the ballpark, working the concession stand. She was always so happy and bubbly. She never hurt anybody.”

Sadie was afraid she might cry, so she reached for the car door. “I have to go.”

He took the door, opened it for her, and watched as she got in. “Call me if you need to talk, okay? I have classes later this morning, but I’ll have my cell phone with me.”

“I might do that.”

He closed her door, and she drove off. A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped it away. Leave it to Matt to treat her as the wounded one, when he’d probably known Emily longer than she. But that was the way he was.

Blair had suggested several times that the college sophomore had a crush on Sadie, but she couldn’t say for sure. He’d never asked her out, not on a real date, anyway, but he’d recently started coming to her church and always sought her out to sit with her. She enjoyed being around him, but she wasn’t sure it would ever be more than friendship.

Still, it was nice to have a guy care about her feelings. It was like sunlight breaking through a thick canopy of gray.

She wondered what her mother would say.

S
o, Miss Sheila Caruso, tell me why you’re right for this job.” The famous Marcus Gibson stood like an accuser in front of Sheila, his hands splayed on the two clean spots on his desktop.

She hardly knew what to say. The truth was, she probably
wasn’t
right for the job of assistant to the author, and if he knew she had a felony drug conviction and had spent a year in prison, he’d send her on her way. But Sadie, her daughter, had encouraged her to try, and she couldn’t let her down. “Well, your ad called for someone who could type, and I’m a fast typist. I just finished a secretarial course at the community college. I also know how to use a computer.”

She glanced at the laptop on his desk and hoped she knew how to use that one. It didn’t look anything like the computer she’d learned on in school.

“I also need help with filing.” He rose to a less accusatory position and waved a hand over his desk. It was cluttered with ragged stacks of papers and magazines and
books. “But I don’t want someone coming in here and throwing things around helter-skelter. I have a system, so whoever comes has to be teachable. Do you have any experience with this kind of thing?”

As he waited for her answer, he picked up a Panama hat off of one of the stacks, lightly punched his fist into it, and seemed to consider the result.

“Uh …” She hesitated. Should she wait until he’d finished with the hat? “Well, not really. I’ve never worked for a writer before.”

“Good.” He flung the hat across the room, and it landed on an old wooden file cabinet. “That’s what I’m looking for. Someone with no experience.”

She thought he was being sarcastic, and her hopes deflated. She waited for his dismissal, but instead he started digging through one of his stacks. He found the book he was looking for under a pile of handwritten pages and started to furiously flip through it.

“What do you know about forensics?”

She searched her mind for an answer. “Uh … well, just what I’ve seen on TV.”

He looked at her as if she were stupid. “Do you seriously believe the tripe you see on a one-hour yawn written by Hollywood hacks?”

She swallowed. “I didn’t say I believed it all—just that it’s all I know about it.”

“So you learned nothing about crime investigations during your incarceration?”

Then he knew. She closed her throat. “How did you know I was—?”

“I Googled you.”

She stared up at him, wondering if she’d heard him right. “I’m sorry?”

“I Googled you. Checked you out on the Internet. I know all about your prison sentence.”

“I see.” So this had been a foolish pipe dream. Of course he’d checked her out. What had she expected?

“I’ve changed a lot in the last year.” She leaned forward, bent on helping him understand. “See, my kids, they were staying with some people here in Cape Refuge while I was doing time. I came here when I got out—to a place called Hanover House, to keep from uprooting them.”

His eyes strayed to his computer screen, and he began to type. She didn’t know whether he was taking notes or checking his email. She swallowed and kept talking.

“Hanover House—you may know it, it’s over there by the Sound, the big yellow house across the street from the beach on Ocean Boulevard?” He didn’t indicate whether he knew it or not. “Anyway, it’s kind of a halfway house, with a real strict Bible program, and it’s made me a better person.” She was rambling, she realized, and her voice trailed off. “I’ve come a real long way in my personal life, and my kids are doing real good, and I know I can do this if you just give me a chance.”

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the clicking of his fingers on the keyboard. Had the man forgotten she was here?

“I may wish to interview you about prison life,” he said finally. “I find that fascinating. I usually try to put myself in the shoes of my characters—living what they live—but I haven’t managed to get thrown in jail just yet.”

She frowned, not certain she’d heard him right. “Well, yes. Of course. Anything you want to know.”

He kept typing. “It pays four hundred dollars a week. Forty hours, give or take. I’ll need to know within twenty-four hours.”

She froze and gaped up at him. Did that mean he was offering her the job? Did her prison sentence not matter?

As if he’d forgotten his last statement, he turned back to the credenza behind his desk. It looked like something he’d dragged out of a garbage dump. One of the legs was broken, and a cement block replaced it. He paged through another book. She wondered
if he was still interested in forensics, or if he’d moved on to some other subject.

He came to whatever page he was looking for and ran his finger down the paragraphs. “I can’t work with you in the room. I usually won’t be here when you are. I like to write out in the world. Experience real life. I’m not like those wannabes who sit in four walls all day hammering out their drivel. And I know what you’re thinking, but having research books does not make me weaker as a writer.”

She caught her breath. “Oh, no, I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“I simply have to confirm things now and then, find words, details, history, explanations … Do you know what they call the clicker on a lamp? The little black thing that goes in and out, turning the blasted thing on and off?”

“Switch?”

Anger flashed across his face. “Do you honestly doubt that I could come up with
switch
on my own?”

“No … I—”

“Never mind.” His face twisted as if he’d just tasted arsenic. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s stuttering inanity. It would have been the perfect metaphor, if I could find the cursed word.” He looked around, as if he hoped to find the answer lying on one of the other cluttered surfaces. “If you take the job, you can start tomorrow. I have papers somewhere.”

She caught her breath and wondered if she’d heard him right. “I do want the job,” she said quickly. “I can be here tomorrow.”

“Fine. I’ll have a roll of red tape here for you to fill out tomorrow. We don’t want to give the government another reason to harass me. I have enough to do.”

“All right.”

He left his book open and went to one of the stacks, began digging through. “Your job at first will consist mostly of typing several of my earlier books into the computer. I composed those on typewriter, but I’m having them reprinted by my current publisher, and I’ll need them entered onto a computer disk.”

“I can do that.”

“I want them exact. No comma out of place. No quotation mark left off. Just as I’ve written them.”

“No problem.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She blew out her relief as she left his cottage but knew she would have to get used to the eccentricities if she was going to work for him. She could do it, she told herself. She’d dealt with difficult types among the guards and her cell mates in jail. Even since getting out, she’d had to adjust to the different personalities at Hanover House.

Besides, it might be interesting. Certainly not your ordinary nine-to-five.

She couldn’t wait to tell Sadie that she was gainfully employed.

T
he former Laundromat that served as the police station was full to the brim with cadets from the local Girl Scout Troop, who’d come for a Saturday morning tour. Cade had completely forgotten his promise to Joyce, their leader, to get someone to show them the workings of the police station. It looked like Alex Johnson had stepped in for him.

In addition to the chattering girls, five computer guys from the GBI were setting up the upgraded equipment the mayor’s office had approved for them and running cables to get them online with the Georgia Criminal Justice Information System Network. Myrtle, the dispatcher, sat at her station with her headphones on, trying to hear the radio exchanges over the confusion around her.

Cade stepped over some of the cables and touched the Girl Scout leader’s shoulder. “Sorry about the mess, Joyce. I forgot you were coming today. You didn’t confirm.”

“Didn’t think I had to, Cade. I talked to you three weeks ago, and you said it was fine.”