Green Tea (27 page)

Teagan and I must have shown our confusion.

“Just look at Teagan. She has her eyes. If you look at your mother, you can see each of you girls. If you look at you girls, you can see your mother. It’s when you look at each other that you don’t see it, but just wait, as you get older, you will.”

“What a lovely thought.”

We moved onto the next subject.

AJ finally had a few minutes to dance. When we’d had our dance, he danced with my mom and his Nana.

Nana and Adeline were the bells of the ball. No pun intended. They danced the evening through.

The cake was cut, the last of the toasts were made, and I realized I was more tired than I’d been in a long time, a happy tired. We left in a little caravan. Jessie led the way, then Teagan, then me.

Teagan and Jessie would follow me home, while AJ brought Nana home.

Adeline was going home with Jovana.

When we were most of the way to the apartment, I called Teagan at a stoplight. “You got a minute?”

“Why?”

“I got to thinking. I need your help to check something. It should only take a couple of minutes.”

“Let me check with Jessie, I’ll call you right back.”

I thought it through while I drove.

My phone rang two exists before the apartment.

“Jessie will drop me at your place, then go over to my place. He’s got some calls to make anyway. He said you can borrow me for no more than 45 minutes and you need to bring me home when you are done with me.”

We laughed.

When we got in the apartment, and I went straight to the computer. I didn’t even kick off my shoes. That never happens.

“So, what?”

“Something Nana Jo said. Can you just do something for me? Can you just get us back to that woman you found, the one you are so convinced is Jerkface’s sister?”

“You can do that Cara. Just go into your history file.”

“Good idea, but it was on your laptop, not my computer.”

“Good point. Give me a minute.”

She typed away, trying to retrace her steps. After a few minutes, and a few cuss words, she found it.

“Her name is Kirsten Branden Gagnon. She lives locally. She is about the right age. You ready to spend the money to do a background check on her?”

“No, but what I want to do is see if I can find a picture of her.”

“That should be easy enough, we’ll just Google her name.”

We typed it in, did the search, hit ‘images’ and tried to divine which image could be her. None of them looked like Jerkface.

Teagan logged onto her account on the social network, did a search for the name, and got a picture.

“Sorry to waste your time Teagan, that didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work?”

“I was just sure that we would find the picture and even though all those girls didn’t look like each other, they would look like her.”

“What?”

“When Nana Jo said that we all look like Mom, even though we don’t look like each other, it got me to thinking. They have on TV all the time that the murder victims look a lot alike. None of the girls I saw, really look alike, so I was thinking that maybe the thing that held them all together was that they all looked like Jerkface’s sister. Maybe he was out killing them because of some weird thing he has going about his sister, but it didn’t work. Those girls don’t look like her.”

“It was a good try.”

“I just can’t let go of what Jerkface told me when I first met him. He kept saying that the key to these crimes is in the minutia. It’s driving me nuts.”

“Good news is it isn’t a long drive.”

“Love you too. Go home. Jessie is waiting for you. AJ will be home any minute. He’s going to be pooped. I don’t think he sat down for more than twelve seconds today.”

“He really is a good guy Cara.”

“I know he is. You know what is going on with Jessie and his relocation yet?”

“No decision has been made. He asked me again if I wanted to go with him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said that I couldn’t think about it. That I had the wedding and the murders and everything to deal with.”

“But you didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes.”

“But you didn’t say no. That should tell you something. Maybe you should go.”

“You trying to get rid of me Cara?”

“No, I’m trying to be a good sister and tell you that you should go if that is what is best for you and not even threaten to slit my wrists or anything.”

“Well, as long as you are being supportive.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Even if I decided to go, it would be a process. It isn’t like I’d decide to go, and be gone tomorrow.”

“Do you even know where?”

“Until I figure out if I’m even slightly interested in going, I’m not going to say where, because it doesn’t matter.”

“Sure it does. If you decide to move, and you move to Tallahassee, that’s one thing, if you move to Atlanta, that’s another, but if you move to Wasilla Alaska, that is a whole other issue.”

“As soon as I know, you’ll know.”

“Does Mom know you are thinking about it?”

“I promise, if I move to Wasilla, I’ll send her a postcard letting her know I arrived safely. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t come after me.”

“Probably not, but she might send somebody.
 
Go home!”

“You want I should walk?”

“Lord.
 
I forgot.
 
You don’t have your car.
 
I’m really beginning to worry about myself.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Last night?” He had that ‘I’m just teasing, but reassure me anyway’ thing going on that guys sometimes get.

“Well, that goes without saying, but I was multi-tasking, ya know, kind of like you were last night, only not quite as much skill, or quite as fun, but the best I can do in my current state.”

“Current state?”

“Hung over.”

“Hung over? Cara, you don’t even really drink. How could you be hung over?”

“Not on alcohol, on you!”

I love it when he blushes. “Oh!”

“What I was thinking about is minutia.”

“Okay.”

“The whole thing with Jerkface.”

“Okay.”

“My mom used to tell us all the time that it’s just plain stupid to tell a lie because no matter what you do the truth of it will rise to the top. That the more cunning you’re trying to be, the more likely you are to reveal yourself.”

“Okay.”

“When Jerkface was talking to me, way back when all this started, he said that Louis was just sure that every crime could be solved with enough inspection of the related minutia. It had a ring of truth to it. It meant something.”

“Okay.”

“What if that’s actually what happened? What if Louis was slogging through the minutia and what he found was information that pointed at Jerkface?”

“Doesn’t that sound just as convenient as the theory going the other direction? The theory that Steph and Carmine proposed and you and Teagan got so upset about?”

“Pretty much, except that my theory feels right.”

“That’s scientific.”

“Don’t be like that.”

“I’m just telling you what the reaction is likely to be.”

“Then I need to find evidence to prove my theory.”

“Hold on. First, you’re supposed to stay out of this whole thing and let the professionals deal with it. Remember? We agreed.”

“But if they’re right, the bad guys are already in jail, if it really is Jerkface and his sister; or he’s dead, if it was Louis. Either way there isn’t any real threat to me anymore. If the professionals are wrong, then the bad guys were either never in jail, or will be out of jail soon enough, and then when I’m not paying attention because I think everything is just spiffy, it is all gonna sneak up on me and bite me in the butt.”

“We wouldn’t want that, it’s such a cute butt.”

“If Jerkface and his sister convince the world at large that Louis was the killer and they were just trying to cover it up after Louis’s unfortunate accident, so that the money that was legitimately left to the place where Jerkface’s sister worked would not be hosed up, then they are gonna be in trouble, but not serial murderer trouble.”

“You know, that never really made sense to me anyway...”

“Doesn’t make sense to me either, but that’s pretty much what Steph told us.”

“I’m pretty sure Steph knows a bunch more than she is telling us.”

“That’s another thing, why is Steph in on all of this anyway? Seems like it would be a cop thing, not a lawyer thing.”

“I agree.”

“When you think of a lawyer involved in any process, you think she is there to protect the interests of her client. If I’m not her client, and we’re pretty sure I’m not, Teagan thinks that Steph approached her, not the other way around, so if Steph had some other interest in this, what is her interest? Who is she protecting?
 
Jerkface and his sister hadn’t even come into the picture yet, and Louis was already dead.”

“Good question.”

“And, what is the connection? There has to be one. If Jerkface is the killer, why did they arrest his sister? And if she is the killer, why did they arrest Jerkface? And if they killed together, where does Louis fit in? And if Louis is the killer, then where do Jerkface and his sister fit in? And if it was Louis and Jerkface’s sister, what the hell is that and what about Jerkface?”

“Those are all really good questions, and I don’t have an answer to any of them.”

“Well, I’m gonna find an answer to all of them.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“The answer is in the minutia.”

“Great. I liked it better when we’d decided that it was all over but the court appearance.”

“Your grandmother told me to stop acting like a ninny and she was right. I’ve been sitting back and letting life happen to me. That isn’t the O’Flynn way. That isn’t my way. I make my life what it is by the actions I take. Life is cause and effect. Choose your cliché, I’m getting my reality back.”

“Where do we start?”