Justice for Sara (11 page)

Thursday, June 6
8:00
A.M.

Kat contacted Jeremy about her and Sara’s things. He sounded surprised by the call.

“It’s all in a storage locker in Mandeville.”

“Could I stop by and pick up the key?”

“Sure, but—”

“What?”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“No,” she replied honestly. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”

“It’s June, Kat, and today’s supposed to be a scorcher. Let me make a few calls, I’ll hire a couple guys to do it for you. Some of those boxes are really heavy.”

She didn’t know what kind of flower he thought she was, but she routinely schlepped sixty-pound bags of wheat and maneuvered hundred-quart bowls of bread dough. Kat smiled. “I’ve got this, Jeremy. No worries.”

“I’ll help you. Let me look at my calendar and—”

“Jeremy,” she said softly, “you’ve already done so much for me. I can do this. I
need
to do it.”

His silence told her he disagreed. That he wanted to insist, but knew it would get him nowhere.

So he did what she had known he would. “I’ll bring you the key.”

“I’ll pick it up.” When he started to argue, she cut him off. “I’ve got nothing but time right now. Just tell me when and where.”

*

Jeremy met her outside the Lakehouse restaurant on the Mandeville lakefront. A historic building in the classic Creole style, it had been turned into a restaurant and event venue, the double galleries used for al fresco dining. Quintessential south Louisiana, with sweeping views of Lake Pontchartrain, the property dotted with ancient oaks and azaleas, gardenia and camellia bushes.

He was on his cell phone, so she waited while he finished his call.

“I will,” he said. “Keep me posted.”

“That was Tish,” he said as he ended the call. “She asked me to tell you she has information about the waterfront property and will call you later.”

“Thanks.” She motioned the restaurant. “Breakfast meeting?”

“Hammering out the final arrangements for next week’s party.” He smiled. “I’m making it official. I’m running for state senate.”

“Jeremy! Congratulations!” She hugged him. “You’ll win. I know you will!”

He hugged her back. “I expect you to come. To the party.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“I do.”

“The focus needs to be on you. I’d be a distraction.”

He caught her hands. “You’re family. The last thing I’m going to do is try to hide you, like a dirty secret. How can my opponents make a big deal out of something I fully acknowledge?”

Kat wasn’t convinced but she agreed anyway. “Okay, then. If it’s what you want, I’ll be front and center, for all the world to see.”

“Good girl.”

He retrieved a key from his pocket. “Here you go. Locker one-two-zero. Mandeville Storage on Highway 22, near Beau Chene.”

Twenty minutes later, she rolled up the storage container’s metal door. A wall of boxes faced her.

Kat saw right away that Jeremy had been right. If she wanted to get this done today, she was going to need help. But she wasn’t about to bother Jeremy again. Maybe Danny could help her? She could pay a couple of his jock students to do the heavy lifting. Maybe one of them had a truck. If not, she could rent a U-Haul for the day.

It took one call. Danny showed up with a couple football players who had failed health class. She didn’t need to rent a trailer, because Danny had insisted on swinging by to pick up his truck.

Working together, it took less than an hour to get the boxes moved from the locker to the truck. Forty minutes after that, the teens had the boxes unloaded and stacked in her front room.

As she paid the boys, she noticed Luke across the street. Talking with Iris Bell. He looked her way, lifted his hand in greeting.

She waved back, a strange catch in her chest.

“Is that Luke Tanner?” Danny asked.

“It is. You know Luke, right?”

“It makes me feel old, but he was one of my students. A heck of a ballplayer.”

“How about a cold drink?” she asked the teens.

They refused and tore out, obviously delighted to have been given the rest of the morning off. But Danny took her up on it.

“Water good?” she asked.

“Water’s perfect.”

He followed her inside, then stopped cold. “It still smells like her.”

It did
. The boxes, she realized. Her sister’s things.

She didn’t comment, she couldn’t. She fixed them both a glass of iced water.

Kat handed him his. He took it, expression pinched. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I need air.”

They went back out to the front porch and sat on the steps. Kat gave him space, knowing how it felt to be ambushed by the past.

Finally, he looked at her. “Do you ever think about the point where your life came to a screeching stop?”

“Yes. God, yes. All the time.” She looked away, then back. “That’s why I’m here.”

He laughed without humor. “Look at us. Pathetic.”

Kat realized she didn’t feel that way, not anymore. “Only we can change that. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Will you help me?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes. Of course I will.”

They sipped their waters in silence. As he drained his, the ice clinking against the empty glass, he checked his watch. “I should go. Can’t leave jocks on their own for too long.”

She smiled and stood. “Thanks for everything.”

“If you need help going through all that stuff—”

She put him out of his misery. “You already helped enough. But I appreciate the offer. More than you know.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it and started again. “What do you hope to accomplish here, Kat? You’ve lived without this stuff for ten years, what can it matter now?”

“I’ve got to put the past behind me,” she said. “How can I do that if I don’t confront it? On every level.”

“It’s only stuff,” he said.

“Memories,” she countered. “Open doors.” She paused. “And I thought maybe I’d find answers in her journal.”

He looked startled.

“You knew she wrote in a journal, didn’t you?”

“No, I don’t think I did.”

“Really? That surprises me.”

“Why would I, Kat?”

“It was a big part of her life. She’d been religious about it since our parents’ death.”

“You noticed because you lived with her. She never mentioned it to me.”

His demeanor had subtly changed. He seemed aggravated. Anxious.

Was there something in the journal he didn’t want her to see?

A moment later, he explained. “Wow, thinking about Sara having a journal feels so weird. So personal.” He smiled ruefully. “She probably wrote about us. Our relationship. When we were … intimate.”

Of course.
She felt like an insensitive idiot. “Sorry, I … didn’t think. If I find it, I promise not to pry.”

She noticed he couldn’t quite meet her eyes and she felt bad for him. How would she feel in the same situation?

Totally exposed.

“Thanks. I appreciate that.” He cleared his throat. Handed her his glass. “Can I call you sometime?”

“I’d like that.”

Even as she murmured the words, her gaze drifted across the street to Luke. She caught herself and jerked her attention back to Danny. “Thanks again.”

“I’ll call you. We can get a cup of coffee.”

“Sounds great.”

As he pulled away from the curb, her cell phone sounded. It was Tish. “Good news,” she said. “The owner of the property on the water’s agreed to sell. All we need to do is come up with the right number.”

Kat McCall
2003

Seven days after the murder

Kat sat across the kitchen table from Jeremy. She gazed down at her wilting bowl of cornflakes. He’d awakened her early. To talk before he left for work. It didn’t matter. She’d hardly slept since Sara’s death. She would doze off for an hour here and there, then awaken screaming for her mom. Or Sara. Terrified. Certain someone was hiding in the closet or under the bed, waiting for the moment she fell back asleep to pounce.

During those small snatches of sleep, she was tormented by nightmares. Bloody ones. In them she lost everything and everyone she loved.

They mirrored her every waking moment.

“Kat, we need to talk.”

She lifted her gaze from the cornflakes. “Okay.”

“You’re in a lot of trouble, sweetheart. They’re going to arrest you.”

“Why? I didn’t do it!”

“You’re their only suspect, baby.” He reached across the table, covered her hands with his. “You’ve got to help us help you. Can you do that?”

“Yes, anything. I’ll do anything.”

“You need to tell the truth.”

“I have. I swear!”

“You were locked in your room?”

“Yes!”

“Honey—” He paused. “That doesn’t sound like Sara. She wouldn’t lock you in and not allow you to use the bathroom.”

Kat’s eyes filled with tears. “But she did.”

“Your story keeps changing. Things just don’t add up.”

“I get confused. It doesn’t seem real.”

“Okay, sweetie, you’ve gotta level with me here. Promise?”

She nodded.

“Sara told me she thought you were seeing some guy. Are you?”

Kat stared at him, the blood beginning to pound in her head. A drumbeat sounding the refrain
tell him tell him tell him …

But she couldn’t. Ryan loved her. He was all she had left.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No one.”

He looked frustrated. He tightened his fingers over hers. “Maybe he did this, Kat. Have you considered that?”

Kat thought of that night, in the car. But they’d only been joking around. He’d never do something like that. She knew him.

“Baby, listen. They’re going to arrest you, they have enough evidence—”

“But I didn’t do it! How can they have—”

“It’s called circumstantial evidence, Kat. Enough of it can convince a jury.”

He looked so deeply and for so long into her eyes, she wondered if he was trying to read her mind or mesmerize her.

“Give me something here. Give me a name. If he loves you, he wouldn’t want you to be arrested. Would he? He wouldn’t want you to be in trouble?”

She lowered her eyes, shook her head.

“That’s right, he wouldn’t. Give me his name, sweetheart.”

“No,” she said again, pulling her hands back. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Dammit, Kat! You’re not thinking clearly. This is your life we’re talking about.”

Ryan was all she had left. She wasn’t about to lose him, too.

“Danny did it. I know he did!”

“But the police haven’t found anything on him.”

“I told them about their fight.” Her voice rose. “And I heard his truck!”

“Couples fight, that’s not enough. And first you said you didn’t hear anything, then you said you did. They don’t believe you and he denies it.”

Kat sat back, searching her memory. Everything from the past couple months was a blur. Between the lies and sneaking around, the alcohol and weed, she hadn’t been paying attention. Nothing jumped out.

But then something did.

Her expression must have changed, because Jeremy sat forward. “You remembered something. What?”

“Sara wrote in a journal every day. She talked about it. Even suggested maybe I should try it. That it might help me work through stuff.”

“Okay. And?”

“And if she’d found out Danny was an asshole, I bet she would’ve written it in there.”