Paranoid(28)

She glanced at Harper. “Yeah,” Harper agreed, “Schmidt is a bully, but he wouldn’t do anything to, like, mess up because he could lose his scholarship.”

“He’d lose it if I made trouble?”

“Don’t, Mom, just don’t!” Dylan said, shooting his sister a dark look. “And please, can we just keep Dad out of this?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, man, really?” Dylan groaned and rolled his eyes. His whole body slumped. “Why?”

“Because he’s your dad.”

“But . . .” Was he really going to argue about it?

“Hey—what is this?” Harper said as she picked up the newspaper still open on the table. The article about Luke Hollander’s death was front and center. “Does Lucas know about this?”

“I don’t know. Probably,” Rachel said. The whole damned town would have read it by now.

“Wow. Oh, wow.” Harper was scanning the article. “He’s gonna freak. It’s online, right?”

“Everything’s online now.”

“Yeah, then he’ll see it.” She shot her brother a look.

“What?” Rachel asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that he doesn’t like to talk about it, y’know. It makes him feel weird. Different.”

Even though Lila had mentioned how difficult it was for her son in the article, Rachel hadn’t dwelled on how the newspaper piece might affect her nephew, the boy who’d never gotten the chance to meet his father. But she knew how it was when someone felt different. Hadn’t she witnessed Luke’s own emotional response when anyone asked about his father, his “real” father, meaning Bruce Hollander? Luke had always tried to hide the fact that his biological father had been serving time in prison. Whenever anyone had questioned him about Hollander or whenever his father had tried to get in touch, Luke had become angry and sullen, horrible to live with.

It had been a weird dynamic for their little family.

It was probably just as difficult for Lucas. Possibly worse.

Harper finished reading and glanced up to meet Rachel’s eyes. “It’s hard for you, too, huh?”

“For all of us.” Rachel nodded, then fought the tightness in her throat when she caught a bit of empathy in her daughter’s eyes. Over the years the subject had come up; the kids knew the sketchy details and Rachel had left it at that. Now, compliments of Mercedes Pope, they might learn a helluva lot more.

Today, it seemed, was a turning point.

For all of them.

And worst of all, Violet Sperry had been murdered.





CHAPTER 9


By the time Rachel was ready to leave for the meeting, Violet’s murder was all over the news.

Flanked by her kids as they stood in the living room in front of the flat-screen, Rachel felt her keys dig into her tightly clenched hand as she watched the press conference where the sheriff himself spoke first into the camera.

Roberto Valdez was a tall, fit man with military-cut brown hair starting to gray, a firm jaw, and near-black eyes that were deep set and didn’t falter as he stared into the camera. Standing on the concrete steps in front of the flagpoles and the department’s headquarters, Valdez, in uniform, made a brief statement before the public information officer took over. A forty-something woman whose brown hair was clipped at her nape, Isa Drake seemed less grim than the sheriff, though her answers were short and concise: “Yes, it was definitely a homicide.”

“No, there are no suspects or persons of interest yet, but it’s still early in our investigation.”

“More details will follow, as Sheriff Valdez mentioned.”

“We are encouraging anyone with information to please come forward.”

The kids stared at Rachel as she turned off the TV.

“So you knew her?” Dylan asked.

“Yes.” Listening to the report, hearing the account on the news had only made it more real.

“Like, she was a good friend?” he asked.

“Not close, but we hung out sometimes.” Rarely.

“Weird,” he said.

“More like freaky,” Harper said. “Who do you think killed her?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You must have an idea.” Her son, again. “Who, Mom?”

“I don’t know.” Rachel checked her watch. “How could I know?” she admitted as much to herself as to the kids. “Come on, let’s get a move on. We’re already late.”

She expected everyone on the committee had been held up. She’d received a dozen or so texts about Violet over the course of the afternoon—group texts, which she despised, her phone pinging as each person weighed in. Worse yet, it was a group Lila had created and some of the respondents came in as unfamiliar phone numbers rather than names, which meant she didn’t really know to whom she was replying. So she didn’t.

They made their way to the back door and the dog bounded behind them. “Not this time,” Rachel said.

“Still talking to the dog.” Harper let the screen door slam shut behind her.

“Hey!” Dylan called after his sister. He was hoisting his backpack to his shoulder. “We all talk to him. You too!” He seemed to have forgiven Rachel for the earlier grilling. At least for the moment. But as his backpack wasn’t completely zipped, she saw inside, her gaze landing on a brown box. “What’s that?” she asked.