Laughter came sputtering out of me.
Sophie cocked a hand on her hip. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Charlotte said. “When we get home, I’d like to grab a couple boxes, go through your closet, and put together a clothing donation.”
“Don’t go digging,” Logan said to me that evening. He’d been about to start a movie we’d rented when he’d made the mistake of asking me how the shopping trip for Sophie had gone.
And me? I spilled out the entire conversation.
“But what if he did do it?” I asked.
Logan looked toward the window and dropped his voice down. “So, what if he did?”
“What? If he did, then that makes him a murderer!”
“What if he didn’t kill those guys?”
“You mean, what if he hired a hit man?”
“Well, yeah.”
“How does that make it any better?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you only dig enough to find the hitter, without digging enough to find out who financed it.”
“This is ridiculous! I cannot believe that you a lawyer and me a cop are having this conversation.”
“Penny, honey, please. Leave it alone. Don’t go digging into this. Stick to the car cases.”
“But, knowing what I know, that he had contact with Sophie and knew about the abuse, and that he had contact with me and I told him about Charlotte and her abuser, shouldn’t I come forward and say something?”
Logan shook his head. “If you say anything, they’ll revoke his parole, and he’ll likely end up in prison this time, considering his years of sanity.”
I rubbed at my temples. “What if I investigate it along with the cars? Figure out if he had anything to do with it. If he didn’t, then I don’t tell anybody, anything.”
“What’s your excuse for poking around at that particular double-homicide case?”
“Easy. One of the victims was Charlotte’s abuser and she feels robbed from seeing him go to jail.”
Logan shifted on the cushion with an uneasy sigh. “Let’s say he did do it. Can we really blame him?”
“No.”
“But the law will.”
“Yeah,” I said on a whimper.
“If he did it, if he commissioned it, he did it to spare his daughters any more torture. He made their suffering end, for good. Do you really want to see him punished for it?”
“No.”
“Then why go digging into it?”
“Because I’m afraid that if he could go kill those two guys, and keep piecing his life together, then who’s to say he didn’t kill all those other people in the serial killings, while getting ready to win custody back?”
“Penny—”
“Was I spending my weekends with a serial killer?”
He let out a sigh.
My hand flew to my chest. “I love my father, I do. You know I feel very much like I have three living parents.”
“I know you do.”
“But, if he was spending his Thursday nights offing drunk drivers, shouldn’t he pay a price for that?”
“He lost five years, and five children.”
“He should have lost all his years to it.”
Logan reached out, took hold of my chin, and turned my head to face him more fully. “We can debate this all night. At the end of the day, right or wrong, that serial killer saved the lives of those that would have eventually suffered at the victims’ hands. If it was your Dad, then he also already paid with his wife, his kids, his mother, and, hell, his whole childhood. Do you really need to take away what little happiness he’s managed to amass, again?”
My hand turned into a fist and I rubbed my knuckles, back and forth, across my closed lips, trying to answer that.
“On the other hand,” Logan continued, “I’m sure some of those drunk drivers were loved. I’m sure a couple hadn’t ever done it before, and paid a steep price for a single night’s mistake.”
“Are you deliberately trying to mess with my mind?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m just saying that there are always two sides to any story.”
“It’s not up to me to judge, though.”
“But whether or not you go digging around in this, is your choice.”
“And you want me to leave it alone, I get it.”
“I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life feeling guilty for being the one to bring your Dad down.”
“But my knowing that he had contact with Sophie, and not saying anything, is that not obstruction of justice?”
He shook his head, “Sweetie, tell me how you want me to spin this.”
“All I really want to have happen is that I dig enough to convince myself that he didn’t do it. That he didn’t do any of it.”
I could tell Logan was now doing his best to choose his words carefully, but ended up shaking his head. “I just don’t know if that’s what you’re going to find.”
“He’s the only parental figure Charlotte and Sophie have.”
“I know.”
“What will it do to them, if I unravel the mystery and he’s the one I find standing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Kelly! I can’t do that to her!”
“I know.”
“He had an alibi for the double murder.”
“Yes.”
“How solid do you think it was?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why are you answering like that now?”
“Because I was only telling you not to dig, to argue the other side, so you could make an informed decision.”
“So, you think I should dig?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Nuh-uh. You’re not going to be able to pin any of this on me. You do whatever you want to do.”
“You think he did it.”
“I think he smells fishy.”
“Ugh,” I moved my arms across my torso, hugging myself for comfort. “Why did I have to go into law enforcement?”
He scooted closer to me and slipped his arm around me. “Because a drunk driver killed your mother, and broke your father. Because you want to stop the suffering.”
“Then I should leave the serial killer case alone.”
“Yes, you should.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I Can’t Not Open the Closet, I’m Standing Right Here
You know how most kids are scared of a monster in the closet? Well, I wasn’t the kid who cowered under her blankets, hoping it didn’t come out one night and show itself.
I was the kid who got out of bed, grabbed a pencil to stab it in the eye, and marched into the closet, indignant that a monster would come to stay anywhere near me.
Of course, there was nothing in there. And once I got that through my thick skull, I got mad about being scared. So, for three nights straight, I grabbed my blanket and pillow and set up camp in my closet. I slept on the floor in there, to cure myself of the fear.
I know I had determined that I should leave the murder cases alone. I’d told Logan that I’d leave them alone. But I just couldn’t help myself. I could not bring myself to walk around with the fear of my father being a murderer.
So, I worked on the case of the periodically stolen cars, as well as researching the files on the murders. Then I also scoured around for any other unsolved murders.
“If you solve that one, there’s a thirty-thousand-dollar reward in it for you,” Dale said, having stopped in the doorway and spied the file I was reading.
“What?”
Dale nodded and stepped inside the room. “The parents of that kid put up the rest of his college fund as a reward for the sentencing of his killer.”
“Why?”
Dale raised an eyebrow. “Why not? He was their only child. And the first in the family to ever get into college. His parents lost a lot that night.”
I snorted in disgust.
“What?”
“He was a rapist.”
He tilted his head until he
caught my eye. “What makes you say that?”
“Because he was.”
“Who did he rape?”
“My sister, three or four times a week.”
Dale was careful not to show much of a reaction, and I knew he was dipping into his training. “When did she tell you that?”
“Not until she moved back in with my father and he got her to go to therapy, and I asked her why.”
“How old was she?”
“Ten.”
“So, when he died, no one knew?”
I shook my head. “She said she kept silent because the foster parents were nice and she was worried they’d put her someplace where she wasn’t treated as well.”
“Despite the repeated raping?”
I rolled my eyes even as I sadly shook my head. “She was ten. She had a hard time understanding what was actually going on. She didn’t know anything about sex when it first started. All she knew was that he shouldn’t be touching her in any place that her underwear covered.”
“And when the kid died, the abuse stopped.”
“Yep.”
“Penelope, why are you looking at this file?”
“When I talked to my Dad about looking into the serial murders, he told me to be prepared that they weren’t the last murders that he was a suspect of, and that he wasn’t proud of his alibi.”
Confusion clouded Dale’s face. “I don’t remember what his alibi was.”
A chuckle escaped from me. “He’d rented a porno and spent the evening on the couch. They had his cable tv record and they had his location pinged on his cellphone.”
“Sounds like a reasonable enough alibi.”
“The other guy that was killed that night liked to knock around his foster kids, that much was in the report. And one of those foster kids just happened to be another one of my sisters.”
“So, one victim was the guy who hit your sister, and the other was raping another sister?”
I swung my gaze up to his. “Yep.”
“I do not want you investigating this one.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“I’m not saying I’m going to put someone else on it. It’s cold. Those two men may not have gotten justice, but they both got what was coming to them. If you dig this up, and add your sister’s sexual abuse to the story, they’re going to ask her endless questions about. She’ll have to relive it. If she didn’t have therapeutic help for eight years, and is still in therapy now, she may not be stable enough for all that. Honestly, it may do more harm than good, and adding that information into the case isn’t going to help us get any closer to the truth. In fact, it’s only going to have us dragging your father back in here, for a case he’s already been cleared of.”
“What if she wasn’t the only one he was harming?”
“You think another victim did it?”
“It’s possible. How many other foster kids went in and out of that home, before my sister? Maybe one of them aged out and eventually came after him for payback?”
“You have a valid point. You do. But do we want to go looking and dredging up that kind of abuse for someone else?”
“I can’t believe you’re talking me down from this.”
Dale leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Take a look around this room. It’s full of cold cases. Wouldn’t your time be better served digging into a case where justice is needed, rather than a case where it seems justice served itself already?”
“Dale,” I said in legitimate shock.
“We don’t have enough manpower, Penny. We just don’t. And that forces us to pick the cases where we can do the most good. Work on the car cases. We can do a real public service by stopping whoever is doing all that theft.”
“Okay.” Okay, enough’s enough. How many people have to tell me to leave it alone before I take the hint and walk away from it?
Three months passed by, and things were settling into a very good way for our clan.
Charlotte and Sophie were on summer break from school, and had landed jobs working with each other, waitressing at a nearby chain restaurant, raking in some decent money.
Sadie, my adoptive sister, had just announced the double-whammy of being both engaged, and pregnant. My adoptive parents were thrilled for her, regardless of their suspicion that the engagement was timed specifically due to the pregnancy. And I awarded them parenting points for resisting the urge to look at Logan and I for any similar news.
For the record, my Logie-bear and I had a well thought out list of goals we wanted to achieve before we hit either of those milestones. And we were actively working on crossing them off, and making progress.
We each wanted to be promoted before getting engaged, figuring that if we could get through that period of our lives together, and remain supportive of the other, then we could probably get through anything. Then, we wanted to be able to afford getting out of our apartment, and into a home before marriage. And then, with a home and good jobs, I’d ditch the IUD and we’d get down to making some babies.
So far, I’d gotten the promotion I was after. I’d cracked the case of the stolen cars, able to connect all but one of them to the same guy. He’d been running a garage, two towns over from his victims. His fifteen-year-old son was on his second round of chemo, for his fourth bout of cancer. The medical bills were through the roof, and the man had an older son in college, and a younger daughter in competitive gymnastics with legitimate potential for the Olympics. The garage profits hadn’t been able to keep up with everything, and the mother couldn’t work because of the sick teen and the travelling daughter.
I busted him, then gave the local newspaper a lead on the story and told them what I was hoping would happen from it. They took the lead, interviewed the family, gave a lot of attention to spreading the word, and turned it into national news.
The daughter’s teammates got together and created a GoFundMe page, getting help from one of their parents to tell the story in such a gut-wrenching way that the donations came pouring in for the family.
Daddy might be in jail, but the sick son’s medical bills were paid off, the rest of the tuition money needed for the older son was sitting in a savings account for him, and the daughter’s training fund was set for long enough to get her the chance to qualify for the next Olympics. Each child was going to be afforded their needed shot at the life they were fighting to obtain. And the mother was offered, and accepted, two jobs that she could do from a laptop, to keep the roof over everyone’s heads.
In the meantime, Logan had another good six months of work ahead of him before he could expect any kind of title-bump at work. Maybe then we could look at getting a ring on my finger.
Tonight, though, we were all meeting up at Dad’s for dinner, for his and Kelly’s third anniversary. Sophie and Charlotte weren’t much for cooking, so they were making spaghetti with store-bought sauce, store-bought garlic bread, store-bought salad kits, and a store-bought anniversary cheesecake. I’d made meatballs from scratch and carried them into the house, Logan holding the door open for me.
Dad gave me a sideways hug, avoiding the Crockpot in my hands, then reached over to shake Logan’s hand. “Son, it’s good to see you!”
Dad was always enthusiastic to see Logan. He liked anyone that provided added stability to any of his children’s lives. He didn’t care if we were married or not, he just cared that Logan stuck around and treated me well. As long as I was happy, he was happy for us.
I rounded the corner of the staircase and came face-to-face with a stranger. “Hello,” I acknowledged with a nod.
“Penny,” Dad said, turning towards us, “this is Sophie’s boyfriend, Zach.”
My eyes widened, “Zach, nice to meet you,” I said, my hands too full to offer to shake his hand.
Dad lifted the slow-cooker from my arms.
“Hello,” Zach said, stepping forward to shake both mine and Logan’s hands.
“Don’t look too stunned,” Logan half-whispered to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to shake off my stupefaction, “Sophie’s not one to bring a guy home, much less to a family dinner. She must think highly of you,” I said to Zach.
The corner of his mouth lifted, “I’m trying,” he said.
“So, sports, cars, technology, what can we talk about?” Logan asked Zach.
“Zach sells Subarus for a living,” Dad said before Zach could open his mouth.
“Really? New or used?” Logan asked.
“New,” Zach said. “But I’ll sell used on a slow month.”
Logan raised an eyebrow to me, in question.
“Go ahead,” I said with a nod. “I have to get this plugged back in,” I said, taking the slow cooker back into my hands.
“Penny and I’ve been looking at compact SUVs. The Forrester is second on our list of two.”
Zach smiled.
“What’s at the top?” Dad asked, pleased there was a topic that might help him continue feeling this new guy out.
“Kia Sportage,” I called out.
“God-awful looking vehicle,” Zach muttered.
“Yeah, that’s what we think, too. But affordable.”
Zach grinned. “But the Forrester isn’t much more, and is way better looking.”
“Penny likes the color choices better, too.”
I shook my head and entered the kitchen. They all looked up and I caught Sophie’s gaze. “Our men are talking cars.”
“Well then, they’ll be occupied for a while,” Kelly said, pulling out enough glasses to finish setting the table.
Sophie smiled.
“You seem happy,” I murmured to her.
Her smile deepened, “I am.”
“Men are like cars,” Charlotte said, opening the box of spaghetti, to put in a pot of boiling water on the stove. “They all look shiny when they’re new.”
“She’s just bitter,” Kelly loudly whispered. “She going to be the only one sitting at the table by herself.”
“I’m thinking about becoming a lesbian,” Charlotte declared.
Kelly, Sophie, and I exchanged looks.
“Honey,” Kelly said, careful to keep her tone even, “I don’t think that’s how it works. I don’t think you can just ‘become’ a lesbian.”
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