by Zoe Carter
Lauren picked up the phone and pressed in numbers. “Sophie McDonner? My name is Lauren Riley. I’m a reporter with the Townsend Report and I’m doing a story on the murder of Tammy Gallagher. I understand that you were friends in high school and I was hoping I could talk to you about Tammy and find out a little more about her.” She listened for a moment. “Great. I’ll see you then.”
He liked that she got things done. Just picked up the phone and did it. Like his motto. “How’d she sound?”
“Like she wanted free lunch,” Lauren said. “She told me if I sprung for Marita’s Mexicana Café, she’d tell me whatever I wanted to know. We’re meeting her in a half hour.”
“Whatever it takes.” He glanced at her. “So what was your yearbook motto?”
Lauren smiled and clicked over to her year. “God, look at me. Wild eyes from a night of partying the night before. Crazy big hair.”
“But beautiful,” Trevor said so quietly he wasn’t even sure he’d said it aloud.
He must have, because she was looking up at him with that same expression. The guy who often said the wrong thing was hitting it out of the park right now. Not that he should be.
“I spent that summer after graduation in rehab,” she said quietly, looking away. “I was so wild, wouldn’t listen to anyone.”
“What made you agree to go?” he asked.
“The last day of school, I was so happy to be out of THHS and got so drunk. Happy stupid drunk. I saw my sister Nova sitting outside at a restaurant with her boyfriend and his parents—she was meeting them for the first time. And I went over and rambled on and on like an idiot, took a half of the boyfriend’s quesadilla off his plate and started eating it, all while ignoring Nova’s mortified pleas to go home. Then I tried to do some dumb trick with the basket of bread and I overturned it on the mother’s lap, even though I didn’t mean to.”
“At least it was just bread,” Trevor said. “Dusts off.”
“Except there was a little saucer of herbed olive oil in the basket, which spilled all over the mother’s pants. Nova was so horrified. She ran to the restroom and I followed her, and she was crying and trying to keep her mascara from running down her face with a scratchy paper towel. I kept saying I was sorry and she said, ‘You’re always sorry, Lauren’ with tears streaming down her cheeks. It just hit home. Nova practically raised me when my mother died and I treated her like she didn’t matter at all. I went to rehab for the summer and I was okay for a while, but then I started drinking socially again. Then I got arrested for disorderly conduct for acting like a moron over some guy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Daughters of police chiefs get arrested for small-beans stuff? I’m surprised. I know being found with the murder weapon next to a murder victim when you supposedly had means and motive and opportunity will get you arrested no matter who you know. But some drunken display of foolishness?”
“Lewton,” she said. “He’s been after my father’s job for years. Any chance he can get to discredit my dad, he’ll take. An embarrassment of a daughter is a great way.”
“Well, your dad is still chief, so that must say something about what a good cop and a good man Tommy Riley is.”
She stared at him again, her expression softening. “It’s nice of you to say that. And I hope he’s doing everything he can to find your sister’s killer, Trevor. It just seems to me like no one is doing enough. Like we’re the only ones who want justice.”
“Good thing I have you on my side then,” he said.
She smiled. “Good thing.”
“You never told me what your motto was,” he said. “From your yearbook photo.”
She flipped pages and paused. “Follow your bliss.”
He nodded. “If I can get to bliss, I’d follow it.”
But he could forget that. Dead kid sisters meant no bliss. He’d find Tammy’s killer, make sure the guy paid and then he’d somehow try to deal with the bitterness by working hard on the ranch. Physical labor was always good for that. Fast, hard sex was good for that too.
He might want to lean over the desk that separated him from Lauren Riley and kiss her—hard and passionately and for minutes—but there was nothing left inside him. He could feel the void inside, the edges raw and crumbling and red-hot. He liked Lauren Riley. And for her sake, he was going to keep his hands and lips to himself.
* * *
Not one whisper or gawk about her past as a murder suspect greeted Lauren at Marita’s Mexicana Café when she and Trevor arrived. She could get used to that. Now that she had the Townsend Report back on a small-scale operation, people were reading and commenting on the story—and not on her notoriety. She was going back to being Lauren Riley, reporter, not Lauren Riley, murder suspect.
“There she is,” Lauren said, lifting her chin at the tall, slender teenager with a black pixie haircut, heavy kohl eyeliner and dark purple lipstick who sat at a booth in the crowded restaurant. She was dressed head to toe in black. She had two small silver eyebrow rings, and a lip ring. At least ten tiny ruby studs lined one ear.
They headed over and sat down. “Sophie, I’m Lauren Riley from the Townsend Report, and this is Trevor Gallagher, Tammy’s brother.”
“Hey, I remember you,” Sophie said to Trevor, the dark-lipsticked mouth curving into a smile. “I didn’t hang at Tammy’s often, but I was there for a birthday party a bunch of years ago in the yard and when we couldn’t break the piñata, you did it with one swing.”
Trevor smiled. “I remember that. Candy went flying everywhere.”
The waitress came over and they ordered, then she returned with three glasses of ice water and a basket of tortilla chips and three kinds of salsa.
“Can you tell us the last time you saw Tammy?” Lauren asked, swiping a tortilla chip in the mild salsa.
“It was early June. That’s all I know for sure,” Sophie said. “Three, four weeks ago? I remember because I talked her into dyeing her hair blond.”
“I was wondering how that happened,” Trevor said.
“She said she wanted to be noticeable, stand out, attract someone other than CJ Spinner. I mean, he’s okay, but he’s not going anywhere, you know? Tammy had goals.”
“To put herself through college?” Lauren asked.
Sophie nodded and dipped a chip in the salsa verde. “That, but also to meet the right people. She thought if she changed her look, maybe she’d stand out more. So she got rid of the mousy brown hair, got contacts, ditched the blah jeans for skinny jeans.”
A makeover, Lauren thought. She could understand that. Lauren had glammed herself up when she was fourteen, even though Nova always tried to make her scrub off the makeup before leaving for school.
“And did she meet who she wanted?” Trevor asked. Lauren could hear apprehension in his voice.
Sophie swiped another chip through the green salsa. “She did say she was approached a couple times by an older man. He kept offering to take her out, buy her a fancy dress.”
Lauren looked at Trevor, then at Sophie. “Older man—like our age?” she said, pointing a finger between her and Trevor. “Thirties? Forties? Sixties?”
Sophie shrugged. “I really don’t know. She just said older.”
“Did Tammy go out with him?” Trevor asked.
Sophie shook her head. “She said something about him creeped her out.” As the girl took a bite of her chip, Lauren and Trevor both leaned forward, hanging on the girl’s every word. “But she couldn’t explain it. I told her she just wasn’t used to rich dudes, but she said it was more than that, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She also said he was wearing a wedding ring.”
Trevor had stiffened beside her. “Well, I’m glad she had the sense to stay away from that sleaze.”
But had the sleaze stayed away from her?
“Did she mention
the man’s name?” Lauren asked. Please say yes. Please. Please. Please.
The waitress came over with a tray and set down entrées before Sophie could respond. Chicken enchiladas for Trevor. Black-bean tacos for Lauren. And a sampler plate for Sophie.
Lauren’s heart was beating out of her chest as she repeated the question. “Did she tell you his name?”
Sophie picked up her mini burrito. “She didn’t know it. She said she’d seen him around town a few times, so he probably lived in Thornwood Heights, but she didn’t recognize him. Anyway, the last time I saw her, she told me he came to Catch of the Day twice and sat in her section and came on to her pretty strong. She said she got the serious creeps. There was something in his expression, the way she found him watching her whenever she glanced in his direction.”
“Did you tell this to the police?” Trevor asked, pushing his plate away. He’d clearly lost his appetite.
She shrugged. “No one’s asked me anything.”
Lauren could feel the anger radiating from Trevor beside her. The police were not investigating this case. At all.
“I have no doubt why,” Sophie added, taking a bite of her tostada. “Look at me. As my mother likes to say, who’d believe a word I said about anything? Whatever. I like it that way. I get accused of being all goth for attention, but to be honest, it’s the opposite. No one bugs me. People stay pretty far away.”
Lauren wasn’t so sure the girl really liked that. “I guess Tammy was the opposite, though? She wanted to garner attention.”
Sophie nodded. “What do you think happened to her? Do you think that stalker dude killed her?”
Again Lauren felt Trevor’s entire body freeze up beside her. “We don’t know yet, but we’re going to find out.”
Sophie didn’t have much to add other than that Tammy was a sweetheart and had helped her out a bunch of times and no, she didn’t do drugs, wasn’t her thing.
When they said goodbye to Sophie, Trevor and Lauren stood outside in front of the five-foot-tall painted wood cactus under the restaurant’s sign.
“A rich older man who had a hard time taking no for an answer,” Lauren said. “Let’s find him.”
“Yeah, let’s find him so I can kill him,” Trevor said, his expression grim. “But Tammy didn’t even know his name. Or how much older. Older to an eighteen-year-old can mean late twenties or it could mean fifties.”
“Sophie said he showed up twice in Tammy’s section at Catch of the Day. We can ask the manager for a list of reservations and names of those who paid by credit card for the time period that Sophie mentioned.”
“Good idea but there’ll be hundreds of names. Isn’t Catch always packed with a line out the door? I’m not sure any name would stand out.”
“Yes, but not ‘well-heeled’ men who dined alone,” she pointed out. “I’ll recognize names of the solo richies.”
He nodded. “This is why it helps to have a reporter on my side. You think like a cop.”
Lauren smiled. “Perk of growing up with the chief of police as a dad. Not that he talked much about work at home. But I always listened.”
He slung an arm around her shoulder as they headed to her car. She liked how that felt a little too much.
But an hour later, they walked out of Catch of the Day more frustrated than ever. During the first three weeks of June, there were no solo customers who paid by credit card. And none of the names on the reservations sounded any alarms. Lauren recognized a lot of them. Rileys and Blakes and Martins and a zillion other Thornwood Heights families who loved the popular lobster shack.
“How the hell could there be so few clues?” Trevor asked as they walked down Main Street. “How could someone commit murder and leave such little trace behind?”
The same way I almost got railroaded for Victor’s murder, she knew. Justice could work in weird ways. And sometimes, there was no justice.
As Lauren saw a very blond, very tall, very tanned particular family coming out of the ridiculously expensive Thai restaurant half a block up, she froze and turned around. There was definitely no justice if she had to face this crew of vipers.
Chapter Eight
“Can we walk that way instead?” Lauren asked Trevor, starting to head in the direction they’d just come from.
Trevor didn’t move. “Lauren, wait. I see Hayden Blake—the medical examiner. Maybe he has something else to tell us about Tammy.”
Hayden wasn’t the problem. The rest of the Blakes were. And Gwen and her husband, Connor, were headed right their way, preceded by their two golden-boy sons—Hayden, who was always kind and polite, if a bit standoffish when Lauren ran into him around town, and Daniel, the biggest snob alive. And Gwen wouldn’t deign to even look at a Riley.
There was bad blood between Connor Blake and Lauren’s father. But it had started well before Abby Blake, Connor’s daughter, had disappeared twenty years ago. Over what, Lauren had no idea; she herself was only five then. But Lauren had once heard Nova asking her father about the discord between him and Connor Blake. Tommy Riley had done his trademark hand-wave of dismissal, muttering that Connor Blake was a vulture and refusing to discuss it further.
Whatever it was, after Abby disappeared, the rift had turned vitriolic. Connor had blamed Lauren’s sister Jennifer for the disappearance, swearing that Jennifer was the last person to see her, that Jennifer was jealous of her richer best friend who had it all, that there was something Jennifer wasn’t saying. And then the flames had been fanned even more when the disappearance went unsolved year after year—the chief of police, Tommy Riley, accused of not doing his job.
Ugh. The Blakes were getting closer. And closer. Lauren was surprised the family was willing to share the same airspace, let alone the sidewalk with a Riley. The Blake sons walked in front of their parents, chatting about their stock portfolios, no doubt. Both were tall, handsome men in their thirties, or maybe even early forties.
Hayden Blake stopped and nodded at Lauren with a smile, then extended his hand to Trevor. “Mr. Gallagher, again I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Trevor shook his hand. “I appreciate that. And call me Trevor. I wanted to stop by your office tomorrow to ask if there’s anything new you can tell me.”
“I wish I did have something more to share,” Hayden said. “But you’re welcome to come by to look at the reports.”
“Is this about that dreadful story of the poor girl who was found in the woods?” Gwen Blake asked, her diamond tennis bracelet glittering in the afternoon sunshine. In her late fifties like her husband, Gwen was very attractive, with light blond hair expertly cut and colored, and ice-blue eyes that could flash hot or cold.
Lauren nodded. “Her name was Tammy Gallagher. She was only eighteen years old.”
“Tragic,” Gwen said, turning away from Lauren, her meticulously made-up face wearing suitable compassion. Lauren could never really read Gwen Blake, not that she had much contact with her.
“I’ll tell you what’s a tragedy,” Connor Blake snapped, stepping forward and pointing his finger at Lauren. He was well over six feet tall and imposing, but Lauren didn’t flinch or budge. “A seventeen-year-old girl with everything to live for suddenly going missing and the police chief’s family getting away with it.”
After all this time, Connor still blamed the Rileys. Unbelievable. “My sister had nothing to do with Abby’s disappearance! And my father did everything he could to investigate what happened.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Connor said, sneering. “Not that you could.” Lauren had never seen such a look of disgust on someone’s face.
“Dad, let’s just go,” Daniel Blake said, taking his father’s arm, his expression calm. “Twenty years is a tough number to take in,” he added, glancing at Lauren. He squeezed his dad’s hand, and for a moment, Lauren saw Connor’s face twist from r
age to grief. Everything aside, the animosity, the years of accusations and hatred, a family had lost a child. Their youngest, their daughter, their Abby.
But in a flash, the disdain was back; Connor looked like he wanted to spit at Lauren, but Daniel started walking, and the family moved on.
“That was tense,” Trevor said.
“Always is. Every time a Riley runs into a Blake.”
Twenty years is a tough number to take in... Damned right it was. Five-year-old Lauren had worshipped Abby Blake, long presumed dead. And Lauren had worshipped her middle sister, Jennifer, who’d fled, who’d gone into exile, the suspicion cast on her too much for that seventeen-year-old to handle. As the years had passed, Lauren, still so young then, had cried herself to sleep over both losses. But what bugged Lauren was how Jennifer could have willingly stayed away when Abby likely had no choice. Something had happened to Abby. But Jennifer had just...left. And never came back until a month ago.
Lauren knew that Nova had had her own issues with Jennifer abandoning them. One day, Jennifer needed to fully explain herself to Lauren, even if it was as Nova claimed that as the years went by, it got harder and harder to come home. Lauren also recalled the two ugly blowups between Jennifer and Connor Blake. The man hated Jennifer. Maybe that was what had kept Jennifer away. A hatred and anger and distrust so dark and scary she never wanted to get close enough for it to scald her.
Maybe Connor Blake was just a rageaholic. But the vitriol for not just Jennifer but the whole Riley family seemed really over-the-top.
“I’ve always felt that there was something going on between Connor Blake and my dad that I don’t know about,” Lauren said to Trevor as they continued down Main Street. “Something I think my sister Jennifer knows and isn’t telling me. I hate when I get a feeling about something, an uneasy feeling, and I’m not sure if I’m right or not.”