Jeremy glared at her, disbelief springing up in his eyes. “No. I can’t believe it. She may have told you that, but in reality she cheated on me. I would never have broken up with her if she hadn’t. I know she did. Sean told me so, and Sean would never have lied.”
“What?” Angry beyond belief, Nora grabbed at him. “What, exactly did Sean tell you?”
“That he’d seen Raquel and another boy together when I was out of town.”
“Not true. Not possible. Sean lied, he had to have lied,” Nora said. “Oh my God, why didn’t you ever confront Raquel? If the two of you had just talked you could have—”
“I was too proud,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t want to talk to her. I wanted revenge on her, so I just went and started dating another girl. Then, a few months later, I got together with Ashley.”
Nora shook her head, unwilling to believe anyone could be so idiotic, though she remembered high school, and how dramatic Raquel and her group of friends had been. Yes, it was possible, she thought, to treat life as if it were a movie, but eventually the consequences of being dramatic caught up with you.
“It’s done now, isn’t it?” Nora said. “You need to move on.”
“So do you,” Jeremy said caustically. “You’ve got a diner that needs opening. Coming here to cry about Raquel isn’t going to do you any good, but here you are. We’re pulled here by a grief that’s bigger than the rest of our life. Sure, the other things in life can be measured and weighted and given a dollar value to. We’ll pick up those pieces and live with them eventually. But right now, all I want is to be alone in a dark cave where I once kissed Raquel, and cry my heart out that I can’t do that anymore.”
Nora nodded, the last tear she would shed falling from her eye. She wiped it, and said, “Then I’ll leave you to it. Be alone, and recover, and go back to those who are giving you a chance, while that chance still exists. You and I – we still have a chance, me with my diner and you with Ashley. Raquel would want us to take it.”
Jeremy nodded, and scooted aside to let her pass.
“Just one thing,” Nora said. “This boy Raquel was supposed to have cheated on you with. Did Sean ever tell you who it was?”
“Sure. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t believe she kissed him at first, till Sean told me it was at a party and Raquel was drunk. He was a complete creep, that guy, and I was secretly glad when he vanished from town.”
“Who was it?” Nora asked, though she already knew.
“The guy I took great pleasure in teasing. Alan.”
*****
Chapter 25
Ruminations
Mrs. Mullally laid out dinner, and Nora ate silently, her mind still reliving the entire day. Maynard tugged at the hem of her jeans, his tail wagging furiously as he tried to attract her attention.
“You look poised to shatter,” Mrs. Mullally said, her lips thinning with displeasure. “Are you all right, my dear?” Concern shone from her face.
“I’m okay, Mrs. Mullally.” Nora said. She wondered how easily the lie fell from her lips, and wondered how many around the world were repeating the same lie over dinner tables. “I’m okay.” Said to children, and parents, and loving spouses - all because you couldn’t bear to speak the truth. That you weren’t okay. Was Jeremy sitting across from Ashley right then, eating dinner, listening to her talk about her pregnancy or her job or the defective washing machine, and all along, saying I’m okay when the only thing that could save him was admitting to her he was not?
What a waste, Nora thought. What a waste of a life, to be married to someone you did not love, and how tragic, for Ashley to love someone who did not love her. Did she know? In public, Jeremy had reacted to Raquel’s death as he would to the death of a stranger. Nora even remembered how annoyed she had been when they came to visit her at Mrs. Mullally’s. She’d deliberately taunted Jeremy, reminded him that he had once dated Raquel, little knowing the wild grief he was hiding from them all.
He hid it so well, so well that even his wife, the woman who lived and slept and woke with him, did not suspect.
Who else was hiding their true feelings about the murder this way? Nora thought. Someone. Someone who had hated Raquel, hated her for a long time, was now pretending to be sad while exulting inside.
There was Stanley Staten, head of the cult of supreme truth. He was the man who had the most to gain. He was also a man who was capable of bending others to his will, to the extent that he had convinced a large group to leave their homes, leave their families, leave all their possessions. How easy would it be for him to convince someone to kill? She had seen him firsthand, as in a few words he convinced his “flock” to go from curious to hostile towards her. Had he done it the same way? Convince someone that Raquel was cruel, or evil, or a threat to their way of life? Had he simply said that his word must be done, and convinced a follower to sneak out of the cult’s compound and kill Raquel?
Sean insisted there was no proof, and that without proof, there could be no case against Stanley.
But what did she know about Sean anyway? Only that he was a man widely considered decent and good. Then again, Jeremy was widely considered a loving husband. What if Sean was a lot more than he seemed? Why had he lied to Jeremy about Raquel? Why had he broken the two of them up? Had he secretly loved Raquel, and wanted to be with her? The night Raquel had died, had he gone to see her? Raquel would have let him in, surely. After all, he was sheriff.
No. Raquel had liked Sean. She would have dated him if he’d asked her to. Nora recalled the last conversation she’d had with Raquel, where Raquel had referred to Sean as “yummy”.
So why had Sean lied? Why had he broken up a happy couple all those years ago? Was it just a teenage prank? Did he even remember doing it? Probably not.
Nora remembered though. She remember how it had affected Raquel when Jeremy broke up with her. All the love Raquel no longer got from her family she had poured into her friends and her boyfriend. When Jeremy broke up with her, for a long time, Raquel had been undone. Even when she had recovered, she had been different, like a cracked vase that is glued together, the crack permanently changing it.
Nora felt a rush of anger at Sean. Why had he done it? Had he only been trying to get Jeremy to hate Alan? Was it the cruelty she long suspected ran like an underground river in his heart?
Cruelty brought her to Santino, a man she had no doubt was a murderer. It was written in the way he had mercilessly beaten his cook, the way he had reacted without a flinch even when Harvey pulled a gun on him. Santino was a man who was willing to die or distribute death in the process of getting what he wanted. He had a strong motive to kill Raquel too, if as his accountant, she had uncovered his scams and was threatening to reveal them. He’d had Harvey followed, he knew so much about Nora, so surely he was capable of having surveillance on Raquel. Maybe that’s why she’d moved all her files onto a flash drive. Because she was convinced her laptop was hacked. Santino could have done it. Very easily. He was Sean’s strongest suspect, wasn’t he?
Except…
…except Raquel had a sense of self-preservation. She wouldn’t just have let someone into the diner so late at night. Especially if that someone was a goon like Santino, or one of his men. There was no sign of the door being forced open, so it had been someone she knew who had killed her.
There was May Almand too. May Almand, who was friends with Raquel, and who was so strongly opposed to Nora for even hinting that it had been a hitchhiker. May had been on several committees with Raquel. Could it be that Raquel had known something about May that no one else did? Nora thought back to the night of the murder, when Raquel had been helping dress her.
She sat up straight, suddenly remembering how Raquel had told her she was meeting someone and then going to the diner. No one had come forward and admitted to meeting Raquel. As far as Sean knew, Nora was the last person to see Raquel alive.
But that wasn’t true. There was one person who had seen Raquel alive after Nora. C
ould it have been May?
There was one person, of course, who Nora was trying not to think of, trying not to include in her mental list. Harvey. Were Sean’s suspicions true? Or was he capable of being so manipulative that he deliberately asked her on a date on the day he knew Raquel was to be murdered just so he could have an alibi?
All she had were questions, Nora realized with frustration. But no proof.
“Do you want more, dear?” Mrs. Mullally asked, breaking Nora out of her reverie.
Nora looked down at her plate, and realized it was empty, and realized she couldn’t remember eating one bite, or even what it was that she had eaten.
Mrs. Mullally scooped up her dish, and put another helping of lemon roasted chicken and buttery potatoes on it.
“You look sad.” Mrs. Mullally said, and Nora smiled at her.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“You say that,” Mrs. Mullally said. “If it makes you happy, I can act like I believe it.”
Nora felt a rush of affection for the old lady who had taken such care of her. “I was just thinking.”
“What about?”
“About Raquel. About how I might never know who killed her. How I might never even have known her, really. All I want is justice for her untimely death, or at least, to look someone in the eye and know they did it.” Nora dropped her fork, and sighed. There were no more tears for her to shed, her heart seemed to have developed a black hole where no emotion could go. Maynard, sensing her change, buried his head in her leg and began rubbing it back and forth. Instinctively, she picked him up and cradled him against her. His silky coat felt good under her hands, as did the steady beat of his young heart.
“I’ve nothing to say but that I’m sorry,” Mrs. Mullally said, putting her hand over Nora’s. “You must move forward, Nora, and not look back.”
“I did that before,” Nora said. “When my parents died, I ran. I ran towards my dreams, and what good ever came of it? I never looked back to get justice from the men who robbed me of my family home, because I never… because I never believed I had the power to. But Raquel? Raquel was a pure shining light in a dark world. She was like my sister, Mrs. Mullally, and I can’t move on, I can’t just keep living my life until I find and bring to justice the person who killed her.”
*****
Chapter 26
Body of Evidence
Nora woke early the next day, and headed to town, wanting to meet Harvey face to face. She didn’t know what she’d say to him exactly, or even if they would work things out. Just that she needed to see him again.
Instead, it was Sean she met. He was coming out of a grocery store, dressed in full uniform, unwrapping a vanilla coconut protein bar. He saw her coming, and stopped. “Nora.”
“Sean.” Angry, she wanted to walk ahead without making eye contact. With little hesitance, he turned around and walked in step with her.
“You vanished yesterday. I went over to Mrs. Mullally to see you a few hours later and you weren’t there.”
“Is that part of your sheriff duties?” Nora asked. “Tailing me?”
“Nora, come on, we’re friends aren’t we? I know I said some things that annoyed you—”
“The things you said that annoyed me,” Nora said. “Let’s make a list, shall we? We can go right back to high school. Where you lied to break up Jeremy and Raquel. Come to think of it, is that your game plan with me and Harvey? Are you feeding me lies to make me distrust him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know,” Nora said, and her fists clenched. “You told Jeremy that Alan and Raquel were kissing at a party. You told him that and the two broke up. Why’d you do that, Sean? What did Alan ever do to make you hate him so?”
“I didn’t hate him. I told you,” Sean said. “Anyway, there are more important things I need to tell you.”
“What?”
There was a ring, and Sean held up a finger to silence her before sliding his phone open. “Sheriff speaking.”
“… more coffee please.” Nora couldn’t really make out the words.
“Hmmm. Mm.” Sean nodded. “All right, you lazy lot. I’ll pick it up. Yes, I’ll get back to the station in fifteen minutes.” Turning to Nora he said, “Look, there are things I want to tell you, but you need to promise me you’ll listen with an open mind.”
“I can’t promise you anything of the sort,” she said. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want to?”
“It’s about that body we found the other day,” Sheriff said. “The autopsy said it was a male, about my age, who’d died maybe three months ago. Of course, I instantly suspected Harvey, given that his partner Donovan was missing.”
Nora held her breath. “Was it Donovan?”
“Donovan is still missing, but no. It wasn’t Donovan. The DNA didn’t match.”
“Oh.” Nora exhaled, feeling relieved. “Harvey’s all right then.”
“Yes, for now.”
“Who did the body belong to, then?” Nora asked. “Was it just a hitchhiker?”
“I would have thought so, and closed the case,” Sean said. “But thanks to you, I figured out who it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s Alan,” Sean said. “You reawakened my memory yesterday when you talked about him.”
“How so?”
“Alan went missing, didn’t he? He tried to attempt to hitchhike out of town way back in the day. I searched around, and found that it was a cold case, but the case files at least had a record of his dental work.”
“Why is that important?”
“Because I matched it with the hitchhiker’s body. Alan ran away from here all those years ago, but he also came back.”
“Yes. Three months ago at Principal Fuller’s funeral.” Nora gasped. “Oh my god. Three months ago. He was killed right after Principal Fuller’s funeral?”
“Exactly,” Sean said. “I believe he was murdered then. That’s the body we discovered, the body we mistakenly thought belonged to Harvey’s partner.”
Nora was speechless.
“That means Harvey’s in a bit less mess than he was yesterday. It also hopefully means that you’ll stop accusing me of a witch hunt against Harvey. I’m dedicated to my job, but I’d never lie to catch a man.”
“Yet you lied to break apart Jeremy and Raquel,” Nora said. “About her and Alan kissing.”
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “Jeremy remembers it wrong. I didn’t tell him I saw Alan kissing Raquel. I told him my girlfriend saw it. She had no reason to lie. I barely remember anyway, I was a big-talking teen with an attitude that all cheaters must suffer. I think I still do have that attitude.”
“Raquel never cheated on Jeremy” Nora said. “I know it well, and you must know it too. Whoever told you that rumor lied, and you destroyed a relationship over it.”
Sean shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Jeremy’s happily married to Ashley now. Hey, I almost did him a favor. If he was with Raquel, he’d never have gotten to be with his wife.”
“That’s not the point, Sean,” Nora said. “You still broke up a couple who was madly in love. Doesn’t that upset you in the least?”
Sean shrugged. “Jeremy’s fine. Raquel was fine. I don’t know, maybe I feel a little bad, but I don’t think it calls for the kind of emotional reaction you’re giving it. Everyone moved on. Jeremy’s having a kid now, for goodness’ sake.”
Biting her lip, Nora wondered how Sean would feel if he could see his friend the way she had seen him yesterday, a sobbing mess.
Sean’s eyes suddenly went wide. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I just realized—”
There was a burst of static as his radio came to life. Sean opened the door of his cruiser, grabbed the speaker and spoke briefly to the operator.
When he turned back to look at Nora, his face was serious.
“Look, there’s been a call about the supreme truth’s camp. Apparently May Almand went down
to see Davis and Jolene today, and Davis had a black eye. May called us to report she suspects elder abuse. I’m going to go down there to check it out,” Sean said. “You keep yourself out of trouble, Nora.”
“I don’t think so,” Nora said. “I’m coming with you.”
“What? That’s absolutely insane. What makes you think I’m going to take you?”
“Davis is my responsibility,” Nora said. “Raquel left me as trustee—”
“Nora, even Raquel gave up on trying to coax him out of that cult,” Sean said. “I can’t allow you to come with me.”
“I’m coming.”
“No. That’s final.”
*****
Chapter 27
Helping Davis
“At least put your seatbelt on,” Sean said. “Don’t make me ticket myself!”
Nora, hiding her smirk, clicked her seatbelt, as they roared down the highway.
“I can’t believe you insisted on coming along,” Sean said. “Do you ever care that you could be in danger?”
“I care very much,” Nora said. “I also care about Davis.”
“The only reason I agreed is because I think you might have a better shot of convincing him to leave than I do,” Sean said. “But remember, you are not to come inside the compound. You stay in the car. Otherwise I will have to arrest you. Stanley has already complained once about you trespassing.”
“Right, I get it,” Nora said. “He’s one shady character, that Stanley. I don’t understand why you don’t just arrest him. Surely he’s breaking some law.”
“I can’t arrest him just for existing,” Sean said. “Though I’d very much like to, believe me. Thing is, he might have a solid motive for Raquel’s murder, but what about Alan? I can’t see any possible way that Stanley is connected.”
He pulled up at the gate, and got out of the car. Before Nora could move, he’d locked the doors. She pounded a fist on the door, irritated.
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