Andrea was arrested. Charges were filed.
Marc warned me that I would probably still owe back taxes, interest, and maybe even fines. But I wouldn’t go to prison. The rest? It was just money. It sucked, but it wouldn’t ruin me. I’d come out on the other side, whole, free, and a hell of a lot wiser than I’d been before. Even if my bank account took a hit.
The first thing I did was call my real estate agent and tell him to put my house back on the market. I wanted to make this move to Bootleg Springs official.
The second thing I did was make sure everything was good to go for the Do-Over Prom. June still didn’t know I was behind the dance. It was just days away, and now more than ever, I wanted to give her a night she’d never forget.
Who knew I’d be hoping to get lucky on prom night again?
Plans were in place. We had the venue, thanks to Bowie. Entertainment, thanks to Gibson and his band. Leah Mae was heading up the decorating committee. Cassidy and Jonah had volunteered to organize refreshments, along with Sonny Fullson, who was bringing the moonshine. When the prom was for grown-ups, spiked punch wasn’t optional—it was expected.
Everything was falling in line. Until June threw one last curve ball at me, just two days before the prom.
“I knew it,” she said, staring at her laptop screen.
She sat at the dining table with a neat stack of romance novels, her laptop, and a steaming mug of tea.
“You knew what?”
Looking up from the screen, she met my eyes. “Callie Kendall is a fake. It’s not her.”
I let that sink in for a moment while I slid into the chair across from her. “No shit?”
“I just got the results from the genetics lab. The sample I supplied is not a match for Callie Kendall. It’s not her, George. I was right.”
“Wow.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. June had taken the hair right off that woman’s head. Like she’d said, DNA evidence wouldn’t lie.
“Yes, wow, and many other exclamations of surprise and triumph.”
“Are you going to pass that on to Cassidy?”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
I could see the wheels turning, something going on in that big brain of hers. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing in this particular case.
“DNA evidence is conclusive, but… it’s not enough.”
“Not enough? You said DNA won’t lie. This proves she’s not Callie. You were right. You can turn this into the police and they can reopen the investigation into the real Callie’s disappearance. What more do you want?”
“I want to talk to her.”
“Talk to who?” I asked.
“The Callie impostor.”
“Oh, June Bug,” I said. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? She’s a woman pretending to be a missing girl. She’s obviously not right. What if she’s dangerous?”
“That’s why I’m bringing you.”
“Whoa, slow down there, Sherlock,” I said. “Maybe it’s time you hang up your cap and trench coat and let the law handle it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because people cared.”
“Of course people cared,” I said, still not comprehending what she meant.
She took a deep breath. “I didn’t understand it before. Why did we keep those posters up for so many years? Why bother? The chance of Callie ever being found alive diminished with every passing year, but that didn’t matter to Bootleg. We still held out hope. I never realized how important that was. How deeply these events are woven into the fabric of who we are.”
“All right, I’m with you.”
“Bootleg is made up of people who won’t stop caring, no matter the odds. And this woman stomped all over that. I have to know why. I don’t understand what could have motivated her to do this.”
“It’s an equation that doesn’t add up.”
“Yes,” she said, her voice excited. “Exactly.”
I shook my head. Sometimes this woman was infuriating. Her need to understand the intricacies of every problem, math or otherwise, was maddening.
I fucking loved it.
“You’re determined to get me into trouble, aren’t you?” I asked.
“You talked to her. Did she seem crazy?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t crazy. Especially if you’re going to confront her with DNA evidence that she’s not who she says she is.”
“I understand the implications of what I’m proposing,” she said. “But I need this. If I turn in the DNA results, yes, they’ll reopen Callie’s investigation and maybe someday we’ll have the truth. But it won’t be the same. I need to look this woman in the eyes and ask her why she did this.”
“What if she won’t explain?”
“At least I will have tried.”
I had a feeling that wasn’t precisely what June meant. She could acknowledge there was a possibility that this woman wouldn’t talk to her—wouldn’t tell her what she wanted to know. But June was confident she would. I could see it in her eyes. In the determination she wore like some women wore jewelry.
My sweet June Bug wasn’t asking me for expensive things. She didn’t want a flashy car, designer shoes, or a fancy condo. She wanted me to help her right a wrong.
I reached across the table and enveloped her hand in mine. “Okay, June Bug. We’ll track her down one last time.”
* * *
Since we knew where Impostor Callie lived, we simply drove out to Philly and camped in front of her building until she came out. We followed, parked two blocks away when she stopped, and watched her go into a nail salon. That wasn’t exactly ideal for a confrontation of this nature, so we waited.
After coming out of the nail salon, she did us an unintentional favor, heading into the coffee shop next door. We got out of my car and followed her in.
The rich scent of coffee beans filled the air. Impostor Callie stood to the side, her attention on her phone. She appeared to have ordered and was waiting for her coffee.
June walked in as if she owned the place, back straight, all confidence. She went right up to the woman, never breaking stride.
“Callie Kendall?” June asked.
The woman looked up. “Oh. Um, yes. Do I know you?”
“You should, but no, you don’t.”
She glanced around, seeming to notice me. Her eyes widened slightly—did she recognize me?—but moved back to June.
“Do you need something? I’m not doing any more interviews.”
“I’m not here for an interview,” June said. “But I do need to speak to you.”
The barista called Callie’s name and she took her coffee from the counter. “What’s this about?”
June gestured toward a table in the back. Wordlessly, I followed the two women and the three of us sat down.
“I’m June. This is George.”
“We’ve met before,” she said to me. “At the restaurant.”
“You did,” June said. “We’re here because we know you aren’t Callie Kendall.”
I held back a wince. Holy shit, she’d just come right out and said it. No games with this one. God, I loved her.
“Excuse me?” the woman said.
“You’re not Callie.”
“Of course I am.” Her brow creased and she leaned away. “What are you talking about?”
June pulled a sheet of paper out of her bag. “I took a sample of your hair and had it tested against Callie Kendall’s DNA. It was not a match.”
“What? When?”
June gestured toward me. “I took a hair sample while you were talking to him in the restaurant that day.”
Her mouth dropped open and she smoothed the back of her hair down with one hand. “What the hell?”
My muscles tensed, the instinct to protect June sending a surge of adrenaline through my system. This woman was getting angry—no surprise there. I’d toss June over my shoulder and carry her out of
here before I let this get ugly.
The woman touched the paper with one finger, drawing it closer, her eyes scanning the text. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“My sense of humor is not well-developed enough to pull off a prank of this magnitude,” June said.
She looked at the paper for a long moment, but she no longer seemed to be reading. Probably deciding what to do.
“What do you want?” she asked, finally.
“I want to know the truth,” June said. “Who are you, and why are you impersonating a missing girl?”
Her posture changed. She’d gone from wary and alert to defensive. Back and shoulders stiff, jaw tight.
“My real name is Abbie Gilbert.”
“Why are you pretending to be Callie?”
Abbie let out a breath and her shoulders slumped. “It’s a long story.”
June didn’t reply. Just kept watching her.
“Callie’s story was in the news and people kept joking about me being her. I’m a year younger, but obviously I look just like her. It got me curious. So I started reading everything I could find about her case. It was fascinating. That whole town kept her memory alive for so long.”
I put my arm over the back of June’s chair. This Abbie person seemed to have relaxed, but I still felt like a coiled spring, ready to strike if she turned out to be the dangerous kind of crazy.
“Anyway, I’m not hurting anyone,” Abbie said. “If anything, I’m doing something good. I gave the Kendalls their daughter back.”
“But you’re not their daughter,” June said. “Pretending to be her means no one is looking for the real Callie anymore. They closed the investigation.”
Abbie rolled her eyes. “Callie Kendall is dead.”
“You seem overly confident, stating that as a fact,” June said.
“It is a fact.”
“Do you have proof?”
“No, I don’t have proof,” Abbie said. “No one does. I know this case inside and out. Even without a body it was being treated like a homicide investigation. Everything points to her being dead.”
“And you think that gives you the right to impersonate her? To lie to her family? To the public?”
“Why does it matter?”
I almost cut in with because it’s illegal and insane. But I kept my mouth shut. This was June’s conversation to have. I was just here as backup.
“It matters because people still care about her,” June said. “And whatever happened to her, people deserve the truth, not some impostor who’s trying to profit from her tragedy.”
“Why are you here?” Abbie asked. “Do you want to threaten me? Blackmail me?”
“I told you already, I want to know why. I want to know why you would go to so much trouble to pretend to be someone you’re not. Other than the distinct possibility that you have a serious mental illness.”
“Because I did disappear and no one cared,” Abbie said, her voice sharp. Her eyes widened with shock, as if she were surprised she’d said that. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “I left my family the day I turned eighteen, and no one did a thing. No one reported me missing or tried to find me. So fine, they didn’t give a shit. I thought I was over it. And then, last year, Callie Kendall was all over the news. The mystery of the girl who went missing from some stupid town in West Virginia. Those people kept her posters up for over twelve years. All those years, and people still wanted to find her. That girl who looked just like me.”
“So you decided to become her?”
“Why not? I created the happy ending everyone wanted for Callie. The Kendalls have a daughter again. That town can move on, knowing the mystery is solved.”
“Except it’s a lie.”
“A lie that doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“I beg to differ,” June said. “It hurts everyone.”
A flicker of fear crossed Abbie’s face. “What are you going to do?”
“Tell the truth.” June stood, her chair scraping across the floor.
I stood and grabbed June’s arm, intent on getting us the hell out of here. Abbie didn’t move, just sat in her chair, staring at June, open-mouthed. But I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Let’s go.”
I didn’t release my grip on June’s arm until we got to my car. She got in the passenger’s side and I cast a quick glance around, half expecting to see Abbie. My heart raced. It wasn’t that I was afraid of her—not physically at least. But who knew what someone like that was capable of doing, especially when backed into a corner. I wasn’t taking a single chance with my woman. She’d heard Abbie’s explanation. Now we were getting as far away from her as possible.
The scenery went by in a blur as I drove. June was quiet. I could tell she needed a little time to process what she’d heard. I clasped her hand in mine, gently stroking her skin with my thumb.
When we left the city behind, I finally started to relax. We still had a long drive ahead of us, but my heightened sense of danger abated.
“You were concerned she’d hurt me, weren’t you?” she asked.
“You just never know. She went to a lot of trouble to convince people that she’s Callie. She has the Kendalls fooled. Got a book deal that’s worth a lot of money. That woman had everything on the line and we cornered her. Anyone could be dangerous in that situation.”
June silently nodded.
“Did you get what you needed?” I asked.
“Yes. The strange thing is, I feel sympathy for her. Or perhaps it’s pity. A whole and happy person would never do something like this. I suspect she’s very broken.”
“No doubt.”
“This is going to hurt a lot of people. There was so much relief at Callie being found, and this will take it all away.”
“That’s true. And I think it means a lot that you recognize it. But I still think people deserve the truth, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.”
“I agree.”
I squeezed her hand. She was right. This was going to hurt a lot of people. The Kendalls. They’d lost their daughter once, and now they were going to have to face that they’d been fooled. The Bodines. Suspicion was going to fall on their late father again, especially because now there was no longer an innocent explanation for the presence of Callie’s fingerprints in their mother’s car. The entire town of Bootleg. They’d celebrated the happy ending to Callie’s story, and now they’d be right back where they started. No closer to finding answers.
But at least now someone would be looking.
38
June
“Ouch.” I reached up to smooth down the little hairs alongside my ear.
“Sorry Juney,” Cassidy said. “I’m trying not to pull.”
I sat in a chair we’d dragged into my parents’ bathroom, facing away from the mirror. I still didn’t understand why we were getting ready for the Do-Over Prom at our parents’ house, but the other girls had loved the idea. Something about nostalgia and doing it right this time.
From a practical standpoint, my parents did have the largest bathroom of any of us. Scarlett’s house was bursting at the seams with two people and her psychotic cat. Cassidy and Bowie were still remodeling their duplex into a single residence. The dust alone was a nightmare, not to mention the allergy-inducing dander from her two cats. My house was not tiny, nor was it in a state of construction or contaminated by cat hair. But my two bathrooms weren’t large, and the other girls had insisted the primping ritual would be fun this way.
They’d been right. It was fun.
I hadn’t turned over my findings about the Callie Kendall impostor. Not yet. There had been a time when I wouldn’t have considered waiting. I had the data, it needed to be shared. End of story. But I’d realized that when it came to people, facts and data weren’t always the most important thing. There were thoughts and feelings behind every story, every situation. And in this case, my resolve to uncover the truth and expose Abbie Gilbert as the fake she was had to be tempered with
compassion.
The news that Callie was still missing—and that we’d been fooled by an impostor—was going to hit my town hard. This was going to affect the lives of people I cared about. My sister. Scarlett and her entire family. So before blurting out what I knew, I’d thought about it. And come to the conclusion that waiting a few days—at least until after the Do-Over Prom—was the kind thing to do.
Cassidy stood behind me, doing something with my hair that involved a curling iron. She had a YouTube tutorial open on her phone and checked it periodically, as if to make sure she was on the right track. Leah Mae had already done my makeup, but they were refusing to let me see the results.
Scarlett sat on the counter, one leg lifted so she could paint her toenails. Leah Mae stood on my other side, leaning toward the mirror as she brushed color across her eyelid.
“Why didn’t you just get a pedicure?” Cassidy asked.
“I did, but I didn’t like the color,” Scarlett said. “Are you almost done? You still need to do mine.”
“I know, keep your panties on,” Cassidy said. “We have time.”
“I’ll keep ’em on for now, but they’re definitely coming off later tonight,” Scarlett said with a wicked grin.
“Preach, sister,” Cassidy said. “Knowing we’re getting laid on prom night sure does take off some of the pressure, doesn’t it?”
“Yep,” Scarlett said. “So does knowing my date isn’t a jackass. I swear, what were we thinking back in high school?”
“Good question,” Cassidy said.
Even I had been burned by a boy in high school. It seemed none of us had come out unscathed.
“Maturity makes a significant difference,” I said.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Leah Mae said. She dipped her mascara wand into the bottle. “My prom date got mad because the heels I wore made us the same height. He wouldn’t dance with me unless I took them off. So there I was, barefoot on the dance floor, and I stepped on something sharp.”
“Ouch,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah, and it gets worse,” Leah Mae said. “I yelped and looked down. There was already blood all over. My date took one look at my bleeding foot and fainted.”
Bourbon Bliss: Bootleg Springs Book Four Page 26