by Lucy Score
When I’d swung down Speakeasy Drive to look in on some of the bigger lake estates and spotted a car in the Kendalls’ driveway, I’d pulled right on in.
The Kendalls were here. And I had questions.
When Callie disappeared, I’d been a kid. When Scarlett found the sweater, Detective Connelly had been pulled in quick, fast, and in a hurry. So I’d never actually had a professional conversation with the Kendalls about their daughter.
Sure, I’d seen them around town. Made small talk here and there. They were fixtures here during the summer, a couple of weekends in the spring and fall. They even did Christmas here every other year. Everyone always looked forward to the tree they’d put up in the second-floor window. All silver and tinseled.
The house was wood and stone with graying cedar shingles and multi-level decks off the back, taking advantage of the lakefront view. I’d never been inside. I wondered if any of Callie’s friends had. She’d never brought anyone to Bootleg with her for the summer. It was always just the three Kendalls.
And now it was only two.
I had a feeling Connelly wouldn’t take kindly to my pitstop, but odds were I wouldn’t dig up anything of interest. What harm could it do?
I pressed the doorbell, heard it echo inside.
I waited long enough to start to second and third guess myself before the door opened. “Oh. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone, Deputy…” Mrs. Kendall glanced down at my name tag. Her hair, a soft, silvery blonde, was pulled back in a sleek bun, and she was wearing black slacks and a black cowlneck sweater. She was barefoot.
“Tucker,” I supplied. “Cassidy Tucker.”
“Do you have…news?” she asked, reaching up to touch the gold cross she wore around her neck.
“Oh, no, ma’am. I had a few questions, if you’ve got a minute?”
“Certainly. Of course. Please come in,” she said, standing back from the door. “Can I get you some coffee or tea?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Kendall. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
Mrs. Kendall led the way inside to a sunken living room with tall windows overlooking the lake. There was a two-story stone fireplace that divided the living space from the kitchen. An eclectic collection of art adorned the wood-paneled walls. It was a little outdated and a lot ornate. Kind of like Frank Lloyd Wright on a lake vacation with Rich Grandma’s heavy furniture and brocade sofas. No family photos, no throw pillows, no homey touches.
But Mrs. Kendall was barefoot, so it must be home.
“My husband isn’t here. Is this something I can help you with or would you prefer to wait for him?” Mrs. Kendall asked, perching on the edge of a green settee.
I took a seat on a silk covered couch across from her and took the plunge. “I was reviewing the original case files of the disappearance and wondered if you could tell me about Callie hurting herself.”
The woman across from me sucked in a tiny breath, and I wondered just how much pain she’d endured over the years. Would it ever end?
She knotted her hands in her lap. “I must say, I’m relieved that law enforcement is finally taking this seriously. You must understand, deputy, Callie’s father and I never believed there was any foul play. This fiasco with the Bodines is unnecessarily dragging another family into our pain. Callie was sick. Callie hurt herself.” The words burst forth like water over a dam.
Outwardly, I stayed calm. But on the inside, excitement bubbled. She knew something. “How did she hurt herself?”
“They call it cutting. She’d take knives or other sharp objects and slice at her wrists. Long shallow cuts,” Mrs. Kendall said. She was looking out the window with a faraway gaze. “I failed her. As a mother, I failed my child. Nothing I did helped her, fixed her.”
“Was she ever hospitalized?” I pressed. Were there medical records we didn’t know about?
Mrs. Kendall shook her head. “Callie and my husband, well, neither of them wanted the attention. We arranged for her to see a private therapist. He prescribed medications, but she often went off of them. She was fine for weeks and months at a time. Such a lovely girl. Sweet and pretty. But then the cloud would come again. She’d lose interest in school and friends. She wouldn’t eat or get out of bed.”
“What did her therapist say?”
“I’m sure you have all of his files on Callie,” Mrs. Kendall said flatly, still staring through the windows at the winter scene. Bare branches, icy gray skies. “He felt she was depressed, unstable. She had such a happy childhood, but once she hit her teen years the happiness never lasted. I learned to treasure those times when things were good for her, for all of us.”
“Mrs. Kendall, I’m sorry to ask this. But do you have any proof that Callie was cutting herself? Since there aren’t any medical records maybe there’s something else?”
Her jaw trembled. “There may be something,” she said, finally.
I waited. There were times to push and times for space.
“No one’s ever asked me for proof before,” she said quietly. “All they’ve done is run rampant with ridiculous murder or runaway theories. No one is interested in the truth.”
I’d long wondered how insulated the Kendalls had been from the conspiracy theories that were still part of daily conversation in Bootleg.
“I don’t know why I took the pictures,” she said, rising gracefully from the settee. “I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe I wanted to show them to Callie when she was better. To remind her that there weren’t any answers in the dark, that she needed to fight whatever monsters plagued her.”
“What pictures, Mrs. Kendall?” I was feeling the buzz in my blood again.
She crossed to the wall of built-ins near the windows.
“I know my daughter did this to herself. I know in my heart of hearts that she hurt herself one last time. I knew it when she didn’t come home by curfew. No one believed me. Until you.” She gave me a long look before leaning over and unlocking a file cabinet.
She pulled out a file. “Maybe they’ll listen to you.”
My hands wanted to tremble when I reached for the folder. There were answers inside. And with those answers, probably more questions.
I opened the file, and now my hands shook. I recognized the arms in the photos. Callie, the girl I knew, had thin arms and long, slim fingers. There was the sterling silver thumb ring she’d always worn. I stared at the pretty, familiar fingers before letting my eyes take in the gore.
Those lovely arms were stretched palm up on what looked like this house’s kitchen counter.
Blood seeped from angry cuts from wrist to elbow. It ran red and pooled on the countertop beneath. Vicious, shallow, mean slices carving through lovely skin. There were scars, some white and some pink, up and down the inside of the arms.
“That’s what she’d do to herself. She said this kind of pain was better than what she felt in her head and heart. Once, she went too deep and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop the bleeding.” Mrs. Kendall’s voice broke.
I closed the folder.
“Why didn’t you ever show these to investigators?” I asked her.
She raised her blue eyes to mine. Calm. Determined. Unwavering. “Because no one believed us. A murder was more salacious, more interesting. If they were going to waste their time searching for a murderer that didn’t exist, it was their own fault. I’ve talked to so many detectives and investigators over the years. Not one of them believes what I know. My daughter is dead, deputy. She did it to herself.”
Again, she laid a hand over the cross. Her eyes remained cool, but the fingers that touched the necklace trembled.
“And I’m relieved,” she confessed.
I blinked.
“I know it’s terrible. I’m a horrible mother. But I couldn’t take her suffering like that. There was no hope for her. Because I would have found it. I did everything I could. Her father and I watched her like a hawk, locked up the knives, checked on her every hour throughout the night. It still w
asn’t enough. She still suffered. Until she finally stopped. My daughter is dead, deputy. And I won’t let her ruin another family over it. Please, take the photos.”
33
Cassidy
“Dad.” I burst into his office without knocking and came up short when I realized Detective Connelly was making himself at home in my dad’s visitor chair. It was an hour past the end of my shift. I was supposed to be getting ready for Girls Night Out.
But I had Callie Kendall’s photos.
“Excuse me for interrupting,” I said, trying to decide if the photos burning a hole in that file were worth me demanding they give me some time right now. It didn’t prove anything definitively, but it gave weight to the ignored suicide theory.
“Do you need something, deputy?” Connelly asked coolly.
What the hell. I’d done my investigative duty and turned up something that no one else had in twelve years. “I have some new information on the Kendall case,” I said.
“You?” Connelly asked. “Did your boyfriend confess?”
I wanted to kick his chair out from under him and watch that smug expression fall off his face. “No, sir,” I said crisply. “I spoke to Mrs. Kendall and she provided me with photographic evidence that Callie was harming herself.” To be a bit of an asshole, I handed the folder over to my father instead of Connelly.
My father stared at the photos, his face impassive. But his mustache twitched. He slid the folder across the desk, and Connelly gave it a cursory glance.
“Deputy, why were you talking to the victim’s mother?” Connelly asked. There was an edge in his voice. But I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was an officer of the law involved in an investigation. I’d investigated.
“I saw a vehicle in the driveway when I was doing my patrol and had a couple of questions.”
Connelly closed the folder and set it on the edge of my father’s desk.
“It’s not your job to have questions. Not unless I tell you you’re allowed to have them. Your job is to support me and my investigation.”
“That’s what I was doing, sir.” If my jaw got any tighter I was going to crack a few teeth.
Connelly rose from his chair and gave me that icy stare. “I don’t give a shit how things were done around here before me. What you two need to grasp is there is an ongoing murder investigation that requires a certain level of professionalism.”
“Disappearance, sir.” I probably shouldn’t have corrected him. But he was already in my space talking down to me, so what the hell. Which one of us wasn’t professional now?
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t know for sure that Callie Kendall was murdered and those photographs, if they can be verified, cast more doubt on that theory.”
Connelly clearly didn’t like to be educated. His face turned a mottled red, and a vein throbbed in his neck.
“You know what I think, deputy?”
“No, sir.” But I’m sure your rat face is all excited to tell me.
“I think that you know your boyfriend’s family was involved. I think you know that maybe it wasn’t just the father who had something to do with it. And I think that you’re doing your damnedest to protect them.”
“Are you accusing me of impeding an investigation, sir?” And the Bodines of conspiring to murder a teenage girl? I may be good and pissed at Bowie Bodine but nobody, nobody could call his character into question. The damn fool got in trouble for being too good, too careful.
“I’m accusing you of not having an impartial bone in your body. I can’t trust you. And if I can’t trust you, I don’t want you to be part of this team.”
My nostrils were flaring, and I think I felt a filling give way.
My father cleared his throat. “Detective, I think you need to remember that this is a very small town. My officers know the people we serve. It’s impossible to exist in a vacuum here,” he said. He looked calm. But the way his mustache was twitching to the left meant he had a full head of steam worked up.
“I don’t care if this is Bumfuck, West Virginia, we have a job to do. Find out what happened to Callie Kendall.”
“And that’s exactly what Deputy Tucker was doing,” Dad said, his voice deceptively calm.
“I don’t trust your daughter’s judgment,” Connelly said, glaring at me. “She’s too busy playing house with the son of a suspect. Perhaps even an accomplice.”
“Every one of them Bodine boys was alibied solid.” Technically that was a lie. All of the Bodine boys except Gibson had an alibi. Gibson’s alibi for the night was that he’d had pizza delivered to his apartment around 9 p.m. and his siblings showed up around midnight. I knew the case files inside out.
“Fact is, so was Jonah Bodine,” my dad continued. “You may not like how we do business here in Bootleg. But we know our town, our people.”
Connelly glared back and forth between us. “I don’t want her anywhere near this investigation. Deputy, from now on, your contribution will be to scan files, fax memos, and get me coffee.” He stormed out, pushing his chair out of the way with enough force that it tipped over backward.
I watched him go and squashed the need to flip him the bird.
“You did good, kid,” Dad said gruffly.
“Good? I just got demoted.”
“Those pictures are the biggest find in this case since the sweater. You found them, not Connelly.”
“So he’s throwing a temper tantrum and taking my job away from me? What is his damn problem?” I was getting more and more worked up by the second. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to control myself. There was only so much I could take before I boiled over or imploded like a still.
“Let it sit a spell. Things will calm down,” my father said confidently.
“I’m supposed to play personal assistant? That’s not what I went to school for. That’s not why I’m here. Why don’t I just resign right now?”
Dad sighed. “Cassidy. I need you here. We need you here. Don’t let some outsider with a God complex chase you off.”
I kicked at the overturned chair with the toe of my boot before righting it and pushing it back into place.
My father sat back down behind his desk. “You did the right thing. He’s holdin’ up a mirror right now. Connelly came in here already convinced that Jonah Bodine was guilty. He’s the one who’s having trouble with impartiality. Not you.”
“Yeah, well he’s the one in the position of power and I’m the one at the bottom of the totem pole.”
“Hang in there,” Dad advised. “He’s tryin’ to scare you off. Be professional. Do your duties. It’ll drive him nuts.”
I puffed out a breath and nodded. “Fine.”
“What’s the order of your Top Three right now?” Dad asked.
“Top Three?”
“Which one of us are you most mad at?”
“It’s a three-way tie at this point.”
34
Bowie
“You’re trying too hard,” Jonah observed as I scrolled through another page on the website. He was steaming broccoli while I searched for exactly the right set of pajamas.
“Cassidy loves these things,” I said, remembering the matching Strawberry Shortcake pajamas Nadine Tucker had given Cassidy and Scarlett for Christmas one year. Every time Cassidy slept over, she had on a different set of pajamas.
I imagined a cozy pair of pajamas would be a smart start to worming my way back into her good graces. I could see her lounging around in soft purple thermals while we curled up on the couch to watch one of those eighties movies she was obsessed with.
I was in this for the long haul. Cassidy Tucker was meant for me, and I wasn’t letting her slip away a second time.
“She didn’t seem to be wearing any pajamas the other night,” Jonah noted.
“Don’t make me drown you in boiling broccoli water,” I said mildly.
He grinned, checking the chicken breasts roasting in the oven.
Having Jonah as a roommate was all right
in my book. He did most of the cooking, slapped baked goods out of my hand, and was, in general, the easiest Bodine brother to talk to.
“How are things going for you?” I asked him, adding a red satin short and cami set to my shopping cart.
He shut the oven door with his hip and reached for his water bottle. “Good,” he said with a roll of his shoulders. “Business is pretty steady for the off-season.” He’d started some group exercise classes during the week that had a huge and primarily female following. But Jonah didn’t seem to notice the adoring attention.
“How about everything else? It’s gotta be weird to share not just DNA but a name with our dad.”
It was the vice principal in me, checking in, testing the waters.
“Everything’s weird as far as I’m concerned. I try not to worry about it much,” he said.
“I noticed reporters are trickling back into town,” I said. “Any of them giving you any trouble?”
“They’re a bit more respectful than the last bunch.”
The school was only fielding about six or seven calls a day from journalists looking for a story. There hadn’t been any more newsworthy breaks in the case since the sweater, and interest seemed to be tapering off.
Jonah looked like he wanted to say something else.
“What?” I asked.
“What was he like? Your father. To you, I mean. Scarlett’s told me some. Jameson, too. But it seems like you all had different relationships.”
“First of all, it’s y’all.”
“I’m not an official Bootlegger yet. I don’t think I can appropriate your language.”
“You’re kin,” I said in my thickest West Virginia drawl. “‘Round these parts you can y’all anyone and anything y’all want to.”
He chuckled, knowing full well I was stalling. He pulled two beers out of the fridge and popped the tops. I accepted the one he offered.
“I had a complicated relationship with my dad,” I told him.