by Zoe Carter
“It was,” she finally said. “Especially because I wasn’t sure if my own family believed I was innocent. The evidence was really stacked against me. I was holding the bloody murder weapon. Everything added up.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to railroad you. And almost got away with it.”
“Just like someone went to a lot of trouble to kill your sister, hide her body and possibly plant drugs to make her look like an addict who got killed in a deal gone bad. Look, Trevor, I don’t know that that’s what happened. Maybe your sister did get involved with drugs. Maybe a buyer or a dealer killed her. It’s possible.”
“Not possible,” he interrupted. “No way in hell. We had an aunt, my mother’s older sister, who became a meth addict. Aunt Jackie—the way she’d looked, how she’d ended up homeless, and eventually dead—scared the hell out of the both of us. That bag of cocaine found by Tammy’s body wasn’t Tammy’s.”
She believed him. And her sister Jennifer might think Lauren was being melodramatic, but the dark underbelly of Thornwood Heights was exposing itself.
Lauren nodded. “Tammy deserves justice. And we can get it for her, Trevor. You want to know something? The only reason I’m here and not in prison is because my family fought for me. My sister Jennifer didn’t stop digging until she found the evidence to prove I didn’t kill Victor. That’s what we need to do to find Tammy’s killer.”
He looked at her hard, as if making a decision about her. “Where should we start? Tammy never mentioned friends or boyfriends in her emails or on Skype. She talked about her job a little, but always in the context of how I’d love the lobster rolls at Catch of the Day or a funny joke she’d overheard.”
“From what I’ve been able to research, it looks like she kept to herself and didn’t have many friends but was well liked. She had a Facebook page but hadn’t been on in months. Same with Instagram. I think we should start with coworkers at the restaurant and try to piece together the last time she was seen and if she was dating anyone. A woman left a nice comment about Tammy on my post this morning—we could talk to her too.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “Although the cop—Paretti—said he talked to some people and got nowhere.”
“Who knows how hard he tried,” she said. “And maybe the uniform intimidated them or something. A brother and a truth-seeking reporter may get people talking.”
She could see that he was relieved, that someone was not only on his team and willing to help but fired up.
“Are you willing to go off-the-record if need be?” he asked as Charlie rested his furry black chin on Trevor’s thigh.
“Of course. I’m not all about the story, Trevor. I want justice for Tammy.”
He nodded, the intense blue eyes less on guard. “Then let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Trevor and Lauren stood at the please-wait-to-be-seated sign at Catch of the Day. The smell of fried seafood was in the air, and for the first time since he’d identified Tammy’s body, Trevor could actually imagine eating. That was good. His determination to find his sister’s killer was keeping him going, keeping him hungry, literally and figuratively, instead of so numb with grief and guilt that he couldn’t do anything.
The popular seafood shack wasn’t busy since it was only eleven o’clock. No one else was waiting, and none of the tables were taken.
“Hey, look,” Trevor heard a waitress whisper to another by the soda station across from where they stood. “It’s that woman who was having an affair with her boss and got framed for his murder. She was in jail for, like, a month.”
Trevor glanced at Lauren.
“I’m used to it,” she said, lifting her chin.
He could tell by the tightness in her face that it bothered her, though. How could it not? To be the object of gossip—and misinformation—especially after she’d been exonerated for a crime she hadn’t committed. She did know what it was like to be on the wrong side of justice.
“We don’t open till eleven thirty,” one of the waitresses called over.
“We’d like to talk to someone about Tammy Gallagher,” Lauren said.
Both sets of eyes widened. “I’ll get the manager,” one of them said and disappeared behind the swinging door of the kitchen.
A tall man who smelled like French fries came over. “I understand you’re here about Tammy Gallagher? We at Catch of the Day were all so sorry to hear of her passing. She was such a sweet kid and a great waitress.”
Trevor liked that. “I’m her brother, Trevor Gallagher, and this is Lauren Riley from the Townsend Report. We were hoping to talk to someone she was close with.”
“Tammy kept to herself, but she was friendly with Sarah Maitland,” the manager said. “She’s in the kitchen filling salt and pepper shakers. You can go back, if you want.”
They thanked the man and headed through the swinging doors into the large stainless steel kitchen. Three cooks were at their stations, and two others chopped lettuce and tomatoes incredibly quickly. Closer to the door, a twentysomething redhead with round black eyeglasses filled saltshakers.
“Sarah?” Lauren said as they approached. “Your manager said you were friendly with Tammy Gallagher. I’m Lauren Riley, from the Townsend Report, and this is Trevor Gallagher, Tammy’s brother.”
Sarah set down the big container of salt. “Oh my God. I was so sad to hear what happened to Tammy. I read the Townsend Report this morning and cried my eyes out. Who could have wanted to kill Tammy? She was such a nice person.”
Yeah, she was, Trevor thought, taking a breath. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“Can you tell us the last time you saw Tammy?” Lauren asked.
“I remember the exact last day I saw her because it was my birthday,” Sarah said. “I had a small party at my house, and Tammy came, but she left early. I never saw her after that. That was June 7.”
“How did she seem at the party? Happy? Upset? Worried?” Lauren asked.
Sarah poured salt into a shaker and capped it, then reached for another. “She just seemed like Tammy. Quiet. Sweet. The last time I saw her, she was smiling because one of her favorite Adele songs came on. She was humming along. But then...” Sarah bit her lip, worry in her eyes.
“But then what?” Trevor asked.
Sarah shrugged. “I think I’m probably making a big deal about nothing. I mean, CJ is a nice guy. Anyone will tell you that. But...”
Whoa. What the hell was this? Who was CJ?
“Who’s CJ?” Lauren asked before he could form the words.
“CJ Spinner. He used to work here. He had a mad crush on Tammy but she just didn’t like him that way, you know? Anyway, he showed up at the party and that’s why she left. She slipped out the back door. I saw her go and that’s the last time I saw her.”
Trevor glanced at Lauren, his stomach turning over. “He used to work here?” he said to Sarah.
“He stopped coming in after Tammy stopping showing up for work. No one realized she was...dead. We just thought she quit.”
“Sarah, did you see CJ follow Lauren out the door?” Lauren asked.
Sarah shook her head. “No. But someone grabbed me over to where people were dancing and I just didn’t think about it again. I’m sorry.” Tears shone in her eyes.
“It’s not your fault,” Trevor said. “You couldn’t possibly have known. And the police aren’t sure exactly when she was killed. It might not have been that night.”
But it very well could have been. And suddenly, they had a suspect—a guy with an unrequited crush. Motive. Why wasn’t Paretti chasing down this lead? Had Paretti talked to the guy and cleared him?
“Can you describe CJ Spinner?” Lauren asked.
Sarah reached into her pocket for her phone and flipped through som
e photos. “Here’s a picture of him.”
Tall, skinny, with flopping brown hair. Dark brown eyes. Trevor memorized his features. “Did the police come by to talk to you about Tammy? Did you tell them about CJ Spinner?”
“I mentioned CJ to the cop who came by to ask us all questions. The cop asked if CJ talked to Tammy that night or if they had an argument, and like I told him, I didn’t see them even interact. Tammy left by the back door when he arrived. I’m not even sure CJ saw that or even knew Tammy had been there.”
But the guy might have. CJ Spinner might have come to the party expecting to see the girl he had a crush on, the girl who didn’t return his feelings, only to see her slip out the back door when he arrived. That had to have burned.
And could make an unstable person snap. Or just piss off a psycho enough to follow Tammy and confront her.
And kill her.
Trevor’s line of thought was making him feel so sick that he had to turn away for a moment, the scent of haddock and fries and onion rings and lobster all too much.
“You okay?” Lauren whispered.
He sucked in a breath and turned back. “Yeah. Just trying to process this.” He leaned close and whispered, “Paretti said he talked to some people, former coworkers, acquaintances, and he has no suspects or leads, so he must have tracked down Spinner and cleared him, right?”
Or the cops just didn’t care about solving Tammy’s murder. He had a feeling that was more likely. The case of Tammy Gallagher had been tried and convicted in the Thornwood Heights Police Department already: she was guilty of being from the wrong side of the tracks and a druggie who met with foul play while buying or selling cocaine. Case closed.
“We’ll have to ask Paretti who he talked to and who he cleared—if he’ll tell us,” Lauren whispered back.
Trevor nodded. He was about to be all over Paretti. He turned to the waitress. “Sarah, one more thing. I just want to make sure I’m not being the typical older brother with rose-colored glasses. So tell me the truth. Have you ever known Tammy to do drugs? Or hang out with drug dealers or doers?”
“No,” Sarah said. “But to be honest, I didn’t know Tammy that well. She was nice but she kind of kept to herself. I think she was embarrassed about not having anywhere to live. I think she said her family’s house went into foreclosure so she had to leave. I wish I could have asked her to stay with me, but I have three roommates.”
Trevor’s hands balled into fists again. Damn it to hell. He wanted to knock all the saltshakers off the table, smash something. His sister had had nowhere to go. When his mother had first told him that Tammy had refused to go with her to California and left the trailer, he’d figured, like his unit buddies had said, that she was staying with a friend until she got her own place. It made sense—and was a hell of a lot easier than thinking that she’d vanished into thin air.
“Where the hell had she been staying, then?” he asked.
“I think she was staying at The Thorn.”
The Thorn? The old crappy boardinghouse on the edge of town. Rooms were cheap by the hour, day or week. When Trevor was in high school, The Thorn was where you went to buy a little pot from a creep renting a room on the first floor or screw your girlfriend without anyone’s parents bursting in.
“Why The Thorn?” Lauren asked. “She had a job. She could have rented a studio apartment or found roommates.”
“Our manager cut back all our hours,” Sarah explained. “His bitchy niece needed a job and that was that. Tammy told me she was practically broke. She said she’d stay at The Thorn or just camp out.”
Camp out? Tammy was an experienced camper; they both were. But come on. No one lived in the goddamned woods. She must have been staying at the hellhole boardinghouse, and some psycho staying there had lured her into the woods and killed her, then left his stash behind, whether accidentally or on purpose to make her look bad.
“Thanks for talking to us,” Trevor said, needing to get the hell out. He heard Lauren saying something to the waitress about contacting her if they had anything to add, then she followed him out.
“My sister was living in that dump,” he said, his voice hollow and almost breaking. “Why the hell didn’t she get in touch with me? I was on a mission those last weeks, but I could have arranged something for her by phone or Skype.” He shook his head, guilt and grief cycling in waves.
He felt Lauren take his hand and hold it tight, and then she wrapped her arms around him. God, that felt good. Too good. She had a great body. He could feel every curve against him. Lush breasts and her small waist and hips. Her hair, reddish brown and wavy, dipped close to her left eye and he wanted to push it back and grab her against him even tighter.
He didn’t have much experience with women. There’d been the hometown girlfriend who’d dumped him when he’d deployed. Then the medic named Amy he’d been seeing for a few months before she’d been killed by shrapnel while tending to an injured soldier, a good friend of Trevor’s. That was almost a year ago. Any time he thought about sex he’d see Amy’s face. So he’d tried to stop thinking about either. After a while, he got used to the void. The feeling of emptiness. He’d focused instead on surviving, on coming home, the ranch he’d buy, making his sister a safe home.
He felt drawn and quartered, and he tightened his grip on Lauren. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel so goddamned alone.
But suddenly, the intensity was too much. He pulled away. He couldn’t seek anything from Lauren Riley but help in getting justice for Tammy.
“Let’s go check out The Thorn,” he said, turning for the parking lot. “Talk to the manager.”
He felt her studying him. Don’t say anything about the hug. Don’t put it into words. I’ll spontaneously combust.
She didn’t. She just nodded. “Trevor. If Paretti didn’t mention The Thorn, it’s because he probably already checked it out. Tammy must not have stayed there. Or for long.”
Shit. The rookie hadn’t brought it up at all.
“I need to see it,” he said. “I want to see the room she stayed in.”
Lauren nodded. They got in her car and she drove three miles to the falling-down three-story clapboard house, its peeling gray paint and hanging-by-a-thread faded black shutters making the house look half haunted, half about to collapse on itself.
A sign saying Rooms to Let was on the front door. Ten dollars an hour. Fifty dollars a night. Two hundred a week.
Probably all Tammy could afford.
They walked up the three steps. Trevor opened the door and stepped in. He could smell garbage, fish frying and urine. A mouse edged along the side of the hallway. Big surprise.
The manager’s office was the front room. It was open. A short, balding man with gold-framed glasses sat at a desk, stamping checks.
“Can you tell us if a Tammy Gallagher stayed here a few weeks ago and for how long?” Lauren asked, flashing her TownsendReport.com press credentials.
“Tammy Gallagher?” the man said, flipping through his roster. “Oh yeah, Tammy. The blonde. Nice girl. I was sorry to hear what happened. She was only here one night.”
One night? “You’re sure?” Trevor asked.
“Yup. I know because I asked her out and she said no. If she would have come back, I think she would have said yes.”
It was a good thing that Lauren put her hand on Trevor’s arm, because he was about to swing his fist right into the dickhead’s pockmarked face.
“She was eighteen, asshole,” Trevor said. “You’re what? Forty?”
“Thirty-eight, and get the hell out,” the man screeched.
“Let’s go,” Lauren said, taking Trevor’s hand and leading him outside.
He kicked at the gate. “She was here for one night? What the hell? Where did she go?”
“Well, with a sleazebag like th
at as manager, I’m not surprised she left. Maybe she did camp out in the woods? Did you guys ever go camping as a family?”
He slammed his hands against his face. “My sister, homeless in the woods.” He needed to take a minute and breathe or he’d punch his fist against the side of the boardinghouse and break every bone in his hand. “Yeah, we did. We went camping all the time to get away from our nightmare of a mother. There are a few areas I know Tammy would be familiar with.”
“Trevor,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “I think we need to prepare for the possibility of something.”
He stared at her. “The possibility of what?”
“That if we find her campsite, we may very well find the crime scene where she was killed. Maybe we should ask my sister Jennifer to come out with us, just in case.”
“The NYPD cop? Will she help us?”
“I think so. As much as she can anyway. She’s sticking around town because of the dead girl she found at the boathouse. She’s working on the case of the missing girls—I know it. Even if she has no jurisdiction here. I know she was looking around the area where Tammy was found.”
“Yeah, but Tammy isn’t considered one of those missing girls,” Trevor pointed out. “According to the cops, she was a supposed drug user who got killed in a deal gone bad.”
“Jennifer Riley isn’t Lewton. She may not always be willing to give me information because I’m the press or because she’s worried about the danger I might put myself in. But she’s sharp as a tack. She knows what’s what.”
