“Somebody murdered him, Annie.”
She froze on hearing the reality framed in words. Her breath stopped. Even her heart paused.
“They shot him and tossed him alongside an old ranch road like he was nothing. Yesterday’s trash.”
“No.” She shook her head against JT’s chest.
He tightened his embrace. “He was rolled up in an old rug. That’s the part I don’t get. Who would do that? Take the rug right off their floor?”
“Can we see him? Where is he now?” Annie backed out of JT’s embrace.
“Folks?” Sheriff Neely was there at her elbow. “Why don’t we go into my office?” He asked Darlene to bring them coffee.
“How about a sandwich?” she said.
But JT shook his head. So did Annie. Her brain felt swimmy. She wondered if she was dreaming and resisted an urge to see if her feet were touching the floor. Her throat ached. She put her hand there briefly, then lowering it, she was surprised to feel something wet and cold nuzzle the cup of her palm. She looked down into Rufus’s warm brown eyes. Somehow the sight of him comforted her. She kept her hand on his head, and searching the room, found Cooper standing near the building’s entrance, hands in his jean pockets, watching her. Against her will, her heart leapt. He seemed to be asking for permission to approach, and even as a voice in her head said no, she nodded.
“I’m so, so sorry, Annie.” He waited to speak until he was close enough to her that she could feel his breath on her face. Something inside her, some internal resolve, began to loosen.
Tears brimmed her eyes.
He thumbed them away and gathered her into his arms. And she let him. It was his kindness, his unremitting strength that was her final undoing. Her tears flowed, and she seemed incapable of making any effort to restrain them. They scalded her cheeks, soaking his shirt. She was aware of him murmuring softly to her, but if there were any words, she couldn’t pick them out. Her ear against his chest caught the vibration of his voice, the sure and steady rhythm of his heartbeat, and the sounds soothed her. Gradually her tears abated, and she straightened, feeling shaky and self-conscious. But the undertow of her grief hadn’t dissolved. She took the tissue Cooper produced from somewhere and wiped her face.
Rufus came and sat beside her, and she patted his ears absently, grateful for the weight of his warmth when he leaned against her leg. She looked at Cooper. “How did you know?”
“Sheriff Audi. JT called him after he heard from you yesterday. I was with the team that found Bo.”
“You were? When did you come here? I didn’t see you.”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
Because of the last time they’d spoken, Annie thought. At the café, after the trip to the morgue, when she’d told him he didn’t know anything about her life or Bo’s. She’d been rude—out of pride, out of the need to protect herself.
Someday you’re going to have to trust somebody again, or you’ll always be alone. Cooper’s prediction from that day passed through her mind. She caught his gaze. “Were you the one . . .” who found Bo? She didn’t say the words, but Cooper didn’t need them.
“No,” he said. “One of the deputies, Roger something. He’s standing over there.” He pointed out a man in uniform, talking to Darlene. “I was in the vicinity, though, close enough that I heard him call out that he had something.”
“Where?”
“Around twenty miles or so northwest of here. We were pretty far off the highway, on a ranch road, I think. Something private like that. Hard to tell in the dark, you know?”
“What would Bo have been doing there?”
“You need to speak with Sheriff Neely.” Cooper nodded in the direction of the sheriff’s office.
Following his gaze, Annie saw that JT was already there, sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs in front of Sheriff Neely’s desk, the same one Lauren had sat in yesterday. The chair Annie had sat in was empty, waiting for her.
Cooper took her elbow as if he meant to guide her there, but she said, “No, I can’t do this now,” and leaving him, she walked rapidly across the room and out of the building, and once outside, she bent at the waist, gulping the chilly new-morning air, drawing it into her lungs breath by breath as if she were starving for oxygen. Gradually, the tight bands that circled her chest eased, and she straightened, but she wasn’t free of it. The nightmare, the god-awful thing that had happened to Bo, that thing that involved the word murder.
She sat on a bench, and pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she called Lauren’s number, not pausing to think of the hour. When Lauren answered, Annie said her name, “Lauren?” and then “We found Bo.”
“Oh.” The syllable slipped out on an audible puff of air.
“He’s dead,” Annie said. “Someone shot him.”
“What? No!” Lauren protested.
A silence fell that lasted several moments, fanning out between them, as useless as a bird’s broken wing.
“Oh, Annie.” Lauren finally broke it. “I’m so sorry. Where are you? I’ll come. You shouldn’t be alone.”
Annie closed her eyes, thinking how her mother would have said the same thing. Thinking of how much Lauren reminded her of her mother. But maybe she only imagined the resemblance. Maybe she wanted her mother so badly she was willing to forget her doubts about Lauren, her sense that for all her seeming kindness and compassion, she was unstable.
Annie said she wasn’t alone, that JT was with her. She didn’t mention Cooper. “I’m still in Cedar Cliff at the sheriff’s office,” she said, and then stopped before she could say she’d run out of the building, run out on Cooper and JT, because she was a wimp, a fraidycat, too scared to hear the details. She wasn’t aware of the pause until Lauren broke it.
“Annie? Do the police know who did it?”
Annie realized she hadn’t even thought about who the murderer was. “He was wrapped in a rug and left beside the road like trash,” she repeated what JT had said. “They think he was killed somewhere else, that whoever did it was trying to cover it up.”
“But why? Who would do such a thing?”
Annie explained about Leighton, how she hadn’t known he was a drug dealer until Bo showed her the proof. She described her shock. “I never saw so much money, except maybe in a bank vault.”
“What happened?” Lauren asked.
“Leighton found out, and he threatened—what if he did this?” Annie bent sharply over her knees.
“Annie, Annie, no. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Okay? Would Bo have—would he have had a reason to be with a guy who was dealing drugs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought he needed more money than he had to go to California. Bo would have been desperate to go there; he’d have done anything.”
“But what are you saying? That he sold drugs and that’s where the cash he had came from?”
“Nothing’s for sure. Detective Cosgrove did say they can’t find Leighton or this other guy who’s a drug dealer, too. Leighton’s partner, I guess, Greg Honey. Evidently Bo knows—knew both of them. I should go—”
“Greg Honey? Bo knew Greg?”
There was something in Lauren’s voice, an underscore of alarm that made Annie say, “Do you know him?”
The silence lasted a beat too long.
Annie straightened. “Lauren?”
“I have to go. I’m so sorry.” She spoke in a rush. “Take—take care, okay?” A moment passed, brittle with regret, or so it seemed. “God, I’m so sorry.” Lauren said it again, and this time, it sounded like a prayer.
21
Lauren left for Tara’s without phoning Jeff. She wanted to call him; if he wasn’t so pissed at her, she probably would have, but she was afraid he would dismiss her suspicion as crazy, that Tara was hiding Greg, and try to talk her out of going or, worse, warn Tara she was coming. She could
n’t take that chance, not while Drew was in the house with them.
The house was dark when she pulled into the driveway behind Tara’s car. There wasn’t any sign of the Jeep Greg drove, but maybe he hadn’t driven himself there. Maybe Tara had picked him up. Anything was possible. Lauren eased out of the Navigator, closing but not latching the door. An errant breeze skittered through the bare-branched canopy of the sweet gum tree near the drive. Eerie shadows trembled over the lawn. She looked again at the house; the windows across the front glittered in the streetlight, like glassy eyes.
A murderer was behind those windows, inside that house, sitting with her son and her sister. He might even now be watching her, waiting for her, waiting to see what she would do. The possibility raised the hair on Lauren’s head. She felt light-headed. Fear uncurled from her stomach.
Call the police. The voice in her head was strident. She had Detective Cosgrove’s card, but then she remembered it was in her purse, left at home, with its contents spilled all over the floor of the mudroom. She’d only grabbed her keys when she left after speaking to Annie. She’d not even brought her cell phone. Everything had left her mind the moment Annie said Bo knew Greg. Because Lauren knew Greg, too, knew his history and what he was capable of. She’d listened to him describe his nature, its capacity for violence, in a meeting. She brushed her hands over her face. If only she’d known of the association before, she could have prevented this. Prevented a lot of things. Now Tara and Drew were in danger.
Lauren walked up the steps, onto the front porch. Tara didn’t keep a key to the door anywhere outside that Lauren knew of, nor did she think she would find any of the windows unlocked, but she tried them anyway, without luck. And when the outside light came on, she wheeled, heart pounding. The front door jerked open.
“What are you doing?” Tara said in a loud whisper. She thrust open the screen, leaning around it.
Lauren saw that her hair was still caught in the same messy ponytail, and she was wearing the same filthy T-shirt and sweats she’d had on earlier.
“Where is Greg?” Lauren whispered, too.
“Greg?”
“Is he sleeping?”
Tara only gaped at her, and Lauren felt a jolt of fear-fueled annoyance. “Don’t play games with me. This is serious. You have to get Drew now as quietly as you can and come with me. We’ll call the police—”
“What in the hell are you talking about now, Lauren?” Tara came out, letting go of the screen door.
Lauren tried to catch it before it slammed. “Drew!” she said.
“He isn’t here. I told you he wasn’t staying with me. He’s at Gabe’s.”
Lauren was perplexed. Still, she said, “Thank God.” She took Tara’s elbow. “We’ll go to my house. We can call Detective Cosgrove from there.”
Tara shook free. “If I call anyone, it’s going to be the men in the white coats.”
“You’re determined to protect him, is that it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not protecting anyone. I don’t know where Greg is. I told you that before.”
“Let me see.” Lauren whipped open the screen door and then paused, waiting for Tara to stop her.
But she didn’t. “Go on,” she said, “since you’re so determined. Search the place.”
Lauren’s pulse pounded in her ears, and every instinct said it was crazy to be here in the house with a man who might possibly be armed, who was most certainly dangerous. Tara followed on her heels as Lauren went from room to room.
“You’ve got no sense about men,” Lauren said, pausing in the guest-bedroom doorway, switching on the light. The room was neat as a pin.
Tara laughed. “And you do, I guess.”
“He’s a drug addict, Tee.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah.” Lauren went to the master bedroom. While the bed there, Tara’s bed, was made up, it was rumpled. She switched her glance to Tara, locking eyes with her. “But Greg’s using again, and I’m not.”
“Is that why you’re here? You’re going to turn him in?”
“He might have killed someone,” Lauren said. “The boy they’ve been looking for all week, Bo Laughlin.”
“You’re insane. Why are you saying that? I thought Greg was your friend—your 12-step mentor. You’re always telling me how much he’s helped you, that he’s the only one who understands.” Tara gestured, making a broad arc with her arm. “The rest of us are idiots, out to get you, ruin your marriage, and take your kids. But Greg? He’s perfect.”
Lauren looked away, undone in the face of Tara’s sarcasm, by the reminder of her fallibility. She tried to remember what had brought her here, what progression of thought. Because Tara was right, Greg had been there with her through the darkest period of her life. Now she was ready to condemn him? Based on what? The fact that he and Bo knew each other? She didn’t know where to go from here. She wanted to back down from whatever this was that had begun to feel like a challenge, yet something—pride, she thought unhappily—propelled her to walk through the rest of the house, the living and dining rooms, the kitchen. The sound of her footsteps, and Tara’s, rang in Lauren’s ears.
They reached the small foyer.
“He isn’t here, believe me,” Tara said.
“I’d like to,” Lauren said. But driving home, she thought of all the places in Tara’s house she hadn’t looked. Places big enough to hide a man. She thought her sister might have lied to her, and her heart felt hollow and cold with fear.
22
Annie sat a moment, holding her cell phone, but her confusion about Lauren, the abrupt way she’d ended their conversation, wasn’t something she felt equal to sorting out by herself. She didn’t want to go back inside the sheriff’s office, either, but she had no choice. Crossing the reception area, skirting the groups of volunteers, she felt their eyes following her, felt their collective sympathy and their pity, and clenched her jaw. When he saw her, JT half rose, asking where she’d been. Distress and fear made a muddy turmoil of his expression. He looked shell-shocked, like a man coming off a battlefield. One who was hunting for a place to lie down.
“How will I tell his mother?” he asked, and his gaze clung to Annie’s.
She was nonplussed. Did he mean Bo’s mother who was dying?
“Come and sit down.” Cooper got up, offering her his chair.
Annie didn’t want to, but she went to it, sitting awkwardly, fighting aggravation and the fresh bite of tears both at once. She wanted to tell Cooper to go, that she didn’t need him. What was he doing here, anyway?
“The sheriff had some questions for me,” Cooper said as if he’d read her mind.
Because he’d been with the team that found Bo, Annie guessed. She wouldn’t meet Cooper’s eyes and looked at his hands instead. They were mapped with scars. From working with the metal, she decided. She thought how much she would like to see his art, and then she was appalled. How could she think of such a thing now?
“JT was just telling me about your brother’s mental state, his drug use—” the sheriff began.
“He wasn’t on anything, not recently,” Annie said.
“He might have been.” JT caught Annie’s glance.
She shook her head.
“You didn’t want to believe he’d get into a car with a stranger, either,” JT said.
“And I was right about that. He knew Charlotte; he worked for her.”
“But you didn’t know that about him, did you? The same as you don’t know whether he was using or selling drugs and that’s what got him killed.”
Annie opened her mouth to argue.
JT cut her off. “You never wanted to see the pain he was in. You and your mama, always thinking you could fix him when there is no fixing that—what was wrong with him. Not ever.” JT flattened his palm, using it to cut the air like a knife.
No one spoke. The sheriff crossed his arms over his chest. Cooper leaned against the wall. Annie pushed her palms down her thighs.
“He knew, don’t you see?” JT spoke softly. “Bo knew he wasn’t right, could never be the man he might have been if—if—shit—this whole thing makes me sick. Sick in my heart!” He pounded his chest with his fist, jerked to his feet.
Annie felt his glare. She was aware of Rufus getting up, of Cooper beckoning the dog to his side, but she didn’t look at any one of the three men or the dog. She couldn’t. It was taking every ounce of her self-control not to cry, not to scream. What she might scream or at whom, she couldn’t have said.
“Doesn’t matter what any autopsy says or what dope they find in his system or even who pulled the fucking trigger on the gun and shot him.” JT’s voice was rough and loud with his grief. “It was how he wasn’t whole—it was that little part of him that knew, that was aware he’d never be a whole man. Never be smart enough to love a woman, earn a living, father a kid. That’s what killed him!”
Rufus whined, and Annie jumped when JT slammed his fist into his palm. “Can’t you see? It would be like being paralyzed from the neck down and you can’t do shit about it, but every day, you got to wake up and face it. How many years could you do it? Huh?” He divided his hot, angry gaze among them. “How goddamn many?”
Now in the hard, frozen silence, JT sat down again and bent his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his hands.
Annie could have reached across the gap between them; she could have put her hand on his arm, comforted him in some way, but she didn’t. She didn’t know why. She was as sickened by what had happened as he was, but she was angry, too. JT was right about her mom. She had searched out ways to help Bo, tried every one, no matter how wacky—everything from macrobiotic diets to herbal supplements to acupuncture. But Annie hadn’t gone along. In fact, she’d argued with her mom about it. JT knew that. He wasn’t any better than her mother, though, with his stupid idea that Bo had been miserable. But none of them had truly understood him, Annie thought.
Crooked Little Lies Page 26
