“Yes, Sir. I promise.”
His next statement broke her heart. Not his words, but the fact that his voice cracked as he said it. “I couldn’t handle losing you, sweetheart. Never. So I mean it. You cannot ever risk yourself like that again. If somebody jumps you or something, that’s different. But if you see something happening and there’s a way to get to safety, you retreat, and you do not engage. That’s an order. Understand?”
She looked up and saw the tears in his eyes, shredding her soul. “Yes, Sir.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “That’s my good girl.”
She stared into his eyes. “Do you…” She had to lick her lips. “What…happened. To Matt.” She swallowed hard. “How do you feel about me?”
He cradled her face in his hands and stared down into her eyes for a long, long time. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, “I was prepared to confess to Matt’s death if they even hinted about looking at you as a serious suspect. No way would I have let you go to jail for that. Ever.”
Her vision blurred. “How did you figure it out?”
“The next day while I was waiting for someone to relieve me at Cara’s, I thought back to every detail and went through it in my mind. You weren’t making sure you had an alibi. You were making sure I had an airtight alibi no one could bust through when the cops questioned me. Which they naturally did question me.
“I knew damn well you didn’t kill July. I knew Matt had to be the murderer, long before they matched his DNA. Your parents were out of town, so their house was empty. You knew May was at the rehearsal dinner, and you knew July was dead. No one to interrupt you there.
“A few months later, when that storm came through and I was helping your dad tack down the tarps on the roof where the limb hit? He was aggravated at himself because he thought he had two more tarps in the garage than he did, and I went out and bought two more for him to finish covering the roof. Your dad never was mistaken about something like that. And then when he was going to take me hunting that winter, he couldn’t find his favorite Buck knife, the one he used to gut and dress deer, and he had to buy a new one before we could leave.”
His thumbs stroked her chin even as he still cradled her face. “I’d pretty much known it already, but those two events solidified it and made me set everything aside in a mental closet, close it, lock it, and brick it up behind a wall so I didn’t accidentally reveal anything to anyone. As far as I was concerned, the night happened exactly the way we told it to police when they took our statements. I suspected they might never find Matt’s body, but no way was I ever going to ask you unless you brought it up first.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, hot and heavy. “Why not?”
“Because I love you. I never wanted you to worry that I might one day betray you. I also didn’t want you doing something stupid, like confessing to it. He deserved it. I always held it in the back of my mind what my story was going to be, and I planned. After I dropped you at your parents’ house early the next morning when we finished talking to the police, I stopped by a pay phone at the park down the road from your parents’ house. I knew my parents were with you. So I called my house, let the machine pick up, whispered my own name like I was Matt calling, said I needed help, then hung up. I got home, played the message, and reset the machine after flipping the tape over to save it until I could get a new tape for it.
“If the police had gone so far as to dig that deeply, I was going to say it sounded like Matt’s voice to me, and that he showed up at my house early that morning before I left to open the gym. That he’d been drunk and he confessed he killed July, and in a fit of rage I killed him and then drove to the park and disposed of his body there. I left it vague so I could fudge the timeline.
“I know damn well you dumped his body at that park, because it was close, and that’s exactly what I would have done. That’s the only way the night’s timeline works. The phone call Matt got from the pay phone was you. You left your parents’ house but didn’t turn the alarm on. Stupid bastard never could tell you two apart on the phone. Did you pretend to be July to rattle him when you called? Said you came home and found June dead? Told him to meet you at your parents’ house to work up a plan and an alibi on what to say to the police?”
Stunned, she nodded.
He continued. “Plus there were no security cameras back then like there are now. Not to mention, it was isolated. Nasty weather meant no one to see you at the park. I’m guessing you killed him in the garage at your parents’ house, moved him with his truck, then dumped the tarps right there in plain sight at the park after rinsing the blood off them. Put them with the others covering the piles of clay they were going to surface the ball fields with. Then you left his truck with the keys in it at that abandoned gas station. That’d be a short run on foot back home for you.”
She blinked, gasping. “What?”
He smiled. “What part of ‘drama minor’ did you not understand, baby? You and I loved reading and watching mysteries. Our minds worked nearly identically. Fortunately, the cops never even looked at me as a suspect, because of the time frame and because the lead detective was friends with my dad. In that case, positive prejudice worked in my favor. White college kid, never so much as a speeding ticket, who’s holding down several different jobs?”
He snorted. “I just had to keep you calm so you didn’t think they were looking at me as a suspect. When they went through our phone records and asked about the call from the park, I shrugged and said it must have been a wrong number, because no one had left a message. I’d already replaced the tape by then and knew they weren’t going to look at either of us as suspects in July’s murder or in Matt’s disappearance. And the longer his body didn’t surface, the less likely we were to be suspected.”
“Never knew watching and reading mysteries would come in handy.”
He kissed her forehead before releasing her. “Technology was on our side back then, too. No cell phones like now.”
She realized…it felt like a stone had rolled from her shoulders. Trite, but true.
“Do you hate me?”
He scowled. “No, baby. Of course not. I could never hate you. I love you.”
“Even…knowing for sure now?”
He sighed. “If he hadn’t ‘disappeared’ by your hand, he likely would have by mine, if the cops hadn’t gotten him first. You’re not the only one your dad said was good at gutting a deer.” He pressed another kiss to her temple.
His next sentence stunned her.
“Besides, who do you think hid and then moved his damn truck so it wasn’t found close to your parents’ house? I saw it that night when I left you at your house with my parents. I went back to get it and hid it in the woods behind my parents’ house until I could move it to Tampa the next night.
“Boy, was that a pain in the ass. Thank god my motorcycle was light enough I could roll it up into the bed and haul it. I think the first time I really wanted to spank you was that night, for being so sloppy with that one clue after being so brilliant with everything else.”
THE END
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