Buried Secrets
Page 22
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Hey, Princess, Scott Caverly is here to see you.” Barb’s voice came across the speaker phone. “And I gotta say, he’s pretty darn good-looking,” she whispered.
“Thanks, Barb, send him to my office.”
Scott gave Grace the look she’d expected as soon as he opened the door. He was confused, evident in the crinkling of his eyebrows.
“Hi, Grace.” His eyes went from Grace and looked over at Harris with a perplexed look. “So, what can I do for you?”
“Scott, take a seat. I’d like you to meet Harris Whitaker.”
Epilogue
Grace weaved between a couple of kids zigzagging on their scooters on the sidewalk that outlined Bridgeton Beach. She looked down at her watch, nearly dropping the two coffees she was carrying from rushing to get there on time. She saw Christie standing up in a black, one-piece bathing suit, waving her over. Although she had only had the baby six weeks ago, she already looked like she had lost most of the baby weight she had gained. Again, she was baffled by how women did what they did when it came to pregnancy and raising children, but she could still smell that new-baby smell that Annabelle Grace had when Grace had held her that day. Grace found herself with a strong desire to hold the baby again. She flipped off her flip-flops and left them by the seawall, assuming they would be safe in the small town, then thought twice about it. She turned, balanced the two ice coffees in the crook of her arm, and bent down to retrieve the flip-flops, sliding them under her other arm. She headed toward where Christie stood, helping Kloe set up her assortment of beach toys.
“Officer Grace!” Kloe ran up to her and gave her the same big hug she had given just weeks before at their house.
“You’re gonna make me expect a hug every time I see you, Kloe.” Grace handed one of the coffees to Christie.
“Oh, I’m sure she will be fine with that. This girl has no sense of personal space,” Christie joked. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m back up to my three cups a day, but that may increase very fast if this baby doesn’t sleep anytime soon.” Grace looked over at Annabelle Grace sprawled out on a blanket beneath a blue tent, her arms and legs extended outward, making her resemble a starfish.
“So, we certainly have a lot to talk about.” Christie sat on the blanket. “Hey, Kloe, me and Officer Grace are gonna chat for a little, can you be a big girl and… Oh, it looks like she already met some friends.” Kloe was talking animatedly with a group of kids at a nearby blanket.
“She’s such a good kid.” Grace dug her toes in the sand.
“Yeah, she is. She’s my special girl.” Christie paused. “Thanks, Grace.”
“For what?”
“For everything. For being there when I thought I was going to die giving birth. For, you know, keeping Miriam out of trouble.”
“Well, there is nothing we can do until Stephen Cassidy’s body washes up, but I kept her confession to myself.”
“Thank you for that. She’s a good person, she really is. She’s just been dealt a rough card. And now she has to feel the guilt associated with killing the wrong person. She is a mess and she’s trying to do everything to make up for it…volunteering even more than ever before and staying so busy she literally has no time to think about her wrongdoing. I mean, I guess I would’ve thought the same thing if I had seen the keychain on Stephen’s backpack. Seeing the whole puzzle put together, it makes a little more sense and I guess she’s not as irrational as I imagined. Don’t you think it’s kinda creepy that he kept a little girl’s keychain?”
“Yeah, but not as creepy as Judy McNeil stealing Annabelle and then burying her body in the town she lives in.” Grace had the hard job of informing Miriam and Scott that Judy McNeil had buried Annabelle’s body in one of the town graveyards in an attempt to hide any trace of her crime and what was an accidental death.
When Miriam faced the findings, it was like she had started the grieving process all over again, knowing her daughter’s body was buried in the town she’d moved to all those years ago and that Annabelle had fought her way back to her mother only to drown in the process.
“True.” Christie took a long sip of her ice coffee. “You know, I always wondered about those letters Scott got every month. And to think he had thought he knew where his father was all these years, and if he didn’t obey his dad’s wishes and not look for him, then who knows, we may have found out that he committed suicide a long time ago.
“Yeah, it’s hard to say how things would’ve gone.”
“Did you hear that Harris is going to start teaching a basketball clinic in town?”
“I sure did. Good for him. Seems like a good guy.” Grace smiled about the new addition to the town. Not long after Scott met Harris, he took him under his wing, much like his father had all those years ago. He took him around town and introduced him to Michael, who was well on his way to serving up the best lobsters in town. And he took him to the gym, where Mark jumped on the opportunity to have Harris come back to teach kids of all ages how to play the sport he excelled in.
As for Miriam, she continued to fill her days with back-to-back activities to benefit the town and, of course, had her chance to vent in court when Judy was taken into custody and sentenced to life in prison. Now, when Grace looked at her, she saw a sense of peace in Miriam’s eyes, especially since Miriam now had a place to go to talk to the daughter she’d lost so many years ago. Annabelle’s bones were dug up and buried next to one of the local parks where she never had a chance to play, and a memorial fund was set up in Annabelle’s honor. The fund was dedicated to providing swimming lessons at no cost to any child in the town, because Miriam guessed that if Annabelle had known how to swim, she would’ve found her way home.
Acknowledgments
As always, there are so many people to thank, but this time I’d like to focus on my dedicated readers who given me the drive to keep on going with this series. If it weren’t for your continued support, these words would have probably never made it on to paper.
I’d like to thank my husband for pushing me to continue this dream of mine, doing what I love to do… creating worlds and characters for others to escape into. Thank you, Christie Conlee and Kristina Caverly, my all-time biggest cheerleaders. Notice the names…they are equally important characters in both this book and my life. Thank you, mom and dad, for your continued support and for spreading the word everywhere you go. Thank you, Brian Allaire and Dawne Armitstead for your police expertise and Joe Gugino for your ocean insight.
Reviews are extremely important for authors, as they give other readers a chance to explore the many opinions needed to make a decision to read or not to read a particular book. With that said, please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I will be eternally grateful.
This book is a follow-up to the McKenna Mystery Novel series and can be read in conjunction with The Gift. Please stay tuned for the follow-up books in the series. You can stay up-to-date on my work by tuning into Facebook: (@AuthorKateAnslinger), Instagram (anslingerkate), and Twitter (@kateanslinger).
Please check out these other reads on Amazon by Kate Anslinger:
Underwater Secrets
Saving Jason