He shook his head.
“When did you have it repainted?”
“Last year.”
“What color was it before the paint job?” I asked.
“Black. Why?”
Black wasn’t dark blue, but it was close.
“The night Kennedy Nixon died, a neighbor thought she saw a dark-colored pickup truck pulling out of Kennedy’s parents’ driveway,” I said. “Was it yours?”
“Kennedy? I thought you were here to talk about Olivia.”
“We’ll get to Olivia after we talk about Kennedy.”
“What does Kennedy have to do with Olivia?”
“Answer my questions and I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t want to talk about Kennedy.”
“What you want or don’t want is irrelevant. I’ll ask you again. Was the truck seen leaving her house the night she died yours?”
He slapped a hand on his knee and burst out laughing. “You’re funny, and dang cute when you’re trying to be serious. Spicy … I like it!”
I’d been led to believe Shawn was a bully, a ticking time bomb set to go off. So far, I disagreed. In my assessment, he was full of himself and confident. He had all the charm of a washed-up has-been. The type of guy who, when he was in his fifties, would still think he was cool enough to pick up women in nightclubs.
“Are you going to answer the question, or what?” I asked.
“Hate to disappoint, but I believe I’m going have to go with the ‘or what’ option, Detective Babe.”
He leaned back and spread his legs, allowing the towel around his waist to open just enough for me to get a sneak peek of his wares, if I so desired. I had half a mind to reach over and rip it off him just to see how confident he’d feel then—a gesture I realized wouldn’t be well received if he tattled on me.
The temptation to put him in his place was great.
Still, I resisted.
It was clear Shawn was trying to rattle me.
I wouldn’t be rattled.
I kept my eyes glued to his and said, “You were questioned after Kennedy Nixon died, weren’t you?”
“Yep, by some other female detective. Wasn’t half the babe you are though.”
“Did she ask if you drove a dark pickup truck?”
“She asked if I drove a dark-blue pickup truck, and I don’t. Well, I didn’t at the time.”
He’d found the perfect truck loophole and taken it.
I wondered if the neighbor was wrong about the color.
It was dark out when she’d seen the truck.
Blue could have been mistaken for black.
“What was your relationship like with Kennedy before she died?” I asked.
“Nonexistent.”
“And yet, you attended her funeral. Why?”
“We may not have been together anymore, but I still felt bad when I heard about what happened to her.”
“You expect me to believe you felt bad about a girl who went around telling your classmates you raped her?”
He ran a hand across his brow. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve heard about Kennedy, but she had mental problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was something off about her. Like, she wasn’t right in the head.”
“Was she diagnosed with a specific disorder, or is what you’re suggesting your own diagnosis?”
“Everyone in school knew there was something wrong with her. After we broke up, she pursued me, not the other way around. When she didn’t get what she wanted, she started telling lies. I didn’t care what she said because no one believed her, and because I knew it wasn’t true. I’ve never had to force a girl to sleep with me, and I wouldn’t. Hell, I could make a dozen calls right now, and every chick I called would be here within the hour.”
I knew one person who wouldn’t. Me.
“You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” I said. “Not every woman you meet is interested.”
He cocked his head to the side and twisted his lips into a mischievous grin. “Sounds like a challenge. If I hit on you right now, do you think you could resist?”
“Go ahead, put a hand on me. I’ll lay you out.”
He stared at me a moment, amused. “You know what your problem is … you’re focusing on our age difference. Love is love, Detective Babe. I’m a man. You’re a woman. Why can’t two beautiful people share a beautiful experience together?”
I wasn’t sure where to begin with my response. It wasn’t often I found myself at a loss for words. It seemed I was in unchartered territory.
“Let’s just stick with the reason I’m here, mmmkay?”
He shrugged. “Can’t blame me for trying, right?”
“If you cared about Kennedy as you claim, then you won’t mind coming down to the station and standing in a police lineup so we can rule you out as the person Kennedy’s neighbor saw leaving the house around the time she died.”
He leaned forward and cleared his throat.
I had his attention.
Good.
Now, I needed to keep it long enough for him to believe the lie I’d just told. The neighbor was dead—a fact I knew, but did he? I doubted it.
He waved his hands in front of him. “Whoa. Hold up. Why would you do a lineup now, after all this time? What would a lineup prove anyway? Kennedy’s death was an accident, right? She was drunk or something, wasn’t she? And she drowned.”
“Two women you dated in the last few years are both dead. Care to explain?”
“Explain what? There’s nothing to explain. I had nothing to do with what happened to either one of them.”
“Then why did one of your exes say you raped her and the other wrote poems about a woman who had been raped?”
“Uhh … what?”
I pulled a copy of the poems out of my bag and handed them to him. “Here, read these.”
He read through the poems, his eyes wide, face somber.
The shocked look on his face seemed legitimate.
But was it?
When he finished, he handed them back to me and said, “Who wrote these—Olivia?”
I nodded. He continued.
“I don’t get it. Why would she … I mean … Wait a second. If it wasn’t me then …” He slammed a fisted hand onto his flattened hand. “If I find out anyone laid a hand on Olivia without her consent, they’ll wish they died before I got to them.”
And there it was … the aggression Roxie had talked about.
“I haven’t been able to confirm whether the poems are about her or someone else,” I said. “All I know is, at the moment, far too many coincidences lead back to you.”
“I don’t care if they lead to me or not. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Do I? I hear you have a mean streak, which you displayed after you read the poems just now. I also hear you’re aggressive when you don’t get your way. Not long before Olivia died, you got into an argument with her outside of a restaurant. You had her pinned up against the car. If Abigail hadn’t intervened, what would you have done—smacked her around a bit?”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t what it looked like. Yes, we were arguing. And yes, I had Olivia pinned against the car. I was trying to get her to hear me out. I wasn’t trying to hurt her, no matter what Abigail thinks. I don’t hit women.”
“Roxie Moreno isn’t a big fan of yours either.”
“Roxie and I have a beef for a different reason.
“And what reason would that be?” I asked.
“I hit on her woman. It was an accident though.”
“Her woman? What woman?”
“We were at a party one weekend, and this cute chick came walking in. I’d never seen her before. One of my buddies said she went to Pacific Beach High School. I had no idea she was in a relationship with Roxie, or that Roxie liked girls. Roxie showed up a few minutes later, saw me flirting with her girlfriend, and she came at me with a knife.” He leaned to the side and pulled the towel down a bit, r
evealing a one-inch scar on the side of his lower abdomen. “Bet she didn’t tell you this part of the story.”
No, she hadn’t.
In fact, she hadn’t told me the story at all.
For now, there wasn’t much more I could do. He’d had an answer to every single one of my questions. There was no hard proof linking him to Kennedy or Olivia’s death.
“Where were you the night Olivia died?” I asked.
“What night was it?”
“Wednesday.”
He repeated the day a few times to himself and then said, “Oh yeah, I was playing Xbox with some friends. We ordered pizza. Drank a few beers. I’ll give you their names. They’ll vouch for me. We hung out at my place all night.”
“From what time to what time?”
“Four or so until about midnight.”
I wrote the names down and stood.
“I have other places to be,” I said. “I’ll be going.”
“Too bad. I was hoping you’d stay a while longer.”
I ignored the comment and walked to the door. Before I could get there, Shawn grabbed my hand, jerking me back. We faced each other, and he leaned in close, too close, and attempted to kiss me. I slapped him across the face—hard.
“Rule number one,” I said. “Never ever put your hands on a member of law enforcement. Rule number two—you’re screwed. You see, before your little display of affection, I had no reason to have you arrested. Now I do.”
I grabbed his hands, forced them together, and slapped a pair of zip ties over his wrists.
“Shawn Murphy, you’re under arrest.”
He attempted to recover what little masculinity he still had left and whispered, “Before, I was sure you were playing hard to get. I figured you’d at least round first base.”
“First base? You’re a boy. I round bases with men.” I glanced around. “And, as it happens, I don’t see any around here.”
He blinked at me, stunned. “You might be the first woman to ever say no to me.”
I grinned. “Trust me when I say, I won’t be the last.”
I reached for my phone, and he panicked.
“Wait, come on,” he said. “Don’t call the cops. My dad will kill me if I get arrested. Just … look, put the phone down. Do it, and I’ll tell you something you want to know.”
Chapter 27
Shawn claimed to have valuable information. Information I wanted. But did I believe him? I slid my cell phone back into my pocket and decided to find out.
“Start talking,” I said.
“You were right before.”
“Right about what?”
“I stopped by Kennedy Nixon’s house on the night she died.”
“Why did you lie to the police when they questioned you?”
“Because I wasn’t involved in her death. The fact I was there before she died shouldn’t matter.”
“It does matter, and you were involved. Why were you there in the first place?”
He leaned against the wall, bowed his head. “So, I’m at work one day and Kennedy shows up. She apologized for spreading rumors about me around school and said she wanted to make it up to me.”
“What was your response?”
“I told her to leave, and she started talking, well … like a crazy person.”
“And how does a crazy person talk?”
“She said she was glad she got the chance to say she was sorry before it was too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“I wondered the same thing, so I asked her. She started laughing. One minute she’s flipping out; the next, she’s laughing so hard she can’t stop. I may have called her a, you know, a freak or something—because, I mean, she was one, right? She looked me dead in the eye and said I didn’t need to worry. The freak wouldn’t ever bother me again because she planned to kill herself that night.”
If what he told me was true, it panged my heart. How isolated and alone she must have been to consider ending her life. I thought about the flaws in today’s society. Far too many spent their lives picking themselves apart until all the meat was stripped from the bone. What meager spirit remained lacked the strength to fight—the light becoming so dim, they were no longer capable of freeing themselves from their troubles.
“After Kennedy told you what she was planning, how did the conversation end?” I asked.
It was a question he didn’t want to answer.
He cleared his throat and avoided eye contact, the smug, overconfident façade he’d displayed earlier, replaced by a look of shame.
“I may have accused her of lying,” he muttered under his breath.
“About killing herself?”
“Yeah, I thought it was one more lie in a string of others to get me to feel sorry for her. After I said it, she looked at me and didn’t say a word. She just stood there with a funny look on her face. Then she got into her car and left.”
“If you thought she was lying, why did you stop by her house?”
“Look, I know what I said to her, all right? Something in the way she was when she left bugged me all day. I thought, what if I was wrong, what if she wasn’t joking? So after I finished work, I drove to her parents’ place. My plan was to check on her, prove to myself she was bluffing. Then I was going to leave.”
“Was she alive when you arrived?”
He nodded. “She answered the door looking sexy as hell. She asked me if I liked what she was wearing, and she said she’d bought it just for me. She had a bottle of wine in her hand, and she was drinking right out of it. She held it out to me, asked if I wanted some, and then offered to let me ‘rock her world’—her words, not mine.”
“And did you—rock it?”
He shook his head. “I was pissed. Once again, she’d gotten inside my head, making me believe things that weren’t true. I told her I didn’t ever want to see her again, and she slammed the door in my face.”
“And you never entered the house, not for sex or any other reason?” I asked.
“I swear to you, I stayed on the front porch the entire time. I was there maybe two minutes, and then I left.”
“When did you find out she had died?”
“My mom called me the next day. She was watching the news and said there were a bunch of reporters in front of Kennedy’s house. I guessed why they were there without her even saying it.”
“Does anyone know you were there, at her house, the night she died?”
“Just you,” he said. “I still think about it, you know. I wonder if she drowned on accident or if she killed herself on purpose. Guess we’ll never know for sure.”
“Maybe not.”
He was silent a moment and then added, “I’m sure you think I’m a jerk. And sure, my anger gets the best of me with an ex from time to time, and we argue and fight just like every couple. I’d never hurt another woman though. I swear.”
“You shouldn’t have lied when the police questioned you about Kennedy,” I said.
“I know. It’s just, when I saw her parents on the news, I thought they were better off believing it was an accident.”
“Yeah, well, I need you to come to the station and make a statement.”
He shrugged. “Can I leave out the part where Kennedy said she was going to kill herself? She may have gone a bit nuts in the end, but I choose to remember what she was like in the beginning—a kindhearted girl who was fun to be around. If she did kill herself, what’s the point of putting her parents through the pain of it again?”
There were two distinct sides to Shawn, sides I’d dubbed Shawn 1.0 and Shawn 2.0. Shawn 1.0 was all for show, crude and rude and as self-absorbed as a narcissist incapable of seeing a world beyond their own. Shawn 2.0 was a softer, nicer guy. I wasn’t in the business of exercising compassion for the type of person he’d appeared to be several minutes before, but Shawn 2.0 had stirred up something inside me, making me want to believe his innate goodness existed.
Over the past several months I’d starte
d trusting my gut again, something I hadn’t done for a long time. It had softened the hard shell I’d coated myself in just enough to even back out to a small degree. Unless there was new evidence to suggest Kennedy hadn’t caused her own death, maybe Shawn was right. Maybe I was better off leaving that mystery unsolved.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my utility knife.
“Hold your hands out,” I said.
“Why? I thought we were headed to the police station.”
“Stop talking before I change my mind. Give me your hands.”
He complied, and I freed him from the zip ties.
He looked at his wrists and then at me. “I don’t understand. After what happened before, why would you—”
“I have my reasons.” I leaned in close, holding up a finger in front of his face. “Before, the way you were talking to me … It is inappropriate and pathetic to speak to any woman that way. To put it in terms you’ll understand, we’re vintage 2000 cote de boeuf, not chuck steak. Got it?”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do. Women aren’t pieces of booty; they’re not your babe or your bae and they don’t all want to have sex with you. I don’t know where you learned that it was cool to act the way you did when I first arrived, but I’m giving you one chance to knock it off. One. If you ever come up on my radar again … if I ever hear you’ve laid an unwanted hand on a woman or said something uncouth, your life as you know it will be over, and I’ll be the one who takes it there.”
Chapter 28
Aunt Laura shot me a text, letting me know she was at Barb’s house. Her timing was perfect. I was on my way over to ask if the cabin in my dream existed, a dream I wasn’t confident had any merit in the real world. I blamed my overactive brain and the fact it had no shut-off button, not even when I slept.
As per usual, I found Aunt Laura and Barb sitting on the balcony with Chelsea and Stuart when I arrived. Barb was right. Chelsea was like a mother who smothered her child, or in this case, her sister, never knowing when to take her foot off the gas long enough to allow Barb to breathe.
Barb spied me walking up the driveway and waved me inside. “Door’s unlocked, Georgiana. Come on in.”
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