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  “I’m not sure how long it will take,” Nell replied truthfully. She did consider calling Bernice on the kitchen phone and warning her that ordering pizza for her kids might be the way to go for dinner.

  “Fine. I’ll expect you to be by shortly.” That was the end of their conversation.

  As expected, Josh and Lizzie groaned about spending the evening with their grandmother and away from computers and a TV where they had some say over what was watched. Nell resorted to bribery and offered pepperoni pizza tomorrow for cooperation, or at least not outright rebelliousness, today.

  After dropping her kids off, she headed back to the paper. The day had turned dark, clouds bringing an early sunset.

  Jacko, Carrie, and Dolan were there. There was a tension in the room and Nell knew she was going to have to settle some disputes. She hoped they were merely editorial.

  “Welcome to the Pelican Bay Inquirer,” Dolan greeted her, holding up the story Carrie had written.

  “It’s the facts. We report the facts, remember?” Carrie huffed.

  “I’m going to my office, taking off my jacket, and then I’ll read it,” Nell said as she walked past them, taking the story from Dolan as she went by.

  She shut the door to give herself enough quiet to think, and to obscure from observation what she suspected would likely be liberal use of the red pencil.

  A dank motel room on the outskirts of town was the last place that Marion Nash saw alive, was the first sentence of Carrie’s article. Her nude body, legs splayed open, was discovered early this morning by a shocked young maid.

  Nell settled for brutal efficiency and rewrote the entire story, not even bothering to see if she could save anything that Carrie had written. Any adult would guess that the murder of an attractive young woman in a sleazy hotel had sexual overtones; Nell saw no reason to spell it out to those too young to understand or those who preferred not to know. She was, she reminded herself, certainly capable of angering her mother-in-law, but she also saw no reason to rub the tawdry details of her daughter’s death in Mrs. Nash’s face. Nell also had to admit that she had significant questions about how and why Marion died, and she wasn’t going to simply write the young woman’s murder off as some debased and bizarre sexual killing.

  When Nell opened her office door, Dolan, Jacko, and Carrie glanced up at her, different looks of expectation on their faces.

  “What did you think of my story?” Carrie asked, the fool rushing in.

  “I totally rewrote it,” Nell answered in a calm tone that she hoped would influence Carrie’s response. “The style that you used was inappropriate for this paper. Junior high kids read us for the sports and band sections. I’m not going to have them read about nude bodies with their legs splayed open.”

  “Well, it’s true!” Carrie blustered.

  “Is it? Or is it just what the authorities told you?” Nell answered back. “Did you actually see the nude body with her legs spread?”

  “Well, no, but Doug told me—”

  Nell cut her off. “He wasn’t first on the scene, the sheriff’s department was. Learn to be skeptical of everyone, Carrie, even handsome men.”

  “Why would they mislead us?” Carrie argued.

  “What if they’re not misleading us, but misleading themselves? They see what they want to see. Should we just follow blindly along?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the two of you being friends?” Carrie shot back.

  “Maybe. Maybe I have a very hard time seeing the Marion I knew doing that. Maybe since all her friends and family deny that she was the type of woman who would go to a sleazy motel with a strange man, I want to have a little more proof that the scene the police constructed is true before I put it on the front page.”

  “That won’t help sell papers,” Carrie rejoined.

  “Some things are more important than selling papers,” Nell answered. Then said, “Come on, Dolan, we’ve got a paper to lay out.”

  Carrie took her clear dismissal as a cue to leave the building. The day was far from over, but Nell doubted that Carrie would do much more work.

  Most of the paper had been set up, so there were only the few last minute things they needed to add. Jacko didn’t need to stay, but he did. To Nell it felt like a show of loyalty, a thank you that she hadn’t quickly branded his friend as a sexual wanton. Nell wished she could find a way to ask Jacko a few more questions, even just to find out for sure if he really was telling her all he knew about Marion.

  Dolan, as usual, offered to take it to the printer’s. From that point on it would be more or less out of Nell’s hands, save for writing the checks to pay for the process, looking over invoices, and listening to complaints from readers when the paper didn’t show up where it was supposed to.

  As they parted at their cars, Nell glanced at her watch. Another hour in each other’s company would ensure that her mother-in-law and her kids wouldn’t be eager to share an evening together again. Nell suddenly felt a pang of loss. It hadn’t been this way when Thom was alive. He’d helped bridge the gap between his wife and his mother, knowing them both well enough to cajole them into getting along. But with him gone, their disagreements flared instead of simmered. And then Nell felt an even sharper, rawer pain. Marion was gone. Her death suddenly wasn’t a puzzle to be solved, or a story to write, but the loss of the woman, the friend, the smiling face Nell hoped to see in the coffee shop.

  If it hurts me this much, what the hell must Kate Ryan be feeling? Nell thought.

  That thought told her where to go next. At least my mother-in-law’s extended babysitting will serve some purpose, Nell reflected as she started her car. She swung by the bike shop, but, as expected, it was dark and closed. She headed to the house where she and Thom used to visit Toby Beck, where Kate now lived. It, too, was dark, but there was a light on in one back room. It’s easier to cry in the dark, Nell remembered.

  If I were a true Southern woman, I would be bringing a casserole or ham or something like that, Nell thought as she climbed the steps. She noticed the subtle changes that indicated a new person living in an old house. Toby’s spartan porch had turned into a profusion of plants. There was a car parked in the garage, but not one Nell recognized as usually being by the bike shop. Kate did most of her commuting by bike.

  For a moment, she wondered if she should be here, accidental witness as she was to their intimacy. An even more sobering thought occurred to her … what if Kate had killed Marion? Nell dismissed it quickly, first as just a feeling, but then she remembered that Josh had mentioned Marion being in the bike shop before she was killed. Was it likely or even possible for them to have fallen into that kind of hatred in so short a time? Neither woman seemed to be the type to have public fights, so Nell guessed that if Marion was at Kate’s shop, it was because she wanted to be with Kate and Kate wanted her there.

  Nell rang the doorbell.

  A minute passed; then she heard footsteps from inside. Another minute passed before a muffled voice asked, “Who is it?”

  “Nell. Nell McGraw. Kate, are you okay?”

  Another moment went by before the door slowly opened. Nell looked into a face that could have been hers a few months ago, grief etched in raw lines and dark eyes.

  “I’m okay,” Kate answered. “Just have some passing bug.”

  “May I come in?”

  For an answer, Kate slowly moved out of the doorway, making an entrance for Nell.

  “I’m really okay,” Kate repeated. “Just the flu or something. Tell Josh I’m sorry about the bike class.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Nell said. The classic words.

  Kate didn’t reply. She just looked at her, understanding she wasn’t just talking about the bike class.

  “About Marion,” Nell added, to make it explicit.

  “I didn’t think … she’d told you.” And not told me
she’d told you, was the clear but unspoken follow-up.

  “She didn’t.” Nell explained her early morning walk and seeing the two of them in the park.

  “So, you’ve known … for weeks now?” Kate asked.

  “Yes. But I wasn’t supposed to know, so I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Kate nodded slowly, and then the guarded look came back. “Are you here as a reporter or a friend?”

  The question stung, although Nell admitted she should have expected it. “As a friend. And as someone who went through what you’re going through, just last year.” To the question in Kate’s eyes, she continued, “Thom. You don’t even get the harsh mercy of a doctor’s office and a few months to say goodbye. Just here and … then utterly gone.”

  Kate glanced away from Nell, as if she couldn’t bear to directly stare at “gone.”

  “I am very sorry,” Nell repeated. “I know that … there may not be a lot of people who know about the two of you …”

  “That was Marion’s choice,” Kate said softly. “Until her mother either got better … or passed on.” Then, in an even softer voice, she added, “I can’t imagine that it ever stops cutting like the sharpest of knives. Does it?”

  Does it really stop hurting or does it just turn numb? Nell wondered. “The knife gets dull as time goes by, but it seems to always remain in your heart. Maybe if enough time passes it becomes a scar and not an open wound. I’m not there yet.”

  “How long?” Kate asked. “How long for you?”

  “Thom’s been gone almost six months now. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him in some way.” Nell knew it was the truth, but she didn’t know whether it would help Kate or only make the grief ahead seem like too heavy a burden.

  “And you’re still here,” Kate said in a bare whisper. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow, to think for a moment that she’ll be here and then be slammed again with knowing that she never will be.”

  “Please don’t think that. Don’t think of doing that to yourself.”

  “No, I have neither … the courage nor the cowardice. It just … hurts so damn much.” Kate broke down. She turned from Nell, as if that could hide the racking sobs that shook her body.

  Nell remembered holding it in, being strong for Josh and Lizzie, all through that first sleepless night and the following glaring day. But the second night, when she confronted the empty bed and the stark knowledge that Thom would never be there again, she’d sobbed just as Kate was now.

  And she did what no one had been there to do for her. Nell put her arms around Kate. At first Kate was stiff, but the grief bent her until her head was on Nell’s shoulder, the tears soaking through her sweater.

  Minutes passed before Kate’s shuddering sobs quieted. More minutes passed with her crying softly on Nell’s shoulder.

  “It’s not true, you know,” Kate said as she finally lifted her head.

  “What’s not true?” Nell asked.

  Kate pulled away from her, as if suddenly embarrassed at crying in the arms of a woman she didn’t know very well. “How she died. It can’t … be true.”

  Nell wondered if there was another version of Marion. “It’s shocking to consider, and very hard to think of someone we love having a side we don’t know about,” she said carefully.

  “I know Marion!” Kate said, the loss too raw to be past tense. “I know what she might do and what would be impossible for her to do.”

  “What do you think happened?” Nell questioned softly.

  “I don’t know. It makes no sense. No goddamn sense.” Nell didn’t immediately reply, and Kate took her silence as skepticism. “What if they told you your husband was killed by a male hustler in a sleazy hotel? Would you believe it?”

  “No,” Nell said honestly. “There were ways Thom could surprise me, but his sexuality wasn’t one of them.”

  “The same with Marion,” Kate retorted. “She’d never had sex with men.”

  “Never? Can you be sure?” Nell asked, then regretted voicing her disbelief.

  “No, never. Not even once. She knew by the time she was fifteen that she preferred women.”

  “How did she know …” Nell trailed off, again realizing she was asking a stupid question.

  Kate gave her the answer she deserved. “Did you have to have sex with women to prove you’re straight?”

  “No, of course not. But … there’s so much pressure on everyone to be straight, it’s hard to imagine someone—particularly someone from this small southern town—knowing they were gay in the same way we know we’re straight.”

  “Marion did. She was like that. She was very good at seeing exactly what was there. I don’t know what happened to her, but I know she didn’t go off with some strange man to a cheap hotel room.” Beneath the grief was the rage. Kate’s words carried a burning edge.

  Do I talk to Kate about what Marion showed me, Nell wondered, mention my suspicions and force them into her sorrow? She started to hold back, thinking her questions were too tentative to share with anyone else, but then realized that if Thom had been killed this way, and she were standing where Kate was now, she’d want to know. Anything that could bring back to her the man she loved, not let him die as some unknown stranger, would be a mercy she would reach for.

  “Did Marion mention a children’s book to you?” Nell asked.

  “A book? Why?” Kate’s question told Nell that she did know something.

  “Marion showed it to me. Did you see it?”

  “I saw a book,” Kate said, still not directly answering Nell’s question. Clearly still weighing how far she should trust her.

  “The first boy killed, Rayburn Gautier, returned that book to the library,” Nell stated.

  “I knew it was one of the murdered children,” Kate said softly. “I didn’t know which one.

  “Did she show you the pictures Rayburn scribbled in the book?”

  “She mentioned them—what they were of—but I didn’t look at them. I didn’t feel I needed to.”

  “Do you know who she talked to about that book?”

  “You,” Kate answered bluntly, a tinge of suspicion still lingering.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Yes, she did talk to someone. But I don’t know who.”

  “She didn’t tell you?” Nell asked. She knew that she was pushing, and that too harsh a question could get her shown the door.

  “She didn’t get a chance,” Kate retorted. “We talked about it that evening, but she still was undecided. She left a message at the shop yesterday that she was going to have a talk with someone who could help. We’ve learned to be discreet in the messages we leave each other. But … she never got a chance to tell me who …”

  “You realize the implications of this?” Nell asked.

  “I’m beginning to … but it still doesn’t make sense. Why? Why kill … someone over some crayon drawings?”

  “What if whoever killed Rayburn Gautier and Joey Sayton found out Rayburn left those pictures depicting what was happening? He might be worried enough to kill for it.”

  “But those pictures were little more than stick figures, Marion said. She had no clue to who the adult might be; she said you didn’t either. Who would kill her over something like that?”

  “Why kill children in the brutal fashion he did? Maybe he felt he couldn’t risk there being something in that book.”

  “I keep thinking that none of this makes sense … but someone killed her.” Kate’s voice cracked but didn’t break.

  Nell knew the woman would spend most of the night crying, but for the moment they could focus on justice, not loss. “Who do you think Marion would have talked to?”

  Kate didn’t answer immediately, just thought for a moment. “My guess would be Sheriff Hickson, which sounds bizarre given what a good old boy bigot he is. But Marion had kn
own him for a long time, since she was a kid. She might not like him but at least she knew him.”

  “You know that the pictures were of a man in uniform?” Nell asked.

  “Marion mentioned that, but she said there was nothing she could recognize other than a badge and a gun.”

  “I wish I could take another look at that book,” Nell said. “I’m guessing the killer took it from her.”

  “No, I have it,” Kate said.

  Nell stared at her. “Where is it?”

  “Not here. So if you’re the murderer, it won’t do you any good to kill me now.”

  Just as Nell had wondered if Kate had killed Marion, clearly Kate had wondered about Nell’s motives for coming over, since she’d been one of the few people Marion had told about the book.

  “Don’t worry,” Nell told her quickly. She hoped she sounded reassuring. “The only person I might kill is my teenage daughter after the third time I tell her to do the dishes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said. “This is all too raw, and I don’t know who to trust or even talk to. I’ll show you the book, but I’d prefer not to tell you where it is. Are you going to investigate this?”

  “There are questions I’d like to ask and see where they lead,” Nell answered.

  Kate slowly nodded her head. “I don’t want Marion’s death just written off as what they’re saying. I want her killer caught … but I don’t want to see anyone else hurt.”

  “I agree with all of that. I don’t want to get hurt, and I have limits in how far I’ll go.”

  “I’ll help if you want. If there’s anything you think risky, you can let me do it.”

  “No, I can’t,” Nell said. “I don’t work that way.”

  “God, Nell, please understand.” For the first time, Kate looked directly at her. “Right now nothing matters to me. I’m not going to wake from this nightmare, and it’s making me crazy and stupid. I’d rather take a risk trying to find justice for Marion than be in a stupid bike wreck because I blindly rode through a stop sign.”

  “I’m not looking to do anything dangerous for anyone, either for you or me, okay? If it gets to that, we go to …”