Page 76 of High Season
“Wewant you here,” Gabby says.
Josie zips up her toiletries bag with one hard, decisive motion.
“Look, I get that you’re trying to be nice, but you don’t know what it’s like,” she says. “It almost killed us last time. I can’t do that again. I can’t do that to you, or to Calvin, or to—” Her voice catches. “To… to anyone else,” she says.
“People talk in places like this. So what? You’ve got the job at the café, if you want it. You’ve got us. Let them talk.”
There’s something solid in Josie’s throat. Something that she has to swallow down so that Gabby can’t see how badly she wishes that were true.
“I can’t,” she says. “I’m not strong enough to go through all that again. Sorry.”
The suitcase is almost full. Gabby presses down on the small pile of clothes inside as if to make space for something more. Josie isn’t sure what.
“Nic messaged me earlier,” Gabby says. “He said he’s been trying to get hold of you?”
“Oh, yeah?” Josie says, as if it’s news to her. As if she hasn’t seen the messages lighting up her screen.
Hey. Is everything OK?
Are you ignoring me?
I’m sorry if I upset you. If you want to be left alone that’s cool. I just want to make sure you’re alright.
“Look, I know that me and Nic used to date, so maybe this is weird for me to say, but he likes you. I can tell,” Gabby says. “And he’s a good guy. It wouldn’t hurt, would it? Just to let him know you’re OK?”
Josie slides past her to pull the suitcase shut.
“He wouldn’t like me,” she says. “If he knew what being associated with me would do to him. If he knew half the things other people think of me.”
She sets the case upright on the floor, ready to leave.
“In fact,” she says. “I don’t think that he’d want anything to do with me at all.”
NEW VIDEO
@TRUECRIMEFANGIRL_2002
POSTED TODAY AT 13:12
Hey, true crime fans, and thanks for coming back to check out my series on the Tamara Drayton case.
Now this is a video that I have had a lot of requests for. And besties, as you all know, these videos are all about you. I always, always want to give you true crime addicts all the juice, and that’s why today we’re talking about some of the weirder bits of evidence for this case—our true crime Easter eggs, shall we say. Now, if you’re new here, these are fun little clues and crazy coincidences that might have absolutely nothing to do with the case. But if you know me, you know I love a rabbit hole, and is anything ever really a coincidence anyway? So buckle up, my little true crime bunnies, and let’s get digging.
So first of all, let’s talk about Harrison Andreas’s car. Now, people freak out over this, and it is kinda crazy. So, on the night of Evelyn Drayton’s birthday party—the same night that Tamara Drayton gets unalived—Harrison Andreas’s car gets stolen from the garage of the Draytons’ property. I know! Wild!
The car is found abandoned not far from the house, and basically police kind of sniff around this for a little bit. It actually ends up being part of the reason why they take Harrison in for questioning, and why he’s the focus of their investigation for the first few days.
But ultimately, and honestly, kind of unbelievably, they decide that the two events—the car being stolen and crashed, and TamaraDrayton’s death—are unrelated. They fingerprint and forensically test the car, and frankly, it’s a hotbed of DNA. I mean, let’s be honest, we all know that Harrison Andreas was a total creep, so he’d probably screwed half the town in that car. But what we know for sure is that the family’s DNA is found inside, plus at least two unidentified samples and a number of partial fingerprints. The police also report that Tamara’s fingerprints specifically are found on the steering wheel. Which isn’tthatsuspect. Like, Harrison said that Tamara was always sneaking his car keys and driving his car, like, classic teenage rebellion stuff, and she was probably giving people rides all the time, like you do when you’re seventeen.
But yeah, there’s literally hundreds of theories out there on this, and I’m not surprised at all. I mean—how often does your car get stolen, and more to the point, how often does your stepdaughter get found half-dead in your swimming pool? Both kinda freak incidents, but for them both to happen on the same night? Kinda wild, right?
So a lot of people agree this makes Harrison pretty suspect. Like, what if he was trying to escape a crime scene and ran his car off the road? Or what if Tamara took off with his car—which she was known to do—but this time Harrison got pissed? Like,reallypissed? Pissed enough to kill her?
But the police get DNA samples and fingerprints for pretty much everyone at the party, and those unidentified samples don’t match anyone. Again, the police decide that the stolen car is unrelated. But what if it isn’t? That would have to mean that the car was either moved by someone in the family, or someone who wasn’t at the party at all. And if you believe that the stolen car is related to Tamara’s death… well. It definitely gives you a lot to think about.
Now, on to my second Easter egg about this case—and this one is big. Were Tamara and Josie actually closer than everyone says?
So, I could make an entire series on just the relationship between these two girls, because there is so much going on here. But the accepted wisdom is that these girls were not friends. In fact, Tamara kind of disliked Josie. Josie was a bit of an outcast, and despite Josie spending a lot of time at the Drayton family home, the two of themrarely interacted because they were just so different. Like, Josie’s family literally worked for the Draytons, and the Draytons weren’t exactly mixing with the help, you know?
