Page 81 of Whiskey Chase
“Um. Is it too small?” Bowie asked. “Maybe we could order a new one?”
“It’s a nice color for you,” Jameson offered.
“Christ!” I stormed over to my kitchen and dug through drawers until I found what I was looking for. “Here.”
I threw the old Missing poster on top of the sweater. Jameson picked it up and frowned. I saw the instant he got the connection. The tightening of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes. He handed the poster to Bowie and stared at me.
“Where did it come from?” he asked me flatly.
“Holy fucking shit, Scar. You didn’t kill her, did you?” Bowie asked, dumbfounded.
I don’t know why I found it funny. Or maybe I didn’t find it funny at all and was just flat out hysterical. But I collapsed to the floor laughing so hard I cried.
“You automatically assume I had something to do with it?” Hadn’t I done the same toward my father?
“It was a knee-jerk reaction,” Bowie said defensively, staring at Callie’s sweater like it was an angry boar.
“I found it in Mama’s trunk upstairs,” I told them. “I recognized it right away because of the button. Remember how every girl in Bootleg swapped out their top button for a year afterwards? He’d packed a bunch of stuff in there. Family photos, some of Mama’s clothes, and this was in the very bottom.”
Jameson picked up the bag and examined the sweater. He dropped it, his face pale. “It’s stained.”
“What?” I asked, snatching it back from him. I held it up to the light, and there was a little pattern of stains. “It looks like drops or splatter.”
“Blood,” Jameson said quietly.
“He didn’t do it,” I said, shaking my head. Someone needed to say the words out loud. I braced for their argument, held my breath.
Bowie, still staring at the offending sweater, remained silent. “Devlin know about this?” he finally asked.
I shook my head. “He knows I found the sweater, and he knows it was hers, but he doesn’t know she disappeared wearing it.”
“He’s a smart guy, Scar. How long does he have to be in Bootleg before he knows every detail of the Kendall girl’s disappearance?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. “What do we do? I mean, I know we have to turn it over to the cops, but…”
The “but” hung in the air.
“But what?” Bowie asked. “We have to take this to Sheriff Tucker.”
Jameson swiped a hand over his forehead. “I don’t know man. What if it was an accident?”
“What kind of accident?” Bowie demanded.
“What if he was driving drunk that night. She left the lake, and it was dark, right?”
My stomach dropped out. My brothers believed there was a possibility that our father had done this.
“And then what?” I demanded, my voice a near shriek. “He dumped her body in the lake? He buried her in our backyard? He wouldn’t have done that. You can’t believe that.”
“What’s the other option, Scar?” Jameson demanded. “Why else would he have her blood-stained sweater hidden away?”
“We have to take this to the sheriff,” Bowie said again.
“And say what? Our dad might be a murderer? You know what that will do,” Jameson argued.
“We’ll all be guilty by gossip,” I said to myself.
“We can’t not take this to the cops. There’s blood on it. This might be the answer that that poor girl’s parents have been looking for,” Bowie said.
