Page 126 of Moonshine Kiss
With a hard tug, it came free.
It was some kind of ticket, faded and hard to read.
“Are you done yet?” Bowie’s voice had gone flat.
“Yeah. Yep,” I said, sliding back between the seats into the back. I followed him out, stuffing the ticket into my back pocket.
If there was any evidence of Callie in this car, it was either microscopic or she hadn’t ridden in it as a passenger. My eyes skated to the trunk.
It’s not like there would be blood-soaked tarps in there. But if Jonah had killed Callie, there was a chance that there was something back there. And it would be better to have forensics go over it rather than having me poke around.
Bowie was standing there in silence, watching me and holding a plastic grocery bag.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Some crap from the back seat. Family stuff.”
I looked back at the trunk for a moment. If there was anything inside, Connelly and his forensics team could find it. I had put Bowie through enough already.
I glanced at the rear fender, the broken taillight and stepped in to get a closer look. It was definitely scraped. There were streaks of blue paint mixed in with the dirty white and the rust.
“What are you looking at?”
“Did your mom back into anything that you remember or get hit?”
“I don’t remember, Cass.” I was losing him. I’d found the end of his infinite patience. “Why?”
“This.” I indicated the damage. I pulled out my phone and scrolled to the pictures I’d taken of the accident report. I found one of the drivers side of the car on the wrecker and zoomed in. It was grainy, but the car was much less rusty and the gouge was there.
“Maybe it happened during the accident.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But this looks like paint to me.” I needed to look at the original photos again. But it looked as though some blue paint had transferred onto the Pontiac.
“Why does it matter?” Bowie asked.
“I need to run a reconstruction on the accident,” I said mostly to myself.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to tell tales out of school, without doing some research. But this accident might not have been an accident.”
“Suicides usually aren’t accidents,” Bowie said bitterly.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “I mean it’s possible that someone hit your mom’s car.”
59
Cassidy
Idrove us home and was surprised when Bowie followed me into my kitchen. I was fixing to apologize when he sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. Eddie skittered out of the room like it was on fire, but George wandered his chunky ass over to Bowie and wove his way in and out of his feet.
“Not everyone wants answers, Cass. Do you think I want to know for sure that my father murdered a sweet, beautiful teenage girl? Do you think that will help me sleep at night? To know that I have that in my blood?” He reached down and stroked a hand over the cat.
I pushed the start button on the coffee maker. “This limbo can’t be good for you. Even if it turns out to be true, at least you’ll know.” He really believed there was a possibility that his father did it. I was surprised by that. I didn’t believe it. Hell, I knew every piece of evidence we dug up would lead the blame away from Jonah.
“How would that help?” Bowie asked. “How would that not ruin everything for every single one of us? Do you want to marry the son of a man who committed cold-blooded murder? Are you okay with having your name linked to mine and my father’s for forever? Do you want to have babies with me and then spend the next twenty years watching them to see if they display any homicidal tendencies?”
“Bowie, it doesn’t have to be like that.” I was scrambling for the thread. But it was lost to me. I felt like my father trying to carry on a conversation. Tongue-tied and misspeaking. I’d forgotten that not everyone needed answers like I did. I’d forgotten that for some answers made things much, much worse. “You’re not your father any more than I am mine.”
