Page 17 of Moonshine Kiss
Dang it. Walked right into that one.
“Scarlett, my job—”
“Your loyalties are torn right down the middle. I get it. I really do. You’re a law enforcement officer. And you’re my best friend. I don’t know what I would’ve done in your place, Cass. I really don’t. But I think some of the reasoning behind you keeping us out of it is because you’re hell-bent on doing everything yourself.”
“I am not hell-bent on doing everything myself!”
“You’ve taken independence to a whole new level,” Scarlett pointed out.
At that moment I heard the scrape of metal on concrete. Scarlett and I got up to look out the back window where Bowie Fucking Bodine was shovelingmywalk.
“I was getting to it,” I grumbled. Jesus, a girl couldn’t catch a few hours of sleep after a late-night call and then shovel her own walk? It wasn’t like anyone but me would be using the back door anyway.
“May it please the court? Exhibit A of Cassidy’s overinflated independence.”
“We need to stop watching all those lawyering shows.” Scarlett and I had binge-watched our way throughBoston Legaland now the better part ofSuits. She wanted to get a better handle on what Devlin did for a living. I just liked the bromances.
“And you and Bowie need to work this out.”
9
Bowie
Jayme swirled into the Brunch Club in head-to-toe city black. Her spiky heels weren’t snow storm appropriate. But they worked just fine for ass-kicking. Silence descended over our table in the private room. I glanced around at my family.
Scarlett leaned into her boyfriend Devlin’s side. Devlin, fancy lawyer that he was, had gone and gotten us Jayme when Scarlett found Callie Kendall’s sweater in our dad’s house last spring. Jameson and Leah Mae had their heads together, sharing the same menu like stupid in love new couples tended to do.
Jonah, our half-brother and the newest official addition to our family, kicked back in his chair and waited for Jayme to drop whatever bomb she had stored in her big-ass pocket book. Gibson stared moodily into his coffee.
The server, a tall, pale senior from my high school, approached. He didn’t make eye contact with me, which was fine with me. The whole town probably already knew we were meeting with our lawyer.
“Coffee me,” Jayme ordered succinctly. She ran a practice in Charleston and also paid us enough visits in Bootleg Springs to keep our asses out of trouble. I wondered if she was charging us double time for bringing her in on a Saturday. “Keep it coming.” She sent him scurrying off.
“You’re acting like I’m one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Jayme complained. “This isn’t terrible news.”
“It’s Callie’s blood,” Gibson snapped.
“Callie’s. Not your father’s. And not yours or yours or yours,” she said, pointing around the table at each of the male members of the Bodine clan. “You think the investigators aren’t considering all possibilities? You all lived in Bootleg. You all had access to that house and the victim.”
She let that sink in as the kid returned with a huge mug of steaming coffee. The rest of us shared a long look.
“Thanks,” Jayme said, sticking her face in the mug.
We ordered somberly, and when the server left, Scarlett leaned in. “You’re saying my brothers are suspects?”
“I’m saying they would have been. You too, Scarlett, if anyone thought you could murder someone in cold blood and keep quiet about it for years.” Everyone but Gibson cracked a smile at that. If Scarlett killed someone, it would be in a fit of rage in front of the whole damn town, not in cold calculation.
“Yes. It’s Callie’s blood on the sweater. But there wasn’t a speck of Bodine DNA found. Your dad could have found that sweater in the woods. Hell, the real killer could be a neighbor trying to frame Jonah Sr.”
“That’s unlikely,” I said dryly. It would have been real nice if our father hadn’t up and died so he could answer the questions we all had about just how he came to be in possession of the bloody sweater Callie Kendall went missing in all those years ago. And those pesky other questions about where the hell he’d disappeared to immediately after cops and reporters had turned Bootleg Springs upside down in a frantic search for the missing teenager.
“Unlikely, but if it comes down to it, if the investigators get a hard-on for one of you, I can argue that.”
“Reasonable doubt,” Devlin said.
“Exactly.”
“So what do we do now? The news is gonna break and soon, I’m sure,” I spoke up. “Maybe the cops aren’t looking at us right now, but that doesn’t mean the entire state won’t be pointing fingers in our direction.”
