Page 119 of Bourbon Bliss
“Excuse me?” the woman said.
“You’re not Callie.”
“Of course I am.” Her brow creased and she leaned away. “What are you talking about?”
June pulled a sheet of paper out of her bag. “I took a sample of your hair and had it tested against Callie Kendall’s DNA. It was not a match.”
“What? When?”
June gestured toward me. “I took a hair sample while you were talking to him in the restaurant that day.”
Her mouth dropped open and she smoothed the back of her hair down with one hand. “What the hell?”
My muscles tensed, the instinct to protect June sending a surge of adrenaline through my system. This woman was getting angry—no surprise there. I’d toss June over my shoulder and carry her out of here before I let this get ugly.
The woman touched the paper with one finger, drawing it closer, her eyes scanning the text. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“My sense of humor is not well-developed enough to pull off a prank of this magnitude,” June said.
She looked at the paper for a long moment, but she no longer seemed to be reading. Probably deciding what to do.
“What do you want?” she asked, finally.
“I want to know the truth,” June said. “Who are you, and why are you impersonating a missing girl?”
Her posture changed. She’d gone from wary and alert to defensive. Back and shoulders stiff, jaw tight.
“My real name is Abbie Gilbert.”
“Why are you pretending to be Callie?”
Abbie let out a breath and her shoulders slumped. “It’s a long story.”
June didn’t reply. Just kept watching her.
“Callie’s story was in the news and people kept joking about me being her. I’m a year younger, but obviously I look just like her. It got me curious. So I started reading everything I could find about her case. It was fascinating. That whole town kept her memory alive for so long.”
I put my arm over the back of June’s chair. This Abbie person seemed to have relaxed, but I still felt like a coiled spring, ready to strike if she turned out to be the dangerous kind of crazy.
“Anyway, I’m not hurting anyone,” Abbie said. “If anything, I’m doing something good. I gave the Kendalls their daughter back.”
“But you’re not their daughter,” June said. “Pretending to be her means no one is looking for the real Callie anymore. They closed the investigation.”
Abbie rolled her eyes. “Callie Kendall is dead.”
“You seem overly confident, stating that as a fact,” June said.
“It is a fact.”
“Do you have proof?”
“No, I don’t have proof,” Abbie said. “No one does. I know this case inside and out. Even without a body it was being treated like a homicide investigation. Everything points to her being dead.”
“And you think that gives you the right to impersonate her? To lie to her family? To the public?”
“Why does it matter?”
I almost cut in withbecause it’s illegal and insane. But I kept my mouth shut. This was June’s conversation to have. I was just here as backup.
