Page 25 of Peak Suspicion
“Everyone is on guard now,” Carter said. “We have to hope the cops can stop him. Obviously, the state is also involved now.”
They continued walking to her car. She looked around the almost empty parking lot. “How did you get here?” she asked.
“I walked.” Ran, really, but she didn’t need to know that.
“I can give you a ride to wherever you need to be.”
“That would be great. I should probably get back to the office.” Though he didn’t look forward to the lecture his mother would likely give him for running out on a tour.
As Mira pulled into the parking space nearest the entrance to Alpine Jeep Rental, Bethany emerged. She hurried to meet Carter as he exited Mira’s rental car. “Where did you disappear to?” she asked. “Dalton had to take your ten o’clock tour and Mom is furious. Oh, hello, Mira.” She looked from Carter to Mira and back again, clearly curious.
Carter leaned back into the car to address Mira. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m better now,” she said. “Thanks. For everything.” She shifted the car into reverse. “I’ll see you Monday night.”
“Monday night?” Had they made a date he’d forgotten?
“At class.”
Right. Class. She smiled and he felt the full force of the look. She made him feel more like a real hero than any praise anyone else could have heaped on him.
Chapter Eight
Mira explained her absence from school during her off-period Monday by saying she had an appointment for a checkup. No one wanted to hear details of her visit to her gynecologist, but news that she had a meeting with the sheriff would cause talk for days. She had called the sheriff’s department Saturday morning to arrange to give the accusing notes to him, and learned he was away until Monday. She had decided to wait. She wasn’t comfortable handing the notes over to just anyone, but trusted the sheriff to keep them confidential.
She was surprised that no one had commented on her closed-door session with Sheriff Walker and the CBI agent Friday afternoon, but it seems that in the rush to collect their belongings and leave school after the bomb threat, no one had noticed. Principal Martin had apparently said nothing, either. For that, she was grateful.
“I brought some letters the sheriff wanted to see,” she told the woman at the reception desk at the sheriff’s department.
“Mira Veronica?” The woman sized up Mira from behind red-framed bifocals. “Sheriff Walker has been expecting you.”
The woman rose and ushered Mira through a locked door and down a short hallway to a door marked Sheriff Walker and knocked. “Come in,” Travis Walker said.
The woman opened the door. “Ms. Veronica is here.” She glanced at Mira with an unreadable expression—not exactly hostile, but not friendly, either—then left.
“Come in, Mira,” Travis said. He looked up from behind an almost spotless desk, empty except for a laptop, a neat stack of file folders and a photograph of a smiling woman with twin toddlers.
“I have the letters you wanted to see,” she said, as she perched on the edge of the chair across from him.
He took the sheets she offered and spread them on his desk in front of him. “Do they look like others people have received?” she asked.
“They appear similar.” His gaze met hers, his expression stern. “After speaking with you Friday, I did some research on David Ketchum’s case.”
“Is there any new information?” she asked. “Do they know who killed him?”
“No. When we spoke to you Friday, you failed to mention you were connected with George Suarez.”
For a split second, she couldn’t breathe. Her heart beat as hard as if she had run a race, but she couldn’t move. “I… I’m not connected with George,” she stammered. “He…he’s a terrible person.”
“You were living with him when David Ketchum disappeared.”
“Yes. But that was before…before I knew what he was really like.” She stared at her hands, knotted in her lap, unable to look the sheriff in the eye anymore. Shame—the emotion she always associated with George—swamped her, along with all the old questions to which there were no answers. How could she have been so blind? How could she have not seen what he was really like?
“When was the last time you spoke to Mr. Suarez?” Travis asked.
“The day he was arrested.” She would never forget watching the police officers handcuff her lover and lead him away, whileanother group of officers carted away their computers and a safe, which she later learned were full of horrible recordings of child pornography. Thinking about it sickened her. “I didn’t know he was doing those awful things,” she protested. “I never would have been with him if I had. I did everything I could to help the police with their investigation.” She had surrendered her own phone and computer and allowed investigators to comb through all her personal belongings. The experience had been a nightmare she might not have survived if not for the support of family and friends who rallied around and believed her innocence. Her ignorance.
“After his arrest, Suarez was questioned about David Ketchum’s murder. But he had an alibi.”
