On Shadow Beach (22 page)

“All that seems like stuff you could work out,” Kara interjected. “If you still like him?”

Charlotte ran her finger around the edge of her wineglass, her expression pensive. “I do like him, but I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should find out,” Lauren suggested. “Don’t write him off without giving him a chance.”

“Is that what you’re going to do, Lauren?” Charlotte asked, lifting her gaze to Lauren. “Give your old high school boyfriend a second chance?”

“Damn, I walked right into that one,” she replied. “No comment.”

“No way—you don’t get off that easily,” Charlotte said.

“What are you thinking, Lauren?” Kara asked, her gaze curious and a bit concerned. “Shane is my brother, and I love him. I don’t want either of you to get hurt.”

“I know you slept with Shane in high school,” Charlotte cut in. “There’s no way you didn’t. He was way too hot to resist. Those dark, moody eyes, that ripped body.”

“I might have,” Lauren admitted, thinking it was easier to confess to sex thirteen years ago than sex last night.

Kara winced and put her hands over her ears. “Please, I don’t want to hear any details. That’s my brother you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to give you any,” Lauren said, feeling a blush warm her cheeks.

“Well, you can give them to me on the way home,” Charlotte said with a laugh. Then she turned back to Kara. “So that leaves you, Kara. Were we all bad girls back in high school? Or just Lauren and me?”

Kara hesitated, then gave a sheepish smile.
“Colin and I did not have sex in high school. We made out a lot, but we waited until we were twenty-one.”

“Really,” Charlotte murmured.

“Interesting,” Lauren said.

“It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad we held off, because I think we might have ruined it if we’d had sex too early.”

“Maybe,” Charlotte said thoughtfully.

“Maybe,” Lauren echoed.

Kara looked from one to the other and laughed. “You two look like you just got called into the principal’s office for bad behavior. Believe me, you had a lot more fun in high school than I did. And who knows what might happen now? Your men are still single and available and right here in town.”

Silence fell between them for a moment. “I slept with Shane last night,” Lauren said abruptly, not sure why she’d felt the need to confess, but there it was. “I shouldn’t have, and I don’t know why I did. It can’t go anywhere.” She glanced at Charlotte, who seemed to be having trouble keeping a straight face. “What?”

“Lauren, you need to stop pretending that Shane wasn’t important to you.”

“He was important, but we were kids back then.”

“You weren’t kids last night,” Charlotte reminded her.

“I felt like one,” she confessed. “Young, reckless, and wild, like the girl who got on the back of Shane’s motorcycle all those years ago and threw
caution to the wind. But it’s over. It was just one last fling for old times’ sake. I’m not going to sleep with him again.”

“Because it was horrible?” Charlotte asked.

Lauren made a face at her. “No, because it was incredible, and I can’t let myself fall for him again. We’ve both moved on.” She looked at Kara, who was giving her a thoughtful look. “Sorry, you probably didn’t want to hear all this.”

“Just—be careful, Lauren. I don’t want either one of you to get hurt. Shane acts tough, and it’s hard to get a handle on what he’s thinking or feeling, but he cared about you in high school and I think he still does.”

“Does he know that last night was just a fling?” Charlotte asked.

“I told him,” Lauren said, drinking the last of her wine. “But I’m not sure he believed me.”

“Why not?” Charlotte persisted.

“Because I have a hard time keeping my hands off of him.”

“Then it sounds like I’d better walk you all the way home just to make sure you don’t take any side trips,” Charlotte said.

“Good idea,” Lauren said, as Charlotte helped Kara to her feet.

They rinsed out their wineglasses, turned off the lights, and left the store, locking the doors behind them. The streets were quiet, just the distant sound of music coming from one of the bars. Angel’s Bay had grown a lot since she’d left, but it still had the
feel of a small town. They left Kara at her car and then continued on to Lauren’s house.

“What about you, Charlie?” Lauren asked as they turned down her street. “Who’s going to walk you home?”

“I’ll be fine, it’s only three blocks. And I’m in no danger of wandering down to the marina and stopping by a certain sexy someone’s boat.”

Lauren frowned. “I do have
some
self-control.”

“Then go in the house and stay there,” Charlotte said with a grin. “It was fun tonight. I’m glad you came. It was like old times.”

“Yeah, it was.” She had girlfriends in San Francisco, but not women who’d known her as a child. There was a certain honesty she shared with Charlotte, and even Kara, that she didn’t share with anyone else. That was her fault. She’d shut her current friends out of her past life. She’d wanted to keep the two separate, and that had come with a price.

“Looks like your dad is home,” Charlotte said. “The lights are on.”

“That could mean anything, but I hope he’s tucked safely in bed.”

“Do you want me to wait, in case you have to hunt him down?”

“No, I’m sure it’s fine.” She paused as her gaze caught on a stack of bricks under a side window—a window that was now open, the edge of a curtain blowing through the space. “That’s odd,” she muttered.

“What?” Charlotte asked, following her across
the yard.

“It looks like someone stacked these bricks so they could get up to the window.”

“You think someone broke into your house?”

“I don’t know.” She remembered the sound of the dog barking earlier, the crash in the side yard. “Maybe the bricks have always been there. I just don’t remember the window being open when I left. My dad must have opened it. Or he forgot his key and climbed in through the window.” She drew in a breath and let it out. “Thanks for walking me home.”

“Not so fast. Let’s go inside and make sure everything is okay.”

They walked around to the porch, where Lauren slipped her key into the lock and opened the door. The open window was in the adjacent dining room, and she walked over to close it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“Abby? Is that you?” Her father came out of his bedroom wearing his yellow rain slicker and boots. “It’s time to go fishing. It’s storming out, better get your gear on.”

Lauren exchanged a quick look with Charlotte. “It’s not raining, Dad.”

“Who’s your friend?” Ned asked, squinting at Charlotte. “Is she coming with us?”

“No, she’s going home,” Lauren said. “It’s too late to go fishing.”

“Okay, then. I better change.” He ambled back toward his bedroom.

Charlotte looked at her sympathetically. “It must be difficult to have him call you Abby.”

Lauren shrugged. “It doesn’t shock me so much anymore. I think she’s always on his mind. Since I’ve come back she’s on my mind, too. We need closure. We need answers.” She paused. “I was thinking about what Abby was involved with in the weeks before she died, and I remembered that she was always taking photos for the yearbook. She had to cover every event.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Maybe there’s some clue in those photos.”

“Did you look in the yearbook?”

“I’m more interested in the pictures that weren’t published. Do you think the school keeps them?”

“Mrs. Weinstein would know. She’s been running the yearbook staff for the last twenty years, and she still works at the high school.”

Lauren nodded. “Then I know what I’m doing tomorrow.”

“If you go to the school around three, I’ll be finishing up my biology presentation in Coach Sorensen’s classroom.”

“Really?” Lauren said. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

Charlotte smiled, but there was a worried look in her eye. “Be careful, Lauren.”

“Careful of what?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t have a good feeling about any of this. If Abby’s killer is still in Angel’s Bay, you could be putting yourself in danger.”

“Or I could finally find out who he is, and make him pay.”

Lauren felt sixteen again when she pulled open the high school’s front door just before three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. She avoided the office and headed down the familiar halls. Through the open doors she could hear the murmur of lecturing teachers and chattering students. Classes would be out in just a few minutes, and she could only imagine how eager the kids must be to finish school for the day. She’d certainly always looked forward to that last bell.

Her old locker was near the girls’ bathroom on the first floor. As she passed by it, she smiled, thinking of freshman year when she’d wrestled with the lock, anxiety running through her veins. She’d battled shyness and insecurity for most of high school; she’d never had her sister’s self-confidence. She’d started coming into her own at the end of junior year, which was also when she’d met Shane.

He’d been a year older, and while she’d heard about him and seen him around for years, they’d
never spoken until a month before he graduated. They’d met outside of a party. He’d been on his motorcycle. She’d been looking for excitement, and boy, had she found it, in one smoking-hot teenager with a bad attitude. Her mother had been horrified when she’d taken up with Shane. Her friends, who were mostly quiet, studious types, had been confused. But she’d been completely swept away, and her feet hadn’t touched the ground until almost a year later, when everything fell apart.

She moved on down the hall, checking out the trophy case and the main bulletin board, which was now a flat-screen monitor with an electronically generated calendar. Climbing the stairs to the second floor, she paused when she saw Chief Silveira waiting outside Tim Sorensen’s classroom. Her heart began to beat a little faster. What was he doing here?

Joe looked just as surprised to see her. “Ms. Jamison,” he said quietly. “What brings you here?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.” Over his shoulder, she could see into the classroom. Charlotte stood at the front, while Tim Sorensen sat at his desk. Now in his late thirties, he was actually more attractive than she’d remembered, with light brown hair and friendly brown eyes. He looked like an approachable guy, certainly not like a murderer.

“What’s your interest in Mr. Sorensen?” the chief persisted.

She stepped back from the door. “Probably the same as yours. Mr. Devlin shared his thoughts with me about a possible relationship between my sister
and her volleyball coach.”

“What do you think about that?”

“I can’t imagine that Abby would have gotten romantically involved with her teacher.” Lauren wished she could infuse more certainty into her voice, but with every passing day she was beginning to question how well she’d known her little sister.

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“I thought I should at least talk to him, but I’m not exactly sure what to ask, ” she admitted.

“Why don’t you let me take care of it?” Joe suggested.

She was relieved that the chief was following up on it, although the fact that he was here also gave more credence to Mark Devlin’s suspicions. “Do you have any more information about him and my sister than Mr. Devlin’s speculation?”

“No, I don’t. But I’m following up with everyone who was known to be in Abby’s life those last few weeks. Since Mr. Sorensen was her coach and her teacher, he’s on the list.”

“The team traveled to some away tournaments that year, and other parents always went along. It was never just the coach and the girls, but he was probably more involved with the girls than an ordinary teacher would have been. Not that I think that makes him guilty—I still don’t believe my sister would have gotten involved with a married man when she was only fifteen.” She paused. “Will you keep me up to date on your investigation? I’d rather
you speak to me and not to my father. He drifts in and out of reality, and I’m still worried that any new information about Abby, especially any facts that damage her reputation, might really set him back.”

“I understand.”

“Thanks.” She headed down the hallway to talk to Mrs. Weinstein, to see if she could get her hands on the yearbook photos.

Joe was glad to see Lauren Jamison leave. It was bad enough to have Mark Devlin shooting his mouth off all over town; he didn’t need the victim’s sister in the middle of things. If Abby’s killer had gotten away with murder for thirteen years, anyone who got in the way of his freedom now might end up dead, too.

He checked his watch—two minutes until the bell rang. Charlotte was taking questions. She looked beautiful in her short floral skirt and light blue sweater, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her easy smile made his gut clench. He’d bet that the teenage boys in the room were enjoying her as much as her presentation about sex. He liked the way she interacted with the kids. She wasn’t only a good speaker, she was a great listener.

Charlotte had the whole package: beauty, brains, and warm-hearted charm. No wonder the new minister was all over her. Yet she seemed to be resisting rekindling her old high school flame, and Joe wondered
why. Not that it was any of his business. He had his own relationship to deal with.

He’d thought having Rachel here would mean a lot more time together, but she was often with Mark, allegedly checking out filming locations, or looking into real estate opportunities. She had hung her license with one of the local realty firms, but so far she hadn’t listed any properties or made any sales. When he’d asked about the potential for work, she’d given him an airy wave and said she was exploring her opportunities—whatever the hell that meant. He’d thought he’d known his wife inside and out, but every day she seemed to become more of a mystery.

The bell rang, interrupting his thoughts, and he stepped back as kids poured out of the room, eager to be done with school. He was about to step inside when Charlotte came through the door, her attention so focused on her cell phone that she stumbled right into him.