High School Reunion (3 page)

“Which means either she let someone in or they picked the lock.”

“That lock’s at least sixty years old. It could probably be opened with a credit card.”

“So you walked into a dark house that you knew shouldn’t be unlocked, not knowing whether you’d find a burglar, a murderer or a rapist?”

“Or my best friend from high school.” Laurel kept her expression neutral, but it was an effort. “I’m a trained agent with field and crime-scene experience. I know how to enter a suspicious dwelling.”

His face darkened. “Without backup?”

Laurel shrugged. She knew he was right to question her, but she wasn’t wrong. Not totally. She let it drop. “So what do you think about her position?”

“Someone conked her from behind.”

“While she was sitting on the couch?”

“Nope. She’d have slumped over.”

Images of what must have happened played out in Laurel’s head. “Picture this.” She turned to look at the foyer door. “I come in the door. Either it’s unlocked—doubtful—or I somehow unlock it without Misty hearing me.” She stepped toward the couch and r
aised her hand. “I’m holding the baseball bat. Did I bring it in or pick it up here?”

Cade still had his arms crossed. He nodded toward the couch. “I’m thinking the bat was Misty’s. It was probably near the front door—for protection.”

“What did you do with it?”

“I gave it to Shelton—Officer Phillips—to check for prints.”

“Okay, I’m holding the bat. I raise my arm and swing—” She demonstrated.

“What are you doing?”

The scene in her head freeze-framed. She looked up at him. “Trying to get a picture of what happened.”

“You do realize you’re talking as if you’re the attacker?”

“Oh. A lot of the time I work alone, looking at forensic evidence from photographs or video. I talk to myself.”

His brows drew down. “So you walk in the perp’s shoes. I reckon I see the crime unfolding like a movie—it’s how my dad always did it. I guess everybody’s got their own way of doing things.” He scrutinized her. “So, Gillespie, if you’re acting out what the attacker did, you need to use your other hand. The blow was to the left side of Misty’s head.”

She felt her cheeks heat up. “You’re right. The attacker had to be left-handed.” She looked at her hands. “Wouldn’t you think at least one perp would use the wrong hand, just to throw off the police?”

Cade’s mouth turned up at the corner and Laurel’s pulse jumped at the hint of his killer smile.

He shrugged. “Plus you’ve still got Misty sitting on the couch.”

“Okay. Let’s start over.” She started to turn back toward the door.

“Hold it.” Cade stopped her with a hand on her arm. A large, blunt-fingered, warm hand.

Crime scene, she thought. Crime scene, not high school.

“Are you planning to act out the entire thing?”

“I like to when I can.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Okay, go ahead.”

She gave him a sheepish smile. “Why did Misty get up? Did she hear something and turn around? Here. You be the attacker and I’ll be Misty.”

Cade sent her a look. “Might as well. We don’t have much else to go on. Shelton lifted prints off the dining table, but Misty had a reunion committee meeting here a couple of days ago, so there are going to be dozens of prints.”

“It was three days ago. You stand here, behind the couch.” She moved to go around to the front but Cade caught her arm again.

“Aren’t you going to give me the blunt object?”

“Ha ha. Don’t make fun of me unless you have a better idea.”

He shook his head.

“Here’s something else to think about. Look at the couch.”

“Yeah, I know. Blood spatter across the cushions. Proves she wasn’t sitting.”

“Have you taken samples?”

“Got a few. Don’t forget that this isn’t D.C. It’s Dusty Springs, Mississippi. We’re not equipped to handle a lot of lab work, and I can guarantee you that the state lab won’t consider a minor breaking and entering, even with injuries, top priority.”

Laurel didn’t comment. She knew she could use the FBI lab in D.C., but if she offered, Cade would want to know why she’d use their resources for such a relatively insignificant crime. And she wasn’
t ready to explain the reason she’d violated her promise to herself never to set foot in Dusty Springs again. She knew the suspicion that had drawn her back here was flimsy at best. She needed to gain Cade’s confidence before she told him her theory.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sitting on the couch, watching TV. I hear something. I get up and turn around. It would explain the blow to the left side of her head—”

Cade swung the imaginary bat. “But not her position on the floor.”

“Use your left hand.” Air stirred against her cheek as he feigned a blow to the left side of her head. “I crumple into the exact position where she was found.”

“So she had to be facing the TV.”

“But if she stood because she heard the intruder, why
didn’t
she turn around?”

“Her cell phone.” Cade said it at the same time as Laurel spotted it on top of the TV.

“She got up to answer her cell phone.” Her stomach sank to the floor. “It was me. I called her from the airport at that very moment.”

“Your call may have saved her life.”

Laurel frowned at him.

“If she’d been sitting on the couch, the attacker would have had a much better angle, and the blow would have struck much harder. It could have killed her.”

Laurel looked at the cell phone. “Have you got gloves?”

“Nope. You’ll have to use a tissue.”

“Misty assured me she’d be at home. She always watches
Secret Lives
at six. At first I thought she didn’t answer because she was engrossed in the show.” She pulled a couple of tissues from a box on the end table and used them to pick up Misty’s phone. She accessed the incoming calls.

“I called her at 6:25 when the plane
landed. Then at 6:58, and 7:20.” She looked at the muted TV. The logo in the corner of the screen identified the station that carried
Secret Lives.
“If she was watching the show, then she was attacked after it started but before it ended. So she was attacked between 6:00 and 6:30.”

As soon as she’d seen Misty’s floor littered with photos and paper, she’d known what the attacker was after. But now she had to face her own responsibility for Misty’s attack. Her mouth tasted like cotton. She couldn’t delay any longer. No matter what Cade thought of her shaky theory, she had to come clean. She needed his help.

“So you think my phone call kept her from being hurt even
worse.
I suppose that’s some comfort, considering—” She stopped. This was as hard as she’d known it would be.

His intense blue eyes held hers, lasering holes in her confidence. “Considering what?”

She didn’t know if he was reacting to the guilt that must be written all over her face or the sudden tension that tightened like springs through her entire body, but his demeanor changed.

He uncrossed his arms and casually flexed his fingers near the pocket of his sweats. At the same time he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. He was poised and ready for anything. The transformation was an awesome and frightening sight.

“Do you see what’s all over the floor? Photos. Scrapbooks. Journals.” She gestured toward the hardwood floor. “I know why Misty was attacked.”

Cade didn’t speak, nor did he move his hand.

“All this—” this time she included the bloodstain on the floor and the couch in her sweeping gesture “—is my fault.”

Chapter Two

Cade Dupree didn’t know what it was about Laurel Gillespie, but he was having a devil of a time taking his eyes off her. If it hadn’t been for one glaring incident back in high school, he wouldn’t even have remembered her. She’d been a year behind him and two years behind his brother. His memory of her was of braces and glasses and wildly curly red hair.

The reason he remembered that much was because of the part his brother James had played in embarrassing her in front of the whole school.

She’d changed. Now her dark red hair was pulled back into a loose braid, but it still wasn’t totally tamed. Wisps and waves floated around her face. Unobscured by braces and glasses, her delicate features were lovely.

Yep. She’d changed a
lot.

“Cade, I want to get to the hospital and check on Misty. She’s going to be scared to death when she realizes where she is.”

Cade took off his baseball cap, folded the brim and stuck it into his back pocket. “Five seconds ago I’d have said go ahead, but you just inserted yourself into the m
iddle of this. You want to explain why this is your fault?” He leaned against the door facing and crossed his arms.

To his surprise, her face turned pink.

“I got an invitation to our ten-year high school reunion, but I hated high school. I never intended to come back to town. But Misty begged me to come. I told her I’d think about it.”

Cade blew out an impatient breath.

“This is relevant,
Chief Dupree.
I was going to wait a day or two and call her back with an excuse. In the meantime, I pulled out snapshots from high school—mostly of graduation night. I wanted to review faces and names.” She turned back toward him and reached into her jacket pocket.

Instinctively, he tensed. It was a ridiculous reaction, totally at odds with her words and body language.

“I found something.”

He flexed his fingers as she pulled out a small stack of snapshots. She held them out.

He took them and shuffled through them. “Yeah? What?”

“Something that would never happen in a million years.”

He frowned at her but she just leveled a gaze at him. He stepped over to a small desk and turned on a lamp. He scrutinized the photos under the bright light. They were mostly snapshots of Laurel and Misty.

The two girls wore white dresses and held their caps and gowns. Both were grinning from ear to ear. Cade studied the awkward high-school Laurel. She wore a dress that hung on her like a sack. Her delicate bone structure and pretty features were not quite obscured by those ugly glasses and braces.

If he or any other guy had bothered to really look at her, they’d have seen what he saw now. Little skinny carrottop Laurel had been destined to be a knockout.

“Put the photos side by side.”

“You could just tell me, you know.” He laid them out like a game of solitaire, then leaned over to study them more closely.

“Back then, I didn’t notice anything odd in the photos, but looking at them now, with seven years of experience in criminology under my belt, what I see doesn’t add up.”

“Who are these people?” He pointed. “I recognize Misty and you. Nice braces.”

She sniffed.

“Who’s that standing behind you two?”

She stepped closer and Cade got a whiff of the scent of gardenias floating around her.

“That’s Wendell Vance.”

“Vance? Where do I know that name?”

“He died that night.”

A vague memory surfaced. “He hanged himself.”

Her nod stirred the air near his cheek. He picked up one of the photos and looked at it more closely under the light.

“Notice anything odd?”

“No. I barely remember him.”

“Look at his face.”

“Okay. His face is red. Embarrassed?”

“You don’t remember what happened that night? What the CeeGees did?”

He shook his head. He’d been at Ole Miss when Laurel’s class graduated. “The CeeGees?”

“The Cool Girls. You know, Debra Evans, Kathy Hodges, Mary Sue Nelson and Sheryl Posey. Their mission in life was to prey on shy girls and geeky boys.”

The girls who’d played the prank on her.

“They taped a sign to his back during graduation that said
Wendell Vance has a pencil in his pants.
”

“Ouch.” He suppressed a grin—almost.

“It’s not funny.” Her hazel eyes sparked.

“Yeah. It is.”

She propped her fists on her hips. “They humiliated him in front of his parents, his teachers, his classmates.”

He nodded. “I remember Dad talking about it. He thought that was the reason Wendell killed himself.”

“So did everybody. But look here.” Laurel tapped the snapshot with a trimmed manicured nail.

He squinted. “A girl’s hand on his shoulder. So?”

“Not just any girl’s hand. That’s—”

“Cade!”

Laurel jumped. Cade looked toward the door.
Oh, damn.
It was Debra, Fred Evans’s daughter.

“Dad told me something happened to Misty. What is it? Can I do anything to help?” Her eyes darted around the room and came to rest on the blood in front of the couch.

“Oh, my God!” She turned white as a sheet, then scurried into the room, a plump hand covering her mouth. “I think I may throw up.”

Laurel eyed her. Interesting that she had rushed
toward
the bloodstain as she threatened to throw up. But then Debra had always been a bit of a drama queen. Based on how she was acting, Laurel would wager that the former CeeGee knew exactly what she would find in Misty’s living room. The only thing that wasn’t fake was her pallor.

In two long strides, Cade reached Debra’s side. “Deb, your dad’s a police officer. You know better than to cross crime-scene tape.”

“But—why would anyone hurt Misty? Was it a burglary?” She turned and spotted Laurel. “Who—?”

Laurel saw the blank look on Debra’s
face. She’d expected it—she looked a lot different without braces and thick glasses. Still, it sent that ridiculous knee-jerk reaction through her—disappointment that someone who’d known her didn’t recognize her. She thought she’d left those high-school insecurities far behind.

“I’m Laurel Gillespie, Debra.”

“Laurel? Oh, Laurel
Gillespie.
So you’re not married yet? I guess you’re here for the reunion?”

Laurel nodded.

Debra turned to Cade. “Why does she get to be here?”

Cade stepped closer. “Because she’s an FBI special agent.”

Debra’s face drained of color again. “FBI? Cade, oh, my God. Did you call in the FBI?”

Cade put his hand on the small of Debra’s back and guided her toward the door. She smiled up at him and put her arm around his waist.