Chapter 16 #2
Jesse’s defensive antagonism abruptly shattered. There was no patronizing stiffness about this woman. Her round face and dark eyes held curiosity, but she didn’t act like Jesse was something that needed to be scraped off her Jimmy Choos.
“Sorry about showing up without an appointment.”
Kayla waved aside the apology. “Carol said that you have something of interest for me?”
“Yes.” Reaching into her purse, Jesse pulled out the picture and handed it to her. “This is how I managed to track you down.”
Kayla tilted the picture to catch the light from the chandelier, which was a smaller version of the one in the main room.
“Oh my God. You weren’t lying. This really is a blast from the past.”
Relief raced through Jesse, making her knees oddly weak. This was her. The girl from the photo. She’d found her.
It felt like a miracle.
Jesse cleared her throat, struggling to keep her tone casual. She didn’t want to frighten the woman.
“Do you recognize the girl standing next to you?”
“Of course.” Kayla glanced up, as if surprised by the question.
“It’s Sierra Lowe. I even remember this day.
” She waved the picture. “It was our first week at Saint Mary’s, and neither of us had attended one of the fancy preschools that the other girls went to, so we didn’t know anyone.
We were only five, but our classmates quickly let us know we were going to be the designated outcasts. We clung together out of desperation.”
Sierra Lowe. Jesse tucked away the name, even as satisfaction surged through her. She was inching closer to the truth. She felt it in her very soul.
“Did the two of you become friends?” she asked.
“Best friends.” Kayla smoothed a finger over the picture, as if savoring her childhood memories. “We did everything together. We sat next to each other during lunch and played together at recess. She even spent the night a few times. Until … you know …”
Her words trailed away, and Jesse frowned. “Until what?”
“The accident.”
Jesse licked her dry lips, taking a moment to organize her thoughts. She’d rushed to question this woman with no firm plan of action. Now she had to scramble for a reasonable excuse to be prying into Sierra’s past.
“Sierra was a part of our family, but we lost track of her when she moved to St. Louis.” She nodded toward the picture in Kayla’s hand. “I came here to see if I could discover what happened.”
“I’m not sure I can add anything that wasn’t in the papers.”
There was something in the younger woman’s tone that warned that she was reluctant to discuss the mysterious accident.
“I wouldn’t ask, but my grandmother’s growing older and she’s determined to write down the family history. It would mean a lot to her to hear the story from someone who knew Sierra.”
Kayla slowly nodded. “I suppose that’s understandable. My grandma is in her reminiscing stage too. Last week she insisted we all come over and help her sort through her boxes of pictures to put them in her scrapbook. It took us hours.”
Jesse ignored the tiny pang of envy. Most people had no idea what it was like to be alone in the world. Not just independent, or estranged from their family. But really and truly alone.
She managed to keep her encouraging smile intact. “Anything you can remember about the accident would be awesome.”
“Okay.” Tapping the picture against her chin, Kayla leaned against the edge of the desk.
“Well, it was our second year at Saint Mary’s.
I remember we’d just come back from our winter break, and when I arrived at school I was taken into an office.
At first I was afraid I’d done something wrong.
I wasn’t as sneaky as Sierra, and more than once we’d pulled a prank and I was the one who ended up in trouble.
” She hesitated, the smile fading from her lips.
“It wasn’t until a nun came in to tell me that Sierra, along with her mother and stepfather, had died in a house fire the night before that I knew she was dead.
I remember crying. And then my mother came to pick me up. ”
Jesse coughed to cover her gasp of surprise. The girl in the picture was killed in a house fire? Then it couldn’t be Tegan. Not unless she’d come back from the dead.
So why had the picture been hidden in Victoria’s car, next to where Tegan would have been sitting? And why did she look like Tegan?
No, wait. It was too much of a coincidence.
That had to be Tegan. And there had to be some explanation for how she’d escaped, along with Victoria.
“Did you know Sierra’s parents?” she pressed.
“I met her mother when she came to school events, but she didn’t really mingle with the students,” Kayla said. “Or even with the other mothers, or the staff. And I never went to her house.”
“Any certain reason?”
“Sierra’s stepfather, Liam Tanner.”
“What about him?”
Kayla looked confused. “You don’t know his reputation?”
“I’m afraid I’ve never heard the name.”
“He was pretty notorious in St. Louis.”
Jesse narrowed her eyes. “Notorious? I’m assuming you don’t mean famous. Like a singer or an actor?”
Kayla shook her head. “It’s terrible to speak ill of the dead, but it was common knowledge around here that his dozen or so car dealerships were used to transport drugs and launder money.
” She waved a hand toward the window that offered a view of the nearby town.
“He had a huge mansion on the lake with a couple of pools and a tennis court, but none of the mothers would let their kids go near the place.”
“He was a criminal?” It was a question, but Jesse already knew the answer.
If Victoria really was married to Liam Tanner, then he was just another villain in her collection.
She’d started with a petty drug dealer, then moved up to a midlevel slumlord, before landing a mansion-owning drug trafficker.
How she ended up with Mac Hudson remained a mystery. But everything else fit a pattern.
“I don’t think he was ever arrested,” Kayla conceded. “He had the sort of money and connections to avoid that. But several of his employees ended up in jail later.”
Jesse didn’t have much experience with traffickers, but her job had taken her to some shady bars where the drug trade was openly discussed.
“Is it possible the house fire wasn’t an accident?” she asked, not sure why it would matter.
“It was never proven, but everyone suspected it was arson,” Kayla confirmed Jesse’s suspicion.
“The cartel?”
“Actually, I heard rumors that the cops suspected Liam started the fire himself.”
“A murder-suicide?”
“More of a pretend murder-suicide.”
“I don’t understand.” Jesse felt as if her entire body was vibrating with anticipation. She was getting closer. “Was there a question about who died in the fire?”
“No, not that. Liam’s body was found near the door, like he was trying to get out of the house.”
“And? That seems like a reasonable reaction to a fire.”
“Yeah, but the bodies of Sierra and her mother were never found. Which meant they had to be in the basement when the house exploded.”
“Wait.” Grim satisfaction blasted through her.
There it was. No bodies. She hadn’t been crazy to cling to her belief that it was Tegan in the picture.
She didn’t know how Victoria had pulled it off, but there was no doubt she’d escaped and taken her daughter with her. “There was a fire and an explosion?”
Kayla shuddered. “Once the flames reached the gas lines … boom. It was a mess. They finally came in with a bulldozer and demolished the entire estate. I think it belongs to some developer now, who built a new golf course there.”
“So the theory was that Liam set the fire and somehow got stuck in the house?”
“Most people assumed that he killed his wife and stepdaughter and hid them in the basement while he poured gasoline around the house and set it on fire.” She shrugged. “No one knows exactly what happened after that, but he was overcome with the smoke and heat before he could get out.”
Or he was knocked unconscious and placed there while the true arsonist managed to slip away, Jesse silently acknowledged. But surely the cops would have considered that theory because there were no bodies found?
“Why did the police suspect Liam Tanner killed his wife and stepdaughter?”
“He’d taken out million-dollar life insurance policies on both of them just weeks before the fire,” Kayla said. “Plus, there was money missing from his auto business. Like he was planning to leave town once he got the insurance.”
“Interesting,” Jesse murmured.
It wouldn’t have been hard for Victoria to have taken out the life insurance policies to frame her dead husband. And even if she couldn’t get the money from the policies, she would have the embezzled cash to fund her disappearing act.
“It was a huge story around here for years,” Kayla murmured, glancing at the picture. “I just missed my friend.”
There was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice, and Jesse was once again struck by the notion that the two girls were genuine friends. How odd.
Before she could respond, the snotty Carol stepped into the office. “Ms. Burlington is here.”
It sounded like a royal announcement, and Kayla shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I can’t keep my client waiting.”
“No worries.” Jesse reached out and gently pulled the picture from the younger woman’s tight grasp. “Thank you so much for answering my questions.”
“I hoped I helped.”
“More than you can imagine.”
Jesse crossed the parking lot and climbed into her truck, her thoughts churning.
Kayla had given her more information than she expected.
Not only had she confirmed the fact that Victoria was lying about her name, about her dearly departed husband who she’d claimed was a surgeon along with being Tegan’s father, but she’d given Jesse even more reason to believe the woman was out there somewhere, conning yet another man. Perhaps even plotting his murder.