Chapter Six #2
“Who is this older man you’re looking for?”
Her eyes met his—dark and beautiful and filled with such sadness. “I might as well tell you. You’re going to hear about it sooner or later. Did Sharee ever tell you why she came to live with me?”
“I think she said something about having come here to ski.”
“Her parents bought her a season pass, but that wasn’t the reason she was here. She had to leave school in Richmond. A teacher filed a restraining order against her.”
He stared. “Why?”
“She was harassing him. The same way she was harassing you. Only worse. He was married and had little kids. She started calling his phone and showing up at his house, uninvited.”
“Is the teacher the good-looking, dark-haired thirty-year-old?”
“Yes. She told one of her friends the two of them were still in contact and planned to get back together. I doubt that’s true, but Sharee might have believed it was possible.
She might have contacted him again, despite the court order.
It’s possible the man had decided he was never going to get her out of his life. ”
“Unless he came here and killed her? Have you told the sheriff this?”
“I told them about Sharee’s previous trouble with the teacher. But now I’ve learned that Sharee told her friend they were going to get back together.”
“They can find out where this man is now and what he’s been doing, and if he came to SkyCrest.”
“I will tell them. I thought they might pay more attention if I could find anyone else who had seen him or someone who might be him.”
“Now that you’ve told me about him, I’ll keep an eye out for anyone who might be him,” Brian said.
“If he did come here to hurt Sharee, he’s probably long gone,” she said. “And I could be completely wrong. He didn’t threaten her before, other than in court.”
“You told me Sharee was strangled. I’m sorry if that’s too painful for you to talk about.”
“No. I have to talk about it if we’re going to find who did this.”
“Right. I’m sure no expert, but it seems to me that strangling is so up-close, and well, personal. And maybe…impulsive? I mean, it’s not like someone brought a weapon to a meeting with her, then used it.”
“You mean it was a crime of passion?” she asked.
“Not necessarily sexual passion. Maybe anger? She could have had an argument with someone. Maybe one of the other girls was jealous of her. Or she rejected one of the boys and they didn’t take it well?”
“Maybe.” She smoothed her hands down her thighs.
“When I talked to Sharee’s friend Leann, she said something that surprised me.
She told me Sharee didn’t hang out with other kids except at the ski resort.
She went out almost every evening, but apparently it wasn’t with the teens she saw during the day.
I don’t suppose you ever saw her out in the evenings? ”
“Never,” he said. “But I wasn’t looking for her.”
“Of course not.” She stood. “I’d better let you get back to work.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more.”
“Listening helped. I can’t talk to my dad and stepmom about this. They don’t want to hear anything negative about Sharee. And I would never blame her for what happened to her—that isn’t right. But looking at the things she did might point to who did this awful thing to her.”
“Are your parents staying with you?”
“They left this morning to go back to Richmond.” She hugged her arms across her chest. “To tell you the truth, I’m relieved. It was hard, having them stay with me. My stepmother blames me for not keeping a better eye on Sharee. And I guess I blame myself.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “This wasn’t your fault.”
She looked at him, and the intimacy of the moment crowded around them. Alone in the lift shack, her shoulder so slight and fine-boned beneath his hand, her eyes so dark as she met his gaze. His breathing quickened, and he moved his hand away and stepped back.
“Maybe not,” she said. “I could have tried to be stricter with her, but knowing Sharee, she would have ignored me and done what she wanted anyway. That’s pretty much how she behaved her whole life. And mostly, she got away with it with no consequences.”
“It’s a horrible situation,” he said. “I’m so sorry for all of you. Let me know if you think of anything else I can do.”
“Thanks.”
He followed her out of the lift shack. She stepped into her skis once more, then glided away. Brian returned to shoveling. He admired Chloe trying to do something to help in the midst of her own grief. And he appreciated she hadn’t taken the sheriff’s word as final when it came to his own guilt.
His thoughts drifted to the teacher Sharee had fixated on.
The man was close to Brian’s age. Why had Sharee fixated on someone so much older?
Whatever the reason, it shouldn’t have gotten her killed.
Had she found another man in town to focus on—someone he and Chloe hadn’t yet heard about?
Or was Sharee’s death merely a horrible accident, an awful thing that had happened for which there could be no logical explanation?
He flashed back to a moment in his childhood—the funeral of a teenager who had drowned on a summer afternoon at the beach.
He hadn’t known the family, but they had asked his father to conduct the funeral service.
He remembered his father coming home after the service and hugging him so tightly Brian couldn’t breathe.
“It’s days like this that remind me how random life can be,” his father said.
“One minute you’re fine and the next your life will never be the same. ”
Brian hadn’t fully understood what his father had meant then, but he knew now.
For Sharee’s parents and sister, for her friends, and even for him, who hadn’t known her well—their lives were changed because of her death.
Knowing who killed her wouldn’t bring her back, but might bring some small bit of comfort to those who grieved her.
And it could mean the difference between his freedom and going to prison for something he didn’t do.
CHLOE RETURNED TO her apartment after five hours at the ski resort—cold, aching and discouraged.
No one she had talked to had told her anything that linked Sharee to a potential killer.
She told herself she had done everything she could today to help her sister.
She took a shower, made a cup of hot tea and prepared to settle on the sofa to watch something mindless on television.
But she couldn’t relax or focus, and within minutes she made her way down the hall to Sharee’s room.
It seemed even colder and emptier today, the scent of Sharee’s perfume fainter.
She opened the closet. The scents of hair gel and baby powder and the vanilla-and-sandalwood lotion Sharee had favored brought tears to her eyes and a knot to her throat.
She closed her eyes, and it was almost as if Sharee were just out of sight—maybe in the bathroom across the hall, primping.
She opened her eyes again and found only the closet, so crammed with clothes they hung crookedly, the hangers tangled as if battling for space.
Boxes, boots, purses and stuffed plastic bags filled the shelf above the clothing.
For someone who had lived here such a short time, Sharee had staked her claim, filling the room with books and shoes and jewelry, art supplies and electronics and sports equipment—everything that made up a life.
Chloe looked up at the full shelf, then retrieved a step stool from the kitchen and began taking down items. The deputies apparently hadn’t found much of interest in the bins of shoes, paperback books and out-of-season clothing that crowded this shelf.
Chloe pulled down a shoebox of letters and her heart jumped with excitement.
Then she realized the most recent letter dated back six years, from a summer camp Sharee had attended.
She started to put the box back, but something else blocked it from sliding neatly back onto the shelf.
On tiptoe, Chloe felt farther back on the shelf.
She pulled out a heart-shaped box—the kind that usually held Valentine’s Day chocolates, complete with a frill of white lace and an extravagant red satin bow.
Holding the box, Chloe stepped down off the stool and carried her find to the bed.
She slipped the lid off and stared down at half a dozen photographs—the wide white margins and somewhat murky colors in the photos made Chloe think of the old instant-develop photos that had been popular when their parents were young. Polaroids?
She sat on the edge of the bed and took out one of the photos.
She studied the image of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, dressed in shorts and a dark-colored T-shirt.
She had dark blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and smiled down at a toddler beside her.
The toddler—a little girl, judging by her pink overalls and the ribbons in her hair—sat astride a pink pedal toy with big white wheels.
The two were in a grassy area—maybe a yard or a park.
Chloe turned the photo over, hoping for a name or a date, but found nothing. She set the photo aside and picked up another one. Her heart beat harder as she stared into the smiling face of a handsome dark-haired man. Cameron Douglas.