Chapter 62
It was after 9:00 P.M., and after thirty minutes of walking Lola around on the golf course, Traci was still urging her dog to take care of business when her cell phone rang.
“What are you doing?” Whelan asked.
“Me? Trying to keep Lola from eating fireflies.”
“How did the meeting with your lawyer friend go today?”
She stopped by a clump of azaleas while Lola relieved herself. “Best way to describe it? Earth-shattering. Remember Shannon? My former best friend and the other lifeguard who got fired after Hudson drowned?”
“Sure. The nurse. Nice woman, although she didn’t seem so keen on you, or your husband’s family.”
“That’s because Fred Eddings raped her. When she was only nineteen. He lured Shannon to his house under the pretense of giving her a better job, liquored her up with a martini…”
“My God,” Whelan breathed.
“She was too ashamed to tell me what had happened when she found out she was pregnant. No wonder she flipped her shit when Livvy told her she was coming to work at the Saint. It was her worst nightmare.”
“And now, her kid owns a piece of the action, right?”
“It looks that way,” Traci said. “Shannon was dreading giving Olivia the news. I can’t imagine how she’ll feel, knowing she was the product of a rape.”
“Must have been a pretty emotional reunion,” Whelan said.
“It was. Up until that summer, we’d been best friends for our whole lives, since the first day of first grade. Twenty-one years, I’ve wondered what I’d done to make her hate me. All these years she was keeping that secret bottled up inside. Not even her mother knew the truth. Until today, neither of us realized how much we missed and needed each other.”
“Women’s friendships,” Whelan said, sounding baffled. “I don’t get it. I couldn’t tell you the name of anyone I went to high school with, let alone elementary school. I’ve got pals, yeah, marine buddies, guys I served with over the years. My former business partner? We haven’t really talked since we sold the company. Every once in a while, he’ll text me something, usually something about sports, but that’s it.”
“You mean to tell me you and your friends don’t get mani-pedis together or meet up on Sunday mornings for a Target run?” Traci teased.
“Nope. But I could see myself doing a Target run with you, if the occasion arose.”
“That’s very sweet,” Traci said. “By the way, Shannon spotted you leaving my house this morning and assumed we’d been… up to something. She thinks you have excellent boyfriend potential.”
“I knew I liked her,” Whelan said, chuckling. “Does she know about Ric? And his involvement in Hudson’s death?”
“No. Today’s news was enough of a shock—for both of us. I think it can wait.”
“Maybe, she’d like, I don’t know? Is closure a cliché?”
“It’s a cliché because it’s true,” Traci said. “I know it gave me some peace, after all these years, knowing it wasn’t our fault.”
“I’m glad. Hey, the other reason I called is to fill you in on my visit to the sheriff’s office after I left your place.”
“He still won’t let you see the investigative reports?” she guessed.
“Actually, I lucked out. The sheriff was out of town. But his chief deputy, guy’s name is Shapley, happened to be in the office today and I might have bamboozled him a little. He let me read the file on your niece’s death. He wouldn’t let me copy it or photograph the pages, or even take notes. He sat me down in a conference room and watched while I read.”
“Did you learn anything new?”
“A couple things. They were finally able to track down the members of that steel drum band that played your Beach Bash.”
“Cedric and the Sunsetters?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“They’ve played the Beach Bash for the last few years.”
“That would have been good information for the sheriff’s office to have before now, especially since the witness statements from the afterparty say they saw Cedric talking to Parrish shortly before she disappeared. Who hired those guys?”
Traci had to think for a minute. “Charlie Burroughs, our general manager, originally hired them, but I’m not sure about this year.”
“But Burroughs would have had the band’s contact info?”
“Probably.”
“He told the sheriff he didn’t know much about the band because Parrish hired them.”
“Did the cops ever get in touch with anyone from the band?”
“They’re back in Jamaica. The reports I read said repeated efforts to contact them failed.”
“Sounds like maybe Cedric has something to hide. Or maybe he just doesn’t like talking to cops,” Traci said. “What else was of interest in that file?”
“Those two dudes who lived in your dorm with Traci.”
“KJ and Garrett?”
“Yeah. Did you send them out to look for Parrish the morning she went missing?”
“My memory is that they volunteered to go, because I was so upset.”
“While they were out there, they took it upon themselves to ‘clean up’ the area, hauling all the trash out, effectively destroying any evidence that might have been at the crime scene.”
“You don’t think they did that deliberately, do you?” Traci asked. “They were Parrish’s friends. They were really upset after her body was found.”
“Not sure what to think,” Whelan said. “Let me ask you something else. How long has your general manager been at the Saint?”
“Charlie? He’s been there for as long as I remember. He was the one who hired me as a lifeguard when I was nineteen. He’s an institution.”
“What do you know about his personal life?”
“Not much,” Traci admitted. “He’s divorced. No kids. He’s kind of a workaholic.”
“Would it surprise you to know that he filed for bankruptcy in 2018?”
“Are you sure you have the right Charlie Burroughs?”
“Very sure. He apparently got himself overextended trying to flip houses on the mainland for the rental market. The bank foreclosed on three of them. He managed to hang on to a house in Bonaventure. It’s worth about six hundred grand.”
“I had no idea he was having money problems,” Traci said. “He’s a pretty private guy. Quiet, steady. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him after Hoke died.”
“Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who surprise you,” Whelan said.
Lola was doing what Traci thought of as the dance of the doggy doody, slowly rotating her compact body in tight circles, preparatory to her late-night potty stop.
“Come on, baby, drop it and let’s go home,” she urged.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Whoops. I was talking to Lola, not you,” she said, laughing. “We’ve been walking for thirty minutes now, and I’m officially exhausted.”
“When can I see you again?” Whelan asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure you want to, or not sure you can?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she said reluctantly. “More like, should I?”
“No pressure, but you definitely should,” he said.
“Let me sleep on it,” she said. “Please?”
They’d arrived back at her house. Traci opened the kitchen door and Lola scampered inside. She walked around the house, locking doors and switching off lights as she went. She paused in the living room, seeing it with a new perspective.
Shannon had been right. The ornate Victorian furniture, overly elaborate window treatments, none of it held any real meaning for Traci. She wouldn’t have chosen any of these Eddings family heirlooms for herself.
As a young newlywed, she’d been so eager to prove her worthiness of belonging to her husband’s family that she hadn’t stopped to consider the price of that acceptance. And Hoke, the younger son, had perhaps been an unwitting accomplice to his family’s coolness toward her. Maybe because, deep down, he knew he’d always play second fiddle to Ric, his father’s favorite.
Soon, she promised herself, she would jettison all this emotional and physical baggage. She would live the way she wanted. It was time. Past time.