Chapter 13
CHAPTER
Lucy
The Past
Early August—Fifteen Years Ago
CHUCK YOUNG HANDED me a glass of iced tea. “Take your time, Lucinda. There’s no rush. I want you to get your statement right.” My father’s best friend patted my shoulder.
We were sitting in the sun-room at the back of the house. My mother’s plants crawled up the glass, making me feel like I was in the middle of the jungle.
My dad told me Chuck needed my statement about the whereabouts of Rhett and me the night of the … murder? Unexplained death? I wasn’t sure what to call it, but Dad said the police believed it was a homicide. And I knew they were looking at Rhett—and me, by association.
I took a drink and put the glass down, tracing the mosaic pattern of the table top with the tip of my finger. “There’s not much to tell, Uncle Chuck.”
Chuck cleared his throat and clicked a button on the recorder he was holding. “Lucinda, you need to call me Chief Young for the record.” He grimaced as if embarrassed that he had to say it at all. He rewound the recorder then looked at me for confirmation that I was ready.
“I’m sorry, of course, Chief Young.” I glanced back at my father, who was sitting against the wall. He had insisted on being present for the interview. He nodded with encouragement.
Things had been strained with my father since Jenn’s body had been found.
He was a lot more cagey. A lot more secretive.
He was on the phone constantly or whispering to Mom in dark corners.
When I came into a room, they’d instantly stop talking.
My father was normally unflappable. It was clear this pillar of the community who sat on his bench handing out judgments with firm resolve was floundering.
There was a distance between us now that had never been there before.
He wouldn’t quite look me in the eye, and his demeanor toward me had become frosty.
My father was my rock. I thought, at one time, Rhett was as well.
That he made up the other bricks in my foundation.
I thought he was reliable. That he would look out for me.
It’s why I had chosen him out of all the boys I could have been with.
It’s why I had gone against my parents’ wishes and stood by him.
But he had let me down.
And now I was trapped by my own bad decision. To admit to my parents that I had been wrong about Rhett now would make me even more of a disappointment in their eyes. And I had been striving my whole life to make them proud of me.
I stared at my father’s oldest friend, and he looked back at me sheepishly. We both knew this was only a formality, and he seemed in a hurry to scratch it off his list.
I was pretty sure if I just said, “Blah, blah, blah” to every question, he wouldn’t even bat an eye.
Chuck pressed the record button again. “It’s August third, and I am speaking with Lucinda Herbaugh.
Her father, the Honorable Clifford Herbaugh, is in attendance.
” He took a drink of his own iced tea before giving me his full attention.
“I need you, for the record, to tell me where you were on the night of July twelfth.”
I held up my hands in mock surrender. “It wasn’t me, Officer,” I retorted. My joke fell flat, even to me.
“This isn’t a laughing matter, Lucinda,” my father barked behind me, and I felt the weight of his disapproval like an anchor around my ankles.
Chief Young smiled wryly. “Please, Lucinda, I need you, for the record, to say where you were on that night.”
I couldn’t give him my truth, so I gave him my lies.
I told Chuck that Rhett and I had been together. That I hadn’t seen Jenn that night. That Rhett would corroborate everything I said.
The dishonesty poured out so easily, it should have worried me.
And while Rhett struggled with everything that had happened, I embraced the deception with a fanatical tenacity because I had to. I had twisted the story around in my head so much that I could almost believe the things I was saying were true.
Or maybe I just wished they were.
A few minutes later, Chuck turned off the recorder and got to his feet. “That’s all I need. Thank you, Lucinda.” He tucked the device into his pocket. “And I can’t wait for the wedding. Tanya may have gone a little crazy with that registry of yours.” He laughed, and I laughed with him.
My dad joined him at the door and clasped the chief’s shoulder. “Let me walk you out, Chuck. We still need to finalize our plans for the cabin. Mabel hired cleaners to get it ready for our annual fishing trip.”
The chief of police and my father, the circuit court judge, chatted together about normal, everyday things and definitely not the murder I had just been questioned about.
I checked my phone and was relieved to see a message from Rhett. He had finished meeting with his academic adviser and was heading back to town. I was surprised that after everything, he still wanted to change his major. Given I knew what—or more importantly who—was the catalyst for that.
“I owe it to myself to do this. I need to do it for Jenn,” he had told me when I brought it up last week.
He said her name with the reverence of a priest in church.
I had asked him not to say it. I thought he’d at least try to act contrite.
But I knew that the days of him protecting my feelings were over.
We had entered a war and neither of us, for our own reasons, were able to call a ceasefire.
I hated that I still loved him. Even worse was that I couldn’t be sure he had ever really loved me.
How could I have been so wrong about him? It was starting to look like the elaborate wedding I had planned may have to be scrapped in place of a smaller, more intimate ceremony to get it done quickly.
It was ironic how in death, Jenn pushed us together as surely as she had pulled apart while she was alive.
Dad mentioned that as spouses, we couldn’t be compelled to testify against each other. And that might be important depending on how long, and how serious, this investigation became—and how guilty Rhett and I looked.
We had spun lies that required us to remain a united front. And I wouldn’t let his betrayal pull me down with him. So, no, I couldn’t walk away from him, or that night, even if I wanted to.
I headed down the hall toward the stairs and stopped as I heard my father talking to the chief in a harsh whisper. I strained to hear what he was saying.
“This has to go away, Chuck.”
The chief of police cast a careful look around, and I ducked back behind the corner. “I’m doing what I can, Cliff, but you know I have to follow protocol. I think Lucinda’s statement should be enough to strike her and Rhett’s name off the list, though.”
“If it didn’t make my daughter look bad, I’d tell you to hold that little shit’s feet to the fire,” my dad seethed.
I wasn’t surprised to hear him speak about Rhett that way. After everything, Rhett would have to work damn hard to redeem himself in my father’s eyes. If he ever could.
“Well, it’s not only Rhett and Lucinda that I need to steer the investigation away from,” Chuck said knowingly.
I heard my father clear his throat. “Chuck, I should probably tell you—”
“Don’t say anything, Clifford. Just don’t.
Keep whatever you have to say to yourself.
That particular eyewitness that heard you threatening Jennifer Moore the day before her death has been told, in no uncertain terms, that what she heard was wrong.
The respectable Judge Herbaugh would never lower himself to intimidating a young girl all because she was sleeping with his son-in-law. ”
“He’s not my son-in-law yet. And he wouldn’t be at all if I had anything to say about it,” Dad growled.
I could hear Chuck laugh. “Well, we both know you have nothing to say about it.”
“Unfortunately.” Dad sighed.
“But I’m saying this, as your friend, it’s a damn good thing I spoke to Cora Stanley at the guesthouse before anyone else in the department did.
Because it didn’t sound good. How could you be so stupid, Cliff?
Going there and shouting at her in earshot of that busybody?
That woman would share gossip with the devil himself. ” Chuck sounded annoyed with my father.
“How was I to know Cora had her hearing aids on for once? And yes, I acknowledge it wasn’t my finest hour, but after what I’d been hearing about Rhett parading that damn woman in front of half the town, I needed to do something.
Lucinda loves him for some reason, and I didn’t want her heart broken,” he said darkly, and I shivered at his words.
“That’s enough, Cliff. I don’t need to hear anything else.
I don’t have to tell you to speak of this to no one.
You and Mabel need to keep yourselves far away from all this until I can get it to die down.
And it will die down. She was an-out-of-towner.
A nobody. She had no connections to anyone here as far as I can tell, and it could have easily been a hit and run, looking at the injuries.
” I heard my dad make a noise of agreement.
“That’s what will make the most sense to everyone,” Uncle Chuck continued, “it’s bad timing that James retired from the medical examiner’s office last year.
Hopefully this new guy will see things the same way we do.
I don’t need an unsolved homicide dangling over my head in an election year.
” I heard the chief’s phone ring. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll call you later.”
I hurried back to the sun-room and away from my father’s secrets that I wished like hell I hadn’t overheard.
“Oh my God, Bailey, stop taking my stuff!” I yelled, stomping into my sister’s room and scooping the pile of hair clips from her desk.
“Those are mine,” she protested without much conviction.
I glared at her. “What is with you? Why do you have to take my stuff all the time?” I snatched a shirt from the back of her chair that still had the tags on it. “Did you even buy this, or did you steal this too? You’re such a weirdo!”