High School Reunion. Mallory Kane
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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.
Laurel clamped her jaw. This wasn’t high school. So why was she letting these small-town divas get to her?
Just as Cade guided Debra into the foyer, she glanced back at Laurel. For a microsecond her eyes narrowed and dropped to the photographs in Laurel’s hand. Then she looked her straight in the eye. Laurel saw something in her gaze—something she couldn’t put her finger on.
She was sure of one thing, though. Debra wasn’t as shocked and faint as she pretended to be.
Cade came back in, shaking his head. “There are still a few folks outside, watching the house like vultures. This is the biggest crime Dusty Springs has seen since old man Rabb shot his son-in-law in the butt.”
He walked over to her. “You were telling me why this is all your fault.”
“We were talking about what the CeeGees did to Wendell on graduation night.”
“You think this is all about a silly high-school clique from ten years ago? What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that they didn’t care who they hurt. They ridiculed Wendell Vance on the most important night of his life. When he walked across that stage to accept the Science Medal—the school’s most prestigious award, nobody applauded. Everybody laughed. It was horrible.” She felt tears prick her eyes. “Then the next morning—”
“It was discovered that he’d hanged himself down by the creek using the old rope swing. What does that have to do with this?”
“It’s in the photo. The hand on Wendell’s shoulder. Look really close.”
He held the photos directly under the lamp. “Okay. I see the hand. Could we stop playing twenty questions?”
“That hand belongs to one of the CeeGees.”
“How do you know?”
“See the ring. Kathy had them made special for herself and the other girls.”
“I still don’t get it. So she’s making a big deal over Wendell. So what?”
She spread her hands. “If a CeeGee was flirting with a guy like Wendell, then it had to be because they weren’t through with him. They were planning something else that night.”
“You really resent them, don’t you?”
“This is not about me. It’s about what happened to Wendell.”
“What? What happened to Wendell? Besides the fact that he was obviously a troubled kid. I don’t get your point. You said what you saw in the photo didn’t add up.”
Laurel blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s right. I can’t shake the feeling that this photo is telling us something important. Think about it. Wendell got the Science Medal. It carried a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship with it. I remember wishing I could win it, but by the beginning of our senior year it was obvious that it was a two-man race—Wendell Vance and Ralph Langston.”
“Ten grand. I didn’t realize that.”
She nodded. “Wendell had been accepted at Vanderbilt. With all that ahead of him, why would he kill himself?”
“Maybe he couldn’t take the humiliation of what they did to him.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Kids kill themselves because they get turned down for a date. It’s sad but true.”
Laurel heard the doubt in his voice. Her frustration grew. She knew her theory was shaky.
Shaky? It was barely more than a niggle of intuition fed by a couple of odd occurrences. Cade was about two seconds away from dismissing her as a conspiracy theorist.
“The more I looked at this photo, the more sure I was that this went beyond a kid hanging himself because somebody pulled a prank on him. I had to come back here and at least see if I could unearth anything about his death.”
Cade pushed his fingers through his hair, and then rubbed the back of his neck. “Wow. As theories go, yours is pretty thin.”
“I know. That’s why I called and asked Misty to pull out her photos. But I screwed up. I should have made sure she was alone before I started talking.” She spread her hands. “She was in the middle of a Reunion Planning Committee meeting. Everybody in the room overheard her talking about Wendell and the graduation night photos. I tried to stop the conversation once I realized she had company, but it was too late.”
Cade looked at his watch. “I don’t get what you’re driving at.”
“You know who’s on the Reunion Planning Committee?”
“Sure. Ann Noble from the Mayor’s office, Ralph Langston, Kathy Adler, Debra Honeycutt and—” he paused for an instant “—and Mary Sue Nelson.”
“Right. Three of the CeeGees. It was one of