A Justified Murder Read online

  “Ha! I met them, remember? They aren’t buying anything.”

  “They—Ow!” She’d stepped on a rock.

  “Where are your shoes?”

  “They were heels. Threw them in the back.”

  Jack turned, picked her up, and carried her the four steps to the porch, then set her down.

  Kate had always been clear that she looked at Jack as the brother she’d never had. But he had very different ideas about the two of them, and often found ways to demonstrate that. “If you think that’s going to impress me, you—” She didn’t finish her thought, because she saw the sheriff’s car peeping out from under the trees, and she heard the low rumble of his voice inside. Her eyes widened.

  “There’s a body inside, but if you faint again I’ll—”

  Kate was already running, barefoot, to the back of the house. The first thing she saw was Aunt Sara, her face pressed to her beloved Fujifilm camera, shooting away. That she had it on silent—or “sneak mode” as Sara called it—made Kate look at the sheriff. He was blocking her full view of a woman sitting in a chair.

  “I don’t think Kate needs to see this,” the sheriff said, but Sara put her camera down long enough to give him a look that meant he was to step aside.

  Kate didn’t faint as she’d done the last time she’d seen a dead body, but she did sway on her feet. Considering what she was looking at, it was a wonder she didn’t hit the floor. There was a bullet hole in the woman’s head, a huge knife in her chest close to her heart, and... Was that at the side of her mouth green?

  Behind Kate, Jack put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  In the distance they could hear what sounded like the sirens of an army of squad cars coming toward them.

  “Get out!” Sheriff Flynn said. “No, Dora, not you. They’ll want to ask you questions. They have to go.”

  Kate was still staring at the body, not sure she was even blinking.

  Jack was trying to look as though he was unaffected by this, but his face had drained of color.

  She took a step closer to him in case either of them went down.

  “Did you get it all?” Sheriff Flynn’s voice was gruff as he spoke to Sara, who’d never stopped snapping away.

  She nodded. Her face was even more bloodless than Jack’s.

  Suddenly, a siren seemed to be just outside the house. Sheriff Flynn opened a back door. “Go!”

  Jack, Sara and Kate scurried out, then went around the side of the house. They were hiding in the shrubs when four Broward County squad cars pulled into the drive. As soon as it was clear, they hurried through the gate. Jack’s Harley was under some flowering shrubs and Sara’s MINI was at the side of the road.

  They didn’t have to say anything to know what to do. Kate and Sara got into the car and Jack drove the bike across Longshore Drive to Sara’s house.

  Inside, they went down the hall past Jack’s room, through the dining room and the kitchen, to the family room. They flopped down on the big sofa, Sara in the middle, and stared into space.

  It was a while before anyone spoke.

  “Do you think Sheriff Flynn just wanted some private photos?” Sara asked.

  “I’m sure that’s it. He knows you’re the best photographer in town,” Jack said.

  “Maybe he plans to share them with the Broward County Sheriff’s Department,” Kate said.

  They looked at one another, knowing that was an absurd idea.

  Sara sighed. “Maybe he knows they won’t share with him, so he asked me to take pictures for him. And that’s all he wants from us. I hope they come out well. In the kitchen I had to cut the exposure down a couple of notches.”

  “You took photos of the whole house?” Kate asked.

  Jack leaned across Sara. “We had at least an hour before you arrived.”

  “I was there ten minutes after you sent your Neanderthal text. I thought maybe Aunt Sara’d had a heart attack.”

  “I would have explained but you—”

  Sara was quite used to the verbal tug-of-war between the two of them. She stood up. “I’ll put the photos on a flash drive, then I’ll go to the sheriff’s office and give them to him.”

  Kate stood up beside her. “Good idea. You can drop me off at my office and Tayla can give me a ride home.”

  Jack looked up at them. “We’re not getting involved in this, right?”

  “Absolutely not!” Sara said. “I took pictures and that’s all.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Janet helped us when we were investigating the murder of the Morrises.” There were tears in Kate’s eyes. “She found names for us.”

  “And she made that chocolate cake,” Jack said. “Best I ever ate.”

  “She helped us so much.” Kate looked at Jack. “Your mother got her for us.”

  Jack got up, pulled tissues from the box on the side table, and handed them to the women. Color was coming back into his face—and the color was the red of anger. “There was no respect in what was done to her.”

  Kate blew her nose. “I can kind of, sort of, understand killing someone but...but that was too horrible to imagine. One way would have done it. Why three?”

  They looked at Sara. “Who hated her that much?”

  “Obviously, a crazy person,” Kate said.

  “Or three,” Jack added.

  “You think more than one person was there?” Kate asked.

  Jack shrugged. “It’s a thought.”

  Sara sat back down on the couch. “I wonder how they’ll investigate.”

  Kate sat down beside her. “They’ll try to find out who hated her.”

  As Jack sat down on the other side of Sara, he gave a snort. “If haters are suspects, then everyone in this town is going to say they loved her.”

  “I agree,” Kate said. “There’ll be two thousand BFFs of Janet Beeson. Bet there’ll be a lot of tears at her funeral. They all loved her so very, very much.”

  Sara spoke up. “When we were planning the memorial for the Morrises, did either of you see or hear anything bad about her? Or even odd?”

  “My mind was focused on what we were doing,” Kate said. The women looked at Jack.

  “All I remember about that day is the itching inside my cast.”

  They stared ahead at the dark TV, silent as they went over every minute of that day. But Janet Beeson wasn’t a person you could remember very well. She was short, dumpy, gray-haired, with unplucked eyebrows, no makeup, and a quiet voice that didn’t carry well. An unassuming woman, someone who faded into the background. The day she was at Sara’s house, she’d silently taken a seat, opened her laptop, and started searching for whatever someone told her to look for.

  The truth was that she was such an unremarkable person that it was embarrassing. They couldn’t recall a thing she’d said. She didn’t make jokes or complain or even ask questions. When everyone was driving Kate crazy about what food was to be served at the memorial for the Morrises, Janet had made no comment. She’d just stayed in the background, always helping, never asking anything of anyone.

  “This really and truly makes no sense,” Sara said. “Why would anyone want to kill her? I know at least five people in this town who deserve worse than what was done to her.”

  “Leave my relatives out of this,” Jack said.

  His semijoke brought them out of their stupor and they again stood up.

  Sara looked at Jack. “Your mother seemed to know Janet well. She might have some idea about why Janet was targeted.”

  “You said you photographed the whole house?” Kate asked Sara.

  “She even videoed it,” Jack added in wonder. Sara liked still photos, not pictures that moved.

  They looked at each other. They were standing in a circle, as though they meant to close out the rest of the world.