Page 94 of Summers at the Saint
“I don’t see how I can. It was so long ago. And don’t forget, I’ve got a very real, very painful mystery of my own to get to right now. I won’t rest until we find out who killed Parrish.”
“That’s fair,” Whelan said. “Maybe we can help each other.”
“You’re going to play detective? In your spare time, between working full-time on a landscape crew, your side hustle driving for a rideshare, and trying to find out what happened to your little brother more than two decades ago?”
Whelan finished his coffee and reached for the check, which the server had tucked under the coffeepot.
“I’m actually pretty good at this stuff, you know. People open up to me. I guess they don’t see me as threatening. Let me take a shot. Please?”
Traci snatched the check away from him. “I’ve got this. What else do you need from me?”
He took a five-dollar bill from his pocket and placed it under his coffee mug. “I’ll get the tip. And what I could use from you are the names of those teenaged girls who saw that red car in the summer of ’02.”
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“Tonight when I get off work, I’ll look up my notes for the names of the girls Mike Sullivan mentioned. And then maybe you could check the hotel registry from that time.”
She rolled her eyes. “That won’t be any help now. Their parents would have been the ones the rooms were registered to.”
“I’ll call Mike Sullivan. Maybe he can come up with some last names for me. In the meantime, do you think Shannon might remember the girls, or that red car?”
“I’m the last person she’d talk to about that summer,” Traci reminded him.
“I’ll get back to her myself.”
“Good luck with that.”
Whelan checked his phone. “It’s almost eight. I better get going. Can you drop me at my car?”
She turned onto Beachview and slowed when she came to the block where the surf shop was located.
Whelan pointed to the Tahoe. “That’s me.”
“I remember.”
“See if you can get me copies of the sheriff’s report on Parrish’s death. That would be a huge help. I want to see what the witnesses who talked to him said.”
“Doubtful he’d give that to me,” Traci said.
“Try this. Pretend, just for a day, that you’re Ric, or Fred Senior, when you ask him. Use your power for good, instead of evil.”
CHAPTER 46
Lola was waiting at the door when Traci got back to her cottage, giving her the kind of reproachful, guilt-inducing glare Traci hadn’t experienced since sneaking home after curfew as a sixteen-year-old.
The kitchen had a dog door that led into the backyard, but access wasn’t the issue with Lola. Her absence was.
“I’m sorry,” she told the dachshund, gathering her wriggling body into her arms and whispering into her floppy ears. “Very, very, very sorry. Did you think I’d abandoned you?”
She filled the bowl with dry dog food and then, as a peace offering, added a small scoop of canned wet food, the doggie equivalent of putting sprinkles on a cupcake. After Lola was done she leapt into her mistress’s arms and covered her face in kisses.
In the bathroom, Traci stepped out of the clothes she’d been wearing for the past twenty-four hours straight and stepped into the shower.
While she lathered her hair she considered how quickly Lola, who depended on her for everything, had forgiven her for leaving her home alone for an entire day.
And then she thought of Fred, whom she hadn’t visited in over a week.
Ric refused to tell her father-in-law that Parrish was dead, but as she’d pointed out, the old man was still mentally sharp. And hewatched television most of his waking hours. Had he seen the news coverage of his granddaughter’s murder?
