Page 74 of Say Yes to the Death

If Claire had asked her, Charlie would have caught the very next plane to West Haven to help her strangle their father.

“He wants me to go the prison and talk to Barney. They want body locations of his previous victims.” Was she even allowed to tell them the other part? Jack hadn’t explicitly said, but he had mentioned it was confidential.

Alice cried out as though someone had just stuck her with a white-hot poker. “Absolutely not. How could he expect you to face that despicable man again? Claire, I need you to get me a lock of Jack’s hair. I don’t care how you do it.”

Claire sighed. “Mom, you can’t keep making voodoo dolls every time someone upsets you. It’s not ethical.”

“Isn’t it? Why don’t you ask Rachel how her bowels have been treating her?”

Hell hath no fury like Alice Alejo with a box of pins and a grudge. Maybe she’d make one for Luke too.

“Ah, shit.” Charlie clapped a hand to her forehead.

“Language, darling,” Alice interrupted.

“Sorry. Big Z just got busted for coke again. I have to go. Claire, don’t do anything Jack tells you to do. Love you both.” Charlie signed off.

Big Z was Mindy’s favorite rapper and one of Charlie’s most problematic clients. He was constantly embroiled in media scandals that threatened the sales of his rap albums. Charlie had pulled him out of more binds than Claire could count.

“I don’t care what Jack says, you’re not going to that prison.” Alice looked as scandalized as if Claire had just suggested she was going to go skinny dipping in a baby pool full of pissed-off scorpions.

Claire bit her lip. Something Jack had said had been gnawing at her. “You don’t think it might help the families of the victims get some closure? If I did get Barney to tell me the body locations?”

“Clairebear. That is not your responsibility. You suffered at his hands. They have no right to ask you to do that. Tell him no, okay, sweetheart? And tell him if he bothers you again, he’ll be hearing from me. I love you. And thank you for the flowers. But please don’t hide things from me again.”

“I won’t. Love you too, Mom.” Claire hung up. The conversation hadn’t left her with the peace she was hoping for.

A text from Luke popped up. She ignored it, but her stomach clenched all the same. What would Luke have to say about her bio-dad returning? It was almost as if talking about Jack in Paris had summoned him. But there was no sense in wondering what Luke would think. He was dead to her.

“Can we move that big piece to the far wall?” Claire asked.

It had been less than forty-eight hours since Jack’s revelation. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t compartmentalize and bury the news. Not even throwing herself into Aaron and Jane’s gallery proposal could prevent images of the victims from popping into her mind as she lay awake in bed at night. If she was truly the only person Barney would speak to, didn’t she owe it to them to try? Didn’t she have a moral obligation to help? But trying meant facing her attempted killer. The thought made her blood run like ice in her veins.

Nicole and Kyle, each gripping one end of an eight-foot oil painting, carefully shuffled across the hardwood floors of the gallery. They secured it to the wall with picture wire and stood back, revealing a watercolor of a little girl on a swing made of a tangle of flowers.

“Perfect.” Claire pointed to another painting. “Coli, what do you think about this one?”

She hadn’t had the heart to tell Nicole about her father’s visit. She was lady-balls-deep in wedding plans, and Claire refused to take the spotlight off her for even a moment. Nicole, wearing an old Venor University T-shirt and paint-splattered shorts, considered a charcoal portrait of a liver-spotted grandmother with kind eyes.

“I love this. It shows her mastery of the human form. Plus, it’s super hard to nail liver spots. Let’s put it with some of the other portraits on this side.” Nicole carried the frame off into a different room.

Rosie sat in the middle of the floor in a strip of sunlight, forcing everyone to walk around her.

Sweat glistened on Kyle’s forehead, highlighting the beginnings of a receding hairline. He took a swig from an aluminum water bottle and sat heavily on the floor, shaking the gallery.It had been barely five years since he had worn a Viking beer helmet and stolen a golf cart from campus security. They were getting older, and the crazy days of their youth had been replaced by careers, marriage, and nightmares.

She really needed a night out.

“Luke’s been asking about you,” Kyle said pointedly. Probably lashing out because she had asked him to move a particular painting six different times.

Claire sighed and turned her back to him. “I don’t care.”

“He’s really sorry, Claire. The whole documentary is at stake. And he’s right, you know. An interview with you would really take it to a whole new level. You know what a perfectionist he is when it comes to his work.”

She whirled around, a hammer in one hand. “Kyle, I love you. But make no mistake, if you try to talk about Luke again in front of me, or try to justify his decision to make me re-experience the worst thing that ever happened to me so that he can sell this documentary, I will pack you into one of those shipping crates and send your ass to Madagascar.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Need help moving your stuff back into your place?”

“That would be great. I’ll text you.”

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