Page 128 of False Evidence

JT was glad for that. Waking up with Alexandra this morning had helped steel him to face the more difficult aspects of today, while feeding Gemma her breakfast had grounded him. He wasn’t in this for the big party. He was in it for the life.

He smiled at his bride. “What’s up, beautiful?”

“I hate to interrupt—I know how important this is. But the video we’re going to show during the reception was just finalized. JT, I really want you to see it in case we need to make any tweaks. We won’t have time later. Do you all mind taking a little break? You’re welcome to watch.”

“How long is it?” Calvin asked.

“Ohh, about fifteen minutes? It was really hard with so many years’ worth of photos to decide what to put in, but we really managed to pare it down. You’ll like it, Calvin. You’re even in a few of the pictures.”

“I am?”

“All those company events.”

“It’s fine with me,” he said. He turned to the attorneys. “You can take a break if you want.”

“I could use some food.”

“We’ve got snacks in the suite,” Alexandra said, giving them the room number for the suite they’d reserved for wedding prep.

She sat at the table next to JT and plugged a USB drive into his laptop. There was a frilly graphic with their names and the date in a script font popular for weddings.

The first image in the slideshow had been taken the night of the holiday party when they first met. An event photographer had taken candid shots during dinner, and there was a photo of JT with Drake and Calvin and a few other executives. The next image was Alexandra, laughing at a table with Brent, Russ, and Kendall. JT had never seen that photo before, but wasn’t surprised Lee had managed to find it in the archives.

“I get why you’re including photos from that night,” Calvin said, “but I can’t help but wonder if you really want photos of Drake, Russ, and even Brent to be shown at the reception?”

“JT and I discussed that, and we agreed everything is part of our journey. And let’s face it, if it weren’t for Russ, Brent, and Kendall, we never would have met. Besides, Calvin, you’re in there too.”

He chuckled. “Well, I’m not some high school senior scouring the yearbook for pictures of myself instead of seeing the shared moments with my classmates.”

“It’s only on the first pass that you look for photos of yourself,” she replied. “And I get your point, but the thing is, Kendall was and will always be my friend. We had our rough moments, but I’ll never have another friend like her. With her death so recent—which I don’t know if you heard about? It’s all so raw and recent, and I really want her to be part of this ceremony.”

“I ran into Brent Forbes a few weeks ago. He mentioned his ex-girlfriend had died. I remember Kendall from when I worked at T&D. I’m sorry she’s gone.”

Yeah. JT knew exactly how familiar Calvin was with Kendall’s work for T&D.

Alexandra rewound to the photo that included Kendall and hit Pause. “I went to her house a week and a half ago. It was…thenight. I’m sure you saw the news… Anyway, I took some things that she’d left for me. Important mementos. But they were stolen from my car. I’d give anything to get those back.”

“I’m sorry,” Calvin said, “that’s terrible. They didn’t show that part of the video on the news but mentioned a box had been taken. That’s what it was?”

She nodded. JT rubbed her shoulder in a show of sympathy.

It was that exact box the cops were searching for in his house. JT hoped to hell the man felt so secure that no one had a clue of his involvement that he’d hidden the box rather than getting rid of it when it didn’t contain what he was looking for.

Alexandra let out a soft sigh. “Yes. The box didn’t have anything important except to me. Framed photos. My mom’s copy ofThe Joy of Cooking. Mom wrote notes in the margins of the cookbook, adjusting the recipes. She has dementia now, and I want more than anything to make my daughter Grandma’s snickerdoodles. That might be the loss that hurts the most.”

“I forgot about your mother’s snickerdoodles,” JT said. “Those things were insanely good.”

“They tasted like love.”

Alexandra was good at this. JT didn’t see the act in her words. She was stringing Calvin right along.

“I won’t give up hope it will turn up. In the meantime, I went back to Kendall’s house a few days ago to get my wedding dress—which isamazing, by the way.” She laughed, her chuckle soft and fun, showing none of the strain that she must be feeling. “While I was in the house, I searched for anything that would offer a clue as to why a police officer would pull me over and then another person would kill the officer and steal a box that I’d taken from her house.”

“Did you find anything?”

She smiled. “Actually, I did. But we had to turn it over to the police. I didn’t even really get to look at it. I hope someday to get it back.”

She hit Play on the video. The next slide made JT laugh. It was a photo of him in a Santa suit with a grimacing kid on his lap. The girl clutched a present in one hand and Alexandra—crouched down in an elf costume—in the other.

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