Page 71 of Little Shattered Dreams

Killing someone over not being given a job?

There had to be more to it.

Right?

“Tyler,” I said, “have you ever seen Clara’s handwriting?”

He nodded. “She gave me a card a few weeks ago for my birthday. Why?”

“Can you come over here?”

He was reluctant, but he did as I asked.

“I know this won’t be easy, and I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you take a look at this note? I’m wondering if you recognize the handwriting.”

“Oh-kay.”

He started reading and then stopped, turning away as the tears came. “I can’t read any more of this … it’s too hard. But yeah, it looks like her handwriting.”

“Do you still have the card?”

He nodded. “It’s on my desk at my place.”

“I need to look at it.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ll walk over with him,” Simone said.

I nodded. “And I’ll call Foley.”

CHAPTER37

Foley and Silas and his crew headed my way, along with a couple of officers. In the meantime, I did some poking around inside Clara’s place, careful not to disturb any relevant evidence. Clara was wearing a pair of jogging shorts and a T-shirt when she died. Half of her breakfast was uneaten and was sitting on the counter in the kitchenette. A load of laundry had been washed but not dried. And her staff uniform was folded at the end of the bed like she intended to change back into it later.

If what Tyler said was true, it seemed odd to me that at some point between breakfast, the time we chatted, and now, she’d made the hasty decision to kill herself. And why hadn’t Calvin mentioned he had a gun and that it was missing? I had a hard time believing he hadn’t noticed after learning how Quinn died.

None of it was sitting right with me.

Not the suicide note.

Not her reasons for killing Quinn.

None. Of. It.

For starters, it was a coincidence that one of Quinn’s former coworkers just happened to be at the retreat the same week she was, and now I was supposed to believe one of the workers at the retreat had a past history with Quinn too?

Then again, maybe Clara’s storywastrue, and she planned to confess everything to Tyler, the one person she thought she could trust.

I stood there, staring down at Clara, talking to her even though she couldn’t talk back. “I wish you were still here. I wish you could talk to me, tell me what happened, what you planned on telling Tyler. You were just getting your life back together. I can’t believe you’d throw it away now, not over something as petty as a woman not hiring you after you got out of jail.”

I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned.

“You always speak to the dead?” Foley asked.

“Sometimes.”

Silas walked in behind him and headed right for me, giving me a quick squeeze. “Sure got a lot on your plate this week. You doing all right?”

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