Page 36 of No One Can Know

She nodded. “Did you ever see her there?” He hesitated. “It’s important,” she pressed.

“I didn’t know who she was at the time,” he said. “But yeah. I saw her there once or twice. I got the impression…” He trailed off. Rubbed a hand along his jaw. “I got the impression she and Logan Ellis were hooking up.”

“Hooking up?” Emma said, incredulous. It wasn’t a phrase she could imagine applying to her prim and proper sister. The Juliette who had been in her kitchen two days ago, maybe, but the one who practiced her concertos two hours a day and never missed a day of Sunday school?

She tried to picture Logan Ellis in her mind. He’d had the good fortune to take after his mother; he had always been good-looking, if a bit generic. He had long blond hair and eyes that looked both lazy and interested, and he always held himself in a relaxed way, disengaged and cooler for it. He’d been out of high school by the time Juliette started. Twenty-four, twenty-five the year of the murders.

“Do you and Logan still talk?” Emma asked.

He made a dryly amused sound. “No, Emma. After his father tried to have me arrested for double murder, a certain distance arose between us.” He shook his head. “We were never friends. He provided goods, I paid for them.”

Emma glanced back toward the front porch. Lorelei was visible through the window, the cloud of her gray hair lit by the midday sun. “Is your grandmother still…?”

He gave a sniff, shook his head. “Nah. The pain went away when she went into remission. We weaned her off. It was bullshit, though. One doctor decides she’s drug-seeking, dependent—of course she was fucking dependent, it was keeping her from being in constant pain. And then the only way to get her the medicine she needs is to pay off some lowlife like Logan.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You say that a lot,” he pointed out.

She lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment. “Is Logan still in town?”

“He’s bartending at Wilson’s.”

“That hole-in-the-wall on Tenth?” she asked. He nodded, and she grunted in dull surprise. “Can’t believe that place is still open.”

“It has its devotees,” Gabriel said. “Emma, why are you asking about this stuff now?”

“I’m just trying to put it all together.”

“Put what together, exactly?” Gabriel asked, brow furrowed.

“Juliette. I don’t know where she was that night, but she came back wearing someone else’s clothes, and there are other things.… It’s just, maybe if I can figure out what happened, I can clear my name,” Emma said, gesturing helplessly. “But I don’t know where to start. Apparently I didn’t even know my own sister.”

He stared at her. His thumb moved over his mouth slowly, and gradually she realized what that look meant. Her lips parted.

“Oh,” she said softly, reality rearranging itself around her. How had she not realized?

“Emma.”

“You thought I did it. All this time?” she asked, her voice strangely calm.

“You told me you wanted them dead,” he said hoarsely. “You left the house in the middle of the night.”

“So did you.”

“I went for a walk to clear my head. Where didyougo?” he asked.

He’d known she’d left. He’d thought she did it. And yet he’d never said anything, she realized—not even when it could have thrown the suspicion off him and onto her.

“I thought you lied to protect yourself. But it was your sister?” Gabriel asked.

“Maybe,” Emma admitted reluctantly. “I don’t know. I just know it wasn’t me. And I never thought it was you.”

“Am I supposed to say thank you for that?” Gabriel asked.

“No. Of course not,” Emma replied.

He considered her. “Why now?” he asked. “After all this time, allthese years. You never once said anything that might make people look at Juliette, even when everyone called you a murderer. So what’s changed?”

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