Page 12 of Shelter for Sharla

“Here you go,” she said when she returned and set the mug down on the coffee table. “Sugar? Milk? Creamer?”

“No. Black is fine, thanks.”

“Ready?”

“When you are.”

“Kids? Could you come out into the den for a minute please?” Sharla called, and in seconds Carter could hear feet shuffling until two young faces appeared in the doorway. “SheriffMelton’s here and he wants to talk to you.”

“I thought we didn’t do anything wrong,” Chelsea said barely over a whisper.

“You haven’t. I just wanted to talk to you about Tamara, see if we could figure out what was going on. There are a lot of questions going unanswered, and we need to get to the bottom of all this.” He motioned to the sofa across from him, and Chelsea and Lionel took a seat. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, found the voice recorder, started it, and laid the phone on the table in front of the kids. “First, I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to you, young man. I’m sorry about your sister.”

“I heard it was you who shot her,” the boy said, an edge to his voice but his expression flat.

“Actually, there were seven gunshot wounds, but it’s true?mine was the one that did the deed. For that, I’m sorry, but she drew on us and we weren’t left with a lot of options.” He watched Lionel’s face but the young man didn’t appear to be confrontational, just trying to sort things out. Carter felt sorry for him. He was bound to be confused. “As I said, we’ve got some questions. First, how long had you been at the event when you left?”

Lionel and Chelsea glanced at each other. “Maybe two hours?” Chelsea answered, and Lionel nodded in agreement.

“And in that time, what did you do?”

“We just hung out and listened to the speakers,” Lionel offered.

“Did you eat or drink anything?”

“I think I had a soda and some chips, and I remember you had a soda and some kind of food, right?” Chelsea said as she turned to Lionel.

“Yeah. A hot dog,” the boy said with a nod.

“Did Tamara have anything?”

“Yeah,” Chelsea answered. “She had a beer. At least one. Maybe two.”

“Bottle? Can? Draft?”

Lionel answered, “In a cup. From a keg.”

“And who was passing out the beer?”

They both shrugged before Chelsea said, “I dunno. Some volunteers, I think.”

“And when did you observe Tamara acting strangely?”

They both sat for a few seconds, seemingly deep in thought, before Chelsea asked Lionel, “How long had we been there when that guy got up to speak? The one who was talking about the importance of taking what you want by force if necessary?”

“I don’t know, but we left when he was finished.”

“And that’s when you observed her acting strangely?”

Chelsea nodded. “Yeah. Well, more like we said we wanted to leave because we were uncomfortable with the way the guy was talking, but she got mad because we didn’t want to stay.”

“Yeah, she got all huffy and asked us if we wanted somebody to hurt her and for her to be unable to defend herself. That’s when she showed me her gun. I was ready to go then?I was totally freaked out by that,” Lionel said, his eyes wide and eyebrows raised.

“And where did you go when you left there?” Carter asked.

“It was getting late, so we were going to come on home.” Chelsea fiddled with the hem of her tee shirt. “I told her I’d drive because I didn’t really think she should. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell her that because she was acting so weird, but she insisted she wanted to.”

“Weird how?”

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