Page 62 of Wham Line
She stared back at me.
So much for my brilliant plan.“I’m not going to let you do this,” I said.“I know you’re covering for Nalini.I know you love her.I know you think you’re doing the right thing.And for all I know, Nalini might have had a good reason for what she did.But that’s for the courts to decide.”
Still nothing.
The heat from the fire made me pull at my collar.
“Fine,” I said.“I’ll tell the sheriff myself.”
I stood.I pushed in my chair.I turned toward the door and took a step.
“Dash,” Indira said.“Don’t.”
“I know you think you’re doing the right thing,” I said.“But I love you, and you don’t need to—to punish yourself, or do penance, or atone, or whatever you think you’re doing.”
When I put my hand on the door, Indira shifted in her seat.The rustle of clothing broke the stillness.And then she said, “It’s not Nalini.We argued, yes.Because she’s lying to me.But that’s about something else entirely.”
I looked back.
Indira was crying, shaking her head, face turned away from me.“It’s Jethro.”
“Jethro?”A dozen questions ran through my head, but I snatched the first one.“Why?”
She shook her head again, and her features tightened.Fresh tears ran down her cheeks, and she sat, and she kept shaking her head.
“Indira,” I said.I circled the table and crouched next to her.I put my hand on her arm.“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she said thickly.“It was so stupid.Iwas so stupid.And I’m so—so angry with myself.Angry that it can still hurt so much after all these years.Angry that I can’t seem to stop hurting.”She swallowed.“I went to the Rock On Inn that night.After Mal was killed.I wasn’t thinking clearly.”She gave a shattered laugh.“That’s putting it mildly.But I went, and I asked Cheri-Ann which room was his because I’d brought something from Mizzenmast for him.I had to see him.”
“Who?Jethro?Why?”
“And then I wasn’t brave enough.I stood there at the top of the stairs, trying to work up the courage.That’s when I saw someone come out of Jethro’s room.”
“You saw Jethro come out of his room?”
She shook her head.“Someone else.They were dressed in dark, bulky clothes, and I didn’t get a good look at them, but I knew right away that something was wrong.They left, and I…I forced the lock and went into the room because I thought maybe something had happened to Jethro, but he wasn’t there.And then I was even more confused.I thought maybe a robber…” She wiped her cheeks.“It was sticking out from under a pillow.There was no way to miss it.”
“The gun,” I said.“The gun that killed Mal.”
“I didn’t even think about fingerprints.As soon as I saw it, I knew why that person had been in Jethro’s room: they’d planted the gun to frame him.And I knew I had to get it out of there.I took it, and I went straight home and hid it.I didn’t know what to do with it.I thought I should get rid of it.”She gave me a watery look that still somehow managed a hint of amusement.“I know better than most people how foolish it is to hold on to a murder weapon.But a part of me kept thinking that if I did get rid of it, the real killer would get away with it.I was still trying to decide what to do the next day when the deputies came to search the flat.”A note of frustration rang in her next words.“I don’t know how they knew.”
But I did.Or I thought I did.Whoever had planted that gun in Jethro’s room had waited for Jethro to come home.They wanted to call the sheriff’s office when he did.And instead, they’d seen Indira go inside.
“I don’t understand,” I said.“Jethro seems like a nice kid, but why would you—” The wordsdo something so stupidrose in my throat; I managed to change them to “—take such a risk?”
Indira looked at me like I was, perhaps, denser than she’d thought.But her voice had a buckled-down quality when she spoke again.“I knew as soon as I saw him,” she said.“You can see it in their faces.And I know—I know it’s foolish.But I couldn’t help looking at him and thinking—” She stopped, and there was so much in the silence that came next.“—thinking, what if things had been different?”
And then everything clicked, and I heard myself say, “Jethro is Mal’s son.”
Chapter 17
I hurried out of the cabin, still trying to wrap my head around Indira’s revelation, blinking in the gray daylight.
Bobby’s Pilot was parked behind the Malibu, blocking me in.And Bobby was leaning against it, arms folded.
The anger from earlier was gone, and although he wore a semblance of his usual calm, beneath it, hurt and unhappiness swam together.The tightness in my chest relaxed, and I forgot all the things I’d been working myself up to say; instead, all I wanted now was for things between us to be good again.
I glanced over.
