Page 133 of Secrets Along the Shore
Nice. I’ll have to put you up for Mother of the Year.“Where did she keep it?”
Serenity shrugged. “As long as it wasn’t here, I didn’t care and didn’t ask.”
“And I’m guessing you didn’t tell the police about her side gig?”
Her face cracks with withering disbelief. “No. ’Course not. I didn’t tell them because I’m not an idiot.”
“Was it dangerous?”
“I mean, not really. It wasn’t that kind of dealing. We’re talking a little here, a little there. Nobody would’ve wanted her dead over that.”
I haven’t officially told her Kamden is dead, but I don’t bother to correct her. She’ll find out the truth soon enough. “Does she have family? Friends?”
Serenity shakes her head. “No family I ever knew about. And friends…there were people she hung with, but I never met them. I only saw her Instagram, same as you.”
“You can’t give me the name of anyone else she might have been with that night, or who might know something about what happened to her?”
“Nah.”
My gaze ventures past Serenity and out the front window. “That Honda in the driveway, is it hers?” I ask, already knowing the car matches the 2006 Honda Accord registered to Kamden.
“Yeah.”
“Has it been sitting there since she disappeared?” It’s a long shot, but if the car’s been undisturbed all these months, a thorough combing could conceivably give us a new angle.
“Yeah. I mean, I used it some. And I loaned it to a couple of friends who had car trouble sometimes.”
Well, so much for that. Still, a search might give us something.
“Did the police ever search it?”
“No.”
“And what about Kamden’s employment? She was a bartender, right?”
“At The Smoked Glass, near the airport.”
“Did she talk about anyone from work? Did she have a problem with anyone, or the opposite—was there someone she was close to?”
“Look, Detective…what’d you say your name was?”
“Walsh. Sophie Walsh.”
“Yeah, well, Detective Walsh, like I said before, I don’t know anything about her friends.”
I resist the urge to sigh in frustration. It’s not her fault she can’t help me. Still, I feel like there’s something here, waiting to be drawn out,ifI ask the right question.
“I can guess what the answer is probably going to be, but what about boyfriends?”
“She had a bad ex a while back who stalked her and everything. Hurt her once or twice. Took her forever to shake him off and when she did, she swore she wouldn’t ever let someone have control over her again. That was”—she glances at the ceiling—“maybe a year and a half or so before she disappeared? She went on plenty of dates after him, but she wasn’t serious about anyone. I never knew their names. Didn’t ask?—”
“Didn’t want to know. I get it.”
“Hey, she had her life, I had mine. I needed the free childcare. I wasn’t in a position to be nosy.”
“What was the name of her ex-boyfriend, the stalker?”
Serenity squints. “Donny. Donny…Mills, Miller…something like that.”
