Page 62 of Tessa's Trust

Just wonderful. I’d about had it with the judicial system for the year. Pierce wasn’t quite meeting my eyes and I didn’t know why. “What’s going on?” I asked.

He sighed, typed something onto his laptop, and flipped the screen around. “You might want to read the article Jolene Sullivan just filed,” he muttered. “It’s online now and will be in print tomorrow.”

“Do people still read print? I mean, newspapers?”

“Apparently.”

I looked at the screen and blanched. The headline was pretty good. It read: Murder Suspect Rescues Fish. I snorted. “You know that’s a silly title, but it would make me read the article.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Pierce said.

I looked at the small headline beneath that read: Another Troubled Albertini Sleeps With the Local Prosecutor. The blood drained from my face. I could feel it happen, and I wavered. “Oh, no.”

Pierce sighed. “You had to know when Basanelli carried you out of the police station that everybody would find out.”

“I did figure,” I burst out. “What I didn’t think was that this wench would follow me to Donna’s house. How did she even know where we were going?”

“She was probably close by, heard what happened, and followed you,” Pierce said reasonably. “Or she took a guess. Everyone knows you moved out of the apartment above the diner, and where else would you stay? Jolene’s pretty plugged into this community.”

“And she hates my family,” I muttered.

“Nah, I don’t know if it’s hate.” Pierce lifted a shoulder. “Y’all do make good copy.”

I cut a look at him. “You’d better watch it, Pierce. You’re around us a lot, and my family seems to adore you for some reason. I’m sure some copy could be written about you, as well.”

He didn’t pale, and he didn’t waver, but his eyes narrowed a little bit as he considered it. “Good point.”

“Thanks.” I scanned the rest of the article, noting that Jolene made a big deal of my purchasing the building in Silverville and then finding a dead body. She also somehow knew about the matching knife found in my fridge.

“You know, as I read this,” I muttered, “I feel guilty. I was upset about everything going on, but I hadn’t really stopped to consider…am I really a suspect?”

“Of course, you’re a suspect,” Pierce said. “The guy had a competing claim to your building.”

Should I appreciate his directness? I did not. “Then why haven’t you arrested me?”

“I don’t have enough evidence,” he admitted. “Nothing ties you to either knife, and there’s no evidence that you actually killed Rudy Brando, or at least there’s not enough to take you to trial. There’s no evidence that you even knew about the competing claim to the building. In fact, if you did, I seriously doubt you would’ve given Sadie Brando all that money.”

I warmed. It was nice that Pierce believed me, especially since he was an excellent cop. If he didn’t think I was innocent, I’d probably be crying and sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial right now. Sure, it’d be over in Silverville, but he seemed more than happy to help Sheriff Franco.

Pierce sighed. “However, there’s also no proof you gave the money to Sadie.”

I bit my lip. “That’s true. I hadn’t really thought about that. So, there’s a theory in the case that I didn’t pay Sadie, killed Brando, and what? Made Sadie disappear?”

“It’s a theory,” Pierce said. “It’s not one I believe or that makes any sense because I don’t know how you’d make both Sadie and Jonathan disappear, but at the moment, we have absolutely no idea where they are.”

I hoped they were all right and somebody hadn’t hurt them just because I’d paid them in cash. “You’re still no closer to finding those two?” I asked, my heart sinking. “I thought it would be easy. Isn’t CCTV pretty much everywhere now? I mean, even on I-90, aren’t there cameras everywhere?”

“Yeah,” Pierce answered. “We’ve checked airlines, we’ve checked buses, we’ve checked traffic cams. We can’t find anything.”

That just didn’t make any sense. “I gave Sheriff Franco the keys to the building and full access to search,” I said. “I hadn’t wanted him to get a search warrant because it wasn’t necessary, so I take it he hasn’t found anything there either?”

“No,” Pierce said. “I’ve been in daily contact with Franco. Heck, hourly, because we both want to solve this as soon as possible. It was nice of you to grant him access, and I’m sure that’ll go a long way in him seeing you as innocent. But we have to find Sadie.”

I chewed my lip. “It just seems so weird that two bodies were found in the same place, nine months apart, and both stabbed, right?”

Pierce shook his head. “Oh, I agree it’s weird, but Lenny’s death looks like a scuffle or a fight that went wrong, and Brando’s death looks like a murder.”

I sat back. “You’ve been looking into Lenny’s death, as well?” This was out of Pierce’s jurisdiction, and I knew he was busy.

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