“I’m not getting into that.” He started to sit down on the little couch, but instead he told Kate to move over, then stretched out on the bed beside her. “I meant for you to scoot this way. Toward me.”
She put a bite of pancakes into his mouth. “Tell me what Sheriff Flynn is going to say.”
“What they’ve found so far. We have to do it early because you are to be interrogated all day. Under glaring lights, with nothing to eat or drink for twenty-four hours.”
“Bathroom breaks?”
“None.”
“Sounds like a day spent with my uncles.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about them. Why—?”
“One set of psychopaths at a time.”
Sara stuck her head in. “Is this a private conversation?”
“Wish it was,” Jack said, “but it’s not.”
“Daryl just sent me a text. They caught Alastair.”
“I take it they found some real evidence against him?” Kate said.
Both Sara and Jack looked at her. It wouldn’t be good if the only evidence they had was Kate’s testimony. Stewart money; Stewart connections; Stewart cold-blooded-killer instinct. They wouldn’t have any hesitation about making sure Kate didn’t show up to testify.
Sara ran Jack out of Kate’s bedroom and told her niece to dress comfortably. It was going to be a long day.
When they got to Sheriff Flynn’s office, it was only 7:00 a.m., but he was waiting for them. They took their seats in the chairs on the other side of his desk.
He looked at Kate. “You okay?”
“Never better.” She was only lying a little bit. Aunt Sara squeezed her hand. “You didn’t by chance do any DNA testing, did you?”
Sheriff Flynn leaned back in his chair and gave a big smile. “And here I thought I’d be able to surprise you with that. We found a red leather makeup case that—”
“Mark Cross,” the three said in unison.
Sheriff Flynn looked at a paper on his desk. “That’s the brand name, yes. It contained lots of hair samples.” He paused for effect. “Hamish Stewart was Cheryl Morris’s father.” When no one showed surprise, he sighed. “Damn! I was hoping for gasps of shock. At least from two of you.”
“Sorry,” Kate said, “but last night I kept them up for hours telling them everything.”
“She’s a very good storyteller,” Sara said. “Succinct. Organized.”
“I’m not sure if I can follow up what is surely an unbiased opinion,” Sheriff Flynn said, “but here’s what we’ve found out. First of all, Evan. Three days before the crash, Alastair Stewart signed in at the library to use a computer. He spent an hour researching how to sabotage the brakes of a 2015 three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup.
“We called Dan Bruebaker’s former coach, the one who ran that training weekend in Naples back in 1997. He remembers Alastair Stewart very well. ‘Arrogant SOB’ is what he said. Dan Bruebaker told him Alastair had been out all night. Seems Dan had a tummy ache and woke up every few minutes. He saw that his roomie was gone and he told the coach about it. The next day the coach worked Stewart out doubly hard but he never let on that he knew Stewart had been out all night with, they assumed, a girl.”
“Good thing the coach said nothing or he might be dead now,” Jack said.
“Unfortunately, that’s probably true. We ran the video you bought from the guy at the retirement home through facial-recognition software. The gray-haired old woman in a wheelchair and the old woman pushing her were—”
“Alastair and Noreen,” Sara said.
“Right. We called Stewart’s high-school girlfriend, Delia Monroe. If you guys had called her, you would have found out that she and Cheryl were at one time BFFs. Did I get that abbreviation right?”
Kate nodded.
“They were forbidden friends, so not many people knew. Delia was from a good family, while Cheryl was...you know.”
