Kate did her best to push through the crowd and get inside.
Melissa was waiting for her at the door with excited eyes. “They were here at six a.m. Did you really find a dozen bodies? Were youwith Jack? Were you frightened? Did he, uh, comfort you?”
What the woman was saying was so far from reality that Kate couldn’t reply. Tayla’s office was straight ahead, and Kate wanted to see her friend. She gave a single knock, went in, closed the door and leaned on it.
Tayla had her back to her and was looking at a computer screen of current listings. “Bad, isn’t it?”
“Horrible,” Kate said.
Tayla turned and smiled. “Nothing like catastrophe to bond people, is there?” She was tall, slim, and had beautiful gray hair. She was a handsome woman, quite regal-looking, and Kate could see why the sheriff bragged that he was “a Kirkwood.” They obviously had good genes.
She motioned to the chair in front of her desk. Kate took it, and they looked at each other.
“You look like your father,” Tayla said.
“Do I?” Kate’s eyes lit up. “I know nothing about him.”
“A charmer, a sweet talker. Could get anyone to do anything he wanted. If he hadn’t been younger than me, I would have gone after him.” She paused. “Now, tell me what caused allthis?” She waved her hand to indicate what was happening outside the office.
“There were two skeletons in the roots of a tree that came down on one of Jack’s properties.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes,” Kate said. She wasn’t about to hint that they thought they knew who the victims were.
“So how was Sheriff Flynn?”
Kate remembered that the man was related to Tayla. She needed to be tactful. “He... He, uh...”
Tayla leaned forward. “He’s a terrible bigot, isn’t he?”
“He’s number four. Not even close to my three uncles,” Kate said, completely deadpan.
The women laughed together.
“Relatives, right?” Tayla said. “You can’t choose them. Was he awful to Jack?”
“Dreadful. Sara wanted to punch him, but Jack stopped her.”
“Oh, yes. Her boxing. Jack should have let her. Daryl would have been too embarrassed to tell anyone who hit him.” Tayla grew serious. “What are we going to do about these?” She picked up a dozen yellow message slips off her desk. “These are requests for you—no one else will do—to show them houses. But I’m betting most of them are reporters trying to get some one-on-one time to question you. All the media think you and Sara and Jack know a lot more than you’re telling.”
Kate made her face blank. She’d learned early on to conceal what she was thinking.
Tayla leaned back in her chair. “That’s your private life and it’s none of my business. I had a couple of houses for you to show today, but under the circumstances I think you shouldn’t leave the office. Why don’t you spend today going over the local listings? Familiarize yourself with them.”
In the last week Kate had been over them so often that she knew the square footage of every house for sale in Lachlan. But she didn’t say that. She knew when she was being dismissed. “Good idea.” She left Tayla’s office and went to her own.
The reporters stayed outside, and when Kate went to the kitchenette, they spotted her and came alive like bees when their hive was disturbed. It was going to be a difficult day.
“And Cheryl wanted to be part of that,” Kate muttered as she made herself a cup of tea.
At ten, she finally checked her phone. She’d been too cowardly to do it before but now scrolled through the list of missed calls: reporter, reporter, her mother, Alastair. Four more reporters, her mother, Alastair, three reporters. She wasn’t about to return the calls of the reporters and she didn’t want Alastair to hear the agitation in her voice.
That left her mother, and Kate knew she couldn’t postpone that. She braced herself for hysterics, but there were none. All Ava wanted to know was how Sara was treating her.
Images of tears and laughter ran through Kate’s mind. What a lot they’d been through in the last twenty-four hours!We, she thought and smiled. She reassured her mother that Sara had been quite courteous. “Mom, did you hear about Lachlan on the news?”
“Oh, yes. Skeletons in a tree, right? Small towns are full of creepy crimes like that. Always secretive. Not like in a city, where they just shoot you out in the open and leave your body on the street where people can find it.”
