Cody’s response to that question had been negative, too, so if someone from the congregation had been watching Shannon,targetingher, she clearly hadn’t sensed anything wrong or at least hadn’t felt enough unease to mention it to her husband or friend.
“Do you have any idea why she started going back?”
“No, she never said a word, not until one Sunday in the middle of the summer when I called and asked if she wanted to take the kids for a bike ride and she said she had to drop by church first. I asked what she meant and she said she’dstarted going to mass again. It didn’t seem like something she was eager to discuss.”
Funny that Shannon wouldn’t have suggested her reasoning to either her husband or best friend.
“Can you recall anything that could have factored into her decision?”
“Not really. At first I thought it had something to do with her cousin Destin passing. She’d been really close to him. But he’d been dead a whole year by then, and I didn’t have the sense that she was still actively grieving.”
But as J.J. herself had indicated, Shannon was a private person. She might not have wanted her friend to know that she was still consumed by the loss. And her father had died only a couple of years before, which might have cumulatively felt like too much to her.
“So if not her cousin’s death, what else could it have been?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was simply searching for answers.”
“To anything in particular?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I really don’t know. You asked me before if Shan had been depressed or under stress, and I told you she hadn’t. But looking back, she’d probably seemed a little preoccupied, like she had a lot on her plate. So maybe all she wanted was a way to chill once a week, give herself a break.”
God as me-time. That was a concept I hadn’t heard before. But her comment triggered a memory.
“Can we circle back to something you said to me the first day we talked? You mentioned that when you called Shannon the morning she disappeared, she sounded a little off—”
“Isn’t it the police’s job to be asking this kind of stuff?” She reached up to an eyebrow and smoothed it with the tip of a finger.
“Yes, the cops are asking plenty of questions, I’m sure. But good reporting can be an asset to the cops, turning up additional information that’s extremely beneficial.”
“There’s really nothing more I can contribute,” she said. “And—and I probably made too much of that the other day when I talked to you.”
“What do you mean?”
She smoothed her eyebrow again, more lightly this time. “That thing I said about her voice, about her seeming distant. It probably meant nothing. I’m sure she was only eager to start her run.”
Okay, this was odd. Why suddenly revise her impression?
“Well, if your instincts that day told you—”
“I don’t really recall what my instincts were telling me that day. This has all been a mess.... Look, are we done here? I feel like my head is going to explode.”
“Sure, but if anything occurs to you about Shannon and the church, or anything else, will you give me a call?”
She threw out an arm, flipping over the hand, in a gesture that said, “Whatever.”
I rose and made my way out of the room, with her right behind me. When we reached the front hall, I paused, ready to drop theI Know What You Did Last Summerbombshell.
“Thanks again for your help, J.J.,” I said. I turned to face her. “One more question before I go. Do you think Shannon’s sister might have any insight into the church question?”
“Like I told you the other day, Kelly and Shannon weren’t super close. But be my guest and ask her if you want.”
“Are you friendly with Kelly yourself?”
“Friendly enough. Look—”
“I just ask because I happened to see Kelly’s husband coming out of your house a few minutes ago.”
Her whole body froze, as if under a spell from a sorcerer. There was no mistaking the expression that flashed on her face. “Busted,” it said. I could sense her scrambling, trying to hatch a credible cover story.
