“Cody?”
“Okay, this might mean something.”
“What?” I asked, my heart skipping.
“Alice Hatfield called me yesterday with a question. Maybe it relates to the clue you’re talking about.”
Chapter 18
TELL ME,”IDEMANDED.
“I’ve already mentioned it to Killian, so I assume I’m not out of line telling you,” Cody replied. “Right?”
“Right.” Killian would hardly endorse Cody spilling the beans to me, but advising him not to blab wasn’t in my job description.
“And this needs to stay off the record. I don’t know what Killian plans to do with it.”
“Of course.”
“She left a message for me on my home phone around one, but I didn’t call her back. I assumed she was angling for a quote, and needless to say, I had more important things to focus on. It’s been a nightmare dealing with the press, by the way, but I don’t want to change my number while the investigation is active and someone might call with a tip.”
Please, I thought. I don’t need all the backstory. Just tell me what the fuck Alice said.
“But you eventually talked to her?”
“She called again, and I decided if I didn’t respond, she’d only keep hounding me. She asked if I could confirm that Shannon had gone on retreat at the Sunset Bay center the summer she was fifteen.”
My breath caught. So Shannon had once stayed in the very location where the killer dumped her body. It was possible that she’d crossed paths there with the person who would murder her years later.
“Do you think Alice had this on good authority?”
“It seemed that way, but like I told you the other day, Shannon had never mentioned anything about the place to me.”
“Did Alice say where she’d learned this piece of information?”
“No, she refused to tell me. Said it was confidential. I would have pressed her—what right does she have to keep that kind of detail all to herself?—but I was dealing with my kids.”
“Kelly seemed fairly sure that Shannon hadn’t ever been there, but I’m wondering—has anyone asked your mother-in-law?”
“I don’t know and, frankly, I doubt it’d do much good. She’s so loaded up on Xanax, she can barely remember her own name right now.”
The mention of drugs was the prompt I needed for my next point of discussion. In the background I heard a child’s voice. The words were indistinguishable, but the tone implied an urgent request, which meant my time was running short.
“I really need to go,” Cody said.
“Please, one more second. Is there any chance—and I ask this only because I want to help find the truth—that Shannon had developed a reliance on drugs this past year, like painkillers for an injury?”
“What?Absolutelynot.” I could feel his anger spike through the phone. “What the hell are you basing that on?”
“Initially there were rumors that the two campers might have been dealing drugs or at the very least buying.”
“Not Shannon. Ever.”
“Sometimes a person—”
“I said not Shannon,ever. I better not see even ahintof that on your website.”
The child’s questioning tone had morphed quickly into a wail.
