I knew. He could outspend me by a wide margin. My support came from a different demographic than his.
Reeves followed me into the hallway. “I tried to provide you with an out. This case will bury you. And that will be all your fault. You just remember that.”
I was so eager to get away from Reeves that I slipped on the stairs, barely stopped from plunging headfirst down that long, curved stairway.
My story could have ended right there.
Some people probably wish that it had.
CHAPTER
15
I didn’t break my neck on the staircase, not that day. And I managed to lose the DA when he paused on the stairway to speak to a local lawyer. At the bottom of the stairs, I made a dash down the central lobby and pushed through the back door. Straight to the parking lot.
I had my key fob in hand, my car unlocked. Pulled the driver’s door open just as an older-model SUV with a rattle in the engine roared into the lot, blocking me.
Nellie. My sister rolled down the car window. “Get in,” she said.
Nellie is not the boss of me. I’m the firstborn child, the one who had to babysit two little sisters so Mama could work the farm. But the expression she wore that day made me climb into the passenger seat without argument.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“For a drive. Maybe get a Coke at the McDonald’s.”
She gripped the wheel so hard that I could see the tendons stand out on her hands. Her voice was grim. “The sheriff came to school today. Mick Owens waltzed into the office like he owns the building. Didn’t even take off his shades.”
I’ve known Mick Owens since high school. He was my date to senior prom, in fact.
Mick drove us to the gym in his daddy’s pickup. Mama sewed my prom dress herself. We cut out early from the dance, for the usual teenage reasons, and went to the local make-out spot by the river, where we engaged in what the health teacher would have described as “heavy petting.”
Back at school on Monday, Mick implied to everybody that we’d done a lot more. He was generally believed. I’m still pissed off about that. Maybe I’ll get over it after another thirty-four years.
The image of the sheriff shaking up the school troubled me. “He’s pulling Nova Jones out of class, in front of her peers? That’s a clumsy way to investigate. Seems like he’d want to approach her at home, to respect her privacy. He needs to be careful with a child witness.”
“Not Nova. He came for the school nurse. Cocheta Bass. You know her?”
Sure, I knew everybody. In a town of three thousand, you do. “Our paths cross. At the Piggly Wiggly or the Dollar General.”
“He took her out of the building in handcuffs. She was crying, begging the office to call her son, let him know what’s happening.”
I was speechless. What the hell kind of role did the school nurse play in the scenario? The case was becoming more outlandish with each additional detail.
Nellie pulled up to the speaker in the McDonald’s drive-through lane and ordered a large Diet Coke. Glanced my way. “You want something?”
I shook my head. We didn’t speak again until Nellie had her drink in hand and rolled the window up.
“I guess everyone at school is freaking out,” I said.
She took a pull on the straw before she set her drink in the cupholder. “It’s wild. They’re already picking sides.”
“What?”
“Dividing into camps. For and against.” Nellie took her eyes off the road to give me a look. “Sure, there’s some people who are loyal to Cocheta and Dr. Gaines. But there’s other people saying they committed cold-blooded murder. That they killed a baby. A baby in the womb of a girl too young to know her own mind. A lot of people are saying it.”
“Damn.” My throat had gone dry. Wished I had ordered a big Diet Coke. I needed that cold carbonation to burn the ache away.
Nellie’s voice was flat. “You’re gonna have to pass on this one, Mary.”
