“What about anyone entering or leaving the block party? Anyone who seemed out of place or in a hurry?”
“Detective, that was over thirty years ago.” Shannon frowned, and her lines deepened into genuine concentration when Kinsley remained silent, letting the question sit. “I was focused on waiting for Richard, not watching the neighbors.”
“Let me help refresh your memory.” Kinsley reached for her phone and pulled up a series of photographs. She held the screen toward the laptop camera, close enough for the image to be legible. The first was of Ginny Kusman. “Did you see this woman that night?”
“No. Not that I recall.”
Kinsley swiped to the next photograph. Darlene Barrett.
“This woman?”
Shannon leaned closer to her screen, squinting slightly to make out the image.
“Yes, I remember her walking down the sidewalk on her own. She seemed to be heading away from the party, back toward one of the houses across the street.”
That tracked. Darlene had left the block party at the Wilsons’ to walk home for the last tray of cheesecakes. Shannon had spotted the woman during that walk, before Darlene had noticed the Bell mansion’s front door standing open on her way back. The timelines aligned, which meant Shannon had driven out of the neighborhood in the narrow window between Darlene leaving the party and Darlene discovering Iris’s body.
“And this man?” Kinsley swiped once more and enlarged Todd Kusman’s photograph. “Did you see him that night?”
“No, I don’t believe so.” Shannon adjusted her laptop.. “Like I said, I was waiting for Richard and not really paying attention to anyone else. I didn’t even see Iris that night.”
She paused before adding an afterthought.
“Just her brother.”
Toby’s pen slipped from his fingers and hit the table with a sharp clatter. Kinsley didn’t take her gaze off the screen. She lowered her phone slowly and rested her forearm on the cold surface of the interview table, every nerve in her body focused on the woman on the other side of the video call.
“You saw Joey Bell that night?”
“I didn’t speak with him, no.” Shannon shook her head, apparently unaware of the significance of what she’d just revealed. “But I spotted him running through some yards with a friend. They were cutting between houses, moving fast.”
She tilted her head, reading something in Kinsley’s expression that made her pause.
“You asked me if I saw anyone unusual, Detective. It was a neighborhood block party. Joey being in the vicinity doesn’t exactly strike me as unusual.”
Except that it was. Joey Bell was supposed to have been at a high school football game, not running through yards between houses in the neighborhood where his sister was about to die. Every account Kinsley had gathered placed the teenagers at the pond or the high school stadium. Joey’s presence in the neighborhood, on foot, moving quickly between properties, upended that narrative completely.
22
Kinsley Aspen
July
Friday, 11:06 am
Carol’s Café hummed with late-morning conversations as Kinsley claimed a table in the back corner. She chose the seat that offered a clear view of the front entrance, a habit so ingrained she didn’t even think about it anymore. The café’s weathered wooden tables and faded photographs of Fallbrook’s earlier days created an atmosphere of comfortable nostalgia, the kind of place where people lingered over their drinks and spoke more freely than they intended.
That was precisely why she’d chosen it at a meeting place, too.
Carol’s offered neutral territory for her interview with Joey Bell, a place where he might be more inclined to open up than in the sterile confines of a station interview room with its institutional lighting and recording equipment. If Shannon Utgoff’s revelation was accurate, and Kinsley had no reason todoubt it, Joey had some explaining to do about his whereabouts the night his sister died.
“I want to apologize for how I acted when we first met, Detective Aspen.” Joey took the seat across from her and adjusted his baseball cap so that it faced backward, revealing a streak of dried dirt on his forearm. His cargo pants bore the grass stains and soil marks of someone who had already put in several hours of landscaping work before the day was half over. “I overreacted. I shouldn’t have been so agitated about the investigation into my sister’s death being reopened.”
Kinsley had truly thought the call she’d placed to Richard yesterday would have stirred his and Eden’s curiosity about the investigation, but they hadn’t stopped by the station or returned her calls. She’d also had to reach out to Joey for this little chat. Her plan had backfired.
“I appreciate that, Joey.” Kinsley used his first name deliberately, matching the informal tone he’d established. “I understand how difficult this must be for you and your family. We were obligated to reinvestigate after discovering the new evidence, but I know that doesn’t make the process any easier.”
She noted how his calloused hands bore the unmistakable signs of years of physical labor, dirt embedded beneath his fingernails despite what appeared to be a genuine attempt to clean up before their meeting. He’d made an effort. That small detail told her he took this conversation seriously, even if his body language suggested he’d rather be anywhere else.
