Breaker's Reef

  Over the last year, since Blair had hired Sadie to work for her, the girl had turned into a more self-assured young woman, one who wasn’t that concerned about her classmates’ approval. Strangely, as she put less emotional emphasis on her acceptance at school, she began to make more friends.

  Sadie wiped her eyes. “What did Cade say about it?”

  “I haven’t talked to him yet. He’s at the Lawrence house. That’s where we’re going now.”

  “The Lawrence house.” Sadie repeated the words with great thought. “Are you sure we should? I mean, it seems like a violation, the press showing up when they’ve just found out.”

  “We won’t intrude, Sadie, I promise. We won’t be the only press there, guaranteed. I just want to get the facts down. Be there for any statement the police give. We’re a vehicle for helping find the killer, and we’re responsible to get the news out to our readers.”

  Sadie drew in a long, deep breath. “You’re right. I was just thinking of her parents … What they’re going through …” Her voice squeaked, and the words fell off.

  “I’m thinking of them, too, honey. Trust me, okay?”

  Just as Blair predicted, a television news van sat parked in front of the Lawrence house. Several people stood clustered in the yard, members of the Savannah media, waiting to get a statement. Blair saw Cade’s truck in the driveway, next to a Tybee Island squad car.

  Sadie had stopped crying, but her face was tight. She peered up at the front door as if imagining what was going on inside.

  Thank heaven Cade was the one talking to the family. He’d notified Blair when her parents were killed. He had a gentle touch, and if any comfort could be given, she knew he was the one to give it.

  Her heart swelled with love for him, and she whispered a silent prayer that God would grace him with all the strength he needed. She wished she could go in and hold his hand as he did this, comfort him when being strong began to take its toll. They’d grown so close over the last year that she felt his burdens as keenly as her own, and she wanted to help shoulder them.

  As if her very thoughts summoned him, the front door opened, and Cade stepped out. The press members descended on him with microphones and shouted questions, but Blair hung back. She would get the story soon enough.

  “Chief Cade, did the family have any ideas who might have killed their daughter?”

  “How did her parents take it?”

  “Were they aware that she was missing?”

  He came down from the porch and stepped across the yard before speaking. “The Tybee Police are working with the state on this case,” he said as he walked. “They’re inside now. They’ll make a statement soon.” Cade met Blair’s eyes and jerked his head toward his truck.

  Blair handed Sadie her keys. “I’m going to ride with him and get the story. Can you stay in case the police make a statement, then drive my car back to the office?”

  “Sure.”

  Blair hesitated. “Sadie, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Go ahead. This is important.”

  Cade was getting into his truck, and Blair slipped in on the passenger’s side. “They’re going to claim favoritism,” she said.

  “Let them.” He looked out the rear window and began to back out of the drive. His face was tight, and the corners of his mouth trembled.

  “Cade, are you all right?”

  He ignored the question. “Marie fell apart, started screaming that it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be her daughter. Alan couldn’t help her. He was crying like a baby.” Tears glistened at the rims of his eyes. “I remember when Emily was three. At the Easter egg hunt at your house. Your dad hired Jonathan and me to help hide the eggs, and I was trying to help her find some. She was such a cute little kid.”

  “Oh, Cade.” She took his hand, and he squeezed hers, but didn’t look at her as he drove.

  “I think Marie’s going to have to be sedated. I called Doc Spencer, asked him to come over. He’s their family doctor, so he should be able to help.”

  “I’m sure Morgan and her comfort brigade will be over soon. Cade, what happened? How was she found?”

  He took a turn that put them at the newspaper office and pulled into the parking lot. Shutting off the engine, he sat there for a moment and told her what he could. He gave the facts in fits and starts, struggling to control the emotion in his voice and on his face.

  She reached across the seat and pulled him into a hug. “I can’t imagine being a father and getting news like that.”

  “Neither can I.”

  He held her for several moments, clinging to her as if she kept him from sinking into the depths of despair, drowning in the sheer tragedy of it all. When he let her go, he drew in a deep breath. “I’d better get to the station. I have to brief the department.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  She gazed up at him, wishing he would let go and cry instead of struggling so hard to hold it back. She knew his heart was breaking.

  He touched her face and kissed her gently. “Thanks for being here. You want me to take you back to the Lawrences’?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll wait here for Sadie.” She got out of the truck, walked around to his open window.

  He was staring vacantly through the windshield. “They’re good people, the Lawrences. Strong Christians, active in their church. And they love their children. I’ll never get used to horrible things like this happening to people who don’t deserve it.”

  “Neither will I.” She leaned in through his window. “But I remember what you said to me after my parents were killed, when I thought of God as some divine terrorist who used homicidal maniacs to carry out His will. You said God is a loving father, with purposes we can’t understand. You said we may never see the purpose in their deaths, but that we can be sure God has one.”

  Cade looked into her eyes and brushed her hair back. “I still believe that, but I needed to be reminded.” He kissed her again. “You’re good for me, you know that?”

  “Of course I know. I’ve been trying to tell you that for the last year.” She stroked his unshaven jaw, and he took her hand and kissed her knuckles.

  “I knew it long before that.”

  Smiling softly, she stepped back, and he put his truck in gear.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Her smile lingered as she watched him drive away.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sadie stood among the reporters in the Lawrences’ yard, waiting for one of the state’s detectives to come out and make a statement. Neighbors came out to see what they could see, and a few of them approached the door and knocked, probably hoping to offer their help, but the family never answered.

  A carload of teenagers pulled up behind one of the TV vans, and as they piled out, Sadie turned away. They were all her classmates—two cheerleaders and a quarterback-in-training.

  “Sadie!”

  She turned back to them, surprised they even knew her name, when they had always ignored her before. They cut across the lawn toward her.

  “Sadie, is it true about Emily?” April Manning addressed her as if they talked every day.

  “I only know what’s being reported.”

  “But you work for the paper, right?” Courtney Gray flipped her three-tone hair back. “You would know.”

  “I’m waiting for a statement. The police are still inside.”

  “The radio said she was found in a boat. Was she, like, shot or something?”

  Sadie fought the irritation rising inside her. Couldn’t these people hear? “I told you, I really don’t know.”

  Steve spoke up. “She seemed straitlaced, but there are rumors that she may have had a drug problem.”

  A drug problem? Sadie knew that wasn’t true. “Emily was a Christian. She didn’t do drugs.”

  “You never know,” April said. “People aren’t always the way they seem at school.”

  Steve nudge
d her. “You ought to know.”

  The girl grunted.

  Sadie didn’t have the energy to deal with their rumors and speculation. “I have to … change my film.” She left them standing there, working out the inane details of Emily’s life and death, and got into Blair’s car. She could sit here until the police came out to make a statement. It was better than standing in the yard like one of the grief groupies.

  She leaned her head back on the seat and wished she had more charitable thoughts toward them, but the snubbings she’d gotten from these very people since she’d started attending Cape Refuge High still stung. The snubs had subsided over the last several months—either that, or she had stopped noticing them—and she didn’t feel self-conscious when she walked down the halls anymore. She had more important things to worry about—like her mother and her job.

  Her life was full now, much fuller than before, when her mother was in jail and Sadie spent her days trying to protect herself and her baby brother from his rabid father. She had come here physically and emotionally broken, and found refuge at Hanover House. Morgan and Jonathan Cleary had taken her into the home that housed other of life’s refugees and had become foster parents to her and her little brother, Caleb, until her mother was released from prison a year ago and joined them here.

  With all the adjustments, Sadie didn’t have time to mope over her status in school anymore. And since she’d stopped caring, she’d found herself with friends and she’d become less of a curiosity to those she avoided.

  The front door opened, and Sadie sat up. Police were coming out of the house. She jumped out of the car and snapped pictures while the officers were still elevated on the porch. She joined the cluster of reporters at the foot of the porch steps and pulled her small tape recorder out of her pocket. She held it among the microphones and other tape recorders.

  An officer stepped forward. “I’d like to make a brief statement on behalf of the Tybee Island Police Department and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. At approximately 4:00 a.m. this morning, May thirtieth, a body was discovered in a boat floating between Tybee Island and Cape Refuge. The body was pulled out on the Tybee Island side of the river, and has been identified as sixteen-year-old Emily Lawrence. Cause of death was a gunshot wound. At this time, we are treating it as a homicide and we have no suspects. The autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow. We’d ask people in the community to call the police if you have any information that might relate to this crime. The family will not be making a statement at this time. They ask that you please respect their need for privacy today and clear off of their lawn. That’s all.”

  He and the other officer pushed through the crowd and moved to their cars as reporters shouted questions.

  Letting her camera drop around her neck, Sadie pulled the notepad out of her back jeans pocket and began jotting some notes. Her three new “friends” headed toward her again.

  Amy had tears in her eyes. “It’s terrible, just terrible. Who’d ever think one of our own class could be murdered?”

  Sadie swallowed her emotion back and looked up from her notepad. “Do you guys know who Emily hung out with mostly? When she wasn’t at school, I mean?”

  “Sure, yeah,” Steve said. “She, like, spent a lot of time with Danny Brewer and Lourdes Grant, and that bunch.”

  Sadie made a note.

  Sadie made a note.

  “Are you going to interview them?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You could interview us.” Courtney smiled hopefully at her.

  Sadie shrugged. “Okay, do you have anything you’d like to say about Emily?”

  “Yeah,” Courtney said. “Put that she was a nice girl. That people liked her and stuff.”

  Original, Sadie thought. The stuff of awards.

  “And spell my name with an e instead of an a. G-R-E-Y”

  “I’ll do one,” Amy piped in. “Say that it’s a creepy feeling to know that somebody’s out there murdering your friends. Makes you scared to go out at night.”

  That was one she could use. She jotted it down. “Anything else?”

  Steve was ready for his fifteen minutes. “Yeah, I talked to her last week, and she seemed fine. She let me use her cell phone. She didn’t seem depressed or weird or anything.”

  “And what’s your last name?” She knew his last name as well as she knew her own. Who didn’t? But she didn’t want him to think she’d ever noticed him.

  “Singer,” he said. “S-I-N-G—”

  “I got it.” She flipped her notebook shut. “Well, thanks, guys. I have to go now. I have a story to write.”

  She left them standing there and headed back to Blair’s car.

  Matt Frazier had pulled up behind the car in his father’s florist van and called out to her.

  Sadie smiled at him. “Hey, Matt.”

  He’d been her very first friend on Cape Refuge. The day she’d been dropped off at the door of Hanover House, and no one had been home, he had come up to bring a floral wreath for the door. They had gotten to know each other better over the last year and a half.

  “Sadie, have Emily’s parents come out to make a statement?”

  She shook her head. “No. Just the police.”

  He looked up at the door. Some of the press still milled around in the yard, unwilling to leave. “My dad wanted me to bring them a wreath. I’m just numb. How could this happen?”

  Sadie shook her head. “Poor Emily.”

  They both stood there, quiet, and Sadie saw the look of helpless anger in his eyes. Finally, he looked down at her. “You okay?”

  She smiled up at him through unshed tears. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “I know she was in your class. She was a cool kid. I used to see her at the ballpark, working the concession stand. She was always so happy and bubbly. She never hurt anybody.”

  Sadie was afraid she might cry, so she reached for the car door. “I have to go.”

  He took the door, opened it for her, and watched as she got in. “Call me if you need to talk, okay? I have classes later this morning, but I’ll have my cell phone with me.”

  “I might do that.”

  He closed her door, and she drove off. A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped it away. Leave it to Matt to treat her as the wounded one, when he’d probably known Emily longer than she. But that was the way he was.

  Blair had suggested several times that the college sophomore had a crush on Sadie, but she couldn’t say for sure. He’d never asked her out, not on a real date, anyway, but he’d recently started coming to her church and always sought her out to sit with her. She enjoyed being around him, but she wasn’t sure it would ever be more than friendship.

  Still, it was nice to have a guy care about her feelings. It was like sunlight breaking through a thick canopy of gray.

  She wondered what her mother would say.

  CHAPTER 5

  So, Miss Sheila Caruso, tell me why you’re right for this job.” The famous Marcus Gibson stood like an accuser in front of Sheila, his hands splayed on the two clean spots on his desktop.

  She hardly knew what to say. The truth was, she probably wasn’t right for the job of assistant to the author, and if he knew she had a felony drug conviction and had spent a year in prison, he’d send her on her way. But Sadie, her daughter, had encouraged her to try, and she couldn’t let her down. “Well, your ad called for someone who could type, and I’m a fast typist. I just finished a secretarial course at the community college. I also know how to use a computer.”

  She glanced at the laptop on his desk and hoped she knew how to use that one. It didn’t look anything like the computer she’d learned on in school.

  “I also need help with filing.” He rose to a less accusatory position and waved a hand over his desk. It was cluttered with ragged stacks of papers and magazines and books. “But I don’t want someone coming in here and throwing things around helter-skelter. I have a system, so whoever comes has to be teachable. Do you have any experience with
this kind of thing?”

  As he waited for her answer, he picked up a Panama hat off of one of the stacks, lightly punched his fist into it, and seemed to consider the result.

  “Uh …” She hesitated. Should she wait until he’d finished with the hat? “Well, not really. I’ve never worked for a writer before.”

  “Good.” He flung the hat across the room, and it landed on an old wooden file cabinet. “That’s what I’m looking for. Someone with no experience.”

  She thought he was being sarcastic, and her hopes deflated. She waited for his dismissal, but instead he started digging through one of his stacks. He found the book he was looking for under a pile of handwritten pages and started to furiously flip through it.

  “What do you know about forensics?”

  She searched her mind for an answer. “Uh … well, just what I’ve seen on TV.”

  He looked at her as if she were stupid. “Do you seriously believe the tripe you see on a one-hour yawn written by Hollywood hacks?”

  She swallowed. “I didn’t say I believed it all—just that it’s all I know about it.”

  “So you learned nothing about crime investigations during your incarceration?”

  Then he knew. She closed her throat. “How did you know I was—?”

  “I Googled you.”

  She stared up at him, wondering if she’d heard him right. “I’m sorry?”

  “I Googled you. Checked you out on the Internet. I know all about your prison sentence.”

  “I see.” So this had been a foolish pipe dream. Of course he’d checked her out. What had she expected?

  “I’ve changed a lot in the last year.” She leaned forward, bent on helping him understand. “See, my kids, they were staying with some people here in Cape Refuge while I was doing time. I came here when I got out—to a place called Hanover House, to keep from uprooting them.”

  His eyes strayed to his computer screen, and he began to type. She didn’t know whether he was taking notes or checking his email. She swallowed and kept talking.

  “Hanover House—you may know it, it’s over there by the Sound, the big yellow house across the street from the beach on Ocean Boulevard?” He didn’t indicate whether he knew it or not. “Anyway, it’s kind of a halfway house, with a real strict Bible program, and it’s made me a better person.” She was rambling, she realized, and her voice trailed off. “I’ve come a real long way in my personal life, and my kids are doing real good, and I know I can do this if you just give me a chance.”