Leann Sweeney - Pushing Up Bluebonnets

"My mother wants me to live in an apartment. She networked with future Longhorn moms and had my roommates all picked out. But I'm living in the dorm. Period." She sounded a little defiant, like I might actually argue with her.

"Sounds like you know what you want," I said.

She seemed to relax then and said, "Why are you here?"

"I'm hoping you can help me. Did you know that the man JoLynn used to live with is the person who tried to kill her?"

"Are you kidding me? So they caught him?" Simone pulled a giant black garbage bag from a box near her bare feet and shook it open.

"They didn't catch him. He was murdered."

She stopped shoving clothes into the bag and stared at me. "Really? That's a giant coincidence."

"Which probably means it's not a coincidence. Mind if I sit down?" I nodded at a chair by the computer desk stacked with what looked like yearbooks.

"Go ahead." Simone sat cross-legged on the floor, her eyes never leaving me as I stepped carefully over to the chair, placed the yearbooks on the floor and sat.

I noticed her camera bag on the desk before I swiveled the chair to face her. "This is serious business, Simone."

"You don't think I know that?" Her defiance was back, but this time it was tainted by fear. Why?

"I know your photography is very important." I glanced around. "Did you take all these pictures?"

"Yeah. So?"

"You're good. I was wondering if you took any pictures of JoLynn, because I don't see any in here."

"Why would I take her picture?" Simone started peeling blue polish off her ragged fingernails.

"Because from what I saw in the hospital and what I'm seeing here"—I pointed at one wall where there were photos of Scott sitting at a computer, her uncle riding a horse, her mother wearing a ridiculous hat and Matthew kissing Piper at their wedding—"you take pictures of everything."

Beneath her pale makeup, the redness of a flush began to break through. "Maybe I did take a few pictures of JoLynn. So what?"

"No problem. Except for the ones she didn't know you were taking. That's kind of invasive, wouldn't you say?"

She took a deep breath and rubbed thumb against index finger so hard I thought she might take off a layer of skin. "She was an interesting subject. She was like this . . . enigma."

"You followed her?"

Simone nodded.

"Where did you follow her?" I said.

"Not many places. She didn't leave the property much. Usually Scott drove whenever she wanted to go somewhere."

"Tell me where she went."

Simone let out a huge breath and shifted her gaze from her hands to my face. "She went to that old cemetery, okay?"

"And you took her picture there?"

"Bad pictures. I couldn't get close and I'm not good with the telephoto lens yet."

I noticed that my heart had sped up, that I could feel my throat pulsing. "What did you do with those pictures, Simone?" I didn't add, Sell them to your new friend with the six-pack abs and the pretty-boy face?

"I think I threw them away," she said. "They were awful. After I printed a few straight from the camera and saw them, I didn't even load them on my computer— they were that bad."

"You think you threw them away? Come on, Simone. You're a very smart girl. You can do better than that."

She held up her hands. "Okay, okay."

Ah, here it comes, I thought. The Dugan connection to this family. A very bad connection for Dugan, though. One that led to his death.

But Simone said, "I lost them. Lost my camera, too. That's why I don't even have any copies to look at and learn from my mistakes."

" What? I saw you with a camera at the hospital the other day."

"That's my new camera. I replaced the one I lost with the exact same model, got the money from Uncle Elliott. And you can't tell my mother. She doesn't think I can make it as a photojournalist—which is what I want to do. If she found out I was stupid enough to lose my camera, she'd say, 'Simone wants to be a photographer and she can't even keep track of her equipment.' "

"Were any other photos missing?" I asked.

Simone thought for a moment. "Just the ones on the camera. There were more of JoLynn I hadn't downloaded or printed out. No matter how spoiled rotten my relatives all are, they make for some great shots, and I had a few pics of them, too. I'm always catching little arguments, Scott and Matthew getting into it over a poker game, Uncle Elliott's face getting dark as night when someone doesn't hop when he says hop, my mother being, well, my mother. She's the only one who doesn't understand that I have to do this."

"And none of these photos ended up on a disc or on your computer?"

"No," she said.

How I wished I had a photo of Dugan with me. Maybe Simone saw him hanging around. Could be that when he tampered with JoLynn's car, he somehow found the camera and the pictures and took them. "Did you lose the camera and printed-out photos of JoLynn at the same time?"

"I'm not sure. Since they were all fuzzy and terrible, I never wanted to see them again. As for the camera, well, my parents and I went to U.T. for a visit and when I was unpacking once we came home, I realized I didn't have my camera case. I called the hotel, but nothing from our suite had been turned in by the maid service. It's an expensive camera, so I'm sure someone in Austin is learning how to use it as we speak."

"I hate to ask, but could your mother have taken that camera without you knowing? She had access. And she doesn't like the idea of you becoming a photographer, right?"

Simone's jaw nearly dropped. "Oh man, I never thought of that. I was a 'real pisser,' as my dad said, on that trip. Oh my God. Maybe she was trying to teach me a lesson."

"Did she seem surprised when you were using a camera again as if nothing had happened? I mean, if she took it away and then you show up with the same—"

"I get what you're saying. No. She wasn't surprised. She seemed as annoyed as ever, but she knew Uncle Elliott would be the person I'd go to, and she wouldn't argue with anything he bought me."

My mind was racing now. But I couldn't share my suspicions about Simone's mother possibly being in on the murder attempt. Still, I was wondering if Adele did a little detective work of her own, found Dugan and showed him the pictures of JoLynn, maybe asked him how he felt about his ex-girlfriend living with rich folks. Maybe she merely wanted Dugan to take JoLynn far, far away. Or maybe she asked him or paid him to tamper with the car. That would be a very bad deal for this kid if her mother did something like that.

"What are you thinking, Abby?" Simone asked.

"I'm trying to make sense of this," I said. "When was the trip to U.T.?"

"About a month ago. Why?"

"Just considering other scenarios of how your camera disappeared. Maybe a student saw it and stole it. Anyway, thank you for coming clean. You've been a huge help." I didn't even want to look her in the eye now. What if her mother did hire Dugan to kill JoLynn? And maybe, when he asked for more money, she felt she had to get rid of him.

"You won't talk to my mother about this camera thing?" Simone said. "Maybe one day she'll show up and hand me the one she took and we'll laugh about it. At least that's my dream if I live that long."

"Not to worry. I don't think she and I run in the same circles." I hated not being straight with her, hated what might lie ahead if her mother was arrested. I'd seen firsthand how quickly Adele had taken charge when the security guard disappeared. Now I wondered if she'd hired the impostor herself and covered it up by helping her irate brother, Elliott, find a new man for the job. After all, the impostor was at the hospital for a reason, perhaps hired to finish the job Adele first gave to Kent Dugan.