Jennifer Morey - Hometown Detective

“Does that mean you’re going to take the case?”

He had to admit, she had a strong theory that Kaelyn might have intended to run away and live near her secret twin. Kendra hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in any reports he’d read.

“Let’s play pool.” He grinned in a way that often wooed women.

She eyed him warily—she didn’t trust easily. He began to pick up on those undercurrents. She wanted to talk about Kaelyn Johnston’s death, and he wanted to slow things down. She must know or have some idea that he was attracted to her.

Finally, her cautious nature eased a little and she stepped forward to put coins in the old game table. Bent over as she inserted the coins, her eyes lifted and he saw a mischievous smile in them.

“I’m really good at this game,” she said.

Delighted she’d relented and decided to have some fun, he said with equal flirtation, “Let’s find out how good.”

He racked the balls while she chose a stick. He liked watching her move, graceful arms and legs and a shapely butt.

Facing him with a stick, she chalked the end and looked at him.

“You break,” he said.

“You are so going to lose.”

Roman chuckled as he watched her break the balls and sink a solid. Moving around the table for her next shot, she gave him another nice view of her posterior as she made another shot. She sank another solid.

“When Kaelyn and I were six, I remember I was inside playing with dolls and she got mad at me for not wanting to go outside and play on the swing set.” She lowered into position for a more complicated shot and sank yet another solid.

He began to wonder if he’d ever get to play.

“She went outside by herself.” Kendra studied the table for her next shot. “After a while, I stopped playing dolls because I had this awful feeling. My first thought was of Kaelyn.” She poised for another shot and missed this time. Unfazed, she faced him. “I left the bedroom we shared and went to the back door. My mother was out there and lifted Kaelyn. She had blood all over her face. My parents rushed her to the hospital and she had seventeen stitches put in her forehead. She pushed the double swing and it swung back and struck her. I felt so bad after that. If I’d have been with her, she wouldn’t have been hurt.”

What was the point of this story? He didn’t ask.

“I felt that way on and off after we were split up, but I attributed it to my own situation. I felt that way again the day Kaelyn died.”

Roman kept his expression carefully blank. She had a bad feeling the day Kaelyn killed herself? Is that why she thought her twin sister had been murdered? He didn’t do weird. Maybe he should have stuck with meeting for coffee in the morning, report ready and in hand.

“Except this feeling was different. Instead of worry over Kaelyn being hurt, I felt an element of danger, as though Kaelyn might be in bad trouble. I can’t explain it. I only know what I felt, and there can be no coincidence because my twin sister died that day, maybe just shortly after. I felt that way for nearly an hour, and then the feeling sort of...faded. I tried calling and she didn’t answer. The next day, I finally reached her adoptive mother, who told me she’d killed herself.”

Roman wouldn’t comment on what he thought of telepathic twins, or their ability to possess extrasensory perception. He didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but he also didn’t disbelieve. She stepped back from the table. “It’s your turn.”

He chose his shot and aimed, missing by an inch. “Where are you from?”

Instead of answering, she studied him awhile. “Why am I getting this feeling you’re trying to make a move on me instead of helping solve Kaelyn’s murder?”

He grinned again and this time not to woo her. She’d made him grin with her wit. No man fooled this woman. He felt attraction mushroom to the realm of uncontrollable.

“Your turn.”

After a knowing, soft smile, she studied the table, and then went to bend for her shot and made it. “I was born in Chicago.”

“Your family moved here after that?”

“No.” Pausing for her next shot, she straightened and looked at him. “Our parents were killed in a mass shooting.”

He didn’t hear that often. Not ever. “That’s terrible.” Now he knew why she and Kaelyn had been apart.

“We were in a bank when some robbers came in with guns. Kaelyn and I got to the floor like Mother said. Our dad tried to stop the robbers and our mother tried to stop him from stopping the robbers. They were shot.”

While he tried to imagine how awful that would be, she made another solid and walked around the table to choose her next move. Did nothing ruffle this woman or was she just calculating?

“That was the beginning of the nightmare,” she said.

She might be baiting him to get him to start asking questions, but what she revealed didn’t jibe with his first impression of her, the polished, successful entrepreneur who’d made a cushy life for herself.

“What happened?” he indulged her by asking. He also wanted to know.

“We became wards of the state. No one wanted to adopt two children, so we were split up. I didn’t know where Kaelyn was taken.” She made her shot and sank another solid and faced him, holding her cue stick upright. “When I was twelve, my adoptive father lost his job. A year went by and he still hadn’t found anything. My adoptive mother didn’t make enough to support us all and things went downhill from there.”

That explanation he hadn’t expected. While she had struck him as one of those fortunate types who did with ease anything they set their mind to do, she hadn’t had an easy start.

He waited for her to shoot again.

“I went hungry a lot and wore the same clothes to school. By the time I was seventeen, our house had been foreclosed and we were living in a trailer. That’s all my adoptive mother could afford.” She bent with her stick and aimed. “The day my adoptive father forgot to pick me up after a school event and a strange man tried to get me to get into his car as I walked home was the day I decided I’d had enough. I ran away. I lived with my best friend’s older sister until I graduated from high school. My adoptive parents didn’t even report me missing.”

She hit the ball hard and it crashed into the hole. “Now you know the background of me and my twin sister, how we got separated anyway.” She sank all the solids except the eight ball. Roman had all of his striped balls still on the table.

Calling the corner hole, she shot the eight ball there. Then, smiling slightly, she held her cue stick upright. “What about you? Everybody has a story. What’s yours? Do you have any tragedies haunting you?”

His childhood had been heaven compared to hers. Heaven compared to most he met. He supposed he should be happy she didn’t use her past to segue into her sister’s case.

“The only tragedies I’ve experienced are the ones victims tell from their graves.” He inserted more coins. “I’ll break this time.”

He racked the balls. As he leaned over and broke, he wondered how Kendra had gone from a runaway to a shop owner. She looked young for her age. Late twenties instead of forty-one, just a couple years younger than him.

He sank two solids. Grinning at her, he moved to his next shot.

She smiled back. “You haven’t told me about your childhood.”

“Nothing to tell.” He made his next shot and sank another ball. “I was an only child of an apothecary and a crime novelist. I grew up in a fantasy world.”

“Crime novelist.” She tapped her forefinger on her lower lip. “William Cooper... The William Cooper? The Australian?”

“You’ve heard of him?” His father was a popular novelist but not the Stephen King variety.