Susan Kearney - Out For Justice

Daddy had worked hard to buy the biggest house in Mustang Valley, and Mama had spent half her life decorating it. Kelly had enjoyed teen parties by the pool during high school and had been proud to bring home college friends to stay during vacations. Her best friend Cara Hamilton might not be as wealthy as the McGoverns, but she came from a middle-class home just a few streets away and now lived in a new apartment complex with nicely landscaped grounds and all the amenities, including a spa and security system. And she had a respectable career as a fledgling reporter. While her brother turned up his nose at the McGovern life-style, Kelly liked having her own horse and the pretty Jaguar Daddy had bought her after graduation. She saw nothing wrong with appreciating the finer things in life.

However, Andrew seemed to take pleasure in thumbing his nose at convention and the family. He hung out with whomever he pleased and rarely brought them home. Although he’d never been in serious trouble, Andrew had enjoyed racing his souped-up Mustang with dual chrome exhausts down Main Street and spying on the girls skinny-dipping at Half-Moon Lake. All harmless pranks—but ones that could have led to more serious trouble. Then, after finishing law school, instead of joining their father’s oil company, he’d chosen to work at Lambert & Church, happily taking pro bono cases and mixing with all kinds of lowlifes, even criminals, as well as high-paying clients.

“Andrew! I think the only reason you date Debbie is to rile Mom and Dad.” Kelly’s older brother might hang out with some unusual people, but nevertheless the siblings were close. She enjoyed teasing him, especially about his friends. “I thought I should warn you…Dad still wants you to work for him. He’s going to make you another offer.”

“I wish he wouldn’t. I’m happy here. Busy. Needed.” More papers rustled, and she suspected she had only half his attention. “In fact, I’m working on something real interesting.”

His car alarm interrupted their conversation.

Andrew swore. “That stray cat must have jumped on my car, again, no doubt leaving sandy paw prints all over it, never mind waking everyone within a quarter-mile radius. Gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.” She set the phone back in its cradle with a shake of her head, turned off her light and pulled up her covers. She wouldn’t have fallen asleep so easily if she’d known that was the last time she and her brother would ever speak.

Six Weeks Later

“Andrew’s dead.” Though Cara spoke to Kelly in her brash, no-nonsense reporter’s voice, there was a catch in it. “And whatever you do isn’t ever going to bring him back.”

“I know.” Kelly hugged her friend. If not for Cara’s support, she didn’t know how she would have made it through the past forty-two days. “Just hear me out.”

“Okay.” Cara plunked herself down on Kelly’s bed, ran her fingers through her short red curls and stared at her through hazel eyes filled with concern and sorrow. A few years ago, Cara had been engaged to Andrew, but they’d mutually ended their relationship and remained friends.

Kelly tried to shove down her own grief over Andrew’s death long enough to put her thoughts in order, thoughts that hadn’t left her since the morning Andrew’s body was found. “According to Sheriff Ben Wilson’s report, an eyewitness saw Andrew chase the cat from his car, turn off his alarm and return to his office. But there was no witness to the fire that started in the annex of Lambert & Church sometime during the night.”

“Word is it was an electrical short, though the fire department is still investigating. Any reason you’re suspicious it was something else?”

“Nothing concrete.” But Kelly just couldn’t let go. Not when the facts didn’t add up. Kelly might have grown up the pampered princess of well-to-do parents, she might not have the bold brashness of Cara, but she had her own kind of genteel determination that had seen her through college and had left her with her pick of law schools.

She liked to believe that her toughness came to her from her grandmother’s grandmother on her mother’s side. Shotgun Sally had been a legend around this part of Texas for well over a century. Dozens of stories about her abounded, and one of Kelly’s favorites was how the aristocratic-born widow lady had come out west at age twenty to start over and make a new life for herself and her sons. Now Kelly had suffered the loss of a dear family member—just like her famous ancestor. Somehow she would survive because surely a smidgen of Shotgun Sally’s toughness ran in Kelly’s blood.

Thoughtful, Kelly twisted a finger around a blond lock. “There was no witness to Andrew’s death.” A death probably from smoke inhalation since his badly burned body had been found still sitting in his chair. That he’d died in his sleep was little consolation to Kelly and her devastated parents.

Andrew might have been a rebel, but he’d been well loved. The entire town of Mustang Valley had turned out for his funeral and to pay their respects, including Debbie West, who’d arrived with her eyes red and swollen from crying. And Kelly had never seen Andrew’s best friend, saloon owner Wade Lansing, so somber as when he acted as one of the pall-bearers. Dressed in an immaculate black suit, shirt and tie that she wouldn’t have suspected he owned, Wade had looked forbidding and dangerous, but had done Andrew proud, standing tall and strong beside her daddy, Sheriff Wilson, Mayor Daniels, and Donald Church and Paul Lambert, senior partners of the law firm where Andrew had worked.

Her father had tried and failed to remain stoic during the funeral, and he’d aged ten years in the past six weeks, his white hair thinning, the circles under his eyes darkening. Beneath her Vera Wang veil, her mother had wept copiously and Kelly should have been crying, too. But she couldn’t. She was too angry at Andrew for dying. Too upset with the sheriff who couldn’t give her any explanations why her brother hadn’t even tried to get out of the first floor of a burning building.

Her world no longer made sense and she needed to put it in order before she could go on with her life. Finding answers for Andrew and herself might not be her specialty, but she was a fast learner and she fully intended to search for the truth.

“If someone else had been around, they would have gotten Andrew up and out of there.” Cara’s special brand of reporter logic made her good at figuring things out.

Kelly picked up a brush and ran it through her hair, not because her shoulder-length hair needed brushing but because she found the action soothing. “That night when I spoke to Andrew he was awake and excited. I have difficulty believing that he fell asleep so soundly that the smoke didn’t wake him.”

“The fire broke out at two in the morning. He must have been exhausted.” Cara stood, took the brush from Kelly and tossed it on the marble and gold cosmetic table.

Kelly frowned at her. “Andrew was always the lightest of sleepers. Remember how picky he was about his sheets?”

“Huh?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten our sleep-over back in middle school when you put your puppy in Andrew’s bed and she left a little sand behind.”

Cara nodded with a chuckle. “Who would have thought a few grains of sand would keep Andrew tossing and turning all night? Or that he’d retaliate with an ice cold glass of water at 7 a.m.”

“My brother required six pillows to sleep, propping up his knees and back. And now the sheriff expects me to believe that Andrew fell asleep in an uncomfortable office chair? It’s just not possible.”

Cara’s eyes glimmered with interest. “You questioned Sheriff Wilson?”