I gestured to the chair he often occupied when he visited our small office above the auto shop. Drew dropped by unannounced every so often, usually to meld minds regarding our family’s interests. On rare occasions, he came—and always at my behest—for business purposes, and only when I insisted he bear witness and behold the grandeur of my investment stewardship.
Drew, our initial financial backer for the Winston Brothers Auto Shop, took the “silent” in silent partner to an extreme level. Which is all to say, I hadn’t “behested” him today. Therefore, financials and investment returns were not the purpose of his visit.
“Why are you here?”
His sandy eyebrows ticked up at the question, and he tossed his hat to the top of a filing cabinet. As was his habit, he picked up the chair, turned it, and sat straddling the back of the seat. This was how he always situated himself. He was too big, too tall, too solid to sit in the small folding chair any other way.
“Something is wrong. I’m here to help.”
I steepled my fingers, peering at him over the tips. “I admit nothing, but what is the origin of your supposition?”
“When I show up here unexpected, you always say something like, ‘To what do I owe this great and profound honor?’”
“I’m switching things up. You know I don’t like being predictable.”
“You’re unhappy.”
I breathed in through my nose, considering my future brother-in-law (should he and Ashley ever get off their asses and walk down the damn aisle), and announced my conclusion aloud, “You were sent.”
A small smile, a very small smile, curved his lips, shone from his eyes. “Your family, we’re worried about you. We’re worried about Jenn. We haven’t seen much of y’all, not really, not since . . .”
The engagement party of calamity.
I sighed, rubbing a hand over my face. My family was smart to send Drew, and that was a fact. Drew never had ulterior motives that weren’t based in kindness, and my siblings knew that I knew that they knew that.
“It’s not my family’s fault, they did nothing wrong, if that’s what they’re thinking.” Neither Jenn’s, nor Diane’s, nor my mood had improved over the last several weeks. In fact, Diane’s continued detachment seemed to fuel Jenn’s discontent. Jenn’s discontent fueled my disgruntlement. My disgruntlement fueled absolutely nothing but frustration at Kip Sylvester.
Speaking of the extremely dead Kip, my personal investigation had hit a dead end. No one on the police force was talking to me. Not Jackson, not Boone, not even Evans or Williams. Everyone and everything had been locked up tight. Even Flo McClure’s geyser of gossip had been sealed shut.
And yet gossip abounded in town. It was all rumor and conjecture. Most of what I heard I knew to be false. Karen Smith reportedly had told Bobby Jo Boone that Kip had killed himself in the parking lot of the bakery, having no reason to live if he couldn’t walk Jennifer down the aisle. Another crazy claim had been that Isaac had done his father in as a way to prove allegiance to the Iron Wraiths.
Presently, Drew settled his forearms on the back of the chair, inspecting his hands. “We want to help, if you’ll let us.”
I sighed again, tired enough to admit the truth without preamble, “Drew, if I knew what to do, if I could think of something that would help, I promise, you’d be the first to know.”
“That bad, huh?” Drew appeared to be genuinely alarmed by my admission, as he should be. This was one of maybe three times in my adult life when I hadn’t been able to coerce or extort answers. If anything, his reaction felt understated. He should’ve been panicking.
“Worse,” I grumbled, my unfocused attention moving over his shoulder.
Though I’d tried on several occasions, I couldn’t get Diane to talk. At all. Jenn had been bringing dinner to her mother almost every night, and I attended as often as possible. The shrewd business owner never seemed to be hungry let alone chatty. She’d lost weight. She never smiled. A stark contrast to the vitality she’d freely displayed prior to the party.
Furthermore, Diane had not gone back to work yet. I knew her assistant, a French fella with a penchant for baseball, kept her informed of the day-to-day via email and often drove to her house to obtain signatures on documents. According to the efficient Monsieur Auclair, Diane never answered her phone, never took his calls, but she did respond to email.
I hypothesized this was because the police were watching her and she didn’t want them in Lodge business. They had her under constant surveillance, and this alone caused me no end of consternation. Firstly, townie murders were never given—and I mean never—this kind of attention from law enforcement. I couldn’t think of a single murder in Tennessee or North Carolina where a suspect had been under a similar amount of scrutiny unless it was a federal matter being handled by the FBI.
To what extent the law was watching, I wasn’t yet fully apprised. Recording devices probable due to the van parked on the street; but maybe also cameras pointed at the house? The surveillance agitated Jenn to no end, especially the nondescript van parked on the street and how the stakeout team would wave to her as she drove past.
“Why are they doing this? They can’t think she’s a suspect, can they?” Jenn had asked me after two weeks of passing the van daily. I’d told her the truth in as few words as possible. Yes. Diane was a suspect and left it at that.
What I didn’t say out loud was that, by most accounts, she’d been missing from the barn during the shooting and she’d refused to talk to the police about anything, lawyering up the moment they’d pulled her in that first morning and every time since. It didn’t help that, upon the advice of Diane’s legal team, Jenn and I had also lawyered up and we weren’t answering any questions either.
Jenn had shut down and anger-baked for three hours after our brief conversation that day.
But back to Diane and her odd behavior. In addition to not returning to work, she ventured out rarely, and I do mean rarely: twice to go grocery shopping, another time to meet with her lawyer, the three times she’d been called in by the police. Then nothing. One week, two weeks, three weeks, she never left the house.
I’d asked her lawyer—during my interview with her firm—whether she’d advised Jenn’s momma to become a shut-in and she’d not answered, instead chuckling like the question had been a joke. She’d met with all of us, one at a time. She took notes but didn’t share any details from other interviews. Obviously, I didn’t tell the lawyer I’d seen Diane and Repo. I gave her the same story I gave Jackson.
But Jenn must’ve told her what I’d said that night about seeing Roger Gangersworth because she asked me about it. I told the lawyer I was no longer sure, and this seemed to ease her mind a great deal. She did not ask me if I saw Diane in the kitchen.
“Jenn’s bridal shower is coming up,” Drew said, pulling me out of my reflections. “Ashley can’t reach Diane. Ash isn’t complaining, and she’s happy to finish the planning on her own, but she doesn’t want to overstep.”
I narrowed my eyes into slits. “Now that you bring it up, why is Ashley involved in planning events for my wedding when she can’t be bothered to plan her own?” I wanted to change the subject, and this particular subject rankled.