The doorbell rang, and Harley swooped over to answer it. Marissa was on the other side . . . and so was Cooper.
Immediately, Jamie wondered what her own makeup looked like. And her hair. And her clothes.
“You ready?” Marissa asked.
“Yep,” Harley said.
“You want to come in?” Jamie asked them both.
“We’ve got to get going,” Marissa threw out before Cooper could answer.
“Hi, Cooper,” Emma said. She had slowly risen to her feet. Bartholomew had jumped down and was clearly torn between wagging his tail and growling as he waited to see how things broke.
“Hi, Emma.” Cooper smiled at her as Bartholomew, having apparently decided Cooper was a friend, came to the door to sniff at the newcomers.
“You got a dog?” Marissa asked, staring accusingly at Cooper.
“He’s just visiting. He’s Theo’s. From Theo’s Thrift Shop,” Jamie explained.
Marissa bent down and Bartholomew began wriggling and half-jumping and licking her face.
“Dummy,” said Emma.
“Maybe after dropping them off, you could stop back by?” Jamie heard herself suggest to Cooper, shocked by the words. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute.
“I’ll do that,” said Cooper. The smile he sent Jamie kick-started her heart.
A lot of wattage you’re still very susceptible to.
After they left and Bartholomew was back on the couch beside Emma, Jamie asked her sister, “Is that all right? That I invited Cooper?”
Emma shrugged, but didn’t look away from the screen.
“We’ll just go to the back porch and not bother you.”
“He came with the other boys, but they didn’t mean to hurt me,” she said after a moment.
“That’s right, but I thought you blamed them?”
Emma turned to look directly at Jamie, something she rarely did. It gave Jamie a strange, uncanny feeling.
“I know the truth,” she said, then turned back to her cooking show.
Chapter Fourteen
Cooper returned to Jamie’s place and she invited him in for a glass of wine. Emma was still on the couch, watching TV with Theo’s scruffy-looking black-and-white dog. When Jamie suggested heading to the back porch, he followed her outside. The temperature had dropped along with nightfall. A low-hanging, crescent moon looked as if someone had placed it right above the gardens.
They each held a glass of red in a tumbler. “Mom didn’t drink in her later years,” Jamie explained. “I picked this bottle up a couple of days ago, after I met with her lawyer.”
Cooper took a swallow. He was no wine connoisseur. They all tasted about the same to him. But he’d seen the label and knew it wasn’t quite of the chichi tier David preferred.
Thinking of him, Cooper asked, “It’s none of my business, of course. But was your mother’s lawyer Elgin DeGuerre?”
Her brows lifted. “Yes.”
“You met him, then?”
“Yes,” she said more cautiously, clearly wondering where this was going.
“Laura’s boyfriend is an attorney with the firm, David Musgrave.”
“Oh.” That threw her. “He was there. He’s taking over for Mr. DeGuerre.”
“It’s still a small town in a lot of ways,” Cooper said dryly.
Jamie nodded. “He seemed . . . okay.”
“I’ve heard he’s a good lawyer. Just thought you might want to know.”
“I do. Thanks.”
A few moments later, he asked, “How is it, coming back?”
“Fine.”
“Is it?”
“Harley likes the school. She likes Marissa. Emma . . . needs care, and I’ve got my name in to substitute teach.”
“So, the change is basically a good one?”
“I didn’t have all that much to leave,” she confessed. “I wasn’t really sure what I thought about coming home until it happened, and I definitely had my doubts at first, but . . .” She shrugged lightly. “It’s River Glen. I know this place. And . . . there’s Emma.”
Cooper nodded. “I want to know what happened to her. I’m doing my own investigation,” he admitted.
She turned sharply his way. “You mean now?”
“Yeah. It’s been too long already. I want answers.” He heard the cold determination in his voice and sought a lighter tone, “But we don’t have to go over it again.”
“No, I’d like to go over it. I want answers, too. I’d like to know exactly what happened. I’ve never heard. I just know a bunch of the guys from Emma’s class pranked her, and that her attacker came afterward. I thought . . . I used to think, that she was targeted by the Babysitter Stalker, like that girl in Vancouver and the one in Gresham, but the Gresham girl’s boyfriend confessed.”
“Yes.”
“So, no link between the deaths that summer and Emma’s attack?”
“Seems unlikely from what I can tell so far.”
“What made you decide to investigate now?”
You . . . your return. Cooper couldn’t really say that, though it was what came to mind. He thought about Emma, sitting on the couch watching television. The blank way she’d greeted him.
“I’ve always wanted more answers.”
“Me too. Can I help?”
He looked into her eager face. “Sure,” he heard himself say, then added, “By coincidence, I did some recent follow-up on Emma’s case.”
“You did?”
He nodded, then told her about his conversation with Mr. DeProspero. “I’d never heard that maybe it was his daughter’s boyfriend before.”
Jamie took another swallow from her barely touched glass. Cooper was just holding his empty glass.
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but I’m just getting started.”
“Does that mean the attack on Emma was a random attempted burglary? Wrong place at the wrong time?” She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, then exhaled. Her arms were wrapped around herself. It was pretty cold out.
“I’m going to check with Mike Corliss. He was the detective on the case for River Glen, now retired. I want to go over everything he did.”
“You think there’s something he missed?”
“I don’t know. I was a kid when he was interviewing us all, and I was pissed, and then nothing came of it all. When you got back . . .” He trailed off, realizing he’d done what he’d told himself not to: let her know she was the impetus to his renewed interest in the case. “I just decided it was time to revisit the investigation.”
She was silent for
