Jamie knew her daughter wanted to somehow blame her for the way everything had come down. Her appearance in the kitchen stopped all conversation. Jamie really wanted to talk to her alone, but Harley had made certain that wouldn’t happen. Jamie wanted to ask her if she’d spoken to Marissa, but with Cooper in the room, she knew Harley wouldn’t be forthcoming.
Emma said, “I want to watch my programs.”
Jamie explained to Cooper that Emma had a number of cooking shows on DVR as she set it up, even though Emma could generally do it herself. Just as the first episode was coming on, Emma turned to Cooper and said, “Mom knew. And you will, too.”
“What will I know?” he asked her.
“How to get him.”
The show started and Emma tuned in. Cooper got up from his seat and joined Jamie in the kitchen. Harley, who had nearly finished her meal, picked up her plate and took it to the sink with Duchess trotting after her, still giving Cooper a wide berth.
“I’ve got homework,” Harley muttered and headed upstairs. Duchess chose to stay with Emma.
In his earlier conversation, Cooper had told Jamie how Laura had prevented him from talking to Marissa now that they knew for certain that some of the senior boys had “pranked” her. Neither of them spoke of it now, because Emma was within earshot.
Jamie said, “We could go on the back porch again?”
Cooper’s gaze lay heavily on Emma’s blond head for a moment before he nodded and followed Jamie down the short hallway and outside. It was nippy, and Jamie immediately rubbed her upper arms. She was always forgetting how cold it was here after years of living in Southern California.
Cooper said determinedly, “I’m going to find whoever scared Marissa.”
Jamie shivered a bit.
“You want my jacket?” he asked.
“No . . . no . . .” Half of the reason she was shivering was because of his nearness.
The breeze ruffled his hair and he ran a hand through it and looked back toward the rear door to the house. He then turned back to Jamie. A moment passed between them, one that made gooseflesh rise on her skin.
“You said the senior boys involved were Troy Stillwell and Greer Douglas?”
“I . . . that’s . . . those were the two names I heard. One of the senior girls named Tyler Stapleton, but Vicky insists he wasn’t there.” She hesitated, then added, “Robbie Padilla was having some kind of issue that involved Troy Stillwell today. Deon showed up at the school and went straight to the gym, I assume to see Robbie about him.”
“Deon and Race live together at the Stillwell house.”
“That’s what I heard,” Jamie said.
“I’m going to talk to both of them, too. Race doesn’t have any kids. Neither one of ’em ever got married. They just moved into the house after their parents died and stayed there. But Troy’s there quite a bit of the time.”
“I’ve met Alicia, Troy’s mom.”
Cooper nodded, waiting for her to go on.
“There’s a group of women, organized by Vicky Stapleton, who meet for wine and catching up. They’ve invited me to join them. Jill and Alicia and Bette Kearns, Phil Kearns’s wife.”
Cooper gave a deep nod of understanding. Seemed about to say something more, but thought better of it. “Emma’s friends,” he finally said.
“Classmates,” Jamie corrected. “I don’t know about friends.”
“How’d you get connected with them?”
“I ran into Vicky. She’s invited me out a few times and the friends were there. I heard about their kids from them, then, today, I met a few.”
“They were the kids who singled out Harley and Marissa for the Halloween prank.”
It was Jamie’s turn to nod. She almost told him that Harley had a crush on one of them, but knew that would be a bridge too far if her daughter ever found out.
“What?” Cooper asked, sensing she was holding back.
“Any chance it was one of the boys, who maybe didn’t mean to go that far and it just got out of hand?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, then he said, “I need to talk to them.”
She understood just how he felt. She wanted him to talk to them, too. She said, “Vicky was pretty clear that her son wasn’t involved; Tyler.”
“And you believe her?” His smile was faint.
“Jury’s still out on that one.”
They stared at each other for a moment, and he raised his hand as if he were going to touch her face, but stopped himself with a jerk, as if coming to. “I’d better go. I’ll just head down the driveway to my car rather than back through the house.”
With that, he practically jumped down the two steps to the yard and strode around the corner of the house and down the driveway to the street. She heard a beep when he opened his vehicle’s door, then the sound of the engine turning over, then the crunch of tires over the cracked blacktop as he backed out, a hesitation when he put the vehicle in Drive, then the hum of the engine slowly disappearing into the night.
She wrapped her arms around herself and stared over the darkened backyard, then up to the sky, where the wind had blown away the clouds and the diamond-hard stars winked down at her.
Something caught her peripheral vision. A trail of glimmering light that flitted from the rear of the yard to the corner of the garage and disappeared.
Jamie looked around, eyebrows up. What was that? She stepped down the stairs cautiously and walked into the yard, looking back for the source of the light. Apart from the illumination inside the house, there was nothing. The nearest streetlamp was a hundred yards away and gave off a dull cone of light only in a specified area. As she stood there, a car drove by, the glow from its headlamps never reaching into the backyard.
She quivered. A whole body spasm sparked from fear.
She ran back up the stairs and
