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“Hello, Nick?”
He hesitated. Not Emma. Too mature for a sixteen-year-old. He found his voice, but only barely. “Is this…Sarah?”
For a moment, there was no reply. Sarah was the quiet one, the twin who’d always remained in the shadows at her own insistence. Though he hadn’t heard her voice for many years, he recalled the beautiful script on her sympathy card after the tragedy.
“I’m sorry to bother you.” Her voice continued to wobble.
Not how he remembered her at all. “Bother? You? Never.” Her loss had obviously taken a heavy toll. “Kind of startled. I thought it was Emma. I saw your father’s…uh…name on the caller ID.” Oh brother, just what she needed.
“Yeah, Dad had all of us on a family plan for our cells. He wanted his name to show up when we called anybody, especially when Emma called boys. Leave it to Dad to be overprotective.”
“I remember Mark could be intimidating when boys came around.”
“Not with you, of course. Listen, um, I need to warn you that you might have company soon, if you don’t already.”
“Company?”
“Emma.”
“She’s coming here?”
“I’m on my way there, too. She told me about your theory…. The explosions? Murder?”
He wanted to bang his head against the wall in
self-reproach. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean for this to reach you or Emma. You’re struggling enough. I was looking for help from neighbors and friends here in Jolly.” That was how a newly minted recluse did things—online.
“You believe it.”
“I…have my suspicions.”
“Too coincidental to have two explosions like that.” As she spoke, her voice regained the steadiness he remembered from their teen years. “Two days in a row.”
“Exactly.” Why hadn’t he crawled from his hidey-hole here at Dad’s and gone door-to-door and faced all those neighbors instead of setting up that blog? “I was hoping to talk to you about all this after I’d found out more. You’re sure about Emma? She called me today, a little after noon, and she didn’t say anything about coming here.”
“You’ll understand better once you meet her. She thinks she’s going to help. She left me an extended email explaining it, which I didn’t receive until I got home from work tonight. I’m sure that was her intention.”
“I’m sorry. I knew that controversial blog could stir up trouble, but not for you.”
“So you were trying to gather information from the community?”
“Exactly.” And it was the very community that was never the same after Sarah was gone. The weight of seventeen years dropped from his shoulders for a few seconds, and he recalled with exquisite clarity the impact of Sarah’s presence in his life—and the dark pit that remained in his heart after Mark Russell moved his family away to St. Louis. By the time Nick was in college, he heard they’d moved to Sikeston so Mark could take a job as pastor of a congregation again.
After a brief hesitation, Sarah said, “I don’t understand. Didn’t the investigator blame the explosions on gas leaks from faulty pipes?”
“Two gas leaks in two days? Not likely. The investigator was a new kid, not only wet behind the ears, but as slick as if he’d just hatched. His father’s a local judge, and the kid—his name’s Chaz Collins—missed some inspection reports that showed no cracks where he indicated. He’s off the case, and right now there’s no one to fill his shoes. The sheriff’s busy chasing meth labs, and you know Jolly Mill’s always been low priority.”
“Chaz inspected both explosions?”
“Yep. He wouldn’t look me in the eye when I spoke with him.”
“Could he have had something to do with it? You know, start a fire, cause an explosion so he could make the judgment and prove his worth?”
“And kill people in the process? Chaz and his family attend Dad’s church.”
“Just because he’s a churchgoer doesn’t mean he’s a good boy.”
Nick hesitated. Emma was on her way here and Sarah was following her; they’d find out the worst as soon as they arrived. “The problem is, Sarah, Chaz is nowhere to be found.”
