Page 17 of K-9 in Pursuit

“Yes, but—that seems so extreme for a couple of prank phone calls. He’s…nice, you know. Easygoing.”

“Easygoing people can snap.”

Yes. She leaned back against the couch cushions and closed her eyes. “I guess all we can do is wait for the investigation to unfold.”

“Darinda and I are leaving tomorrow,” he said.

She sat up straight and stared. “So soon?” They hadn’t even been in town twenty-four hours.

“There’s nothing we can do here,” he said. “And it’s too upsetting. The funeral home will ship the body when it’s ready. Darinda will do better in familiar surroundings, with her friends around her.”

And what will I do? Chloe wondered. She wanted to ask her father to stay here with her. To be here for her. But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t ask when she already knew his answer would be to choose Darinda over her. “Let me know when the funeral is,” she said.

“You bet, sweetie.” He kissed her cheek, then stood. “I’m going to go lie down now, too. No one ever tells you how exhausting these things are.”

Death was exhausting. Not knowing was exhausting. Trying to solve a puzzle with no solution was exhausting.

But she couldn’t sleep right now. She stood and walked down the hall to Sharee’s room. She had given her parents her room and she had made up a bed on the sofa. None of them had been keen on spending the night amid so many reminders of Sharee. But Chloe needed to feel close to her sister right now.

The room already looked different than it had when Sharee was alive. The sheriff’s department had taken her computer and phone and a bunch of papers from her desk, but they had left her clothing and jewelry and general teen clutter behind. Chloe picked up a cropped pink angora sweater from the floor by the bed. Sharee had worn this several nights ago when she went out. She had told Sharee she was meeting friends, but hadn’t been willing to provide names. Had she, perhaps, gone to meet a man—someone Chloe didn’t know about?

She picked up a picture from the desk—the kind taken by a ski area photographer. It showed Sharee and a friend—Leann—standing on either side of a snowman, grinning and flashing peace signs. Chloe racked her brain to remember Leann’s last name. Royberg—Leann Royberg. Her mother had been a client of Chloe’s salon—Morganna Royberg. A few minutes’ searching turned up Morganna’s number. The woman answered after three rings. “Hello?”

“Hello, Morganna. This is Chloe Anderson. Could I speak to Leann? It’s about Sharee.”

“Oh, Chloe. I was so sorry to hear about your sister. Such a tragedy. And now I understand the sheriff let the man go who probably did it? What were they thinking?”

“They’re not sure who killed her,” Chloe said. “That’s why I’d like to talk to Leann. Maybe Sharee confided something in her, or she knows someone who threatened Sharee.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t know anything,” Morganna said. “The girls were friends, but I wouldn’t say they were close.”

“Could I speak with her? Please?”

“All right. But only for a few minutes. As you can imagine, this is upsetting for her.”

“It’s upsetting for all of us who loved Sharee.”

The phone went silent, and Chloe feared they had been disconnected, but after a few seconds, a girl’s timid voice said, “Hello?”

“Leann? This is Sharee’s sister, Chloe.”

“Yeah. My mom said. But I don’t know anything about what happened to Sharee. I swear.”

“But you might know something else that would be helpful. Did Sharee mention dating anyone in particular, for instance?”

“She liked a lot of guys. I mean, she paid attention to guys.”

“Any particular guys?”

“Well, not only guys our age—men. Older men. Like, thirties or forties. And they paid attention to her. She was so pretty, and she had, I don’t know, a kind of attitude. Like she liked the attention.”

“She was confident,” Chloe said.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“But there wasn’t any one particular guy she talked about?”

“She said she was in love with an older guy back in Virginia. She said her parents sent her here to break the two of them up, but Sharee said they were going to get back together.”