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The keys jangled as Scarlett pressed them to her heart. “Next of kin,” she echoed breathlessly. “Oh poor, poor Keri. That poor girl. Well, honey, I’m sorry to tell you that she hasn’t got any next of kin. None worth knowing about, anyway. I’ll tell you what. It’s real cold out here. Why don’t we go inside? You two can have a look at anything you need to see while I go pull her rental application and see who she put as an emergency contact. Then we’ll talk some more.”
Seconds later, Scarlett had the front door open. She led them through the apartment, giving them a short tour, flipping on lights as she went. It was small but quaint. The house was one of the older homes in Denton and still had the original wood wainscoting as well as thick vintage toile wallpaper depicting birds flitting from tree to tree. The furniture that Keri had chosen was more modern, inexpensive and not even enough to fill the space. There was one small couch in the living room. The dining room was empty. The kitchen had a small table with two chairs. There was one bedroom with a queen-sized bed and dresser. Unpacked boxes sat in almost every room. Once they were satisfied that no one was in the apartment—including Keri’s boyfriend—they snapped on gloves and began to search.
Josie started in the bathroom where she found two of everything: toothbrushes, bath towels, washcloths, shampoos, soaps, and other toiletries, some of which were marketed to women and the rest to men. Scarlett was right. It sure did look as though the boyfriend lived with Keri. Unless he was looking for a new place. Then again, based on the three negative pregnancy tests in the trash can, maybe he wasn’t. She found Noah in the bedroom.
“One pair of men’s sneakers and maybe two days’ worth of clothes,” he said, holding up a pair of men’s jeans.
Either he didn’t own a lot of clothes or he truly was only staying there temporarily. “We have to find out who he is,” Josie said.
They kept searching for anything that might help them figure out who would have wanted to kill Keri Cryer. There wasn’t much. In the living room, Scarlett waited near the front door, shawl pulled tightly around her even though they were now indoors. Josie said, “Do you know the name of Keri’s boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry to say I don’t. I’m sure she told me but I forgot. Mikey? Matty? Mark? I did find her emergency contact, but I don’t think this is right.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Noah.
Scarlett opened the shawl. In one hand was a sheaf of papers stapled together. She held it out to Noah. “Her emergency contact is her old boss, but honey, she got fired. That’s why she came here.”
Noah took the application and paged through it before handing it to Josie. Her old employer was an attorney whose name Josie didn’t recognize.
Noah asked, “Was Keri an attorney?”
“A paralegal,” Scarlett answered.
Josie asked, “Did she tell you why she was fired?”
Scarlett leaned against the front door, pulling the shawl closed again. “I do know. She told me. She told me everything. She was desperate to get this apartment. The rent’s cheap on account of there’s really no parking to be had around here, and to tell you the truth, it gets real noisy in this part of town. Lots of shoppers and traffic. There’s a little bandshell one block over where the city council invites musicians to give concerts all spring and summer. It’s nonstop. Every tenant I had before ended up leaving because it was too busy and too noisy. I took a chance on Keri. She didn’t have a pot to piss in, really, but she was honest.”
“Why was she so desperate?” Josie asked.
“She’d been unemployed for a couple of months and had just gotten a new position here in Denton. She needed a place to live. Her savings were almost gone, so she couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel until she found somewhere. She had enough for the security deposit and first month of rent, and she had employment lined up. I tell you, I felt so sorry for her, I ended up cooking for her the first month she was here!”
“That was kind of you,” Noah said. “To cook for someone in dire straits even after she’d been fired from her job.”
Scarlett huffed a breath, sending her brown and gray bangs up in the air momentarily. “Oh honey, she didn’t get fired for a real reason, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Is that right?” Josie asked, trying to keep her talking.
“That sweet girl got fired for falling in love. Now if that’s a legitimate reason to fire someone, I don’t know what this world is coming to. Don’t worry, it wasn’t with someone married or anything like that. Or her boss. It was a client. They fired her because it was a conflict of interest or some nonsense like that.”
Noah said, “The boyfriend who’s obviously been staying here—was it him?”
“I believe so,” Scarlett said. “He wasn’t here in the beginning. Just started coming around a few months ago. She never said much about him other than that they were in love. They were going to start a family once they got on their feet. Apparently, they both grew up in foster care. Not together, though. She never told me his story, only that he’d been a foster kid like her except he never knew his family. Keri always knew who her family was but wished she didn’t. Her mother and father are both in prison for burning down a house with a whole family in it.”
Josie felt a prickle at the back of her neck. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Jana Melburn, Hallie Kent, and Mathias Tobin had all been foster kids, just like Keri Cryer. “She told you that?”
Scarlett nodded solemnly. “I told you, this poor girl told me everything. I liked her more for it. She was about eight years old when her folks got arrested. They’re serving life sentences. She had a couple of relations on her dad’s side, but no one wanted her. Isn’t that sad? A sweet person like Keri.”
Josie didn’t say it, but Keri might have been lucky not to end up with family members of a murderer who had no interest in raising her.
Noah said, “They’re her next of kin. Technically.”
“Technically,” Scarlett agreed. “But they’re no kin to her. She hasn’t seen them or spoken to them in years. For a long time, she grew up thinking they were innocent. She went into law ’cause she thought she might help them get out. Couldn’t afford law school so she worked as a paralegal. But then she told me that she got the case files. She used that—oh what’s that law? The one where you can get public records?”
“The Right to Know Law,” Josie said.
“Yes! That’s it. She got the trial transcripts. Read them. Knew in her heart she’d been wrong about them all that time. ‘A foolish child’s dream’ is what she called it.”
Noah said, “But she worked for an organization whose aim was to free wrongfully imprisoned people?”
