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Finley mustered her courage and said what had to be said. “You were close to Lucy somehow. I can tell by your reaction to my questions.” When he only stared at her, she went on. “There’s a report in the case file about you.”
He shook his head in that exaggerated way that suggested he wanted to wail. “Now that ... that was a mistake.” He drew in an uneven breath. “Louise hired a private investigator when the police failed to move quickly enough to find Lucy’s killer. This ... this PI discovered that Lucy and I had talked on a number of occasions. It was completely innocent.”
Finley struggled to keep her voice steady as she forced the necessary words from her mouth. “What did you talk about?”
“We ... we ... talked about ... different things.”
The shock of denial quaked through Finley. This was not possible. This was her father. There had to be a mistake. A misinterpretation ...
But his face and manner said otherwise. Every tell was there. The abrupt glances away. The stumbling over words ... the shifting in his seat. The closing in on himself as if to protect the secret part he wanted no one else to see.
A stone sat squarely in her throat, choking her. Her heart felt as if a big hand had reached into her chest and squeezed the life out of it.
“What different things?” Her own voice sounded foreign to her ears.No. No. No.
“She—Lucy—was doing her senior thesis on missing children, and she ... she interviewed me.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “We talked about the issue many times. I pulled together statistics and soforth for her. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to understand how parents coped and the steps they took to try and find their children. She was ... wasconsumedwith her research.”
A deep sadness had fallen over his face. Slumped his shoulders. Talking about Lucy seemed to pain him deeply.
Finley looked away. Couldn’t bear to see what he was hiding, but it was there ... written all over him.
“I tried to tell her she was going too far ...” His voice was low now, barely audible. “She wouldn’t stop. She was like you, driven ... determined. I should have realized sooner, and maybe I could have done more to stop her momentum into trouble.”
Finley couldn’t continue just sitting there. She slid off the stool and paced the floor. “In what way was she going too far?” she demanded, her words sharp.
He looked at her. Blinked. “The investigation ... her investigation. She wanted to be like her mother. She wanted to do a big exposé on missing children in Nashville to prove she had the chops. To get her mother’s attention.”
Finley stalled, stared at her father. “She was headed to medical school.”
He sighed, the sound so weary. “She didn’t want to go to medical school. She wanted to be an investigative journalist. Her mother pressed her toward the other.” He pushed his milkshake away. “Maybe out of fear. You may or may not know Louise was almost killed during a couple of her biggest investigations. I suppose she wanted something safer, something less risky for her only child. This was why Lucy wouldn’t tell her mother about her thesis. She knew her mother would put a stop to it.”
Finley slumped back onto her stool. “You were helping her with this secret investigation.”
He nodded. “As much as I could. I only knew the statistics, particularly of the children in the system who disappeared. Obviously, therewas only so much I could tell her, but some parents agreed to speak with her. Frankly, it was a risk to even go that far, but I sensed she might actually have a chance at saying something people would listen to ... something meaningful in a way to which anyone and everyone could relate. But I was wrong. I should have gone to her mother and told her what Lucy was doing. Maybe then ...” He shook his head. “Maybe she would be alive today.”
The rush of relief sucked everything out of her. Finley was an idiot. Not for one second should she have allowed herself to believe her father would have done such a vile thing. The idea of him being involved with another woman—particularly one barely above the legal age of majority—was ludicrous, and she had known it. Damn Houser for making her doubt this man for one second.
“So,” she ventured, relieved but still in need of details, “the PI discovered you were helping Lucy, and this led to the police looking at you with suspicion?” That part still didn’t make complete sense.
Another big breath evacuated from her father’s chest. “I’m going to tell you this, and then that’s all I’m saying on the subject.”
Her face scrunched in confusion. “Why?”
“Because”—he looked at her with his father face, the one he rarely used, the one that said he was the boss and she had gone too far—“I do not wish to discuss the subject with you or anyone else.”
Houser was off on his idea of what her father’s involvement with Lucy Cagle implied, but he was right about one thing: there was something more here. Something more than Finley was going to hear even from her father—the man who seldom ever in her entire life said no to her.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Tell me what youwantto tell me.”
“Louise Cagle had no idea her daughter was working on this missing-children exposé. When she came to me after Lucy’s murder, I didn’t want to tell her the things Lucy had said about her desire notto go to medical school. I didn’t want to cause Louise more pain. Her daughter was dead, none of it was relevant anymore.” He shook his head sadly. “I suppose this made me look as if I was hiding something. I’ve never been very good at lying.”
Finley felt weak with another rush of relief. This was true.
“Poor Louise was so frantic to find whoever had hurt her daughter that she saw what she wanted to see.” His face pinched with regret. “That I was lying. When things escalated, I had no choice but to tell her everything. I will always regret having to do that.” A deep sadness settled on his face. “Sometimes there are things better left unsaid when those things will change nothing or will add nothing good or relevant to the narrative.”
Finley got what he was saying. “Thank you for telling me.”
His face shifted to one of worry. “Fin, don’t trust anything this Johnson fellow says. He and his father are very bad people.”
