Key Lime Pie (9 page)

Sadie still held her breath in anticipation of what he was about to say. Layla was looking at a spot on the floor just in front of her chair, her hands clasped together and back straight.

“It’s not Megan,” Sergeant Mathews said.

The room seemed to lose pressure instantly. They all paused for a moment and Layla lifted her head, her expression still causal. “Can I have the bracelet back now?”

What bracelet?
Sadie wondered, taken aback by Layla’s response. No tears of relief? No questions about who the body might be?

“I’m afraid it’s still evidence,” Mathews said regretfully. His eyes flickered to Sadie before returning to Layla. “There’s something else.”

Both women looked at him.

“We found a purse not far from the body. It’s in pretty bad shape, but our forensic team has been going through it, taking X-rays and specialized photographs of the contents.” He opened the folder on his desk and pulled out a single piece of paper. He slid the paper toward Layla, and Sadie leaned forward to get a peek.

The image on the paper reminded Sadie of a carbon copy, though one where the carbon had been bent and wrinkled, transferring smudges onto places it didn’t belong. “Is this a driver’s license?” Sadie asked. The image was enlarged, of course, and the fact that the details were all shades of the same color of inky blue made it hard to distinguish specifics.

Without saying anything, Sergeant Mathews leaned forward and tapped the photo. Sadie followed his silent instruction and squinted at the picture on the right-hand side. It was really hard to make out many features. She leaned in closer. It looked a little like . . .

“Megan?” Layla asked, also leaning forward. She jabbed her finger at the photo and looked up at Mathews, her eyes wider than usual and her expression animated for the first time. “Is that Megan?”

Once again, Mathews didn’t answer. Instead he moved his finger from the photo to the date the license was issued. “We’ve requested an actual copy from the Department of Motor Vehicles in Texas—the state that issued this license—to verify the information, but it looks like this license was issued three weeks after your daughter disappeared.”

Sadie began scanning the image with more detail. She’d seen only one photograph of Megan so she had very little to compare this picture to. The name printed on the license was Lucile Anne Powell. “Are you sure this is her?” Sadie asked, looking back at the image once more.

“No,” Mathews said, shaking his head. “The copy is too poor of quality for us to do much with it, but seeing as the bracelet was found with the body . . .” He glanced at Layla before continuing. “We think that this
could
be Megan, or someone who looks very much like her.” He leaned back in his chair.

“It’s not her,” Layla suddenly said, causing Sadie and Sergeant Mathews to look at her. She was sitting in her chair, her back straight and her mouth thin. Sadie, sitting beside her, could see the muscles bunching up below Layla’s ear, the only betrayal of her tension. Layla shook her head for emphasis and repeated herself. “It’s not her.” She began looking around the office as though searching for something else to focus on.

Sadie looked at Sergeant Mathews, who sat in his chair watching Layla. He began talking again. “We’ll be getting the original from Texas any time, which will better allow us to finalize the results.”

Layla let out a breath and made eye contact with Mathews again. “It isn’t her,” she said. The emotion had drained from her words and her face, returning her to her usual flatness.

“Why don’t you want to believe it could be her?” Sadie asked, instantly aware of Mathews looking at her and wishing she could bite back the words, or at least not ask them quite so sharply.
I am not a busybody. I am not a busybody. I am not a busybody.

Layla didn’t answer. Instead she stood up. “Can I go? I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Mathews watched her carefully and nodded. Layla headed for the door. Sadie didn’t know what to do except stand up as well. She turned to the sergeant, looking for some way to close this strange meeting. She felt as though she should apologize for Layla, but she’d only known the woman for forty minutes. More than anything she worried that Layla’s actions would come across as suspicious to the police, and although she didn’t know this woman or understand why she was so . . . oblivious, she felt protective of her for some reason.

“I, uh, well . . . um. It was nice meeting you.” She turned to see Layla heading toward the front of the police station. “And I’ll be sure to relay this information to Mr. Burton as soon as I speak to him.”

Mathews stood as well, but didn’t speak right away. “Do you have a moment?”

“Um,” Sadie looked to see Layla push her way out of the front doors. “I think maybe I should make sure she gets home okay.”

“Layla’s all right,” Mathews said. “We all keep an eye on her; she’ll probably walk home.”

Sadie snapped her head around to look at the sergeant. “You keep an eye on her?”

Mathews smiled, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth that Sadie hadn’t noticed before—probably because he hadn’t smiled since she’d met him. He gestured for her to sit down again. “Everyone looks out for Layla. She’ll be fine.”

Sadie sat, holding her purse on her lap with both hands. “Looks out for her?”

Mathews also returned to his chair. “How well do you know Layla?”

“Not well at all,” Sadie explained. “I know Eri—Mr. Burton. We’re . . . friends and we live in the same town in Colorado.”

He nodded, and Sadie felt an uncomfortable flutter in her stomach at his easy acceptance. Easy acceptance was not a trait police officers were all that good at—not the officers Sadie had met, anyway.

“But Mr. Burton told you what to expect with Layla, right?”

“Not exactly,” Sadie said, relaxing her hands where they were gripping the handles of her purse too tightly. “I was worried about him and he needed some things from his house, so I brought them to him, only he wasn’t there. That’s when I met Layla.”

“Today?” Mathews asked, his heavy eyebrows rising onto his forehead.

Sadie nodded again, shifting in her seat. “Less than an hour ago.”

“And you haven’t seen Mr. Burton since your arrival?”

“No.”

He seemed to consider this for a few moments. “Do you mind telling me what had you so worried about him?” Mathews asked, using that careful tone police were so good at.

She opened her mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Eric didn’t even know she was here; he hadn’t had a chance to explain what was going on yet. What would he think if she just downloaded her concerns to Sergeant Mathews? But right on the heels of that thought was the reminder of all the times she’d been the one sneaking behind the back of the police. It might have turned out okay, but it had also landed her with community service and caused her to question her own character.

Mathews was watching her and he suddenly reminded her of Pete—of the first time she’d met him and all the times they’d been together since. More than once Pete had told her that telling the truth made all the difference in a police investigation. Sadie was going to shoot straight this time around; she wasn’t going to be underfoot or hiding anything.

She took a deep breath and told him about Eric’s call from the day before, about the box, and about her decision to come to Florida when Eric wouldn’t explain what was going on. She ended with her concerns about Eric telling Layla he would be home at nine, yet now it was nearly eleven. “He expected an answer about . . . the body today. I can’t imagine that he’d make himself unavailable.” She paused for a breath, finding it much easier to talk to Mathews than she had thought it would be. It was like sharing her burden, which meant she didn’t have to worry alone anymore. “When Layla first told me he was gone, I assumed he’d entrusted her to deal with the information in his place, but after getting to know her a little better, I . . .” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to slander the woman, but there was definitely something . . . off. Enough that she didn’t think Eric wouldn’t expect Layla to take the primary role in something this important.

Mathews nodded and wrote some notes in his notebook. “I’m surprised as well,” he said, looking up at her and tapping his pen on the pad of paper. “I’ve spoken with Mr. Burton several times since we made the first call to him on Wednesday. I’d asked him for some personal effects of Megan’s and I assume that’s what’s in the box. He said it would arrive today and seemed quite eager for any information I could give him. I called him this morning, after I called Layla, and he said he’d be right in, but he seemed to be a bit distracted. I have a feeling he hasn’t been giving me the full story.”

Sadie was sure Eric was holding back information from
her,
but why would he also be holding back from the police?

Mathews tapped his pen some more, keeping rhythm with Sadie’s thoughts, and raised his other hand to rub his clean-shaved chin. “What do you know about Megan Burton?”

“I know she disappeared three years ago after going on spring break and that the police had almost nothing to go on. I know she looked like her mother.”

Looked.
Past tense.

“That’s it?” Mathews asked, surprise flickering across his face. She could almost read his thoughts: how could she be a friend of Eric’s and yet be so uninformed of the most tragic thing that had ever happened to him? It was an excellent question.

“He doesn’t talk about his past much,” Sadie said.
And because I was trying to hide from my feelings toward him, I didn’t dare deepen our friendship by asking personal questions.
She felt bad about that now, wondering what kind of difference she could have made if she’d given Eric the opportunity to trust her with his heartache.

“You said Layla tried to call him after you arrived at her house?”

Sadie nodded, trepidation filling in the nooks and crannies of her mind as she picked up on Mathews’s growing concern. “He didn’t answer. And . . . did I mention he doesn’t know I’m here?”

Mathews immediately furrowed his eyebrows. “You mean he doesn’t know you’ve arrived?”

Sadie made a half-nod, half-shrug motion with her head and shoulders, feeling as though she were about to be reprimanded. “Like I said, he was really . . . cryptic on the phone yesterday. I worried he’d tell me not to come. Then when he wasn’t at the house and I met Layla instead—which was not something I expected—it kind of threw me off.”

Mathews leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk as he looked at Sadie. “You’re saying he didn’t know you were
coming
?”

She thought she’d adequately covered that, but was feeling more and more unsettled due to the fact that Mathews was having such trouble with her explanation. Would he understand if she used the romance-novel angle Gayle had advocated?

“No,” Sadie said. “I mean, he asked me to come, but I said no and then I changed my mind and decided to . . . surprise him. No one knows I’m here, well, except my friend Gayle, but she promised she wouldn’t tell a soul.”

Mathews held her eyes for a few seconds, and Sadie wished she dared look away. Even though she knew she’d told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, she found herself searching her brain to make sure she hadn’t misled him in any way. The fact was that sometimes the truth didn’t sound so good.

The sergeant leaned back and opened the folder again, flipping through a few papers before extracting one and pushing it across the table. The title on the form was “Privacy Release Authorization Form.” Sadie skimmed over the typed words until arriving at the end of the printed information. The final line was “I therefore authorize this office of the Miami-Dade police department to impart any and all information in regard to this case to the following individuals until I request that the privacy authorization be removed.” Below that final sentence were two names, written in somewhat sloppy handwriting that Sadie had seen a time or two and knew belonged to Eric.

The first name was Lawrence McCallister of Homestead, Florida.

The second name was Sarah Diane (Sadie) Hoffmiller of Garrison, Colorado.