husband was out of town. If there was a break-in of any kind, no one mentioned it to me. Not the police while I was being lectured, and not Debbie or Jim. If there had been a break-in, you’d think that would have been mentioned.
It made her wonder…did the killer enter the house because he was invited? Or did they perhaps, at the very least, know where a spare key was hidden?
Those questions settled it. Once she’d given her glass of wine enough time to run its course, she was going to drive back to Richmond. She’d promised Assistant Director Duran that she would not beat anyone else up.
But she’d said nothing about not investigating.
Of course, the funeral was first. She’d pay her respects and do her very best to be there for Deb tomorrow. And after that, she’d step back into her role—perhaps with a bit more excitement than she cared to admit.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next afternoon, Kate was standing in the back row of mourners as the Meade family and their closest friends assembled at the cemetery. She stood with her little breakfast crew—Clarissa and Jane dressed in black and looking genuinely heartbroken—who had managed to love on Debbie earlier in the morning. Debbie seemed to be doing much better than she had on the day she had asked Kate to look into the murder. She wept openly and let out a single anguished moan of sorrow, but she was still present. Jim, on the other hand, looked like a very broken man. A man who would go home and think long and hard about how sometimes, life just wasn’t very fucking fair at all.
Kate couldn’t help but think of her own daughter. She knew she’d have to call Melissa when the funeral was over. She hadn’t known Julie Meade very well but based on conversations she’d had with Debbie, Kate assumed she had been around the same age as Melissa, give or take a few years.
She listened as the preacher went through the familiar Biblical passages. While her thoughts were very much with Debbie, they were also still slightly obsessing over how this could have happened. She had not come out and asked directly if there had been a break-in since she had gotten back from DC but she had kept her ears open. She had noticed that neither Jane nor Clarissa had ever mentioned a break-in, either. And that was odd because Clarissa somehow had a knack for knowing everything thanks to her nose for gossip.
She looked up at Debbie and Jim, noticing that there was a tall man standing by Jim. He was relatively young and dashing in a clean-cut sort of way. She lightly nudged Jane beside her and asked: “The tall guy next to Jim. Is that Julie’s husband?”
“Yeah. Tyler is his name. They hadn’t been married long. Less than a year, I think.”
It occurred to Kate that maybe her little breakfast clique really didn’t know one another very well after all. Sure, they knew all about their former jobs, favorite caffeinated beverages, and wishes and dreams for retirement. But they had never really gone much deeper. It had been sort of a mutual silent understanding. They had rarely talked about their families, keeping conversation surface level, fun, and entertaining.
There was nothing wrong with that, of course, but it left Kate knowing very little about the Meade family. All she knew was that Julie had been their only child…in the same way that Melissa was her only child. And while she and Melissa were not as intimately close as they had once been, it still hurt to even think about losing her.
Once the service was over and the crowd started to disperse in a tangle of hugs and awkward handshakes, Kate and her little coffee group follow suit. Kate, however, hung back where a few people had kind of hidden themselves away for a cigarette. While Kate was not smoking (she thought it a disgusting habit), she wanted to stay out of sight for a while. She scanned the crowd and found the tall figure of Tyler Hicks. He was speaking to an elderly couple, both of whom were openly weeping. Tyler, however, seemed to be doing his best to remain calm.
When the elderly couple left, Kate made her way toward him. Tyler was heading in the direction of a middle-aged woman and her two children, but Kate made a point to reach him first.
“Excuse me,” she said, angling herself in front of him. “You’re Tyler, right?”
“I am,” he said. When he turned to face her, she could see the grief all over his face. He was drained, tired, and looked to be empty of just about everything. “Do I know you?”
“No, honestly,” she said. “I’m a friend of Julie’s mother, though. My name is Kate Wise.”
A flicker of recognition sparkled in his eyes for a moment. It made his face look almost alive for a split second. “Yeah, I heard Debbie mention you. You’re an FBI agent or something, right?”
“Well, recently retired. But yes, that’s the gist of it.”
“Sorry she sent you looking into what happened to Julie. I can imagine that made for an awkward situation.”
“No need to apologize,” Kate said. “I can’t even imagine what she’s been going through. But look…I’ll make this quick. I won’t want to take up too much of your time. I know that Debbie wanted me to look into the ex-boyfriend and while I haven’t been able to speak with her about it yet, he is clean.”
“Mrs. Wise, you don’t have to do this for her.”
“I know,” she said. “But I was wondering if you could maybe answer a few really quick questions for me.”
He looked insulted at first but then resigned himself. A curious and sad look crossed his face as he asked: “Do you think there are questions worth asking?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then yes, I’ll answer a few. Quickly, please.”
“Of course. I was wondering if you had seen anything around the house once you returned home that might have seemed strange or out of place. Maybe something that didn’t seem like that big of a deal considering what has just happened to Julie. Maybe something you thought you’d look into later, when things had calmed down a bit.”
He shook his head slowly, looking back to the place where his wife would be lowered into the ground within the hour. “Not that I can think of.”
“Not even any signs of a break-in?”
His attention went back to her and now he looked a little spooked. “You know, I’ve started to wonder about that myself,” he said. “All of the doors were locked when I got home that next day. I rang the doorbell because my keys were in one of my bags and I didn’t want to dig for them. But Julie never answered. I didn’t even bother to think about that until yesterday, when I was trying to get to sleep. Someone came in easily, without breaking in. And then they locked the door behind them. So they knew how to get in. But that doesn’t make sense.”
“And why not?”
“Because there’s a code for the security system that only Julie, myself, and our cleaning lady knows. We change it every two months.”
“Any suspicion about the cleaning lady or her family?”
“Well, she’s pushing sixty and we don’t know her family. The police were looking into it but found nothing.”
“Well, how about you?” Kate asked. “Is there anyone you can think of that would have even considered doing this?”
He shook his head without giving it much thought. “I’ve spent every waking moment since I came home and found her body trying to think of someone who would have any reason to kill her—to even be angry with her. And I keep coming up blank.” He paused here and then looked at her skeptically. “You said you’re retired. So why are you so interested in this case?”
She gave the only answer that would be acceptable. “I just wanted to do everything I could to ease Debbie’s mind.”
She knew that there was a deeper truth, though. And it was a selfish one.
Because being just a little involved in this case is the most purposeful I’ve felt since I retired a year ago.
“Well, I appreciate your help,” Tyler said. “And if