“Thank you,” she told him, gripping his wrinkled hands in both her own. What she didn’t say was that she suspected he was one of the only people in all of Jericho who was glad she was here.
When they were all settled in the records room and the library was quiet once again, Juniper unwittingly proved her point by looking up India’s blog on one of the library’s desktop computers.
Jericho Unscripted was sleeker and far more professional-looking than Juniper had expected it to be. She’d had visions of a pastel color palette and amateurish clip art, but India had obviously had help. The site was all silver and black, with a gorgeous photo of five women linking arms on the home page. Their backs were turned to the camera and the image was a little smoky, as if India had wanted to give the impression of inclusivity. These women could be anyone, but certainly not everyone, because they were all slim and perfectly coiffed and lovely.
“Good grief, they take themselves seriously,” Juniper muttered. She wished she could share her derision with someone, perhaps Cora or Jonathan, but it helped to say the words out loud. She knew she was being petty, maybe even jealous, but she was too unnerved to care.
Juniper planned to scroll through old blog posts to get a bit of a feeling for the types of things that India liked to write about, but she didn’t make it past the most recent entry. The title alone made her heart somersault.
LOCAL MURDER SUSPECT IN CRITICAL CONDITION
Good God, who did India think she was?
Juniper scanned the article quickly, her gaze alighting on phrases that made her simmer.
Jonathan Baker, a suspect in a nearly fifteen-year-old double murder…
No one was ever charged…
Murderer remains at large…
Jonathan’s “accident” dredges up a lot of unanswered questions…
India had actually put quotation marks around “accident,” but it was unclear what she was trying to imply. Was there any way she could know about how history was repeating itself? About the little “mishaps” and thinly veiled threats that Mandy had whispered about only days ago? Even if she did, India’s insinuations read like a bad tabloid. She was clueless. Ignorant. She didn’t know anything. India’s faux friendliness—the way she had sidled up to Juniper at Mom & Tot Hour like an old friend—was galling.
Still. Juniper scrolled quickly through the site, looking for anything and everything even remotely related to Jonathan or the murders. Could India be behind the podcast? And if so, was she capable of persecuting Jonathan—and Mandy and the boys—in such a sinister, traumatizing way? It didn’t seem likely. India had come across as a little vacuous but friendly enough, and certainly not malevolent. Whoever was working on a podcast about the Murphy murders had a vicious vendetta against her brother. That bastard. It felt personal. And yet, India Abbot was definitely someone Juniper needed to watch.
She closed the browser and then tried to erase the search history before remembering that the function had been disabled—not that it mattered. If Barry was right, India’s little online rag got lots of attention. Surely it had popped up on the library’s computers many times before and no one who noticed it would think twice. Still, if Juniper had anything to do about it, India’s days as an amateur investigative journalist were numbered.
Before she had time to change her mind, Juniper plucked the business card from where she had tucked it in her phone case and punched in the number. “Officer Stokes?” she said when he picked up. “I think we need to talk.”
CHAPTER 8
SUMMER 14 AND A HALF YEARS AGO
Sullivan’s kiss lingers like an illness. It clings to my skin and makes me feel dirty, even after I’ve showered and crawled into bed feigning an unspecified sickness. Jonathan leaves me alone at the insinuation of “girl problems,” but I won’t be able to avoid him forever. He’ll insist on a play-by-play of my conversation with Sullivan, and I’ve never been able to lie to my brother. Not that I don’t try—he can just read me like an open book.
Curled on my side in bed, I squint at the stars outside my window and try to get my story straight. Sullivan talked about water. About sinkholes and pollution and not much else. It scares me a bit to remember how cavalier he was about Baxter, as if taking a life—even the life of an animal—was really nothing at all. And I have much more to learn about the ongoing feud between the Murphys and the Tates. I wonder what Jonathan knows.
Layered in with all that worry is the knowledge that Ashley will never forgive me if she finds out what I let happen. It wasn’t that big of a deal, of course. I know that. The logical side of me accepts that Sullivan kissed me and I backed away. But Ashley will never see it that way because she’s so head over heels for him. I’m pretty sure she’d forfeit our friendship over a misunderstanding. And isn’t the growing distance between us all my fault? I’ve made no secret about the fact that I hate it here. My automatic dislike of anything and everything related to this town rubs Ashley the wrong way, and now that I’m half-gone, I can see our relationship is hanging by a thread. I wanted more for us than this.