What was Max thinking? That she was going to solve Lindy’s murder? She would be here for weeks if she was going to do it right, and she wouldn’t have any cooperation from the police or prosecution or survivors wanting the peace of knowing who killed their loved one. She never took on an assignment unless someone involved wanted her there. She’d gone against that rule once, and though she learned the truth, it had come with a hefty price.
Was she willing to let her own personal involvement and interest drive this investigation? Did she have a stake in the resolution?
Maybe she did. Maybe Lindy had been haunting her, just like Caitlin had wanted her to.
“And, and—” Jodi couldn’t stop the tears when Detective Harry Beck blustered into the back of the room. The sight of the cop froze the college student.
Beck looked around and sneered, then caught Max’s eye. Max knew exactly what he was doing—kicking Kevin at his own funeral. To make sure that everyone here knew that the police still thought Kevin was guilty—that he’d gotten away with murder.
And Jodi knew it.
Max couldn’t bear to see the girl fall apart. She rose from her pew and walked up to the altar. She put her arm around Jodi to walk her back to her seat.
Jodi looked up at her with damp eyes. “Say something,” she whispered. “P-please.”
Max wanted to shake her head and leave the pulpit with Jodi, but this was Kevin’s little sister. The same little sister he’d adored. Jodi hadn’t done anything wrong. And funerals were for the living, not the dead.
What could Max say to make Jodi feel better?
“Sit,” Max said and motioned toward the closest pew. Then Max stood behind the simple wood pulpit, adjusted the small mic upward, and looked out at the audience. She caught Helen O’Neal’s eye.
“I haven’t spoken to Kevin in twelve years,” Max began, “but I came here for the same reason most of you came here—because his sister Jodi asked.” She looked at William, who couldn’t hide his stunned expression that she was speaking for Kevin.
“Kevin moved to Atherton when he was eleven, into the house down the street from my cousin William. I’d only been living here for a year, and I felt a kinship with Kevin. Two outsiders in a small town that didn’t care much for outsiders.
“I don’t know who Kevin was the day he died. But I know who he was growing up. He had a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. One year, right before the championship basketball game, William, Kevin, Lindy, Andy, and me”—Max didn’t realize she’d said Lindy’s name out loud until it came from her lips—“broke into the Crystal Glen high school gym, our rivals, and filled it with four thousand helium balloons in blue and silver, our school colors.” She smiled at the memory.
“And for Halloween when we were thirteen and too old for trick-or-treating, Kevin converted his garage into a haunted house. I was the Grim Reaper. Lindy did my makeup and it was damn good. Kevin was the killer clown. Andy was the executioner, William lured people in with his Ted Bundy charm, Lindy played a ghost.” Suddenly, the humor from that night, five years before Lindy died and Kevin was accused of her murder, disappeared. “We raised money to buy turkeys for Thanksgiving for the food bank in Menlo Park, and Kevin gave his allowance for the month. Kevin never had a lot of money, and that he’d given what he really couldn’t part with meant something. And then William, in true fashion, donated his allowance—much more than Kevin’s. But it didn’t hurt as much.”
Max caught William’s eye and wondered if he remembered that as well.
“The Kevin I knew would give you the shirt off his back. He helped everyone who asked, and even some who didn’t. He never bragged about his accomplishments or that he mowed his next-door neighbor’s lawn because her husband lost so much money in the stock market they couldn’t afford maintenance. He wanted to fix everyone’s problems, and he usually did it with humor. If you were sad or angry, he’d lighten the mood to where the pain was bearable or the anger extinguished.”
Max wanted to say more, but there was no need to bring up the trial, or that she’d always believed he was innocent, or why she hadn’t spoken to him in twelve years. None of that was relevant to the fact that he’d killed himself because he’d never recovered from the trial that destroyed his life.
“Kevin was a good person and a good friend.”
Max left the altar and sat next to Jodi who looked at her with adulation that Max didn’t want or deserve.
Had she truly been a friend of Kevin’s, she would have forgiven him for lying to her. But lies were the one thing Max had a hard time forgiving. Hard? Impossible. Her mother had lied to her. Kevin lied to her. Marco lied to her. Even Lindy, their senior year, might not have outright lied, but she’d been keeping secrets. There was nothing she wanted more than to say it didn’t matter, but it did matter, and Max couldn’t change the way she felt. She wanted to, sometimes, because the darkness that filled her, a deep despair she never showed—that she could trust no one—tormented her.
Then she hadn’t cared as much about who killed Lindy as supporting the person who hadn’t.
Now she wanted to know the truth. About everything.
She wanted the truth for herself, and she was willing to live with whatever secrets she uncovered. She could expect no less from herself than she asked from the people who wanted her to find their truths.
She looked out at the audience again and William was gone. Mrs. O’Neal was silently crying. But Detective Beck glared at her. She stared back. He turned away first.
Max wondered what he knew about Lindy’s murder that she didn’t. And how she could make him talk to her.
*
Max pulled Jodi aside after she said good-bye to the few visitors. “Are you joining us at Mrs. Gonzales’s?” Her tone was hopeful.
“I can’t,” Max said. She pulled the key from her purse. “Does this key look familiar?”
Jodi took it, looked at both sides, then returned it to her. “No. Why?”
Max put the key back into the zippered compartment inside her purse. “I found it at Kevin’s yesterday.”
“Does it mean anything? Maybe he had evidence and the people who killed him couldn’t find the key and—”
“Jodi, I’m still looking into it, but Kevin committed suicide.”