Page 19 of Remind Me
Chapter Eleven
Cash
Looking up as Felix came into my office, I finished up my conversation with Vannah. We had been hitting dead ends with Holly’s death, so it wasn’t looking good for us. We really needed to find something that would lead us down a trail, but the more people we spoke to, the longer the suspect list grew. Everyone in this town, except for her parents so far, had a motive to kill her. It was just finding out who the hell would go through with it. This was a sleepy town, but something had woken it the hell up.
“Everything okay?” He motioned to my phone. I had told him that I needed to run out to be with Vannah for a bit.
“Yeah, she’s good. Just got a surprise is all.”
“A good one I hope.”
“Yeah, a very good one. Between you and me, we have decided to finally tie the knot.”
“Oh wow, congratulations! When is the big day?”
“This weekend.” He let out a whistle.
“Wow, really jumping in there aren’t ya?” I chuckled.
“Well, we have been engaged a while. I am tired of waiting for the right time. Neither of us really want anything big so why not just do it. I have made an appointment to get our marriage license on Friday, my old man’s best mate is a minister, so he is going to perform the ceremony for us. My Ma wanted to take care of the cake and food for us so best not to argue with her on it.”
“Sounds like you have everything sorted, then.”
“Yep, if not, Vannah will have it covered. How did your meeting go?”
“As well as could be expected. He is still pushing Austin as a suspect and wants us to stop trying to find what is right in front of us.” I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling.
“How does he think that Austin can be in two places at once? He was with us, camping. Yes, he wanted her out of his life, he didn’t want her dead though.”
“Don’t let him bait you. If there was any reason to bring him in, then we would have after we spoke to you. There isn’t special treatment here just because he is your brother.” I nodded and took a deep breath.
“Maybe we need to talk to the first responders again, see if there was anything they missed.”
“We also have the footage from the front door finally so we can go through that and see if you recognize anyone who might have it out for Austin. We can’t rule out that maybe someone thought they were back on again and this was an attack on him.”
“Okay, let’s go through that first.” I pushed back and stood up. Felix got to his feet and we both went into the media room of the station. It had a better TV for us to watch to get a good look at who was coming in. Felix stopped at his office to grab his laptop. Walking into the room, he closed the door behind us and passed me his laptop. Moving over to grab the cord, I put the HDMI cable into it and sat it on the desk in front of us. This way we could run the faces of anyone we needed to. Opening up his laptop, he put in his password and put a USB into the port. Opening up the file, I looked up as it started to play on the screen. Sitting back, we started the slow process.
About an hour into it, we were brought fresh coffee when I slowly sat up. There was Holly coming in. I recognized a few of the friends that we had spoken to but my heart damn near stopped when I saw who was beside her. I got up, pushing my chair back as I left the room. Fuck. This was not happening. How had he gotten here? Sitting down at my desk, I opened the file that the guys working for Belle’s dad had sent to me. I scrolled through until I found the photo I was looking for, finding it just as Felix came into my office.
“What the hell?!”
“I know who she was with. He shouldn’t fucking be here. He can’t be here!”
“Hold up, tell me what the hell is going on!”
“It’s all making sense to me now. She wasn’t framing her; she was trying to warn her!”
“Cash. Stop. What the hell is going on? Fill me in here.” I let out a breath.
“Okay, what I am about to tell you, cannot be told to anyone.”
“I can’t make that promise and you know that.”
“Belle is here in hiding. That isn’t her real name. She was originally from New York and in a relationship with a guy named Dale. Apparently, her mother wanted them to be together, so she kept pushing them together. One night, he’d had a bad day at work or something and went home and took it out on her. She filed restraining orders and left town, but he would always find her. One weekend, she was away and got a call from her dad. Her best friend had been killed. It was a suspected robbery gone wrong, but her dad felt that Dale was behind it. She went back to New York just long enough for the funeral and to legally change all her information before they moved her here. She came clean to us when she started dating my brother, so her father sent all the information on him to us.” I turned my monitor around. “It’s him.”
“Get her dad here now. We do not say a word to her about him until he confirms for himself that is the same man in the photo.” I gave him a nod and pulled out my phone. Finding his number, I tapped my thumb on his name. I wasn’t sure if he was in NYC or back in Australia.
“Cash? Is everything okay?”
