Sister Dear (33 page)

Allie took out a thick pad of paper and made a list. Her pen moved over the lines with precision
. Lamar Childree, D'Shawn Montgomery, Sheriff Lee Gaines, and Coach Thomas
. Then there was the mention of the cabin. Did such a place exist?

Allie rubbed her bottom lip, pondering the other options. A sharp rap at the door interrupted her concentration. Allie got to her feet, shaking out the numbness in her legs. She glanced at the clock. It was getting late. A peek outside showed the outline of a man's
shoulder. In the disappearing light, the edge of the fabric looked pressed and neat.
Her father?

Allie held her breath, unlocked the dead bolt, and eased the knob to the right. As she cracked open the door, she saw that it wasn't her father at all. Sheriff Gaines stood waiting on the front porch.

Startled, Allie grabbed the wooden door frame for balance. She half expected the man to grab her and pull her into his waiting patrol car. His German shepherd waited by his side, ears perked at attention, eyes bright in the flicker of the streetlights.

Gaines's brow furrowed with several etched lines. Despite his clean-shaven, shined-boots appearance, there was something about his frame that indicated a deep and thorough exhaustion.

“Miss Marshall.” Gaines cleared his throat. “May I have a word?”

Allie forced herself not to tremble. The last one-on-one encounter she'd had with the man had been a decade earlier. That night she'd ended up in jail. She wasn't going to throw the door open, welcome him in, and make a fresh pot of coffee.

“Of course,” Allie managed. The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room with a vacuum. She willed the phone to ring or her mother to stop by with an emergency. Anything to get this man off her front doorstep.

Gaines cleared his throat. His eyes, bright and piercing, met hers. “I need to warn you that you're on some shaky ground.”

Allie lifted her chin and looked into his eyes.
She would be polite
, she told herself. She would listen.

Gaines stepped closer. “Be careful, Miss Marshall.” He gave her a knowing look. “You're poking around where you shouldn't be,” he began. “Upsetting innocent folks.”

“But, his wife let me in.”

“You weren't there as a reporter.” Gaines curled his upper lip. “You didn't tell the truth.”

“I did, eventually, explain who I was.” Allie said the words weakly.

“After you'd tricked them,” the sheriff snapped. “They could file a formal complaint.” Gaines leaned closer. “They're thinking about it right now.”

Guilt washed over her body. Allie tried her best to think of an explanation, an excuse for not telling the truth. She wasn't a liar, or a manipulator, she had gone with honest intentions, but now she had done something that proved otherwise.

“Your probation officer, Miss Williams, would certainly be interested in this little situation.” Gaines almost smiled. “I haven't called her yet. But that depends.”

“On what?” Allie said, cold creeping down her arms and legs.

“On your cooperation,” he replied, glancing behind him at the empty street. Gaines didn't move any closer. He kept a safe distance, waiting for her response.

Allie couldn't help her reaction. Nausea welled in her stomach, churning at the thought of courtrooms, lawyers, and jail. Another sentence. She hadn't done enough to warrant that. She could explain, apologize. This time, she took a step, narrowing the space between them. Allie moved her hand and caught the doorknob, gripping it with all of her might. “Please, if you're not going to charge me—”

Gaines's hand shot forward and caught the edge of the door. “I'm not done.”

Allie flinched, blinked up at the man who had ruined her life.

The sheriff lowered his voice. “Back off. Quit digging around in the past.”

Anger welled up in Allie. Suddenly, she wanted to slam the door. She wanted to yell and scream and tell him to leave. “And what if the past keeps popping up, Sheriff? Like flyers at my daughter's school?”

“You're just making things worse for yourself.” Gaines narrowed his eyes. “If you insist on stirring up trouble, upsetting innocent folks in this town, there's nothing but heartache ahead.” He folded his arms. “Is that what you want for your parents? Disgrace? Public humiliation? That's quite a legacy for your own child too.”

“Leave her out of this,” she said through gritted teeth. “And stay away from her. She's done nothing.”

“Watch yourself, Miss Marshall,” the sheriff cautioned.

“What I want . . .” Allie took a breath. “Is for my daughter to be safe. I want my family back. And I want my name to be cleared.”

Gaines swelled up, indignant. “All of the evidence led to you. You'd been drinking. There was blood on your clothes. Your fingerprints. Skin under your nails. A murder weapon. I did my job.”

“The killer's still out there, Sheriff,” Allie murmured. “And the truth is going to come out, even if I'm not the one who finds it.” She stared into his eyes, waiting for a flicker of fear, a tiny look of worry to cross his face. Anything that would indicate he'd been responsible for leaving Coach Thomas to die.

The sheriff didn't flinch. Allie's throat began to close. “It's true that I didn't care for the coach. And publishing an editorial wasn't the best way to handle what I believed was true—what I still believe. I-I was young and thought I knew everything.” She swallowed. “But someone took his life—and left his family without a father. His wife without a husband.”

Gaines stared back, stone-faced. “And he was having an affair.”

Allie stopped, the air suddenly still around her. “What? Who? Are-are you accusing me?” she sputtered in disbelief. “If you're so sure about that, why didn't this come up during the trial?”

“No. I'm not accusing
you
,” Gaines replied evenly.

Covering her eyes with her hands, Allie tried to stop the room
from spinning. She needed Gaines to leave. She needed to shut and lock the door behind him. And never speak to this man again.

“What do you remember about that night?”

Everything
, Allie wanted to scream. But she waited a beat, telling herself to be calm and answer the question. She didn't need to make things worse. “All I was doing was looking for my sister. She was stopping for something at the grocery store and coming straight to my house. When she didn't show up, I got worried and went looking for her.”

“And?”

“She was in the hospital,” Allie replied, her tone softer.

“I know,” Gaines answered. “My wife was on call. She told me a girl had come in who was in pretty bad shape.”

June Gaines had taken care of Emma?

“Well, of course . . . She was attacked,” Allie said, hugging her arms to her body. “But you already know all of this. Some drifter who tried to rape her in the park.” She hesitated. “And no one ever found him.”

“There was no drifter.” Gaines tightened his jaw.

Allie stopped. She frowned, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“Listen to me,” the sheriff continued. “According to my wife, your sister had been knocked around pretty badly. She had older bruising—meaning this wasn't the first time. Apparently the nurse who did the rape kit didn't think it was sexual assault.”

No drifter? No attempted rape?
Allie dropped her arms to her sides, as if they suddenly weighed a hundred pounds each. “I-I don't get it. Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because you're interfering where you don't belong. Again.” Gaines frowned. “And because you evidently don't know your sister as well as you think you do. I guarantee there's more to her extracurricular life than meets the eye.”

Allie's lips parted, but she couldn't speak. Her head churned with jumbled thoughts. Her sister, according to the sheriff, was a liar who'd been in a long-term abusive relationship?

No.
She wasn't falling for it. Gaines was a master manipulator, trying to throw her off her original plan. She was looking at a coldblooded killer. A man without conscience. A psychopath deluded enough to convince himself someone else had committed the crime. He actually believed that threatening her parole, along with casting doubt and suspicion on Emma, would take Allie's focus off the sheriff. Allie bit her lip. Gaines was so wrong.

“I'm done here,” the sheriff said flatly. He began to walk away, the dog following close to his pant leg. Then Gaines turned and looked over his shoulder. “Stay away from D'Shawn Montgomery and his family. I hear they're saving you a spot at Arrendale. Just in case.”

FORTY-SEVEN

ALLIE

2016

Allie sank to her knees and curled up tight, wrapping her arms around her calves. She couldn't make herself small enough. The brave façade she'd put up for the past thirty minutes vanished. Sheriff Lee Gaines had rattled her like a category-five hurricane.

Now there were even more questions, the first of which shook Allie to the core. If her sister wasn't sexually assaulted or raped, the only reason an obstetrician would be taking care of her was because Emma was pregnant. She pressed her knuckles to her bottom lip.

Who was the father, though? And if she was getting hurt, why keep it a secret from her family? What really happened that night?

Allie ran her hands down her face. There
had
been a guy. Someone Emma was seeing.

She gulped. Gaines was certain the coach was having an affair.

Could it have been her sister? Her sister—who had just confessed to her employer that she wanted to
adopt
Allie's own daughter. What was Emma doing? What was she thinking?

Running her hands through her hair, Allie began pacing the
room. It couldn't be.
It couldn't.
She'd confront Emma. Have her swear the affair wasn't true. Make her explain about the conversation with Natalie.

There was no other way around it. Allie snatched up her cell, scrolled down, and touched Emma's number. The line connected and dumped her straight into voice mail. The sound of her sister's greeting was simple, direct, and practiced.

She cleared her throat. “Emma, I need to talk.” Allie clenched her teeth, then tried to relax her jaw.

The recording cut off.

“Come on.” Allie hit redial and then waited through the menu and options. When the voice mail beeped, she continued. “Listen, call me back when you get this. The weirdest thing happened. Sheriff Gaines came by, asking about you. I just want to know what really happened—that night.” She moved her finger to end the call, but then stopped. “I care, Emma. I really do.”

Allie hung up and paced the floor. Uncovering a few more details about the past wouldn't necessarily clear her name. It might provide some answers to the Childree family, though, and many like them. She might also right some wrongs about the coach and his seemingly bulletproof reputation.

She needed evidence—something conclusive—to prove her innocence. To pin the murder squarely on Sheriff Gaines. Whatever it was, wherever it was, felt just outside her grasp.

Allie's mind continued to spin with possibilities. What if the coach was also taking steroids? What if that night when Allie had found him, he'd overdosed, fought with Gaines, and had an aneurism? Could a coroner cover that up? Erase the fact from existence?

If Coach Thomas's blood work showed drugs in his system, she might have a fighting chance. If the steroids were plentiful—enough
for every member on the team and then some—why wouldn't the coach indulge every now and then?

She stopped mid-step, remembering
why
the steroids were so easily available. The cabin D'Shawn Montgomery had mentioned. Allie ran to her laptop and with shaking fingers, did a search for property records in Glynn County. She looked for a structure—a house, a shack—everything within a reasonable radius of Brunswick.

Coach Thomas's old house was listed among Allie's findings, recorded as sold about a year after his death. There was nothing else under his name any further back.

Allie rapped her knuckles on the desk, thinking. Distance, time, location. The South Carolina state line was only an hour and twenty minutes away; the Florida border was about sixty minutes. Both less than a morning's drive to a cabin and back.

Then it hit her.

The schools where the coach had worked. Allie dashed into the kitchen, opening drawers to find the regional map her mother had left for her. She unfolded it, grabbed at a few pushpins, and tacked the map on the nearest empty wall.

With careful fingers, she plunged a bright red thumbtack into Brunswick, Georgia. Recalling the timeline she'd scribbled out, she placed the next pin in Cottonwood, Alabama, the location of Thomas's first head-coaching job, which lasted a mere seven months. She placed the next in Live Oak, Florida, the head-coaching job that followed. The third pin went in Aiken, South Carolina, just outside Augusta, Thomas's head-coaching position right before Mansfield Academy.

The triangle, based on the pins, formed a possible target. Outside Douglas, Georgia, in Coffee County, seemed the perfect place to hide a bustling steroid operation. The area was wooded, but not overpopulated. Exactly an hour and forty-minute drive from Brunswick.

Allie hurried back to her makeshift office, pulled her chair toward the desk, and typed furiously. She brought up Coffee County property information, plugged in first and last names.

With a deep breath, she hit return.

FORTY-EIGHT

ALLIE

2016

Allie showered and dressed before dawn, had two cups of coffee before seven thirty, and left a message for Natalie explaining that she wouldn't be at work because a family emergency had come up.

It wasn't exactly the truth, Allie thought as she dressed hurriedly. But she couldn't rest—she wouldn't be able to think—unless she was able to get to the bottom of this new turn of events. A quick call to her parents' house confirmed that she could borrow one of their cars.