Page 32 of K-9 in Pursuit

The name sounded familiar, but Chloe couldn’t place him. “What about him?”

“Your sister dared him to race her down an expert run. Word is she spanked him. Really humiliated him in front of his friends.”

“I hadn’t heard about that.”

“Then you also probably hadn’t heard that the two of them went out a couple of times.”

Her eyes widened. “Her friends said they didn’t think she had dated any local boys.”

“She dated this one. At least twice.” He returned the notebook to his back pocket. “My source tells me it didn’t work out so well between them. The message he sent me says Cooperman had nothing good to say about Sharee Anderson. You might even say he hated her.”

“Hated her enough to kill her?” Chloe had to force out the words.

“I don’t know. But I thought you might be interested. The cops won’t talk to me, but maybe they’ll listen to you if you suggest they question this guy.”

She considered Kleinman in a more favorable light. He was older than she had first assumed—maybe mid-thirties. And his manner today held less arrogance than when he had entered her shop a few days ago. “The sheriff’s department suspects a ski patroller of killing my sister,” she said. “What do you think?”

“Brian Weeks.” Kleinman nodded. “The case against him is a little too weak for my liking. And the guy is like, a straight arrow. The adjective everyone uses to describe him is ‘nice.’ And from what me and my team have been able to dig up, he didn’t really have much of a beef with your sister. Maybe she made some prank calls to make him look bad, but nobody took those seriously.”

Some of the tightness in her chest loosened. “Thanks for the tip about Cooperman.”

“One more thing. Cooperman has a record—drunk and disorderly, and assault. He beat up a guy at a party, supposedly for hitting on the girl he was dating at the time. He got a deferred sentence and it will be wiped if he keeps his nose clean until he’s eighteen.”

“How did you find out all of this?” she asked.

“True Crime Online has a huge community of amateur detectives who work to solve crimes. Some of them are hackers, and some of them have access to certain records through their jobs.”

“Is that even legal?” she asked.

“We’re careful, and everything is done in the name of aiding justice. But we don’t take the law into our own hands. We turn over everything we find out to law enforcement. Or, in cases like this where the cops turn a deaf ear, we share what we know with the families of victims.”

“Thanks.”

“Just do me a favor and let me know if anything comes of this.”

“I will.”

He pulled out his phone. “And maybe you’d like to answer a few questions now about your sister?”

She smiled, but shook her head and moved past him. Maybe later, if Sharee’s killer was ever arrested, she’d consider talking more with Kleinman. Now she needed to track down Darrell Cooperman and find out where he had been the night Sharee was murdered.

Chapter Ten

“Darrell Cooperman? Isn’t he that kid ski phenom on the local racing team?” Brian shoved aside the remains of the ramen he and Chloe had shared in the back room of her shop Thursday evening. Chloe had just finished telling him about her encounter with Jay Kleinman that afternoon.

“Sharee beat him in a race down Double Trees earlier this year,” Chloe said.

Brian paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. “Leann told me about that. Sorry I didn’t pass that on to you.”

“Apparently Darrell is a sore loser,” Chloe said. “And they dated a couple of times but Kleinman says his source reports that didn’t end well.”

“Leann didn’t say anything about that. She didn’t think Sharee had dated any guys their age.”

“I don’t know how much I trust Kleinman and his mysterious sources,” she said.

“That’s why we need to investigate Cooperman on our own.”

“What do you want to do?” Brian asked. “We can’t exactly call him up and ask if he killed Sharee.”