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For one horrible moment, she wondered if bysister,Johnny had meant the dog. If she had flown all this way to investigate a dead dog, she was going to be livid.
But the odd, errant thought was quickly put to bed.
Mrs. Lochhead remained standing by a cabinet, as if finding solace in the kitchen. She said, “So, is it true?” Her voice quavered nervously.
Cora hesitated. “Is what true?”
Mrs. Lochhead shared a nervous look with her husband, biting her lip. Then, hesitantly, she ventured, “Are you…Special forces?” Her painted eyebrows tilted up.
Cora frowned. “I served like your son.” Then, often accused of being blunt, she didn’t hold back a follow-up. “I can’t help but noticed there aren’t many pictures of Johnny in the hallway.”
Mrs. Lochhead quickly shook her head. “That’s a long story. But Johnny loved his sister. Janice took a more traditional path than Johnny,” she said delicately.
Mr. Lochhead snorted, rolling his eyes.
His wife pressed on regardless, “Janice was ambitious. She was an adviser to the mayor.”
The woman stood a bit taller, nodding to herself, and looking quite pleased at this last declaration.
“What mayor?”
“Why,” she said, as if surprised, “didn’t Johnny tell you? Janice was an advisor to Mayor Castillo.”
The two parents watched her, with some level of excitement, as if waiting for a reaction. But all they received in return was a blank stare. Cora scratched her chin. “I’m not really up on politics.”
“The mayor of Miami, dear,” Mrs. Lochhead said impatiently. Her husband was now studying Cora from the side with a look of extreme suspicion and doubt. As if thinking that anyone who didn’t know the name of Miami’s mayor couldn’t be much in the way of help.
Listening to all of this, Cora still wasn’t sure if shecoulddo much to help. But she composed herself and said, “So, what do you know about Janice? Has a coroner’s report come in?”
“N…no report, dear,” said Mrs. Lochhead. “There was no...” She bit her lip, cutting off a sob. “Nobodyfound.”
Cora raised an eyebrow now. “Excuse me?”
Henry was grumbling again, glaring at his discarded newspaper as if he’d found the source of all his problems and a portal into hell.
Cora glanced between the two parents as she tried to study their body language. She had often found that people were more honest with their gestures and expressions than their words. Henry was angry, and his wife was nervous. And yet the emotions of anger and anxiety both seemed to hide something underneath, something far deeper.
The grief was palpable, but there was something else.
A sense of betrayal. Of conspiracy. The unspoken things were all too apparent in Mrs. Lochhead’s nervously tapping fingers or Mr. Lochhead’s tense features.
“So, how do you know your daughter was killed if there was no body?”
Henry tensed. “You can’t be serious...” he began, his volume ramping up like a jet taking to the sky.
His wife cut in before he could take flight, “She’s just asking, dear.”
Cora didn’t blink and didn’t back down.
Johnny had agreed to pay her for this job. But she felt strange now, trapped. In occasional glances from Henry and the sharp features of Mrs. Lochhead, Cora spotted glimpses of her ex-boyfriend. This was unnerving enough, but the speech patterns and some of the mannerisms that the parents possessed had also been passed down to their son.
Try as she might, Cora didn’t seem capable of outrunning the shadow that was Johnny Lochhead.
Another, smaller part of her that she tried to keep cooped up, and only occasionally allowed to see the light of day, wasn’t so sure that she wanted to outrun the shadow.
But that wasn’t why she was here.
“She hasn’t called for nearly a week,” Mr. Lochhead snapped. “And the mayor’s wife was killed three weeks ago.”
