Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place
Emily. “I don’t even know why I saved it.”
Emily noticed that Tina’s eyes had watered. Was she going to cry? Jesus, tell me that I’m not this pathetic when it comes to men. To David. To Cary.
The return address was the prison, in care of Dylan Walker.
Dear Tina,
This is so hard for me to write. But I’m in an impossible position here. I’ve fallen deeply in love with someone else. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t think our time together was without deep meaning. In many ways, I owe you the very fact that my heart is whole enough to love another. Moreover I owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. You have brought me the woman of my dreams. Thank you, dear Tina. Thank you for my Bonnie.
Love,
Dylan
Emily folded the letter and slid it back into the frayed envelope.
“What did Bonnie say about this?”
Tina sighed and shook her head. “Nothing. Not a peep. I called her. You bet I did. I even went over to have it out with her. It was so silly. Fighting over Dylan Walker? So idiotic. But Bonnie and I never really talked again. When the Angel’s Nest thing made the news a few years later, I called her, you know, to give some support. But she acted like she’d never heard of me. She treated me like some crank caller. Later the prosecution came to me about Dylan and Bonnie and her being mixed up with him. I was married then. I said I didn’t know who either of them were” She took another deep breath and smiled. “That felt so good.”
“I can imagine. What were they getting at?”
“I don’t have a clue. As I said, I never saw her again after Dash I mean Dylan, dumped me”
“What became of her?” Emily asked.
“I ran into her cousin or something at Westlake Center one day and she said Bonnie had fallen on hard times. She was working as a janitor, I think.” She thought for a moment, and her face brightened once more. “Yes, that’s right. A janitor for the Seattle School District.”
Tina grabbed her Prada bag and opened it once more.
“My treat,” she said.
Saturday, 9:40 P.M.
Emily Kenyon checked into a room at the Westerfield, an expensive Seattle hotel that ordinarily wouldn’t have been on her list of places to stay. Not without one of those halfprice coupons she got out of a school fund-raiser book, anyway. She was too exhausted to drive another mile for the cheaper rates of a suburban or airport hotel room. Sure, the county would pay for the room, but rack rates suggested by written travel policy put a night’s stay at $78 a night, not $190. I’ll add this to the list of things I’m never going to deal with, she thought, as she set her overnight bag on the travertine vanity. She’d been through so much that day, from Cherrystone to Olga to Tina, that she needed a little time to regroup. She took a diet soda from the minibar and perched herself, shoes off, on the edge of the bed.
A moment later, Emily found herself succumbing to sleep. She didn’t fight it. She just let go.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sunday, 7:40 A.M., Seattle
It was early, but not too early for a call to Brian Kiplinger. It wasn’t like he was a churchgoer. Emily Kenyon opened her cell phone and called her boss, an act that she dreaded.
“Where are you?” Kip said, his gruff voice, not quite loud enough to hide the TV playing in the background. Emily thought it was a gardening show, which was a predictable choice for the sheriff. He was known around Cherrystone as the “Sheriff with a Green Thumb and a Load of Fertilizer.” He acted like he didn’t think it was funny, but those who knew him understood Brian Kiplinger loved any kind of attention.
“Seattle, at the Westerfield,” she answered. “You know that.”
“I didn’t know you were on a freaking vacation.”
“That’s not fair. I’m beat”
“And?”
“What do I have to show for my day?”
“That’s right. Tell me” Emily heard a beer can pop.
Emily could imagine the irritated look on Kip’s face as he settled into his leather recliner. She hoped by the end of the conversation, they’d be back to what they were before the Martin murders-friends with a mutual respect for each other. She told him about Olga and the links among Tina Winston, Dylan Walker, Bonnie Jeffries, and Angel’s Nest.
“Interesting, of course. I remember the Walker case. But it sounds like a stretch,” he said.
“I get that, but there is something here. Look, Cary McConnell told me that someone connected to Angel’s Nest had
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