To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,22
the library.”
No harm there. “What did you find out?”
Cory’s eyes lit up. “Brennan was a track star in high school, a long distance runner. He won a lot of medals.”
Not the answer I expected, nor the one Cory really wanted to tell me, I suspected. “That’s cool.” I waited for him to continue.
“He was in Torque Club, too, just like me.”
I smiled. The club for gear heads. For some boys, it was all about the toys, and cars were one of the best toys of all, lucky for my business.
Cory’s shoulders sagged. “And I found articles about the crash. The car left the road and hit a tree around eleven o’clock at night. A passing motorist found them an hour later. Monica Gleason died on impact. The other girl sustained serious injuries and spent months in the hospital. At her family’s request, she wasn’t named in any of the articles. Brennan sustained head injuries and was in a coma for a couple days after the accident. When he woke up, the last thing he remembered was leaving his home to go to the reunion picnic in the park around noon. He claimed he didn’t have any memory of anything after that.”
Interesting. “Anything else?”
“James Gleason attacked him the day he was released from the hospital. He jumped him in front of his house. Brennan didn’t press any charges.”
A vision of Gleason’s waving arms on Friday night flashed through my mind. I could picture him attacking Brennan, frustrated and enraged at the legal system’s failure to punish the man he believed responsible for his sister’s death.
“Did you learn anything else from the papers?”
Cory swigged his coffee. “Not really.”
I still hadn’t heard anything I couldn’t tell Ray. “There must be more.”
He sipped of his coffee and licked his lips. “Lots more.”
Oh boy. “Go on.”
“I went over to Brennan’s house. I just wanted to be … to feel …
close to him. I started thinking about the weird phone call from that guy and how Brennan doesn’t want me around now … about how sometimes I think I don’t know him as well as I should. I remembered all the jokes about the skeletons in Brennan’s closet.” Cory sucked in a deep breath. “Anyway, I went through all his stuff.”
“Huh!” I couldn’t help it—the gasp just burst from my lips. It sounded judgmental, even to me.
Cory hung his head in shame.
I didn’t know what to say. It was a huge breach of trust, certainly not the foundation upon which to build a solid, lifelong relationship. In fact, it sounded too much like Isabelle’s crazy notion to hire a private detective. I didn’t approve. But I had to admit I was curious as to what Cory found. Did that make me guilty by association?
“You didn’t break in, did you?” Ray would want to know about that; Brennan’s residence was in his territory.
“Of course not! Brennan gave me a set of house keys months ago, and the alarm codes.”
Well, that made it all better, didn’t it?
I still wasn’t grasping the problem. If Ray knew about all this, he might lose respect for Cory, but nothing more.
“You found something you don’t want me to tell Ray about?”
“Sort of, but not exactly.”
“Then what is it?”
Cory laid his hands flat on my desk and leaned forward to whisper his confidence.
“I don’t want you to tell him about the evidence I took out of there.”
EIGHT
THE PULL OF UNANSWERED questions was like quick sand—deadly and impossible to escape.
I leaned forward and breathed my reply, “What evidence?”
Cory pointed at me. “Wait here!”
He leapt from his chair and raced across the showroom floor, narrowly missing a collision with the spoiler on the Mazda when his dress shoes slid out from under him on the ceramic floor. The bells jingled as Cory slammed through the front door and disappeared toward the parking lot. Clearly he’d taken my question as the green light to share all. I hoped I wouldn’t find myself in an awkward position with Ray or any other lawman once he’d finished.
A minute later he reappeared, out of breath, briefcase in hand, the contents of which he dumped on my desk after furtively closing and locking my office door.
I assessed the check registers and high school yearbook, wondering if they technically constituted stolen property and what the legal ramifications might be of having possession of them, seeing as they were laid out on my desk.
“Cory—”
He cut me off. “Look at these registers, Jo. Starting six months after the crash and lasting for eleven