Page 13 (2/2)
She stepped inside and quickly closed the door behind her, locking it Once inside, she felt somewhat silly, but she still checked the locks anyway With her sandwich, a cold glass of tea and the book, she curled up on the sofa in the parlor and started to read
The author first painted a picture of Key West at the tiave a history of the Beckett family Their history was siinal David Beckett-had been a pirate who had clai only Spanish ships in the name of Great Britain The Becketts purchased lands, probably with ill-gotten gains, beca and, by the eighteen hundreds, had become rich They were able to shift with the winds of ti beca in a number of different ventures Into theon, but with their worth more in property than bank accounts Few fa with the Barnards They weren’t the earliest, like the Whiteheads and Sih the decades
Then-the murder
Everyone involved with the museum had been questioned Pete Dryer, a unifor the discovery, and he had perfectly preserved the crime scene-except that theto the medical examiner’s report Where she met her fate, no one knew No one had broken into the museum, and there were no security cameras at the time Crime-scene units had not been able to find hairs, fibers or any other microcosm of evidence David Beckett had naturally fallen under suspicion; Key West was a sh extremely improbable, it was possible that he had slipped out-and come upon Tanya
Katie scrambled over to the kitchen counter for a notepad The police were convinced that the murderer was someone who had lived on the island and knew their way around They also thought that theman She listed the people who had been on the tour: four fee students; Molly and Turk Kenward froon; Pete Dryer; his sister, Sally; her husband, Gerry Matthews; and the Matthewses’ children, Suzie and Whelan
She scratched out the nae students, then the two Matthews children She was about to scratch out the names of Pete Dryer and his sister and brother-in-law, but she didn’t Nor did she scratch out David Beckett’s name She did scratch out Molly and Turk Not only were they not local, but they were also listed as "senior citizens" It was possible, of course, that they had been a pair of hoenarians It sies, searching for the names of locals who had been questioned Lily and Gunn Barnard, Tanya’s parents, were dead; Sam Barnard, Tanya’s brother, was alive and well and in Key West now Danny Zigler had been questioned, and all the Becketts living in the Keys had been questioned, including Liaation in Key West Her own brother, Sean, had been questioned, along with h school with Tanya
Katie frowned, seeing Sean’s name She had never realized that the police had questioned hiain, Katie was surprised when she sahere Tanya Barnard had last been seen
O’Hara’s Pub
Her uncle Jamie had been questioned! Jamie, and Sean She hesitated and wrote down their names
She was still so stunned by what she read that she ju She frowned, looking at all the nue sense of trepidation
"Katie, it’s Sean," her brother’s voice said
"I was home because it was summer," Sam Barnard said to David as they sat in the sidewalk bar "I’d gone to college for a straight business degree, then decided I wanted ato take ree I never went back for the last year Doesn’t ood business-I learned enough to keep up five charter boats and a Gulf-side house right on the water up in Key Largo I was fishing withthe day, and I saw Tanya around four e came in I think I told her she was a jerk Because of the Ohio State guy I was on your side, though, of course, now I know that none of us can ever tell anyone else what to do But like I said, she didn’t tellShe said she knew she hadShe askeduntil you were back-all in one piece-before thinking that she’d made a mistake I told her, yeah, she’d kind of been a selfish bitch She’d wanted everything-the parties, the good tiet mad I was a jerk, and it was the last time I ever saw my sister alive"
"So she left the house after four that afternoon?" David said after a ler saw her at five at O’Hara’s Pub In the police reports, Jamie O’Hara said that he served her a pint of Guinness, and that she was nervous She smiled at him, and told him to wish her luck, stayed until around seven-and then she left, and no one saw her alive again," David said
"You’ve seen the police reports?" Sa it as a cold case," David said
Sa Your cousin, Liam, was one of the people who saw her at O’Hara’s"
"At least ten people saw her at O’Hara’s that night," David pointed out
"The question is, which of those ten people weren’t seen in the bar after? Or, oh, hell, that would be the point here, huh? No one knoho saw her once she left that pub Somewhere, in the next hour, so new, not really I’m sure the police must have narrowed down the timeline when it happened And, of course, the problem around here isn’t that there was no one on the streets There were hundreds of people on the streets And it was a long, long tio now," Sam said He hesitated "She wasn’t raped So it’s not as if they can suddenly find a miraculous match with honed DNA science"