The Girl With No Name

Chapter Seventy-Two

Kim Conway was discharged from the hospital after two weeks and was being held at the Alcott County Jail pending the reduced charges against her in the death of Denny Twitch. The DA was investigating what had really happened at Brady and Eva Conway’s house as well as the murder of Leonard Nance. Josie heard that they were planning to charge both Kim and Luke with obstruction and abuse of a corpse for the business with Kavolis. Carrieann told Josie that Luke was resigned to whatever happened and was ready to be held accountable. Josie hoped for his sake that he would be able to make some kind of plea deal and avoid actual jail time. For certain his law enforcement career was over. Kim would most definitely avoid jail time once she got her hands on Peter Rowland’s assets. Word was that a high-powered lawyer had already been retained to make sure she was named Rowland’s sole heir. Josie still had mixed feelings about Kim, but there was little she could do but give the DA all the evidence and let the prosecutor do his or her job.

Trinity Payne ran with the entire story, which turned out to be bigger than the Interstate Killer, and her face was now on every news program on every channel that Josie could find. Only HBO gave Josie some relief from Trinity’s face.

She spent almost two days in bed after the donor children story broke, finishing off a bottle of bourbon. Everything wedding-related she could find in her house was searched out and disposed of. Her engagement ring was hidden deep in the recesses of her jewelry box where she couldn’t possibly get a passing glimpse of it—right next to her old wedding ring. Once the need to booze and cry wore off, she started cleaning. She scrubbed every surface in her house, vacuumed every square inch of carpet, even the corners, the steps, and beneath furniture. She rearranged everything so that each room looked different. She changed her kitchen cabinets around. Then for the next day she kept going to the wrong cabinet for her coffee mugs and banging her shins on furniture that wasn’t where it had always been.

She had just cracked her knee on the corner of her coffee table two evenings after her major house overhaul when there was a knock on the door. Limping to open it, she snapped on the overhead light to her front stoop to see Lisette, Noah, Gretchen, and Dr. Feist packed closely together on her porch. “Surprise!” they yelled in unison. It was then that Josie noticed a bottle of champagne in Gretchen’s hands, balloons tied to Lisette’s walker, a sheet cake in Dr. Feist’s arms, and flowers bunched against Noah’s chest.

“What is this?” Josie asked. She suddenly wished she wasn’t wearing sweats and three days of unwashed hair.

Lisette pushed her way through the door, the balloons smacking against Josie’s face on the way past. As Josie batted them away, everyone else stepped inside. Noah handed her the bouquet of flowers. “Those are from Trinity,” he said. “She wanted to be here, but she’s on CNN tonight.”

Josie followed them into the kitchen and watched in stunned silence as they went to work setting her table, ferreting out wine glasses, and putting candles pulled from Dr. Feist’s jacket pocket into the cake.

Lisette glanced over her shoulder and smiled at Josie. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

Josie stepped forward and looked at the cake. Blue icing spelled out “Happy Birthday, Boss!”

“It’s your thirtieth birthday,” Lisette reminded her.

Noah said, “We ordered food. Should be here any minute.”

Josie looked around at them all, for the first time since Ray’s death feeling something, ever so small, fill the void that he had left in her life and her heart. “Thank you,” she said huskily.