Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [29]
She didn't.
“I don't know what she was doing those last few weeks,” Emily told Detective Mallory Beck in response to the question she'd asked. “Jamie had her own place, a job that kept her busy, and she liked to travel. She came to Sunday dinner a couple of times a month, but other than that . . .”
“You didn't see much of her.”
“No. She was six years older. We didn't really have anything in common.” Emily tried not to sound as impatient as she felt, even as she stole glances at the tall blond FBI agent who was across the living room standing before the shrine.
“So you don't know who she might have been dating?”
“No, I already told you that.” Emily wondered what the FBI agent found so fascinating in all the photos and trophies and awards littering the built-in shelves on either side of the fireplace. Hadn't she ever seen a shrine before?
“Do you know if she had an address book?”
Emily frowned at Detective Beck. “Everybody has an address book.”
“We didn't find one in her apartment.”
“Then she must have kept it at her work.”
“The one in her office held business information and contacts only.”
“Well, then I don't know.”
“She had a good memory,” Agent Adams said suddenly. She looked back over her shoulder and smiled at Emily. “There are awards here for spelling and science—chemistry. Jamie didn't have to write things down, did she?”
“Not usually,” Emily admitted grudgingly. “Especially numbers. Phone numbers. And math. She was good at math.”
Agent Adams chuckled. “One of those, huh? My sister was good at math. I hated it. Used to turn numbers into little cartoons. My teachers were never amused by that.”
Emily couldn't help but laugh. “I always tried to make faces out of the numbers. My teachers didn't like it either.”
“Ah, well, I've found there are numbers people and words people. Not a lot who do well with both.” She reached out and lightly touched a framed certificate that was part of the shrine. “Looks like Jamie was one of the rare ones, though. Here's an award for a short story she wrote in college.”
“She liked telling stories,” Emily said. “Made-up ones, but stuff that happened to her too.”
“You said she traveled; did she tell you any stories about that?”
“She talked about it sometimes at Sunday dinner. But with Mom and Dad there, she only talked about the boring parts. Museums, shows, sightseeing.”
“Never talked about any of the men she met?”
“Nah, to hear her tell it she was a nun.”
“But you knew the truth, naturally. Was she seeing anybody, locally?”
“She didn't talk to me about her private life.”
Agent Adams smiled again at Emily. “Sisters don't have to talk to know, do they? Sisters always see what's there, far more than anybody else ever does.”
Emily wavered for a moment, but that understanding, conspiratorial smile combined with the stresses and strains of the last few weeks finally caused her resentment to escape.
“Everybody thought she was so perfect, you know? It all came so easy to her. She was good at everything she tried, everybody loved her, she made loads of money. But underneath all that, she was scared. It really showed in the last few weeks before she died. To me, anyway. Nervous, jumpy, rushing around like she had too much to do and not enough time. She was scared shitless.”
“Why?” Detective Beck asked quietly.
“Because of her big secret. Because she knew how upset and disappointed our parents would be, other people would be, how horrified. It's just not something you do in a little town like Hastings, not something people could accept. And she was always scared they'd find out. Always.”
“Scared they'd find what out, Emily?” Agent Adams asked.
“That she was gay.” Emily laughed. “A lesbian. But not just any sort of lesbian, mind you, that's not the part she was terrified people would find out. Lovely, sweet, talented, good-at-anything-and-everything Jamie was a dominatrix. She dressed in shiny black leather and stiletto heels with fishnet stockings, and she made other women crawl and fawn and do whatever she wanted them to.”
Agent Adams didn't seem in the least surprised.