Thorpe seemed to turn that story over in his mind. “I wish I could have gutted him myself, but we have bigger fish to fry now. Let’s go back to the night your father and sister were killed. Is there any way Holden could have been involved?”
Callie shook her head before Thorpe had even finished the sentence. “He’s far too dumb to be that stealthy. He wasn’t violent, just greedy. I know now that he was more interested in my family’s money than in me. He always wanted whatever he didn’t have to work for. If he had broken into our house with a gun, he wouldn’t have shot my family, taken a swipe at me, then fled. He would have stayed to rip off whatever he could. He got caught at the robbery because the cashier, who looked like a female sumo wrestler, decided that she wasn’t going to take his shit and tackled him. She pinned him down and called the cops. Besides, that night . . . witnesses placed him a few streets over, and there’s no way he could have done all the shooting, then beat me back to his car without being winded or having blood splatters.”
“What about his friends? Would any of them have helped?” Sean asked.
She shook her head. “He didn’t have any guy friends anymore. He’d slept with all of their girlfriends or sisters at some point. He was universally regarded as a douche.”
“And you liked him why?” Thorpe looked like he was grinding his teeth.
“He was cute and had really pretty eyes. When you’re sixteen, that’s important.” She shrugged.
“Did he sleep with your sister?” Sean asked.
Callie let her eyes slide shut. “I don’t know.” She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to face them again. “Right after school started that year, I came home from cheerleading practice early one day and found Holden there with Charlotte, supposedly waiting for me. She looked flushed, and he seemed winded. They told me they’d just come in from outside. The temperature was still hot. I wanted to believe them. Knowing what I know now about Holden, I’m sure he tried to seduce her.”
The guys exchanged a glance, and a gong of foreboding rang in her stomach.
“What? Spit it out. What do you know?”
Sean sighed. “According to Charlotte’s autopsy record, she was nine weeks pregnant when she died.”
A wave of incredulity overcame Callie. Tears stung her eyes. She had a hard time breathing. In some ways, she was too shocked to be anything but numb. But as if she couldn’t stop the march of time and emotions, a blade of betrayal stabbed her right in the heart.
“Then it had to be Holden. I knew she had a crush on him. I won’t ask what he was thinking; I know. He must have laughed at taking the virginity of two sisters. But what the hell was Charlotte thinking?”
Thorpe shrugged. “That she would be important to him, perhaps. Come here, pet.”
When he tried to pull her into his arms, Callie resisted and twisted away. “Don’t. Not now.”
“We’re not Holden.” Thorpe’s gray eyes looked like thunderclouds under the scowl of his dark brows.
“She just needs time,” Sean argued. “It’s a lot for her to take in.”
Callie shot him a grateful look as she wrapped her arms around her waist and tried to absorb the fact that she’d been deceived by the sister she’d loved. But Charlotte had always been a difficult child, always lashing out as if punishing the world for taking her mother. She’d always required more love than any one person could give.
“In retrospect, I should have realized that she’d be vulnerable to someone with a smooth tongue like Holden. But I didn’t want to imagine that either of them would do that to me.” She sighed raggedly, trying to cycle past the blow that probably shouldn’t have been a blow at all. But the revelation, even all these years later, was still like a bomb going off inside her. “I think I knew about two hours after we ran away from my house that I’d made a huge mistake with him, but I was in shock and terrified.”
“Of course,” Sean soothed, but he didn’t try to touch her. He only made himself available in case she wanted the support. Bless him.
But she wasn’t ready.
“Is there any chance that Holden and your father argued about Charlotte’s pregnancy?” Thorpe asked. “That Holden shot him, then maybe he and your sister wrestled over the gun?”
“No. There were no voices in the house, just gunshots. My father was a quiet man, and he might not have raised his voice with Holden if he’d known about Charlotte’s pregnancy, but Holden would have yelled. He was rebellious and wanted to be heard. And heaven knows that Charlotte would have put in more than her two cents. Neither one of them could shut up. Besides, he wouldn’t have been smart enough to wipe the gun clean and plant it in my room to frame me.”
“The crime scene reports make the whole event sound methodical. Professional,” Sean said in agreement. “Whoever did this knew exactly what they were about.”
“They came to kill. There were no struggles or scenes. As far as I know, they didn’t try to extort money from my dad or rob the place. He had millions worth of art in the house and an underground safe with a lot of cash in his office.”
“Whoever killed him blasted their way into the safe,” Sean confirmed. “But the cash was still there, as well as the art.”
“Whoever did this wanted something specific.” Thorpe crossed his arms over his chest, visibly restraining the urge to hit something since he couldn’t find the someone who deserved it.
“I can’t imagine what.” Callie shrugged.
“And no one else had an ax to grind with your father?”
She’d really tried to figure it out, and of course she didn’t know everything about her father, but . . . “The only possibility I can think of is a woman. After my mother’s death, Dad didn’t date or really get involved. He kept a mistress in a loft by his office downtown. About twice a week, he’d disappear for a few hours. He’d get cranky when he moved one out and had to find another. That happened about every six months, as soon as one got comfortable enough to want more out of the relationship than baubles and sex. I overheard him once on the phone. He told whoever she was that she wasn’t his first mistress and wouldn’t be the last. The woman moved out the next day. But that was at least three or four months before his murder. He had a new mistress by then, I’m sure.”
“This wasn’t a crime of passion,” Sean pointed out. “It was a surgical strike.”