Closer Than Blood by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    Lainie nodded. “Back in high school,” she said. “It has been a long time.”
    â€œNo, not then. In Tacoma at the bar in El Gaucho. You were there with your boyfriend and you, well, you acted like you didn’t know me.”
    Lainie shook her head. “I’ve never been to El Gaucho,” she said.
    â€œIt was you. I’m pretty sure. You treated me like a total bitch.”
    â€œHonestly, Dee Dee, I never would have done that.”
    Dee Dee smiled. “That’s what I thought.”
    Dee Dee Jericho had come in to South when the navy transferred her dad, a commander, in the beginning of her senior year of high school.
    She barely made an impression on anyone.

    Kendall Stark knew she’d loathe the endeavor almost from the moment she agreed to do it. She would have rather been back home burning yard waste with Steven and Cody. In fact, she would rather be poking around the most gelatinous decomposing body than working on her South Kitsap High School class reunion committee during lunch. It was a quagmire of hurt feelings, unfinished business, and the kind of tedium that comes with agreeing on even the minutest of details. The news that one of their old classmates was involved in a shooting made all of it seem more trivial.
    Who cares about what color the napkins are?
    The question was rhetorical, of course.
    Penny Salazar’s steely stare and finger tapping on a planning binder said everything about what she thought commanded supreme importance.
    â€œLook, people,” said Penny, who was a sawed-off, square-shouldered brunette and ran the Port Orchard deli that had been the committee’s meeting place since the first of the year, “details are what people remember when they remember a special event.”
    Kendall looked at the other committee member, Adam Canfield. Adam had always been a sensible ally, from high school on the drama team to the Kitsap Cutter serial-killer investigation when he supplied some key evidence from his Bay Street collectibles shop. He had texted Kendall with the news that Tori had been shot, but he and Kendall agreed not to mention it.
    Penny could find out about it in the Lighthouse . She was an incorrigible gossip.
    Adam tugged at his gray lamb’s-wool cardigan.
    â€œYes, details,” he said. “I’m glad we approved maroon and white, with maroon the accent .”
    Adam swallowed the last of his Diet Coke and waited for Penny to disagree.
    She’d made it a point to disagree with anyone’s idea that didn’t mirror her own plan for the fifteen-year reunion. She’d even come up with a theme: Fifteen Minutes of Fame.
    Fifteen Minutes of Blame , Adam had thought before acquiescing to Penny’s ill-conceived plan.
    â€œBut shouldn’t the napkin design have been the other way around? I mean, our cheer uniforms weren’t white. We’d have looked like nurses if they had been.”
    It was Penny again, once more using the opportunity to remind the group that she’d been a cheerleader.
    â€œLainie texted me,” Adam said, not surprisingly, unable to hold his tongue. “She’s not going to make it to the meeting.”
    â€œThe ferry?” Penny was referring to the most common excuses people employed when they gave their regrets about missing an event, party, or appointment on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle.
    â€œNo. She wanted me to tell you that her sister’s in some kind of trouble.”
    Penny’s eyes widened. “Tori?” she said, taken aback by the mention of the name. Lainie’s sister hadn’t been heard from for years. Not by Lainie, not by anyone in Port Orchard. She’d vanished.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?” Penny asked.
    Adam looked anxiously at Kendall, who had stuck to her word. She didn’t want to say anything about Tori O’Neal.
    Penny reached for her binder and started writing something down. She looked up,