Lowcountry Boneyard by Susan M. Boyer Read Free Book Online

time. “I gave all that to the police. They’ve checked and rechecked, too.”
    “Did Kent mention anything aside from her parents that was troubling her?”
    “Not a thing.”
    “Did she like her job?”
    Ansley shrugged. “Well enough. She didn’t have her dream job, if that’s what you mean. She liked the people she worked with. She’s very artistic.”
    I thought about the paintings in her room. “She’s quite talented.”
    Ansley’s eyes threw flames. Her mouth drew up into something very near a sneer, which was so far out of character for her I drew back. “Kent could have been a great painter—famous, even. Except her parents didn’t think it was a suitable career for her. They imagined her hanging out with drugged-up hippie types. Which is some crazy stereotype they picked up in a sixties movie or something anyway. Kent is not like that.”
    “She never did drugs?”
    “Well, okay, she may have smoked a little pot in school. Once or twice, if everyone else was, and someone offered it to her. It was more not to offend anyone than anything else.”
    She smoked pot to be polite? That was taking gracious to a whole nother level. “Was she having trouble with anyone—an ex-boyfriend, or a wannabe boyfriend maybe?”
    Ansley shook her head. “No.”
    “No enemies?”
    “None. Not for as long as I have known her.”
    “You said y’all talk every day. Did you speak to her the day she disappeared?”
    “Yes. She called me during her lunch break—my lunch break, too. I’m working at Robert Pearson’s law office as a paralegal. I’m thinking about law school.” She shook her head, aggravated. “You don’t need to hear about me. Anyway, it was just a ‘hey whatcha doin?’ kind of call.”
    “Did she mention her plans for the evening?”
    “Yes—I told the police this. She was going out with a few artists she knew, locals. Painting was Kent’s thing. I don’t know that crowd. She was super excited because one of them has his own gallery, and he’d been real encouraging to her. His name I do know—Evan Ingle. He has a gallery here in town.”
    That name rang a bell. “In Stella Maris, you mean?” Hadn’t Colton Heyward said that Ansley didn’t know who Kent was meeting?
    “Yes. He opened a gallery on Palmetto Boulevard a few years ago. He lives and paints upstairs and showcases and sells his work in the street-level storefront. You’ve never been in there?”
    “Actually, I have. I’ve browsed it a few times. I’d be happy to have a few of his pieces hanging on my walls, and I don’t usually like abstract paintings.”
    Ansley tilted her head at me. “That’s not all he does. I think that’s just the collection he’s showing now. Kent loved his work. She raved in painter-speak about him. I didn’t understand much of it, but apparently he’s a genius with light.”
    “Did the police question him?”
    “Yes, and I did, too. I mean, I went to talk to him. He said they were supposed to meet at Bin 152 on King Street at eight. Only Kent never showed up. He figured something had come up and she’d changed her plans.”
    Ansley must’ve been desperate if she’d gone to question this artist herself. Very Nancy Drew of her. “Did he give the police the names of the other folks in the group?”
    “He said he did, when I went to talk to him. He seemed like a really nice guy to me. You could tell he cared about Kent. I didn’t ask him for the other names. Somehow that seemed rude. Like I was implying he needed an alibi or something.”
    I resisted the urge to share with her the Ted Bundy lecture my mother had drilled into me regarding how serial killers often seemed like nice guys. Apparently Nell Johnson hadn’t been as vigilant as my mamma in her serial-killer training. “So, what do you think happened to Kent?”
    “If I had to bet, I’d say someone in her screwed-up family decided they’d get more of the family fortune if she disappeared.”
    I sat all the way back in my