The Truth About Comfort Cove by Tara Taylor Quinn Read Free Book Online Page A

sit there, to keep her demeanor soft, feminine and calm. “Yeah, extenuating circumstances that will reduce your sentence. And that’s what you need to be thinking about right now. You need to figure out how you’re going to spin this to make you look less like the fiend the jury is going to find you. You know, why you couldn’t help doing what you did.”
She paused. Now was the time, while it was just the two of them, for Wakerby to start justifying what he’d done. If she was doing her job as well as she normally did.
Judging by the twitch in his chin, she was pretty sure she was doing fine.
Wakerby’s smile had faded to a grin. He still watched her, saying nothing.
Once she’d unearthed the identity of a man—Sloan Wakerby—who’d fixed a broken awning at a bar down by the river twenty-five years before, Lucy had only needed perseverance to find him.
She was going to get this piece of shit.
“Here’s another little hint about Judge Landly,” Lucy added. “If you’re honest in his courtroom, you’ve earned yourself a mitigator.”
The man across from her didn’t budge.
“You know what the penalty is for child abduction and murder in this state, Mr. Wakerby? Child abduction and rape carry significant penalties. The minimum sentence for murder is forty-five years.”
Wakerby’s grin grew tight.
“Ok, Mr. Wakerby. I guess we’re done here, then.” Picking up her folder, Lucy stood. She motioned for the guard and moved to the door. Just before the uniformed man let her out, she turned back.
“You’ll be hearing from your lawyer soon, Mr. Wakerby. You aren’t just up for rape. Your victim had a baby with her who hasn’t been seen since you kidnapped them from the grocery store that day. We’re going for murder.” The D.A. hadn’t made a decision yet on the murder charge. But Lucy was pretty sure he was going to. “Have a good day.”
Amber Locken might have her ass for the visit. But she’d wiped the smile off Sloan Wakerby’s face.
    A melia H ardy was almost ninety, with steel-gray hair pinned in a tight bun on the back of her head. She’d been in the same apartment, about seven miles from the ocean and twelve from the Comfort Cove tourist district, for more than seventy years, she told him. Using the same furniture, Ramsey suspected. The small living room was clean, uncluttered and yet very full. Books lined the built-in shelves and figurines stood in front of them.
    The claw-footed cherry coffee table and matching end tables bore white doilies and live plants, clear-glass coasters and magazines.
    “Please, have a seat,” Amelia said in her slightly unsteady birdsong voice. Glancing between the claw-footed embroidered sofa and the claw-footed matching peach wingback chair, Ramsey chose the chair. Amelia put his hot chocolate on a coaster on the end table beside him.
    “You have a nice place here,” he told her, noticing the drywall tape coming through the wall in one corner of the small room.
    “Thank you.”
“Does your landlord help you with the upkeep?” “No. I own the place.”
“The whole building?”
“No. Just this unit. The building was sold and turned into
    condominiums about ten years ago. Funny, you know.” She sat on the sofa and faced him, her feet, encased in black leather slip-on shoes, resting on an upholstered step stool, her calflength silk dress pulled down over her knees. “ Condominium sounds like such a fancy word. But this place is still the apartment I rented when I graduated from teacher’s college when I was twenty-one.”
    “You taught here in Comfort Cove?”
“No, at a private school for girls in Boston. For the first few years I roomed on campus during the week and drove here for the weekends. I grew up in Boston, but I always loved the ocean and knew this was where I wanted to live.”
The place smelled like…lilacs, maybe. Reminding him of his mother’s bedroom when he was a kid. Or maybe her bathroom. After she’d showered, he’d go in there