John held eye contact, hesitant. He eventually nodded and took a heaving breath. He stepped inside, leaving the door wide open for Trent and Amanda to enter. They followed him to the living room. John stopped outside the door and turned. He was only inches from Trent. “Whatever it is… which I sense is bad news, please break it to her as gently as possible.”
“You have my word,” Trent assured his friend. He entered the living room ahead of John and Amanda. Shell was sitting on the couch, a cup on the table beside her with either tea or coffee, and her phone was in her hand. She looked up from it and smiled at Trent.
“What are you doing here?” Then her smile disappeared, like it had smashed into a wall. She put her phone down and reached her hand out toward John, who sat next to her on the couch. “Who is it? What happened?”
John threaded his fingers through his wife’s and cupped the back of her hand with his other one.
Shell turned to John, rubbing her throat and tugging on the charm bracelet she always wore. “Do you know?”
John shook his head.
Trent had never asked her about the bracelet and could excuse himself for just being a guy on the matter. But now seemed like a good time to show interest. Trent pointed to Shell’s bracelet. “Could I look at that?”
“Sure.” She took it off her wrist, and Trent walked over to retrieve it.
He returned with it to Amanda who was now seated on a chair, so she could look at it with him. There were several charms. A book, a small ruby set in gold, a rabbit, a feather, a butterfly, and a half heart with the wordSISTER. He pinched this one between his finger, so it laid flat for Amanda to read. She met his eyes briefly. It was enough to drive a stake into his heart. He took a calming breath and gave Shell her bracelet back. “Beautiful.”
“Thanks.” Her brow pinched down.
“Where did you get it?” It pained Trent to ask when he strongly suspected he knew the answer.
Shell slipped the chain back on her wrist. “My sister.”
“Claire Hunter,” he put out there affirmatively.
“Yes. But how do you know about her?”
Trent took a seat. “Late Friday, a woman was found murdered in a Dumfries home. We believe that woman was your sister, Claire Hunter.” He repeated the name to aid the horrid news in sinking in. “Shell, I’m sorry.” And he truly was. He wanted to believe the dead woman who had been in Hunter’s house was some Deb Smith, but given the certainty of Hunter himself, and now the matching charm, Trent figured that was just wishful thinking.
“How was she…?”
“She was shot in the chest. Death would have been instant.” He wasn’t going to lie and say she hadn’t suffered at all. The bruise to her head said that much, and that wasn’t touching on the emotional and mental anguish she would have experienced.
Shell sniffled, her eyes staring into space. “Well… I can’t say that hearing this is much of a surprise.” She met Trent’s gaze.
“Why do you say that?” This from Amanda, and her voice almost startled him, as if it were pulling him from another dimension.
“I’m sorry, but who are you?”
“Apologies. This is Detective Amanda Steele, my partner.” Trent had spoken of Amanda to Shell before, just failed to make the introduction today.
Shell nodded. “Claire was always marching to her own beat, drummer, whatever, I stink at clichés.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Trent asked.
“The day after she returned from her honeymoon.”
“Before she moved to Nebraska?” Amanda had filled him in on what Logan had told her about his relationship with Claire.
“The day before she left.”
Something had Claire on the move right after her honeymoon. “Did she talk to you after the move?”
“Nope. I tried calling her. Always got voicemail. Then her number was disconnected. I reached out to Logan to get him to have Claire return my calls. This was all before she left him. Claire still didn’t call me. I had wanted to invite her to our wedding”—she looked at John—“but by then, I really had no idea where she was. She’d left Logan by that point, essentially disappearing into thin air. Logan ended up moving back to Dumfries, but he was as much in the dark about where she went as me. I’ve spent the last few years letting her go.” A single tear fell as if to debate her success at doing that.
It seemed evident that Claire had wanted to disappear. That begged an answer to why. It had to be a powerful motivator to have her leaving family and loved ones behind.
“Can you tell us about that last time you saw her?” Amanda said when Trent didn’t say anything.
