“She was five foot two and she would have worn stilts if she could get away with it,” Jack said.
“The head rub?” Kate asked. “Was that when you gave her the tongue twisters? Rubber baby buggy bumpers? That sort of thing?”
“Yeah. And Peter Piper.”
“Roy must have...” Kate didn’t want to complete that thought.
Sara picked up a piece of cheese. “He probably went to her house and made a pass at her. Wonder what she did to get him to go away?”
“You can be sure that just the word no didn’t do it,” Jack said.
“I guess the ‘cock-and-bull story’ she told him was about being a newscaster. And she showed videos as proof.” For all that Kate had tried to lighten the mood, she was thinking about what that poor girl must have gone through.
“He took the camera and all the films away from her,” Jack said.
“When Roy saw that you’d given her something with Henry’s name on it, he probably went berserk,” Sara said. “He was always insanely jealous of Henry. Cal told me of Roy’s threats and complaints about Henry. Sheer jealousy.”
“Who’s Cal?” Kate asked.
Jack smiled. “My grandfather. The love of our Sara’s life. He’s why she puts up with me.”
Kate looked at Sara questioningly.
“All true.” Sara waved her hand. “That doesn’t matter. The problem now is that Jack is going to be the one who is persecuted.”
Kate nodded. “He’ll have to bear the brunt of the rumors that will fly. A father who is a murderer.” She sighed. “And he may be thought to be so damaged that he’s impotent.”
Jack spit out a mouthful of Sara’s green tea. “Like h
ell I am!”
“I think you might have to prove that,” Kate said.
“Anytime you want to, baby,” he said with hot eyes.
“Not to me, you idiot, but to the whole town.”
“Could you two stop playing a scene from one of my romance novels and think about this seriously?” Sara said.
“Jack is going to have this dumped on his head. The question is...what are we going to do about this?”
“I don’t see anything we can do,” he said. “Obviously, I can’t stay in this town. But then, I’ve always thought I’d like Seattle. Or maybe I’ll move to New Mexico. High mountain desert.”
Kate and Sara were staring at each other. When they seemed to reach an agreement, they looked at Jack.
“Did I miss something? What are you two thinking? Anybody want a beer?”
“Sit,” Sara ordered.
Jack didn’t move.
She stared at him. “Do you really and truly believe that your father killed two women, buried them, then planted a tree over their bodies? And that he kept a secret like that until the day he died?”
“No,” Jack said. “He might get into a bar fight and smash a head, but...” He took a breath. “If he’d killed Cheryl, it would have been by accident and he wouldn’t have had the calm calculation that he needed to cover it up. He sure as hell wouldn’t have kept his mouth shut.”
“Which he had to do,” Kate said. “My impression of your father is that he tended toward flamboyance rather than coldly hiding two murders.”
“He certainly never planted a tree in his life,” Jack said.