A Willing Murder (Medlar Mystery 1)

“Definitely no.” Gil looked a bit embarrassed. “Unfortunately, there was a lot of locker talk about her. She was so damn pretty. And that body! I had—” He cleared his throat. “I had a dream or two about her.”

“Any actual conversations with her?” Sara asked.

“Only once. I was about fifteen, and we’d had a late football practice. I went to the front of the school to meet my dad. Cheryl was there waiting for her mom to pick her up.” He paused. “I was always awkward around girls, but it was just us there. I asked her if she’d go to the school dance with me that weekend.” He smiled. “She was really nice. She said she wasn’t free, but if she were, I’d be the boy she most wanted to go out with. She said, ‘You’re my second favorite.’ That’s when her mother showed up.”

Gil shook his head. “Now, there was a hard-core mom. She looked at me as if I’d tried to rip her daughter’s clothes off. She got out of the car and marched over to me like she was going into battle. I swear that if she’d had a gun, she would have shot me. But then, at fifteen I was six feet tall. Bigfoot in person.”

Sara laughed. “What exactly did her mother say?”

“The usual, that she knew boys my age had only one thing in mind and that I’d better never get near her daughter.”

“What did Cheryl say?” Kate asked.

“Not a word. I still remember my shock at it all. I don’t want to brag, but mothers were usually nice to me.”

“Why not?” Sara asked. “You were a catch—star athlete, smart, salt-of-the-earth personality.”

“You make me sound dull,” Gil said.

“You’re a single father who works hard,” Sara said. “Nothing dull about that.”

“Another saint,” Jack said. “Tell them about Cheryl’s mother. They’re interested in her profession.”

Gil’s face turned a rosy pink.

“It looks like you know about Mrs. Morris’s, uh, ‘outside job,’” Sara said.

Gil nodded.

“What do you know about it? Especially who,” Sara said.

“I didn’t know about her until later, but back then, my dad told me to stay away from both of them.”

“Both of them?” Jack said. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. If Dad were alive, he could tell us, but he’s not, so...”

“But you have no idea who she...associated with?”

“None at all.” Gil looked at Jack. “I think you should know that there’s a lot of gossip around town.”

“I know. It’s about Roy.”

“We were told that he’s the suspect, but we don’t think he’s guilty,” Sara said. “But how do you get an alibi for twenty years ago?”

Jack leaned back against the couch. “I bet Grans knows where her precious son was on every day of his life.” He looked at Sara. “Why don’t you pop over to her house and have a chat?”

“Got a flamethrower I can take with me?” Sara’s upper lip was curled.

Kate looked over to Jack, who shrugged. It didn’t take much to put together that Sara wouldn’t have a close relationship with the woman who was married to the man she loved.

“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Gil said. “Keep the yearbook as long as you need it, but I don’t think it’ll be much help. There’s just the one posed photo of Cheryl. It doesn’t show her. When she used to hurry down the hallways, every male in the building would stop to watch her. She really was an unusual girl.”

Sara leaned forward. “She had all that male attention but she always said no?”

“If she was dating, I don’t think it was anyone in Lachlan.”

“Who you knew about,” Sara said. “On the videos, she could have passed for thirty. Maybe there was an older man. Or a married one.”