Tell Me No Lies by Rachel Branton Page A

touched her arm, and her face turned in my direction. “In the bedroom you said Gage went to prison to save you.” I don’t know what I was expecting. A confession maybe? She and young Dylan both seemed sure Gage was innocent. Was that because Mia knew something or because they wanted to believe? It could be like how Lily and I had kept expecting my mother to miraculously become a real mother to us. You blind yourself to the people you love. It hurt less that way.
    “He didn’t tell you?”
    “He doesn’t talk about it.” Which was true as far as it went because he hadn’t talked about the circumstances surrounding his sentence at all. I had the feeling that if I asked, he’d tell me again that it was none of my business.
    Mia nodded as though she had expected as much. “I was there. A man was making trouble at the store where I worked. Gage tried to protect me, and they started fighting.” She shook her head. “So much hitting. Blood. They passed out. I went for help, but when we came back—” She broke off, her green eyes pleading. “When I came back, the fireplace poker was shoved here in the man’s head.” One hand fluttered to the back of her neck, her finger angling up into the skull to show the placement. “Gage was still unconscious where I’d left him.”
    “Didn’t you testify to that?”
    “I told the police, but this man had . . . hurt me the week before, and they believed Gage had acted in revenge. I wasn’t strong enough to use the poker, they said, and no one else had a motive.” She swallowed hard, her voice becoming softer and almost intelligible. “Sometimes, I think I did it. I was strong enough, no matter what they say. Gage knew I could have done it, and he thought I might be accused, and that’s why he didn’t fight the charges. But I know he didn’t do it. My brother could have killed that monster by accident or in self-defense, but he would never murder an unconscious man. But you know that, or you wouldn’t have married him.”
    What she’d proven was that Gage might be guilty after all. I’d seen a hint of how responsible he felt for his sister, and the fact that she called the murder victim a monster meant he’d hurt Mia deeply. “There was nothing else? No other evidence?”
    “Skeet—that’s the monster’s name—his wallet was missing. Never did find it. And I know he had money, a lot of money, because he showed me before Gage came.” She let out a sound that was somewhere between a hiccup and a sob. “The money was gone when we found the body, but nobody believed me.”
    I wasn’t sure what to say to that because I didn’t know if I believed her.
    “Maybe if I can find enough new information, they’ll reopen the case,” she continued. “This past year I’ve been volunteering at Sarah’s House—a place that helps women and children leave abusive situations—and so many problems I see there are because of alcohol and drugs. I started to think maybe drugs are why Skeet was murdered. He had drugs in his system when he died. The authorities said he was just a user, but all that money had to come from somewhere. He might have been selling drugs, and maybe that was why he was killed.”
    “It’s going to be hard proving anything after so long,” I said. She had glanced away to check on Dylan, so I waited until she looked back to say, “How long ago was it?”
    “Over seven years, but Kingman is a small town. Not much changes. Someone here has to know more than they are telling, and I’m going to find out what.” She paused as if debating something within herself. “Look, I know I’m on the right track because someone left this in my mailbox yesterday.”
    She pulled a note from the pocket of her apron and handed it to me. It was typed in big, bold letters on a folded sheet of white paper that had no distinguishing marks. I opened it carefully.
     
     
    Justice has been done. Don’t mess with things unless you want more trouble than you got with