Lethal Lies by Laurie Breton

Author:Laurie Breton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Faith found Newt in his office, talking on the phone. He took one look at the fire in her eyes and quickly ended the call. “What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“I have two words for you—Stacey Beliveau.”

Newt winced, closed his eyes, and sighed. Opening them again, he squared his jaw and began tapping a pencil against his desk blotter. “What about her?”

“Is there any special reason you neglected to mention her? Or the heroin that’s apparently flooding the streets and schools?”

His mouth opened, then closed. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “it never entered my mind.”

“How is that possible, Newt? We were talking about drugs. How could it not occur to you that there might be a connection here?”

He leaned forward and planted both feet flat on the floor. “You were talking about drugs,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She swept a lock of hair back from her face. “Are you telling me you really believe drug trafficking had nothing to do with Chelsea’s death?”

“I didn’t say that. There’s still one hell of a lot that Davy Hunter has to account for. But I’m not convinced that Chelsea uncovered some nest of drug vipers, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“Did Chelsea cover the story about Stacey Beliveau? I didn’t find mention of it anywhere.”

“No! Damn it, she didn’t!” He rubbed his temples with both hands. Wearily, he said, “Stacey’s parents are friends of mine. She was a beautiful girl with brains and a promising future. Bud and Judy were devastated by her death. How the hell do you get over losing a daughter?”

Newt’s blue eyes grew sad, and he shook his head slowly. “You can’t imagine the pain they went through. The pain they’re still going through. It tears your heart in two, just thinking about it. The town was in shock. Pain and disbelief. How could one of our own, a nice girl from a nice family in a small town like Serenity, end up dead from a heroin overdose? We all knew Stacey, and we all loved her. We’d watched her grow up. It was even worse at the high school. It’s so hard for kids to understand something like this. Skip called in grief counselors, but still the kids took it hard.

“And the cops—” his mouth thinned “—Serenity’s so-called finest, couldn’t manage to figure out how Stacey got her hands on the stuff. It was a terrible tragedy. Nothing the Gazette could print was going to bring Stacey back. And it wasn’t as though anybody in town hadn’t already heard the news. The whole town knew about it two hours after it happened. What was the sense in hashing and rehashing it? Bud and Judy had already been through enough, so I decided the only compassionate thing to do was to leave it alone. The Gazette didn’t cover the story. Now the Beliveaus are trying to go on without their daughter. The entire town is trying to go on without her. Unearthing her ghost isn’t going to help us find out what happened to Chelsea.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.