What's Done in Darkness by Kayla Perrin Page A

Shemar was like a brother to me. I’m glad I can help out.”
    Shawde appreciated his words. Yes, she was paying him, but he was charging her less than his normal investigator rate because he’d gone to school with Shemar from grade school through high school. And at least Gordon didn’t think she was crazy. He’d listened to her arguments about Katrina and believed that she was behind Shemar’s death.
    â€œLet me know if anything changes,” Shawde said. “And try to find out Christian’s last name. I want to know why he’s here from England, how he and Katrina met.”
    â€œOf course,” Gordon said. “I’m trying to keep a low profile. For now, I’m just a regular customer who comes in every day and works on his laptop. I’ll find a way to strike up a conversation with Christian and get back to you.”
    â€œThanks,” Shawde said.
    As she ended the call, her eyes went to her binder of articles and notes about Katrina. Shawde had had it open to the page with one of the articles about the carbon-monoxide accident that had claimed the lives of Katrina’s parents.
    Accident. Yeah, right. That’s how the incident had been termed, but Shawde knew better. And she’d tried to enlighten the police with an anonymous phone call.
    â€œYou need to look into Katrina Hughes, their daughter,” Shawde had said when she had called the Georgia state police from a blocked number.
    â€œWho is this?” had been the officer’s reply.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter who I am. You just need to trust me. The Hugheses didn’t die accidentally. Look into Katrina. She’s behind this.”
    â€œI’m going to need your name and number,” the officer had said. At which point, Shawde had hung up.
    She hadn’t wanted to leave her name. She was fast getting an idea of how the police worked, and she wasn’t impressed. If she’d left her name, they would find out that she was Shemar’s sister and that she’d alleged Katrina was behind his accident. Considering the police in upstate New York had never taken her seriously, she knew the Georgia police would determine she was a nutcase who couldn’t accept the truth.
    Which, she had to acknowledge, was how a lot of people saw her. Even her friends, like Cathy. If Shawde were to tell Cathy that she had an investigator in Key West trailing Katrina, Cathy would tell her to get some counseling.
    Shawde didn’t need counseling. What she needed was Katrina behind bars.
    As Shawde reread the article, hoping for some clue she hadn’t picked up on before, she yawned. When she got up, she thought about Katrina. When Shawde went to work, she wondered what she could be doing differently to help prove her case. And when she came home, she looked through her binder again, studying the various articles and going over the notes she’d taken from the conversations she’d had with some of Katrina’s former schoolmates and sorority sisters.
    Shawde flipped to the section of the binder labeled “INTERVIEWS.” Everything was catalogued in alphabetical order and also according to the interviewee’s college year at the time that Shemar had been murdered.
    Jennifer Adelaide was the very first name in the file. A sophomore. She had dropped out of the Alpha Sigma Pi sorority after only a few months.
    Shawde had recorded every interview she’d had on the phone with witnesses and then had transcribed them and put them in this file. It was easier to reread the interviews, slowly study every word to see if there was something she had missed.
    â€œâ€˜Was there anything strange you recall about Katrina?’” Shawde said softly, reading aloud the first question she had asked Jennifer.
    Strange? Um, well, Katrina wasn’t very nice, that’s for sure. She was a major hard-ass. She loved to make us pledges do a ton of shitty things. Like seriously, was there