Buried Secrets Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mysteries, Book #14 (The Charlie Parker Mysteries) by Connie Shelton Page B
Authors: Connie Shelton
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extensive searches through the surrounding woods by Search and Rescue teams and cadaver dogs. Within two weeks after her acquittal, Tali Donovan left Seattle. Her husband divorced her, and her mother and siblings claimed that they rarely heard from her and didn’t know where she was currently living.
The article quoted Chet Flowers as saying, “We feel certain she did it. You work homicide as long as I did, you have deep instincts about these things.”
I studied the face of the woman again but, as with a word that you repeat over and over, the newness began to fade and I decided she only seemed familiar because I’d remembered her from all the television coverage years ago. I clipped the portion of the page that referred to Donovan and tossed the rest of the paper in the trash.
Drake wandered in, his hair tousled and eyes still looking sleepy. I doctored a mug of coffee according to his preferences and placed it in his hand. He slurped at it appreciatively and caught sight of the clipping on the table.
“What’s that about?”
I quickly gave the rundown on the new case and the plan to spend the next couple of days in the office with Chet Flowers.
“And here I thought you’d be at the mall, snapping up all those after-Christmas bargains,” he teased. He knew better than that. “Well, I will be at the airport, doing a hundred-hour on the ship and making sure she’s ready in case I get another call on a moment’s notice.”
“Breakfast?” I offered half-heartedly, since I still felt full from last night’s big dinner.
He poked around in the packages that had become stacked up in one corner of the countertop and came up with one of Elsa’s blueberry muffins.
“This’ll do,” he said as he bit into it. Crumbs scattered like snowflakes and Freckles went a little nuts, licking them from the floor.
“I’m going to leave you to it,” I said.
I showered and dressed in my standard work attire of jeans and a sweater. Twenty minutes later I was at the office, letting my computer boot up while I started a pot of coffee down in the kitchen.
While it brewed, I keyed in a search for “ tali donovan murder trial” and came up with a few thousand hits. I started with the most recent articles and read backward. The newest material basically reiterated what the tabloid had printed; that ill-regarded paper obviously had done no homework other than borrowing whole paragraphs from the Seattle newspapers. As Chet Flowers had told us, Donovan had been acquitted of the crime mainly because the bodies of the children were never found. The press must have given her no peace at all, and public sentiment generally went against her in every way. The fact that her husband didn’t stick around afterward also added fuel to the fire of speculation. Shortly after the verdict she’d gone into hiding.
Before she vanished, though, there was the highly publicized trial, with pictures of the defendant walking with her lawyers into court. They’d made sure she was dressed conservatively in plain slacks and schoolmarm blouses, with her dark hair in a demure ponytail and minimal makeup. She cleaned up well and looked nothing like the disheveled version of herself in the mug shot. Guilty or innocent, they all usually manage to look respectable in court.
I found a long piece that pretty well summarized the history and read through that. It painted the picture of a model family—the good-looking husband a success with a giant tech company, wife who adored him, two beautiful children. Most of the photos showed the children in endearing poses. America fell in love with those kids and was disgusted with the mother, with her air of detachment during the whole affair. On the day they disappeared she had let them play alone in the back yard of their upscale suburban home. That in itself was practically portrayed as a crime, and I felt a stab of sorrow for the way society had become. I used to roam my entire neighborhood, climb the trees,
The article quoted Chet Flowers as saying, “We feel certain she did it. You work homicide as long as I did, you have deep instincts about these things.”
I studied the face of the woman again but, as with a word that you repeat over and over, the newness began to fade and I decided she only seemed familiar because I’d remembered her from all the television coverage years ago. I clipped the portion of the page that referred to Donovan and tossed the rest of the paper in the trash.
Drake wandered in, his hair tousled and eyes still looking sleepy. I doctored a mug of coffee according to his preferences and placed it in his hand. He slurped at it appreciatively and caught sight of the clipping on the table.
“What’s that about?”
I quickly gave the rundown on the new case and the plan to spend the next couple of days in the office with Chet Flowers.
“And here I thought you’d be at the mall, snapping up all those after-Christmas bargains,” he teased. He knew better than that. “Well, I will be at the airport, doing a hundred-hour on the ship and making sure she’s ready in case I get another call on a moment’s notice.”
“Breakfast?” I offered half-heartedly, since I still felt full from last night’s big dinner.
He poked around in the packages that had become stacked up in one corner of the countertop and came up with one of Elsa’s blueberry muffins.
“This’ll do,” he said as he bit into it. Crumbs scattered like snowflakes and Freckles went a little nuts, licking them from the floor.
“I’m going to leave you to it,” I said.
I showered and dressed in my standard work attire of jeans and a sweater. Twenty minutes later I was at the office, letting my computer boot up while I started a pot of coffee down in the kitchen.
While it brewed, I keyed in a search for “ tali donovan murder trial” and came up with a few thousand hits. I started with the most recent articles and read backward. The newest material basically reiterated what the tabloid had printed; that ill-regarded paper obviously had done no homework other than borrowing whole paragraphs from the Seattle newspapers. As Chet Flowers had told us, Donovan had been acquitted of the crime mainly because the bodies of the children were never found. The press must have given her no peace at all, and public sentiment generally went against her in every way. The fact that her husband didn’t stick around afterward also added fuel to the fire of speculation. Shortly after the verdict she’d gone into hiding.
Before she vanished, though, there was the highly publicized trial, with pictures of the defendant walking with her lawyers into court. They’d made sure she was dressed conservatively in plain slacks and schoolmarm blouses, with her dark hair in a demure ponytail and minimal makeup. She cleaned up well and looked nothing like the disheveled version of herself in the mug shot. Guilty or innocent, they all usually manage to look respectable in court.
I found a long piece that pretty well summarized the history and read through that. It painted the picture of a model family—the good-looking husband a success with a giant tech company, wife who adored him, two beautiful children. Most of the photos showed the children in endearing poses. America fell in love with those kids and was disgusted with the mother, with her air of detachment during the whole affair. On the day they disappeared she had let them play alone in the back yard of their upscale suburban home. That in itself was practically portrayed as a crime, and I felt a stab of sorrow for the way society had become. I used to roam my entire neighborhood, climb the trees,
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