Double Minds by Terri Blackstock Page A

didn’t seem to be grieving the same way as his wife. Instead, he looked angry. His lips were tight and his teeth bared as he bit out words. She wished she could hear the conversation.
    After a few minutes, Tiffany came out to the sun porch. “Would any of you like to see Brenna’s room?” She took Chase’s arm. “Chase, sweetie, let me lean on you and I’ll give you all a tour. I want you to see what a special and talented person my baby girl is … was.” As she corrected herself, Tiffany swayed. Parker wondered if she was about to faint.
    “You sure you’re up to this?” Chase asked her.
    Tiffany seemed to rally. “Of course.” Her voice was weak, nothing like the sound on her CDs. “I need to get away from all the well-wishers who didn’t even know her. Wouldn’t know her if she spat in their faces. Don’t even know why they’re here, except to see and be seen. Blood-sucking leeches.”
    Parker felt a rush of guilt, but Tiffany reached out a hand to her. “Come on, kids, let’s go upstairs.”
    Feeling like a fraud, Parker took her hand and let Tiffany lead her up the grand staircase, down the wide hallway floored with rich mahogany.
    They went past several beautifully decorated bedrooms and a big study with Brenna’s portrait on the wall. Parker wanted to pause at each room and see how the upper class lived, but Tiffany kept walking.
    Finally, they stepped into Brenna’s bedroom suite. Why would the girl have chosen to live in a cramped dorm on campus when she had a home like this? The room had the look of a penthouse in a five-star hotel. Parker was afraid to touch the furniture.
    Tiffany went to Brenna’s bed and sat down. She grabbed a satin pillow and stroked it gently. Chase lost it—he covered his face and leaned against the wall. Marta and some of the other girls surrounded him, hugging him, trying to comfort him. Feeling like an intruder, Parker backed into the hallway.
    She should leave, right now. She had no business here.
    She heard footsteps on the stairs and saw Nathan Evans coming up with the three men she’d seen outside. Two of them she knew to be promoters. The third one was the guy with the ponytail, the one she had guessed to be Brenna’s brother. His eyes met hers again, calm and familiar as if he knew her, as they went into the study and closed the door.
    Quietly, she headed back to the staircase. As she passed the study, she heard angry voices and paused. “This didn’t just happen by accident,” she heard someone say. “This was deliberate and it’s aimed at me.”
    “Let’s not get carried away,” someone returned. “It could have been a case of mistaken identify.”
    “You don’t gun my daughter down by accident. It wasn’t a mistake.”
    The voices grew more muffled and she stepped closer. She couldn’t hear the words anymore, but the heated exchange sounded angry, bitter.
    Maybe she should stay, after all. She might hear more. But she couldn’t lurk outside this door. She went back to Brenna’s room and, taking a deep breath, stepped back inside. Tiffany sat on the bed, leaning back against Brenna’s ornate headboard, her vacant eyes locked on another portrait on Brenna’s dresser.
    “I told him,” she muttered. “He has so many enemies. They finally got even.”
    Parker’s heart slammed through her chest. She waited for someone closer to the family to ask what she meant, but no one did. So she did. “Enemies? What enemies?”
    Tiffany looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “My husband’s enemies. She was his little girl. The thing that would hurt him most.”
    Parker had the strangest feeling that the identity of Brenna’s killer might roll right off Tiffany’s tongue. “You sound like you know who did it.”
    Tiffany seemed to snap out of it then. “Who knows? Dozens of people over all these years …”
    “But … was there someone recently? Someone who made threats?”
    “Not outright. Not that I know of.” Tiffany’s