Key Lime Pie by Josi S. Kilpack

though she didn’t want to. Well, she did want to, but she didn’t want to want to.
    “Nothing seems out of place,” the officer explained. “We’ve been through every room. It’s clear and undisturbed.”
    But the door was kicked in, Sadie said to herself. Someone had a reason to get in there. And the timing was impossibly coincidental—the very time Sadie and Layla were at the police station.
    She commanded herself to stop it. No more questions!
    “What about the fire can?” Mathews asked. “Have we identified its contents?”
    “Clothes,” the officer said, shrugging. “And what’s left of some three-ring binders; the papers inside are unsalvageable, I’m afraid.”
    Sadie’s hand slowed.
    He continued. “Officer Kerr is laying everything out, and the fire chief is on his way over to help, but so far there doesn’t seem to be anything all that important.”
    Sadie’s mind went back to her explanation to Mathews about the contents of the box. Nothing important. For the second time in twenty minutes she growled low in her throat and threw a mental tantrum about having to step even further into this whole situation. Mathews moved forward as though to go to the back of the house and Sadie was tempted to let him, but she was the only person here who knew what had been in the box. She couldn’t withhold that kind of information.
    “Sergeant Mathews,” she said, tucking the pen beneath the clip of the clipboard and moving toward him. He turned and waited for her to catch up with him, watching her with careful expectation. She looked at the grass, wondering if she wanted to do this. Her experience with police officers hadn’t necessarily built trusting relationships. Would Eric want her to tell? Did it matter? Was it fair to distrust every police officer she ever met simply because she’d run into a couple difficult ones?
    “Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said when she reached him.
    “That box I brought from Colorado,” she said. “It was in the living room when Layla and I left for the police station. Is it still inside?”
    “You said it was a Sunkist box, right?”
    Sadie nodded. Mathews looked past her and got the attention of another officer. He told the officer what to look for and the officer went back to the house. Before speaking again, she took a breath. Hoping she was wrong about what else she had to say. “It would fit in that oil drum, I think.”
    Mathews had been watching the door and turned back to face her. She held his eye, but neither of them spoke. A few seconds later the hinge of the screen door squeaked again and moments later an officer approached.
    “No Sunkist box, Sergeant,” the officer said. “Want me to check the other rooms?”
    “Sure,” Mathews said, but Sadie knew that he knew as well as she did that it was a fool’s errand. He nodded to Sadie. “Shall we head out back?”
    Sadie fell in step beside him. As they walked, she tried to write on the statement form some more, eager to complete the paperwork even though she knew that yet one more thing was now standing in her way. Walking and writing at the same time resulted in horrible handwriting so she tucked the clipboard under her arm.
    They rounded the house and Sadie crinkled her nose at the wet cinder smell of the backyard. A sheet of plastic had been laid out on the patio and several black mounds were spaced every few inches upon it. She stopped when Mathews did, just in front of the dissected mass and pointed at the item that first caught her attention. “That’s the red sweater,” Sadie said. “It was at the top of the box.” Parts of the red yarn were still visible, probably where the sweater had been folded. She pointed to another clump of blackened fabric. “I’m assuming that’s a pair of jeans—there were two of them.” The three-ring binders were easy to identify since they were now metal rings attached to melted lumps of plastic, and what she assumed was the music box was still the right shape,