Chapter Twenty-one

 

Wednesday, April 6

12:30 p.m.

 

She’d intended to spend her lunch hour writing, but she’d simply needed to put a little distance between herself and the office. Or, rather, a little distance between herself and the likelihood of running into her coworker.

Glancing down at her watch, she mentally calculated how long it would take Dean to drive to Paleville, take pictures at the assisted living facility and the bank, and drive back. Throw in a couple of food stops in both directions, and he should be arriving back at the newspaper within the next hour.

Mitch had said he’d call the office himself and leave a note with Debbie, requesting that Dean call him at his earliest convenience. And sure enough, when she left for lunch, a little pink sticky with Mitch’s name and number was on Dean’s clipboard behind the receptionist’s desk.

She’d barely slept a wink all night, trying to come up with various plausible explanations for the similarity between Dean’s newest possessions and the missing items around town. But every time she’d come up with one, her mind would immediately revert back to the robberies.

Please, please don’t be Dean. Please.

The guy was annoying on a good day, but he’d become her friend. Someone she could count on to turn a bad mood around or to keep her on her toes. Like a brother in a way.

Please.

It had taken every ounce of her energy to keep from talking to Sam about her fears that morning. But Mitch had insisted, cautioning her to take it slow, let him do his job. The taking it slow part was the hardest of all. This wasn’t just some person she knew from a distance. This was Dean. Her Dean.

Slowly she made her way down Second Street, bypassing all of the places where she could stop and get a bite to eat. Her stomach was twisting all right, but not from hunger . . .

She stopped outside Ocean Point Gifts, her eyes seeking out the framed photograph she’d admired the night before. The rising sun sparkling across the cresting waves was breathtakingly beautiful even with her heavy heart. She stared at it for a few moments, thinking and pondering, until her grandmother’s voice whispered through her thoughts.

“Doing for others always brings peace to the giver.”

Well, if there was ever a time to test that theory . . .

Elise tugged the shop door open and stepped inside, the breeze from the ocean jangling a nearby wind chime.

“Good afternoon. May we help you find something today?” A man of about fifty-five stepped out from behind the counter.

“There’s a photograph in your window that I’d like to purchase. Do you ship items?”

“Yes. Yes, we do. And if the item is a gift, we can wrap it as well.” He motioned for her to lead him to the picture, falling in step behind her.

“Gift wrap would be great, thanks.” She picked up the frame and turned it, her gaze immediately riveted to the beauty of the shot once again. “This is it. It’s just lovely.”

Taking the frame from her hand, he led the way back to the counter. “It’s taken by a local photographer here in Ocean Point.”

A small wind chime topped with a smattering of seashells caught her eye as she passed by, prompting thoughts of Uncle Ken’s fiancée, Sophie. Stopping, she lifted it carefully from its hook and checked the price. Twenty dollars. “I’d like to add this too.”

“Of course.” He took the wind chime from her hand and attached it to a hook at the counter. “Anyway, we loved this photographer’s work so much we decided to take some of his shots on a consignment basis. If they sell as well as we hope, then we’ll simply stock him on our own.”

“Who’s the photographer?” she asked as her hand twirled a rack of magnets to her left. A sand dollar with an ocean scene painted on its front caught her eye.

“Dean Waters.”

Her hand dropped to her side as her mouth gaped open. “Dean Waters?”

“Yes, do you know him? He’s the photographer for the local paper.”

Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she eked out a response. “Yes. We work together.”

The man wrapped the frame in tissue paper and placed it in a gift box. “Oh, really? What do you do at the paper?”

“I’m a reporter.” She could hear the wooden sound to her voice and worked to soften it. “My name is Elise Jenkins.”

“Ohhh, Elise.” He sealed the box shut with a small disc-shaped gold sticker and extended his hand to her. “I’m Russ Walker. My wife, Gerty, runs the place but she’s home with a cold today. She’ll be disappointed she missed you. She’s been hoping to meet you one day. She said you were very nice on the phone when you called to talk about the robbery.”

“That’s nice, thank you. I’m sure I’ll be back again. I’ve avoided coming in the past ten months because I suspected you had too many lovely things in here for me to resist. And I was right.” She forced her mind off Dean and onto her surroundings. “I’m sorry your store got robbed. I’m sure that was stressful.”

The man nodded as he carefully removed the wind chime and set it in a rectangular box. “It was. But we did okay. Didn’t lose anything of any real value. And, most important, no one was hurt.” He sealed the box with a gold sticker and handed her a pad of paper. “Here, fill this out with the address we are shipping to, and we’ll get it out in the mail this afternoon.”

When she’d completed the information, she gave it to him and paid her bill, hoping against hope that her grandmother’s oft-spoken words would prove true today.

“Thank you so much,” she said, lifting her purse off the counter as she smiled at Russ. “I appreciate your help and it was very nice meeting you.”

“It was nice meeting you too, young lady.” He emerged from behind the counter and walked with her toward the front door. “Come see us any time.”

She scanned the walls and shelves as she approached the door, noting a few little knickknacks that would look cute in her apartment, but it was the plaque on the wall that made her stop in her tracks.

Sierra McDermott smiled back at her from the center of the plaque, “Employee of the Year” engraved in a gold plate beneath.

“That’s Sierra. When did she work here?”

Russ stopped behind her and started counting under his breath. “Um, she started about two years ago, I think. Stayed with us here for about a year.” He pointed at the picture as a look of pride flitted across his face. “That one was a helluva hard worker. We struck gold the day we snatched her from Merv. Then lost it ourselves when the bridal shop came knocking.”

 

• • •

 

2:30 p.m.

 

No matter how many times she looked up from her computer, Dean still didn’t materialize. And she was worried. The pink sticky with Mitch’s call was no longer attached to his clipboard when she returned from the gift shop. A few beat-around-the-bush type questions yielded nothing from Debbie beyond the fact that the photographer had returned from Paleville, only to leave again fifteen minutes later.

That was an hour ago.

Elise tried to focus on her article, to let Mitch do his job. But it was difficult. She hoped Mitch was right, that there would be some silly little explanation for Dean suddenly having a new computer, cheap watch, and a handful of postcards.

“Elise!”

She turned around in her chair at the sound of her name being whispered. From where she sat, she could see both Tom and Karen’s terminals. The sports reporter was nowhere to be seen, his ball cap missing from atop his computer. Karen was there, but she was typing away with headphones strapped to her ears—listening to Mozart, no doubt. Either way, neither of them was whispering her name.

“Elise!”

Debbie?

The thought disappeared from her mind as quickly as it came. Debbie didn’t whisper. Ever. It was like Dean and an iron.

Standing up, she looked toward the receptionist’s desk, shocked to see that hell had, indeed, officially frozen over. At least in the front half of the office anyway.

The receptionist waved her over, her hands flapping at her sides like a territorial goose. “Did you see him?” Debbie whispered.

Elise looked around the office again, her scan expanding to the waiting area and foyer as well. “See who?” she whispered back.

“Jacob Brown.”

“Jacob Brown? Here? When?”

The territorial goose began strutting around her desk, mindful of the golden egg she had. “You sure you want to know? I mean, I don’t want to interrupt your writing or anything.”

“Tell me,” she hissed.

Debbie plopped down in her seat and pulled a jar of nail polish from the top drawer of her desk. Slowly she uncapped it, leaning over the index finger on her right nail. “Chipped my polish a little while ago. I hate it when that happens.”

Darn the luck . . .

“Debbie!”

“Okay, okay.” Debbie brushed more polish on the offender and grinned up at Elise. “He asked to see Sam.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Asking that would make me nosy, don’t you think?”

Elise laughed.

“Hey! I take offense to that. I may know a lot, but it’s only because I’m observant.”

She leaned against the half wall that separated her from the receptionist area and drummed her fingers on the top. “Okay. So what did you observe about him being here?”

“Better. Much better.” Debbie lowered her voice again and periscoped her head over the counter, peering down the hallway that led to Sam’s private office. “He had a paper in his hand.”

“Paper . . . paper . . . paper,” Elise mumbled under her breath. And then she remembered. Jacob’s essay from class. Sam had said he’d love to publish it if Jacob would grant permission.

Baby steps . . .

“Pretty interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

Maybe the ice was beginning to break . . .

“Woo-hoo, Earth to Elise.”

“Huh? What?” Startled, Elise looked at Debbie, realized the woman was talking to her despite the fact she’d heard nothing of the past few sentences. “I’m sorry. My thoughts ran away with me for a minute. No sign of Dean yet?”

“Nope.” Debbie put her hand on the ringing phone. “What’s the urgency about seeing Dean?”

“Nothing.” Elise waved a retreat at the receptionist as she made her way down the hallway in the direction of the water fountain. Which, coincidentally, was just a few steps from Sam’s office . . .

Snatches of muted conversation floated into the hallway from her boss’s open door. The voices inside sounded amicable, a few chuckles dotting the air from time to time as added confirmation that things were okay.

She pushed the small circular button and put her mouth to the water, her ears still trained for any bits of conversation she could cull.

“Sierra is really the reason I took the class. She’s been trying to refocus my attention and wanted to help get me going toward writing again.”

Sam’s calm voice wasn’t far behind.

“It’s always nice to have someone pushing our wagon from time to time. Makes reaching our destination even nicer when we know someone believed in us the whole way.”

Elise straightened up, wiped excess water from her chin. Sam was right. That’s exactly how she felt about Mitch. And Sam.

“I don’t know what I did to get a girl like Sierra, but she’s wonderful. Believes in me one hundred percent. She listens too. Sometimes I feel bad when I talk too much about my troubles, because she takes it all to heart. Like she’s supposed to fix it all somehow.”

Feeling suddenly guilty for eavesdropping on a conversation that was none of her business, Elise wandered back to the newsroom. She felt more content somehow, more at peace. Jacob Brown was a good kid who’d been dealt a tough blow in life. He’d be okay. His sharing his essay with her boss was a pretty big step.

She sat down at her desk, her gaze resting briefly on the blinking cursor halfway down her computer screen. The article on young victims, and how child psychologists work with them, was coming out well. But her mind was no longer on that story. Or any story, for that matter.

All she could think about at that moment was food. It didn’t really matter what kind, just so long as it stopped the gurgling and pangs that had kicked up after her stop at the water fountain.

Her drawer, of course, held nothing. No pretzels. No backup Caramello bar. No cookies. Nothing. Those would all be in Dean’s stomach. Frustrated, she yanked open the zipper on her backpack purse and fished around inside, her hand closing on a package of cheese crackers she’d thrown in the other day.

As she pulled the rectangular package out, her purse tipped, spilling crinkled papers and loose change all over the floor. “Ugh!”

“Let me help.”

Elise looked up, smiled at Tom. “Thanks.”

They fumbled around on the ground until they had everything. When they were done, the sports reporter simply lifted the purse from the ground and set it on her desk. “That’s not your lunch, is it?”

“Yeah. But it’s my own fault. I went shopping during my lunch hour instead. I wanted to get something for my uncle.”

Tom shifted from foot to foot and cleared his throat softly. “His birthday?”

“Nope. Just because.” Elise rezipped her bag and ripped open the cracker package. “Want some?”

He held up his hand and shook his head. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

She swallowed her first mouthful of cracker. “What doesn’t?”

“That you’d use your break time to do something nice for someone. It’s very you.” Tom patted her arm and turned toward his computer, bending quickly. “Oh, wait, I think this is yours too.”

The receipt was from Ocean Point Gifts. For a wind chime and a picture frame. “Oh, yeah, thanks.”

The remaining five crackers went quickly as she looked at the receipt on her desk and mentally walked through the gift shop again. The magnets were cute. And so were the Ocean Point novelty items. She closed her eyes as the rumbling in her stomach began to subside, her thoughts on the wind chime she hadn’t planned on buying. But Sophie would love it.

And Sierra’s picture. That was a surprise.

Snatched from Merv’s to work at Ocean Point Gifts . . .

Her eyes flew open and she sat up straight in her chair as a thought flew through her mind. Merv’s? Ocean Point Gifts? A former employee of the first two robbery locations, a student at the third?

No. No way.

Nibbling on her lower lip, Elise forced her attention back to the screen in front of her, to the place in the article where she had stopped. But it was no use. If she could suspect Dean, then—

“Oh, my God!”

“Talking to yourself now? That’s not a good sign, missy.”

Elise looked up, her eyes widening at the sight of Dean, standing beside her desk with his camera bag on his shoulder, a playful grin on his face. “What?”

“You’re talking to yourself. You just said, ‘Oh, my God.’” Dean reached across her body and picked up the empty cracker wrapper. “Hey!”

“Where did you get your computer?”

He lifted the wrapper to his nose and sniffed. “Hey, these are my favorites!”

She grabbed his arm. “I’m serious, Dean, please. Where’d you get your computer?”

“What’s all this fascination with my computer? First Mitch, then you.”

“Dean!”

“Okay, okay.” He slid his bag from his shoulder and set it on her desk. “But I already told you.”

She searched her memory bank for the conversation he was referring to. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did. You asked me about her. Actually, let me rephrase that. You hounded me about her.”

“I hounded you? How? When? About who . . . ?”

And then she knew. Sierra.

Scrambling to keep some semblance of order to the millions of thoughts racing through her mind, she grasped Dean’s arm tighter. “You said she was helping you. You didn’t say you bought it from her.”

“Well, duh, do you really think I’d bring a computer to Mia’s without knowing how to turn it on? Sheesh. What do you think I am, stupid? Wait, don’t answer that. Anyway, I heard through the grapevine that she had an extra computer she was willing to unload for a hundred bucks. I couldn’t resist.” He pried her hand from his arm and opened her drawer, shutting it seconds later in disgust. “You really must go shopping, missy. And where did you have those crackers stashed in the first place? They weren’t in your drawer three hours ago.”

She let it pass. There’d be plenty of time to smack him for rummaging without permission. Again.

“So you’d just bought it that night?”

“Bingo! Give the chick a prize, ladies and gentlemen!” Dean spread his arms and bellowed into the air.

“Pipe down, Dean! I’m trying to work!”

His jaw slacked open. “Did Debbie—a.k.a. Megaphone Mouth—just tell me to pipe down?”

“And those postcards you mailed the other day? Where’d you get those?”

Dean stared at her. “Huh?”

“Yesterday you asked Debbie to mail some postcards for you. Where’d you get them?”

“Damn it, can’t that woman ever keep her mouth shut,” he said, turning on his heel and heading toward the reception area.

“Dean, wait, please!”

He turned. “What?”

“The postcards, where’d you get them?” she pleaded.

“The bag.” Dean slapped the heel of his hand to his forehead and theatrically stumbled around. “Women.”

The bag . . . the bag . . .

“What bag, Dean?”

A noise resembling a frustrated moan rolled from his mouth as he banged his head against the wall. “The bag, Elise. The computer bag.”