Chapter Twenty-One

“The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight.”

“I spoke with the school counselor.”

I peer at Betty Anne through crusty, slitted eyelids.

“I told her you’ve been through a lot this last month, having lost your mother and all, and you needed to take care of her estate, so they’re letting you complete your work at home.”

I rub sleep out of my eyes. “When did you go?” But Dane…I need to see him again.

“This morning. They’re only letting you home-school for a few months. Then you have to go back if you want to graduate on time.”

“Man…thanks, Betty Anne.” I really owe her.

She starts asking me a hundred questions—what flavor yogurt do I like best, which brand of coffee do I drink, which bread—white or whole wheat—would I like for my sandwiches. I can tell she’s happy to take care of someone again. “Be back in a bit.”

Once she leaves, I rip off the blanket and notice my feet. Filthy. I didn’t dream it. I remove the tattered plastic bag from under the bed and stare inside.

A dull white T-shirt with spattered bloodstains along the hem. Spattered—sent flying through the air. Not spilled, not pooled. Last night, Mami showed me, confirmed what I’ve felt from the very beginning—her death was no accident. Now I feel terrible knowing I made her rise from the ground to come and spell things out for me, because I’ve been too naive to put it together myself.

But whose shirt is it? Looks like a man’s. A washed-a-thousand-times undershirt can be anybody’s. I get dressed, stuff the plastic-wrapped shirt inside my backpack, and head out.

...

Word Puzzle Girl is at her desk again, chewing on her pencil and looking mildly surprised to see me. In the back, outside an office door, a man in his thirties wearing a buttoned shirt talks loudly about a football game with an older man in a sweater vest who seems cornered and whose eyes flit between me and the guy talking about extra points and overtime.

“Can I help you?” Word Puzzle Girl’s lazy eyes are bored with me already.

Demand answers. This is my mother—my dead mother—who no one seems to care about. “Did you ever give anyone my message that I was here two weeks ago?”

“I gave it to Officer Stanton. Didn’t he call you?”

“No. Is he here?”

The older man enduring the younger man’s verbal barrage looks at me again.

“I’ll check.” Word Puzzle Girl uncrosses her legs from her swivel chair and sashays between the cubicles in her plaid wool skirt. I watch as she quietly speaks to the two men, nods, and goes into the younger man’s office to sit and talk. The older man comes out to the counter.

“Good morning, what can I do for you?” He grins politely but is clearly irked, as though he has better things to do.

“Officer Stanton?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you. I’d like to talk to you about my mother, Maria Burgos. 150 Maple Street. She was found in her bathtub back in Aug—”

“Yes, I know who Maria Burgos is. You’re her daughter?” He looks at me from top to bottom. “This way.” I follow him into his office. Officer Stanton sits behind his desk and closes a trivia quiz on his computer screen. Does anyone work around here? “Close the door,” he says. I softly shut the door. He leans back in his chair to reach for a pile of folders on a table behind him, plucking a thin one out near the top of the stack. “Now, what is it you need from me?” he asks curtly, checking the name on the folder’s tab.

I sit down and prop my backpack between my feet. Don’t let him dismiss you. “A lot of things, actually. Which is why I left you a million messages to please call me.”

“I only got three.” He eyes me impatiently. So he did hear them? And just conveniently forgot to call me? “Sorry about that. Messages sometimes get lost in the shuffle here.” He tries his brand of bullshit out on me, but I’m not having it.

“I’ve needed help,” I say, betting he forgot that being a police officer means serving the people. “I have lots of questions.”

“Right.” He taps his pen on the table. “Why don’t you start with one, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for you.”

I clear my throat. “I came here before because my mother died this summer, and I wasn’t here at the time. I’m her next of kin, yet no one has contacted me about her house, her belongings, or anything.” I’m rambling, but hopefully the desperation in my voice will prompt him to do more than just sit there with that smug look on his face. “Where is everything? What do I have to do to get her things?”

Officer Stanton opens the file, quietly flips through some papers. “What things do you want?”

“What do you mean?” What business is it of his what things I want? They’re my mother’s belongings—now mine—that’s all he needs to know. “Everything. Her furniture, her clothes…I mean, where is everything?”

“Storage.” He puts down the file.

“Great. Then…where’s the key for that? I need the key to her house, too. Doesn’t it belong to me now?”

“Miss Burgos,” he interrupts without answering. “Didn’t your mother leave a will?”

“If she did, wouldn’t I know by now?” I hear the frustration rising in my voice. “I mean, it’s been almost two months.”

“I don’t know. Who’s her lawyer?”

I feel my blood boiling. I scoot to the edge of my seat. “You’re the police. Doesn’t your file there tell you everything? If I knew about a will and her lawyer, would I be here asking you for help?” I smack the edge of his desk.

His eyelids fall to half mast. “Okay, relax.” He opens the file again, checking something. He nods, closes it again, opens his hands in resignation. “I’m just a little surprised that you’re here.”

“Why? What is so surprising about her daughter being here?”

“Because according to this report, you’re not next of kin.” His countenance displays both his disdain and impatience. And truth to say, he’s totally mocking me and reveling in my stunned silence.

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“I assure you it’s not.”

“But I’m her only child.”

“But you’re not her husband.”

I almost laugh in his face. How lame a police department is this that their information is so outdated? “My parents divorced years ago.” Did she remarry?

“Miss, the house is in Jay Burgos’s name. He plans on selling it, even though, if you ask me, he’s not going to get much for it right now, but hey, desperate times. He also rented the storage unit everything was moved to.”

“But…that’s a mistake. They’re divorced.”

He looks at his file again. “Estranged. Separated. Not divorced,” he says, throwing the words into the vast expanse between us and watching them land like dice on one of those casino craps tables.

I can’t reply. All I can do is think back, try to recall a time when my father might’ve said that he and Mami were officially divorced. I thought that he said so, but then again, maybe I just assumed they were? They were estranged?

“Miss Burgos?” Officer Stanton leans back in his chair and drums his fingers on the armrests. He’s so done with me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

He sighs and purses his lips. “Call your father,” he says, tapping the edge of the file against his desk. “He would have the keys to the house and the storage facility. Then you can find whatever it is you’re looking for. Is there something else?”

Something about his smirk and tone, or maybe because I’m so open and vulnerable right now, tells me he’s talking about the journal. He knows about it. Of course he does. Everyone knows about it. According to some, I know where it is and I’m here to claim it, to cash in on it just as much as everybody else, even though clearly I don’t need the money.

I think of my debit card declining at the store last week, how our water and power were cut, and how Nina said she didn’t get paid enough. Or do I? “No, that’s it. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not a problem.” Facetious smile from ear to ear.

I stand. I have to get out of this negative, accusing atmosphere, but then I remember the other reason I came. “There’s something else…” I pull out the plastic bag containing the bloodstained T-shirt. “I found this. It belongs to whoever killed her.”

Officer Stanton’s eyebrows raise. He gives a short chuckle. “What makes you think your mother was murdered? She slipped and fell in her own bathroom.”

“Because my mother didn’t slip.” I glare at him. No one will ever understand how I get my information. My mother told me herself. She came from the grave and showed me. “She just didn’t.”

He doesn’t hold out his hand or offer to take a look at my evidence, just stares at my face, his brown eyes holding steady on mine. “Leave it there,” he says, nodding to the edge of the desk. “I’ll have someone properly collect it. Where did you get it?”

I went over this a thousand times on the walk over—where I found it, what I was doing rummaging through a garbage receptacle at an abandoned fast food restaurant—but I can’t tell him all that without seeming suspicious. In the end, I decide on the truth. “I found it on North Broadway and Hemlock Drive, just north of the cemetery.”

“The old Hardee’s?” A slow smile spreads on his face, as well as an urge in me to lunge at him for his condescending manner, but instead, I un-crumple the shirt on his desk and point to the dried bloodstains. He smirks. “What makes you think a shirt you found so far removed from the scene belongs to a killer you don’t even know actually exists?”

“Have it tested, and you’ll see.” I snap a few pictures of the shirt with my phone, just in case I never see it again. “Please call me if you learn anything else. You need my number?”

“No,” he says, flipping up the note paper clipped to the file, the one I wrote on when I first visited this place. “Got it right here.”

Outside the station, I let out a massive breath. Then I spot it—Dane’s blue Eclipse pulling into the station, not from Main Street, but through the back parking lot. What is he doing here, of all places? It’s the middle of school hours. Doesn’t he have a class to teach?

Breaking into a jog, I hurry around the building, ignoring the gate bar that lifts whenever a police car enters the garage, ducking underneath it to get by. Is he following me? First the train station, then my mother’s house, then hanging out at the coffee shop, school, here…

Anger blinds me, started by the news of my parents’ non-divorce, now fueled by the truths that are starting to make themselves evident before my very eyes. I approach his car and see him halfway into the backseat. I’m about to call him, when he withdraws his long body from the backseat, toting his phone, a manila folder, and a leather case in the shape of a—

I stop cold.

What is he doing with—

He closes his car door and presses his key remote to lock it. He stops as well, surprised to see me. “Micaela,” he says calmly, holding out a hand to placate the approaching guard.

I’m lost for words. Do teaching assistants usually go around with concealed weapons in holsters parking in authorized-only parking spaces? “Who are you?”

“Micaela, let me explain.” He approaches me slowly.

I gaze into his face. So stupid. I’ve been so stupid! Mr. Boracich, student teacher teaching the unit on nineteenth century authors, touring New England to learn more about them. Crud, crap, lies. “Just—who are you? Obviously not who you say you are, or are you professor by day, police officer by night?”

“I’m not police.” His words should calm me, but I’ve never felt this angry in my life.

“Then why are you here? This is a police station.” I gesture to the building then let my arm slap against my side in frustration. “And that is a gun. How am I supposed to believe anything you say? You’re not even who you say you are, so why shouldn’t I trust someone I grew up with instead of you?”

Why does my heart feel like it’s going to rip in half?

He blows out, cheeks puffing. “I didn’t say everyone you grew up with, just those with a vested interest in the journal, people who never cared about your mother to begin with.”

“How do you know if they care or not?”

“Aw, come on, Micaela, open your eyes! You know they don’t care. I heard the way Bram’s aunt spoke to you at Sunnyside. You’re in direct danger, which is my main concern.” His tilted head, his worried eyes, plead with me to understand. “I’m not police.” He struggles, like he can’t decide who to plead devotion to, me or whoever paid him to watch over me and stay hush about it. “I was hired.”

I knew it.

“To watch over you and protect you.”

So, when he warned me I was being watched, he really meant by him?

I clear my throat. “Hired by whom?” My father. This has to be my father’s doing, adding to my status as princess, following me around with an extra pair of eyes. “Who, Dane?” I yell, wondering for the very first time if his name is even Dane Boracich at all. I wait for him to say what I already know.

“I can’t tell you that.” Carefully, he attaches his holster to a shoulder strap, so the weapon rests under his arm.

“Why not?”

“Because my task here is two-fold. Watching over you and looking into your mother’s case.” He flips up a palm. “That’s already more information than you’re supposed to know.”

More than you’re supposed to know. So he’s a private investigator and bodyguard? Who can afford that but my father? “Well, if you can’t tell me who it was, then at least tell me if you’re aware that someone…” The words cling to my tongue, but I force them out. “Killed my mom.”

He closes his eyes, almost like he’s trying to control his emotions. When he reopens them, I see the answer written all over his face. Yes, I know, I can almost hear his thoughts. He nods an affirmation.

He’s known all along. Not only do I detect guilt on his face, but something else. I can’t quite figure it out. Is he mad that I’m mad, upset that I’m upset? Was he hoping I’d always be smiles and precariously close to flirting with him?

“I left something with Officer Stanton that might be of interest to you,” I tell him.

He approaches me and brushes my cheek with his fingertips. I was right—he has feelings for me. No normal detective would do that. I should draw away, but I don’t. I don’t know what to feel anymore.

“I’ll take a look at what you brought. Just…let me do my job, okay?” he asks. “Try not to interfere.”

My legs are unsteady. I do my best to appear in control as he caresses me. If I can get past my anger, I think I might prefer this new role of his. It suits him better.

He withdraws his hand. “Now get out of here.” I press my lips together and nod. “And Micaela?”

“Yes?” I watch him take a deep breath to regain his professional composure before walking off with a mission on his mind.

“Pretend you never saw me.”