THE POLICE STATION was overly bright, maybe to blind lawbreakers the moment they walked through the door. It also smelled of lemon cleaner, too much lemon cleaner. Either that or the pregnancy was heightening her sense of smell.
“I need to use the restroom,” Shelley said.
Riley nodded, and she took off down the hall. She wasn’t going to cry, act scared or do anything to let these people know how defeated she felt. After she did what needed to be done, she washed her hands and ran cold water over her face. She was tired of things happening to her. Every time she turned around, some new roadblock appeared. She pulled her phone from her purse and reread her latest text message.
One thing was for sure. Shelley wasn’t going anywhere. But she was seriously thinking about no longer reading text messages, ever. First, her ex must have a dozen phone numbers because if she blocked one, he simply sent a message using a different number. Now her text messages were nothing but bad news. Like the one she’d received back at her father’s care facility that made her knees weak.
Sarasota Falls Bank recently returned one of your checks, bank card purchases, or other transactions due to insufficient funds. While this was probably the result of an oversight on your part, you need to deposit funds to cover the charges shown below and any future transactions that may be presented for payment.
This morning she’d had over two thousand dollars in the account. Money she’d budgeted down to the last dime. Money meant to see her through the next few months and birth of her child. She’d withdrawn two hundred in cash yesterday morning when she’d fled. It might last her until the end of the month since she had food and her rent was paid.
Rent on a garage apartment she’d just tried to break the lease on. Ha, she had the worst kind of luck.
She was due to have a baby in three weeks and she didn’t have enough money for her next bottle of prenatal vitamins.
Quickly she called the bank. The manager was a friend of her father’s. He listened and promised to call her back. She felt like the floor had just been taken from underneath her.
Shelley listened to Officer Leann Bailey offer Ryan ice cream. They must keep it in the break room for all the criminals’ kids.
I am not a criminal, she reminded herself.
No matter her innocence, her association with her ex-husband and his crimes had made her feel guilty, but she would get over that.
“Thank you,” Ryan said, and Shelley could hear him giggling up at the deputy as if she were his preschool teacher. Sometimes Shelley thought that if she ever saw Larry again he’d regret it, not because he’d hurt her but because he’d hurt Ryan, who was old enough to remember, and the yet-to-be-born Isabelle, who would have to know the truth someday. Small towns could be long on memory and slow to forgive, at least when it came to their pocketbooks. And someday, Ryan and Isabelle would have to answer the questions their friends and their families asked them.
Riley beckoned her down another short hallway with “Come this way.”
She followed him to one of two interrogation rooms. “Have a seat.” Riley pulled out the chair for her. Then he surprised her by excusing himself before disappearing out the door.
The table she sat at was old, probably a relic of the seventies, with plenty of scratches. A few crumbs were scattered across its surface. Had someone eaten lunch in here? Depressing. The walls were painted a bland gray color, guaranteed to make people long to escape. The narrow fluorescent light made the room much too bright, guaranteed to create headaches. She started to stand, thinking maybe the door was unlocked and she could sneak out. In her present condition, if she got busted, she could claim another restroom emergency.
Before she even managed to scoot the chair back, Officer Guzman came in. He carried three bottles of water. He set one on the table, handed her one and opened the last one for himself.
He took a long drink, giving her the time to look him over. He sat down next to her. Much too close. She glanced at the door; he’d left it open.
“You live on my street,” she said.
“My aunt does, and I’m staying with her right now, have been for almost two months. Maybe you know her. Bianca Flores.”
Shelley winced. Bianca Flores had planned to add a guesthouse to her B and B, kind of a honeymoon cottage. She’d hired Larry—per Shelley’s recommendation—to find a contractor and laborers. After all, he had know-how and connections.
“I came to Sarasota Falls twice while I was growing up,” Oscar shared. “Once for a whole summer when I was twelve.”
Shelley felt her mouth open and a half laugh form. “Oscar,” she said, digging for the memory.
“My brothers came, too.” Oscar’s words cemented what she was just now catching on to. “There are three of us boys.”
“You were the one who played with me.”
“That was me.”
She was silent for a minute. He was the only one of the brothers who took time to play with a girl.
“You taught me how to catch air riding my bike off a curb,” she said.
“And you let me use your Barbie for pellet-gun practice.”
“I was eight and for the first time glad I owned a Barbie.” Shelley had asked for a pellet gun the next Christmas. That hadn’t gone over well with her parents. She scooted her chair back a bit, changing positions and wishing the baby wasn’t dancing on her kidney again. Watching Oscar examine her way too much like a cop, she asked, “Why did you become a police officer?”
He grinned. “I’m supposed to be asking you the questions.”
“You already did. I have nothing to add. I just want to take Ryan and go home.”
“Back to the garage apartment?” he queried. “What happened to the Victorian your parents owned?”
“You’ve read my file,” she countered. “You know what happened to the Victorian.”
“You sold it to pay for your mother’s funeral and put your father in the care center.”
She waited. Most people said platitudes like “Sorry to hear...,” “Bad luck...” and “Had to hurt getting rid of such a stunning piece of property.” A few less subtle people had ventured a “Well, you didn’t need such a big, rambling place for just one person. The upkeep must have been brutal.”
Oscar looked interested. “I thought your house the coolest ever, next to my aunt’s.”
“I thought the same.” She curled her fingernails into the soft skin of her palms and dug in. If only she hadn’t acted so rashly. Her parents had money set aside, but between the funeral, the medical bills and soon the care center, it seemed to be flowing only one way. Out of the bank account, not in. “That was why I had to sell it, unfortunately.”
She’d sat in this very room a good six months ago and given the details to Riley. Maybe he hadn’t put everything in her file. After taking a breath, Shelley added, “I was thinking about selling it. The day I visited the care center to see about finding a spot for my dad, Cara, the woman at the front desk, was sympathetic. She listened to my story and then handed me an advertisement about a home liquidator.”
Shelley gave a little laugh. Larry’s business had been called Wagner’s Ways: Ten Ways We Can Help You Get Rid of Possessions in a Timely Manner. It hadn’t been original or even catchy, but there’d been whole paragraphs, testimonials from previous clients who extolled Larry’s virtues. One woman claimed Larry had sold her home and belongings—mostly antiques—for more than she’d expected, and now she was living in a retirement community in Florida a full year before she’d planned.
“She was completely fictional, which I didn’t know until later,” Shelley explained after telling Oscar the story. “But to me, it was an answer to a prayer. I should have realized the real estate value and the worth of what was inside that house. But I was still reeling from my mother one day sitting beside me, laughing, and the next being gone.”
“Riley did tell me that your mother had an aggressive form of cancer.”
Two weeks was all she’d had with her mother between “I’ve got a headache” to “I’ve been diagnosed” to “Goodbye, honey. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter than you.”
No, no, no, Shelley would not cry in front of this cop, no matter how comfortable he made her feel. She blinked instead until the tears withdrew.
“Larry came along after your mother’s passing, right?” Oscar asked.
Good—he didn’t notice her reaction. She didn’t want his sympathy. She only wanted him to believe she was innocent and should be left alone, never brought to this station again. If she hadn’t gone to the care center that day, if she hadn’t shared so much with the woman at the front desk, if she’d been more mature and just handled everything herself...
Of course, then she wouldn’t have Ryan or Isabelle.
“I was handed the advertisement two days after we buried my mother. I was still in shock. But I was quickly figuring out that I couldn’t care for my dad like my mother had been doing. He was quickly getting worse. Now I’d know to do more research, but Larry seemed so nice.”
“How long did you date him before getting married?”
Shelley was almost embarrassed to admit, “Just three months.” It made her decide to change the subject, even though it meant going back to another topic she didn’t care to discuss. “And thanks to Larry, I know all about the Sarasota Falls Police Department and what ‘interrogation’ means. You’ve established rapport. What are you supposed to ask me?”
At least she had the satisfaction of knowing she’d surprised him. He recovered quickly. “I’m supposed to see if you’d encountered any of our other neighbors during your walk. I know I didn’t see anybody.”
“You don’t usually walk that early in the morning or I’d have run into you before.”
“I’m the new man on the rotation. I primarily work graveyard, so I get off at eight. I try to take Peeve to the dog park and let him run a bit, and then I come home and go to bed.”
“But something changed yesterday?”
“Just that I had some follow-ups to do on a few cases, so I got home later than usual.”
“And home is with your aunt?”
He hesitated, just enough that she knew there was something he didn’t want to tell her. “It is, for now.”
“Why did you come to town?”
“My family was worried about Bianca. I had the time.”
She nodded, but he didn’t add anything else, so she said, “Often, when Ryan and I go for a walk, we see Mrs. Dupont. She walks her dog, too. Also, Abigail Simms is often working in her yard, but she doesn’t stray from her house unless one of her kids comes to get her, although I think her son is living with her now.”
“Yes,” Oscar agreed. “I’ve met both of them.”
But he didn’t know their histories, Shelley thought. Not like she did. And it said something about her that the man had lived a block away from her for two weeks and she hadn’t noticed him.
She stood, checking her watch and thinking surely it was evening. It wasn’t. Instead, her watch read three o’clock. She walked to the door, insisting, “I need to get Ryan some supper. A meal of ice cream isn’t good enough. And I didn’t have the opportunity to feed him lunch.”
“If you’ll wait a minute,” Oscar said, “I’m sure Chief Riley will be right back. I know he has a few more questions.”
“I—”
Her cell phone rang and she answered the call immediately, noting it was from the care center.
“This is Shelley,” she said.
It was Cara. “We can’t find your father, Shelley. We’ve looked everywhere, and it appears he’s not on the premises. He didn’t say goodbye like he always does.”
Shelley almost dropped her phone.
Normally such news wouldn’t cause her this much concern. Her father tended to wander and liked to go to the Sarasota Falls Corner Drugstore. He’d buy a pack of cigarettes, perhaps remembering something from his youth. The proprietor called the care center, pretended to put the transaction through and handed her dad an empty carton. Cara or whoever was at the front desk watched for his return.
There’d been discussion about stopping the practice, but Sarasota Falls was a small town, and her father enjoyed it so. Thus it was allowed.
Not after today, though.
Today, she knew that Larry Wagner had recently been in the vicinity, knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her father.
To hurt her.