SHELLEY HAD A love/hate relationship with the media. She hadn’t even watched the news before she’d made the news. This morning she sat glued to the television screen, watching as Candace’s death was the focus of the morning airwaves.
Candace wasn’t well-known, but she was liked by those who did know her. She was the same age as Shelley.
Candace, however, had completed college, married her sweetheart and had been living her fairy tale.
Shelley had completed college, too, although it wasn’t doing a lot for her at the moment.
She thought about the young woman she’d seen dancing across her backyard, sometimes with her husband, sometimes not.
She was dead. Larry had been standing over her.
Shelley changed the channel, partly to squelch the direction her thoughts were going and partly to see if every station was covering the story. They all were. Photos splashed across the screen. Candace with her parents at Disneyland. Candace graduating from high school. Candace getting married. Candace with her kindergarten class. The two reporters spoke politely and mentioned how fortunate it was that school wasn’t in session and how the kids would have been adversely affected.
Jack Little was on his way back from vacation, mourning his only child.
One photo was of Candace and her best friend. Shelley leaned forward, studying Anna Guzman. She looked a lot like her big brother, Oscar: same black hair, same strong chin and dark eyebrows. The female reporter went on to mention that one of the officers investigating Candace’s death had a connection to the family.
Speaking of photos... Oscar Guzman had caught her off guard yesterday, reminding her that they’d met when she was eight and he was twelve. Leaving the couch, she went for the one closet in the apartment and bent to pull out a suitcase. She kept thinking this one-room apartment was temporary, so why unpack? Considering her flight the other day—albeit aborted—she might have been right. There were five photograph albums. She went for the one from her school days. Because she was an only child, her parents had taken a lot of pictures.
She found the one with Oscar halfway through. It was faded, but she could tell the black-haired boy grinning jauntily at her was Oscar. His hair was shaggy and touched his shoulders. His eyes were black and looking right at her. His shoulders were broad for a kid’s.
He’d been fun with a capital F, and not afraid of anything.
In contrast, at age eight, she hadn’t even had a skinned knee.
Sighing, she went back to the television, changing the channel to the third major station. They, too, were preoccupied with the murder.
She wondered if Oscar was watching the news. Probably. She got up and went to the window, staring over at the roof of Bianca’s Bed-and-Breakfast. She couldn’t see if his motorcycle was in the parking area.
She went back to the couch, weaving a soft blanket around her and wondering if she’d ever feel safe again.
The current station had an update. Cody Livingston was in the hospital. He’d collapsed after returning to town from a business trip. The hospital hadn’t released any information why. The station showed some photos of him, too, same as Candace. Cody with his parents and three brothers at a beach. Cody graduating from high school. Cody and Candace getting married. Cody helping a customer at Little’s Supermarket. “Up and coming,” the newscaster claimed.
He continued with his report, stating, “According to private sources, Candace Livingston’s body was first discovered by Shelley Wagner, wife of Larry Wagner, who...”
“Brubaker,” Shelley whispered, white-hot anger causing her to clench her fingers, dig her nails into the soft skin of her palm. “I’ve gone back to my maiden name.”
Then Shelley went cold. What if Larry was watching this broadcast? Would he think she was cooperating with the authorities? He’d threatened to make her disappear. He could make her disappear, too. What was stopping him?
Shelley slumped, the television remote falling from her hand.
The doorbell sounded. Shelley, pushing away dread, went to the side window to peek out.
Oscar Guzman waited at her door.
She didn’t want to answer, but he’d ring again and wake Ryan.
She allowed the door to open maybe an inch. “Yes?”
“You okay?”
“No.”
“I’ve been sent to bring you to the station. Riley has a few more questions.”
“Sure he does. My responses will be the same as yesterday. Nothing’s changed except now the media knows I’m the one who found the body.”
“That didn’t come from us.”
“Mommy.” Ryan joined her at the door, pushing it open and looking up at Oscar before saying, “Doggy.”
“Peeve is home with my aunt. Would you like to go visit him?”
“No,” Shelley said.
“Look.” Oscar lowered his voice, sounding kind, intimate. “I know this is an imposition. But we’ve got Cody Livingston in the hospital, and it looks like he has a solid alibi. He was in Flagstaff, Arizona, the morning his wife died.”
A white sedan drove slowly down Vine Street. Larry had driven a white sedan. He liked white. He’d claimed that white cars were so commonplace that it helped him fit in. More like disappear into a crowd, she thought.
He shouldn’t have been in this neighborhood, not after what he’d done, what she’d seen. No, couldn’t be him. He wasn’t stupid. But still, the sight of that white car sent a feeling of helplessness through her so debilitating that it took all her willpower and strength to remain standing.
“What’s wrong?” Oscar stepped back, turned around and scanned the street. The tail end of the white car disappeared around the corner, and Shelley knew Oscar hadn’t seen it.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. How is Cody?”
“Extreme fatigue compounded by shock.”
“Of finding out his wife was murdered?”
“He loved his wife,” Oscar said simply, making Shelley almost ashamed of how defensive she was. She needed to remind herself that Oscar Guzman had been Candace’s friend, and this was more than a case for him.
“I’d never personally met them,” she shared. “Nothing more than a wave as Ryan and I walked by. I just knew he worked at Little’s.”
“I believe you,” Oscar said.
Powerful words when the person saying them actually meant them. Shelley acknowledged Oscar did. That made him even more dangerous, because she might start trusting him.
That would be a mistake.
“Mommy, eat.”
“I’ll fix you pancakes, Ryan. Then I need to talk to Officer Guzman for a few minutes.”
“’Kay.”
She opened the door the rest of the way, letting Oscar in. He sat at her table, entertaining Ryan by moving a plastic train and making choo-choo noises while she cooked breakfast. Once Ryan was in front of the television with a Thomas the Train DVD to entertain him, she joined Oscar at the table.
“I’m on your side. I want you to know that. Here’s what we have,” he said. “We have a female victim with no known enemies. We have a husband with a solid alibi. We have you calling in a possible homicide and then fleeing the scene. If you’d just called without fleeing, I don’t think there’d be an issue—”
“Ha! So you say.”
Shelley stared hard at Oscar, knew when she’d been bested. “Let me feed and dress Ryan. Then I’ll head to the station with you.”
“Great. My aunt Bianca offered to watch Ryan if you don’t want to take him with you.”
“No. Ryan goes where I go.”
An hour later, Shelley and Ryan followed Oscar into the police station and down the hall to the same room as the day before. Ryan, clutching Pooh Bear and holding a toy train for Officer Leann Bailey to admire, went to the break room while Shelley went with Oscar.
Officer Guzman, she corrected herself, shaking away the sound of his words: “I believe you.”
Riley didn’t so much as glance up from the table where he sat looking at some papers.
“We just want to catch the killer,” Oscar said as she sat down.
Riley nodded his agreement.
Oscar sat at a chair away from the table and against the wall.
Riley fired the first question. “What time do you and Ryan usually take your morning walk?”
For the fourth time, Shelley carefully went over the time Ryan woke up, how they’d started out for preschool, met up with Oscar and wound up by Candace’s window.
Riley prodded and Shelley shared what she knew, and she did know the habits of those on her street. She knew what times her neighbors left for work: the car salesman and the plumber left before true daylight. She knew who was retired and who didn’t work. She confessed that she knew what time Candace left to jog in the morning and that Candace went to the grocery store often.
Now that Shelley knew Candace’s maiden name was Little, that made sense. Jack Little owned thirty stores across the small towns of northern New Mexico. Shelley had met him just once, back when she was in junior high. She’d known he had a daughter but not the daughter’s name.
She wasn’t so sure of Cody’s schedule. He didn’t seem to have a set one and was often gone overnight, but then, she’d been in the garage apartment only a couple of weeks.
“Could Candace have gone for an early morning run on Monday?” Riley asked.
“She could have, but I didn’t see her that morning.”
“Did you look for her?”
“No, not really. I was late and wasn’t paying attention to what was happening outside my window.”
“Besides the neighbors, what else have you seen early in the morning?”
“The garbage truck, but it comes on Thursday.” She turned and pointed to Oscar. “I would see him drive home a little after eight. I didn’t know who he was or that he was a cop. I knew he lived at Bianca’s place, and I figured he worked a graveyard shift somewhere since his motorcycle rarely left during normal work hours. I figured he was new to town and would soon be looking for a permanent place to live.”
“You’re pretty observant,” Riley noted, his tone a bit accusatory.
Shelley didn’t care. “Yes, you can thank yourself and Larry Wagner for that. I don’t ever intend to be a victim again...” Her voice caught.
“And?” Riley prodded.
“Doesn’t matter what I want,” Shelley said. “Here I am, in trouble again.”
“Then don’t be,” Oscar said. “Tell us everything you saw.”
“I have. I had Ryan next to me, asking if that woman was asleep. I’m pretty sure I told him yes and that we needed to get going.”
“What made you so sure she was dead?” Riley asked. “If she’d been alive, even barely, you calling right away might have made a difference.”
“Her eyes were open. I froze for a minute. I was so amazed that Ryan thought she was asleep when she was so lifeless. I had to remind myself later that he’s barely three and that to him, she was just lying still. If I’d thought for a moment she was alive, I’d have broken down the door.”
Even with Larry standing there, she thought to herself.
“She hadn’t been dead long,” Riley said.
“How did she die? Did someone hit her?” It was a mere forty-eight hours since Shelley had stumbled across the murder scene, and over and over she tried to focus on what her husband held in his hands. She figured it was the murder weapon. But in truth, it had looked more like a piece of paper, perhaps an envelope.
“A blow to the head. We thought at first she’d been hit over the head, but now it looks like she caught her right temple on the edge of a coffee table on the way down. We’ll know more when we get the autopsy report.”
“So possibly it wasn’t murder?” Shelley, for the first time, felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe Larry hadn’t killed that poor woman.
Then why the threatening text, and why had he been in Candace’s home?
“It was murder,” Oscar said, “but maybe not premeditated. There were signs of a struggle.”
Slowly Riley took a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on. Then he opened his folder and pulled out a black piece of paper. It was shiny, glossy and oversize.
Shelley looked back at Oscar. His expression told her nothing except that she was in trouble. “What’s that?”
“Preinked vellum paper,” Riley responded. “I’d like to get the impressions of both your hands, palms down, fingers splayed.”
“Why?”
“Because Candace was pushed, and the person who pushed her had small hands.”
Riley’s gaze went to Shelley’s hands. “Like yours.”