Scott
“It’s my knees. They think I need new ones,” Bette said on the phone.
To hear her over the din of the bullpen, Scott drifted into the break room at the police station, his cell tucked under his chin and his left hand holding his coffee. He needed to down it, fast. And then have two more.
“Shit.”
“That’s what I said,” Bette responded. “But, you know, doctors.”
Scott could almost hear her shrug. He knew what this would mean, why she’d called him right away. Bette was family, but she was also Lily’s caretaker when he was at work.
“They said I’ve been putting too much strain on them,” she continued. “So I need some physical therapy and to take these shots. And probably surgery eventually. ‘Shit’ about covers it.”
“I’m sorry, Bette.” He exhaled. “You seem like you’ve been getting around pretty well…considering.”
Bette chuckled. “They let you on the force with that eyesight?”
Scott laughed in response. “Just being polite. You do, though. Get around pretty well, all things considered.”
“You haven’t seen me do steps lately.” She paused. “Listen, it’ll only be a few appointments here and there. Maybe some bad days after the shots. But you remember my neighbor, Ginny? She says she can watch Lily if I’ve got therapy or need to take it easy. She knows the girl. Sometimes we go over there and play checkers.”
“Ginny? Is she the one who always smells like molasses? The one who’s blind in one eye?”
Bette said, “As long as she keeps the one good eye on Lily.”
Scott puffed out his cheeks and set his cup down on the break table, some of the coffee sloshing out. Detective Carter Morales passed him, raising her eyebrows. A transplant from the south, she was new to the area like Scott, and they’d bonded over it. She was the person whom Scott wanted to consult about the handwriting on the note in Kim’s apartment.
But right now… Scott exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. Lily was in preschool on weekday mornings, and though he was usually around to pick her up, Bette often gave her dinner, put her to bed, and stayed in the house until Scott got home late at night. Police work could be erratic. Currently he was working the swing shift, but that could change. He relied on Bette, probably more than he should have. Though he liked the contact with people on the street, he’d also considered moving up to detective. This put a major halt to those plans.
“Know any girls in the neighborhood? Any mother’s helpers?” Bette asked. “If they still call them that. I used to have one for Alexa to help me out while I did chores and the shopping and such. Of course, that one wore too much makeup and always talked about boys, so she probably wasn’t the best influence for Alexa.” Her voice hit that perfect intersection of bitterness and amusement she’d trademarked, and Scott shook his head. His former girlfriend’s wild ways was not something he wanted to remember right then, not when he was trying to figure out how to tend to their daughter the next few weeks. He knew Alexa’s lack of even an iota of maternal instinct meant asking her to come help wasn’t an option.
He imagined how such a call would go down.
“Hey, Alexa,” he’d say as she picked up her cell in Barcelona or Tokyo or wherever she was performing nowadays. He’d probably have to then say it was Scott, and maybe even Scott Culpepper, because he rarely called and Alexa had a lot of people calling her about travel stories to write or spontaneous getaway weekends full of liquor and adventures like she lived in some Hemingway story. It was what had attracted him to her initially, that crazy adventurous spirit. He’d grown up too fast as the only son of aging parents, a kid who’d needed to work young and hard to support himself. Alexa made him feel young in a way he never had. They’d had a whirlwind thing for a few weeks and had been careless. When Alexa wound up pregnant, she’d gotten caught up in the novelty of the stableness that he represented and tried to settle down. But by the time Lily was four months, they both admitted it wasn’t going to work, and Alexa left the country with a gleam in her eye that her baby girl had never given her.
It’d been a mistake to be with a woman like her, but a beautiful one. He had Lily, and sometimes when he watched her, his heart cracked and shifted in ways he hadn’t known possible. But he’d learned his lesson, and he knew he wouldn’t be with a woman like that again.
No, Alexa wouldn’t come, not for a few weeks, not even when it was because her own mother needed new knees. She didn’t do that sort of thing, and in all honesty, Scott would’ve been relieved. She had her thing, and they had theirs.
She sent a postcard every Christmas from somewhere exotic, and even that had a lot of white space on it. A couple sentences, like she was a celebrity Lily had written fan mail to, not half her genetic makeup.
“What about that girl that visits her parents a few doors down?” Bette said, interrupting his bitter reflection. “The lawyers?”
Scott tensed. “The Xaviers? You mean Kim? Or Laurel?”
“Who’s the one you’re always staring at?”
“I’m not—I don’t—”
“Lily seems to like her.”
He sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. “That’d be Kim.” Lily had taken a shine to Kim when she’d met her last fall, and Scott had to admit she was good with her. Playful and attentive, like she actually liked being around kids. Despite being shy with adults, Lily yelled Kim’s name and waved at her when they saw her come to her parents’ weekly dinner across the street, and Scott just—well, apparently he stared. Enough that his would-have-been mother-in-law noticed.
“Oh, you could ask Sophie and Sierra’s mom,” Bette said. Lily was friends with two twin sisters, and their mom was home with them. Unfortunately Taylor Stiles creeped him out, between her insistence on her girls always wearing matching accessories and the obscene amount of time she spent crafting baked goods to impress the other parents.
“There’s got to be someone else,” he mumbled. Taylor Stiles was a no. And he was trying to get Kim’s intruder caught so he could get her out of his neighborhood. The idea of inviting her into his home to watch his daughter—well, it’d be working at cross purposes. If this morning was any indication, even being in the same room as Kim Xavier was asking for trouble.
“Let me give it some thought,” Scott said. They ended the call, and he walked back to Carter’s desk.
“Hey, do you remember the case from last fall,” he said. “The grad assistant who kept getting the threatening notes?”
Carter leaned back in her chair, pursing her lips. She was about his age, with long, dark curly hair, brown skin, and a slow southern drawl. “The ones on the car? Yeah, I remember. We never caught the guy.”
Scott nodded. “We thought it was probably an ex, but none of them seemed to fit the profile. I was the responding officer, the first note she got.”
Carter studied him. “Why do you bring it up?”
He sat down in a chair across from her. “I found a note. Different victim and scene, but the handwriting matches.”
“Interesting,” Carter said. “Can I see the report?”
Scott put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward. A trio of officers were in the break room, laughing and sharing jokes, and he doubted they’d overhear. But he still didn’t want to make Kim’s situation public, especially after Jimmy’s reaction. “There is no report. This is someone who didn’t want to file a police report. For personal reasons. I was wondering if you could pull one of those notes out of the evidence room. To confirm that the handwriting matches.” He extracted the bag with the note from his pocket.
Detective Morales bit her lip, considering, but in the end she took the evidence from him, like he’d guessed she would. She was curious and determined, and she wanted to catch any man who terrorized women.
He’d check back with her at his next shift and convince her they needed to talk to that woman who’d found the notes again. Ten to one, there was a connection between her and Kim Xavier.