46

While she waited for Delia to arrive, Emily dialed Mina’s number at least a dozen times. It was borderline harassment, but Emily didn’t care. The current situation had left her a little crazy. On the last try, Emily left a message. Although she didn’t leave any details, she knew she sounded desperate. Because she was.

Instinctively, Emily grabbed Nick’s phone and pressed her birth date. She couldn’t help herself as she began to scroll through Nick’s email and texts, just in case there was anything that might … No, wait! She couldn’t. It would be tampering with evidence. She could go to jail. Lose everything. She set the phone down and wiped her fingerprints off it. She paced around the kitchen. Then she returned to the phone and picked it back up. She would peek. She wouldn’t delete or change anything. No harm in that. Right?

She found that Dr. Payton’s assistant had sent the same email she’d sent Emily to Nick’s personal email three hours earlier. Dr. Payton had waited to call her until he was sure Nick had received the news. Snake!

She also found multiple emails, texts, and phone calls that correlated with Nick’s search for James VanDerMuellen. He had researched the high school class ring company and gotten his hands on a copy of the receipt for James’s ring. He had hired a digital forensics expert to conduct a deep-dive Internet search on James that had turned up nothing in the past couple of years. It was like James had scrubbed himself from the Internet. Nick had contacted countless family members and friends by text, email, or phone. The same message echoed through each response. “We haven’t seen him. We don’t know where James is. He’s disappeared. He owes me money. We’re worried.”

Nick had done his due diligence.

Delia came bounding through the front door without ringing the bell. Emily nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Don’t you knock?”

“Maybe you should lock the door,” said Delia. “What’s going on, doll?”

“The ninth hair. It’s Nick’s,” she blurted out, struggling to hold back her tears. “They just arrested him.”

“Oh, God. I can’t believe this.” Delia held Emily for a moment and then gently led her to the kitchen table.

“I’m making you some tea. Sit there and tell me everything.” A little mom treatment was exactly what Emily needed.

Emily handed her the lab report she had meant to give Nick. After a moment, Delia looked up at Emily with a slight terror in her eyes that Emily had never seen before.

“I can’t believe … are you sure?”

She nodded. “But the worst part is, Nick didn’t know his sample had been submitted. I did it.”

Delia left a long pause between them, filled by the sound of the gas flame hissing under the kettle on the stove. She stood motionless by the kitchen sink, staring into it with a disbelieving gaze.

“With that and the jacket … I’m just afraid …” Emily didn’t know where to go next. “What am I going to do?”

“Do you honestly think Nick is guilty?” Delia asked her, straight faced.

Emily was quiet for a moment before saying, “I want to believe him. I know his character. He’s not like that. But Jo didn’t think Paul was like that either. So, yeah, I don’t like it, but I do have some doubts. Sins of omission are still sins.”

“And now it’s coming back to bite him.” Delia leaned against the kitchen counter with her mug warming her palms. She looked at Emily with resolve in her brow.

“With a little push.”

“Are we not all capable of evil?” said Delia, who had seen her fair share.

Emily had learned this, too, in her cases with dad. Even the best of people could be tempted into dirty deeds if the right circumstances presented themselves. Silence passed between them.

“I’m testing you, doll. Doubt is an essential duty to this job. You’re right to have it.”

“It feels awful.”

“Of course it does. Especially given this situation. You care very deeply about Nick. Maybe you even love him. I know you thought you were trying to help.”

Emily glanced away. She could hear her mother in Delia’s words. But she hadn’t been able to give her and Nick’s relationship a fair shot—in high school or now. The timing had just always been off between the two of them. What if he was convicted for Sandi’s murder?

“I did it because I wanted to find out the truth,” said Emily.

“And now you don’t like the results.” Delia snapped Emily from her emotional introspection. Her eyes flitted back to Delia’s determined gaze. “But you are likely the only person who can help him right now.”

It was bitter medicine to swallow. She would do everything she could to free him. He would do the same for her. He’d saved her life. Now, she had to save his.

Delia took a sip and joined Emily at the table. “I heard about your escapade at the Silver Slipper,” she said with a soft smile.

Emily let out a little chortle. “Not my brightest moment.”

“But a fearless one. That’s heroine material.”

The anxiety began to trickle from Emily. “Where do I start?” She drew in a deep breath.

“We’re going to put this together logically.” Emily felt a wave of relief as Delia clicked into her investigative mode. “Let’s talk this through. What do you have so far? What do you know?”

As Delia served more tea, Emily explained where she was so far with the case, how unhelpful and odd and disconnected Mrs. Parkman had been. Paul and the pack and their dirty deeds. Her lack of conversation with Mina. The DNA evidence. How Tiffani had almost run her off the road.

“Tiffani definitely knows something,” said Emily. “But besides the fact that she’s acting all weird, the only real evidence I have is these rings.”

“You think they’re somehow connected?”

“I know it seems like a stretch, but what do you think?”

“Why would she be protecting the man who killed her sister?” asked Delia.

“Exactly. I can’t wrap my head around that one,”

“Well, let’s take a look.” Delia enlarged the images of the two rings on Emily’s phone screen to get a closer comparison. Delia’s lifetime of experience in the FBI with investigation and tool identification gave her a distinctive edge in seeing the finer details that clinched a theory and corroborated evidence. She spent the next few minutes taking measurements and jotting down a set of computations on scratch paper.

“Your instincts are impeccable, my dear. Unbelievable. You see here—they are the same stone. Right down to the defects. See that vertical scratch on the left side, about half a millimeter in length? It’s the same one in this photo.”

Emily was elated and in awe of Delia’s skills.

“My guess is that James or Tiffani had the stone remounted in a new band,” said Delia. “Now you need to find out why Tiffani and James were together. And if she knows where he is.”

“How? I’ve totally blown my cover with her,” said Emily. “She doesn’t trust me or want to see me.”

“We’ll just have to approach this differently,” said Delia.

“How?”

“Melany.”

Emily gave her a quizzical look. Who?

“My friend. The contractor’s wife. Her husband owns Pepper Cave Construction. Remember?”

Emily nodded, but she wasn’t seeing the trees for the forest here.

“Don’t you think it was odd that of all the plots on Pinetree Slopes, the first one to be excavated was the one where Sandi’s body was found?”

Of course. It was so obvious when Delia said it!

“Can you get Melany to tell you who has the deed on the land and who’s building there?”

“Now you see it, doll,” Delia nodded. “I think this may yield some interesting results. In the meantime, you keep working on Mina and pay Nick a visit in jail. Bring him an extra sweater and a blanket. The mayor doesn’t like to waste money on heating the city cell.”

“Thank you, Delia.”

Delia rose from the kitchen table and set her mug in the kitchen sink. “I’m going to head out. You okay?”

“Yes. Much better.” Emily felt hope rising in her chest. “I’ll just clean up a bit here, grab a few of Nick’s things, and close the house.”

“Good girl.” Delia gave her a hug. “It’s going to be fine. And someday you and Nick will tell this tale around the campfire to your grandchildren.”

“Don’t get ahead of your skis, Ms. Andrews,” Emily cautioned. She knew Delia was just trying to lighten the mood, but there were still so many hurdles to jump. If Nick was proven innocent and released, would he forgive her?

Delia left, and Emily collected herself as she bustled about the house, gathering the items she needed for Nick. She ran upstairs to Nick’s closet and grabbed a sweater, socks, and fresh pair of jeans. She was about to switch off the closet light when a glint caught her eye. A small plastic picture frame. She recognized it because she’d had the same one once. Her own fifteen-year-old face smiled back at her. Nick had his arm around her, and they were standing in her front yard under a red-leafed maple. Her mother had taken the photo just a few weeks before her crash. It was September nineteenth, Emily’s birthday. The four of them— her, Nick, Mom, and Dad—were on their way to dinner to celebrate. Nick’s freshly shaven face still glowed with a summer tan. None of them looked as if they had a care in the world. All so blissfully unaware how much life was about to change. She loved that Nick still had this picture. Still holding on to hope. Something she had given up long ago.

Emily trudged downstairs in a daze. She shut off all but one living room light and turned down the heat. Tomorrow she and Delia would collect their new pieces, and soon the entire puzzle would be complete. She had to have faith in that. Not just for her own sake, but for Nick’s.