52

“I know this is going to sound crazy. But you have to trust me,” said Emily to Jo and Paul at their dining room table the next morning after breakfast. It was after eight and the three Blakely kids had gone off to school.

“You want me to send my husband to the Silver Slipper? In broad daylight?” Jo shook her head. “You’ve lost your mind, Emily Hartford.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, especially after what you two just went through, but please. It’s really important to the case. And getting Nick out of jail.”

“You have to give us more to go on, Emily,” said Paul, taking his wife’s hand in his. Emily was glad to see this loving gesture. She wanted nothing more than for her friends’ marriage to recover and thrive. And she felt awful about what she was asking.

“I can’t divulge every detail. Just yet. I just need you to keep Tiffani Parkman engaged while I check on something.”

“Just how engaged?” demanded Jo, eyes piercing Emily.

“Hang out at the club and keep an eye on her. You don’t have to talk to her or anything—I mean, unless she looks like she’s leaving. Make sure she doesn’t leave the club before I text you the all clear.”

“This is really weird,” said Paul, discouragement in his brow.

“Are you putting yourself in danger again?” Jo was adamant.

“No, of course not.” Emily’s voice lilted, and she knew Jo could hear right through the lie.

“I know you, Em,” Jo said. “And I don’t like this.”

“Why don’t you go to the police?” asked Paul.

“It’s complicated.” Emily wrung her hands over her full mug of coffee. She had been so nervous, she hadn’t taken a single sip, and now it had cooled to undrinkable.

“You don’t trust the new detective, do you?” said Paul.

“I’m at a delicate stage, and I don’t want any screw-ups.”

“We’re not doing it,” said Jo firmly, “unless you tell us what’s going on.”

“I will go to the police. I’m planning to. Of course.” Emily hesitated. “But I need to be sure about something first. I’m just corroborating evidence.”

“You being so cryptic is not helping convince us,” said Paul.

Emily searched her brain for some better way to convey things. “If I tell you this, you have to keep it to yourselves. At least for now.”

“We’re not gonna blab, Em. We want Nick out of jail as much as you do. You need to trust us, too.”

Emily looked to Jo. “Remember the black-onyx ring from the yearbook picture? It was James’s class ring. Tiffani used the stone and had it set in a new mounting. I saw it on her finger in a Facebook picture and in her car. Delia confirmed it’s the same stone.”

Jo’s eyes went wide.

“Does Tiffani know where James is?” demanded Paul.

“I can’t say.”

“You’d better say,” said Jo.

“I’m not putting either of you into any more jeopardy over this. You have enough to deal with,” said Emily.

“Ever since you came back to Freeport, your sleuthing has really stirred things up,” said Jo. “I love you, but maybe you should just stick to surgery.”

Emily didn’t argue. Jo’s emotions were warranted.

“Paul, can you go to the club or not?” asked Emily.

Paul looked to Jo, who crossed her arms and turned to Emily with a serious look.

“He can go. This one time.” She got up from the table and paced a few steps. “You both owe me big-time.”

“I know. And thank you.” Emily hoped it came across as sincere and grateful.

*   *   *

Emily waited incognito at Tiffani’s apartment complex the rest of the morning.

Tiffani emerged from her apartment at eleven thirty, and Emily texted Paul.

She’s on her way.

Emily pulled out slowly and trailed Tiffani. She soon realized Tiffani wasn’t going directly to the Silver Slipper. Emily trailed her at a safe distance through the streets of Freeport and then outside the city limits into the country. It didn’t take long before Emily realized that Tiffani was heading to her mother’s home. It would be harder for Emily to hide herself in the open landscape of the county. She drew back far enough that she could just see the form of Tiffani’s Lexus cresting and dipping over the gentle hills of the road to Mrs. Parkman’s.

The Lexus soon approached Mrs. Parkman’s driveway and turned in. Emily then passed the driveway and pulled her car over to the shoulder, parking far enough away to be hidden from Tiffani’s view by a cluster of trees down the road past the house but still within good view of the Parkman home. She was about to exit her car when she realized she could be stepping into more danger than she was prepared for. Thinking fast, she reached under the passenger seat for her portable toolbox and grabbed the sharpest object she could find—a Phillips screwdriver. She stuffed it into the interior pocket of her winter coat and exited.

Climbing down the gently sloped embankment into the ditch, Emily was able to get even closer by walking the ditch alongside the road back toward the Parkman home. She found a private perch behind some shrubs where she could survey undetected.

She watched Tiffani get out of her car and slip into the side door off the garage.

Why would she not use the front door? Why wouldn’t she go right in to see her mother?

Ten minutes passed. Emily imagined Mrs. Parkman on the couch in the living room watching TV. She would never think to glance outside, because the TV would be blaring and she couldn’t hear a darn thing.

TV blaring.

Rats in the walls.

Have Tiffani call the exterminator.

There was no exterminator.

There were no rats.

I let him treat me that way. I actually played along.

The scratching she had heard was … human.

I showed him I was on his side. And, ten years later, it was all worth it.

A human clawing to get someone’s attention. Clawing to get out.

James.

The side door of the garage opened, and Emily felt the air being sucked from her lungs at what she saw. Tiffani shuffled out backward, tugging with all her might on the rope of a red sled as it bumped over the threshold of the doorway and onto the drive. On the sled was a human-shaped object wrapped in a faded blue sheet. Tiffani jerked the sled across the snow-covered driveway toward her car.

Emily glanced toward the picture window. She saw Mrs. Parkman get up and head into the kitchen. She still had no idea what was going on outside her house.

Emily stood motionless in a patch of tall, dead weeds poking through the snow, trying to decide what to do. Go after Tiffani? Call the police? Follow Tiffani? Was there any chance James was still alive under that sheet? Her stomach grew nauseous and twisty.

Tiffani parked the sled by the trunk as she opened it. How on earth was this slender woman going to lift this dead weight of a man? An image flashed into Emily’s brain. Tiffani onstage during her pole dance at the strip club. She could lift her entire body parallel to the floor, inching it down to within centimeters of the dance floor in an ever-so-graceful manner, never even breaking a sweat.

Tiffani effortlessly grabbed the bottom half of James’s body and lifted, flinging his legs over the lip of the trunk. She didn’t waste a second positioning herself under his upper body. With a heave, she shoved the rest of him in. Then she threw the sled on top and slammed the trunk closed. Emily pressed her lips together hard and bit down on her lower lip. She tasted blood as she licked away the pain. She willed her frozen limbs to move.

Emily jammed her hand into her pocket for her cell phone and realized she had left it in the car. Darn it!

Emily unfurled her stiff legs from a crouched position. They tingled as the blood flowed back into them, causing her to stumble on her first few steps toward her car.

Tiffani hopped in the driver’s side, and a second later the engine fired up. At a glance back through the front picture window of the house, Emily could see Mrs. Parkman waddling back into the living room, holding a soda and a bag of potato chips. She never turned her gaze toward the action happening outside that window.

Incredible. That TV must be so loud!

At the house, Tiffani barreled her Lexus in reverse down the driveway, skidding and slipping left and right on the snow-covered dirt drive that no one had bothered to shovel or have plowed. She swerved out onto the empty country road in the direction of Freeport.

Emily’s mind raced. Where would be the most likely place to dump a body between here and Freeport? There was Rock River, which flowed from far north near the upper peninsula through the city of Rock River and eventually into Lake Michigan. Or there was Freeport Lake.

Emily could hear the Lexus’s tires skidding on the icy pavement as Tiffani was getting away. Soon her car summited and disappeared over the hill. Emily had scampered the last few steps to her car when she heard a rumble from a truck coming around the curve in the road, facing Emily. She didn’t get a good look at the driver, but she was certain from the make and model of the truck that it was Hendrick VanDerMuellen. She ducked into her car as the truck sailed past.

Emily watched in her rearview mirror. The truck slowed as it reached the Parkman house. There was wrath in the way Hendrick cranked his truck and plowed down the drive. He knew his son was being held captive and was about to take punitive action on the unaware, innocent Mrs. Parkman.

She couldn’t let that materialize.