I’d thought I’d hear from Erik sometime that day, telling me that he’d opened an official investigation into what had happened to Noah. But I didn’t.
When he still hadn’t called me by noon the next day, I was done waiting.
I called his cell phone rather than calling the police station.
“I expected you might call,” Erik said in lieu of a hello. “I’d planned to call last night, but we had an accident on Highway 31, just outside town.”
I never knew what to say when he told me something like that. The things police officers had to see and cope with on an almost daily basis would have turned me into a jellyfish. But maybe all he needed was for me to listen and let him know that, with all that was happening in the world, I had nothing but respect for the sacrifices law enforcement made to keep everyone else safe.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Were there fatalities?”
“No, thank God.” The sound of him rustling papers carried over the line. “I guess you’re calling about Noah’s case.”
“Does that mean it is a case now?”
Erik cleared his throat. “Unfortunately not. Mark made a good argument, but Dr. Johnson lobbied equally as hard that it was accidental.”
I understood where he was coming from on having to listen to both sides, and yet I didn’t. “But Mark’s the expert. You’ve worked with him for years, and you know he knows what he’s talking about.”
“I also know that he would say the moon’s made of blue cheese if you wanted him to.”
A hard, hot ball formed in the pit of my stomach. My first instinct was to defend Mark’s integrity. He wouldn’t risk convicting an innocent person sometime down the line just to make me happy now.
I pulled the phone away from my face and stuck out my tongue at it to let off some of the pressure. Losing my cool would only prove Erik’s point that Mark and I impaired each other’s judgment. It might be true in some ways, but not this time. “I’m sorry you think so little of both of us.”
Erik sighed. “It’s not like that, Nicole. I’m saying this because I’m your friend. I’m both of your friends. And you have to admit it’s more likely you’re seeing a crime here where there isn’t one than that we have another murder in Fair Haven.”
Improbable wasn’t the same thing as impossible. “I think you’re making a mistake if you classify this as an accident.”
“Now you sound like Officer Scott.”
Officer Scott? Elise? She was the only officer assigned to this case as far as I knew.
“Look,” Erik said, his voice quieter than before. “Our whole department is under investigation thanks to the former chief and the things he covered up. Every decision I make right now is questioned and examined for favoritism and corruption because I was his second-in-command. If I don’t have a better justification than Mark examined a patient he had no right to examine because a civilian asked him to, it won’t just be my job. It’ll be his and anyone else who’s seen as crossing the line with us.”
Like Quincey, who’d once let me out of a cell. And the dispatcher who gave me Quincey’s cell phone number because I was Stan Dawes’ niece. Good men whose only mistake was to help me.
“I understand.”
“You know I’d help if I could,” he said.
“I know.” He always had. He’d become the big brother I’d never had, and I appreciated that he was trying to watch out for his people.
But someone also had to watch out for Noah—one of my people. Whoever had hurt him might come back to finish what they’d started. I couldn’t live at the hospital to make sure he was safe, and since the police didn’t classify it as a crime, they wouldn’t leave him protection either.
If Erik couldn’t investigate, I would. I’d find him the evidence he needed to open an official case.
The best lead I had at present was that Noah was a recovering gambler and owed someone money. Finding out the name of Noah’s bookie might be enough to give Erik the justification he needed. Hopefully getting the name from Russ wouldn’t be like squeezing lemonade from a stone.
I snapped leashes on my dogs and took them with me. They could use the exercise, and Russ had planned to spend today finishing the repairs that we couldn’t make yesterday without the parts Noah was supposed to pick up prior to his attack. Thankfully, the temperature had been wrong last night, and the sap wasn’t running today. It gave us a little time to catch up.
I swung by the rental shop to grab a pair of snowshoes and a walkie-talkie, then radioed Russ for his location. His voice as he gave it sounded hesitant, but he couldn’t exactly ask what I wanted over the radio.
The walk out took us about ten minutes. As soon as we were inside the tree line, I took the leashes off Velma and Toby and let them run free. The first command I’d taught both of them was come, and they’d both caught on quickly when they realized a treat waited for them when they did. I wasn’t above bribery for good behavior.
I spotted the snowmobile before I saw Russ’ barrel-shaped figure weaving through the trees. It wasn’t normal for him to take the snowmobile if he was only out this far, but perhaps he had sections to repair all across the bush. Or perhaps the attack on Noah had made him feel his age. I’d called him as soon as Mark left yesterday, and I hadn’t heard him sound so defeated since his girlfriend passed away last fall.
Russ raised a hand in greeting. “I have a feeling I’m not going to like whatever brings you out here.”
Good news had been in short supply for us lately, but it wasn’t like Russ to be so morose. He was usually the level, easy-going one. No high highs, but also no low lows.
Then again, he’d lost Uncle Stan, and now Noah was unconscious in the hospital. If it were me, I’d be wondering what could be coming next. That fear of the future could deflate even the staunchest optimist.
I also couldn’t deny that he wasn’t going to appreciate what I wanted. “I need the name of Noah’s bookie.”
His eyebrows came down into a like heck you do frown. “I don’t know his bookie’s name, and even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”
Russ was one of the world’s worst liars. He tended to sweat and twitch when he needed to tell a falsehood. Right now, he looked stern and solid. Which, unfortunately for me, meant he probably didn’t know the name of Noah’s bookie. “Do you have Oliver’s phone number?”
Russ had his wagging finger out and his chest puffed up. “There’s no reason you need the name of Noah’s bookie. You’re not the police, and you certainly shouldn’t be chasing after whoever hurt Noah. Your luck isn’t going to last forever.”
Velma bounded through the snow drift next to us and made two laps around us before sliding to a stop and planting her fist-sized paw on top of a branch, pinning it to the ground so she could tug on the other end. She was already larger than most dogs and lean like a deer. Watching her play like this gave me an equal sense of sadness and satisfaction. She and so many others had been spared from having short and brutal lives, but it’d taken the sacrifice of a good man to bring it about.
I’d rather not have to sacrifice the same amount to save Noah. Russ was right. I wasn’t a cat. There weren’t nine lives waiting for me to burn through, and even if there had been, I’d have already used up at least five of them.
“Trust me, chasing after a criminal is the last thing I want to do.” I crossed my heart for emphasis. “But Erik says he doesn’t have enough information to open an actual investigation. I thought if I could give him the name of Noah’s bookie it might help.”
“Oh.” Russ’ chest deflated like a popped balloon. “Sorry. This is bringing up some rough memories of what happened to your uncle.”
That explained his out-of-character behavior. Grief was one of those emotions where you’d think you were doing better and then something small could come along and send you tumbling back. “At least Noah wasn’t negligent.”
Russ grunted. “Small favors.”
He turned away from me and tightened up one of the replaced joints in the sap line. It was his trademark way of trying to end a conversation. He hadn’t given me Oliver’s phone number, but I could always call him at work. With the way he’d been dressed when he came to the hospital two days ago, he couldn’t work anywhere other than Quantum Mechanics.
I called a goodbye to Russ. I’d let him think he’d won this one, and I’d track Oliver down on my own.
I picked up a cell phone signal a few feet from the edge of the bush and dialed the number for Quantum Mechanics. With the amount of time my car had spent there, I knew it by memory. One more visit and Tony should really give me the mechanic version of frequent flyer miles.
I didn’t recognize the man’s voice that answered. “Oliver’s off today for a family emergency. You can leave a message for him when he gets back in if you’d like.”
I opted not to leave a message. If he wasn’t at work, my guess was he was at the hospital, sitting with Noah. I called the front desk at the hospital and gave them the room number.
A man answered on the second ring.
“Is this Oliver?”
There was a longer hesitation on the line than I expected. “Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes.” Always call yourself their employer when you want to form a connection, my mom used to tell me, and their boss when you want to give them an order you expect to be obeyed. In this case I wanted Oliver to feel like I was on Noah’s side, advocating for his best interests. “Noah’s employer.”
“I remember you,” Oliver said, but the way he said it made me think he meant he remembered me from more than just our meeting at the hospital a couple of days ago. “Are you calling to see how Noah’s doing?”
I flinched. Normally I preferred face-to-face interactions because it was easier to read people, but this time the phone saved me. If Oliver hadn’t said something, I might have jumped right into what I wanted from him, so focused on finding who hurt Noah that I forgot to check on how he was healing. If he was healing.
“How is he doing?” I asked so that I didn’t have to lie by directly answering his question.
“The doctor says the swelling’s come down in his brain. He should be awake but he’s—”
His sentence cut off so abruptly that I stopped walking and checked my phone. I still had a signal, so it hadn’t been caused on my end.
“Anyway,” Oliver said, “thanks for calling.”
“Wait.” Hopefully he hadn’t hung up already. It’d be mortifying if I had to call back because then it’d been clear what my real motive had been for calling. “I’ve been trying to provide some information for the police that might help them decide if they should classify Noah’s case as criminal. Do you know the name of the man he owed money to?”
Phrasing it broadly seemed more tactful and safer. For all I knew, Noah owed money to more than one person.
“Other than Tony you mean?”
I’d almost forgotten that Noah had gotten himself fired from Quantum Mechanics for stealing. “I didn’t know he was paying Tony back for what he took.”
“Not sure, but I figured that’s what was happening since Tony didn’t press charges.”
That was interesting information but not helpful. I couldn’t see Tony attacking Noah for missing a payment, or even a lot of payments. “Tony’s not the only one, though?”
“Naw, but he’s the only one I know by name. Noah never told me the name of the guy he placed bets with.”
I stomped my foot into the snow and Velma’s ears perked up into triangles like she was trying to decide if this was a new game. If this were a game, I could go online and find a cheat to get around this roadblock. “Are you okay with me going into Noah’s house and looking around for any records he might have kept?”
“Sure,” Oliver said. “And could you empty out the fridge for me. If he comes out of this, he’s not going to want to go home to his house smelling like spoiled milk and rotten apples.”
I settled the dogs in at home and took the path through the woods to where Noah and Russ’ cabins sat. Other than the staff at Short Stack, our pancake house, and Dave who worked at the rental shop and ran the zip line in the summer, Sugarwood only had three full-time employees—Noah, Russ, and me. Since Uncle Stan had technically been their landlord—albeit rent-free—before he died, his key rack had neatly labeled spare keys to each of their homes.
I wiggled the key in Noah’s lock until it gave, pushed the door open, and hesitated in the doorway. Even though Oliver gave me permission, it felt like a violation of Noah’s privacy.
One of the strangest things about dealing with Uncle Stan’s affairs after he died was sorting through his private belongings, things he’d never expected anyone else to see. It’d been bearable then because he’d been my family and he wasn’t coming back. But with Noah, if he recovered, I’d have to face him every day knowing more about him than an employer should know about their employee.
But if I wanted to help him, I had no other choice.
I took a long stride across the threshold and dragged the door shut behind me. I’d expected the house to smell like grease and dirt and gasoline since Noah was a mechanic. Instead, his house smelled more like hay and spicy aftershave.
I didn’t know Noah well enough to know the best place to look for any records, but I did know he was methodical about organizing his tools. He didn’t like anyone touching his toolbox, and his workbench had all his tools hung on labeled nails or stored in neatly labeled, clear plastic boxes.
Since he didn’t have any reason to hide his records—Russ and Uncle Stan had known about his habit—the most likely place would be in a desk or filing cabinet. I walked through the living room, kitchen, and breakfast nook, but they were almost sterile, like Noah had already sold everything of value that he owned that wasn’t essential for survival. No television. No computer. Nothing of value except a small piece of machinery sitting on a towel, presumably something he was fixing for Sugarwood, but it could also be an item he was repairing for someone else to make extra cash.
The only other room downstairs was his bathroom. I highly doubted he kept his record of his debts in there, though in the crime scene photos I saw during my previous career, I’d seen stranger things kept in the bathroom, including a spray paint gun and a hand juicer. I peeked into Noah’s bathroom just in case, but the most interesting thing there was the lack of a shower curtain.
The stairs led up to the house’s two small bedrooms. The first was completely empty. The second must have been where Noah slept because it at least had a mattress on the floor, neatly made. A small dresser nestled against one of the walls.
I held my spot in the doorway. The dresser seemed like my best option for finding any information about who Noah owed money to. It was also the most likely spot for him to keep his underwear, and as important as this was, I didn’t want to be elbow deep in Noah’s boxer shorts…or tightie whities. There were some lines that should never be crossed.
I sucked in a deep breath and strode toward the dresser. I’d take a quick look. Given how Noah organized the rest of his life, he probably wasn’t the type of man to keep papers in with his underwear anyway. Fingers crossed, he kept anything pertinent in its own drawer.
I pulled the top drawer open enough to see inside. Jackpot. No underwear, only papers and pictures.
Noah had stacked old credit card bills, neatly labeled with the reference numbers banks gave online when you paid, and elastic-banded together by year. Did bookies accept credit card payments for debts? With people being able to accept payment through their cell phones anymore it was certainly possible, and I didn’t want to overlook anything.
I unfolded a couple recent bills and scanned the purchases. Other than the grocery store, a 96ers Bar & Grill, and The Burnt Toast Café, the majority of purchases were ones he’d made for Sugarwood that we reimbursed him for. Nothing jumped out at me as a potential cover name for a bookie’s business, and there were no charges to a personal name.
I folded the bills back up and stacked them back on his pile. If I had to rifle through his private business, I could at least be respectful of his filing system.
A nine-by-twelve cream-colored envelope lay next to his stacks of bills. I wiggled it out and popped the flap. It wasn’t sealed.
I poured the contents out on the dresser top, and photos slid everywhere. Pictures were the last thing I’d been expecting. I stored all my photos digitally anymore, as did most people I knew. I only printed out ones I wanted to frame and display. I certainly didn’t print pictures to stuff them in an envelope in a drawer. But maybe Noah had owned some expensive frames that he’d pawned for cash. That wouldn’t surprise me.
Either way, pictures wouldn’t help me find his bookie. I started to scoop them back up to slide back into the envelope and froze.
Noah smiled at me from the image, sitting on a large fallen log, a backdrop of trees covered in red and orange behind him. And the young woman sitting on his lap looked barely legal age…maybe not even.
She’d tied her blonde hair back in a ponytail, which made her already lean face look narrower, and turquoise teardrop earrings dangled from her ears. She wore that kind of all-hope-no-fear smile that I’d rarely seen on anyone over the age of twenty-five.
They were both fully clothed, though, so it wasn’t like the photo alone proved wrongdoing. For all I knew, Noah had once had a younger sister and she’d died so he took down all her photos and stuffed them out of sight. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing a grieving person had done.
I flipped to the next picture.
Whoever the girl-woman was, she wasn’t his sister. This picture was close, like Noah held the camera at arm’s length to take it, and the image was slightly off-center. Despite that, there was no mistaking that the person Noah was passionately kissing was the same girl-woman from the previous photos. The turquoise earrings were the same.
I’d seen enough. I averted my eyes while I shoved the photos back, just in case any of the others weren’t so innocent.
A burning sensation grew at the bottom of my throat and spread down into my stomach. I should turn these pictures over to Erik as well. If Noah had been inappropriate with an underage girl, that meant an angry father or uncle or brother could have been the one to hit Noah in the head. Based on what Mark had said about the angle of the wound, it couldn’t have been someone shorter than Noah, which ruled out 80 percent of women and the girl herself.
I’d pray she was overage. I hated to think that Noah could have been capable of acting inappropriately toward a minor.
I set the packet on top of the dresser. If the girl-woman in the photo were legal age, I’d still need the bookie’s name. Even if she wasn’t, the bookie might be the one who hurt Noah anyway. Finding these pictures simply meant the police would have more suspects to investigate.
A few other photos floated around loose in the drawer. Noah with an older woman who looked like his mom. Noah, Russ, and Uncle Stan standing in front of the horses and sleigh. Noah at what looked like a Quantum Mechanics Christmas party with Oliver and Tony. Nothing in any of them suggested anything abnormal or pointed to anyone else who might have wanted Noah dead. In fact, he looked well-liked.
I moved the photos to the side. Underneath was a manila folder. I flipped it open.
It looked like a ledger of payments, like you’d expect to find when someone was paying off a debt. Unfortunately, Noah hadn’t written down the name of the person or persons he owed money to.
I continued turning the pages. If Noah hadn’t left some trail, I didn’t know where to go next. The man took minimalism to a whole new level.
I set aside another page. The one behind it was a photocopy of three checks. I couldn’t help but smile. Noah might have been an addict, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He’d covered his tail by copying every check he’d written to repay his bookie so that he’d have proof of what he’d already paid off.
The checks were all written out to a George Abbott. I’d found the name I was looking for.
I squirmed in place on the cold metal bench along the wall of the police station. The man at the front desk, who turned out to be the same one who put me in contact with Officer Quincey Dornbush the last time I’d been tangled up in a murder investigation, had told me Erik was on the phone, but he’d be out as soon as he finished.
The front door to the station swung open, and Elise Scott strode in. I could tell the moment she spotted and recognized me because her step faltered slightly. She changed directions and stopped in front of the desk.
“What’s she doing here?” Elise asked the desk clerk.
I think she meant it to be a whisper, but the waiting area was empty except for me. The only noises were the ruffling of the papers the desk clerk had been looking through and the rattle of the furnace pushing not-nearly-warm-enough air out of the vents.
The temptation to answer her myself was almost more than I could handle, but I didn’t want to be one of those snarky women. I’d always found that women like that were a lot more fun to read about than they were to know, and I already had enough barriers to break through in Fair Haven without adding a reputation for snarkiness on top of it.
“Nicole?” Erik’s voice called from my left.
I glanced up and he waved for me to join him. Once we were both inside his office, he closed the door tightly behind us.
He sank into his chair and nodded toward the one on the other side of the desk. I opted not to sit. I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t butting into this investigation. This was more of an evidence drive-by.
He gave me his characteristic not-quite-a-smile smile. “I’m almost afraid to ask why you’re here after our conversation this morning.”
I swallowed down an extremely unladylike snort. I couldn’t blame him if he was wondering what trouble I’d already managed to get myself in to after we talked this morning. I was probably more familiar with the way to the police chief’s office than most of the long-time residents in Fair Haven were. At least this time I could set his mind at ease.
“I got permission from Noah’s family to look around his house for anything that might point to who could have wanted to hurt him.” I laid the folder and envelope on the desk. “I found the name of the man I think Noah owed money to and some…”
I didn’t know how to describe the photos of Noah with the girl-woman. If it turned out she was underage, I’d have to fire him no matter how nice he seemed or how hard a worker he was.
“Some what?” Erik asked.
He hadn’t reached for the pile of documents, and the way his lips turned down made me want to squirm. He clearly thought I’d done something outside the lines to get whatever I wanted to show him even though I’d told him how I came by it.
“Some photos I think you should see. They were in his house as well.”
He still didn’t reach for the documents, and my chest tightened. Didn’t he believe me?
Erik rubbed at the shoulder where he’d been shot in January. We’d hoped he wouldn’t have any lasting side effects from the wound, but he’d confided in me at our last breakfast that he was still having trouble controlling his aim when he fired his weapon at the range. The doctors said he needed to give it time, but he was starting to be afraid of being confined to desk duty forever, even after the powers-that-be hired a new police chief—a task they seemed to be in no rush to complete.
He must have realized what he was doing because he dropped the hand he’d been massaging his shoulder with to the desk. “I can’t look at any of that, and you need to take it with you when you go. Put it back where you found it.”
I took a step backward. Of all the things I’d thought he might say, that wasn’t on the list. It reminded me too much of how Chief Wilson denied the truth and turned a blind eye to what was happening in Fair Haven. But I also knew Erik wasn’t like that, so he must have a good reason. “Why?”
“This isn’t an open investigation, and nothing in what you brought proves someone attacked Noah. If I look at it now, and later we do find evidence suggesting Noah was attacked, I won’t be able to use it. So put it back in his house, where you found it, and don’t mention it to anyone else. I don’t even want to know where in the house it was.”
I sank down onto the edge of the chair that I’d turned down before. I saw his point, but that left my biggest concern unanswered. “I’m worried that whoever did this won’t consider it finished because Noah’s still alive. They could smother him in his bed and no one would know until it was too late. Isn’t there anything you can do without compromising the department or a future case?”
Erik cracked his knuckles, something I hadn’t seen him do before. It must be a sign of the additional stress he was under with the investigation into the department and his questionable recovery on top of running the department. “I can’t give him a protective detail as long as it’s classified as an accident. I could call the hospital and ask that only people on a list I’ll give them be allowed to visit him.”
My shoulders slumped. It was something at least, and it should be easy enough for Erik to explain if he was asked. A question had been raised by people close to Noah about whether it was really an accident or not, and he was taking precautions to protect a citizen should this turn out to have been intentional.
It didn’t guarantee Noah’s safety, though. It was more like a bailing bucket on a boat with a hole. Someone could still sneak past the nurses. They couldn’t watch Noah’s door every minute, especially given that the patients on the floor far outnumbered the staff. And once someone slipped inside, a staff member would have to actually look in the door to Noah’s room to see someone was in there.
And if Noah did recover, he’d be out in the world again, giving whoever attacked him a hundred more opportunities to do it again. This time, they’d probably make sure he was dead before they left.
Why didn’t they make sure he was dead the first time? the annoying voice of logic in my head whispered.
I didn’t have an answer for it, and sitting like a mannequin in Erik’s office was only wasting his time and mine.
I rose to my feet, grabbed up the evidence, and turned for the door. Despite the pictures of Noah and the girl-woman, his bookie still seemed the most plausible option for who’d hurt him. If it’d been over money, there was one way to ensure Noah’s safety that didn’t involve the police.
I’d find his bookie and pay Noah’s debt myself.