Stacey Rathmell lived at home with her parents, and their house turned out to be in a subdivision not far from Quantum Mechanics. The house was a Cape Cod-style with dormered windows on the second floor, green shutters, and a steeply sloping roof perfect for winters with heavy snow. The first word that came to my mind was unpretentious. It was how I would have described Tony as well, so I suppose it fit.
Elise knocked on the door, and Stacey answered. She looked almost identical to the way she had in the picture. That suggested they might have been recent rather than taken a couple of years ago the way we’d assumed. People changed a lot in their teens, so it wasn’t likely she’d look the same now as she had at fifteen.
Or maybe I was reaching because I didn’t want Noah to have been guilty of what he’d been accused of. We might not have been close, but I’d liked him, and I didn’t want to like him if he’d been preying on underage girls.
Stacey’s gaze zipped over Elise’s uniform and then hopped to me. She dropped the backpack she’d been holding to the ground. “Did something happen to one of my parents?”
Elise showed her badge, even though her uniform made it clear she was the police. “We’re here to talk to you about Noah Miller.”
Stacey rocked back and forth as though she were trying to decide between inviting us in and slamming the door in our face. It was an odd reaction.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I was on my way to class, actually.”
Elise had filled me in on the way on the little she’d found out about Stacey. Other than her ill-fated appearance in the court records surrounding Noah’s statutory rape charge, she must have kept her head down to stay so far out of the everybody-knows-everybody rumor mill of Fair Haven. From what Elise told me, Stacey’d been the model child and now was going to school for automotive technology, with the intent of taking over her father’s business when he retired. Other than the fact that she’d once been a girl scout, the gossip puddle ran shallow. I had more of a reputation after a few months than Stacey Rathmell did after living here her whole life.
It spoke to how careful Tony and his wife must have been in protecting their children. That knowledge kept me from dismissing entirely the idea that Tony had somehow been involved in Noah’s attack.
“We won’t take up too much of your time,” Elise said, “but it is important that we talk to you.”
Stacey stepped back out of the doorway, the only invitation she gave for us to enter. She didn’t make the usual requests that a reticent adult might have about whether we had a warrant or whether answering our questions was mandatory. It was looking like she wouldn’t even question who I was or why I was there.
Elise entered, and I followed.
Stacey had that same way of avoiding eye contact that Tony had. It seemed contrary to the pictures where she’d either been looking straight into the camera or straight at Noah.
Stacey showed us to the living room, but she stayed standing. “I don’t know how much help I can be.” Her gaze shifted from side to side, and she twisted a lock of hair around her finger.
Elise didn’t really need me. The girl was a terrible liar. Based on her body language tells when she said that, she felt like she had a lot to say about Noah.
“You’ve heard about what happened to Noah?” Elise asked. She’d taken a seat on the couch, which was a bit of a miscalculation. Since she was asking the questions, she should have stayed upright so she didn’t have to look up at Stacey. I should have been the one to sit, indicating that we were going to stay until we’d had our questions answered.
But Elise had admitted that she wasn’t good at this. It wasn’t like anyone was born knowing how to read and manipulate others. I’d learned, probably much too young.
“I heard,” Stacey said. She’d stopped twisting her hair, but held one hand in the other. “I tried to go see him, but there was some sort of list, and I wasn’t on it.”
I barely kept myself from rolling my eyes. That was just great. The nurses managed to keep the one person I was pretty sure hadn’t hurt Noah from seeing him.
Elise should follow that up with a question about why she’d gone to see Noah. I glanced in her direction. Was I supposed to simply listen and observe here or was I allowed to ask questions as well?
Elise pulled out a notebook and a pen. “We believe that what happened to Noah wasn’t an accident.”
Stacey turned a pasty green. “You think someone hurt him on purpose?”
Only my parents’ years of drilled in training prevented me from slumping. Way to give away the whole sack of potatoes, Elise. That information should have been held back until the end.
Hopefully Elise would forgive me, but I had to jump in or this whole visit could be a waste. “We’re not sure yet. We’re trying to find out a bit more about Noah that might help us understand what he was like.”
I avoided saying if anyone had a reason to hurt him. People tended to shut down if they thought you might be implying that they or their loved ones had something to do with a crime.
“Your name came up in connection to Noah,” I said.
A leading statement rather than a question. When a person was already nervous, the way Stacey was, they’d often be inclined to ramble if given a bit of a nudge.
She sat in the nearest chair. “He used to work for my dad.”
Smart girl. She’d probably come up with that strategy for answering questions about Noah the last time police officers had come around asking about him. Unfortunately for us.
“You won’t get in trouble if you tell us what happened, and neither will Noah.” Elise tucked her pen inside her notebook as if to imply that she wouldn’t even take notes. “We’re only investigating his potential attack, not what he personally might have done in the past.”
If we’d been alone, I would have high-fived her. Interviewing might not have come naturally to her, but it looked like she’d be a quick study with some more practice.
Stacey’s face set into hard lines from her eyebrows to her lips. “If you knew enough to find me, then you know what I told the police when they asked three years ago. Noah never did anything he shouldn’t have, and my dad didn’t know what he was talking about when he said Noah did.”
There was a fierceness to her response, like you only see in people who’re defending someone they care about deeply from an unwarranted attack. That, combined with how obviously uncomfortable she’d been when she tried to lie to us before, made me believe her. But there were still the pictures to explain.
I pulled a photo that I’d hung on to out of my purse and turned it toward Stacey. It was one of the ones that showed Noah and Stacey kissing.
Stacey gave the cross-armed shrug that teenagers seemed to be masters of. “So? That was taken after I turned eighteen. We’re two consenting adults. If you don’t believe me, you can check on when I got the earrings I’m wearing. They were a gift from my parents at my last birthday.”
Elise’s shoulders went tight. It was one of her tells. She didn’t know where to take this next.
I looked down at the photo long enough that I knew it would make Stacey uncomfortable.
Finally I met her gaze and tapped a finger on the edge of the picture. “You can see how this makes it look, though. Like maybe this started before your birthday.”
“I could say you can’t prove that, but I’m tired of people trying to trick me into admitting something that isn’t true.” She smacked a palm into the arm of her chair. “Noah didn’t touch me while I was underage.” She punctuated each word with another slap, then her hand stilled. “I wanted him to, but he said he wanted to do things right. We’d wait, and if we still wanted to be together once I turned eighteen, then no one could stop us.”
The words I should say fled from my mind. On one hand, Noah had done the right thing. On the other hand, Noah was old enough to be her dad. Could a relationship with such a big age gap be genuine, with no ulterior motives?
Stacey scowled at me. “You think I don’t know what that look on your face means. I’ve seen it on every adult who’s talked to me about this.”
I schooled my features so the skepticism I was feeling didn’t show through. She’d been probed about their relationship so much that she’d be on the defensive with almost anything I asked, and we’d end up no further ahead about whether or not Tony might have decided to hurt Noah after all these years. I needed to find a way to disarm her. What might she actually want to talk about?
“Maybe if you told us a little more about how this started?” I said. “What attracted you two to each other?”
Stacey leaned back into her chair, pulled one knee up to her torso, and hugged it to her. She looked more like a vulnerable child than a rebellious teenager. “No one’s ever asked me that before.” Her voice was soft. “Even now, no one cares why we want to be together. They only care about our age difference.”
“I care,” Elise said. “We both do.”
Stacey licked her lips. “It’s not easy, you know. Going through high school when you’re not one of the popular girls. My parents had rules for what I could wear and the kind of parties I could go to. It didn’t make me very popular. And I had nothing in common with all the kids who might have been willing to be my friends. I liked to go to my dad’s shop on the weekends and after school and learn about cars.” Her gaze slid to the photo. “That’s how I met Noah.”
I moved to the edge of my seat and leaned forward to indicate interest. It wasn’t hard. I was interested.
“Noah was always willing to show me stuff. Not all the guys there wanted a teenage girl hanging around and asking questions. Noah and I started talking about cars and eventually about other things. Turned out we had more in common than I had with any of the guys at school.”
“So why did your dad think something inappropriate was happening?” Elise prompted.
“He said Noah was flirting with me, and he told me he didn’t want me spending time with him anymore. I’d sneak into the shop nights when I knew Noah’d be working late alone, and one time my dad caught me there. We weren’t doing anything, but he assumed we had been and he went to the police.”
One of the puzzle pieces slid into place in my mind. “And he told everyone that he’d fired Noah for stealing because he didn’t want the real reason getting out?”
Stacey nodded. “It wasn’t fair. But Noah said we just had to be patient. We had our first kiss the day after I turned eighteen.” Her voice was so wet with tears that I almost couldn’t understand the end of what she’d said.
I caught the gist. They’d waited three years to become a couple, only for Noah to end up in a coma shortly after.
And now I knew how to get to the question we really wanted to know, but doing it made me feel a bit like I was covered in sludge and smelled like it, too. “How do your parents feel about your relationship with Noah?”
“My dad freaked out when I told him Noah and I were engaged. He thought it proved that Noah had pressured me into sleeping with him three years ago and that we’d been meeting secretly ever since. He said Noah only wanted my help to pay off his gambling debt.” She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek. “I offered to help Noah, we even argued about it, and he refused. It wasn’t about money.”
I studiously kept my gaze from snaking to Elise. We’d wondered why now, after three years, the father of the girl Noah’d been accused of molesting would seek revenge. Stacey’d given us a possible answer. That same man wanted to marry his daughter, maybe use her to ease the burden of his gambling debt. Given how devoted to Noah Stacey seemed and how long they’d waited to be together, it wasn’t likely they’d be dissuaded either.
But would Tony have tried to kill Noah over it? Maybe he came to Sugarwood to talk to him, man to man, and when Noah refused to give Stacey up, Tony’s anger got the best of him.
Elise was on her feet. “Thanks for helping us better understand the situation. I’ll make sure you’re put on the list of people who’re allowed access to Noah.”
Elise handed her a business card and asked her to call if she thought of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Noah. It was sneakier than I would have expected from Elise. We had an answer from Stacey already for who had a motive to hurt Noah, but giving her the card and leaving the idea hanging meant Stacey might volunteer another name as well. For the sake of Tony’s whole family and Noah, I still wanted to hope someone else had done this.
Outside, the snow flurries of earlier had become thumbnail-sized wet flakes. They drenched my hair.
When we climbed back into the car, Elise and I sat in silence for almost a minute. All I could think was that Stacey was really going to hate us if we ended up proving that her father tried to kill her fiancé. We’d been the first people who’d seemed to believe her about Noah, and we were secretly using her.
As much as I knew we were trying to work toward the greater good, and that people couldn’t be allowed to go around killing each other simply because they didn’t want someone marrying their daughter, I still wished I wasn’t involved in this case anymore. I didn’t need to be. This was a choice I’d made. Glutton for punishment, my Uncle Stan would have said.
“I always expect to feel better when a strong lead comes along,” I said. “But so far I’ve ended up feeling like the Grinch stealing Christmas.”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Elise smoothed her hands over her already-smooth hair, “but this is my first investigation. Erik only let me keep going with it because I’m the one who believed it wasn’t an accident from the start.”
I’d wondered. Elise seemed very inexperienced with investigating to have been given the lead on this case now that it was a case.
“I’ve known Tony a long time,” she said. “I don’t want it to be him.”
That was a sentiment I could echo. At least in Uncle Stan’s murder, I’d been wrong about it being Russ. In the other cases I’d been involved in, it hadn’t turned out as well.
“One of the reasons I quit my job as a criminal defense attorney was that I didn’t want to defend people who were guilty. Now I keep stumbling onto cases where the people I want to be innocent are guilty, and part of me actually wants to defend them.”
“Just because Tony had a motive doesn’t mean he did it.” Elise started the car. The windshield wipers squeaked like wet sneakers on a tile floor. “We’ll still need to see if he has an alibi for the time of the attack. And we don’t have the weapon yet, either. Did you check your barn to see if there was blood on anything outside the stall?”
I nodded. “I figured that whatever the attacker used they either brought with them or took with them afterward. I didn’t think to look for anything that might be missing and would fit the type of wound Mark described.”
Elise dug at the braiding on her steering wheel with her pinky finger nail. “Shaped like a miniature horseshoe.”
If we assumed Tony was the assailant, then his weapon of choice might have been a tool. “Is there a tool that would make that shape?”
“A wrench, maybe. If it was swung sideways like a baseball bat. But Mark would know better.” She slid her gaze sideways toward me and a smile played at the corner of her lips. “Should I call him and ask?”
Elise seemed to have the same naiveté about social interactions as Mark did, so she must have thought teasing me about a man I cared for and couldn’t have would help me get over him. I couldn’t come up with any other reason. I should tell her to call after she dropped me off, but that felt more like something a high schooler would do than a grown woman.
And I had to admit—I missed hearing Mark’s voice. “Might as well.”
My attempt at an it’s-all-the-same-to-me tone failed. Miserably.
Elise stuck an ear bud into her ear, and asked me to dial the number on her phone so she could keep her attention on driving. The falling snow had already created a slick sheet on the road.
I put Mark’s number in and tapped the green phone icon to dial.
“Grant?” Elise said. “What are you doing with—” She sucked in a breath so sharp she could have swallowed her tongue, and her face went slack. She listened for a minute. “No, I’m coming. I don’t care.”
My mouth dried up, and it felt like a hand reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. There was only one reason Grant would have Mark’s phone, and that Elise would go to wherever they were even though she was supposed to be working. Something had happened to Mark.