Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 338(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
“Right.” I put the card in my purse and stood up. I had suddenly lost my appetite.
7
JASON
Isat in the diner across from the police station, looking over my notes. Sometimes a change of scenery helped, and I was stumped. The waitress arrived and topped off my coffee. I had been there for two hours, just drinking and working the case.
After talking to Earl and his friend, I had learned little more than I knew at the beginning. Someone was selling a highly toxic offshoot of crystal meth, and the people who were buying were fine, upstanding citizens. I had reinterviewed the families of each of the victims.
Victim number one was Carrie Fishburn, a local beauty and stay-at-home mom of three. Her kids would never be the same. Her husband seemed baffled that Carrie would even know where to find drugs, much less risk her health and her life by ingesting them.
Carrie’s friends described her as well-liked and fun to be around. She was a member of the PTA and the set designer for the local high school production of The Wizard of Oz. I hadn’t met a less likely drug user in all my years on the force.
Something must have happened in Carrie’s life, I reasoned. Or she must have interacted with someone along the way who made illegal stimulants seem fun. I retraced Carrie’s steps on the day she died.
She had dropped off her kids at school, like she always did. She had picked up dry cleaning for her husband at ten, hit the grocery store at noon. The clerk remembered her because they’d chatted about a soccer game, one of the international championships that not a lot of Americans watch. By 2:00 p.m., Carrie was face down on her kitchen floor, the after-school snack she had been cooking burning in the oven.
Had she run into someone in the grocery store? Was the dry cleaner to blame? I had hit both of those venues and come up with nothing. I stood and packed up my notes before leaving the diner. Walking back across the street, my thoughts drifted over to Lindsey. The last time I saw her, she had been leaning against the hood of a car, eating a taco. If I had her number, I could call her up on the pretense that there had been a break in the robbery case. Or I could manufacture some lie about the cabin.
It wasn’t fair how the landlord treated her. Despite all the anger, I could tell she was in love with that little cabin. She had been promised the opportunity to purchase it herself, and when I came along, she had been tossed out on her ass. I definitely didn’t like being the bad guy.
I pushed my way through the door to the station house, nodded to Cheryl, and went to my desk. I tried taking out my notes again, but it was no use. I had run up against a wall. There wasn’t any juice left in this rock I was trying to squeeze. I leaned back in my chair and let my thoughts wander. Like a magnet, they focused in on Lindsey.
Maybe we could work out some arrangement where we both got to keep the cabin. Maybe we could be roommates. Stranger things had happened. I could keep the big bedroom in the back, and she could transition into one of the smaller ones. We could share the refrigerator and the bathroom, taking turns like responsible adults. It could work.
I sat up straight, grabbed my phone, and headed for the door. The hair salon was only a five-minute walk from the police station, and I covered the ground in half that time. I knew Lindsey would probably be mad, but I was looking forward to seeing those fiery eyes again. When I reached the salon, there were two women working, but neither of them was Lindsey.
I pushed the door open and walked inside. Lindsey’s friend Ava looked up from her client and frowned. She looked back down again, pretending to be engrossed in her task. I marched up to her and interrupted.
“Is Lindsey working today?”
“No,” Ava said curtly.
“Do you have her number?”
“Yes, I have her number,” she said, pinning her client’s hair in a messy bun.
I waited a beat. “Can I have her number?”
Ava began to comb the remaining locks, preparing for a cut. “No.”
“It’s about the cabin,” I whispered.
“I don’t care.” She set down her comb and picked up her scissors.
“I have an idea that I think might work,” I tried again.
“I have an idea too,” she said sweetly, turning to face me at last. “Go back to Nashville.”
Wow. I was used to getting the cold shoulder from witnesses, but I wasn’t accustomed to so much personal vehemence. Ava was looking at me like she wanted me to explode, as if she could concentrate hard enough and make me disappear. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this loyal friend, so I nodded respectfully.