by E. G. Scott
“Actually, he and his partner, Detective Wolcott, came to the office today.”
Rachel raises her eyebrow. “I missed them? Darn. What’s the partner like? Is Wolcott a he or a she?” She pauses chopping to grab another carrot and holds it like a cigarette.
“He. And suspicious. Or maybe ‘inquisitive’ is a better word.”
“Well, that is his main job requirement, no?”
“True. But, I felt like he was overly skeptical of me for some reason.”
“He’s probably freaked out by acupuncture. Men usually are, especially uniform-wearing men.”
“Even so, I wasn’t trying to put needles in him. I was trying to be helpful.”
“So what is there to be suspicious of?”
“Well, my name is being attached to a dead woman that I have no recollection of, for starters. And I was jumpy before they even got there.”
“You have nothing to hide.” There is the slightest touch of doubt in her voice when she says this.
“I didn’t make a good first impression with Wolcott, or second impression with Silvestri.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Char.”
“I was on edge, I guess. And there were the flowers. They had questions and I had to lie about who they were from. I said you sent them.”
She instinctively looks at the bunch she’s just lovingly positioned. “What flowers? I’m confused—”
“Peter sent flowers.”
Rachel’s face contorts. “Oh. Wow. That’s news. Is he back?”
“He’s not back; he just sent a bouquet.”
The mood in the room has changed substantially, the lightheartedness being replaced by thick tension.
“Where is he? What did the message say?” She seems to have forgotten about the detectives altogether.
“His work assignment is taking more time than he originally thought.”
“Of course it is,” she says to the carrot.
“Rach, his job is important to him. It isn’t his fault or choice that he is going to be away for longer than he expected.” The defensiveness in my voice makes me question my own faith in the matter.
“Whatever his job actually is.” Her words are razors.
Sometimes, I wish I’d never told Rachel about Peter.
She begins to arrange the portobello steaks on a cutting board and rains Himalayan salt and black pepper down on them. I busy myself with slicing veggies and retrieving the skewers from the utensil drawer. We work in silence for a few minutes and the sounds of a haunting piano melody build in the background.
“Let’s talk about something else, okay?” The phrasing as a question is only to suggest that I’m being considerate of her opinion on the matter. I am not. We are absolutely going to change the subject.
She turns her gaze out the window, the last of the daylight fading quickly. “Fine. Back to the detectives . . . What’s the latest on the dead woman?”
I shoot her a disapproving look. She’s been oddly cavalier about this very grim situation, and it’s irking me.
“They said they are getting close to figuring out what happened to her. They have some leads.”
“Huh. They came all the way to your office just to tell you that?”
I feel the patience slip from me at the same time as the knife slides from my hand and clatters to the floor. “Oopsie!” Rachel exclaims and goes to retrieve it.
“Leave it,” I yell.
Rachel is startled and takes a step away from me. She raises her arms in a gesture of “What?” and then into a pose of defense.
“Char? What is it?” She’s wide-eyed. I suddenly feel foolish.
“Sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I’m so frazzled. I miss Peter. This business with the dead woman is awful. I definitely don’t love having detectives showing up at the office—even if they are well-meaning. I’m having a hard enough time getting new clients and keeping them. And . . .” My brain is spitting out words, but I am unsure if I want to really get into things with her.
“And?” Rachel has taken a seat at the table and has clasped her hands in her lap, waiting, like she knows what is coming. “Are you upset with me about something?” I sit across from her and mirror her body language.
“I feel like you are being more negative about Peter than usual. You’ve never even met him, Rach, but you act like you know him better than I do.” She opens her mouth to counter this, but I hold up my hand to stop her. “Every time I bring him up, you become really judgmental.”
I look down at my hands on the table instead of meeting her eyes. I immediately begin to doubt everything I’ve said before she can respond. She is quiet for a long time and then clears her throat.
She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and clicks around, and I feel a surge of annoyance that she’s decided to start texting in the middle of this conversation. After a moment, she hands the phone to me.
Onscreen, there’s an email from a name I don’t recognize at the top—[email protected], subject line PETER STANTON. I’m unable to read anything beyond that, the anger is so blinding.
“What am I looking at?” I am tense all over at the sight of his full name.
“Someone I know works at the DMV. I asked him to run Peter’s name through the database after I tried to find him on one of those online background-check sites.” She pauses to gauge my response. I have no words. “There was no trace of him,” she finishes.
My face is burning and all the saliva in my mouth has evaporated. I stand to get some water and reach for a glass of freshly poured pinot noir instead and drink it down in two giant swigs.
“Whoa, Char, slow down.” Rachel stands and moves to put her hand on my arm, but I shrug her off and move to the other side of the kitchen.
“Rachel. What. The. Hell?” My head is pounding and I can taste a migraine coming on. “Why the hell were you doing a background check on Peter?” In all our years of friendship, this is the first time I’ve raised my voice to her. It feels awful. “Is this why you’ve been acting so secretive lately?”
“I—I—I was concerned, Charlotte,” she stammers. “It seems like the more you told me about him, the less it made sense. People typically get more information the longer they date someone. Maybe you haven’t been telling me everything you know, but based on what little you’ve shared—and, come on, we tell each other everything—things were not adding up.”
“How dare you?” I’m so furious I can’t see straight. “I didn’t ask you to do any of this. This is such an invasion of privacy, Rachel.” She looks like I’ve smacked her.
“Char, I know you are angry. And I understand why you feel that way. But can you be logical right now?” she reasons, her defensiveness less than a few moments ago.
I am speechless. I start pacing around the kitchen.
“Let’s look at this objectively. What do you really know about this guy? He’s got a government job, allegedly? Have you seen any proof? He’s completely offline. He’s a phantom. No trace of him anywhere. He uses burner cell phones?! He doesn’t believe in credit cards?”
“I’m not going to go point by point with you on this, Rachel. This actually isn’t any of your business.”
She’s determined. “You’ve never seen where he lives. What about any friends or family? He claims he’s originally from Chicago, but there is no one with his name from the state of Illinois or nearby, remotely in his age range. If he actually lives in Quantico now, there is no trace of him whatsoever. I had a bad feeling about what I might find out, and that terrible sense only doubled when I put him into the background-check system and there was no sign of him at all. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“How about you be logical? He works for the US government.” I’m spitting, I’m so enraged. “Why would you be able to find anything about him online? Why would anyone? Those o
nline services are bogus and don’t have all the information; he’s said so himself.” She guffaws at this, but I am just as driven to have the last word. “Why would they make it easy to just look him up on some low-budget search site? Use your head.” I hear my mother’s voice coming out of my mouth and cringe.
“Right. But the Department of Motor Vehicles should. Which is why I asked my friend to do me a favor after my search came up empty. I thought you would want to know if this guy you have been obsessing about for a year isn’t who he says he is. I did this to protect you.”
I’ve never heard Rachel yell, and it’s jarring. I’m shaking because she’s hit an already raw nerve with a hammer. I won’t admit it to her, but she’s not confirming anything that I haven’t already thought about.
“You need to leave.” My voice is cold as I turn the fury at myself on to her. I turn away so that I don’t have to look in her eyes. The wind has picked up and the chimes hanging outside of the kitchen door are twisting and clattering at full volume in the absence of her response.
“Charlotte. You are my best friend in the entire world. I care about you. I’m worried. I have a really bad feeling about this man.”
I remain silent.
“Char. Please. It’s like he doesn’t even exist. Don’t you want to know who he really is?”
I close my eyes tightly before the first wave of tears starts to pour down my face. “I cannot do this with you.” I turn my back to her. “Good night, Rachel.”
I don’t open my eyes until I hear the sound of the door click behind her. Blood rushes in my ears so loudly, it sounds like I’m in a wind turbine. A moment of panicked regret seizes me and I move through the house and throw open the door as she’s backing her car out of the driveway. She sees me and stops.
I walk up to the driver’s side and she lowers the window, her eyes hopeful.
I hold my hand up to stop her moving any closer back in my direction. “I’m still pissed at you.”
She nods and meets my eyes. “Okay. I understand.” She looks devastated. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I thought I was doing something good. I’m trying to protect you.”
“I can take care of myself, Rach.” As I say it, I wonder.
“I know you can. But I am worried. You could get really hurt by this person.”
“I need to process this more before I say anything that I’ll regret,” I say truthfully.
“I completely get that. Do what you need to do.” She’s deflated that I’m not inviting her back in, but if anyone should appreciate me having strong boundaries, it should be her.
“I didn’t come out here to talk about this more.” I kick a rock near my foot from the driveway into the grass.
“Okay.” She sighs. “Why did you come out here, then?”
“I wanted to make sure you . . .” I soften. “Just text me when you get home, okay?”
* * *
After she’s gone, I sit in the cold evening air on the steps, shivering without my jacket, unable to motivate myself to go back inside. I’m still flaming from our interaction. The bamboo wind chimes directly above me are twirling fast. I have so many fearful thoughts. I deeply believe in the power of reaping the energy that we put out into the world, and I feel betrayed by the major imbalance of new doubt, tragedy, and rejection that is swirling around me. I’ve only tried to be loving, positive, and supportive and have been met with resistance, rejection, and death. I feel adrift and lonely. I feel desperate for Peter to respond and tell me that everything is going to be okay. I close my eyes hard and wish for him. I feel my phone move in my hand. Hope blooms.
Home safe.
I’m sorry.
I start to respond and my disappointed anger halts me. I put my phone facedown on the step next to me and listen to the hollow wood pipes knocking against one another. For the first time in our friendship, I don’t reply.
TWENTY-ONE
SILVESTRI
“Can you give the clicking a rest, partner?”
Wolcott’s voice tugs me out of my head. “Huh?”
“You’ve been fiddling with that thing incessantly,” he says, nodding toward the Bic pen in my hand. “It’s fraying my nerves.”
We’re in the parking lot of the shopping center in Smithtown, sitting in the unmarked car in front of China Panda, clocking the office next door. “Still trying to figure out how a dead woman manages to place an order for a flower delivery.”
“You and me both,” he says. “Someone’s leading us in circles here.”
“Circle’s gotta lead somewhere.” I can feel the tension in the hinge of my jaw.
“I requested the call records for that morning from the phone company. That should help clear this up.”
“Yeah,” I grunt.
“What’s got your beak in a vise?” He laughs. “You seem to be taking things awfully personally.”
“This case is just throwing me off. Don’t mind the mood.”
He cocks a brow in my direction. “You sure you’re not getting a little too close to this thing?” he asks. “The mirror’s not getting a little fogged?”
“Ah, jokes.”
“Maybe you’ve got a thing for dangerous broads.” He chuckles.
I shake my head and stifle a laugh. “Man, I couldn’t even tell you my type anymore.”
“Oh.” He brightens up. “The missus has been on me to have you over to the house for dinner.”
“What, she wants to set me up?”
He waves off the thought. “Nothing like that. She just wants to get to know you. I think she has this picture in her head of you living in a cave and drinking bat’s blood or something.”
“And what in the world would have given her that idea?”
“I may have used the term ‘brooding’ to describe you,” he says.
“Me?!” I shake my head. “I’m an absolute fucking delight, Wolcott.”
His laugh is cut short by a flash of action from the door we’re scoping out. Charlotte Knopfler exits the office and walks toward the green Prius parked a few spots away from us. We wait for her to drive off before we exit the car.
* * *
“Ms. Sherman, is it?”
She barely pays Wolcott’s inquiry any mind as she takes my hands in hers and studies me intently. “You must be Silvestri?”
“Your reputation precedes you,” he cracks. “And I’m his partner, Detective Wolcott.” He extends a hand to Rachel Sherman, who takes it with her right while keeping hold of mine with her left. I wonder if we’re about to be pulled into a meditation circle.
“Detectives, I’m afraid you’ve just missed Charlotte. She ran out for lunch.”
“That’s a shame,” I say.
“She’ll be sorry to have missed you.” She offers a warm smile. “Oh, any news on that poor woman you found? Char’s been filling me in.”
“We’ve got some solid leads,” says Wolcott, nodding.
“It seems like such a wild case. I don’t mean to be morbid, but I’m so intrigued.”
“Join the club,” he says, half a grin on his face. I watch his eyes sweep over to the floral arrangement. “Say, my partner and I were in yesterday admiring the flowers you surprised Ms. Knopfler with.”
She inhales deeply and smiles. “It’s so important to be surrounded by vibrancy and life in one’s work environment, don’t you think?” She catches herself. “I’m sorry. That was an insensitive thing to say to you both.”
“Well, it’s not all murder and mayhem,” he responds. “In fact, my partner here is something of a green thumb. You’ve got that in common, I guess.”
She shakes off the thought. “I’m no expert. I just enjoy the energy that flowers bring to a room.”
“Don’t be modest,” I say. “You must know a good deal. I mean, you don’t just stumble into ghost orchids without knowing what you’re loo
king for. They’re quite rare.”
“Oh.” She hesitates. “Yeah, right. Actually, Char knows a lot more than I do. I just try to pay attention to the names that she mentions. And those are her favorite.”
“I see,” says Wolcott. He holds her gaze for a long moment.
Her eyes finally shy away from his and find mine. She smiles again, but it’s lost a bit of its luster. “Well, I’m sorry again that you missed Char.” She’s well versed in deflection, a tendency I recognize. “Is there anything I can pass along to her?”
Wolcott looks to me, then back to her. “Just mention that we were here and that we’ll be in touch soon.”
“Of course. And thank you for stopping by.” She crosses to us and places a hand on each of our shoulders. She smiles as she gently nudges us toward the door.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Sherman,” I say.
“Of course.” She beams as we exit the office. “And, please, call me Rachel. May you both have a blessed day.”
* * *
“Last chance for some lo mein,” he says, nodding in the direction of the China Panda as we climb back into the unmarked.
“I’m going to hold off.” I key the ignition and throw the transmission into reverse.
“Nice work in there, partner.” He grins. “I gotta ask, are ghost orchids a real thing?”
“Oh, they’re stunning,” I say, backing out of the space. “But there were none in that arrangement.”
“I see.” He looks off. “And why, do we think, is Rachel Sherman lying for Charlotte Knopfler?”
“That woman’s got some secrets,” I say. “And a past. I’d bet big on that.” I don’t explain to Wolcott how my time in a twelve-step program has made it easy to suss out people of a similar bent.
“Well, let’s pull her sheet and dig around a little. See what we can find.”
