Everywhere to Hide

by Siri Mitchell

I could slide over the counter and curl up behind it, in the work area. But if someone actually came into the store, it would only be a matter of time until I was found.

  Ditto if I took refuge underneath a booth.

  The back room?

  There were wire racks and shelves, but at the moment they were filled with boxes. If I could have moved them, I might have made a place for myself to hide and put boxes in front of me, but they were heavy. Immovable. And I might not have time to punch in the code to get in there.

  Was that the outside keypad beeping?

  I fled to the only place I could think of.

  The bathroom.

  Is a smaller place to hide—a place with no outlet—really a good idea?

  It was the best I could think of right then. I ran into the last stall of the three, hopped on top of the toilet, curled into a ball, and sank my head into the circle of my arms. I let my forehead come to rest on my kneecaps.

  I heard the back door open.

  Heard the bathroom sink drip.

  Drip. Drip.

  The flowery scent of the hand soap was suddenly nauseating.

  The door shut with a thud.

  There was silence for a moment and then footsteps went past the bathroom door, down the hall.

  Maybe I could sneak out when the intruder wasn’t looking.

  But in order to know he wasn’t looking, I would have to take a look. And possibly expose myself to his view in the process.

  The footsteps came back up the hall.

  Maybe he wouldn’t notice the bathroom.

  The footsteps paused.

  The bathroom door squeaked open.

  A foot scuffed against the tile of the floor.

  I heard the first stall door open. It banged against the metal frame. The impact vibrated up through the toilet, through the seat, and into my feet.

  The second stall door was pushed open.

  I leaned a shoulder into the solid wall beside me and squeezed my elbows in toward my head.

  My stall door pushed open.

  I held my breath.

  When nothing happened, I opened a crack between my arms. Took a peek.

  A man was standing there, mop in hand, head cocked. “I’m used to mold growing on toilets, not girls.”

  I blinked, trying to reconcile his benign form with the sinister vision I’d created in my head.

  He extended a hand toward me. “I’m not going to hurt you, but you got to come down off of there.”

  I’d forgotten that the manager had a cleaning crew come in at night after the shop closed.

  I stepped down off the toilet. “Sorry.”

  “Shop’s closed. You’re going to have to leave.”

  “I work here. Really. I can show you. I just forgot about—” I gestured toward his mop.

  After a few minutes of trying to explain myself and then giving up, I punched in the code for the back room and got my ID out of my pocket. I also found the magnetic name tag I used for my apron and showed them to him, finally convincing him that I was legit.

  His name was Rick. “Usually there’s no one here when I come. Got the place to myself. Kind of nice.”

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “You run away from home?”

  “My home ran away from me.”

  He snorted a laugh. Put a pair of headphones to his ears. “Don’t mind me. Just going to clean this place up.”

  * * *

  I went back to my studies. I didn’t have any trouble staying awake. My senses were on high alert.

  Rick left around two o’clock. I didn’t dare to fall asleep—I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up before the first employee came in at four. My plan was to make it look as if I’d come in to open the shop. I could claim I’d mixed up my dates. The person scheduled to open wouldn’t know I hadn’t clocked in.

  Around three forty-five, I put all my books away, stowed my backpack in a locker, and drew an apron on over my head. I pulled out my hair tie, ran my fingers through my hair, and then put it back into a ponytail.

  This time when I heard the keypad, I didn’t panic. When Ty came into the back room, I greeted him.

  “Hey. Are—?” He cocked his head. “Are you supposed to open?”

  “I thought so. Sunday, right?”

  “Uh, no. Maybe. I mean, today’s Saturday, but maybe—”

  I feigned surprise. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Really? Sorry. I’ve been a day off since Monday. With all that happened.” I shrugged. Figured it didn’t hurt to make a play for sympathy. “Since I’m here? I might as well help you.”

  There was a knock at the back door.

  Ty started toward the hall. “I’ll take the deliveries if you can get the brews going.”

  I worked behind the front counter brewing regular and decaf while Ty checked in the deliveries and then put them away.

  We finished our prep with some time to spare.

  Ty picked up a couple mugs and poured us both a cup of coffee.

  “You okay? Back from the time warp?”

  What? Oh. “Yes. Definitely firmly planted in Saturday now.” I took a sip.

  “Hey. They ever catch that guy? The shooter?”

  “Still looking for him.”

  “They can write me a parking ticket two minutes after my meter expires, but they can’t catch a killer. Welcome to America.”

  I made sure to clock in when my actual shift started. During my break, I called Mrs. Harper.

  “Whitney Garrison!” Her voice was clear, though she sounded tired. “It’s so good to hear from you!”

  “Are you doing okay?”

  She told me that her family had convinced her to sell the house. No surprise to me. “I suppose they’re right. It is awfully big for just one person. And I was getting lonely. They say it needs to be painted and the carpet taken up. And maybe even a new roof. I guess it does, but it seems like an awful lot of work to go to if I’m just going to put it up for sale. Anyway, I’m sorry you had to find somewhere else to go with such little warning.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I wish I could have said that I was going home, that I planned to move back in with my dad. She would have liked that; it seemed to bother her that I lived so far from him. I would have felt safe there. And maybe memories of my ex and images of Cade wouldn’t be able to catch up with me if I left them here on the East Coast.

  But I wasn’t a child. Going home wasn’t an option.

  Besides, my father had sold the house. I didn’t have a home anymore.

  Chapter 30

  Leo came in after I went back out on the floor. He wanted to talk to all of us. “I need you to tell me again about your regulars.”

  Ty was the first to answer. “The guy who got killed was a regular. Joe. Came in every day around one thirty.”

  “Aside from him. Have you noticed any others?”

  Corrine piped up. “There’s Whitney’s boyfriends.”

  I couldn’t keep from rolling my eyes. “He doesn’t want to hear about them.” And I didn’t want him to think I liked to string men along.

  But Leo disagreed with me. “I’d love to hear about Whitney’s boyfriends. Tell me everything.”

  Corrine bumped Ty out of the way and took his place. “There’s been a couple. We keep telling her she ought to ask one of them out.”

  “Would you be able to identify them if they come in?”

  “Sure. Whitney pretends like they don’t exist. That’s her strategy. It drives them crazy.”

  Mostly, it was face blindness. I just shook my head, playing along.

  “Tell me what they look like.”

  “Sure. Well, there’s one, he’s been coming for a couple weeks now. He sits right over there”—she pointed to a table by the door—“and gives Whitney sad puppy-dog eyes. Comes in around eleven. Stays for, what—an hour?”

  I shrugged.

  “How would I recognize him?” Leo asked.
/>
  “Besides the puppy-dog eyes? I don’t know. His name’s Austin. Typical prep boy.”

  “When you say typical, what do you mean?”

  “Something about the hair. And the clothes. What’s wrong with him, Whitney?”

  “Not my type.” Not after Hartwell.

  “Well, if you don’t want him, can I have him?”

  Leo ignored Corrine’s question to me. “Have you seen him lately?”

  “He was here yesterday. He usually comes in around the same time as the other one.”

  “Which other one?”

  “He’s like . . . hipster, variation three. You know?”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “It’s the nice pants. And the nice shirts. You know the kind. And the mustache. Mostly the mustache. He’s Mustache Man.”

  “What kind of mustache?”

  “You know. The—” She drew a couple curlicues in the air in front of her.

  “I’m not following.”

  “The one that turns up at the ends.”

  “A handlebar?”

  “That’s it. A handlebar mustache.”

  “I saw him. In the security footage. He was here the day of the shooting. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “I don’t know. Tuesday? Wednesday?”

  “Can you tell me anything else about him? Besides how he looked?”

  Try as she might, no matter how many different ways Leo asked the question, she couldn’t remember another thing about him. Nobody knew his name or where he was from.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “I mean, what else is there?” Corrine asked.

  “Anything. Where he works. Where he lives. Is he a commuter?”

  She thought for a moment. “Here’s something. He always orders tea. Iced.”

  “Tea.” Leo sounded dubious.

  “Green tea. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know? You do you. That’s what I say. But doggone. Now I’m sad. Because that’s what I like: a man who thinks for himself.”

  “And you said he was one of Whitney’s boyfriends?”

  “He wasn’t my—”

  Leo held up a hand.

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  “I was kind of angling for him at first. He had that vibe,” Corrine said.

  “What vibe?”

  “That thing going on.”

  “What made you stop?” Leo asked.

  “He wasn’t interested.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “He was always glancing out the window when I was trying to talk to him.”

  “Where was that? Where did you talk to him?”

  “Right here. He sat where you are. Only he’d never face the counter. Not unless Whitney was around. Then he was all”—she made a gesture with her hands—“locked on. You know?”

  “Anyone else try to flirt with him?”

  “I mean, I think we all did, didn’t we?”

  “Didn’t we what?” Maddie asked.

  “Mustache Man. We all gave him a try, right?”

  I spoke up. “I didn’t.”

  “True. Everyone except for Whit.” Corrine pointed a finger at me. “I’m gonna take a page out of your playbook next time.”

  “So it was Whitney from the start?”

  “Was it?” She turned to ask me.

  I shrugged. Trying to play it off like I normally had. But underneath my nonchalance, a chill was working its way up my spine. “I don’t think so.”

  “When did it start?”

  “I don’t know. Last week? Yeah. But he actually asked about you a couple days ago.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. He wanted to know when you’d be in next. And I said to myself, chalk another one up for Whitney.”

  “When was that?” Leo asked. “Do you remember what day it was?”

  She turned around and grabbed Maddie by the elbow. “Hey. Do you remember what day we ran out of lids?”

  “Tuesday. Because I wasn’t here and I heard about it my next shift.”

  “Tuesday. It was Tuesday.”

  Tuesday. The day after the murder.

  Chapter 31

  When it got busy, Leo left the counter so we could get back to work. But I asked him if I could talk to him before he left.

  “What do you think? About the man with the mustache?”

  “It wasn’t Hartwell. We have the video. It wasn’t him. Whoever he is, he seems like a man with a job to do. He sat right there and watched every day while Cade picked up his coffee. He watched him come in, watched him go out. Learned his habits.” He pointed to my chest. “Saw your name tag and everyone else’s. And dang—a handlebar mustache. Have to hand it to the guy. Cheesy, but effective. Pull off the mustache, throw it away, and you’re a totally different man. Don’t even have to dye your hair or shave a beard. Bottom line? We don’t know anything more about him than we did before we started asking questions.”

  One thing was clear to me. Corrine, annoying though she was, could be a valuable ally. Granted, she wasn’t very discreet, but she did notice everything.

  If I told her about my face blindness, maybe she could watch my back.

  I wasn’t thrilled about voluntarily telling someone that I had a giant blind spot in my life. The last time I’d done that was when I’d told Hartwell.

  And the thing was, I didn’t tell him right away. I didn’t want to. He was so . . . everything. Everything I’d ever dreamed about and thought I couldn’t have. He was cute. How could I tell, if I couldn’t remember faces? I couldn’t. But I watch people. And I noticed he had a certain effect on women. So he was cute.

  Or gorgeous.

  Or something.

  He was very confident. The kind of confidence, I suppose, that comes from being the son of a congressman and being raised with money. And then heading a start-up that made millions.

  He was such a gentleman. He opened doors for me. He waited to take a seat until I sat down. All those things that proper people are supposed to do? He did them without thinking. They were instinctual.

  And he was never late. For anything.

  Wherever we were supposed to meet, he was always there first. I could count on it. That meant that he was always looking for me. I’d never had that in my life before. I had always been the one doing the searching. I had always been frantically looking around trying to find a way—clothes, hair, shoes, voice, gestures, gait, something—to figure out who people were. To finally have someone know me? Have someone name me and look for me? I didn’t have to worry about causing anyone any trouble. Once I got used to all of that, I told him about my face blindness. And he was okay with it.

  He asked so many questions.

  How had I recognized my parents? By their clothes? By their hair? But what if they changed something? What if they had to wear glasses? Or gained weight? Or lost it?

  I told him there were so many other ways to tell people apart. Their voices. Their scent. The way they walked or the way they gestured when they talked.

  I never dreamed that one day he would use it all against me.

  Everything was perfect.

  Until he started undermining me. Started making me question myself. That’s when I began to defer to him. And then he began to bend me to his will. That’s when I surrendered, trading away my autonomy for his approval. And then he started hitting me.

  But I talked myself into staying with him because I thought we were worth it. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who gave up when things got difficult. Every couple had disagreements. If I really loved him, wouldn’t the truest measure of my loyalty be my commitment to working things out?

  He talked about moving in together. And that’s about when he started cheating too. It took someone who knew us both to tell me. The humiliating part? It had been right there, the whole time, on social media.

  I just couldn’t see it.

  And I didn’t know how to recognize the
signs.

  I didn’t know that being careful not to provoke his temper would lead to giving up my opinions so I could safely tiptoe around even the most noncontroversial things. And I didn’t know that tiptoeing would turn into having to walk oh-so-carefully across eggshells all the time.

  Now I did.

  That slight detachment he always had wasn’t preoccupation; it was boredom. That perpetual looking around wasn’t networking. It was being on the lookout for something else. Someone else. Someone better. Someone new.

  When I confronted him, he didn’t deny it.

  He never even tried to deny it.

  That’s what hurt the most.

  He blamed it on me instead. If I’d been a better girlfriend, he wouldn’t have had to look around. That’s what he said.

  I’d been so naïve.

  That’s why I hadn’t told anyone at work about my face blindness. I didn’t want anyone else to use it against me. But now? Their not knowing had the possibility of making things a lot worse for me.

  And I didn’t need to tell everyone.

  Corrine noticed everything. And everybody. If I let her know, she could help keep me safe.

  I pulled her aside as she was leaving the counter to clean up a spill in the back room. There was no one in line and only a few customers at the tables. I asked if I could talk to her about something.

  “You want to know who that yummy guy is, right? The one over there in the blue shirt?”

  “I really don’t.”

  She told me all about him anyway. “And you know what his drink is? Guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “A flat white. With a dash of nutmeg. Is that not just perfect?”

  “Corrine? I need your help with something.”

  “I’m keeping him to myself. No hard feelings?”

  “No hard feelings. It’s about the murder investigation.”

  She’d already ducked through the swinging door into the back room.

  I followed her.

  She reached for a mop. Handed it to me. “Would you mind carrying that?” She picked up a jug of cleaner. Nudged a pail out of the corner with her toe and put a squirt into it. Pointed to a puddle in front of the refrigerator. “Orange juice. I dropped a bottle. Don’t step in it.”

  I tore some paper towels off a roll and blotted the spill.

  “So what was that about the investigation?” She headed to the door.