by Emily James
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. That was not my hair. It couldn’t possibly be my hair. It looked…amazing. It had body. “Holy crap. How’d you do that?”
Liz grinned. “I’ll write down the instructions for you. Best part is that it shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to style when you get out of the shower.”
I drove back to Uncle Stan’s house—now my house—trying not to think about what Mark would say if he could see me now. Then I dove back into sorting through Uncle Stan’s belongings.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke up with a kink in my neck, a queasy stomach, and smelling natural gas.
12
I stumbled to my feet, but the world spun around me and my stomach rolled. Every step felt like the floor tipped under me in a different direction.
How long had I been breathing this in? The smell, like a mix of rotten eggs and skunk, was strong, but didn’t they make it that way on purpose so you’d know in time if you had a leak? What happened to Uncle Stan’s carbon monoxide detectors? Back when he lived in Virginia, he was the kind of man who changed his fire alarm batteries with the twice-yearly time change and had not one but two carbon monoxide detectors in his thousand-square-foot apartment.
I focused on dragging my mind back from the rabbit trails it wanted to run down. Had to be the effect of the gas.
I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to open a window if I smelled gas or if I was supposed to leave the house and call the gas company. My brain felt fuzzy, like someone took an eraser to it. I picked up my purse and headed for the stairs. I wasn’t going to risk taking the time to open a window. I needed to get out.
I tripped over my own feet and caught myself on the railing, inches from tumbling head-first down the stairs.
One step at a time. I reached the bottom.
It was dark outside. Dark in the house. But I didn’t dare turn on any lights.
I ran my shin into something, and pain spiraled up my leg.
The door had to be somewhere to the left. I limped toward it and groped around until I located the doorknob. It didn’t budge.
My heart punched up into my throat. Don’t let it be stuck. Don’t let it be stuck.
I tugged again, straining all the muscles in my back. Wait. It couldn’t be stuck. I’d come in through this door a few hours ago. Had I locked it?
I felt for the lock switch and turned it. I wrenched the knob again. This time the door flew open easily and I half raced, half fell out the door and into the yard. I left the door hanging open behind me.
I gulped in breaths of air so cold it burned down into my lungs. My coat was inside, but I wasn’t going back for it.
I glanced behind me, barely able to make out the bulk of the house. Dark clouds blocked out all but the tiniest sliver of light from the moon.
My head started to clear, and my teeth chattered. I still felt too close. I backed up right to the edge of the trees and took out my phone, dialing 9-1-1.
The dispatcher assured me she was sending help. She wanted me to stay on the line, but my hands shook so hard I couldn’t hold the phone. I accidentally dropped it, and the call disconnected.
The eerie darkness closed in on me, along with a sense of absolute vulnerability. I wrapped my arms around my waist. Somehow I needed to focus my mind on something other than the fact that I could have died and that I was alone out here. Nothing came to mind, so I recited the Constitution just to hear my own voice.
In less than five minutes, flashing lights zoomed up the drive way, and I waved an arm at the approaching vehicles. Soon I was wrapped in a blanket in the back of an ambulance, while a paramedic examined me.
“You’re really lucky,” he said. “Most people who have a leak like this while they’re sleeping never wake up.”
Thanks. As if I wasn’t already freaked out enough. “Am I okay then?”
“You’re free to go.”
I carefully climbed down from the ambulance. He might say I was fine, but my legs still felt like loose Jell-O. I tottered my way over to the police cruiser.
The man next to it talking to a representative from the gas company wasn’t Chief Wilson, but I couldn’t expect the man to work 24/7 even if he was the chief of police. In the strange alternating light cast by his cruiser, I couldn’t get a solid look at this officer’s features. I thought he was closer to my age than Chief Wilson’s—and built like a brick wall.
“Do they know yet what caused the leak?” I asked.
The officer turned toward me and motioned the gas company employee forward.
“Not yet, ma’am,” the man said. “There doesn’t seem to be an obvious leak. We’ve turned the gas off for now, but it won’t be safe for you to stay here until we’ve located the cause. You’re certain you didn’t leave a burner on the stove? Or something else that could have accidentally blown out and caused a false leak?”
“I didn’t turn anything on when I came home today.”
“And it didn’t smell like gas when you arrived home?”
I hoped my look clearly said I’m not that stupid. “I wouldn’t have gone in if it had.”
The man scratched his head. “One other thing, ma’am. Your carbon monoxide detector was unplugged. You should really be more careful about that.”
I put it at the top of my mental list to check when I was able to go back into the house. It was a bit irksome that everyone was looking at me as if I were at fault. I’d been in this town for barely a week, and I hadn’t even had time to look in all the closets in the house, let alone know if something was broken. For all I knew, I might turn on a tap tomorrow and start a flood. I added Check the fire alarm batteries to my mental list as well. At least then if the house did accidentally catch fire, no one could blame me.
The officer thanked the natural gas employee, and the man returned to the house, where other men were now crawling around my home like ants.
The officer scratched his chin. “How about you take a seat in the car with me? I have a few questions I need to ask.”
I squinted at where his nametag should be, but it was too dark out even with all the emergency lights to read it. “I don’t have to get in the back, do I?”
He chuckled. “You’re not under arrest, so no. You can sit up front with me.”
He opened the passenger door and I climbed inside. Even up front, the car smelled like stale coffee, urine, and vomit. I breathed through my mouth and thanked Uncle Stan’s God that the officer hadn’t put me in the back. I might have had to burn my clothes, and at present, they were the only set I had access to.
The officer slid in behind the wheel, turned on the car, and adjusted the heat.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You looked awfully cold even wrapped up in that blanket.” He shifted slightly so that he was angled toward me. “When something like this happens, we have to check into things, you understand?”
I nodded. I understood that they had to check into it, anyway. I had no idea what questions he might need to ask. Two tiny balls of tension formed beneath my shoulder blades.
“You haven’t been feeling suicidal lately?”
To quote Velma from the Scooby-Doo cartoons I watched as a kid, Jinkies! What kind of person tries to kill themselves with a gas leak? Had anyone ever actually done that? I could see now why he led into this by suggesting he had to ask these questions. “No, sir. I’d much rather be alive than dead. If I’d wanted to kill myself, I would have stayed in the house.”
He gave what I interpreted as an apologetic shrug. “And have you been having any money troubles lately?”
What happened to the small town gossip chain? “None. I just inherited from my uncle.”
This time he smiled. “I know. I’ve heard the story, but they make us ask these things in case you tried to blow up your house and collect the insurance money.”
I assumed Uncle Stan had home insurance—he liked to be prepared for every contingency—but I hadn’t run across the policy yet. “Well,
I can put you in touch with whoever you might need to reach to check on my financials, if you’d like.”
“No need. Like I said, this is routine. I expect once they can check the place over again in the light, they’ll find a faulty valve or some such.”
He must not realize I was a lawyer. I knew perfectly well that there was no such thing as routine questions. If I answered in a way that sent up any red flags for him, everything I said would matter. Thankfully, I really didn’t have anything to hide.
He stopped jotting notes and flipped the page in his notepad. “And do you know of anyone who might wish to harm you?”
My mouth went dry. If I’d started to ask too many questions to or about Uncle Stan’s killer, could this “leak” be an attempt to stop me? That felt melodramatic to even think it, but the officer wouldn’t have asked me if it wasn’t a possibility.
“Ma’am?”
I blinked and focused on his face. “Sorry. I don’t know about that last one. Is it alright if I answer with a maybe?”
His body language went from casual to practiced casual. A little tighter in the shoulder muscles. His movements a little slower. “If someone might have been trying to hurt you, who do you think it was?”
Last night I’d quizzed Russ on his argument with Uncle Stan, and this afternoon I’d been prying into the business of Jason the brewer. Liz might have claimed he was her ex, but that didn’t mean he was or that they didn’t still talk. They had a child together, after all. Heck, even Derek could have said something to his dad about me asking after him.
My questions could have made either of the two men nervous if they were the killer, but nervous enough to try to kill me, too? As far as I knew, I hadn’t uncovered anything solid enough to justify that, but if this had been an attack on me, it meant I’d stumbled on some of the pieces that could lead me there.
Russ’ words about how even an unfounded suspicion could hurt a person’s livelihood in this town came back to me. Assuming for a moment that one of the two men was the killer, that meant the other was innocent and didn’t deserve a police investigation into their life.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But someone killed my Uncle Stan a week ago. I’ve been showing curiosity into the circumstances of his death. It’s possible his murderer felt threatened.”
The officer rubbed under the rim of his hat. “I wish you’d told me this right away. I’d have had the men from the gas company turn off the gas and then move away until we’d had a chance to check for fingerprints or other signs of forced entry.”
If someone had tried to kill me, they would have worn gloves. Whoever this killer was, they were smart. They’d have had to be to kill Uncle Stan in the first place and then cover it up so nicely. The gas company probably wouldn’t be able to prove whether this leak was accidental or intentional.
They were smart, and it was possible they wanted to kill me.
My stomach rolled and turned my throat into a ball of fire. I grabbed the car door handle and concentrated on the coolness of the plastic. My therapist called it grounding. Focusing on something solid in my environment was supposed to short-circuit my brain and prevent it from flicking my hyperventilate-or-pass-out switch.
But having the officer there staring at me wasn’t helping.
I needed to be alone for a minute or I was going to slide right into a full-blown panic attack. “Since I can’t stay here tonight, am I able to at least go back inside long enough to collect my things?”
“I’ll check with the gas company, but I don’t see why not.”
The officer left.
I drew in a few deep diaphragm breaths. It was possible someone had actually tried to kill me. The panic faded away and something hotter and stronger replaced it. Something that felt a lot like fury.
If whoever had killed Uncle Stan thought they could kill me or scare me away, they’d made a major miscalculation.
13
The next morning, I cradled a cup of The Sunburnt Arm’s awful coffee between my hands. I’d slept as late as I could, and so the coffee was particularly strong and a little stale. If I stayed here long enough, I might actually develop a taste for the stuff.
I released the cup and tapped my phone on the table. If last night was an attack, it meant I was on the right track. Now more than ever, I wanted to talk to Jason the brewer.
But I’m not stupid. And I’m definitely not reckless. Anxiety issues and risk-taking don’t exactly go together.
So if someone was willing to blow me up and my new home with me, I needed to be careful. I couldn’t go talk to Jason alone. Fay was too sick to go with me. Russ didn’t think I should be investigating in the first place, and I had to consider him a real suspect. My gas “leak” happened only a day after I’d found out that Russ and Uncle Stan had a big enough argument to prevent them from finalizing their business partnership. Plus Russ had easy access to Uncle Stan’s house and a key to get in.
That left Mark as my crime-solving partner.
My call went to voicemail, and I left a message.
My phone rang less than five minutes later, showing Mark’s number on the screen. I glanced around the room, to make sure it was still empty, and answered. I filled Mark in on everything that had happened in the past day.
A few seconds of silence followed, then a whoosh of air like someone letting out a breath. “Have you heard from the gas company yet today?”
“Nothing yet.”
“So it could still have been an accident?”
“It’s possible.”
“And what do you plan to do if it turns out it wasn’t an accident?” His words had a cautious edge to them, like he was weighing each one before speaking it.
“I’m going to keep investigating, whether it was an accident or not.”
“Nikki—”
“If I can get a little more evidence, enough to point to a clear suspect, then I can take it to Chief Wilson and let them handle the rest. But I can’t stop now. This could mean I’m close.”
Muffled voices carried over the phone, and his reply was equally garbled, as if he’d placed his hand over it. I braved another sip of coffee. One of the things Fay had promised to show me during our canceled tour was someplace to buy a good cup of coffee. I could have really used that information right about now.
“You’re not still staying at your uncle’s house?” Mark said, his voice clear again.
“I’ve moved back in to The Sunburnt Arms.” I shifted my phone to the other ear. “Listen, the reason I’m calling is that I know it’s not safe to go asking around by myself anymore and I want to drive out to Beaver Tail Brewery to talk to Jason. I was hoping you’d come along.”
“As your bodyguard?” There was a hint of teasing in his tone now at least.
“Something like that, yeah. Bodyguard. Medical expert.”
“I don’t think you should keep investigating this.”
The teasing note was gone again.
My own smile faded. “I know, but I have to. We’ve already had this discussion. Please come with me. I don’t want to go alone.”
It was the truth, but I’d implied that I would go with or without him, which of course I wouldn’t. The twinge in my stomach felt an awful lot like guilt over manipulating him.
The line still sat silent except for the sound of quiet breathing.
“Please,” I said again.
He sighed. “I’m at work right now, but I’ll pick you up around three-thirty.”
Since I couldn’t go back to work sorting through Uncle Stan’s belongings and Mark wouldn’t be by until the afternoon, I decided to use the time to make an essential purchase—a flashlight. Seemed like a necessity in this weird streetlightless town. To be fair, they did have streetlights in the town proper. Unfortunately for me, those ended long before my new home. Uncle Stan must have a flashlight somewhere, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The dark out at Sugarwood was creepy, and it got dark here before supper.
I pulled into the p
arking lot and found a spot as close to the front door as possible. The hardware store seemed like a holdout in the business-naming scheme of the rest of the town, which lent credence to my theory that any business catering to the locals stuck to stating what they did. The large blue-and-white sign read DAD’S HARDWARE STORE. And in smaller letters underneath was NUTZ, BOLTZ, TOOLS, ETC. The misspelling of nuts and bolts might have been accidental, but I suspected it was an intentional nose thumb at the cutesy names all around them.
The wind bit my cheeks as soon as I stepped out of my car. I tucked my face down low into my coat collar and jogged across the parking lot. My phone vibrated in my purse, but I waited until I ducked inside the door to pull it out. It was Fay.
I tapped the screen. “Hey, you must be a mind reader. I was going to call you today to see how you were feeling.”
“A bit better. I’ve even had enough energy this morning to work on the layout for the flyers I’m doing for Carl’s upcoming run for sheriff.”
She’d been excited the day before when she told me about Chief Wilson’s plans to run for sheriff at the next election, and her voice did sound less strained than yesterday, but the thought of her working on anything—even something she was enthusiastic about—after how weak she’d been sent a twinge of worry through me. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be resting instead?”
“Carl said the same thing. He wanted to hire someone for it, but I used to be a graphic designer, and it’s nice to feel useful.”
“Just promise me you won’t overdo it.”
“Promise. But I called to ask—”
Dead air filled the line.
My heart slammed into my rib cage, then my phone chirped. I let out a long breath. Nothing had happened to Fay. The call simply dropped. This place had the most random tiny dead zone pockets. I’d had a full signal in the front of the store, but now no signal at all.
I quickly chose a medium-sized flashlight. The lens wasn’t quite as large as a car headlight, but it wasn’t far off, either. Exactly what I wanted.
