by Emily James
But I knew Mark didn’t have sisters. “Mark’s your cousin.”
“Mark, Grant, and I were born the same year, so we grew up more like siblings.”
The implication in her words was we look out for each other.
A lump grew in my throat. It must be nice to have family who had your back. Someone like Elise couldn’t possibly know how lonely it was to have very little family and now very few friends as well. When I announced I was giving up law and moving to Michigan to run a maple syrup farm, I’d quickly found out that most of the people I thought were my friends in DC weren’t my friends at all. And I hadn’t spoken more than a smattering of words to my dad in nearly six months. That made for a particularly fun Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I was done talking about this. I didn’t owe her an explanation of my feelings for Mark, cousin or not. Where Mark was concerned, she could draw whatever conclusions she wanted. Most of them would probably be true anyway.
Elise started the car before I could tighten my hand on the door handle to open the door. “I believe you now. That there’s nothing going on between you and Noah or you and Erik or you and Dave from the rental shop.”
She’d left one out. And I’d no doubt she’d done it intentionally.
I climbed out of the car and walked around the back. As I came even with the driver’s side of her car, she rolled down the window.
“Hey, Nicole?”
I stopped. Hopefully she wasn’t about to lecture me because I didn’t want to embarrass myself more by crying in front of her. It should be enough that I’d left Mark alone, for the most part. How I still felt shouldn’t matter to her as long as I did the right thing and stayed far away from him.
Elise smiled at me. A tiny Cavanaugh dimple formed in her cheek. I blinked rapidly to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. If she’d ever smiled at me before this moment, I would have seen the resemblance between her and Mark right away.
“I think,” she said, “that in an alternate reality, you and I might have been friends.”
9
I climbed into my car, dropped my purse on top of the evidence folders on the passenger’s seat, and stopped, my keys halfway to the ignition, dangling in mid-air.
He got mixed up with some girl, Georgiana Abbott had said.
Mixed up could mean a lot of things, and the girl Georgiana mentioned might not be the same one as the girl-woman in the picture. It did mean that whoever hurt Noah might be someone from his past that he’d been in trouble with.
I couldn’t show the evidence I’d collected to Elise any more than I could show it to Erik. I still needed to put it back like he asked me to. But Elise had proven that she actively wanted to solve this case and was treating it as attempted murder rather than as an accident. She might be willing to check into Noah’s past and see if he had any kind of a criminal record.
Elise’s headlights were already at my rear bumper. I didn’t have her cell phone number, and I wasn’t about to risk anyone’s career by trying to reach her at the police station. It was now or wait until I could arrange an accidental meeting. Every hour we waited was another hour Noah’s life was in danger.
I dove from my car and sprinted toward the back end, waving my arms, as Elise’s car pulled out of the parking space and turned in my direction.
The cruiser screeched to a halt, skidding forward. I jumped back.
The driver’s side door heaved open and Elise bolted out, her angry cop mask firmly back in place. “I thought you said you weren’t a risk-taker. What do you think you’re doing? I could have run you down and then we’d both be fodder for the rumor mill.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth, but a snicker broke lose anyway. That was too funny an idea to hold inside. I could see the headlines now: Cop Runs Down Police Chief’s Alleged Girlfriend in Jealous Rage.
Elise planted her hands on her hips. Her headlights blinded me enough that I could only see her silhouette and not her expression.
I stepped around the lights and joined her next to her open door. It might have been my father’s DNA in me, but I didn’t like to be at a disadvantage to anyone. Not being able to see her face put me at a distinct disadvantage.
With the headlights no longer giving me camera-flash syndrome, I could see her pursed lips.
“Is it safe to say that you no longer consider me a suspect in Noah’s attack?” I asked.
Elise sighed, but the note underneath it was good-humored this time. “I suppose so.”
“I think you might want to do a background check on Noah to see if he has any sort of a criminal record.” I’d save the detail about the girl-woman for now. Mentioning it would only put Elise in a bad position because then she’d want to see the pictures. “Georgiana Abbott said something about him being in trouble with a woman, and that’s what made him get help for his gambling problem. It could also point to someone who might have wanted him dead.”
Some of that was extrapolation, but my heart was in the right place, so that had to count for something. Besides, Elise would have wanted to know why I thought a police check on Noah might yield pertinent information. By feeding her that up-front, I kept control of the conversation, and hopefully she wouldn’t ask any follow-up questions that I’d have a hard time answering without telling her about the pictures I found.
Elise gave a sharp nod. “Thanks. I appreciate the help. I’m not…” She looked over her shoulder like another police officer might have snuck up on us while we weren’t watching. “I’m not actually supposed to be investigating, but Mark is sure this wasn’t an accident, and Russ is more worried for Noah than he wants to admit.”
Olive branch offered and accepted. It felt nice to not be at odds with someone in this town at least. “All I’ve wanted from the start was to help.”
“I see that now.” Elise reached into her pockets and pulled out a card. She handed it to me. “My cell phone number in case you think of anything else. I’ll give you a call if I find out anything.”
I was helping bottle maple syrup the next afternoon when my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voicemail. I’d slacked off on my role at Sugarwood enough that I didn’t feel right taking calls when I should be working.
The third time the number vibrated my phone, I held it up at Russ with a hands-in-the-air shrug and ducked into the storage room.
“Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes.”
“It’s Elise.”
Her voice was so low I could barely hear her, and there was noise in the background of wherever she was, people talking. One of the background voices sounded a bit like Quincey Dornbush, so my best guess was that she was at the police station.
And there was only one reason I could think of that she’d be calling me so soon and wouldn’t want to be overheard. “Did you find something?”
“Yeah. Noah doesn’t have a record per se, but he was charged with statutory rape. The name of the girl isn’t in the file since she was a minor, and apparently the charges were dropped because the girl insisted Noah hadn’t touched her. It was her father who went to the police, claiming Noah had harmed his daughter.”
My stomach turned queasy and I sank down with my back against one of the black metal shelves. “Does it say how old the girl was?”
“Fifteen.”
If Russ knew about this and hadn’t told me, we were going to have words. And I still couldn’t show Elise the pictures I’d found. The girl-woman in them had looked older than fifteen to me, but I had noticed that teenagers in general were looking a lot older a lot faster than they had when I was a kid. If it wasn’t the same girl, we were looking at something worse—a pattern. “How long ago was this?”
“Three years.”
“That seems like a long time to wait to seek revenge after Noah was cleared.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But if we assume that he was guilty and the girl didn’t want to admit to it, then it could have been the family of another underage girl who came after him this
time.”
That meant tracking down every teenage girl Noah had any sustained contact with.
A burning sensation shot up my throat and I swallowed hard. “We regularly hire teenagers for part-time jobs here. I’ll get you a list. I imagine you’ll want to talk to them.”
“This should be enough to convince Er—Chief Higgins to open a criminal case. It’d help if we could talk to the girl involved with the initial charge. At the very least, we could figure out more about Noah’s type and patterns for how he might start a relationship.”
“We could ask Oliver Miller, Noah’s cousin, if he knows who the girl was.”
I thought Elise might have groaned, but I wasn’t sure. “I know who Oliver is. Are you willing to try talking to him? He won’t talk to me. After he got fired, he turned everyone who still works here into a villain. Except Mark. No one hates Mark.”
It was almost like she enjoyed throwing Mark’s name around to see if she could get a reaction from me. I wasn’t about to react.
Russ stuck his head in the storeroom door and tapped his watch. I held up one finger, and he closed the door again.
His constant warnings about ruining the reputations of innocent people suddenly played in my head. “I’ll talk to Oliver, but do you think we can keep this quiet? The girl did say Noah hadn’t touched her. Maybe he was innocent.”
“Maybe.” Elise huffed out a breath. “I don’t know what to hope for here. My kids love Noah. If he was innocent of the charges, we’re back to the beginning on who might have wanted to hurt him.”
According to Russ, he and Uncle Stan knew about the charges brought against Noah, but they believed him when he said nothing had happened between him and the girl.
“We wouldn’t have hired him otherwise,” Russ said, his hands out like he was pleading with me to believe him. “And we watched Noah close afterward anyway. Nothing he’s done said those accusations might be true.”
I rubbed my hands over my face. That might have been enough for me once. But even though I didn’t want our investigation to hurt Noah’s reputation, I also had more people to think about now. Employees who depended on me for their livelihood.
I used to hear my parents talk about it sometimes, how every decision they made about their business could impact their employees, but I hadn’t understood it until my decisions might mean someone couldn’t pay their electricity bill anymore. “You took a huge risk. Do you know what’s going to happen to this business if it turns out Noah acted inappropriately toward a minor?”
The look on his face—like he’d taken a punch to his man parts—told me he did. We were a maple syrup farm, but at least a quarter of our revenue came from family events like the tours. No one would bring their children to a place that had knowingly harbored a sex offender. And no one would let their daughters work here anymore, either.
This was the worst possible year for it to happen, too. Russ had been on the phone with the manufacturer of our sap lines half the afternoon yesterday. The lines kept bursting, costing us time, money, and production. They were sending someone out to examine the lines later this week to see if we’d ended up with a faulty production batch.
“We understood the risks,” Russ said, “but your uncle and I also thought it was the right thing to do to give a person a chance to prove themselves and to let them know someone believed them.”
A chance to prove themselves. It was what I’d demanded from Elise yesterday when she’d wanted to believe the rumors about me without seeking out the truth.
Great. Now I felt like a hypocrite.
Of course, I’d only be a hypocrite if Noah were innocent the way I was of the accusations Elise made. “Do you know who the girl in question was?”
Russ wagged his head. “Noah wouldn’t tell us. Said he knew how easily things could get out, and he didn’t want to do that to her reputation.”
I’d have to talk to Oliver and hope his tolerance of me held out. This time, though, I needed to speak to him in person so I could show him the picture of the girl and see if he recognized her.
10
We’d faxed a list of former and current female teenage employees over to Elise, but it was two days before I could get away from Sugarwood, and even then, I only had one hour. The pace at Sugarwood had been laid-back my first month here, and I hadn’t realized how that would change when syrup season actually hit.
I climbed into my car, still dressed in my working clothes, smelling of maple syrup. With the time I had, I could only go one place—the hospital or Quantum Mechanics. I’d called the hospital on my walk from the sugar shack to the car, and so I knew Oliver wasn’t there. If I went to visit Noah, I’d lose my chance to ask Oliver about the girl in the photo and whether he knew the name of the girl who’d been involved in Noah’s statutory rape charge.
As much as it felt like I should visit Noah, he wouldn’t know I was there. The more logical use of my time seemed to be to try to track down who had hurt him.
I reached the point where I’d have to turn away from the hospital if I was heading for Quantum Mechanics. I threw on my signal and made the turn.
Seeing how bare Noah’s house was, he’d probably have wanted me to take the practical option if he’d been able to cast a vote.
I pulled my car into a space at Quantum Mechanics and climbed out. This was the first time I’d been here without my car in a shambles.
I didn’t recognize the man at the desk inside. My suspicion was that they didn’t have an actual receptionist or secretary. From the times I’d been here, it seemed like the mechanics each took a turn manning the desk. Erik had said something the second time my car was in the shop about Tony liking his mechanics to have contact with the customers. His theory was that it made them aware that there were lives at stake if they didn’t do their job well.
I asked if I could talk to Oliver for a minute, and the desk mechanic went into the shop. It was only after he was already gone that I wanted to kick myself for what this might look like. With the rumors that were already flying around town about me, asking for Oliver at work might add his name to the list. I should have at least told the desk mechanic that I was Noah’s boss and I needed to check something with Oliver about Noah.
Someone needed to invent future 20/20 glasses to prevent situations like this.
Oliver came out from the shop, wiping his hands methodically on a rag as though he hated the touch of grease on his skin. Even though getting fired from his job at the police station had been his own fault, I could understand how he might feel resentful if he’d had to return to a job he didn’t enjoy. Of course, I was speculating. Maybe Oliver loved fixing cars and only changed jobs for some other reason…but based on the way he was scowling at his dirty hands, I doubted it.
“Has something happened to Noah?” Oliver asked.
I cringed internally. I was 0 for 2 today in considering how other people might interpret my actions. “I’m sure the hospital would call you rather than me.”
He slow-blinked at me like I might be stupid. Either that or he was baffled by what other reason could possibly be good enough for me to interrupt him at work. If he’d heard the rumors about me, he might even think I was here because I was romantically interested in him. At this point, nothing people in this town assumed about me would surprise me.
I slid the picture of Noah and the girl-woman from my purse. “I did have a couple of questions for you about Noah, though. We’re getting close to being able to open an official case so the police can search for who hurt him.”
Another round of slow blinks like that wasn’t news to him. Since he’d worked at the police station, he probably was smart enough to allow the police to do their work, and trusted that they’d take care of everything. He might have more common sense than I did. I kept butting in.
Should I tell him that the police asked me to come or would that make him less likely to tell me anything, the way Elise feared? This was already going to be an awkward enough conversation without me
making it worse by a poor judgment call. I’d skip mentioning the police for now, since Elise wasn’t even technically supposed to be investigating herself.
“In looking at who might have wanted to hurt Noah,” I licked my lips to buy myself some time to find the right words, “some things in his past other than his gambling addiction came up. There were some accusations brought against him.”
The corners of Oliver’s lips turned down and his upper eyelids drooped, bringing his eyes to the size of most people rather than his usual shocked expression. “Yeah, that.”
He must have been taking lessons from Russ because that was as close to a non-answer as one could get. I held up the picture for him to see.
“Do you know the name of the girl who was involved in the charges?” I tapped a finger next to the face of the girl-woman in the photo. “Or do you know who this woman is?”
Oliver’s lip muscles twitched in a mini-expression of emotion. My dad had always said mini-expressions were essential to watch for when examining a witness on the stand because they’d point out the areas you needed to follow up on. They were leakage of an emotion a person wanted to hide or repress.
I had no idea what emotion Oliver wanted to suppress—it could be as simple as not wanting to seem disgusted at a cousin he cared about—but he definitely knew something about the situation, the girl in the photo, or both.
The door that led back to the shop swung open and Tony shuffled out.
He raised a hand and gave me his tiny, shy smile. “Hey, Nicole. No more car accidents, I hope. You here to pick up Mark’s truck for him? That part’s been delayed again, so it’s not ready yet.”
His gaze shifted to the photo in my hand, and the tone underneath his skin went from peachy-pink to washed-out grey.
The back of my throat burned and saliva flooded my mouth as though I might be sick. Whether or not Oliver knew the girl-woman in the photo, Tony definitely did.
