by Emily James
She sounded odd and she hadn’t wanted to tell Mark why she needed to reach me. I could only think of one reason. Dean had done something stupid. “I’m at the hospital. What’s wrong?”
“Oh thank God.”
Her tone indicated it was an actual giving of thanks rather than taking the Lord’s name in vain. It also wasn’t at all the reaction I’d be expecting. Again.
I had to assume she didn’t think I was at the hospital because I was sick or injured or her reaction would have been a lot different.
“I’m on the fourth floor,” Elise said. “Please come. I’ll meet you at the elevator.”
She disconnected the call before I could get any more information.
If I hadn’t been in a hospital, I would have sprinted. This sounded worse all the time. I silently willed the elevator to move faster, and this time not only because I hated riding in elevators. The fourth floor was the same floor where they’d put Noah after he’d been attacked and ended up in a coma. Had something happened to Erik? It couldn’t be one of the kids because Elise would have called the whole family.
Elise practically yanked me out of the elevator when the doors opened and dragged me down the hall away from the nurses’ desk.
“It’s Dean,” she said.
My first thought was that he’d hurt someone, maybe even Ken if he’d put the pieces together. But Elise’s first call came in only minutes after I left Ken, so that couldn’t be it.
Dean had to be the one in the hospital.
Elise was already rambling on. “He still had an In Case of Emergency card in his wallet with my name and phone number on it. It’s the one I gave him back when we were married. The doctors won’t talk to me because we’re divorced, and they’re trying to locate his official next of kin. I didn’t know what to do.”
So was I here as a friend, as her legal counsel, or as his? “Do you know what happened?”
She shook her head. “His neighbor called 911 because he collapsed on his front lawn. She’d been watching him carry plants back and forth. By the time the paramedics reached him, he wasn’t conscious, and he was struggling to breathe. I don’t know whether he had some sort of heart attack or stroke or if someone intentionally hurt him.”
All the heat rushed from my body, leaving a chill behind. It couldn’t be coincidence. Dean’s warning about Griffin played in my mind like a macabre soundtrack. Dean said Griffin wouldn’t like him quitting their business. It was possible this was his response. He’d chosen to take out Dean and ensure that Dean wouldn’t cause him any problems in the future because he’d seemed to suddenly develop a conscience. “Where are the kids?”
Elise twitched. “They’re at my house with Erik. Why?”
“I think it might be a good idea if you went to stay with Bobby in Detroit for a couple of days.”
The look she gave me said she wasn’t going to let it rest at that. I told her my suspicion. “I’m going to call Chief McTavish and have him contact the police force in White Cloud, but I don’t know how vindictive this guy is. Hopefully he’ll stop if he thinks he’s gotten rid of the risk Dean represented, but Dean told me he threatened Arielle and Cameron if Dean told the police that he was with Griffin the night Sandra died.”
A little bit of the police officer came back into Elise’s stance. Emotions flashed across her face. I couldn’t interpret them all, but I was sure part of them stemmed from the knowledge that Dean had been willing to risk going to prison in order to help protect Arielle and Cameron. It might have been the first time she’d felt respect for him in years.
She dug her phone back out of her purse. “I’ll call Bobby. You’ll let me know if Dean…I don’t know how to tell Arielle and Cameron.”
I pulled her into a hug. “We don’t tell them anything for now. For now, we keep them safe, okay?”
She nodded. “You stay safe, too.”
I hadn’t considered that I might not be safe, but Elise was right. Griffin knew Dean had told me that they were together the night Sandra died. He had to assume I knew they’d be engaging in illegal activities. He could easily guess I’d put the pieces together and concluded he’d been the one to harm Dean. And Dean had told me Griffin wouldn’t stop at Elise and the kids. He’d come after me as well. Me and Mark.
I needed to call Chief McTavish, text Mark, and then I needed to get off this floor. Until the police had spoken to Griffin, I wasn’t safe to go home. He could even be waiting there for me now or he could have broken into my home and planted some sort of poison in my food. He’d made sure to let me know he knew where I lived.
24
My best option seemed to be to go back downstairs and sit with Russ and Tony. Not only wouldn’t I be alone, but I didn’t want to go home until I knew Stacey and the baby were okay anyway.
My phone wouldn’t pick up a signal in the elevator, so I waited until I reached Stacey’s floor again. I called Chief McTavish, explained everything, and gave him Griffin’s name and address. I also let him know that Elise was going to stay with her cousin.
He didn’t even lecture me. Instead, all he said was “I’ve got kids myself. They’re both off at college, but I understand.”
I hung up, texted Mark, and came around the corner to where I’d left Tony and Russ. Tony’s shoulders slouched forward, and Russ’s hair stood on end as if he’d been tugging it.
My heart felt like it tumbled from my chest and hit the floor. “Any news?”
Tony didn’t even blink in response to my question.
Russ set a hand on his shoulder. He’d probably been the closest thing Noah’d had to a real dad. It felt right that Russ had stayed, not only for Tony’s sake but also for his own.
“They told us we could wait here,” Russ said, “but they had to take her for a c-section. Her blood pressure was spiking, and the baby’s heart beat had turned erratic.”
A sudden weight in my chest pressed me down into the seat. The rational lawyer side of my brain knew there’d be some risk to the baby being born early, but I hadn’t considered that Stacey might be at risk as well. Women had babies all the time. Many of them were much older and much younger than Stacey. She was fit. She was healthy. All her check-ups had been good.
I wanted to ask how much danger they were both in, but I didn’t want to be the thing that pushed Tony over the edge. The man looked like he was barely holding it together as it was.
Tony’s head turned in my direction. “Will you pray for them?”
As far as I knew, Tony and his wife didn’t attend church. If someone had asked me, I couldn’t have said whether they believed in God or not. But there was that old saying about there being no atheists in foxholes. Maybe the truth was closer to there being no atheists when the life of someone you loved was at stake. When your hands were bound, it opened your heart to the hope of someone more powerful who could do what you couldn’t.
“Do you want me to pray out loud?”
***
Half an hour later, my phone rang. Tony had his head resting back against the wall, and he jerked hard enough that his skull made a thud.
I glanced at the caller ID. Fair Haven PD. That had to be Chief McTavish.
I signaled Russ. “I have to answer this. I’ll be around the corner. Find me if there’s any news.”
I answered the call before it went to voicemail.
“I have bad news or good news depending on how you look at it,” Chief McTavish said.
“Don’t tell me he’s dead,” I blurted.
“Have you considered therapy, Dawes? That’s not a normal response.”
I was already in therapy, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. He’d said there was news that could be either good or bad. Considering my history, that meant my suspect was dead—a good thing in that he couldn’t hurt Arielle and Cameron, but a bad one in that Dean could go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit…assuming he survived.
But I wasn’t in the mood to argue with Chief McTavish or defend myself right now. I wanted to know the ne
ws and get back to waiting for word on Stacey. “If he’s not dead, what happened?”
“He’s in police custody, but he’s been there over twenty-four hours.”
This afternoon Dean was seen by his neighbor working on getting rid of the plants I’d ordered him to dig up. Griffin couldn’t have attacked him. He might still have been able to poison his food. “Could you ask the officers in charge of the investigation to have the doctor test Dean’s blood for poison? If Griffin poisoned him, he could have done it prior to going into custody.”
Chief McTavish sighed. “I’ll ask, but it’s going to be a battle. Your suspect wasn’t brought in by the police. He came in to cut a plea deal for identity theft. He’s turning over all the names of the other people involved and everyone they’ve sold an identity to in exchange for complete immunity.”
Double crap. That made it look like Griffin was innocent concerning Dean’s attack. Dean had told him he was leaving the business, and instead of coming after Dean or coming after Elise and the children the way he threatened, he covered his own backside. It was a much smarter move than following through on his threats would have been. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or not that he was a smart criminal rather than a stupid one.
If he was spilling his secrets, now was the time to get him to alibi Dean, though. That would give Elise peace of mind, and she could honestly tell Arielle and Cameron that their dad wasn’t a killer.
“If nothing else, please have them ask Griffin if he was with Dean the night of Sandra’s murder. Dean claimed they were together, but Griffin threatened to hurt his kids if he told the police.”
“I’ll do what I can. The chief over there’s not a reasonable man.”
Russ called my name, and my phone slipped halfway out of my hand. I couldn’t remember if I’d said goodbye to Chief McTavish or not, but I stuffed the phone and ran.
25
I’d only every seen a shy smile on Tony’s face before. His I-just-won-the-lottery look now went well beyond that. He was smiling, but he also looked a little like he’d had all the air knocked out of his lungs.
The smile, though, was all that mattered. Stacey and the baby must be okay. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy. Noah Anthony Rathmell.”
Tony didn’t sound at all put out by being the middle name instead of the first name.
“How are they?” I asked.
“The nurse said they’re both going to be okay. Stacey’s in recovery, and Noah’s in the NICU. They want to keep him in an incubator for now because of how small he is, but it sounded like they’re confident he’ll be fine.”
Russ threw an arm around my shoulders and drew me into a sideways hug. Mark had been texting every half an hour for updates on the case and on Stacey. I sent him a message and told him he could call me if he needed to. This had to be triggering some bad memories for him of losing his baby daughter.
“He’ll be okay,” Russ said.
At first I thought he meant Noah, until I saw that he was looking at my phone’s screen.
My eyes burned, and I had to blink to keep back the tears. I didn’t want to leave this. I didn’t want to go back to a place where we were two among many. In DC, we could make friends, but in Fair Haven we had a community of people who knew us and cared. It’d never be the same in DC as it was here. Job or no job, I didn’t want to leave. I’d rather spend the rest of my life patching broken sap lines than go back to the city.
P.S. I typed to Mark. My vote is to stay in Fair Haven.
A text dinged in before I could put my phone away. It wasn’t from Mark.
Chief McTavish’s cell phone number was attached. Working on convincing them a full tox screen is needed. Doctor’s initial assessment is stress and heat exhaustion. But your guy alibied out. They were together until almost sunrise.
A second text from Chief McTavish dinged in.
Charges still not likely to be dismissed. They’re confident no one else could have done it. Think G is lying to cover for him and will argue it in court.
My euphoria over Noah and finally making my decision about where I wanted to live dulled.
If they wouldn’t move to drop the charges against Dean based on an alibi, I was back to needing to find the real killer.
I hadn’t uncovered any evidence that Sandra knew about the true nature of Dean’s business. She could have easily blackmailed him to get the money to save Nadine and Sam’s business if she had. Since she didn’t know about his business, none of Dean and Griffin’s clients would have had any reason to hurt her. None of them seemed to have a grudge with the business that would have been severe enough to kill Sandra over. Besides, now that I knew Dean was innocent, I was sure he would have told me if any of his clients might have done it, however slim the chance. A client would have also needed the skills to pick the lock since Nadine said she’d unlocked the door when she arrived in the morning. Given the type of people Dean “helped,” they might possess those skills, but it was a long shot.
Which brought me back to Ken, who also couldn’t have hurt Dean because he was with me at the time. He might have had a key to their house, though.
Or Nadine’s husband Sam, who had no motive that I could see, especially given that Sandra and Ken spent time with Nadine and Sam as a group and all seemed to get along well. The only things pointing to him were the plastic bags from the same store and access to a house key—except Nadine had her keys with her, so he didn’t have any more access to Sandra and Dean’s house than anyone else.
Maybe I was stretching and simply not wanting it to be Ken. Maybe Ken killed Sandra and Dean really did collapse from stress and heat exhaustion. Could heat exhaustion send a person into a coma?
Though considering it was getting close to five in the morning, it was also highly possible that my mind wasn’t thinking clearly anymore.
Now that Stacey and baby Noah were safe and I knew I wouldn’t go home to find Griffin crouching in my bushes ready to strangle me as well, I could get some sleep. As soon as I got up, I’d go back to Dean’s neighborhood and talk to Ms. Nosy Neighbor. If anyone could tell me if Ken had lied and did sometimes go over to Sandra’s house, it was her.
***
Mark had Sunday off. We’d decided to get up in time for church—meaning we’d probably each gotten no more than four hours of sleep—and head to Dean’s neighborhood together afterward. The theory was that the passenger could keep the driver awake as we drove to White Cloud. I’m not sure how much of the sermon I grasped, however.
Once we were on our way, I wanted to know if Mark had gotten my text about settling in Fair Haven, but the conversation almost immediately jumped to Stacey, baby Noah, and Mark’s deceased wife and daughter. We’d talked about them many times before, but what happened with Stacey and Noah had dredged up a lot of fears for Mark about us having children. It was something he wanted, and intellectually he knew the same thing wasn’t likely to happen again. That didn’t make the anxiety he felt any less real.
Midway through the drive, Elise texted to say that they were heading back home since the danger was past. She’d also been placed in charge of Dean’s welfare temporarily. The hospital had reached Dean’s brother out in Maine, and he’d asked them to speak to Elise and allow her to make decisions until he could fly in. Dean’s condition showed no change.
I texted back, and she confirmed that the doctors thought it was heat stroke, but that she’d seconded Chief McTavish’s request to run a full toxicology screen.
When we turned onto Dean’s street, the gray garbage bin on Dean’s front lawn still lay on its side, as if he’d tried to grab it as he fell and it went over with him. Wilted flowers littered the ground around it. I’d clean it up before we left.
We parked in his driveway and walked across the street to Ms. Nosy Neighbor’s house. I couldn’t see a reason not to bring Mark at this point. The woman seemed happy enough to gossip about Sandra and Dean to anyone.
She answered the door with a glass of lemona
de in her hand. Her gaze darted to the glass as if she were afraid simply having it there would encourage us to ask for a glass.
“He hasn’t changed his mind about selling the house, has he?” She leaned to one side, looking past us. “I’ve been watching, and the sign is still out front, but it hasn’t sold yet, either.”
The woman was the definition of impatience. The house hadn’t been listed that long, and I doubted the real estate market was booming in this small town.
“He hasn’t changed his mind.” I left out that he currently couldn’t change his mind. Since the first thing she’d cared about was the state of his house sale, she didn’t deserve an update about his medical condition. I’d better jump straight to my question before I lost my patience with her, though. Lack of sleep could make me a bit grumpy. “When Sandra was alive, did Ken ever go over to Dean and Sandra’s house?”
The woman shook her head. “Never. Ken and Dean are civil to each other, but they don’t socialize. Sandra went to Ken’s plenty of times, like I told you, though.” She winked twice.
Her observation of their pattern didn’t mean Ken hadn’t gone over that night. It did mean my assessment that he hadn’t killed Sandra was probably correct. She might have taken the meal over to him after she’d finished preparing it that night, but she hadn’t likely invited him over to eat it at her house. Especially since, according to Dean, he’d told her he’d be home a lot earlier than he was.
I thanked Ms. Nosy Neighbor even though it made me want to gag, and we headed back across the street.
“Are you sure she didn’t kill them?” Mark asked. “She seems desperate to get rid of them.”
She didn’t so much want them gone as she wanted a nice neighborhood, full of “good” people. “As sure as I can be about anyone in this case. Having a couple she disapproved of in her neighborhood upset her, but she’d know that two murders would mean fewer nice families would want to move here.”
Mark hoisted the garbage container upright, and I gathered the plants. Dean had dropped only an armful, but it destroyed the curb appeal of the house. Now more than ever, Dean would need that money. Whether he lived or died, there’d be medical bills. I’d always hated that part of our medical system. It felt cruel to present someone whose loved one had died with a bill as well.
