Traces of Guilt

by Dee Henderson

“I think I’ll get you the lists. You’re going to need a bigger wall for your timeline.”

  “I’m thinking the same thing. I don’t know what’s relevant. But once I see it, the timeline is likely going to be the key to understanding this case.” She looked over a file she was holding. “How’s that other list, the violent ones, coming?”

  “With some deputies’ input, we’ve got the names. I’ll get you a copy. I’m heading out to talk to some on the list, see if I can find out who else should be on it.”

  “You sound kind of doubtful.”

  He shook his head. “No, I think it’s a solid way to approach the problem. But I’m thinking we won’t see the right name without something else to point us there.”

  Evie nodded to her notes. “That’s where my side of this comes in. I have to find you a motive, something that would pull a name on your list to the top. We still need a trigger, a reason to carry out the crime. The one thing I’m confident of is the motive isn’t going to be something trivial. If this doesn’t turn out to be a random crime, the motive of the person who went after Deputy Florist and his wife and son is going to be huge. If motive is there, I’ll find it.”

  Gabriel smiled at her confidence. “I’ll send you in some lunch. Anything you don’t like?”

  She shrugged. “Raw onions. Sushi.”

  “I’ll come up with something without getting near those. Don’t read too long without a break or your headache is going to return.”

  “How do you know it’s gone?”

  He reached over and lightly touched her forehead. “You’ve got a tell when it’s there—the headache’s gone, but you’ve still got the ache around the stitches.”

  “It feels like I’ve got fishing line knit through my skin,” she complained.

  He chuckled. “It’s probably close to the truth. I’ll see you later. Call if you need anything.”

  “Sure.”

  Evie Blackwell

  Evie watched Gabriel leave, looked at what he’d left behind on the table. Another roll of sweet-tarts. A bit of magician on his part, she thought, since she hadn’t seen him put it there.

  She slipped one out and with new determination turned her attention back to the files. Gabriel had the list of names. She needed to find that why. She liked Gabriel’s smile—find something useful and she’d get another of them. Not that she was working the case for his smiles, but still, it was a nice side benefit.

  So far, nothing in the files included the names of Florist’s wife or son. Was that a simple courtesy to the deputy if his son had been in on something that caught an officer’s attention, maybe vandalism at the school or petty thefts involving kids in Joe’s circle of friends? She’d begun compiling a list of names to investigate further. It would be hard to find a motive directly involving an eleven-year-old who, from everything she’d seen up until now, seemed to be a good boy.

  Susan Florist had been a clerk at a bank. There’d been a heart-attack death there—a disgruntled customer denied a loan extension. Also a series of threatening letters related to the bank’s foreclosure on farmland. Since Susan was a part-time employee, nothing in the bank’s actions likely would have drawn attention to her. Evie hadn’t come across any reports of an attempted bank robbery, or a bank employee embezzling funds, or someone acting inappropriately toward female staff.

  Evie moved her shoulders around to loosen them, started to think about missing Deputy Scott Florist, but then stopped and circled back to his wife, Susan. The bank was a hub of the community. She would know people’s financial business as a teller handling deposits, working a customer-service desk. Things like bank balances, bounced checks, church contributions, those behind on paying back a loan, those spending more than they could afford, child-support payments. Financial matters were always emotional flash points when there was trouble. Susan would be in a position to see and hear a lot of personal information about people in the community.

  Evie thumbed through the case files she’d brought with her, looking for the write-up on Susan and her work history, took her time reading through it. Susan had handled opening accounts, provided access to the safe-deposit box area, and worked the front counter taking deposits and processing withdrawals. She hadn’t been involved with loans or business accounts or reconciliation of problems. But the general tasks she routinely handled would have been enough to learn personal information about the bank’s clients.

  Evie circled Susan’s name on her notes, circled the bank, and wrote out a simple statement: You know my secrets, and I think you told someone, maybe your husband.

  Evie tapped her pen against the notepad, intrigued by the places that possibility could take her. A couple had a joint checking account, but the wife kept a secret account as a just-in-case cache? One with statements going to another address for privacy? Someone worried about a violent streak in her husband? Maybe someone withdrawing a bunch of cash, cleaning out an account in preparation for bolting, and Susan was the person who assisted in the withdrawal. . . .

  Yes. There might be something here. Whether it led to the family’s disappearance was a different question. But Susan would have known at least some of the community’s secrets, and someone could naturally conclude she’d told her husband some of those secrets. A good line to tug, Evie thought as she put a Carin Lake fishing spin on it—she was throwing out a line for ideas and had just hooked something that felt big.

  Should she mention the idea to Gabriel? No. Not yet. Ideas were fragile things. There would be any number that didn’t get into her net before she found something worth sharing with him. She’d pursue this one on her own and see where it went. The fact she’d come up with one possibility told her she’d find more.

  Back in the post office after a quick stop to buy a radio, Evie returned to the timeline. The music helped the place feel friendlier, echoing down the long room like a concert hall. Evie found herself moving in step to the rhythm as she moved back and forth between the files and the wall.

  Susan Florist had been an organized woman. Evie fully appreciated that as she taped more calendar pages up. Susan had used a month-at-a-glance layout, one or two words capturing the daily schedule. Doctor. Baseball practice/Joe. Spanish class. Haircut/Scott. The woman had laid out the Florist family’s life in neat orderly boxes and archived the expired pages. Evie started with the month the family disappeared and went back in time. She fit almost two years’ worth of the calendar pages in towering columns on the wall. Finished, Evie pulled out a chair, put her feet up on another one, and carefully studied the results.

  Susan Florist, tell me something interesting about yourself. I know it’s here, buried in these dates. Your son’s life. Your husband’s. Yours. What do I need to see?

  She reached over for the roll of sweet-tarts, peeled off another. She scanned and absorbed month after month of the Florists’ lives. She wasn’t looking for any particular item. She was simply reviewing the routines, the interruptions. Car in for maintenance, the dishwasher breaking, a visit to the vet, the places someone would interact with Susan more often than Scott, and vice versa. A birthday party invitation for Joe, scout meetings, youth group, or places with just Susan and Joe, without Scott.

  New notations appearing . . . Joe at Mike’s, Yates/dinner here, some coffee/10 a.m. reminders. The Yates had moved into the community? A new couple who also had a son, Susan is making time to get to know the wife, the boys are in school together, have them over for a meal to introduce them to her husband? That might be a useful thread—new people in town. A look at school records could give her a sense of who had arrived the year or two before the Florist family disappeared. You might tell new people something about your lives, what’s going on, invite them to your home. Sometimes disguised monsters came to visit—

  “Evie.”

  Her elbow popped against the edge of the chair, and her feet slid off the second chair and smacked on the floor.

  Gabe smiled apologetically. “Sorry,” he said.

  She r
ubbed her elbow. “Sure you are.”

  “Look at the bright side. Maybe it will take attention away from the other aches and pains.” He laughed at the look she gave him. “I am sorry. Listen, I’m heading out to do more interviews. Want to come along?”

  He’d interrupted a train of thought that was going somewhere, and she had to push down irritation at his reasonable question. She shook her head. “Thanks, I’m good.”

  “Okay. You spook easy—that’s interesting to know. I’ll whistle my way in next time.”

  “Fine. Good. I hope an interview goes somewhere.”

  He chuckled and disappeared out the door.

  She walked over to make sure the door was locked, fixed herself a sandwich while she was up, and returned to rescue the second chair, get settled again. She shook her head to clear the interruption, looked at the calendar pages, and pulled the schedule information back into place piece by piece.

  New people coming into their lives, showing up in their schedule . . . someone new who has a dark and dangerous side. Would he maybe come in via Joe? A new coach for Little League, a new dad of a teammate? It seemed most likely through Joe. Or through Susan via a woman, a wife, a girlfriend. Not directly through Scott, not stepping into their personal lives. The door would open through Joe or Susan. Unless it was a new guy at work . . . She paused on that thought. Yeah. A nice cover. Scott brought someone new into their lives, someone new on the job. If it’s a cop, they think he’s safe and have no hesitation about letting the person into their lives.

  Evie could feel when the moment of concentration peaked and the idea began to fade. She tried to get the feeling back, but it wouldn’t form. It didn’t mesh with the calendar, she realized. New people coming in via Susan and Joe were there, but not Scott. No fishing dates, no golf outing, no guy stuff—little markers that should be there. Evie wrote herself a note to check school records on the possibility of a new couple showing up with a boy Joe’s age, but the rest of the what-if wasn’t holding together.

  She stretched, ate another sweet-tart, went to the last calendar month of their disappearance, month by month in reverse order, and looked for another possibility. Something else was here somewhere.

  Evie heard the post-office door open, knew it was Gabriel, and didn’t look up. He was whistling the same tune as when he’d come in with an update on his interviews and when he brought in dinner. She didn’t mind the whistling, but the song fragment looping in her head was annoying.

  “It’s eight o’clock. You need to call it a night.”

  “Yeah,” she answered absently, just to acknowledge the remark, no particular inclination to follow his advice. She was just glad he spoke so he stopped whistling.

  “What’re you doing now?”

  Over the course of the day she’d been reviewing the contents of the various boxes collected from the Florist home. She read letters, flipped through notebooks, scanned a diary of Susan’s, looked at saved Christmas cards, found restaurant coupons and school flyers—the normal clutter a family collected over time and eventually discarded. At the moment she was deep in their financial, insurance, and medical paperwork, tracing where they sent checks, looking for signs of secrets, an affair, child-support payments, bailing out a family member who kept getting into debt, something. Even the boy had an account for his allowance and interesting purchases to his name. She condensed the last hours into a single word: “Finances.”

  “Evie. Pause long enough to look at me.”

  She glanced up. Gabriel was wearing a bright pink Hawaiian shirt and holding two glasses of crushed ice and something red with straws stuck in them. He handed one of them to her. “Sip it slowly.”

  She complied, and smiled. Tart and fruity.

  “Don’t ask what’s in it. It’s safe for cops to drink on duty, contains no alcohol, although it’s probably got a dozen other things—including a touch of lime juice and part of a can of cherry pie filling—from what I saw land in the blender.”

  “You were at a party?”

  “Good one too. A coming-home party for vacationing friends, three weeks in Hawaii. We didn’t want them to feel so much culture shock coming back to Illinois. Come on, take a break. You can drop in on the last half of the party with me.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Two blocks east, above the pizza place.”

  Okay, meeting the town’s residents would be a decent use of her time, and she could use a break . . . and more of this punch. She pushed back her chair, tucked the phone he gave her into her pocket with her keys, picked up her drink.

  “How many people were interviewed today?” she asked as they walked toward the door. “You told me earlier about yours, but were there others?”

  “Between Dad, myself, and deputies who had the time, we interviewed thirty-eight. We added another six to the list based on feedback—people we all agree we should have thought of ourselves. How’d you do?”

  She glanced back at the tables. “I’ve got some ideas.” She really wanted to pursue a couple of them for another hour or so . . .

  He reached over and pulled her through the doorway. “It’ll still be here tomorrow. You’ll think better if you clear it out of your mind for a bit.”

  She waited while he locked the place up, nodded to the retired deputy coming their way. Gabriel must have been confident he would get her to take a break.

  “You need a warmer jacket,” he pointed out. “We can ride—”

  “No, I’m fine for a few blocks. Come winter, I live bundled in layers that make me look like the Michelin Man. I’m stubborn about giving in to winter.”

  He smiled. “A cute image. Tell me something else I wouldn’t know about you.”

  She gave him a considering glance. “Okay, but I answer one, you answer one. Sure you want to go any further? I already gave you the easy answers.”

  “Yes.”

  She sipped at the drink and decided to make it interesting just to see how he would respond. “Let’s see, I build a snowman every February just to force away my increasing annoyance with winter. I vacation comfortably—land somewhere, rent a house, eat out, take a stack of books and movies, pretend I live there, and decide if I would like the area as someplace to retire one day. I’m trying to get up the nerve to take flying lessons so I can travel around as easily as Ann does. I like to run with my dogs, play Frisbee with them, enjoy tug-of-war with their ropes. I used to go to the gym to stay in shape, but now the dogs help me accomplish that and with a lot more fun. I’m single, never married, though I’ve been close enough a few times it would take a sharp knife to shave the difference. I take my birthday off. I sleep in, then put a hundred dollars in my pocket and go shopping for whatever catches my eye, write down a list of what I want most, and hand it to God as my birthday wish, have a special meal—steak, baked potato, asparagus, a richly iced cupcake—curl up on the couch to watch a good movie or reread a favorite book to top off the day.” She looked over and found him watching her. “Birthdays aren’t celebrated enough as they should be,” she finished, feeling a bit defensive.

  “Define ‘almost married.’”

  Trust him to catch that one. She blew out a breath. “Let’s see . . . not in any particular order. One got called off by the groom a few days before the wedding. Another, I returned the engagement ring. The third”—she grinned, cocked her head—“we’ll call it career-goal differences, but in reality his mom didn’t like me, and we mutually concluded she never would. That gets me to age twenty-six. I’ve since become wiser and stopped letting guys ask me the question.”

  He was silent for a long moment. “I’m not sure what to say. That’s an . . . unusual history. Allow me a tactless question—how old are you now?”

  “I’ll admit to thirty-five with a year of fudge. When I’m forty it’ll be three years of wiggle room, and I’ll work my way up from there.”

  “Dad had told me, but I wanted it from you. Word is you’re seeing a guy by the name of Rob Turney.”

 
“That’s the word, is it? Accurate enough, I guess.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Evie, but that almost-married list is sad.”

  She liked that he was willing to say such a thing. She agreed with him. With a shrug, she replied, “I was looking for something I thought a guy could give me, with the added edge of being a bit commitment shy. They were good guys with solid jobs, I wasn’t going to be marrying lazy bums, and any one of them would have made a fine husband. But I didn’t fight very hard to keep a wedding in view once things in the relationship began to go south. I’ve grown out of it, that need for a guy to fill the voids, make me complete. I grew up.” She shook off the memories and offered a smile. “And that constitutes my list of personal crashes.” She could tell he wasn’t sure what to say, and she was of a mind to let him off the hook. “Are we at the party? I see Hawaiian shirts in the windows above us.”

  Diverted, he glanced up. “Yes.” He opened the door in front of them. “Stairs to the second floor, then take the door on the right. Hosting us are Glenda and James Fitzgerald. You’ll want to ask about their son, Mark, and their cat Sophia.”

  “Got it.”

  “The Florists’ extended family is mostly here. I counted six of them,” he mentioned as they topped the stairs.

  She shot him a look. “You should have told me earlier. I need a Hawaiian shirt too.”

  “In this crowd, someone is going to spill that punch on you—you’ll be nicely colorful. Hang around with me for a bit. I’ll introduce you to folks or you can peel off and see if you can corner a lady who likes to gossip. Either is going to make for a fun evening, maybe even productive.”

  He opened the door, and the volume promptly spiked. Between music and conversations, it sounded as though the entire town had gathered in what could be at most a three-bedroom apartment. Gabriel stepped in first, drew her into the room behind him.

  “Gabriel! You brought a date. How nice! Come in, come in. I see you’ve already gotten her a drink. What’s your name, dear? I’m Linda the librarian, but most people just call me the town crier. Come on, let’s get you a plate and some food, and you can tell me where Gabriel has been hiding you.”