Out of Mind
Page 29
She shrugged. “For work.” It was the same reason they’d moved nearly every six months or so for as long as she could remember.
“What work did Peter do?”
“Whatever was available, really.”
“What job did he have here?”
“He was working as a gardener at Paradise Spring Hotel on Magazine Street.”
Chapel jotted the details on his notepad. “We’ll have a chat with them. Do you know any reason why someone would want to kill him?”
She’d been asking herself the same question every waking moment since the woman had fled with the knife in her hand. “No. He was gentle and kind. Everyone loved him.” She sniffed back a sob.
“Have you thought about the woman who murdered him? Can you tell us any more?”
She’d done nothing but think of that woman. It horrified her how little she could recall. “It happened so quick. Isn’t there any video footage?”
“Oh, we wish. But no, there’s no footage.” He cocked his head and his left eye narrowed, looking at her even harder.
Charlene’s chest squeezed at his intense gaze. When his eyes darkened even further, her gut churned. It suddenly occurred to her that she may be a suspect. “What about the waiter, and the other people in the restaurant, and that bus stop outside? Someone must’ve seen something.”
“We’re interviewing everyone at the moment.”
Her mind snapped to the woman who’d stabbed her father… Her brunette hair, pulled into a high pony tail that flung from side to side as she snapped her eyes from Charlene to her father. The fire in her eyes that blazed both fear and bravado. Her white knuckles as she’d clutched the steak knife. The visible throb of pulse in her slender neck. The pause. That moment where she’d stopped for a split second, frozen with apparent indecision, the blade aimed at her father.
Yet Charlene couldn’t remember anything else. Not what the attacker had been wearing. If she’d had jewelry or tattoos. She couldn’t even remember the woman approaching their table. One minute Charlene and her father were deciding on who’s turn it was to top up the fridge, next second the brunette was screaming at her father in a foreign language.
“Do you have anyone you can stay with?” Chapel snapped her from her tumbling thoughts.
“What?”
“Is there anyone you can stay with?”
She lowered her eyes. “No.”
“Family?”
“I don’t have anyone.”
His brows bounced together, his eyes narrowed and again she had the impression he thought she was lying. He tapped his pen on the table, sounding out a metallic heartbeat. “What about your mother?”
Her brain screamed at her to run. But she fought the panic, as her mind flitted from one possible response to the next. The vice clamped around her chest squeezed tighter. Insecurity crept in like a thorny vine. Her pause had his unfounded guilty glare darkening and it was a couple of thumping heartbeats before she decided the truth was the best response. She raised her eyes to Chapel and met his gaze. “I haven’t seen my mother since I was six.”
“Hmmm.” His pen tapping stopped. His eyebrows nudged upward. “What about friends, do you know anyone here?”
“No.”
“Is there anyone who can stay with you?”
“No. I don’t really have anyone.”
His brows drilled together this time and when his pen tapping got faster, she felt the need to clarify. “We moved around a lot.”
“A lot… How often is a lot?” The pen stopped and somehow the silence was worse.
“Usually every six months or so.”
“Hmmm, it would help us to piece things together if you retraced the last few years. Start with what you did in Chicago.”
As Charlene listed her and her father’s recent moves, Chapel jotted notes on his notepad. The scratching of his pen was as harsh as nails down a board. But the silence when he stopped was worse. So she carried on, blurting out one detail after another. Her mind danced to a game her and her father always played while on a road trip. It was a memory game. She’d say something like: we were eating ice-creams on a pier and a child flew a red kite into the railing right beside us. Where were we? Her father would have to answer. He’d then ask her a question about somewhere they’d been. They could do it for hours. Recalling where they’d been, something unique they’d seen.
She’d never play that game again.
“Wow, you do travel around.” Chapel yanked her back from that horrific thought as he flipped the page. “Do you know if Peter retained his bank statements?”
She blinked at him, suddenly nervous about her response. But once again, the longer she paused the guiltier she felt. “We don’t have bank accounts.”
He sucked the wind through his teeth and leaned back on his chair. “That’s highly unusual, Charlene.”
“Dad didn’t trust the banks with his money. So we only ever used cash.”
“You never had a bank account either? Credit card?”
“No. And I never needed one either.”
“What about wages?”
“Cash.”
He pinched the back of his hand again. “Rent?”
She huffed. “Everybody loves cash.”
“Well, that’s interesting.”
“Interesting how?” She had no idea what he was implying, but the look on his face confirmed he was suggesting something. And it wasn’t good.
“Most people who don’t use bank accounts stash their money somewhere. Under a mattress. In the wardrobe.”
Charlene huffed out a laugh. “You’re implying that we have surplus cash. We earned enough to pay the rent, buy food and occasionally have a treat. That’s it.”
“Maybe Peter’s killer thought he did?”
The grin fell from Charlene’s face. “I can assure you we didn’t have extra cash.”
“Did you know Peter didn’t have a driver’s license?”
“Yes. He never had a need for one.”
“What about his social security number? Do you know it?”
Her heart leapt to her throat. Her father didn’t have a social security number. Neither did she. “No! Why would I?” It wasn’t a complete lie. Her heart leapt to her throat at Chapel’s glare. Her father had ranted many a time about remaining untethered to any government programs. He was stubborn like that. But after hours of implications from Chapel she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had an ulterior motive.
Was he keeping us off the grid for a different reason?
Out of Reach
In a place where a city can be lost hundreds of years . . . they can still find each other.
Lily saw the temple of Agulinta on television: a vast stone structure swallowed by the Yucatan jungle, rediscovered only now after hundreds of years. So why did the papers she found after her father’s death show the same mysterious carvings that puzzled archaeologists at Agulinta? Her search for answers pulls her to Mexico’s southern border, where the journey to the lost temple will take her through jungle and mountain, over waters home to crocodiles and drug runners, and into uncomfortably close quarters with a man whose need to wander has become a way of life . . .
Australian Carter Logan’s work as a nature photographer has given him the excuse he needs to roam wherever his restless feet take him. But in all the time he’s traveled, he’s never been drawn to anyone the way he is to this determined, cagey young American. Lily’s perseverance through dirt, sweat, and danger to the heart of the ancient temple fires through him. But when the two of them are left alone and stranded in a vicious wilderness, their connection might prove the difference between life and death . . . if the secrets of the past don’t come between them first.
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