by Rose, Kristi
“I took out the trash, but I could’ve had someone else do that. Like an employee. This isn’t on you. Cooper would have done what he had to at any time. I gave him the opportunity.” I shrugged. It was behind us now. Or at least I hoped it was.
I supposed I’d never truly know if I was targeted by Carson. Reconciling how he treated me as a spouse with his intentions when he came to our area was too hard for me. But I was okay accepting not everything could be cut and dry, black and white.
One question lingered. “Why me and not you? Why send me the bank code and the video if you were such good friends?” I was propped up on my elbows, and I let my head fall back so the sun could kiss my face.
“I was the obvious choice. Cooper knew Jake would come to me so he set me up to be disbarred. Being under review really hogtied me. Any misstep in Cooper’s direction would have worked against me. Had I tried to discredit Cooper, it would have looked like an attempt to deflect what was happening with the bar association.”
“But Carson came to you anyway?”
“Yeah, but not for the reasons Cooper thought he would. Jake knew Cooper better than Cooper knew himself. He came to me to help set up contingency plans. Like signing your PI license.” He gave a wry smile. “I never knew about the video or what Jake had in his back pocket. I didn’t even know about Ben Fulton.”
“How do you think Cooper learned there was an incriminating video?” This was an unanswered question that bugged me.
Lockett shrugged. “I’d only be guessing. Maybe from spying on a meeting Ben and Carson had. Dumb luck. I don’t know. But whatever it was that tipped off Cooper lead him straight to you.”
For all the anger I had toward Carson there was an ache of sadness, too. On the day he’d sent me his backpack and fake identification he knew there was a chance he wasn’t going to live. I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like.
“You think Cooper told wife number one about me to get the estate to move so quickly?”
Lockett nodded. “For sure. He was looking for that video. When I learned of Carson’s death I figured it was only a matter of time before they learned about you.”
“We were all part of some crazy plan of revenge. Just pawns.” I said.
Lockett shook his head then did a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe at first. Carson was enraged when he lost the company. I think you all started out as a means to an end, but there was a change in him these last few months.” He held up a hand before I could ask questions. “What you don’t know was that Jake’s wife Cynthia’s dad was a brute, the worst kinda guy, and Jake and I spent most of our youth protecting her from him. Jake enlisted in the Marines right after high school. Cynthia forged her dad’s signature, and they got married immediately following boot camp. I think once Jake was making money, she wasn’t going to let go, and he…well…he’d always taken care of her. They’d drifted apart a long time ago. I don’t know why or how Cynthia became such a bitter woman, but she kept stalling the divorce. They were living separately for at least a year before he moved here. He didn’t come here to marry you if that’s what you’re thinking. You guys took that trip to Vegas...”
“And we had too much to drink and got married,” I finished for him.
He nodded. “Yeah. You’ll have to take my word for it, but toward the end there, I was seeing the old Jake I knew. Not the bitter Jake. I know that’s because of you.”
Processing everything was almost too much. Still little tidbits stuck out. Like this whole plan was convoluted and unnecessary.
“How can you be so sure? That he was changing because of me?” There was comfort knowing my man barometer wasn’t fully broken. Maybe just needed calibrating.
“Because about a month before all this happened, he came to me and had me set up an account in your name.”
“What?” I sat up.
“I think he knew he wasn’t going to make it out alive.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “He asked that if something should happen to him, then wait a month and give you the information about the account.”
I calculated dates in my head. “It’s not been a month.”
Lockett gave me a look that said he thought I was being ridiculous. “Okay, I suppose I’ll wait then.”
I punched him in the arm.
“I emailed you earlier all the information. It’s not much, a savings account with ten thousand dollars in it. But it’s something, right?” Lockett gave a half smile.
I took his hand. At first I held it, but then I squeezed, pressing his thumb back. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
He yelped and pulled his hand away. “The rules said I couldn’t for a month. We’re way closer to that now then we were when we first met.”
I flopped back on the blanket and covered my eyes. Ten thousand. At least I would have a small cushion, for a while.
I looked at him from under my hands. “I can forgive you for following the rules.”
“That’s good.” He chuckled.
“I suppose you’ll be returning to Seattle now? I heard the disciplinary board threw out your case in light of Cooper’s actions.”
Lockett nodded. “I kinda like it down here. Maybe I could open a satellite office. Jake used to admonish me for working too hard, not having a life. I see now he had a point.” He glanced over to Precious who was sitting by my parents and hers.
“She has an off again-on again boyfriend. Just so you know. But I don’t think she’d turn you down for a date. Maybe don’t expect much after that,” I said.
“I believe I’ll accept that challenge,” he said with a wide smile.
I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. “Carson talked about Precious, didn’t he? That’s how you knew who she was that day you told me he died.”
Lockett gave a toothy smile. “Noticed that, did you?”
I shook my head in wonder. How we survived was anyone’s guess. Dumb luck, I supposed. “I have a question for you. What was up with the no shoe thing when I saw you at Ralph’s?” I nodded to his bare feet.
He laughed. “I’m a black belt. I have to be prepared to fight at any time. I can’t afford to kick off my shoes when I need to take someone on.”
“Ricci was nearby that day, wasn’t he?”
Lockett looked away briefly then back at me. “I did what I could to keep you safe but sometimes you made it really hard. I knew you were being followed but not by who. Maybe if they saw you talking to a black belt, it might have helped you.”
I side-hugged him. “Look me up when you’re in town. I’m moving to the apartment over my dad’s paper.” I was letting go of the life I’d started with Carson. I didn’t feel safe in the townhouse, and my good memories there were clouded with bad ones. I was taking what I had left of Carson and keeping those items and memories in a place where I felt safe. The townhouse was simply that, a house.
Lockett playfully pushed me away. “What are you going to do about the business? I kinda think you have a knack for this private investigator thing.”
“Well, up until a few minutes ago, I was seriously broke.”
“You can start your own photography studio,” Lockett suggested.
See, here’s the thing. Taking studio pictures on a regular basis was an instant snoozer. Such a boring idea. I liked using my camera for money shots. “We’ll have to see. With the business burned to the ground, I’ll have to see if any clients come to me,” I said.
“I had Toby make you a website. You can deactivate it at any time.”
We sat in a comfortable silence.
“I suppose we get back to the business of being normal again. No drama or chaos,” I said, a bit woefully.
Lockett chuckled. “You know, this is going to sound crazy, but sometimes I think he’s still alive.”
I sat up wide-eyed. “What? Why?”
He gave a gallant shrug. “Dunno, but it’s totally something Jake would do. Fake his own death.”
I took in my surroundings, people mi
lling about through the park. A man in dark shades and a ball cap lingered by the river’s edge. He was watching us. Or maybe he felt me watching him and turned in our direction. I squinted, trying to see him better. My imagination was getting away from me. He touched the bill of his cap, then hopped into a speedboat and zoomed away. He was the right height and build for Carson. But he’d been too far away for me to be sure. He was probably just a guy who saw a weird woman staring at him.
“You’re kidding, right?” What I’d seen was just a man with similarities. That was the logical explanation.
“Mostly.”
“If Carson isn’t dead and resurfaces, I will kill him myself.”
* * *
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BEST LAID PLANS
No “learn to be a PI” video prepared her for this
When Samantha True witnesses Wind River's most popular principal keel over dead she knows three things
1.He's been murdered
2.Proving it will be impossible
3.They're gonna think she did it
As she works to clear her name, Samantha learns "Principal Josh" is the king of slime balls. Eliminating suspects proves tricky when half the town has a motive for murder. It'll take the right private investigator to crack this killer's best laid plan.
Chapter 1
The last Friday in August
“I’m counting on you, Sam. You must be my eyes and ears. I’ll need you to attend the Parent-teacher collaboration meetings and school events,” Rachel said, taking the seat next to me. She handed me a piece of paper with the meeting’s agenda. “Mom and Dad are super busy. They can’t do everything.”
“They can’t come to a PTA meeting once a month? They managed it when we were kids,” I said.
Rachel’s deployment was set for the end of September. She’d brought Cora out over the summer to live with our folks hoping to make the transition easier. Rachel’s ship was constantly going out to sea in practice runs they called workups. For every five-day break she got, Rachel flew out to spend them with Cora and us.
“It’s PTC. Parent Teacher Collaboration, and you know what I mean.” She sighed with exasperation.
I rolled my eyes.
Rachel was a tightly wound ball of anxiety and motherly hysteria, primed to blow at any second. Until this deployment, she’d never left Cora for a period longer than twenty-four hours and the separation was wearing on her. Her ship’s deployment was scheduled for a minimum of four months, maximum six. That’s a long time in kid years.
Rachel had decided Wind River Elementary, the elementary school we’d attended, wasn’t good enough for Cora. Instead, my niece, who still picked her nose when watching TV, was going to the new ubercool STEM-based charter school called Village Garden School.
A ruse of a name if you ask me.
Mom said they picked the name to sound friendly and unthreatening. No aggressive or politically incorrect mascot either. Nope. The fighting carrot, Captain Carrot, with his wild sprig of hair, the leafy green part, and a bowler hat, was as menacing as the school got.
Personally, I thought it was a huge joke on the town. A dig at the hipster parents and their crunchy lifestyle. Because Wind River wasn’t some quaint village. In fact, a meth house had been discovered on the outskirts of town. And as for the school’s garden? It was currently a churned-up piece of land waiting for seed. Soon the Pacific Northwest rains would start and wash away anything planted if the school didn’t hurry up about it.
My best friend, Precious, real name Erika, plopped onto the seat beside me and held out a napkin with three tiny blueberry scones on it. “Compliments of the PCT and How Ya Bean Coffee House,” she said.
I took one. “That’s a dumb name,” I said. “PCT. Putting collaboration in the title doesn’t make me want to work as a team any more than using association or organization.”
Rachel took a scone. “I’ll miss these. June knows what she’s doing.”
June was the owner of How Ya Bean and one awesome baker and barista. Her concoctions could make angels weep with joy.
“I might attend these lame-ass meetings if scones are served,” I said under my breath.
My role as younger sister was to get Rachel to explode. She needed a good cry and to vent her steam. I was prepared to take the brunt of it, too. And if I wasn’t? She’d twist my arm behind my back and remind me of all the times I’d ruined her—insert favorite anything. That list was long. That’s why I continued to push at her buttons and nitpick at random, insignificant things.
“Just help me out here, Sam,” she said with a groan.
“Okay, let me get this straight. You don’t want me to be in charge of caring for Cora—dressing, feeding, offering life lessons, those sorts of things—but you want me to do things like attend PTC meetings, volunteer, and report back little tidbits about her school and teacher to you? You know how I feel about school.”
Being dyslexic had not made school a fun experience. Even more so when a portion of the staff thought my inability to decipher language and symbols was me being stubborn and refusing to learn. Who purposely did that? Refused to learn?
Rachel said, “All the more reason for you to be here. You can pick up on struggles Cora might have.”
Okay, I’d give her that.
Rachel blew out a frustrated sigh. “Besides, I’m not asking you to be her guardian because you’ve never cared for a kid before. It’s not easy. You can’t make them tater tots and sprinkle dried kale over it and call that nutrition. You have to keep track of when they poo and how they sleep.”
I grimaced. I wasn’t interested in anyone’s poo.
She continued, “They need seat belts. They lack common sense, and they don’t need a role model who throws caution to the wind.” She gave me a pointed look.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if she was talking about anyone else. Then I stuck my tongue out at her.
“You can help me here. Show her she’s not alone. Be here. It’ll make her feel good to know someone she knows and loves is on campus. And you can tell me if she’s making friends. I need to know she’s happy and adjusting well. I need to know her teachers are warm and loving. That this is a good environment for her. You can easily do this for me.”
“Thanks, I think,” I said. I was about to poke at her more but a tall woman with mousy brown hair pulled back into a topknot with expertly curled tendrils around her face stood and rang a bell.
I glanced at my watch. The kindergarten families had fifteen minutes to get all the pertinent information before we’d be shuffled out and the first-grade parents would be shuffled in. VGS was hosting us in their cafetorium, used both for lunch and assemblies. The room had been redone so that one wall was a row of three single-car garage door sized folding windows that opened to the dry dirt yard called the garden. They were open tonight. Not the best choice in hindsight considering the wind would occasionally bring in puffs of dust.
“Take your seats please,” Mousy Brown Hair lady boomed across the room. “Principal Josh Chapman would like to speak. I’m Mindy Cunningham, President of the PTC, and I’ll be here to answer questions you might have about the PTC and how you can help. Our volunteers can do so much from home, so please come see me when he’s done. We depend on you all to make this school great.” She turned to the side and gestured to a tall, lithe man with a full head of light blond hair in tight curls. He was probably Rachel’s age, but he hadn’t grown up in Wind River because neither of us knew him.
I whispered to Rachel, “I wonder which one is the village idiot?” I elbowed her to show I was joking. She pinched my knee in response.
“He resembles Justin Timberlake,” Rachel whispered. “Kinda cute.”
Yea
h, I suppose, if it was two A.M. and a person was inebriated, tired, and wore foggy contacts. But I sorta saw the resemblance. Maybe it was the coloring or the hair. He wasn’t unattractive by any measure. Just not my type.
I said, “I think it’s because he’s not in uniform. You’re not used to seeing men in regular clothes.”
Rachel snorted.
Precious said, “There’s better out there. And he’s wearing pleated pants. I mean, who does that anymore?”
The man in question cleared his throat and beamed at the crowd. He would need to do more than smile to gain my trust.
Principal Josh—he told us to call him that—talked about bullying, behavior, and parent pickup. No buses, only mommy mode of transportation for the special snowflakes. He shared all this with a constant smile. Like the Joker who even when being evil smiled. I was underwhelmed by him and skeeved out by how he constantly touched people when he talked to them. Like Mindy Cunningham from the PTC kept getting her shoulder squeezed every time he referred to the collaboration. Or a parent in the first row when he called attention to their volunteer work.
Or maybe my annoyance was because men were on my crap list. Thanks to my probably decreased-kept-two-wives liar of a husband, I didn’t have warm fuzzies about men in general, or Principal Josh.
I forced my thoughts away from Carson and the mess he left me when he was murdered and focused on Principal Josh’s yammering. He was making extended length-eye contact and repeating the phrase “caring is sharing” to guilt people into volunteering for the upcoming Fall Festival, which was happening in a few weeks. Like me, many were looking at their fingernails or the ceiling.
Following a heavy sigh, Principal Josh introduced the school counselor, Danika Post, a petite woman with chestnut curly hair and an eye for fashion as told by her fancy high heels.
