Pumpkin Roll

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Jane pulled out her phone again and started scrolling. “One of the articles talked about that.” She kept scrolling, then stopped. “‘The victim has regained consciousness and her condition has been upgraded to stable, though she will remain at the hospital for further evaluation,’” she read out loud.

  “At least she’s getting the care she needs,” Sadie said, feeling a little better about the “further evaluation” part. “Hopefully social services will get involved and she’ll end up in a better situation in the long run.”

  Sadie felt her desire to find answers drain out of her, replaced with fatigue and plain old sadness. She shook her head, more ready than ever to let this go. “Regardless of what might have been behind what’s happened here, it’s over now, right?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Pete said, pushing away from the counter.

  “In case it isn’t, keep in mind that I came to help,” Jane said. She put down a half-eaten piece of pizza and brushed her fingers off over the box, her bright purple nails flashing with the quick movement. “Any way I can.” She stood up from the table and shrugged again. “It won’t hurt my feelings if you want to leave it all at the feet of the police and let them figure it out, but I think we also need to face the facts.” She looked straight at Sadie. “You have a history, this story is already in the press, and it’s all just weird enough to get more and more attention from here on out. There’s always the chance that it will just go away—let’s hope it does—but if you decide to do a little homework on the sister, Mrs. Wapple, or even the possibility of ghosts, I’m happy to help.” She paused a moment. “I mean, maybe figuring out some explanations would be a kind of closure to everything. Totally up to you, though.”

  Chapter 22

  Sadie held Jane’s eyes and decided to look at this from a different perspective. Jane wasn’t trying to make her believe in phantoms—she wasn’t even trying to make Sadie feel obligated to launch an investigation—she was just offering her help, and much less forcefully than she had in previous situations.

  Sadie smiled and put her hand on the younger woman’s arm as something much closer to gratitude and companionship pushed some of her doubt and hesitation out of the way. At Sadie’s touch, Jane tensed a little bit and for a moment her assured expression dropped enough to show a whisper of vulnerability, reminding Sadie that it was usually a lot of hurt that created the toughest exteriors.

  “Thank you, Jane,” she said with sincerity. “For everything, really. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”

  Jane nodded and took a step back, causing Sadie to drop her hand. “Okay,” she said. “Do you need help with the dishes or anything?”

  Jane was offering to do dishes? Sadie was seeing a whole new side of this girl tonight.

  “Don’t tell Sadie, but we used paper,” Pete said, coming back to the table and sending a wink in Sadie’s direction. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

  They walked Jane to the door and watched her climb into her car and drive away before Pete locked the front door and the new eyebolt—checking it twice. There was still one car parked at the curb, but Sadie was encouraged that the other reporters had left. Hopefully that meant that something far more exciting had happened and they had tossed her story aside like a stale crust of bread.

  The curtains had been drawn when the police were there earlier, and Pete hadn’t bothered to open them up. For Sadie’s part, there was nothing outside that window she had any interest in seeing.

  “It was nice of Jane to come,” Pete said, heading toward the back door, Sadie trailing behind him. “I was going nuts being here with the boys, knowing you were there alone. It was a huge relief when she called and said she was heading to the station.” He locked the back door and slid the new chain into place. Sadie was so glad he’d remembered to install the extra security, even though she hoped there would be no need for it.

  “It was really nice of her,” Sadie agreed. She took a deep breath and let it out as Pete double-checked the window locks over the sink. She knew she should deal with the failed cinnamon twists and overcooked beans tonight—she hated leaving the mess for morning—but she couldn’t make herself do it. They weren’t going anywhere, and she was completely overwhelmed by far more important things.

  While Pete finished securing the house, Sadie waited for him to ask her some questions about the police station, or about exactly what had happened at Mrs. Wapple’s house, but he seemed distracted somehow—not interested in talking things out. Strangely, that was okay with her. She was looking forward to the oblivion of sleep.

  The two of them went through their nightly routines, and Sadie tried to ignore the intimacy of brushing their teeth next to one another in the bathroom. Pete finished first and gave Sadie a minty fresh kiss on the cheek before retiring to his room. Sadie closed the bathroom door and took a shower, scrubbing at the red paint still on her hands. When her skin was raw, but paint-free, she turned off the shower, dried off, and dressed in the pajamas she’d brought in earlier.

  She opened the door a few inches to let the steam escape and began lathering on all the creams and serums that kept her looking a youthful fifty-two instead of her true age of fifty-seven. She was applying anti-crepe neck cream and thinking about how the paint can had been so perfectly rigged for her to kick over when the bathroom door suddenly opened. She jumped to the side and lifted both forearms in a block before seeing Pete standing there. She lowered her arms, both a little embarrassed by, and a little impressed with, her reflexive action.

  “Sorry,” he said with an apologetic smile. “Sneaking up on you probably isn’t a good idea right about now.”

  “I’m a little keyed up, but it’s good to know that taking the advanced self-defense course at the Y is paying off.”

  Pete nodded. “I just . . . Well, I was thinking about what you and Jane were discussing—about looking into Gabrielle or Mrs. Wapple tomorrow.”

  Sadie rubbed the excess cream into her hands; she didn’t want to draw attention to her neck with Pete watching her in the mirror. She also hadn’t made up her mind about if she would take Jane up on her offer. Part of her wanted to drop it completely, but the other part impelled her forward, encouraging her to learn everything she could. Her hair was still wet and she felt a drip of water slide down the back of her pajamas—the pink-and-white polka-dotted ones she only wore when she wanted to look nice in her jammies.

  “Do you trust me?” Pete asked suddenly.

  She leaned against the counter as she continued rubbing the lotion into her hands. “What kind of question is that?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light despite the fact that the name Michaels surfaced in her mind. “Of course I trust you.” And she did, very much. Did he trust her?

  Pete crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the floor. He was tense and unsure of himself, something that rarely happened. “Do you remember what I told you about not getting as involved as you could in this case?”

  “After I decided to go to the hotel to talk to Gabrielle?” Sadie asked. He nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, I’m not sure where the police are with this, and as much as I support law enforcement as a whole, I don’t know these people and Boston’s finest has a rough history that has me worried about how your history is going to play into this. It’s hard to make sense of why you keep finding yourself in these situations, and I’ve no doubt the police are having a hard time with that too. Cops hate coincidences and patterns.” He took a breath while Sadie tried to keep her expression neutral, even though she was aching to defend herself. Was he questioning her too? Is that what he was getting at? Was it only her history that he was worried about?

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I just wanted to tell you that while I can support you doing what you feel you need to do, and I acknowledge that in the past your determination to get to the heart of matter has made all the difference, I can’t help you with this one, and I shouldn’t really know the details anymore.”

  Sadi
e felt herself exhale the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, but her surprise was sincere. “You think I should look into Gabrielle?”

  “I’m saying I can’t be a part of it—at all.”

  “But I should try to figure her out?”

  Pete didn’t say anything, allowing Sadie to think over what he’d said exactly. If she continued, it was on her own. Or, rather, she and Jane on their own. The fact that he’d said what he’d said and hadn’t told her to stay out of it—like he usually did—almost felt as though he were giving her his blessing . . . sort of. She had to keep dissecting his words in order to find the specific intent of what Pete was saying.

  She grabbed hold of the only thing that stood out. “I can’t talk things over with you anymore?”

  He held her eyes for a few moments, obviously wrestling with what to say, what to tell her. It was tempting to just come out and ask him about what she’d overheard on the phone but she didn’t want to take away his chance to confide in her because she did trust him and she wanted him to do this his way.

  “I love you, Sadie.”

  That brought Sadie up short. It had been said before, in greeting or parting, or signed on a note he left on her windshield at the grocery store when he’d recognized her car in the lot. The words had become as comfortable on their lips as the kisses that sparked more than just chemistry these days. But he’d never said it with this kind of weight before, as though his loving her explained something more than his feelings and tapped into more than their future. He reached for both of her hands, and she stepped closer, their entwined hands between them.

  “I love you too,” Sadie said, her chest constricting with rising emotion as a horrible thought entered her mind. Did he fear that whatever he wasn’t telling her would crumble what they had together? He looked so heavy, so concerned and . . . scared.

  “Are you okay?” Sadie asked.

  Pete squeezed her hands. “Sure,” he said, but he was looking at their hands, not her eyes. “And I know things will work out in the long run. I just need you to know that it’s okay for you to follow your gut instincts on this. I trust them, and I don’t want you to ignore them because of my inability to be involved.”

  “I wish you could be involved,” Sadie said. “I think we make an amazing team.”

  Pete smiled. “Just be careful, and don’t forget how much I love you and how proud I am of the woman you are.”

  Talk about cryptic! But Sadie didn’t dare question him about it; the fear in his eyes was burrowing into her.

  They stood there for a few more seconds, and finally Pete let go of her hands and kissed her quickly on the lips. “Good night,” he said when he let go.

  “Good night,” Sadie answered as Pete turned and went back into his room. She went into her room a few minutes later and shut the door behind her while pondering the exchange. She stopped when she caught sight of her laptop plugged into the charge cord and resting on the dresser. Everything she needed to know could be only a Google search away, but was it a betrayal of Pete for her to investigate him?

  Did she want to know who Michaels was?

  Would it change everything?

  His words came back to her: “Do you trust me?” She absolutely did trust him but wondered if he really trusted her. If he did, wouldn’t he have told her? Then again, he didn’t know she’d overheard his phone call. And yet there was something preparatory in what he’d told her—be careful, remember that I love you. Pete himself had told her to trust her gut instincts. And he’d pointed out that her investigations in the past had been important—they’d made a difference. Would he find it at all surprising that Sadie would dig into his past if she had reason to do so?

  She thought of how troubled Pete was, how vulnerable he had looked, and her heart ached for him. He had so much pressure on him right now, but she also trusted that whatever he couldn’t bring himself to tell her was something that would not destroy what they had between them.

  She retrieved her computer and made herself comfortable on the bed. As she flipped open the screen and waited for it to wake from its electronic sleep, she looked at the bedroom door and simply hoped that her gut instinct wasn’t leading her astray on this one and that whatever this secret might be, she and Pete really were strong enough to handle it.

  Chapter 23

  Once the new browser window had come up, Sadie typed in the URL of her favorite journalistic archive website. It had been a wonderful resource in the past, and she felt only a small twinge of guilt that Pete was the one who had showed her the site in the first place. She didn’t have access to police records like he did, but Pete taught her how to make a pointed search of public information and of previously published articles dating all the way back to the sixties in some cases.

  As she typed Pete’s name into the search bar, Sadie did a quick review of what she already knew about his basic history. He had been born in New Mexico—Santa Fe—played baseball in high school, and served four years in the army via the ROTC program after graduating high school. He married Pat after finishing his time in the military and then completed his schooling and joined the police force when he was almost thirty and his girls were young. Jared was born a few years later, completing their family. The family moved to Fort Collins about thirteen years ago, then after Jared had graduated from high school and started his undergraduate work at Colorado State, Pete and Pat had moved to Garrison. Pete had said something on the phone about fifteen years ago. That would have been when he was in New Mexico. Was Michaels someone he arrested back then? Was this Michaels person the reason Pete had left his home state?

  Although the website spared Sadie from the thousands of useless links she’d have encountered through a traditional Google search, there was still plenty of chaff to sift through. It took about fifteen minutes for Sadie to skim through the results until she found a link that matched the time period Pete had mentioned on the phone. She opened a scanned image of an article from the Farmington Daily Times, printed fourteen years earlier.

  Sadie took a breath, then zoomed in on the image and started to read about whatever it was Pete didn’t want her to know about his past.

  Detective Under Investigation; Landscaper Acquitted

  The investigation into who killed Lamar Nutson in his Flora Vista home last April took a shocking turn on Thursday, June 4, when Ricardo Fruge, Mr. Nutson’s former landscaper, was released from the San Juan County jail where he’s been held without bail for the last two months awaiting trial.

  Mr. Fruge called 911 to report having found Mr. Nutson lying on his bedroom floor April 2 of this year, a victim of an apparently random attack involving multiple stab wounds and a blow to the head. Mr. Nutson was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where he died two days later as a result of his injuries.

  Mr. Fruge had worked for Mr. Nutson for several years but had been recently fired for having pawned several pieces of equipment belonging to Mr. Nutson. Mr. Fruge claimed to have returned to the house to repay Mr. Nutson for the equipment, but was arrested two weeks following the attack due to evidence which was not made known to the public. Today, Mr. Fruge is a free man but refused to make any comment as his lawyer drove him away from the jail.

  Yesterday, Detective Peter Cunningham, four-year veteran of the Farmington police department, was put on administrative leave pending an investigation into his work on the case. According to an official police spokesman, Detective Cunningham is not a suspect in the death of Mr. Nutson, but is suspected of using unapproved methods of investigation when he accepted the help of Terry Michaels, a self-proclaimed psychic. The information from Ms. Michaels led police to Roberto Fruge. However, current information has proven the information was not viable and that the search of Fruge’s father’s home was done without a proper warrant. Evidence discovered during that unlawful search is now suspect. What action will be taken against Detective Cunningham is as yet unclear, but according to the spokesman, “It’s unfortun
ate that proper protocol was not followed in this case. We are doing all we can to repair the situation and bring Mr. Nutson’s killer to justice.”

  There have been no other arrests since Mr. Fruge’s release, and Detective Cunningham has made no comment.

  “Oh, Pete,” Sadie said, shaking her head as she bookmarked the page and returned to her search results. Using the new names she’d discovered, she looked for any other articles on the topic. She felt a little queasy as she imagined the implications of the article. Certainly Pete hadn’t acted on a psychic’s tip without fully considering the situation, had he? She knew him to be skeptical and cautious, but had he once been impetuous and brazen, seeking justice at any cost? Sadie found another article dated three weeks after the first one and pulled it up. This one was digitally archived rather than scanned in.

  Psychic Arrested in Nutson Murder