Melissa narrowed her eyes. “Funny isn’t the word I would use.” She looked down at her dog and tugged on the westie’s leash. “Boy, it’s time to go.”
“You know, maybe this is fate—”
She shot me a glare. “What are you talking about?”
“We keep running into each other. Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something.”
She groaned. “The universe is probably just trying to torture me.” She tugged on her dog’s leash again. “Come on.”
“By the way, I didn’t realize that you lived in the neighborhood,” I said.
She ignored me and tugged on her westie’s leash again. “Come on, Butterscotch, it’s time to go.”
My eyes lit up. “Wait a minute. You named your dog, Butterscotch? That’s so cute.”
Her icy demeanor did not thaw one bit. Melissa’s focus remained on her dog. A desperate tone came to her voice. “Butter, come on.”
Butterscotch didn’t pay any attention to her. The westie was too busy rolling around on the ground with my dog.
“Let him have his fun,” I said. “He’s having a good time with Snickerdoodle. Besides, I won’t bite.”
Melissa snarled at me. “If I haven’t made myself clear enough, I have no interest in talking to you.”
The two dogs were completely oblivious to the drama that was unfolding above them. That was probably for the best. I had no interest in arguing with Melissa. If only she shared that sentiment.
“Just because you’re holding a grudge against me doesn’t mean you should take it out on your dog,” I said.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Look, I’m sorry about what happened during the Andrew Stewart investigation. I understand that you may never forgive me for questioning you about his death, but I assure you, I just wanted to bring his killer to justice.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be treated like a killer? To know that you are innocent, but worry that you’ll be sent to jail for a crime you didn’t commit? It’s terrifying.”
“I can’t pretend to know what that was like for you. All I can say is that I’m sorry. If you don’t forgive me, I understand.”
She stared deep into my eyes. A few moments later, she glanced down at our dogs, who were licking each other.
“Our dogs do seem to really get along,” she said.
“Dogs are simple like that. They don’t come with any baggage. They just live in the moment. Humans work a little differently.”
Melissa scoffed. “Tell me about it.”
As I glanced at her, I saw a troubled look on her face.
“Why do I get the feeling that your anger isn’t just directed at me? Is something else bothering you?” I asked.
“What makes you think I’d tell you if there was?”
I nudged my head at the dogs. “Butterscotch doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to go anywhere. Isn’t talking to me better than standing here in awkward silence?”
She looked down at her dog then sighed. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Sabrina, don’t act like we’re best friends.”
“Fine.” I took a step back. “What brings you to this neighborhood?”
“I, uh, live a couple of blocks away.”
“Since when? I thought you lived on the south end of town.”
“I moved.”
“Well, welcome to the neighborhood. You enjoying it?”
“It’s all right.”
So much for small talk. This conversation was going nowhere fast. If I wasn’t careful, we’d be discussing the weather soon. With the conversation stagnating, I decided to change the subject. There were some other issues I wanted to bring up, and since Melissa clearly wasn’t going to be leading the discussion, I figured there was no better time than now to get into meatier topics.
“How are you and William doing?” I asked.
Melissa averted her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That good, huh?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re so nosy.”
“I didn’t realize that things weren’t going well for you and William. I was just asking you about your life. By the way, feel free to ask me anything you want about my life.”
“Fine. Why are you so nosy?”
“Because some incredibly suspicious things are going on in this town and I want to get to the bottom of them.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “What kind of suspicious things?”
“Are you saying that you haven’t noticed all of the mysterious things that have been occurring? Your own boyfriend is involved in one of them.”
“William’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
“That’s probably not such a bad thing.”
She looked wildly offended. “I can’t believe you’d say that.”
“Don’t get me wrong, breakups are hard. I have been down that demoralizing road myself. But in this specific case, considering who you were dating, you are better off without William.”
“How do you know that?”
“Like you said, I’m a nosy person. That nosiness had led me to discover that your ex-boyfriend is a member of a very shady group.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know about the secret society that he is a member of, then?”
Melissa fell silent.
I waited a few seconds for her to respond, but her lips remained shut. “You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
She stared at the ground.
“If you tell me what you know, it would really be a big help,” I said.
She scoffed. “You’re fooling yourself.”
“Why? What do you know?”
“Suppose there is a secret society in town. How secretive could they really be if I had details about them?”
“Are you denying that the society exists?”
“No. I’m saying you’re crazy if you think I know anything about it.”
“You were dating one of the members. Besides, couples talk.”
“I don’t know what kinds of conversations you have with your boyfriend, but William never mentioned anything about a secret society to me.”
“I was just thinking maybe you overheard him having a suspicious phone conversation, or—”
She cut me off. “I know what you were thinking, but nothing like that happened. William is a very secretive person. If he had any suspicious phone conversations or went to any secret meetings, he did it when I wasn’t around.”
Melissa’s mouth said one thing, but her tense body language made me believe she was withholding information from me.
“So you don’t know anything about the secret society?” I asked.
“What makes you think that this so-called secret society even exists?”
“Like you said, I’m a nosy person,” I replied. “I’m also a very concerned person. And you should be too.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “About what?”
“About what this secret society is up to.”
“You’re acting like there’s some big conspiracy going on here or something.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t really know what’s going on. But I do know this—people usually meet in secret because they don’t want the public to know what they are doing. Which makes me wonder, what are they trying to keep hidden?”
Melissa shrugged. “I have no clue.”
“Really? In all the time you were going out, you were completely in the dark about what your boyfriend was doing?”
Melissa gritted her teeth. She was trying her best to keep a lid on her feelings, but as I looked into her eyes, I could see how much she was struggling to hold herself together.
“You do know something, don’t you?” I asked.
“I know this. William was a secretive and controlling man who kept his feelings completely walled off. Let me tell you, those are not
ingredients for a happy relationship.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Well, this is my answer. As tough as breakups are, I’m glad I’m not under his thumb anymore. I just want to put as much distance between myself and him as possible.”
“Why? Did he threaten you?”
“Sabrina, I’m going to give you a word of advice, and I suggest that you take it. Stop sticking your head where it doesn’t belong or your nosiness will come back to bite you one day.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Melissa kept talking.
“Come on, Butterscotch.”
She pulled on her dog’s leash again.
This time, the westie didn’t put up any resistance. Melissa and Butterscotch scooted away.
I made sure to get the last word in. “If you decide that you do want to talk to me, I live right around the block.”
Melissa didn’t even turn around to acknowledge my statement. She just kept walking away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
David and I both knew that investigating was hard enough to do, much less on an empty stomach. Before resuming work on the case, David had me head over to grab a bite to eat. I drove over to my friend’s sandwich shop to pick up some to-go food to munch on.
Apparently, the universe wanted me to run into familiar faces from the past. After parking my car, I got out and headed to the entrance. That was when I ran into a familiar face on the street.
It was my ex-boyfriend, Wally Tuttle. He was the man I had dated before David came into my life. Alcohol had been the reason for Wally’s and my breakup. Wally just couldn’t seem to stay sober. Because of that, I couldn’t be with him any longer.
Recently, Wally seemed to have cleaned up his act. The last time I saw him, he had clear eyes. I didn’t know what had happened, but something was different about him all of a sudden. The twenty-eight-year-old was a mess. He looked more like the old Wally. He didn’t look like he had shaved in days. His brown hair was messy. There was a jittery look to him.
Wally sat on a bench with his eyes closed. He grimaced as he rubbed his forehead.
“Wally, is that you?” I asked.
He took a deep breath and glanced over at me. “Sabrina. Hi.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine. I’m just having a really bad headache.”
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a large unlabeled pill bottle.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Just some headache pills.”
“That’s an awfully big bottle. You buy those at the discount warehouse?”
He shook his head.
“What brand are they?”
“They are a specialized mixture.”
“You mean they’re prescription?” I asked.
“Not exactly.”
Why was he being so vague? With each mysterious answer he gave me, the more my curiosity grew. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was hiding from me and why he was hiding it.
“Where did you get them?” I asked.
He snapped at me. “What’s with all the questions?”
“Sorry. I was just curious.”
I took a step back.
When he saw how wary I had become, it put him even more on edge. He opened the bottle, tilted it horizontally, and shook it so that a few pills came out.
He caught the first two gel-coated pills, but a third pill bounced off his hand and landed on the ground. Wally bent over to retrieve the third pill from the sidewalk, but gave up when he wasn’t able to spot it immediately.
“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. That was my headache talking,” he said.
After abandoning his search for the stray pill, he sat back up on the bench, popped the other two pills in his mouth, and swallowed them both.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “That must be a pretty fierce headache.”
“Is there such a thing as a light headache?”
“Good point. So those pills, do they work pretty well?”
He nodded. “Oh yeah. They keep me sane.”
“Just what the doctor ordered, huh? Well, that’s good to hear. By the way, what doctor recommended those?”
“Why do you keep asking me where I got them?”
“Because I know how brutal headaches can be. So the next time I get one, it would be nice to have a strong pill to take instead of just basic aspirin.”
“I don’t think you need something this strong.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
He looked like he was ready to snap at me again, but narrowly managed to keep himself from blowing his top. “I’m just telling you, in your case, the odds are that taking something this strong would be overkill. This stuff is for people who get a lot of headaches.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Just how many headaches have you been getting?”
He groaned. “Can we stop talking about my headaches?”
I was about to press him for answers, then I saw him wince.
A look of concern came over my face. “Maybe you should call your doctor. What if this is more than just a headache?”
He waggled his pointer finger back and forth. “I’ll be fine.”
“Wally, I don’t know that you’re thinking straight. You don’t look fine.”
“I already told you, it’s just a headache.”
“I heard what you said.”
“Then let’s drop this subject.”
“I just want to say one more thing—”
He groaned.
“Wally, you told me yourself that you’ve been getting a lot of headaches—to the point where you’re carrying around this big bottle of unlabeled pills. How can I not be concerned about you?”
“I’ll be fine,” he barked.
There was a fire in his eyes that sent a shiver down my spine.
I instinctively backed away from him. “All right. Whatever you say. I was just trying to help you.”
Regret came to his face. “Look, I didn’t mean to snap at you like that—”
He could try to apologize to me all day, but I wasn’t interested in listening to it. He appeared to be coming unhinged, and I didn’t want to stick around in case he completely unraveled.
“You know what? I really should be going,” I said.
He grimaced again then rubbed his head. “Yeah. Me too.” He got up from the bench. “Again, I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
Wally shuffled down the street away from me.
Once he was a safe distance away from me, I put my guard down and allowed my thoughts to wander. My gut was telling me that there was much more to the story about his headaches than he had let on.
I had an idea about how I could get answers. I headed over to the bench that Wally had been sitting on and scanned the sidewalk. A few seconds later, I spotted the pill that he had dropped. I reached into my purse, pulled out a tissue, grabbed the pill, and took it with me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
My stomach was growling when I entered Shannon’s sandwich shop. Shannon Smith, my petite twenty-eight-year-old redheaded friend, was behind the counter, smiling away.
She wasn’t alone.
Joe Marlowe, a six-foot-two, short-haired, muscular man with a handsome face, was with her.
Shannon and Joe were in the middle of some heavy flirtation as I entered. Instead of just striding up to the counter, I stopped in my tracks and watched them from a distance.
Shannon’s and Joe’s focus was so deeply on each other that neither of them noticed me entering the shop. They continued their flirtation at the counter.
“I had a really great time last night,” Joe said.
“So did I,” Shannon replied.
“I’d love to do it again,” Joe said.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
“How about tonight?”
“That would be great.”
He smiled. “Fantastic. I’ll pick you up at
six.”
“I can’t wait.”
Joe leaned across the counter, gave Shannon a kiss, and then headed toward the exit. It wasn’t until he approached the front door of the shop that he spotted me.
“Sabrina. Hi. It’s good to see you again,” Joe said.
“You too,” I replied.
“Have a good day.”
“I’ll try.”
Joe then left the shop.
I quickly turned my attention to the counter and approached Shannon, who was swooning.
“So I guess you finally made your decision,” I said.
A glimmer was in her eyes. “I sure did.”
“You seem pretty happy with your decision, too.”
“That’s because I am.”
“It sure looks like you chose the right guy.”
“I hope so. I certainly spent enough time fretting over who the wrong guy was.”
“So, are your fretting days finally behind you?”
“Fingers crossed.”
“Is that the best you’ve got? Just fingers crossed?”
“Don’t get me wrong, it sure feels like I picked the right guy. Then again, it’s still really early.”
Shannon was notorious for second-guessing her decisions. Part of that was her unlucky history with men. The other factor was that doubt was just a natural part of her personality. Apparently, even a delightful kiss from Joe wasn’t able to give her bulletproof confidence.
I crossed my fingers as well. “Here’s hoping that things continue to go smoothly.”
She threw her arms out. “I’ll let you know either way.”
“So, how did Gavin take the news?” I asked.
She let out a sigh. “He kind of lost it.”
“I can’t say that’s surprising. After all, who takes rejection well?”
“But here’s the thing. Gavin was out of his mind before I even told him that I was choosing Joe over him.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Wait. Really?”
Shannon nodded.
“Did you just catch him at a bad time, or—?”
“I must have. He was irritable the moment he opened his front door. The crazy part was, when I looked into his eyes, it was like I was staring at the Gavin of old. He was completely on edge and jittery—like he was unraveling.”
My eyes widened. “Unraveling?”
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