by Jeff Shelby
He at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “That’s not what I meant…”
“I stopped by the church to buy some raffle tickets,” I said. “Declan asked me if I wanted to come over for dinner. It’d been a couple of weeks since I’d seen him, and I felt bad about that. He’s been a good friend.”
He noticed my emphasis of the word ‘friend’ and he cringed. “Oh, well…” He stopped and suddenly his arms were unfolded, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “I just thought…”
“You thought what?”
He blew out a breath and fixed me with a stare. “I thought you might be interested in him.”
“Interested?”
He nodded.
I tried to choose my words carefully, and tried to ignore the thumping of my heart. Because I was pretty sure of something: Gunnar Forsythe was jealous.
“I am always interested in hanging out with my friends,” I said.
Gunnar cocked his head, studying me. “And is that what he is?”
“A friend? Of course.”
His eyes locked on mine. “Is that what I am?”
My heart threatened to ricochet out of my body. How was I supposed to respond to that? Gunnar was a friend. There was no question about that. I just wasn't sure if he was more than that.
“Well…yes,” I stammered.
He crossed the room and before I knew it, he was a foot away from me. The smell of his aftershave was stronger and I breathed it in, trying not to go weak in the knees at the sight and smell of him. I looked down at my bare feet, focusing on the chipped pink nail polish on my toes.
He reached out and tipped my chin so I was looking at him.
“What if I want to be more than your friend?”
His eyes swallowed me. My mouth went dry and I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think.
His fingers fell away and I resisted the urge to touch my chin, to see if it was as warm to the touch as I thought it might be.
“You know, don’t answer that,” Gunnar said. Both his expression and his tone had softened. “Let’s just see what happens.”
See what happens? I knew exactly what was happening. Gunnar Forsythe was dangerously close to sweeping me off my feet. The problem was, I just wasn’t sure I was comfortable with anything other than having said feet firmly planted on the ground.
I nodded and swallowed a couple of times, trying to steady my nerves. “Okay,” I finally mumbled. What else was there to say?
He rocked back on his heels, his arms folded once again, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Uh, so tell me,” I said, blushing furiously as I tried to come up with something else to talk about other than the status of our relationship, “was there a specific reason you came over?”
“Do I need one?” he asked lightly.
I shook my head. “N-no, of course not.” My cheeks felt like they were on fire. “I just…I was just asking.”
He grinned. “I rigged up a new automatic feeder for my chickens last week. It’s working pretty well, so I thought I could set one up for you, too.”
“Automatic?”
“Yeah, just a PVC pipe and a Y connector is pretty much all you need. Gotta train them to eat from it, but the result is pretty much zero waste. And no chickens screaming at you in the morning when they think they’re out of food.”
I smiled. I’d had a few mornings like that, when the girls had called for food and I’d gone outside, only to see their trough empty because they’d somehow managed to spill all their feed on the ground. And since it wasn’t where it belonged—in the trough—they didn’t eat it. I’d sort of solved the problem by topping off their feed at night, but there was always a bunch wasted, mixing in with the sawdust and waste that eventually had to be scooped out and put in one of the compost bins.
“Sounds great,” I told Gunnar. “How much do you want for it?” I knew it was pointless to ask, because he never let me reimburse him for anything, but I always did. It was the polite thing to do and, honestly, I did it because I truly would have paid him.
He stroked his chin. “Four.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Four? Four dollars?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Four hours.”
“What?” I was completely confused.
“Four hours. With me.”
My throat was positively desert-like again. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“You can call it whatever you want.”
I had no idea what to call it. “Four hours of what?”
He chuckled. “I'm sure we can think of something.”
Butterflies clanged around in my stomach. Laura was right. Gunnar had the hots for me.
And I was fairly certain I had the hots for him.
“So,” he said. “We have a deal?”
I didn't really need an automatic chicken feeder or whatever he called it.
But I didn't want to be rude.
And I had been thinking about making more friends.
At least, that's what I told myself.
“Deal,” I said.
EIGHTEEN
I called Mack.
Not because I needed dating advice—he was the last person I would turn to in that department—but because I needed something to take my mind off of what had happened with Gunnar. I’d tried to forget about it as I did dishes and made my bed and started a load of laundry. I tried as I weeded the garden, yanking clover and clumps of crabgrass and creeping Charlie. I’d tried as I threw together a turkey sandwich for lunch.
But all I could think about was Gunnar.
I tried harder to switch gears, focusing instead on the other visitors that morning. The woman who had basically parked outside of the house. And Shawn in the backyard, skulking around, confusing me with his version of the story. All of this, coupled with Leslie’s supposed disappearance, made me wonder if there was something I should be doing, or something I could be missing. The thought had occurred to me that the woman in the car might have been Leslie; after all, they did seem to have the same long brown hair. But why would Leslie be driving a different car? And why would she be casing my house? I dismissed that possibility.
Since I had said—repeatedly—that I wasn’t a private investigator, I decided the next best thing I could do was call one.
Because he might actually have some advice.
“This is the second time I’ve heard from you in a week,” he said as soon as he picked up the phone. “You must really miss me.”
I chuckled. I was sitting in one of the wooden rockers I’d put out on the front porch. The humidity that afternoon was tolerable, and the glass of ice-cold lemonade was helping to cool me off.
“I do,” I told him.
He snorted. “Why are you calling? You figure out what’s going on with the girl and the ex?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Nope. Because now she’s missing.”
I had his attention now. “What?”
I gave him a recap of what had happened over the last twenty-four hours. To his credit, he listened quietly, not interrupting a single time.
When I finished, he let out a slow breath.
“What?” I asked. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you might actually have a real mystery on your hands.”
“I had a mystery on my hands before,” I reminded him. “With the bones and the fire.”
“Pssh,” he said, and I could almost see his hand flying through the air, waving off the suggestion. “Please. That was like a quiet Thursday for me.”
“Do you want to help me with this or not?”
“No,” he answered. “Because I’m hoping you get sick of that little town and decide to move back here. Pretty sure you’d find employment easily.”
I smiled. If that was Mack’s way of saying he missed me, I would take it.
“I’m trying to figure out a potential list of suspects,” I said, ignoring his insistence that he didn�
�t want to help.
“Who do you have so far?”
“Well, that’s just the thing,” I said. I swirled the ice cubes in my glass, listening to them clink together. “I don’t have anyone, really.”
“I can think of three right off the bat.”
I held the glass still. “You can?”
“Yep.”
“You don't even live here.”
“But I'm amazing, Rainy. You always forget that.”
“Tell me.”
“Well, the ex-boyfriend, for one. He’s the obvious choice.”
I thought about Shawn. He was an obvious suspect, this was true, but he’d also told me he and Leslie were still together. That he loved her. And I couldn’t help but remember how they’d interacted. No fear on Leslie’s part, and definitely no anger on Shawn’s.
“But they’re still together,” I reminded Mack. I’d just finished telling him my exchange with Shawn.
“You don’t know that. What makes you think the kid was telling you the truth? You see him have an argument with the girlfriend, and then the next thing you know, he’s casing your place.”
“He wasn’t casing it,” I said.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know that, either,” Mack said. “Just because someone says something doesn’t make it true. Golden rule of investigating. In life, really.”
I picked up the pad of paper I’d brought out with me, along with the mechanical pencil sitting next to it. I wrote Shawn’s name down.
“Okay. Who’s number two?”
“Mike.”
“Mike? I don’t know a Mi—”
“The restaurant kid. The one you saw near the girl’s car.”
“Mikey?” I frowned, shaking my head. “He was reenacting a TV show, trying his hand at being an investigator.”
“Sort of like you?”
I ignored his comment. “He has no motive. No reason to kidnap Leslie.”
“No motive that you know of,” Mack corrected. “That doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.”
I sighed. It had been a little weird, finding Mikey outside of Vivian’s house, lurking near Leslie’s car. But I’d bought his explanation, hook, line and sinker. It made sense, because nothing pointed to it being anything more.
“Okay, fine,” I said, scrawling his name next to Shawn’s. My fingers were still dirty from weeding because I’d refused to wear gardening gloves, and I left a streak of dirt on the paper. “Who’s the third one?”
The line was silent.
“Mack? You there?”
“I’m here.”
“You said you had three people,” I said. I took a sip of lemonade. The sweet-sour taste made my tongue tingle.
“I do. But…you’re not gonna like my third suggestion.”
I didn’t much care for his first two, either, but I stayed quiet about that. “Just tell me.”
It was his turn to sigh. “Fine. Vivian.”
“Vivian? Her sister?”
“Stepsister you said,” he clarified. “And, yes. Vivian.”
I made a face. “You realize she’s the one who called me about this, right?”
“Yep.”
“So why would she ask me to help with her sister if she was the one who kidnapped her? That makes no sense.”
“Sure it does,” Mack said. He was munching on something: peanuts, by the sound of it. He always had a jar of cocktail peanuts at his desk, and he would eat them by the handful. “Think about it, Rainy. If you wanted to commit a crime, what steps could you take so that you could cover your tracks?”
“I don’t know, because I wouldn’t commit a crime.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Mack said. “The first thing you do is report it. Because, by doing so, you remove yourself as a suspect. Be cooperative. Ask for help. Appear worried. Act like you had nothing to do with it. Be the Good Samaritan. All of those things deflect suspicion.”
“Why would she want to kidnap her sister? Leslie would know who she was, would easily be able to tell people what happened and who took her.”
“That’s assuming she comes back.”
A chill ran down my spine. “So you think she’s…dead?”
“I have no idea,” he said breezily, as if we were simply discussing whether or not it was going to rain over the weekend. “All I know is that the sister needs to be on the suspect list.”
I wasn’t buying it. Sure, Vivian had admitted that she and Leslie had a rocky relationship, and I’d even witnessed a little bit of this attitude toward her stepsister. She clearly didn’t like how Leslie popped in whenever she needed money, and I knew firsthand that Leslie could be a hard person to get along with. But I didn’t think that any of these things were reason enough to think she might be behind Leslie’s disappearance.
“I don’t know,” I said, my pencil hovering over the pad of paper. I couldn’t bring myself to add Vivian’s name.
“I’m just sayin’,” Mack said, munching in my ear, “when things go wrong, the first place you look is family. Because they either have information that will help you solve the case, or they’re somehow involved in the first place. Every time.”
As much as I didn't want to believe it, I knew that he knew what he was talking about.
“Don't let those bumpkins down there fool you, Rainy,” he said. “Somebody's lying to you.”
I didn’t disagree.
Mack was probably right.
I just needed to figure out who.
NINETEEN
I couldn’t stop thinking about Mack’s words.
Especially because, as afternoon turned into evening and evening turned into morning, Leslie was still missing.
I’d caught word of it on the local news, a short, five-minute segment at the end of the hour during one of the national morning news programs.
The local station wasn’t in Latney, but Charlottesville, and a short segment aired, asking the public for information about a missing woman. Leslie’s picture flashed on the screen, and it stunned me, seeing her green eyes and auburn hair and that half-smile that looked more like a smirk.
So after a breakfast of eggs and toast, I’d decided I needed to do a little more digging, as much to help find Leslie as for my own peace of mind. Her disappearance was becoming an obsession, and I didn’t like it. I wanted to focus on my garden and my chickens and on becoming a part of this town, not ruminating on the reasons why it might have been a bad decision to move there in the first place.
The only problem was, I didn’t know where to dig.
I hadn’t talked to Vivian since Sunday night, when the sheriff had shown up at her house. Truth be told, I was pretty sure she was disappointed in me and how dismally I had performed at helping to find her stepsister. The sheriff was an absolute no. He wouldn’t have shared information with me if I were the last person on earth.
I could talk to Shawn, if I could find him. But he’d high-tailed it off my property the minute I’d asked. I could stop in the Wicked Wich and talk to Mikey, but I wasn’t sure he would know much of anything, either. It was hard to believe, but his sleuthing skills were probably worse than my own.
Declan might know something. He was the pastor, and people often went to him in times of need. Actually, he went to them, I thought, remembering how he’d shown up at my own house time and time again during that first week of crises. But even if he knew something, that didn’t mean he would tell me. I wasn’t sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if men of the cloth were sworn to secrecy, if there was some kind of pastor/parishioner oath of confidentiality.
There was one person who I could talk to, though; one person who might know something. And who would have no problem blabbing information.
Sophia Rey.
I headed straight to the boutique. It was just past ten o’clock, which meant she would have just opened the doors. Hopefully, traffic was slow on Tuesday mornings, so she would have time to goss—I mean, chat.
The bell on the door jingled and Sophia looked up from behi
nd the register. She looked as perfectly put together as always. Her blonde hair was straightened today, parted in the middle and spilling like two golden waterfalls onto her shoulders. She wore a shimmery silver blouse and white jeans with a big black belt clasped around her waist.
“Rainy,” she exclaimed, smiling. “What a pleasant surprise. Are you looking for more things for your home?”
The last time I’d visited the store, I purchased a lamp for one of the guest bedrooms. I’d wanted a lot more—almost everything I set my eyes on—but Sophia’s prices were a tad too much for my decorating budget. I’d stayed away to avoid temptation.
“Oh,” I said, looking around at the shelves and displays gracing the tops of different pieces of furniture, “I’m always looking for something.”
“Aren’t we all?” Sophia smiled. “It’s why I do this. Walter and I definitely don’t need the money this little business of mine pulls in, but I just can’t imagine my life without it. This store is my baby, my reason for living.”
I just smiled in return and nodded, not understanding at all how a store could mean that much to someone. But if she had no children and her husband was working long hours, and this was what she did to make herself happy, then who was I to judge?
I turned my attention to a china cupboard. It had been painted a dusky, milky blue, and all of the knickknacks were sunflower-themed. A sunflower teakettle, a sunflower trivet. Sunflower corkboard and sunflower magnets; linen napkins embroidered with sunflowers, and a small purse in the shape of a sunflower. I’d always liked sunflowers but after seeing this display, I now loved them. I craved them. I wanted every single item on display, even though I had nothing sunflower-related in my house.
I picked up a delicate china creamer. It was black, with miniature sunflowers painted on each side. “This is beautiful,” I murmured. I tried to be discreet as I turned it over to look for the price.
“It is,” Sophia said, nodding. “A woman near Bentley paints these. She’s incredibly talented. She had a show once in Manhattan, years ago. Paul McCartney has one of her vases; bought it right there at the show.”
I nodded. If a hand-painted creamer was just shy of fifty dollars, I could only imagine what a full-size vase might go for. Paul McCartney was probably one of the few people who could actually afford her pieces.
