Ultimately, he had failed to derail me, but he had succeeded in making me angry. Even though I tried not to let my irritation show, I found myself a little more worked up than I had expected.
“Really?” I replied. “You can be as dismissive as you want, but your condescension won’t get you anywhere.”
Jake’s massive ego was now on full display—so much that it began to cloud his judgment. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of me.”
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. Now, I just want the answer to a few questions.”
He was full of bluster. “You’re way out of your league.”
Jake was really testing my limits. It was almost like he didn’t care if I called the cops.
Unfortunately, I was bluffing. If I involved the police, my boyfriend would know that I was conducting my own investigation behind his back. The ramifications of that wouldn’t be pretty.
Even though Jake had called my bluff, I didn’t let myself become discouraged. “I just want to know what really happened to Andrew.”
He folded his arms. “You’re wasting your time with me, then.”
Jake clearly thought he could intimidate me.
I decided to double down on my bluff by dialing a few numbers on my phone. “I’ll make this very simple for you. You can either answer my questions, or you can talk to the police. I guarantee it’ll be easier to talk to me.”
For the first time, panic came to his face. “Fine. What do you want to know?”
“How long have you been with Melissa?”
“Not long.”
“When did you start seeing her?”
“About a month ago,” he replied.
“So she was dating both you and Andrew at the same time?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
His noncommittal answers were driving me nuts. These were very direct questions I was throwing at him.
“Did Andrew know you were sleeping with his mistress?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” he replied.
“But you’re not sure?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
In addition to his unhelpful answers, another thing about him frustrated me. The other suspects had become increasingly horrified as I connected the dots of their transgressions.
Jake acted like none of the salacious details I had thrown at him were of much consequence. The annoyance that he did show appeared to stem from the fact that I was taking up his time rather than the actual content of my words.
“You don’t seem very bothered by the fact that your girlfriend was seeing another man the same time she was with you,” I said.
A smug look came to his face. “The only thing that matters to me is that I ended up winning out in the end.”
“Didn’t it make you angry when you found out Melissa was with Andrew, too?” I asked.
Jake had a better poker face than I had suspected. He shook his head, not bothered by my statement in the least.
“Why didn’t it make you angry?” I asked.
Jake’s response was drenched in cockiness. “Look at me. Then look at Andrew. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who Melissa was going to end up with.”
I switched gears. “Melissa’s isn’t all you ended up with. Now that Andrew is dead, you will have an easy road to buying his chocolate shop.”
A smile crept across his face. “I suppose I will.”
I scoffed. “You suppose? Who do you think you’re fooling? Andrew was the only one who put up resistance to selling the place. With your biggest obstacle now removed, nothing is going to stop you from buying the chocolate shop.”
“That’s just a lucky break.”
I was appalled. “Andrew was murdered. What kind of a man would refer to that as a lucky break?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but I didn’t give him the chance to reply.
“How about the kind of man who would be willing to commit murder just so he could buy a chocolate shop?” I asked.
“I would be offended if that wasn’t so ridiculous,” he replied.
“Is it? Your difficulties with him weren’t just professional, but also personal. Is it just a coincidence that you and Melissa are together? Or did you use her as a pawn to try to sway Andrew’s opinion about selling his place? Then when Melissa wasn’t able to convince Andrew to part ways with his company, you decided to use more extreme measures to get Andrew out of the picture.”
He glared long and hard at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re denying it, then?”
“Of course I am.”
“So you’re saying it’s just a total coincidence that you and Andrew were dating the same woman?”
He nodded.
I scoffed. “That’s one really big coincidence.”
A smarmy expression came to his face. “Look around. I am a wildly successful businessman. Why would I risk my entire empire to kill someone as insignificant as Andrew Stewart?”
“It is amazing the things people will do out of greed,” I replied.
He shook his pointer finger at me. “There are people far greedier than I am.”
I had a hard time believing that.
Jake continued. “Sure, I wanted him to sell. But other people I know needed him to sell.”
“By other people, you mean—”
“His family. Look at his wife and son. They stood to gain a lot of money from the sale.”
“It’s pretty convenient, pushing the blame on someone else.”
He didn’t flinch. “That’s where it belongs.”
I tried to send a retort his way, but he kept talking.
“Face it, you have nothing on me,” Jake said. “All that photo proves is that Melissa and I are romantically involved. It in no way points to me being a murderer. Now, I have answered all of your questions. It’s time that I got back to work.”
Jake turned around in a hurry and walked away. That put me in a terrible situation. I could have threatened once more to call the police, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. He had a swagger to him—an air of invincibility. Even though it didn’t sit well with me to watch it, I couldn’t think of any way to poke a hole in it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My discussion with Jake had not yielded the results that I was looking for, but all hope was not lost. Perhaps Melissa could fill in the gaps. There was only one way to find out. I headed back to the south side of town and pulled onto Melissa’s street.
After she had slammed the door in my face the last time I had spoken with her, I decided to take a different approach this time. Now that she recognized my car, I decided not to park in her driveway, but rather farther down the street. My plan was to approach her place on foot as quietly as possible, so I didn’t draw attention to myself. Perhaps then she wouldn’t hear me coming.
While my focus was squarely on how to get Melissa to talk to me, the universe apparently had other plans for me. After parking on the street and getting out of my car, I was confronted by a crazy surprise—this time coming from Melissa’s neighbor.
At first, the sight of a couple kissing in the neighbor’s driveway while pressing up against the side of a car didn’t seem like much more than a public display of affection. It was only when the couple pulled back from their kiss that my jaw nearly hit the ground.
The source of my shock could be summed up in two words—Ryan Davidson. The five-foot-nine twenty-eight-year-old still had the body of a lacrosse player even though he hadn’t played the sport in nearly a decade. His brown hair was trimmed at the exact same length that it had been the last time I had run into him.
That wasn’t all. Even though he was ten years older now, he looked pretty much the same right then as he did when my sister had gone missing all those years before. I didn’t know what he had done to keep time from having its way with him, but it had worked wonders.
Running into my sister’s old
boyfriend in such a random fashion like this meant that I was completely unprepared to tackle the emotional baggage that inevitably came with seeing him. More than with anyone else I encountered in my life, whenever I spent time around Ryan, I couldn’t help but think of my sister. Forget about the murder investigation. At that moment, my thoughts were immediately transported back to the time of my sister’s disappearance.
I couldn’t help it. That was always what happened whenever I ran into Ryan. While my mind drifted into the clouds, something distinctly different occurred in the driveway. Just as Ryan was saying good-bye to the woman he was with, I became the focal point of their attention.
Of course, it didn’t help that I was staring at Ryan like some crazy woman. I wanted to dash away before Ryan spotted me so I could avoid having to make conversation with him, but my legs didn’t get that memo. My feet felt like they were stuck in cement.
When the woman Ryan was with saw me staring so intensely at him, conversation was inevitable. Although it was a confrontation that I was worried about. The redhead folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at me like I was some crazy ex-girlfriend type who posed a threat to her.
The twenty-seven-year-old had a lean body and wore yoga pants with a matching black tank top. She had pulled her long hair back into a ponytail, which made the freckles on her round face really stand out.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
Her remark had technically been a question, but given her aggressive tone, she had clearly hoped to scare me off.
Until that point, Ryan had been so focused on the redhead that he hadn’t noticed me. That all changed when he glanced over at me in order to figure out what had caused the redhead to get so bent out of shape. When Ryan spotted me, a look came to his eyes like he had just seen a ghost. This had the makings of a seriously awkward conversation.
While I had trouble untying my tongue, the same could not be said for Ryan.
“Sabrina,” he said.
The redhead went on even higher alert. “You know that woman?” She took an accusatory tone. “How?”
The hostility was really ratcheting up in a hurry. I wanted to defuse the tension as quickly as possible and assure the redhead that I wasn’t a threat to her. “Ryan used to date my sister. He’s like a brother figure to me.”
That last line really got the redhead to ease off the throttle, which was a relief to me as there was already enough awkwardness going around without her sour attitude making an even bigger mess of things.
She replied with a far more congenial tone in her voice. “Oh. Ryan just hasn’t mentioned you before.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
I agreed. “It has been a while.” I held my hand out to the redhead. “I’m Sabrina.”
She responded in kind. “Jocelyn Watson.”
While I usually avoided platitudes, in this case, they were infinitely preferable than going deep by talking about my sister.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said.
That reply was enough to get a smile out of Jocelyn. From there, the conversation seemed to stall. A lot of that had to do with the fact that Ryan and I both retreated into our respective minds. Ryan had mentioned that it had been a while since we had run into each other, but I couldn’t pretend that us not crossing paths wasn’t by design on both of our parts, whether consciously or not.
The fact was that ever since my sister’s disappearance, the only conversation Ryan and I ever had was of the stilted variety. No matter how many years went by, the words never came easier between us. I felt like both of our memories were haunted by our respective feelings for my sister.
It was strange, though, because he was the only person I had those uncomfortable encounters with. I attributed that to one factor. I only knew him through Jessica. My sister was the only connection we had. That wasn’t the case when it came to the rest of my friends and family. Obviously, I had known my mother my entire life. My stepfather had been around since I was a child. Even people like Shannon and Kelly had been my friends for decades.
Before my sister’s disappearance, I had only known Ryan for a little over a year, and through quite a specific lens. During that time, all of my interactions with him were through my sister—or about her. When I thought of him or talked to him, it was always in the context of him being Jessica’s boyfriend. Over the years, that association in my mind hadn’t changed.
So to see Ryan with a new woman was just a strange thing to grapple with—even ten years after Jessica’s disappearance. It wasn’t that I didn’t expect him to one day date another woman. I was just unprepared when that day came along.
I wish I could tell you that I took the news in stride, but I would just be lying to you. Gobsmacked would be a more apt description of my reaction.
As much trouble as I was having coming to grips with this new reality, as a favor to Jocelyn, and for the sake of my own sanity, I made small talk to keep the conversation from devolving into nothing more than a series of uncomfortable silences.
“I haven’t really seen you around. How have you been?” I asked.
I had posed the question to Ryan, but Jocelyn was the one who jumped forward with an answer.
“Really good, actually. We’re engaged,” she said.
Jocelyn proudly held out her finger, prominently displaying a diamond ring. Typically, the sight of a diamond made me swoon. In this case, it stopped me cold. My eyes opened as wide as saucers.
I knew that the normal response to finding out news like that was heaping praise on the engaged couple, wishing them my best, and fawning over the bride-to-be’s ring. It was not a stretch to say that this was anything but a normal situation.
I was of two minds. Naturally, part of me was happy for Ryan. He was a good man, and he deserved happiness. That being said, the other part of me was completely despondent. It was irrational for me to think that Ryan could put his entire life on hold until Jessica was found—if she was ever found.
After all, it had been ten years since Jessica’s disappearance. It wasn’t as if only ten days had gone by and he was already engaged to another woman. Still, it was shocking for me to see Ryan dating, much less engaged to another woman. Yet there he was, a future groom-to-be. He had moved on.
The same could not be said for me.
My shocked reaction to his happy news just proved how much I was still living in the past. The emotional tug of war in my head continued as I tried to reconcile the fact that Ryan would soon be getting married to someone who wasn’t my sister.
I tried to keep my inner strife from spilling out. Not just because the conversation wasn’t awkward enough already, but because I didn’t want to spoil the happy couple’s moment.
I forced a smile. “Congratulations.”
I couldn’t tell if they could see through my façade to the raw emotions that were bubbling under the surface. If they did, they weren’t showing any signs of it. Jocelyn especially seemed to buy my comment as entirely authentic.
The future bride-to-be was aglow. “Thank you.”
Ryan, meanwhile, slowly approached the topic of my well-being. “How are you?”
“Not nearly as great as you are,” I replied.
He gave me a look of deep sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
In true deadpan fashion, a wry joke slipped out of my mouth. “It has just been a rough decade.”
Talk about a slip of the tongue. I hadn’t intended to be quite so candid with him. The last thing I wanted to do was delve into the various issues that were troubling me. I wanted to find some restraint—and fast.
“I hope things get better for you,” Ryan said.
I forced a smile. “So do I.”
I certainly wasn’t helping my own case. My goal was to make an exit from this conversation, not to prolong it.
Ryan made an attempt to reach out to me. “Anything I can do?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately not.”
“Well, let me know
.”
Ryan was saying all the right words, but there was a noticeable reluctance behind them. Almost as if he felt like he had to say them based on the situation rather than them coming from the bottom of his heart. Either way, I wasn’t about to take him up on his offer. When I needed comfort, I turned to my boyfriend, or my mother, or one of my friends.
To keep myself from getting too emotional, I turned the spotlight back on them. “I hope you have a great wedding.”
Jocelyn spoke up. “We will.”
I hated to admit it, but instead of Jocelyn’s unadulterated joy bringing a smile to my face, it only reminded me of the things my sister hadn’t ever gotten a chance to do, like something as spectacular as get married. And unless Jessica was found alive, wouldn’t ever get to do.
At that moment, the emotion of the situation became too much for me. Making an exit from the conversation was now imperative. It was a delicate line to walk, however. After all, I didn’t want to be rude. I just wanted to be out of there.
“I hate to cut things short, but there’s someone I need to talk to,” I said.
Ryan didn’t put up any fuss. “I should be going, too.”
Despite the overwhelming awkwardness of the conversation, I wanted to end things on a good note, mostly because I didn’t know when I would run into Ryan again.
“Good seeing you, though,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
My feet had an easier time moving forward than my emotions did. Physically, I no longer felt like I was standing in cement, but internally, my thoughts were frozen in time. If I was going to move forward, I needed to shake off my brain fog.
It was essential that I calmed my breathing first. That encounter with Ryan had left me really worked up. My heart was nearly pounding out of my chest.
My head wasn’t in any better shape. Various thoughts about my sister swirled through my mind. I had to find a way to shelve those so I could get back to solving this murder. If I was going to be an effective investigator, I needed to be focused on the task at hand.
Shortly after my sister’s disappearances, I began having panic attacks. While medication played a role in keeping them at bay, I also utilized a number of breathing exercises to bring my heart rate down. I put one of those exercises to work, exhaling slowly, picturing a serene landscape in my mind, and taking measured, rhythmic breaths.
Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 98
