“So did I,” Sadie said. She quickly updated Gayle on what had happened since last night—it sounded like a made-for-TV drama—and Gayle’s expression showed increasing outrage the more she heard.
“I’m taking down that sign,” Gayle said after someone laid on their horn for five full seconds while they drove by.
“No, the sign is fine,” Sadie said. Annoying, but fine. “It supports what we wanted to do, which is to appear as though we’re still going on with everything in hopes Jane makes a mistake.” Sadie explained that they were going to have the dinner tonight as planned, though with a security team in place. Which reminded her that she still needed to reserve the pavilion. She glanced at her watch and felt the urgency. It was after 4:00.
Gayle wrinkled her nose. “Farley Park?”
“They have that covered pavilion and the fire pits. They’re not the nicest park in town, but they’re the only one with both features.”
“And if the wind’s wrong, it smells like Rosen’s dairy farm,” Gayle added.
“Excellent point,” Shawn said with a nod. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t love the idea, and now I remember why. Remember that church picnic? I think three different kids puked up their cheeseburgers.”
“Thank you, Shawn,” Sadie said, giving him a look she hoped reminded him that he’d been taught manners at some point in his life and ought to use them.
“Why don’t you use my backyard?” Gayle said. “It’s only a few blocks from here.”
Sadie pictured the long narrow yard Gayle had behind her house. She had lilac trees along the fence and a covered back porch that had three picnic tables and a built-in grill. Before the divorce, her husband had renovated it, which gave Gayle particular satisfaction when he didn’t get the house in the settlement. There was also a swing set the younger kids would love. It was perfect and fully fenced, making it more secure than the park could ever be.
Sadie didn’t want to pursue the offer, it was so intrusive on Gayle, but she couldn’t ignore how well it would work. “Really?”
Gayle nodded. “We haven’t stopped in to see it yet, but Amber’s husband has been keeping up the yard for me. I know the kids have used it a few times for family dinners and stuff. I would love for you to use it.”
“I’ve got some tables I borrowed from the church around back. I bet Pete’s son-in-law could bring his truck over and pick them up.” Miles had offered the truck to help Pete move so Sadie hoped he was equally available for this task. “You’re sure it’s not an imposition?”
“Not one bit,” Gayle said, and Sadie knew she meant it. Gayle loved to help people, which was one of the reasons why Sadie loved her so much. She hugged her friend again. “Thank you so much,” she said mid-squeeze. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“I do it for the adulation alone,” Gayle said with a grin, then looked at the house. “You said you can’t stay here. Where are you going to stay tonight?”
“We were at the Carmichael last night so I think we’ll just take our things back there. I can’t imagine they’re booked on a Wednesday night. Breanna and Liam will need a room, too, I guess. And maybe Pete now that his house is a crime scene.” She made a mental note to call on that soon. There was so much to do.
“I’m sure the police will clear everything before we have to worry about staying overnight, don’t you think?” Shawn said. “I really hate their beds. They’re rock hard.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, frowning, “but even if they clear the house, I don’t think it’s safe for us to stay here. Knowing Jane’s been inside makes me nervous.”
“Of course you’ll stay with us,” Gayle said as though it were obvious. “I’ve got two guest rooms—one with a queen and one with a full—and a couch bed in the basement that I’m told is quite comfy.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Sadie said. She was dominating Gayle’s life as it was, using the backyard for the dinner. Gayle had just gotten into town, and it didn’t sound like she’d even seen her kids yet.
“Of course you could,” Gayle said, waving off Sadie’s objection. “I know you were excited to have your kids staying with you at the house, and you can all fit at my place. I won’t stand for anything else. Bill and I can help load up whatever things you need for the wedding right now, and we can store it at my place so you don’t have to worry about it one bit tomorrow.”
Sadie felt such relief to have someone she trusted making these decisions so easy for her. “Oh, Gayle, you have no idea how heaven-sent you are right now.”
“We better get going, though,” Shawn said, turning toward the front door. “Heaven-sent or not, we’ve got a lot left to do, and it’s hotter than Hades out here.”
Sadie had been so wrapped up in the moment that she hadn’t noted the temperature, but she suddenly felt the heat and was eager to follow Shawn across the lawn and up the front steps. Gayle and Dr. McKay followed, Gayle chattering on about how strange it was to be back in Garrison after over a year but that she already missed Kauai. Her skin stayed soft thanks to the humidity, and she could feel the dry air of the Rocky Mountains making up for lost time.
Sadie smiled at Gayle’s commentary while Shawn used his key to open the door. She heard it open and stepped in after him, only to walk into his back when he stopped short. She looked to the side of him to see what it was that had stopped him as the alarm started beeping to announce that a door had been opened.
The living room carpet was covered in birdseed and mangled pieces of tulle and ribbon from the favors she’d set beside the door last night. The monogrammed napkins she’d ordered weeks ago were also torn and scattered across the floor. Sadie’s chest hitched slightly, but as quickly as she felt the shock, she got angry. She was so tired of being manipulated by Jane’s games! Favors and napkins—what a silly thing to have wasted her time on. As though Sadie cared when she compared such antics to Shawn’s bank account or Pete’s pot plants. Knowing Jane had been in the house again bothered her more than anything. There had been no realtor’s open house today that would have given her access.
She pushed past Shawn in order to turn off the alarm, which was beeping faster as it counted down to the end of the thirty-second delay. But as soon as she stepped into the house, she forgot about the alarm. She forgot about everything.
Her wedding dress—the dress she was supposed to wear when she promised herself to Pete—had been a two-piece, ivory-colored skirt and jacket set. But it now consisted of at least a dozen pieces laid out on the floor directly inside the door, as though the different pieces were a puzzle that could just be snapped back together.
Sadie stared at the dress, heard Gayle gasp from behind her, and waited for the frustration to fill her up as it had been doing all day today. Of course Jane had found some way to access the house—despite the alarm system Sadie had bought specifically to keep her out. Of course she’d found Sadie’s dress and shredded it before making it into a display Sadie would see when she came home next. Of course she hadn’t moved her attention from Sadie entirely and had found one more way to dig in her claws and make Sadie hurt.
“Oh, Sadie,” Gayle said from behind her.
The beeping of the alarm was still speeding up, a warning that the time to disarm it was running out. Sadie decided to let it go. The alarm would alert the monitoring company, who would call her. She could verify that the alarm was valid, and the company would notify the police. Not having to make the call herself would keep her from having to deal with Malloy.
She surveyed the living room for another moment, then stepped around the dress and headed for the kitchen.
“Let me grab my phone charger,” she said, as though that was the only thing she had on her mind.
On the way to the kitchen, she noted her laptop on the floor by the computer desk, the screen cracked and several of the keys pried from the keyboard. She stared at it for a few seconds before continuing into the kitchen, the beeping from the alarm becoming more and more insistent. “Shawn, where’
s your laptop?”
“In my room,” he said, watching her carefully from the doorway.
It took everything she had to remain calm and not show the lurching she felt inside. She could break down later, when this was all over and she was alone.
“Go see if it’s okay.” She reached the part of the island where the bug had been planted and then got on her hands and knees so she could peer into the space. It was gone, but its absence didn’t make her feel any less vulnerable. She stood and continued into the kitchen where she unplugged the charger. For a moment, she considered retrieving the cookie dough from the fridge, but then realized she wasn’t going to be making cookies today.
Shawn reappeared, a bag in each hand, one of which was her overnight case. “My laptop’s fine,” he said, lifting his bag slightly as though indicating his computer was in it. “I grabbed your bag too. The rest of the house looks okay, but we probably don’t want to mess with anything, right?”
“Right,” Sadie said. Malloy might get mad at her for taking the bags—her house was a crime scene now—but she was going to take her things with her anyway. “I think that’s it,” she said, turning toward Gayle and Bill.
“You have everything you’ll need?” Gayle asked. The warning beep of the alarm changed to a sharp wail, and she startled, but Sadie didn’t react.
“That’s everything,” Sadie shouted above the sound of the alarm.
“Hair stuff? Makeup? Spanx?” Gayle reiterated, equally loud. The alarm cut off, leaving a heavy silence in its wake. Gayle paused, cleared her throat and then continued in a normal tone of voice. “You don’t want to have to come back.”
It was a good point, and Sadie nodded before heading to her room. She grabbed her secondary overnight bag and started throwing anything she might need before the wedding inside. Would they really go through with it? What would she wear?
She returned to the living room and attempted to ignore the sympathetic expressions of Shawn, Gayle, and Dr. McKay who stood in the threshold of the front door. Their sympathy weakened her resolve to be emotionless.
“Let’s go,” she said loudly, not pausing on her way to the front door, her feet crunching the birdseed as she made her exit. Sadie grabbed the doorknob on her way out and gave one more quick look at the dress and the mess and the symbol of just how much Jane hated her. She wouldn’t bother locking up, that way Malloy and his crew could get in without having to contact her. They wouldn’t be looking for the bug now, though. What was the point of locking the police out when Jane had full access?
How do I stop this? she asked herself as she followed Shawn to the car. How was it possible that after all they had done, Jane continued to stay one step ahead of them?
Chapter 19
The alarm company called Sadie’s phone before they’d pulled out of Peregrine Circle, at least three minutes after the alarm had gone off. She’d have to reconsider her continued patronage to this particular monitoring service when this was all over. Luckily, no one was in mortal danger so Sadie explained the situation, and the nice young man on the phone assured her they would alert the police on her behalf. After that call, Sadie texted Breanna with Gayle’s address instead of Farley Park and a promise to explain later.
Once they arrived at Gayle’s, Shawn took up a position in the dining room, which was missing a table and chairs, but there was a sideboard he could sit at with the only remaining barstool from the kitchen.
Gayle hadn’t been kidding when she said her kids had picked over her house. There were empty spaces all over the once meticulously decorated home. She kept looking toward certain walls or corners and frowning, but whether it was because she was mad at what was missing, worrying about Sadie’s situation, or trying to remember what had been there, Sadie didn’t know. And she didn’t ask.
The numbness she’d felt following the sight of her mangled dress hadn’t lifted yet. She was tired and overwhelmed and beginning to feel fatalistic, as though they would never get ahead of Jane, which made continuing to plan the barbeque less than enjoyable.
Bill said he would work on the backyard, and Gayle thanked him with such a sappy kiss that Sadie found herself jealous. They had such freedom, such ease and confidence in their relationship. How Sadie wanted that too. Right now she wondered if it could happen. It felt unobtainable, and when the numbness faded enough to let in the underlying anger and self-pity, she had to blink back tears. What would Jane do next?
“Three hundred and sixty-eight shares,” Shawn called from the dining room. Sadie was in the kitchen, trying to make a new to-do list. Her thoughts were so scattered and disjointed she needed to be reminded of what she had left to do.
Shawn continued. “Eleven hundred likes, and I’ve gotten a couple of text messages about her having gotten coffee at Café Café a few times over the last two weeks. Looks like changing the contact information on the Facebook page doesn’t change it for those updates that were already shared.”
“Excellent,” Sadie said, careful not to let her discouragement show in her tone of voice. “You’ve done a great job with that, Shawn. Thank you.”
“No prob,” he said. “I’m gonna get going on the profile. I already looked up one of those meds. The rabeprazole is for ulcers; maybe she’s so miserable she gives them to herself as well as to the people around her.” His keys tapped out a rhythm on his computer.
Sadie had hoped he’d make some quick progress and thanked him again for his overall wonderfulness before returning to her list, which was uncomfortably short. Basically, she needed to call all the barbeque guests about the change in plans. Why was she so hesitant to do it?
She tapped her pen on the paper and admitted she was avoiding the call to Pete’s kids. She knew Jared the best; she and Pete had watched his kids when he and his wife had traveled to Texas to find an apartment after he matched with his residency after medical school.
It was during that babysitting trip that Sadie had come to realize just how warped Jane’s attentions really were. Both Jared and his wife, Heather, had been so kind about the situation and seemed the least concerned about Pete and Sadie getting married.
But Pete’s oldest daughter, Brooke, had been the one planning this dinner and the most hesitant toward Sadie over the years. Not rude, necessarily, and they’d made a lot of progress in recent months, but Brooke was the one Sadie always felt driven to impress. His other daughter, Michelle, was more easygoing and quiet but the least likely to take control of a situation.
Sadie consulted her lists—one of which had the phone numbers of all family members—and took a breath before making the unavoidable call.
Brooke answered on the second ring and took things better than expected. She offered to call her side of the family about the situation and the updated address for the barbeque. She was worried about Pete, which put her and Sadie on more equal ground than usual. Sadie was worried about him, too.
“We’ll be to Gayle’s by 6:30, and I’ll have Jared and Miles pick up the tables and chairs from your garage,” Brooke said. “We should have plenty of time to get it all done.”
“That’s great,” Sadie said, grateful for Brooke’s willingness to take some of the burden off Sadie’s shoulders. “Thanks.”
They ended the call, and Sadie put a check mark next to every name on the list associated with Pete’s side, glad she wouldn’t have to call people she hadn’t met yet. Most of the people on Sadie’s side already knew what was going on, but she texted Jack and his daughters and left a voice mail for her cousin Sandra, who was coming up from Boulder. By the time she finished, she’d received text confirmations from Jack and his girls that they would see her at the barbeque. That informing the guests had been so easy was both good and bad: good that it didn’t increase complications, but bad because Sadie suddenly had nothing to do.
If her laptop hadn’t been destroyed, she could be helping Shawn with the profile. She very much wanted to be part of uncovering Jane’s history, but she couldn’t very well kick him off
his own computer. Especially since background checks were Shawn’s specialty. Instead, she began straightening the cluttered kitchen, likely the result of Gayle’s daughters rifling through Gayle’s cupboards and drawers in search of those items they wanted for themselves.
There was a sense of calmness about restoring order to the kitchen—vases in this cupboard, bowls nested inside one another. She hoped that organizing Gayle’s kitchen might organize her own thoughts, but she kept picturing her dress lying in pieces on the floor, then imagined Jane cutting it apart and envisioning Sadie’s reaction to the destruction. Her chest got hot with rising anger and increased trepidation. What was next? Having been unable to anticipate what Jane had done so far left Sadie increasingly anxious about what might come next. Were the people around her still at risk or had Jane had her fun? Sadie didn’t dare think that.
The sliding glass door opened, and Gayle stepped inside, making her way to the kitchen. “What if I made a big batch of lemon water for the dinner tonight? My contribution.”
“You’re giving us a venue,” Sadie said, lining up the glasses in the cupboard from tallest to shortest, front to back. “No one’s giving more than that. . . . But I do love your lemon water recipe.” Gayle’s father had been plagued with kidney stones for years until his physician gave him the recipe, which he claimed would cure the stones. Gayle’s mom had started making it for Sunday dinner every week, and the man never had another kidney stone in his life. That was science. Delicious science.
Gayle had always made lemon water for different functions she was a part of, especially in the summer, and knew the equations by heart. Sadie had it written out in her Little Black Recipe Book, which she’d left at home. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Sadie asked.
“Not at all,” Gayle said, reminding Sadie, again, of how much she truly liked to help people. She headed for the back door. “Let me just make sure the kids didn’t run off with my five-gallon drink cooler. Will you check on the state of my sugar and see if I have citric acid and lemon extract in my cupboard? They last forever, and I always keep them on hand, but we better make sure they haven’t been appropriated to one of my girls’ kitchens.”
Wedding Cake Page 15
