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 David, 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.
Phew.
That was a close one. It took a few moments, but I was finally able to get my emotions under control. With my pulse no longer racing, I stared out into the distance to clear my head. When I had restored my focus, I approached Melissa’s townhome.
Before I knocked on the door, I positioned myself on the edge of her doorstep so she wouldn’t be able to see me through her living room window. In order to discover my identity, she would need to actually open the door. If she didn’t answer my initial knock, I had a plan to disguise my voice by impersonating someone with a deeper, raspier delivery. I had also concocted a ruse that I was willing to enact if necessary.
Finally, I was ready to knock. As expected, Melissa didn’t answer. I knew she was home. Her car was in the driveway. It was time to put my plan into action. I knocked again, this time using the deeper voice.
“Ms. Wilcox, I have a flower delivery here for you,” I said.
A few moments later, I heard footsteps coming from inside her hous
e. This was it. I knew that I only had a small window to work with, so I had to be prepared. In order to maximize my time, I pulled my phone out and loaded the photo of Melissa and Jake kissing.
I put my foot out in anticipation that the minute Melissa spotted me, she would try to close the door in my face. My instincts had been spot on. Melissa opened the door, saw that I wasn’t really from a flower delivery service, and tried to put an end to the conversation before it even had a chance to begin.
For the moment, my foot was enough to stop her door from slamming. I was less successful at keeping her from going nuclear. She was so upset with me that veins were nearly popping in her forehead.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here again!” Melissa barked.
“I have a very good reason for coming back—” I started to say.
She interrupted me. “I don’t care.”
“I have a feeling you’re going to care about this.”
I held up my phone.
Melissa saw the photo of her and Jake kissing, which only made her angrier. “Were you spying on us?”
Really? That was the part she was concerned about? Not what the actual photo showed, but how I had gotten the image.
I tried to set her priorities straight. “It doesn’t matter how I got the picture.”
“It does to me.”
Fine. She wanted to hammer this point. I would give her a dose of her own medicine. “If you were trying to keep your relationship a secret, you did a very poor job. You two were right out in the open, in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Anyone could have seen you. I just happen to be the one to know the significance of your relationship.”
Her outrage continued. “So you were spying. How dare you?”
I tried to nudge the conversation back toward the core of the issue.
“That is the least of your worries,” I said.
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
I ignored her demand. “You are romantically linked to someone who desperately wanted to buy Andrew’s business. A man who stood to benefit a great deal from Andrew’s death. To me, that’s the only subject that matters.”
Melissa narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you trying to get me to throw Jake under the bus?”
“I’m trying to figure out the truth. That’s all.”
She snarled. “You sure have an interesting way of going about it.”
“I’m asking you simple questions. You are the one who is making things complicated.”
“Because I don’t like people being up in my business.”
“Just answer me, and I’ll be out of your hair in no time,” I said.
“How about you just get out of my hair right now?” she replied.
I shook my head in disbelief. “There you go, making things difficult again.” It was a good thing I had a backup plan. “You keep wanting me to leave. Fine. How would you like to explain all this to the police detective who is investigating Andrew’s murder? If he heard you and Jake were together, I’ll tell you what he’d think. That you two might have plotted to kill Andrew together.”
She was vehement in her denial. “No. That’s not true.”
I held my hands up. “You have no way of proving that.”
Desperation came to her voice. “You’re really pushing it.”
“Am I? Did Andrew know that you and Jake were romantically involved?”
“No—” she started saying.
She stopped talking when she saw how intensely I was staring her down.
“It’s funny,” I replied. “I asked Jake that same question. I can’t say that his answer was the same as yours.”
She hemmed and hawed but finally replied. “Fine. Andrew knew about Jake and me.”
“I’m sure Andrew wasn’t happy to find out that you were sleeping with him and Jake at the same time.”
“None of this proves anything.”
“One of your sexual partners was an angry business owner,” I said. “The other was a greedy investor determined to force the other to sell his business. And there you were, right in the middle of the action. You have to admit, this doesn’t look good for you.”
“It doesn’t matter how it looks. I didn’t do anything.”
“Did Jake try to get you to convince Andrew to sell the chocolate shop?”
“I don’t like where you are going with this,” she said.
“Your efforts to convince Andrew clearly didn’t go well. Did that force you to go to extreme measures?” I asked.
“You’re crazy.”
“You are awfully defensive. If my allegations are really so nuts, they shouldn’t bother you. So why are you getting so worked up?” I asked.
As I stared into her eyes, she had the look of an animal that had been backed into a corner. Her fight-or-flight instinct was enabled.
Unfortunately, she chose flight. “We’re done here.”
I pulled out the only card I had up my sleeve. “I’ll tell the police everything I know.”
“Go ahead. Tell them. I didn’t kill Andrew.”
With her adrenaline pumping, she put all of her weight on the door. She managed to muster more strength than I anticipated. With the door closing on my foot, I suddenly had no choice. If I didn’t move my foot, she’d crush it with the door. Reluctantly, I pulled my foot back. That was when, for the second time that afternoon, I had a door slammed in my face.
Chapter Thirty
If you were wondering, having a door slammed in my face didn’t get any easier to shrug off the second time around. My nerves were rattled as I walked back to my car. It was rare that my emotions were so raw. Part of that was just that my frustrations had hit peak levels. The case had done such a number on my patience that this latest door slamming was just the fitting end to a maddening day. In addition, I didn’t know where to go from there. I had run out of suspects, chased down all the leads I had, and was now staring down a huge question mark.
Before I was able to spend too much time inside my head, I spotted a police car parked behind my sedan on the street. I knew the odds were low of me being able to go through this entire investigation without the police catching wind of my activities, but the timing of this encounter with the boys in blue was especially poor.
There was no doubt that my luck had run out. What other explanation was there for me to be faced with an inevitable confrontation just as I was feeling wildly agitated and in no mood to make conversation? I needed to put on a good face. After all, there was no scenario where this wouldn’t be bad news for me. Even if it was David behind the wheel of the police car, finding out that I had been meddling in his investigation would not fill him with joy.
If another officer of the law was sitting in the driver’s seat, I would find myself in even deeper trouble. Faced with two unappealing possibilities, I should have been relieved when I spotted David getting out of his car to approach me. That comfort was quickly replaced by a general sense of uneasiness when I saw the disappointed look on David’s face.
I was not looking forward to this. If I could think of a way to wriggle my way out of it, I would have slunk away. Unfortunately, that was not an option. Instead, anticipating that this would be a rocky discussion, I prepared myself for the worst.
Since I was already back on my heels, I decided to let David break the ice to see what kind of a tone he struck with me. As I expected, he was stern with me, but he didn’t blow up.
He made it clear that my investigative activities had not gone unnoticed. “Looks like you’ve been keeping busy.”
David was a master of the deadpan understatement. Even so, as I peered into his eyes, I could tell that he wanted to give me a serious talking to. Were I not his girlfriend, he would have probably given me an earful. That said, even though we were a couple, it wasn’t like he was going to let my actions slide.
David just realized that there was a fine line that needed to be walked. If he was too harsh with me, his words would bleed over to the rest of our relations
hip. Striking the right tone was key—both for him and for me.
I made an attempt to charm him with a smile and a positive attitude. “David. It’s so good to see you. What are you doing on this side of town?”
“Don’t try to butter me up.”
David wasn’t seeing the entire picture. Obviously, I wanted him to warm up to me, but there was more at play than that. Not only was it good to see him, but I wasn’t clear why, of all the places he could approach me, he had decided to do so outside of Melissa’s home.
“What brings you to Melissa Wilcox’s street? Do you have a new lead on her?” I asked.
David didn’t even address my question. He was determined to dictate the topic of the conversation.
David let out a sigh that was filled with frustration. “Let’s not make this any harder than it already is. Sabrina, I know what you have been up to.”
So much for smoothing over the rough edges. It looked like things were about to get very prickly.
“I can explain—”
David interrupted me. “What were you thinking?”
“Andrew’s killer is still out there—”
“Exactly,” David replied. “There’s a killer on the loose, and you’ve been out there snooping around on your own. Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in today?”
I became defensive. “I have been very careful.”
“We are dealing with a murderer here. They have already killed one person. Who is to say that they won’t strike again?”
I tried to interject.
David did not let me get a word in. “If the guilty party did kill again, who would make a more fitting victim than someone who has been sticking their head where it doesn’t belong?”
“I knew the risks going into this.”
David looked more baffled than ever. “Yet you still decided to play amateur sleuth?”
“Andrew’s killer needs to be found. I couldn’t bear if this case went unsolved,” I said.
Chocolate With A Side Of Murder Page 15
