by Devney Perry
I told Helen I was taking Belle home and left her in charge of the restaurant while I grabbed my coat from the office. When I opened the back door, the cold air hit me hard in the face and it only took seconds for my nose and ears to sting. I had no idea how far away Belle lived, but just a block in this weather and she would have turned into an icicle.
“I like your truck,” Belle said as she climbed inside, running a hand along the leather seat.
“Thank you.” I turned the key and fired up the heat. “So where to?”
Belle gave me directions as we drove, and as we got closer and closer to a sketchy part of town, the knot in my stomach tightened. Had she been walking home in the evenings all this way? Through this neighborhood? We were miles from the restaurant. We were miles from her school.
By the time I pulled into her trailer park, I’d made a decision. Molly didn’t need to pick a stranger to receive a free car.
I was buying a vehicle for Belle.
“It’s the last one on the right.” She pointed down the dead-end road that led through the trailer park.
Belle’s arms were wrapped around her belly as she huddled against the door. She did not want me seeing where she lived. The only reason she was letting me drive her home was utter desperation.
Just as the last trailer down the road came into view, Belle’s arms shot out. “Stop!”
I slammed on the brakes, jolting us both forward. “What?” I turned to her for an explanation.
“Can you just park here for a sec?”
“Um . . . sure.” I pulled to the side of the road.
Her trailer was three down from where we were parked, close enough to see the siding was falling apart and two of the windows were covered with plywood. I was assessing the shiny black car out front—one that was much too expensive for the owner of that trailer—when a man stepped through Belle’s front door.
The guy was tall, kind of lanky, and had perfectly styled dark hair. If not for the cigarette in his mouth, I’d consider him good-looking. Was that Belle’s dad? If it was, why wouldn’t she want to go home before he left? “Do you not want your dad to see that I drove you home?”
She shook her head. “That’s not my dad. That’s his friend Tommy.”
The color drained from her face as Tommy got into the shiny black car. She didn’t have to say anything for me to know she was terrified of him. The air in the truck turned cold with fear.
As Tommy pulled away from her house, Belle covered her belly and ducked down low below the dashboard. Only when Tommy had raced past us and his engine could no longer be heard in the trailer park did she finally sit back up.
“What’s going on?”
She didn’t answer as she stroked her baby bump.
Something was wrong. This entire situation screamed wrong. The hairs at the back of my neck were prickling, telling me that things were far worse for Belle than I could have ever imagined.
And I suspected Tommy was the cause.
I reached across the bench and put my hand on her shoulder. “Who is that Tommy guy?”
She stroked her belly without an answer.
“Um . . . do you have a boyfriend?”
She shook her head.
Damn it. That meant I couldn’t skip my next question. “Belle, whose baby is that?”
She kept her eyes down and I was sure she wouldn’t answer, but then she looked up and squared her shoulders. “Mine. This baby is mine.”
That baby was Tommy’s. She didn’t have to say his name for me to guess the truth. And given her obvious fear, I was also guessing that her child hadn’t been conceived with her consent.
“If something is happening with that guy, if he’s hurting you, then we need to go to the police.”
She shook her head. “No. It will only make things worse.”
“Belle, you—”
“No!” She cut me off. “No.”
I sighed. “What about your parents?” Did they even know she was pregnant?
“I just live with my dad and he’s gone a lot. He’s kind of out of it.”
I ran a hand over my forehead. What was I going to do? I’d just met this girl, but I couldn’t live with myself if I did nothing to help. If she was being abused by one of her dad’s friends, she couldn’t continue to live in that trailer. She certainly couldn’t bring a baby into that trailer.
“Is there anyone else you could stay with?” Anyone with health insurance so she could see a damn doctor?
She shrugged. “My grandma lives in Oregon, and I could probably live with her but I don’t have any money. My dad, um . . . he usually needs it.”
If money was all she needed, I’d gladly pay her way to Oregon. She could go by plane. Or by bus.
By car.
A plan rushed through my mind as I put the truck back in drive and steered us the rest of the way to her house.
When I parked and shut off the ignition, her hand shot out again. “You don’t need to come inside!”
I took her hand in mine and squeezed. “It will go faster if we both pack your stuff.”
“What?”
“Come on.” I opened my door. “You’re going to Oregon.”
An hour after I’d left the restaurant with Belle, we were back.
Belle’s meager belongings were in Jamie’s truck. She’d called her grandmother to announce her pregnancy and confirm she was still welcome in Oregon—which she was. And she’d left a note for her dad, something she didn’t expect he’d see—or care about—until she was long gone.
So while Belle was inside the restaurant using the bathroom before her journey, I was sitting in the driver’s seat of Jamie’s truck, staring at the picture I’d pulled out of the visor.
“It’s not exactly buying a stranger a car, but I think you’d be okay with it.” I touched his face. “You’ve watched over me for long enough. Look out for her instead, okay?”
His frozen smile was all the answer I needed.
I pressed a kiss to my fingers, then to the photo, before tucking it back into the visor so it could be with Belle as she drove to Oregon. Leaving the truck running, I grabbed my purse and went inside. Then I walked straight to the office safe, where I pulled out all of the cash Molly had planned to take to the bank tomorrow.
“All set?” I asked Belle as she came back to the kitchen. She had the takeout bag Helen had made her looped over one wrist.
“Are you sure I can borrow your truck? I don’t know how I’ll get it back here.”
I smiled. “You aren’t borrowing that truck, Belle. It’s yours.”
“No, I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. That was my husband’s truck, and he’d want you to have it. No arguments. Just promise me to drive safe. Find somewhere to stay tonight before you get too tired.” I handed over the wad of cash. “Here. For your trip.”
She stared at it with wide eyes, probably never having seen that much money before.
“When you get settled, you’ll need to send me your new address so I can transfer the title of the truck to your name. Okay?”
She was still staring at the money.
“Belle? I’ll need your address, okay?”
Her eyes snapped to mine and she nodded wildly. “Okay.”
“Good. Now you’d better get on the road if you want to make it to Missoula before it gets too late.”
Tears flooded her eyes as she took the money and tucked it into her coat pocket. “Thank you.”
I stepped up and wiped a tear from her face. A face so young, but so brave. “Keep in touch.”
She fell into my arms, hugging me so tight with her thin arms I could barely breathe.
“Drive safe.”
She nodded against my chest, then let me go, waving as she disappeared through the back door.
Keep her safe, Jamie. Get her to Oregon.
I wasn’t sure if sending a sixteen-year-old on a twelve-hour road trip was smart, but it was better than the alternative. And I had faith that on
ce Belle got to Oregon, her grandmother would see her through.
Until then, she had Jamie.
I ignored the burn in my throat and took a settling breath just as Helen came bursting through the kitchen door. I spun around to see her arms full of dirty dishes and stress written all over her face.
“I’ve got the counter. You take a quick break.” I came unstuck, smiling as she sighed and went back to work.
Not long after the dinner rush subsided, Cole came into the restaurant with a manila folder under his arm. He came behind the counter for a kiss, then set the folder on the counter.
“What’s this?” I flipped open the file. A school picture of Belle was the only thing inside.
“This is the cashier’s daughter.”
I stared with wide, unblinking eyes at the picture. At the bottom, written with a Sharpie, was her full name. Tuesday Belle Hastings.
Tuesday.
Belle had given me her middle name instead of her first. Had she told me Tuesday, I would have remembered her name from the newspaper articles about the murder. I’d memorized those articles—the ones printed alongside Jamie and Kennedy’s obituaries.
“What are the chances?” I muttered. Coincidences. They really were our thing.
“What?” Cole asked.
I shut the folder. “You’re never going to believe what I did this afternoon.”
Chapter Twenty
28th Birthday: Go crowd surfing
COLE
“You’re shitting me,” Matt said, sitting on the edge of my desk.
“How fucking crazy is that?”
Matt shook his head, letting everything I told him sink in. “Holy fucking shit.”
Holy fucking shit. Those had been my exact words to Poppy last night.
I was sick over what had happened to Tuesday Hastings. Her dad, Aaron Denison, was a meth junkie. His name was on the drug task force’s watch list, but since he wasn’t a major player, we hadn’t brought him in. Instead, we’d been spending our time going after dealers like Aaron’s friend, Tommy Bennett.
Tommy was one sick fucker. His specialty was getting young kids hooked so they’d help him sell drugs to their naïve friends, but unfortunately, we’d been having hell proving it. We hadn’t even been able to bring him in for using—as far as we knew, he never touched the products he was selling. He got off on selling drugs to ruin the lives of others.
I cringed, thinking about the kind of pleasure he’d taken from Tuesday. And here Poppy had inadvertently gifted Jamie’s truck to Tuesday. Kennedy Hastings’s daughter. “We’ve got to get guys like Aaron and Tommy off the streets.”
Matt nodded. “Too bad the daughter wouldn’t tell Poppy if Tommy had assaulted her.”
“I know,” I sighed, “but it’s given me a whole lot of motivation to bust his ass. We might not get him on sexual assault, but distribution to minors will set him up with a nice, long prison sentence.”
And as soon as we put Tommy away, I was going after Aaron.
I hadn’t kept tabs on Tuesday Hastings—or Poppy—these last five years. But when Poppy had asked me to check on her, I’d gotten curious too. Over the last month, I’d researched Tuesday, starting with her school. Things had looked promising at first. She was a straight-A student. She had perfect attendance and her teachers seemed to love her. Everything pointed to a smart, well-adjusted teenager.
Things had looked so good I hadn’t rushed to investigate her home life.
Now, I regretted waiting so long.
Just yesterday, I’d learned that Tuesday had been placed with Aaron after Kennedy had been murdered. Kennedy had never married Aaron and had held sole custody of Tuesday—not even giving her daughter her father’s last name. But after the murders, Aaron had been next in line for custody. At the time, he hadn’t been a known drug abuser.
Either he’d hidden it well back then, or he’d gotten hooked on drugs while his daughter had shared his home.
“The timing of all this is the really crazy part,” I told Matt. “I called social services yesterday when I saw Aaron’s name pop up as Tuesday’s guardian. I told them that he was a known meth addict and it would be worth making a visit.”
Matt chuckled. “But Poppy came to the rescue first.”
“That she did.”
Tuesday was Oregon-bound to live with Kennedy’s mother, who would get the custody of her granddaughter she probably should have had all along. And I had come to the station this morning with a fire in my veins to put Tommy Bennett and Aaron Denison in jail so they could never hurt her again.
“Tommy is getting bumped up as target number one for the task force.”
Matt nodded. “Agreed. He’s got to go down.”
“We’ll make a plan when we meet with the rest of the team later.” With a nod toward his desk, I changed subjects to the murder case. “The DMV just got back to me with registration info from that new set of plates we sent in. I put the list of names on your desk.”
“Nice.” Matt stood and went to his desk, opening up the folder I’d set there earlier. “God, I hope we find a lead here.”
“Me too.”
The months I’d spent working on the liquor store murder had worn me down. I hated that all we had to go on were old videos. I hated that, after all this time, we’d made so little progress. But mostly, I hated that I didn’t have anything to give Poppy. I couldn’t tell her we’d found Jamie’s killer, but I also couldn’t tell her that the case was cold.
The stagnancy—the helplessness—was gnawing at me.
But at least it wouldn’t last forever. Matt and I were on our last-ditch effort to track down a lead.
“This list,” Matt tapped the folder, “if it doesn’t have anything, I don’t know what else we’ll do.”
Nothing. If that list didn’t turn up a lead, we were stuck. “I sure as fuck hope we find something, but I’m not holding my breath. If the women you questioned last month didn’t give us a lead, I don’t think we’ll find anything here either.”
“I don’t want to admit defeat, but you’re probably right.”
Matt had spent last month interviewing potential suspects—six women in total. Each had been caught on camera leaving the grocery store complex the day of the murder. Each had dark hair and had worn jeans that day. Each had driven out of the parking lot alone. Six women, and all of them had been cleared.
Three of them had had alibis. Thanks to their phones, they’d been ruled out because of texts or phone calls made during the time of the murder. One woman’s teenager had been with her at the grocery store, but since they’d arrived and left in separate vehicles, I hadn’t paired them together on camera. And two other women had been at the register in the grocery store, checking out at the time shots had been fired. Their credit card statements had proved their innocence.
Confirming alibis—a miserably slow process—had been necessary for the investigation, but after the initial interviews, Matt and I had known that none of the six women we’d brought in were viable suspects. None of them had motive. Each of them were, and had been five years ago, plenty well-off financially. They’d had no reason to rob a liquor store for less than a couple hundred dollars.
Which meant going back to the video footage, spending our early mornings combing through it all over again. And this time, we’d pulled every woman on tape, period. We’d identified seventeen additional vehicles driven out of the complex with females inside. Next week, Matt would start bringing them in for questioning, and with any luck, we’d find a lead before Christmas.
Otherwise, the case was dead. Matt and I would have done everything we could.
“Have you told Poppy anything?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to tell her anything until I know for sure.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. We were grasping at straws to begin with. I think she knows the likelihood of us finding anything is small. I just . . . I don’t want to let her down.”
“I don’t envy your position on this one.”
I didn’t either, but if all I had to tell her was bad news, I wanted it to come from me.
And I wasn’t giving up yet.
“Big day today. How are you feeling?” Jimmy asked Poppy.
She leaned into my side as we stood behind the counter at the restaurant. “Good. I’m just hoping I don’t freeze at the game.”
Jimmy took a sip of his coffee, his eyes softening when he looked back at Poppy. “I’m proud of you for seeing this through.”
“Thanks, Jimmy.”
My arm around her shoulders pinned her close. “So am I.”
Today, Poppy was doing the last thing on Jamie’s birthday list.
I’d been prepared these last couple of weeks, watching her closely as I’d braced for a breakdown. But I should have known better. My Poppy was handling this with pure grace.
And I was simply glad that today was it. We were done. No more lists. No more looking backward. Poppy and I were free to look ahead, to whatever came our way.
“Let me get a few last things done in the kitchen and then we can go.” She patted my stomach and I released my hold.
“Take your time. We don’t need to leave for another hour.”
“Do you guys want refills?” she asked Jimmy and Randall, getting two nods.
“I’ll get it.” I grabbed the coffee pot from behind me. “You head on back.”
“Thanks.” She smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.
I refilled Jimmy’s and Randall’s mugs before topping off my own. Then I made my way down the counter, chatting with customers as I offered refills. The restaurant was busy this morning. Both Molly and Helen were rushing around, clearing tables and delivering food. Poppy had been here since four a.m., making sure there was plenty of food for the weekend.
“It sure is crowded in here,” Randall grumbled as I came back to visit with them.
“Good old Cat/Griz weekend. It’s always a cluster.”
The Montana State University Bobcats were taking on the University of Montana Grizzlies in the annual Cat/Griz football game. The rivalry—one that had become famous over the years—drew a huge crowd to Bozeman when the Cats hosted the game every other year.
