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10

MACK

At 4:00 a.m. I trudge into the bakery to begin making the cinnamon roll dough and get the coffee started. I haven’t slept and my mind is still reeling, but I go through my morning ritual: start the fire in the fireplace, turn on the lamps on the end tables, plug in the fairy lights, then once I quickly get the first batch of dough proofing and a few muffin batches in the oven, I pour myself a cup of coffee and sit by the fire for a little while, usually to relax before the busy day ahead. Today, just to pull my shit together so I can function even a little bit.

I almost told Shelby yesterday about Leo—the account, its activity—but then she was telling me about someone trying to kill the residents or her, and the note from Otis, and I just couldn’t. Deep down I know she thinks Leo is behind this. I just can’t believe that. I’m not ready to let myself believe that until every other possibility is exhausted.

The bank was less than helpful. Of course they wouldn’t give me any information, even though I had all the account and routing information. My name is not Leonard, and they don’t give out information without a secret PIN, so what I can tell from the online information is that money is being transferred to a prepaid debit card so it’s not traceable. There is no withdrawal location, no ATM, no point-of-sale data. Just another smart move by Leo to hide the money we did have left…which he hid in a secret account that he can pull from anonymously and I can’t access. I hate him.

I think of Rowan and her college money, and the stability of our house, and her future… I wonder if I should keep all this from her forever or tell her one day who he really was, and it makes me sick, and I hate him even more.

This is usually the time of the day where I handle the mess of my life the best. The smell of cinnamon muffins in the ovens, coffee brewing, the dark stillness outside and the Bublé song playing softly as I sit in the moody light by the fire and have a few moments to myself. It’s been healing, opening the bakery…even though I have no choice because he left me broke. I try to put that out of my mind most mornings. But now I want to scream and tear my fucking hair out at the thought of it all—what he’s done to me.

I wish I didn’t know. I think I mean that. Because the thought that he owed some very scary person money and that got him killed had really seemed like the most logical explanation…until now. Now I have no idea what the hell that absolute son of a bitch has done. One day I mourn for him and what might have happened because he got himself too deep into some dark shit and I forgive him, and the next, I find out he’s alive and still stealing from people and hiding.

The tap on the locked front door startles me, and I jump to my feet. I see through the glass that it’s Billy Curran, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them as he visibly shivers in his inappropriately light coat. What in the world? I go and unlock the door to let him in.

“Hi,” he says. “I know you don’t open until five, but I saw the lights on…”

“’Course, come on in,” I say, and he follows me to the counter where I pour him a cup of coffee. “Are you just closing up?” I ask.

“Yeah. We’re in different worlds, you and I. Not sure if I’m cut out for the 3:00 a.m. bar closing anymore. Last time I did it I didn’t have back pain…or need readers to see the checks.” He follows me back to the couch and sits in the leather chair nearest the fire, and it’s nice, I realize. Having him here. He has a calming presence, and even though I’ve known him since middle school, I don’t really know him at all, but the familiarity is still so comforting.

“Hmmm” is all I reply, smiling at his remark.

“It’s so much more peaceful on this side of the street,” he says, looking around at the serene ambience. Yeah, sure , I think.

“I had a crazy thought that I know is totally out of the blue,” he says, a little shyly.

“Okay?” I say, glancing toward the kitchen when I hear my oven timer go off.

“Do you wanna maybe get dinner with me later?”

“Dinner?”

“Yes?”

“Tonight?” I add, because I don’t know what else to say.

“Uh. I thought maybe, yes.”

“Why?” I ask, stupidly.

“Well…” he stutters and I know I’ve made him uncomfortable, but I’m just so taken aback by the invitation.

“I should make it up to you—my dad giving you a heart attack, the fact that he had this footage all this time. Maybe just a mental break from all that’s been going on.”

“Oh. A mental break for you?” I say, not knowing why I am unable to just face what he’s asking.

“Well, you’re the one who came to the bar in slippers, so I was thinking you,” he says, and I burst out laughing, to my surprise.

“Right,” I say.

“I mean, God, no pressure. I just thought it might be nice to catch up. We were friends once, and I guess—I heard you’ve been through a lot…not that you have to talk about any of it,” he says. I think about this for a moment.

“Everyone in town would talk,” I say, and although that seems petty, they would…and I can’t deal with anything else right now.

“We’ll go to Brainerd. They have a new Thai place,” he says, and I can tell he’s sensing my rejection.

“Okay,” I agree, surprising even myself. I haven’t slept, he is just coming off an all-night shift, we haven’t spoken more than ten words to each other since college, and I’m still mourning being abandoned by my husband, but hell, somehow it is suddenly the only thing I want right now. To be in another town, not thinking about my problems, sipping red wine, and eating pad thai with a handsome, long-lost friend. Hell yes to this.

“I can pick you up at six-ish if that’s okay,”

“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Yes.” He offers to pay for the coffee, but I decline and he puts money on the counter anyway and then disappears back out into the icy morning that still feels like the dead of night.

I don’t have time to think about what I just did or what it means, because I’ll burn the first batch of bakes if I don’t run to the kitchen immediately, so I try to put it aside for the day.

When I arrive home in the late afternoon, the snow is blowing again and it’s already getting dark. I practically tiptoe down the drive to gather the mail from the mailbox with my arms out on either side for balance so I don’t slip on the ice and end up in a snowbank. When I make my way back inside the pups yelp and turn themselves in circles. They run outside for the seconds it takes them to pee and run back in. God, why do I live here? Why do I stay in this miserable frozen tundra anymore?

I toss the mail on the counter and light the fire so Linus and Nugget can curl up and chew on their bully sticks. Then my mind turns to what I will wear tonight. God. I’m immediately embarrassed by my own thoughts. It’s not a date. I’m married, first of all, it’s just an old friend, second of all, and maybe most importantly, it doesn’t matter what I wear, because it will be covered up by a parka in this bullshit weather anyway.

I make a cup of tea and turn on the television—a home renovation show plays, and I passively wonder what these young couples buying seven-figure houses do for a living. Then I grab the stack of mail and flop on the couch. I open a depressing bank statement—our joint account of twenty years, and the low number still shocks me. The private account I discovered isn’t impressive either, it’s under ten thousand dollars. I wonder how much it was over a year ago when he disappeared, and if he’s just been living off of our stolen savings, gambling it all away. And now it’s getting low, and what does that mean? I guess he keeps trying to win a jackpot until he ends up on the street, sleeping behind a dumpster somewhere. Or maybe he tries to come back at that point? I mean, who could he go to after all this? He’s burned every bridge.

Then I open the phone bill and glance at it. What I see steals my breath. I gasp and the dogs lift their heads and look at me before laying them back down. I apologize to them for some reason, and then stare at the bill again. How is this possible?

Leo’s phone shows activity. After all this time. How? I kept the line because of course I would, he was missing and so was his phone, and just in case anyone ever found it or something, I don’t know. I had to keep it, and since the night he vanished, it has been off—no way of tracing it, no activity.

He’s fucking with me. He has to know I would see this. Was he banking on the fact that the phone bill is on auto draft and I probably don’t look at it much? No. No, because he still has money. He doesn’t need to use this line. Between bad business deals, loans, and gambling, he lost almost half a million dollars in our personal accounts over the last few years while lying to me, moving money around, pretending things were okay, hiding it all. He left with money, and there is still some money there, and any sane person trying to stay gone and undetectable would be using a disposable phone. He turned this one back on for a reason.

But what earthly reason could there possibly be? He hasn’t hurt me and betrayed me enough, so now we’re playing games? I’m so enraged that my hands shake and red blotches dot my chest. I do think about this being someone else. Of course. Some teenager found his phone and is using it, but don’t they make that very difficult these days? The phone is locked and dead and you can’t just get it turned on for a new user. Or maybe it’s all easier than I think. But that bank account proves he’s withdrawing money.

Or maybe…he was killed and the person who did it has his ID and all the information they need to be making withdrawals from his account. Oh my God. I was so angry I hadn’t thought of that when I saw the bank account. But why, then, would they be stupid enough to use his phone? None of this makes sense!

I call the phone company, and I can already tell from the way the woman answers the phone that she’s not going to be helpful. “Uh, yes. Hi. I… We have three lines on this account. I wonder if you can look up something for me. My line, my daughter’s, and my husbands,” I say and then give each phone number. “My husband is the one ending in 7862 and it’s been shut off for over a year. We locked it, so it couldn’t get stolen…used by anyone else, but kept active. So, I see that it has been reactivated as of a couple weeks ago. Twelve days, it looks like, to be exact. Uhhh. Do you know how that happened?” I say, holding my breath, hoping she has some miracle answer that breaks a hole in this mystery.

“Well, someone would have to call in and use your PIN and reactivate.”

“Right,” I say. “So someone called you and you turned it back on. So they had to have the PIN?”

“Well, of course they didn’t call me directly, but whoever helped them would just ask some basic security questions and yeah, turn it back on.”

“Okay, so I’m correct that this phone was totally off until twelve days ago, right?” I ask, and there is a pause because I probably sound desperate and I’m asking odd questions about my own phone line, but it is mine and she went through security measures with me, so she sort of has to answer.

“That’s correct. Anything else I can assist you with?”

“Yes, who called in? This is the phone of a missing person and I need to know who called and reactivated it!” I say, practically yelling, even though it’s not her fault she’s useless.

“I don’t know. I would assume you. Someone with your PIN and…”

“It obviously wasn’t me. Was it a woman? Are you saying a woman called and turned the phone back on?” I say, because somewhere in the back of my mind that damn scarf in the video that looks feminine is starting to niggle at me and I know she doesn’t know, but my frustration is mounting.

“I couldn’t know that,” she says.

“Don’t you record calls…for training purposes or something?” I ask, and I hear her take a patient breath, and my breath hitches.

“We MAY record calls, but that’s not my department and I don’t know that they can track a call if you don’t know who called or when they called. I can transfer you to my supervisor,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, and I talk to the supervisor who is equally as use less and tells me I can file a report and they will investigate if I think my information was stolen or is being misused. I hang up.

I decide I should call Detective Riley. But then I hesitate. I mean, I really sit on it for a moment, because I should have called him when I found the bank files yesterday. I should tell him about the note Otis wrote. And when the cops were out at the Oleander’s taking reports about the vandalizing of the HVAC, Shelby should have told them about the note on her car and the note from Otis, and how this is all surfacing right about the time the news is finally covering the first clue about that fateful night, but we didn’t for a reason.

If you listen to the folks around town, it’s because Riley is Shelby’s ex-fiancé and he hates Clay, and there have been petty disagreements over the years. Some would say Shelby has been overheard calling him a sexist good ole boy and an incompetent small-town detective who got his credentials from a Cracker Jack box. Oh, the talk. Apparently, Riley is still in love with Shelby, which is why his wife, Belinda, and her brother opened a bait shop over on Rice Lake to put Clay out of business, and it’s also why Clay got drunk off Christmas punch one year at the annual holiday parade and threw up on Riley’s car. But this is what happens when you have known everyone in your life since elementary school. It gets messy. But I don’t believe he has it out for her.

I think the simple fact is, nobody blames the force for having zero clues about what happened to Shelby that night because they believe Leo went mad and he is responsible, because nothing else makes sense. They did their investigation. The coincidence is too much, so he must be involved. He appears to have left of his own accord, and his evidence of financial ruin and how he hid it from me gives reason for him to run from his crumbling life.

And after all this time, there’s also the scribbling from Otis, a very ill man, about someone trying to kill him. Sure. Give that to Riley and see how seriously he takes it. Let’s put all our force back into finding Leo Connolly because Otis Thorgard, practically in a diabetic coma, warned of danger. The vandalism at the Oleander’s was kids, they say, but “they’ll make a report and she should get cameras around the place” is what they told me and Shelby.

It’s exactly like Riley said: if all leads are exhausted and there’s no reasonable hope that new information will come to light, that’s when you consider no longer actively investigating. Fair. So what will he do with this bank and phone information? Probably very little. Because Leo is not being actively pursued as the suspect in what happened to Shelby. There is zero proof, just a hunch and assumption by everyone including the police, and this evidence actually strengthens the argument that he left with all our money and doesn’t want to be found.

Well, guess what. I’m not calling Riley. I’m going to find that son of a bitch myself.

“Holy shit!” I yell out loud and leap from the sofa, spilling tea down the front of my sweater and all over the floor. “Oh my God,” I say, standing frozen for a moment, feeling a brief brush of disbelief. I can find him.

I’m shocked it took me the thirtysomething minutes since I found the bill until this second to remember I can look at our tracking app. Unless he turned it off himself, we all have tracker apps. I used to use it to keep tabs on Rowan when she was out as a teen, and it’s useful if you can’t find your phone, but spying is an additional perk I’ve never used it for. It should allow me to see where he is. I sit back down, and then I stand back up and shake out my hands. I’m trembling with nerves. I sit back down and take a breath and then wipe a few splashes of spilled tea off my phone screen and click the app…and there it is.

“Shut the fuck up,” I whisper to myself, cupping my hand over my mouth. His phone is moving southbound on highway 10, headed toward Fargo, North Dakota.

The doorbell rings. Shit. Billy.

I go and open the door, and I know the color has drained from my face and my eyes are wild and confused, and I’m covered in tea and my nerves are frayed. He doesn’t look me up and down or comment on how I don’t look remotely ready for dinner out. He just smiles, holding a bouquet of flowers to my surprise, and I feel terrible, but I don’t have time to feel terrible or worry about anyone’s feelings. I’m quaking with adrenaline and rage, and a little bit of terror at what I might find if I pursue this, so much so that I just blurt it out as I pull a coat on and practically push past him.

“Sorry. Shit. I’m so sorry, but I think my missing husband is alive and driving down the interstate as we speak and I have to go to Fargo. Sorry.”

“Oh. Right…now?”

“Yes. Right this second.”

“I’ll go with you,” he says.

“What? No. Why?”

“Because you should have someone with you. It could be dangerous,” he says, and I just stare at him and blink for a second. But I’m not thinking about danger or about him dropping everything to drive on slippery roads to goddamn North Dakota for someone he scarcely knows anymore, or how exhausted I am, or what I’ll say or do when I find Leo. I am just going. Right this second, before I lose him again.

“Let’s go,” I say, and within minutes we are driving through the inky blackness, fat snowflakes tapping the windshield, snow squeaking under the tires on the snow-packed roads as we drive into the night.