Page 19

19

SHELBY

Clay doesn’t know how the security equipment got into the back of his truck. He swears to God. He swears up and down and on the girls’ lives that he can’t imagine how it could have materialized in his possession. He tells me I have to believe him.

I said I did. And then I went to work and brought the bag with me to see if I could cobble any of it back together to work again, because I can’t afford a new system, even though we have no choice. But now, a day later, I don’t know what I believe. I never thought I would doubt my husband for any reason, but I can’t stop thinking about it. One minute I hate myself for even considering he would have any involvement in…what? Terrorizing me? Of course not. That’s so absurd. And then the next minute, I cannot think of any way someone else could have accessed all the cameras. And why put them in his truck? Whoever is doing all this is smart, and probably wants me to suspect him. Or maybe that’s the absurd thought, and I’m blind for not suspecting him earlier.

My mind whirls and my body aches from the ceaseless stress of it all. Early this morning I got news that Bernie’s car was found. Mack called to tell me that they found it in a snowbank behind a cluster of pines off a back road while on a search shift last night, and when they called the police, they were told to go home and haven’t been given any updates yet. So now, we all wait. Always waiting—waiting tips, waiting on the blood DNA from the snow outside my house, waiting for the psychopath to make contact again. Waiting.

By evening we still haven’t heard anything, so when Clay comes home from the bait shop, I ask him to take the girls to my mother’s. I say that they should stay with her for a few days because there’s too much happening around here and they shouldn’t be around it. I just need to know they’re safe, and until the new security system is connected tomorrow, and maybe even until things settle down in general and we feel some safety again, they should probably just be there.

My mother gleefully agreed when I called her this morning about it, and she offered to take them to school and back and listed all the cookies they’d make, and snowmen, and crafts, and I stopped her, out of instinct I guess and lied, telling her they have a winter break scheduled so no school, they’re all hers. Even better, she said, and when we hung up I called the school and said the girls had some sort of bug and would be out for a few days.

I just can’t get past the thought that they aren’t safe there—that whoever is doing this tried once to kill our whole family on the ice. Or was I the only target, and it didn’t matter who else got hurt? Whoever it is knows where they go to school and where their bus stop is, and when they have recess, and lunch hour, but they won’t know they’re at my mother’s, and she’s agreed not to tell anyone they’re there, even though I know I’ve scared her. But she was already scared. All of us are.

My mother still lives in the house I grew up in on a massive plot of land up north that even has a small lake on the property. It’s such a good fishing lake that she’s always kept it open to fishermen and loves seeing the ice huts dotting the frozen lake top in the winter. As a kid I’d make hot chocolate and set up my stand at the edge of the lake and sell hot cups for fifty cents each. It’s the girls’ favorite thing to do at their grandma’s, so they’ll be excited, and that’s what I need for them right now—to be completely shielded from all this horror and just happy making pots of cocoa at grandma’s.

The girls are all giggles and twirling down the hall in the tutus they’re wearing after playing dress up in their room. When I tell them they are spending a few days at grandma’s, they’re elated. It’s like afternoons at the Ole, endless candy and crafts and full-time doting and attention. June asks if she can wear her leotard under her coat on the way so she can show grandma the glittery unicorns on the sleeves and I tell her she can. Poppy packs her Elsa suitcase and asks if they can bring Gus, and I tell her grandma is allergic, and to pull their things into the hall when they’re ready.

I hear Clay lumbering around the kitchen and find him boiling a couple of hot dogs in a pan of water. He’s still in his coat and boots. I can see the tension in his body just from looking at his back in front of the stove.

“I don’t feel comfortable with you here alone while I’m gone,” he says. “Not at night.”

“It’s an hour round trip,” I say.

“Still,” he grunts.

“Well, I’m meeting Mack for a drink at the Trout anyway while we wait for word about Bernie. I might stay at her place until the security gets fixed tomorrow.” I can feel him stiffen at the mention of this, but we don’t go round and round about it again since the girls are here. Him asking do I believe him? Me asking how the hell did it get in your truck, then? And then six more variations of those arguments over and over. We just don’t say anything else to each other.

When I hear the girls pulling on snow boots and arguing over who gets to sleep on the top bunk in their room at grandma’s, I go and kiss and squeeze them and tell them to listen to grandma and not to fight her about bedtimes, and then they pull their things outside and down the sidewalk. Clay looks back at me before he follows behind them. He looks like he’s going to say something, but then he just turns and leaves silently.

And then I get to work. I have an hour before I meet Mack and I plan to search every corner of the place I can think to look before I go. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but that doesn’t stop me from going through all of his things in hopes I’ll know it when I see it. He’s an outdoorsman, not a man with a home office or briefcase, and he barely gets on the desktop computer. So the only place to even look first is his drawers and his side of the closet which I dig through carefully but thoroughly. All I find underneath T-shirts and underwear is a basket of socks with no matching pairs and old cuff links, earbuds, and a gold watch from a hundred years ago.

In the garage, I stare at the wall of shelving. I watched a movie once where the wife discovered her husband was a serial killer by finding trinkets from all the girls he killed in a plastic Walmart bin he stored in the garage. Trophies, Millie called them. It makes me shudder to think about it now. In the movie I thought the killer was some kind of moron not to be a little smarter than that, but I guess hiding something in plain sight is sometimes not the worst idea.

I open shoeboxes full of old coins and playing cards, and I rifle through storage bins full of everything a person saves over the years for no reason—a cookie tin with a cardinal design, oil filters, and a broken coffee maker. Baby booties and ugly mugs, wire hangers and tennis balls and a stained glass lamp from my grandmother’s house. I dig my hand down to the bottom of every box full of old paperbacks and rogue Legos and strings of Mardi Gras beads…for what, exactly? Am I expecting a used syringe to surface, some suspicious duct tape and zip ties?

After almost an hour, I realize I’m running late to meet Mack, and that this is stupid. That I’m being paranoid and need to keep a better head on my shoulders right now. I feel a prickling heat climb my spine as an overwhelming feeling of shame ripples through me. What am I doing ?

Of course someone put that stuff in his truck, just like they snuck into the Oleander’s and cut wires, just like they cut the ice at the lake. “Stop,” I mumble to myself. “Just stop.” I push bins back into their spots on the garage shelving before getting into my car, taking a deep breath, and driving to the Trout.

It’s busy tonight. I find Mack at the bar with a stool saved next to her. She waves and plucks her purse off the seat so I can sit down. The jukebox plays George Strait and the place is bustling and warm. Hats and mittens are piled on pub tables, and coats and parkas hang on booths and chair backs. Billy puts a napkin down in front of me and I order a shot of whiskey and a glass of Pinot. Mack raises her eyebrow at me but doesn’t say anything. As we catch up, something feels different—distant. We first talk about the girls and Rowan the way we always start—kid updates first—but today it’s just an avoidance of the heavy topics neither of us seems to know how to talk about with one another. We skirt around them, and I get the feeling there are things she’s not telling me.

I, on the other hand, tell her every last detail about Clay and the cameras and needing a new security system and how I just want to leave town. How the girls are at my mother’s for a while, and then we order another drink and marvel at how Riley can have no leads yet, and what to do about it all.

There are only two detectives in our small town so I can’t exactly demand someone else take the case. Jones is the other guy, and he’s like an actual lump on a log. He is officially working with Riley on all of it, but says almost nothing and seems to do the bare minimum required of him with zero expression on his face. I didn’t know a person could exist in the absence of any personality, but alas, we have Howard Jones.

It’s not that he’s hard-boiled from a life of seeing the worst in humanity. He may have given Betsy Wisniak a ticket for running the Main Street stop sign or detained Joey Ahlstrom for stealing Tide PODS from Walmart, and that’s about as hardcore as it gets…until me, that is.

After I get it all off my chest, I ask what’s the latest with her, but again, she brushes it off and changes the subject.

“How’s the gang at the Oleander’s?” Mack asks.

I shake my head sadly. “Mort is taking it the hardest, and Millie responded by buying a box of merlot and retreating to her room. Flor and Herb seemed to be huddled up with Evan trying to study security footage and discuss everything they think could be clues or evidence and, I guess, trying to not surrender to the idea that anything bad has happened to him. I guess you still haven’t gotten any updates?”

“Nothing,” she says. She fidgets with her glass for a moment before speaking. “I know it seems off topic, but do any of the residents know that the Ole is in major financial trouble?” she asks, and I’m not sure why she would want to know this aside from the fact that we have just been trying to keep business as usual since Leo’s disappearance. Someone could always buy the Oleander’s and turn it into an apartment block or bowling alley or something, and Mack wants nothing to do with being the owner of a business that’s going under, but I guess she would sort of inherit it if Leo is…well, dead.

I have just been trying to keep it afloat so we aren’t in danger of losing everyone’s home, but she’ll have to be the one to officially make decisions about it at some point if I can’t find a way to save it.

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I haven’t told any of them, but sometimes I get strange comments about saving money or looks of concern around any budget conversations, so I can’t be sure. Why?” I ask.

“I don’t know—they’re going through a lot, and I was just curious if that was another thing on top of it all—if they were worried they’d be homeless or something,” she finishes, and I can’t help but feel like there’s more behind the question, but I don’t press.

“I hope not. I’m scrimping and saving and doing everything I can,” I say and she squeezes my hand. I know she’d help if she was able to. What a crazy turn of events to be sitting here with Mack, the successful, flashy, wealthy one of us…somehow more broke than me.

Her phone rings and we both look down at it on the bar top to see Riley’s name pop up. She gives me a wide-eyed look and answers. She listens for a moment or two, her face falling, and she slowly moves her phone away from her ear and places it back on the bar, numbly, turning to look at me.

“Bernie’s dead.”