Page 21

21

MACK

It’s late morning by the time I hear Shelby stir in the guest room. I hear the rattle of the pipes and running water in the bathroom sink, so I pick up the tray of coffee and muffins I made when I was up far too early because Rowan was texting me about some boy she was crying over. I notice the coffee’s gone cold, so I pour two new mugs and tiptoe down the hall and tap on her door.

Inside Shelby looks like I remember her in college after a few too many Jell-O shots at a dorm party, and I don’t recall even seeing her take a shot of liquor like a twenty-year-old since we were actually in our twenties, but times are tough right now, so I can’t say she doesn’t deserve to do whatever gets her through.

“Morning.” I sit next to her on the bed and hand her a cup of coffee and then slide under the puffy white down comforter next to her with my own mug. “There’s a couple ibuprofen,” I say, pointing to the tray. She takes them and sips her coffee.

“Thanks, Mack.” She leans her head on my shoulder and we are both quiet for a few minutes, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the wind whipping through the tree branches and snow blowing around the deck. I designed that deck that’s so lovely, even underneath the two feet of snow on top of it. I’ll miss this house.

“I saw a check for an obscene amount of money hanging on your fridge with a magnet…from Billy Curran? I mean it’s none of my business whatsoever, but is there anything you wanna tell me?” she asks, and I can feel myself blush.

“I’m not accepting it. He was trying to help with…an expense, but I’m giving it back.”

She raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Expense? Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I say, with a tone that requests an end to the topic.

“You two seem…close lately,” she says.

“Just business. I’m helping him with remodeling ideas,” I say, dismissing the topic. “That’s it.”

“Huh,” she mumbles, reaching for her phone on the nightstand and I quickly take it from her and toss it to the end of the bed.

“Nope.”

“What the hell?” she says. “I have to tell Clay to pick me up.”

“Herb and the gang coordinated to drop your car off last night. They said they had nothing more exciting to do and would be happy to help, so it’s outside. So just…no need for your phone yet.”

“Uhhh. Why?”

“Just…don’t look at Facebook. I know you will, but maybe not just yet,” I say, and she crawls down and snatches her phone from the puff of comforter that swallowed it.

“Jesus. What now?” She opens her app and scrolls. It doesn’t take long before she sees it, but at least I got to semi-warn her.

“Yeah, it appears Riley’s wife took a video of the whole thing last night on her phone and took liberties with how she edited it,” I say, rewatching it as Shelby plays it over and over. It’s less than two minutes long, but her shoving Riley’s shoulder is in slow motion and her mouth is twisted and her eyes are watery and bloodshot as she yells “This guy’s a fucking crook! A fucking thief!” and the caption reads “Mental Health Awareness” and goes on to say that Shelby essentially has lost it and there is no evidence of all the things she’s reporting are happening to her and maybe she’s lying. That all this is a need for attention, a cry for help, and we should have some compassion and get her the help she needs…not in those exact words, but that’s the gist of it.

Shelby stares at the phone screen with her mouth open and an unreadable look in her eyes. She starts to scroll down.

“No! Seriously. Nobody should ever read the comments. Let’s just…” but of course she does and one of the comments from Karen Gustafson says “Poor Bernie. It’s no surprise he killed himself if this is what he had to deal with from his caretaker.” I see tears form in her eyes.

“I’m not even his caretaker. It’s senior living, not a nursing home. They don’t even…” she begins to say, picking out the wrong thing to defend because she doesn’t know where to begin with the real accusations, I suppose.

“Hey, come here,” I say, gently taking her phone away and replacing it with her coffee mug. “Karen Gustafson is a twat. We all know that. She snaps her fingers and calls me waitress when she comes into the cafe. And she tips in loose pennies from the bottom of her purse,” I say and try to continue offering examples of her faulty character, but Shelby interrupts.

“It has six hundred views,” she says numbly.

“It’ll pass,” I say.

“Does everyone think I’m lying? Is that what people think?”

“No,” I say. “Of course not.” But the truth is I don’t really know what people are saying because I have been so wound up in my own crisis, running to hell and back looking for Leo, decoding boxes of paperwork, and cryptic messages. I have no earthly idea what people are saying about Shelby, but they probably are saying that. It’s Rivers Crossing. When the gossip gets old and tired, spice it up a bit. Why not?

“Do you think they were Bernie’s?” she asks.

“What?”

“The footprints. What if he got out of the car—maybe he checked to make sure the tailpipe was packed with snow, maybe he just walked around to make sure nobody was around, which I guess is silly because that road goes unused for days at a time out there, but I mean, maybe. People were saying Bernie seemed depressed… I don’t know.” She sighs, sinking down into the bed and holding her cup of coffee on top of the covers tucked up to her chin. She stares up at the ceiling in dismay.

“Maybe, but from what I remember, they were just like…boot imprints leading away from the car. I don’t recall prints leading back, but you’re right. It’s kind of a blur because it was a shock and I wasn’t looking for that sort of thing, so when I remembered, it’s just a flash in my mind. But I’m sure that’s what I saw.”

Shelby sighs again, puts down her mug and slowly gets to her feet, pulling on a sweatshirt she left hanging over the chair on the vanity and looking for her socks.

“I have to go and see the girls at my mom’s. They’re staying there a few days. Maybe longer. I need to call Clay. You know I can already see the look on Riley’s face when you tell him you saw footprints. It’s sort of like you know he’s rolling his eyes internally, you know? That’s what it will be.”

“I wanna tell you something,” I say. She gives me a what-else-could-there-possibly-be look, but when I pat the edge of the bed, she tentatively sits. I sit crunched up against the pillows in front of the headboard and rest my coffee on my knees. I take a deep breath.

“I’m losing the house. Leo took out a secret mortgage on it and it’s getting foreclosed on, but please don’t say anything about that. I don’t wanna talk about it right now,” I say quickly, and her shocked eyes and open mouth slowly adjust into a forced neutral expression as she lets me continue.

“He cheated a lot of people. Gambled and stole money from his staff, partners, and you. Sort of.”

“Me?”

“Yes, in a roundabout way.”

“Um. Wouldn’t that be something I’d know about?” she asks.

“I have something to show you,” I say, and she watches me walk out the guest room door into the kitchen where the dogs see and start barking until they realize it’s just me and go back to lie down in their bed by the fireplace. I grab some files off of the kitchen counter and Shelby is already behind me, taking them from my hands before I can do this gracefully.

“What is it? You’re freaking me out.”

“I found these in Leo’s things.” She’s looking through the pages, not making sense of it. “Essentially, he’s been skimming off the top at the Oleander’s. There’s a secret bank account I found, so however he set up this…fraud, I guess, it’s just automatic now and it filters through this bank, which takes a percentage before it is sent to the Oleander’s system, and you would never know that’s not the full amount. I don’t really understand money laundering but that’s the general idea, I think.”

Shelby sits there with the papers still in hand and a look of utter confusion on her face.

“This is why we are going under. Why there’s never enough to make the books balance?”

“I mean, yeah. I would think so. I imagine there is a way to stop it continuing, but if they don’t find him it’s not like the money can be recovered.” She doesn’t respond, just pages through the papers in awe.

“I only found out a few days ago. I was trying to see if I could track him down with this information, but it’s all been a dead end, so I think I’m just giving up.”

“What do you mean? What does that mean?” she asks, putting her hand on my arm and tossing the papers on the counter.

“I’ll give all this to the cops, of course. I mean, I was gonna anyway. I just wanted a day or two. And if the house gets sold from underneath me, maybe it’s time for me to go. The whole town…it’s hard to be here.”

“I know,” she says, hugging me. And we stay in that glorious hug for a minute before I pull away to wipe a falling tear and apologize.

“It’s not your fucking fault,” she says.

“I just think maybe it’s time to sell the cafe and go to get a little place near Rowan’s school. Find a job out there. I just don’t know anymore. But the main reason I’m telling you all this is because…what if this is why someone is after you?”

Shelby sits on the bar stool at the counter and looks at me. “Because Leo is stealing money?”

“Yeah. Because they think you’re in on it. What if they think you have to know since you run the place? What if someone else knows about the fraud and what if that someone else was fucked over—stolen from by Leo—and they think you two are partners in this laundering? I mean, fuck, it’s just a theory because why else would anyone be after you? Why not be after me? Maybe they know enough about it all to know he hid everything from me, but they assume you see the finances. I might be grasping at straws here, but it’s something, maybe.”

Shelby considers this. “Well, who? There isn’t one person I can think of that would be capable of this kind of stuff. Unless it’s him.”

“You think it’s Leo.”

“Well, fuck, Mack. I mean, you’re telling me he’s still out there somewhere stealing money from us. Maybe he wants us both dead so nobody else finds out, and he can get away with it all. And he must be alive, because he’s still making withdrawals,” she says.

I look down at the papers on the countertop and close my eyes. What can I say. She’s not wrong, as much as I want her to be. It’s just hard hearing another person say it out loud—that he’s awful. That he’s a criminal. That he’s alive, and is letting this all happen to me.

We both jolt when we hear tires coming up the drive, crunching over ice patches and rolling to a stop. The dogs start going crazy and we both stand and look out the front bay window to see Detective Riley and Detective Jones emerging from a police car and walking up the drive to the front door.

“Holy shit,” Shelby says. “I just pushed his shoulder and he was off duty. You don’t think they’re here about last night, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I mumble as I pick up Linus and shush Nugget. We stand looking at one another, and even though we are expecting the knock, it makes us both jump—the invasive sound reverberating in the silent house.

We both stand in the front hall and open the door to see Riley and Jones, their faces crumpled and grief-stricken as they take their hats off and hold them to their chests upon seeing me. Shelby gasps and holds her hand over her mouth, but somehow it takes me a minute to absorb what’s happening.

Somewhere between them asking if they can come in for a moment and the dizziness and someone pulling a chair up for me to sit and my heart in my throat I make out the words—and they try to tell me in a graceful way, but the truth has been un covered and there is no way to unhear it. There are no threads of hope to hold on to.

The remains of Leo Connolly have been found. Leo is dead. Leo has been dead a long time.