Page 39 of Paranoid

Roberto Valdez was a tall, fit man with military-cut brown hair starting to gray, a firm jaw, and near-black eyes that were deep set and didn’t falter as he stared into the camera. Standing on the concrete steps in front of the flagpoles and the department’s headquarters, Valdez, in uniform, made a brief statement before the public information officer took over. A forty-something woman whose brown hair was clipped at her nape, Isa Drake seemed less grim than the sheriff, though her answers were short and concise:

“Yes, it was definitely a homicide.”

“No, there are no suspects or persons of interest yet, but it’s still early in our investigation.”

“More details will follow, as Sheriff Valdez mentioned.”

“We are encouraging anyone with information to please come forward.”

The kids stared at Rachel as she turned off the TV.

“So you knew her?” Dylan asked.

“Yes.” Listening to the report, hearing the account on the news had only made it more real.

“Like, she was a good friend?” he asked.

“Not close, but we hung out sometimes.” Rarely.

“Weird,” he said.

“More like freaky,” Harper said. “Who do you think killed her?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You must have an idea.” Her son, again. “Who, Mom?”

“I don’t know.” Rachel checked her watch. “How could I know?” she admitted as much to herself as to the kids. “Come on, let’s get a move on. We’re already late.”

She expected everyone on the committee had been held up. She’d received a dozen or so texts about Violet over the course of the afternoon—group texts, which she despised, her phone pinging as each person weighed in. Worse yet, it was a group Lila had created and some of the respondents came in as unfamiliar phone numbers rather than names, which meant she didn’t really know to whom she was replying. So she didn’t.

They made their way to the back door and the dog bounded behind them. “Not this time,” Rachel said.

“Still talking to the dog.” Harper let the screen door slam shut behind her.

“Hey!” Dylan called after his sister. He was hoisting his backpack to his shoulder. “We all talk to him. You too!” He seemed to have forgiven Rachel for the earlier grilling. At least for the moment. But as his backpack wasn’t completely zipped, she saw inside, her gaze landing on a brown box. “What’s that?” she asked.

“What?”

She pointed. “The box?”

“Oh.” He flushed, zipped the pack. “Lucas needs a new mouse for his computer. I had one, so I told him I’d bring it.”

That didn’t sound quite right, but Dylan added, “He’s got another one ordered. He’s just borrowing this one until it gets here. No big deal.” And he was out the door.

No big deal.

She wondered, but let it go.

* * *

The trip to Lila’s house took less than twenty minutes. She’d let Harper, who had gotten her license just two months earlier, drive, and her daughter tended to be a lead foot.

Which ran in the family. Still, her fingers had curled over the armrest for most of the ride.

With a little difficulty, Harper parked on the street in front of Lila and Charles Ryder’s house, a three-storied Victorian built on the steep hillside in the late 1880s. The house had been home to the Ryder family for generations and was the very house where Cade and his brothers had grown up, the place where his mother had died.

Rachel hated it.