Page 146 of Sunkissed Colorado

“Leo didn’t go to anyone for help for his mom?” I asked.

“He said he thought about it. Until he found out his mom had been following me around and broke my car window. Left those notes for me. He just tried to keep a better eye on her and convince her I wasn’t responsible, but he thought if anyone knew, she’d either be committed or arrested. He was just a kid then. Seventeen.”

“Yeah, I guess I understand. This is still messed up.”

I’d been through issues with my parents too as a kid, and my siblings and I had been afraid to go to the authorities. Especially after our dad left, and we were basically on our own. At seventeen, Leo had just lost his sister. I had to think he would’ve been scared to lose his mom too.

“But it gets worse,” Zandra said. “Because this is where Tommy Pickering comes in.”

I sat back and gave her a questioning look. A few strands of dark hair blew into her face, and I brushed them away.

“Tommy was blackmailing them. He’d seen Paula break my window. Leo paid him five hundred dollars to keep him quiet.”

I shook my head in disgust. Yet that sounded like Tommy. He’d always been an opportunist.

“After I left town, Paula seemed to get over her fixation and was doing better. Tommy lost interest in blackmailing them, thankfully. Leo stuck around as long as he could, and he said Winnie tried to be there for him even though she had no clue how bad things were. But he felt trapped here. He decided to leave everything behind. Like I had.”

“Did he tell you about his arrest for assault?”

She nodded. “Leo said he came back to Silver Ridge over the years to check on Paula, sent her cards and money, but he couldn’t bring himself to live here. It was still too painful. Then earlier this summer, he got involved in that bar fight, got arrested. He claimed he ran because he couldn’t go to prison and leave his mom all alone.”

“Sounds like a convenient excuse for escaping home to mom when he was in trouble.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. He’s been living in an abandoned cabin in the woods since June. Paula was bringing him food. About a month after Leo came home to Silver Ridge,Icame back to town. And that was a lot for his mom to take in when her wellbeing was already so fragile.”

I thought of how the house had seemedwrongwhen we went there. Like there were things Paula was hiding. She hadn’t seemed outright angry or resentful, though. Mostly tired. Seemed like there was still a missing piece to the story.

“You mentioned you felt like someone had been watching you,” I said. “We thought it was Tommy, but could that have been Paula?”

“Even Leo isn’t sure of everything his mom has been doing. He thinks she threw that brick through the Hearthstone window. Probably left the note on my car too.”

“Wow.” I shook my head. This whole situation was bizarre. Sometimes it felt like everybody knew everyone’s business in Silver Ridge, and then we found out something like this had been going on. Leo Mackenzie hiding out in the woods. Paula targeting Zandra.

Then again, if I was going to hide from the cops, there was plenty of wilderness around here to do it. Incredible that nobody had seen Leo come in or out of town.

Unless…maybe someonehadseen him.

“Tommy’s all wrapped up in this,” I said. “He was outside the brewery creeping around the same night you got that note.Outside our place on another night. What else did he do?” The guy was like a cockroach, always turning up when there was bad shit going down.

“Tommy must’ve seen Leo at some point, figured out Paula was helping him hide. So Tommy went to Paula. Said she had to pay up or he’d send the cops after Leo. After that, Tommy was followingPaulaaround, trying to get proof of Leo’s whereabouts.”

I cursed as I made the connection. “And that’s why Tommy kept turning up aroundyou. Because Paula was already watching you, and Tommy knew all along.” No wonder he’d been so smug when I questioned him about Z’s harasser. He’d admitted seeing Zandra at the Pine Cone motel, but when he realized Paula was sneaking around Z again, Tommy saw a new opportunity.

The past repeating itself.

“After Tommy demanded money again, Paula seemed to have a harder and harder time telling the difference between the present and the past. It was like she thought Jessa’s death had just happened. Leo started watching her more, trying to keep her home so she wouldn’t do something else that would put her in jail or draw attention to him.”

I could already predict where this was going. “She set the fire.”

Zandra wiped her eyes. “It’s hard to believe. Like some wild plot to a movie.”

“Or a true crime show,” I muttered. “Truth is stranger than fiction, Z. Some of the stuff out there? It’s freaking nuts.”

“And I was in the middle of it.”

I gave her a couple minutes, then asked, “What really happened the night of the fire?”

“Paula wasn’t answering Leo’s calls that night, and he got worried something was up. He took the risk of coming into town to look for her. Drove by our place first, since he’d figured out I was living there with you. When there was no sign of Paula, he went to Hearthstone. He swears he would’ve stopped her if hecould. But it was too late. He would’ve run inside the building to help, but then you got there.”