by Emily James
Heaven knew I needed one.
I called the mission, and the manager—whose name was Lillian Ardis—practically gushed. People donated more food and money around the holidays but less time. They were short-handed.
Lillian didn’t sound like someone who would beat a man to death…but then again, Jarrod didn’t look like a man who would beat his wife, and he had.
Lillian met me at the door. And towered over me. She had to be nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders and short-cropped blonde hair.
Her hand swallowed mine when we shook, but her smile made me feel welcome. Most people might have immediately written her off as a suspect. That’s where I had an advantage over most people. I trusted no one.
She took me on a tour of the facilities. They had men and women’s dormitory rooms, a spacious cafeteria, showers, and other smaller rooms where she explained they ran Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, as well as reading programs for the illiterate and even job match programs. Their mission had formed relationships with some of the local businesses who were willing to give a chance to the homeless who wanted to get back on their feet.
Her passion for it all made me suspect her argument with Jimmy had been over one of two things. Either he was doing something to hurt the work the mission was doing—which didn’t seem likely given what I knew of him.
Or he’d found out she wasn’t what she seemed.
Chapter 6
Lillian closed the door to the meeting room, and I felt my chance to ask her anything about Jimmy closing as well.
Once she settled me into my role, she’d be gone. I’d hesitated too long, trying to come up with the perfect segue. I wasn’t a natural investigator like Nicole. I spent most of my time trying to not be noticed.
“You seem to do a lot to try to help them.” I focused on controlling my voice. Our voices could give a lot away if we weren’t careful. “Do you ever have problems with clients?”
Clients was what she’d told me they called the homeless they helped. It showed them respect.
“Do bears crap in the woods?” She rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing compared to my last job, though. I used to work as a guard in a women’s maximum-security prison.” She smiled. “Then I decided I’d rather try to keep people out of trouble rather than deal with them once they were already in it.”
Even with my natural suspicion, I was having a hard time imagining what could have made her angry enough to kill. It had to be something Jimmy knew that would ruin her and the valuable work she felt she was doing. Maybe she’d crossed a line with a client.
“Do you ever have trouble maintaining your personal boundaries?”
There was a twitch it her cheek like the average person switched off and the prison guard—who couldn’t react to anything the inmates said—switched on. “We have strict ethical codes that everyone, including volunteers, have to agree to.”
Great. Now she suspected I was here to abuse a vulnerable population.
Or she’s trying to distract you, Fear whispered. Like an anglerfish luring its prey to the light before swallowing it whole.
She motioned for me to follow her. “We’re short-handed in the kitchen right now, so let’s get you started.”
In the kitchen, rather than out front, serving. It was a convenient way to keep me away from their homeless clients in case I turned out to be a problem and to also make sure I was watched by the other kitchen workers.
Normally I would have welcomed being behind the scenes, but I’d hoped to talk to some of the clients and see how they felt about Lillian, see if there were any rumors about her.
Though that might be a better job for Dwayne. The other clients would trust him more, whereas I could see if the other volunteers had heard any arguments between Lillian and the clients.
Lillian pushed open a door. A burst of warm air nearly knocked me backward. If I’d been hoping to find a free place to stay warm, I’d found it. If I still had any extra pounds remaining, I’d sweat them away as well.
Two woman and one man worked inside, hardly enough to produce enough food for all the people I’d seen lining up.
Lillian pointed to the eldest woman, who wore a hair net over her curly dark hair. “Vy’s our staff member. She’ll give you your tasks.”
She let the door swing shut, and it pushed me into the room.
Vy hustled toward me. “Thank the stars.” She pushed a hair net and apron into my hands. “Ethan’s peeling potatoes for the first time today, and at the rate he’s going, we’ll be serving Christmas dinner at Easter.”
Ethan turned around. He had a dripping peeler in one hand, a half-naked potato in the other, and a look on his face that said he’d rather be anywhere else. He looked like the kind of man who should be at a baseball game, wearing a backwards hat and drinking a can of beer, rather than hanging out in a mission kitchen.
Being an outsider, Ethan might be more willing to talk. If he’d been here when Jimmy was still alive, he could be a good source.
Even if it meant standing shoulder to shoulder with a strange man. I’d just have to tell Fear to stuff it for a few hours.
I pulled the hair net on and tucked my braid up under it. “I can catch him up no problem.”
Ethan held out the peeler toward me before I could tie on my apron.
Jumping right into questions about Lillian or the clients would likely make even him suspicious. I needed to figure out how to set him at ease with me first.
“How about you wash while I peel? I cook for a living.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I peeled plenty of carrots for my carrot cake cupcakes. I held out my other hand for his half-done potato. “No opportunity for peeling potatoes in your line of work, I’m guessing?”
You would have thought we were playing a game of hot potato with how fast Ethan tossed me the potato as well. “I’m a sanitation worker. No one wants me prepping food after I toss bags of garbage all day.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “Well, except for the people here.”
I returned his smile and set to work on the potatoes. He probably hadn’t expected to end up in the kitchen any more than I had. I, at least, had food prep skills.
Thankfully, he’d given me a natural lead in. “Have you been volunteering long?”
“Less than two weeks. They had me cleaning at first, which was a better fit, but they had a couple of their regular kitchen volunteers call in sick today, so here I am.”
He shrugged his shoulders like he couldn’t understand it but wasn’t going to argue. I didn’t have to do any mental math to know that meant he’d started volunteering after Jimmy died. He wouldn’t have been around to hear an argument between Jimmy and Lillian.
But pretending I didn’t know might give me a lead-in to see if he’d heard any rumors about Jimmy or Lillian among the other volunteers. “Did you ever meet the main who was hit by the train?”
Ethan stopped scrubbing the potato he was working on. “I heard about that. It’s really sad, but one of the things I’ve learned working here is that there are a lot of fights between clients.”
I shifted my weight in his direction so that I could speak more softly and still be heard. Fear screamed so loudly in my head to back away that I could barely hear my own thoughts.
“I heard that he was fighting with the manager rather than one of the other clients.”
“I’ve heard a few yelling matches since I’ve been volunteering here, but I still think it’s more likely it was another client who killed him. Might have even been by accident. A lot of them have problems with anger and impulse control. You’ll see once you’ve been here longer.”
Dwayne and Carla had said it was strange to hear Lillian arguing with anyone. But it was possible they’d said that because they—unlike Ethan—were convinced it couldn’t have been another homeless person who hurt Jimmy. They were looking for the killer to be someone other than another homeless person.
Before I could ask him anything more about what kinds of arguments he heard, Vy
joined us to start mashing the potatoes that had already been boiled.
My subtlest attempt to find out what she knew about Jimmy was rebuffed with “I don’t tolerate gossip in my kitchen.”
It could have been my imagination, but she seemed to keep a closer eye on me for the rest of the evening, pairing up with me rather than allowing me to be alone with one of the other volunteers.
She even kept me to unload the dishwashers after all the other volunteers had left, as if she were afraid I’d accost one of them in the parking lot. She probably thought I was a reporter snooping around for a story. I’d tried to slide into conversation that I operated a cupcake food truck, only to realize from the look on her face that claiming to run a cupcake food truck in Michigan in December made me sound like a big, fat liar.
By the time we were done, the lights in the halls had been dimmed, and all the clients seemed to have gone to the dormitories. Vy disappeared before I could even collect up my coat and put on my gloves and scarf.
Walking down the halls, I could still hear the sounds of people talking and, from somewhere, music playing what sounded like jazz, but it felt strangely peaceful, like I’d stepped into a bubble.
The bubble burst as soon as I excited the building into the back parking lot and saw that my tires had been slashed.
Chapter 7
I clamped my hand around the building’s door handle, not allowing it to swing shut. The person who’d slit my tires probably hadn’t stuck around, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance. I wasn’t sure if the door would lock behind me if I let it close, trapping me out here alone.
One thing I knew at least—this wasn’t Jarrod. He wouldn’t bother wasting his time slashing tires. He’d go straight for me. Cutting a person’s tires was either a warning or a delay tactic. There wasn’t anything I was headed to after this, so I doubted it’d been meant to delay me. If it’d happened somewhere else, I would have guessed the perpetrator wanted to strand me far from help. But I could get help here even if I had ended up locked out.
That meant whoever did this most likely meant it as a warning. The only thing I could think of was that someone hadn’t liked me asking questions about Jimmy. Then again, it was a pretty big leap for them to think I’d know that was why my tires were slashed. It didn’t quite fit.
The adrenaline rushing through my body was making my limbs feel like they were pulsing and weak.
First I had to confirm that I wasn’t panicking over nothing. Maybe I’d simply gotten a flat tire from a nail or wear. I leaned to the side so I could better see my other front tire.
It was flat as well.
I wasn’t naïve enough to leave the door in order to check on my back tires. Not alone. Besides, if the front two were flat, the back two likely would be as well.
I backed into the building and pulled the door shut tightly behind me.
A security officer would have been the ideal person to ask to accompany me to check my other tires, but that wasn’t an option. The mission had security officers outside during the day, but not at night. Once they’d reached their capacity for the night, they closed and locked the doors. If there was any trouble after that, the regular staff called the police. Or so Lillian had told me while briefing me quickly on protocol.
Even though the security staff was gone, Lillian or some other staff member should still be there.
I turned down the hallway that Lillian had pointed out as containing the offices. The door to the main office was still open, and the light was on.
Vy and Lillian sat together at a desk near the back. Their body language and the tone of their voices made me think they were fighting, but they were doing it too quietly for me to hear what they were saying.
Vy looked over. She must have caught my movement in her peripheral vision. “I thought you’d gone home.”
“I tried to. I have a flat tire. I was too scared to change it on my own, just in case.”
It sounded pathetic when I said it out loud, but it was true. Except the part where I wanted to change my tire. I had one spare and two—or more—flats.
Vy rolled her eyes, but Lillian got to her feet. “I’ll come with you. If it’s more than a simple flat, we’ll have to write a report.”
The skin on my arms felt like someone had trailed an ice cube along it. That seemed like a leap to make unless she already knew.
But the only way she could already know was if she’d been party to it.
She motioned for me to lead the way, but I held my ground. “If it’s not a normal flat, what would it be?”
I tried to keep my voice controlled. Instead, it kicked up a little at the end, giving away my fear.
Though perhaps it would have sounded less natural if her statement hadn’t scared me at all.
Lillian sighed. “Vandalism happens sometimes to vehicles in our parking lot. We need to extend our cameras out back, but we don’t have the money in the budget yet. Are you parked in the back lot?”
I nodded. She set off, giving me no choice but to follow her.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “We have a higher-than-average rate of cars being broken into by clients who need money for their next fix. Or damaged by a client who was asked to leave. Even though we try to compensate volunteers for any damage done to their vehicles on our property, it’s scary enough that most never return once something like this happens.”
I hadn’t even thought about the cost to repair my tires. Thankfully, it sounded like I didn’t have to worry where the money for replacing them would come from.
I did wonder, though, whether Lillian was trying to make it easy or hard for me to leave by telling me that most volunteers who had their vehicles vandalized never returned.
On one hand, it could be her way of saying It’s okay if this isn’t for you. It’s not for most people. Or it could be almost a taunt. Are you going to be too weak to hack it, too?
Neither would work on me. I was here with a specific purpose. I planned to stay until I’d accomplished it, but no longer.
That said, knowing how to interpret her words seemed important. Did she want me to stay, or did she want me to go?
I’d been poking around about Jimmy. If she’d killed him, she had a strong motive for wanting to get rid of me.
Her reaction if I pushed a little more might tell me where the truth lay, as well as helping me figure out if Jimmy had been banned from the mission.
I lengthened my stride so that I could walk beside her. “What kinds of things would get a person kicked out, for example?” I asked as casually as I could.
If she already thought I was a reporter, she might not even answer. For all I knew, that’s what she and Vy were arguing about. Vy might have shared her suspicions about my motives, and Lillian might have responded by telling her that they were too short-handed to deny me a chance to volunteer. Or, more likely, their argument had nothing to do with me and everything to do with some other regular issue that came along with running a mission for the homeless.
The sidelong glance Lillian gave me made me think she was sizing me up. “Lots of things can get a client banned. Bringing weapons onto the premises. Assaulting security officers or other staff. For example.”
Her echo of my words let me know that she didn’t think I was a completely innocent volunteer. It’d been silly of me to think she would. She dealt with people who probably routinely lied to her. She’d probably gotten good at knowing who was being up-front and who wasn’t.
Since I didn’t yet have anything concrete about Jimmy and who might have wanted to kill him, I had to make sure she would allow me to come back another day. Assuming she’d fall for a part-truth.
We reached the door to the parking lot, and I stopped without opening it. “I heard that the man who died on the train tracks used to stay here. I was wondering if he killed himself because he wasn’t allowed to stay here anymore. I like helping others, but I want to make sure I give my time to a place that helps and doesn’t hurt.”
Lillian’s face did a weird transformation as I spoke, vacillating between tightening around her eyes that hinted at sadness and lowered eyebrows that made me think she was angry and about to kick me out, flat tires or no flat tires.
“We do the best we can, and sometimes we do have to evict people, but he wasn’t one of them.” She pushed open the door, and a rush of cold air hit me in the chest. “He tried to make money finding things in dumpsters and selling them. I encouraged him right up until he started trying to sell what he found to other clients in the building.”
That sounded like it might have been the source of their fight, but I couldn’t figure out why that would have caused a major disagreement.
Lillian must have been able to read the confusion on my face. Instead of stepping outside, she continued to stand in the doorway. “We can’t allow clients to sell things to each other on mission property. He argued that he was helping them get phones and stuff they couldn’t otherwise afford, but we can’t bend the rules for anyone. It’s a slippery slope.” She nodded her head toward my truck. “Let’s take a look at your tires. It’s getting late.”
The exhaustion in Lillian’s voice—like she blamed herself a little bit even though she knew she shouldn’t—made me think she hadn’t had anything to do with Jimmy’s death. It wasn’t that kind of guilt. It sounded like the kind of guilt anyone in a mercy career felt when they lost one. They intellectually knew they couldn’t save them all, but their hearts still wanted to.
Which meant that she also thought the police had been right that Jimmy killed himself. She didn’t think it was a murder.
She hadn’t killed him, and we were once again without a suspect for who had.
Chapter 8
All four of my tires had been slashed.
One tire might have been an angry resident who’d been banned from staying the night. All four felt like a targeted attack.
But whoever had done it hadn’t left any sort of a message or warning. They didn’t want me to know why they wanted to scare me away. They simply wanted me to leave and stop asking questions about Jimmy.