by Emily James
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asked again.
“Everything’s fine.” I smiled at him with the smile that always fooled people. “I didn’t expect you’d be back this morning. You were here so late last night.”
Ethan’s gaze followed Dwayne and Carla as they left. “I’m here whenever I have time off.”
He didn’t come into the alley with me. Instead, he seemed to be waiting for me to come out. I needed to go back inside and find out when I could pick up my truck anyway.
I joined Ethan.
We walked in silence most of the way back to the building. He sneaked a glance at me three times, like he wanted to broach the topic but didn’t know how.
We couldn’t get back into the building from the rear door without a code, so we headed toward the sidewalk that led to the front.
Two paces before we rounded the corner of the building, Ethan stopped and reached out a hand in my direction, like he was trying to stop me from going any further. “I didn’t mean to, but I heard some of the conversation you were having with them.”
Some. Not all. Maybe there was still a chance he’d only heard the part where we were trying to figure out who might have killed Jimmy and not the part where we were basically accusing Carla of having done it.
He ducked his head down to make sure his gaze held mine. “You need to tell the police.”
My hopes deflated faster than a failed soufflé. “There’s nothing to tell.” Great. Now not only was I lying, but I also sounded like Carla. My dad might have been right after all that the people you spend time with influence who you are. “They were friends of the man who was killed on the train tracks. We don’t think it was an accident, and we’re trying to figure out who would have wanted to hurt him.”
“I was standing there for a while.” He held up his hands as if to stop the reprimand he was sure was coming. “I know no one likes being spied on, but I was trying to decide if someone was in trouble.”
Someone was in trouble. And I wasn’t entirely sure whether it was me or Carla.
I believed her story. There were too many things that she probably would have done differently if she’d been the one to kill Jimmy, by accident or intentionally.
Unfortunately for her, there was also enough evidence to make her a prime suspect. Given that she was homeless and would be given a public defender who would probably also think she was guilty, her chances of acquittal if she were charged with Jimmy’s murder were slim.
While I didn’t like Carla, I had liked Jimmy. I didn’t want to know that his real murderer was walking around, enjoying their life, while someone else paid for their crime. If nothing else, my innate sense of justice wouldn’t allow it. My dad had taught me that we had to stand up for what was right. I hadn’t done that perfectly in my life, but I also couldn’t completely shake it.
I’d suffered for years while Jarrod benefitted. It hadn’t been fair then, and it wasn’t fair now.
“I don’t know what you heard, but I think you probably misunderstood.”
He raised an eyebrow as if to say Do you think I’m stupid? “She has the dead man’s socks. She drinks beer, and he didn’t, but they found beer with his body. And they were married and on the outs.”
Okay, so he’d heard everything perfectly. He’d been standing there for almost the whole conversation. Which, frankly, was a bit creepy, his explanation notwithstanding. Though my problem with it was likely due to how I’d lived under the constant threat of Jarrod watching me and tracking me. I wasn’t sure how a normal person would have felt. They probably would have been grateful Ethan cared enough about others to make sure everything was kosher.
I forced myself to meet his gaze without flinching. “She didn’t do this.”
“You don’t know who did this. That’s for the police to decide.” He tapped his temple. “Any information you have about it should go to them.”
It was that divide in thinking again that I’d noticed with Nicole. She’d also assumed that all police were good and unbiased. They weren’t. Carrying a badge didn’t guarantee that someone was a good person.
The police in Fair Haven had been mostly good and honest and tried to do their jobs with as little bias as possible. I didn’t know what the police here would be like.
The decision about what to do settled on my shoulders like I’d stacked bricks there. “The police don’t always get it right.”
Ethan’s gaze shifted. For a second, I thought he was going to put his hand on my shoulder. “No. No one always gets its right, no matter how hard we try. But I figure we have to trust the professionals to steer us in the best way. I trust my priest to tell me what penance I need to do for my sins, and I trust my dentist when my teeth hurt. You know what I mean?”
I did. But I’d also once had an unnecessary root canal done because my dentist made a mistake. “I’ll think about it. I don’t want to point a finger at her if she didn’t do it. I promise we’ll”—I was careful not to say I’ll—“take any information we find to the police eventually.”
His expression changed, almost like the skin around his eyes turned to stone. “Not eventually. If you don’t go to the police with this, I will.”
Chapter 11
I couldn’t take what I knew to the police, but I couldn’t let Ethan do it, either. The police might even think my reluctance to share what I knew meant I’d been a party to the crime.
Which meant I needed to stall. Stalling was a great tactic. If you stalled them long enough, most people gave up or forgot because something more important in their lives would come along. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to decide if skipping town now was the better way to go.
Technically, I had nothing holding me here. Christmas was only a few days away, and my catering gigs were completed.
Nothing, that is, except a strange sense of kinship with people who also had no home and seemed to have the world against them.
I slumped my shoulders forward and allowed my head to droop with it. It was my I’m-sorry-and-I’m-not-a-threat pose. “Will you give me a chance to try to convince her to go in and talk to the police herself? They might give her some leniency if she does that. If she killed him, I don’t think it was premeditated.”
Ethan’s jaw clenched, then unclenched. “That’s fair. Twenty-four hours. If she hasn’t agreed by then, she won’t.”
I almost lost my faked submissive look. I hadn’t expected him to actually go for it. I wouldn’t have. Asking her to turn herself in gave her forewarning and a chance to disappear. Disappearing wouldn’t be in her long-term benefit—it’d make her look guiltier—but Carla didn’t seem like someone who’d care. She also didn’t seem like someone who would think about it logically. She’d react on instinct.
Ethan and I walked the rest of the way in together. Just before we parted ways, he tapped his watch as if to remind me of the ticking clock on Carla’s freedom.
Somehow his pushing me to turn over what I knew to the police solidified my belief that she was innocent. Being pushed forced me to pick a side and defend it. It was probably a psychological phenomenon that had some name my dad would have known from all his reading, but I didn’t.
What I did know was that now, instead of trying to sell a handful of cupcakes to people two days before Christmas, I had to try to find Dwayne and Carla and come up with a plan to figure out who’d really killed Jimmy within the next twenty-four hours.
* * *
The day was half gone by the time my truck had tires and I was back behind the wheel. I knew Jimmy’s basic dumpster diving route, give or take a few dumpsters, but I didn’t know where Dwayne or Carla spent their days. I decided to go to one of the spots where they found me before and hope one of them showed up.
By the time three o’clock came, I’d sold more cupcakes than I thought I would thanks to last-minute Christmas shoppers, but Dwayne and Carla were nowhere around.
All I could think was that they expecte
d me to be back volunteering at the mission that night and planned to meet up with me there.
Either that or they’d both already vanished and left me looking stupid and complicit.
I headed back for the mission. A few people were already standing in line for a space, but there were so few that it was easy to see as I drove by that Dwayne and Carla weren’t there yet.
I pulled around back and parked my truck, under the nearest streetlamp to the door this time. Even though it wasn’t dark yet by any means, the winter sky had that dull gray look to it that seemed to make the sun disappear long before it actually set.
I didn’t miss hurricane season in Florida, but I did miss the year-round sunshine.
Dwayne and Carla stepped out of the alleyway.
I’d debated whether or not to tell them about Ethan’s threat. I’d decided not to because I wasn’t entirely sure Carla wouldn’t jump him in the parking lot if I did. Since he’d been at the shelter this morning, he’d hopefully gone home by now, but I didn’t want it on my conscience if he hadn’t.
I motioned them back to the alleyway. Lillian had told me the back didn’t have cameras. There were cameras all around the rest of the mission.
“We need to think again about who might have wanted Jimmy dead,” I said once we were all halfway back and—hopefully—safe from eavesdroppers. I wasn’t taking chances again.
“So you believe me now?” Carla’s voice was half surly and half genuinely hopeful, as if she wasn’t used to being believed.
What had brought her and Jimmy to this kind of life? It wasn’t the right time to ask, but there had to be a story behind it—probably a sad one. One involving a mortgage they couldn’t pay or the death of a child.
“I do.” I pointed at her feet. “But we have a problem. The police are going to look at you eventually because you were his wife. If they find your DNA on the bottles or on his shoes, the only way you’re not going to prison is if we can show them someone else was more likely the person who killed him.”
Carla blinked rapidly. “Dwayne said you were gonna help me eventually. I didn’t believe him.”
I almost thought I heard her say thank you under her breath, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Just like I wasn’t sure whether she was trying not to cry or the cold was making her eyes water the way it was mine.
Either way, getting back to the problem we had to solve would make the situation less awkward for both of us. “I was thinking we need to make a list of everyone who knew Jimmy was a recovering alcoholic.”
Dwayne shook his head. “We were talking about that, too. Most people think anyone who’s homeless is also a drunk. They might not have known nothing about Jimmy’s past.”
So not necessarily someone who knew Jimmy. Carla and Dwayne were also convinced it wasn’t another member of the homeless community, and I was sure it wasn’t Lillian. What did that leave us?
All I knew about Jimmy beyond that was that he liked my cupcakes and that he dumpster dove, looking for things he could fix up and sell.
“What if he found something in a dumpster that he shouldn’t have? The person who threw it there could have caught him picking through the garbage and been afraid he’d figure something out.”
“Or he could have tried to talk to them about it if he knew who put it there.” Dwayne sneaked a not-so-subtle glance at Carla. “He was a good guy. He was always wanting to give people a second chance.”
Confronting someone about a potential crime seemed foolhardy to me, but I was a coward at heart. I hadn’t stood up to anyone in my life when it really counted.
I checked my watch. Dwayne and Carla would need to get in line soon or they wouldn’t have a meal and a place to sleep tonight. My truck wasn’t big enough for all three of us to sleep in, and I certainly didn’t have enough food in it to feed me, let alone them. I’d even sold out most of my cupcakes for today—though that wasn’t saying much since I’d only been able to toss together a hasty two batches once I got my truck back.
Dark would be here soon, too, making retracing Jimmy’s steps extra difficult.
“What about if we meet tomorrow morning to travel Jimmy’s route? We can see what kinds of things are dumped and what businesses or apartments dump there. It won’t give us a name, but it’s a place to start.”
Given how short we were on time, I was going to grasp even that tiny straw for a beginning.
We agreed to meet up the next day immediately after they finished breakfast.
Two hours later, I was in the kitchen, loading the first batch of dishes into one of the industrial dishwashers when I heard shouting.
Carla shouting.
Chapter 12
Carla’s yelling got louder. Vy turned to face the kitchen door as if considering whether she should go out into the hallway.
I twisted the dishcloth I was holding. You need to leave this place, Fear insisted. And not come back. This isn’t your problem.
It wasn’t my problem. But I’d made it my problem. Beyond the fact that I’d liked Jimmy, beyond the fact that they’d given me tips on finding places to park, and beyond the fact that I felt a sense of kinship with them because none of us had homes.
Beyond everything else, they’d gone hunting for their friend who went missing.
When I’d disappeared, there was no one who cared enough about me to even notice, let alone search for me and try to figure out what happened.
Maybe that said something about Jimmy in comparison to me. I’d been very isolated. Maybe it said something about Dwayne and even Carla and the kind of people they were. Maybe it was both.
But they were doing what I wish I’d had someone to do for me—believe that I mattered and care what happened to me.
Vy turned back toward me. “Sometimes these things happen. I’ll check with the office to make sure the police have been called.”
She turned her back to me and pulled her cell phone from her pocket.
“I didn’t do it.” Carla must have been closer to the kitchen now. I could make out words. “He was dead when I found him.”
My legs gave out, and I caught myself on the edge of the counter just in time.
I glanced at Vy. She didn’t need to call the office to make sure the police had been called. The sick feeling in my stomach told me the police were the reason Carla was yelling in the first place.
They’d come to arrest her.
Ethan hadn’t kept his word. He’d gone to the police after all. There was no other way they could have decided to arrest her.
Hopefully I was jumping to conclusions. They might simply be trying to take her in for questioning because she was Jimmy’s spouse. Carla wasn’t the calmest woman. She might have panicked. She might think they were blaming her for Jimmy’s murder when they weren’t. Yet.
She’d make things worse for herself by overreacting—especially if for some reason Dwayne wasn’t there to calm her down.
I dropped the dish towel on the counter and headed for the door while Vy’s back was still turned.
I hurried for the cafeteria. It was suspiciously emptier than it should have been. Many of the clients seemed to have slinked away, not wanting to be part of the scene taking place. Other were openly staring, while a few didn’t even seem to be aware of the commotion happening. They were either lost in their own minds—where the real world meant little—or they were hoping that by avoiding eye contact they’d also go unnoticed.
A few feet away from the door, Carla stood in front of two police officers, gesturing wildly, her arms looking as if they’d detach from her body at any moment from the sheer force of her movements.
The fact that they’d sent two officers hinted that my hopes might be wrong. This might, in fact, be an arrest.
Carla’s gaze landed on me.
She bulldozed between the two officers. One of them stumbled to the side, and the other grabbed him, keeping him upright.
The look on Carla’s face reminded me of the way Jarrod looked before some of my wors
t beatings. I instinctively raised my arms to protect my face.
Carla slammed me into the wall, and pain ricocheted through my body.
“You lied to me.”
Slam.
I let my body go limp. It was like how the drunk driver in an accident was always hurt less than the person they crashed into because their bodies were more relaxed. I’d figured out how to turn my body into a ragdoll a long time ago.
“You pretended like you were gonna help me.”
Slam.
My body took the blow, but my heart felt it. She had been fighting back tears in the alley yesterday. She wasn’t used to people believing her and being willing to help her. She’d taken the risk on trusting me, and now she thought I’d betrayed her.
I opened my mouth to tell her it wasn’t me. She slammed me into the wall again, and the air rushed from my lungs.
Then she was being hauled back. The officers each had ahold of one of her arms. She turned her fury on them, cussing.
Without her pinning me to the wall, I sank to the ground. Everything around me spun.
Someone knelt down next to me. I hoped it was Dwayne so I could explain. When my eyes focused, I realized it was Lillian.
She didn’t touch me, probably because she was too well-trained when it came to not touching her clients, even platonically. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
My whole body ached, but I wasn’t going to a hospital. Not even if she’d caused internal bleeding. Hospitals cost money that I didn’t have. “I’ve survived worse.”
Lillian glanced back over her shoulder. I followed her gaze.
With the officers gone, there was a buzz in the room, like everyone was talking in whispers. Too many of them stared in our direction.
Lillian focused back on me. “We appreciate that you’ve helped out, but I think it might be best if you found somewhere else to volunteer. Tires can be replaced…”