by Emily James
The second shop was a convenience store. The teenage girl behind the counter had barely looked up from her phone and had told me I’d have to come back the next morning and talk to her manager.
I crawled back into Ethan’s truck after my encounter at the convenience store, feeling bone-cold and weary.
Ethan swiveled to face me instead of putting the truck back into drive. “Maybe we should call it for tonight. Most places are going to be closed soon anyway, and you look tired.”
You look tired seemed like one of those things smart men knew better than to say to a woman. In a strange way, though, I appreciated his concern. “I can’t stop until we’ve done the whole route. By tomorrow, any evidence might have been erased.”
Ethan got the truck moving again. “My route doesn’t go much further.”
Neither did Jimmy’s regular path. If memory served me, Dwayne and Carla had only taken me to three or four more dumpsters to look for him.
Ethan drove past an alleyway that I remembered. It was wedged between a jewelry store on one side and an accounting firm on the other. I remembered it because Dwayne said the dumpster had an unusual odor to it, and he’d been afraid that he’d find Jimmy decomposing inside.
Now it seemed like one of the most likely places for him to have found something he shouldn’t have. Maybe the accounting firm wasn’t properly disposing of confidential material, or an employee from the jewelry store had tried to steal something by tossing it into the trash and coming back for it later.
I reached a hand in Ethan’s direction, but I didn’t actually touch him. “You missed one.”
His face twisted into a tight frown. “Are you sure?”
“The alley we just passed has a dumpster at the end. It was one I visited before with Dwayne.”
I left Carla’s name off.
Ethan slowed the truck down incrementally. “I must be tired, too.”
He pulled a U-turn at the next light and turned down the alleyway.
I slid slowly down from his truck. Climbing in and out would have been a lot easier if he’d had running boards. It was a good thing we were almost at the end because my legs felt about as mushy as overcooked spaghetti.
Both the jewelry shop and the accounting firms had doors that opened up into the alley, presumably to provide them with easy access to the dumpster.
The alley wasn’t lit by anything more than the moon and the light from my cell phone. I switched over to the camera function.
I held my phone up and turned around, taking my time so that I didn’t accidentally miss anything in my fatigue. My eyes felt gritty from squinting at my phone for so long.
The accounting firm didn’t seem to have any cameras. I inched around until I faced the jewelry store.
A tiny red pinprick of light glowed from a spot above the door and to the left.
“Any luck?” Ethan said.
I jumped. I hadn’t expected him to join me. He’d stayed in the truck at every stop before this.
I turned to face him. He had the hood of his jacket up so that his face was nothing more than a shadow with white puffs of breath coming from the center.
A tingle rushed over my face, making my skin feel strangely hot. He reminded me a little too much of the Grim Reaper.
“Any sign of a camera?” he asked again.
I pocketed my phone. “The jewelry store has one. The storefront was still lit up when we passed before, so hopefully that means we can get them to send the footage to the police tonight.”
I went to move past him, but he stepped into my path. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find anything.”
Ringing filled my ears.
Ethan raised his right arm. He clutched a tire iron in his hand.
Chapter 15
The truth slid into place in my mind.
Ethan had his hood up to hide his face in case there was a camera and he needed to dispose of me. He didn’t want the camera catching his face.
There was only one reason for him to want to hurt me now, here. He’d killed Jimmy in this alley.
He’d been waiting to see if I found a camera. If I hadn’t, he’d have let me move on to the rest of the dumpsters.
It’d been why he tried to pretend this one wasn’t here.
Where had Fear’s voice been this time when I needed him? Though maybe it was my own fault. I’d been ignoring him so much the past few weeks that he might not be speaking to me anymore.
“I’m really sorry, Isabel.” Ethan sounded sincere, but more like someone who’d nicked the bumper of my car rather than like someone who was about to crack me in the skull with a metal pole.
Hadn’t he said something about a priest? If he was Catholic, hopefully I could appeal to his sense of right and wrong.
“Killing me to cover up whatever you did isn’t going to fix this. You’ll never have peace until you confess and turn yourself in.”
“I’ve already been to confession, and I’ll go again and do whatever penance the priest tells me to.” He gripped his other hand around the trunk of the tire iron. “But I can’t let you leave here. I’m safe as long as that video gets erased.”
That wasn’t the kind of confession I’d meant. I meant confessing to the police. Besides, if my dad had taught me one thing about his faith in God, it was that forgiveness wasn’t a free pass to do whatever you wanted.
“I grew up in a Christian home. I know Catholicism is different from Protestant denominations in a lot of ways, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. You can’t knowingly sin and then say a few Hail Marys to wipe it away.”
“What happened to that homeless man was an accident. I didn’t know he was in the dumpster when I emptied it into my truck. My priest said it was better for me to do penance for what I’d done by helping others than it was to go to prison for something I didn’t mean to do.”
“Then why not call the police? If it was really an accident.” Oh, wait. The reek of alcohol in his personal vehicle and his two weeks of sobriety. “Unless you were drinking on the job.”
I thought he nodded his head, but it was hard to tell with his bulky hood in place. “The police would have smelled it on me. They’d have made me take a breathalyzer.”
And while he wouldn’t have gone to prison for accidentally crushing a dumpster diver in his garbage truck if he’d been sober, it became a crime when it happened while he was drunk. His inebriated state might have even meant he ignored safety protocols.
That was why there was beer with Jimmy. It’d been the beer Ethan had with him. If he worked this area regularly, he would have seen that homeless people often hung out at the train yard. It would have been an easy connection for him to make to take Jimmy there and dump him on the tracks, hoping everyone would believe it was an accident.
His plan almost worked, except for the beer. Maybe he assumed Jimmy would have alcohol in his blood. Like Dwayne and Carla had pointed out, people often assumed that all homeless people were also drunks.
Ethan took a step toward me.
I stepped back even though there was nowhere to go. The alleyway ended in a brick wall that was the backside of another building. I could pound on one of the doors, but I might be dead before anyone came. If anyone came.
I moved farther back. If I could reach the dumpster, I might at least find something to defend myself with. “Killing me won’t be an accident. What will your priest say to that?”
He lunged for me, tire iron up. “Please forgive me.”
I screamed for help and sprinted backward toward the dumpster. Stupid me that I hadn’t thought to scream before, but Jarrod used to only beat me harder if I cried out. The instinct to call for help had been beaten out of me, literally.
I tripped over a bag of garbage and careened to the side. I grabbed the bag and heaved it at Ethan.
The dumpster rattled, and a figure launched out of the top. It crashed straight into Ethan.
For a second, I thought I’d fallen into those Twilight books that were so po
pular a few years ago and a vampire had swept down to tackle my attacker. But I was no Bella Swan, and the grunts and oofs said it was two normal men wrestling on the ground.
“This time you gotta be the one to call the police,” Dwayne’s voice came out in a panting cadence. “I got my hands full.”
Chapter 16
I spent the three minutes it took the police to reach us trying to figure out whether to give them my real name and risk tipping Jarrod off to which state I was in, giving them my Isabel Addington persona and hoping they didn’t run it, or making up a new name entirely and then leaving town the second they finished taking my statement.
Whether it was because of his guilty conscience or because he knew he had no hope of getting away with it anymore, Ethan confessed everything as soon as the police arrived.
He even detailed for them how he’d slashed my tires to scare me away from the mission because I was asking questions and how he reported Carla for having the dead man’s socks even though he knew she hadn’t killed him.
When he admitted to that last part, Dwayne glanced in my direction.
One officer took Ethan to the station to make his formal confession while the other officer took down our names and phone numbers. I told him my name was Isabel Addington and crossed my fingers that they wouldn’t look into her. They shouldn’t. The police didn’t normally run background checks on witnesses, though if Ethan hadn’t confessed, his future lawyer might have.
And, unfortunately, that meant I should also leave the city and move on, whether I wanted to or not. Hopefully, Ethan would sign a confession and it would all be over, but I couldn’t take the chance of someone looking too closely at me. If I faded away, changing my phone number, they’d probably assume I was another homeless person who’d disappeared and leave it at that.
The final police officer headed into the jewelry store to get the surveillance footage, leaving Dwayne and me standing in a dark alley. The officer really must have assumed we were both homeless. He hadn’t offered to give us a ride.
I held out a hand to Dwayne. Shaking his hand was the only way I could think of to show him respect, to let him know that I appreciated him coming to my rescue even though he thought I’d betrayed them. “Thank you.”
He shook my hand, but it was quick, like he was out of practice. “You really hadn’t given up on proving Carla didn’t do it.”
“I really hadn’t.” I motioned that we should start walking to the mission. The night was only going to get colder. If I told Lillian what had happened, she might find a spot for Dwayne even though their doors would be closed to clients by now. “What were you doing here?”
He patted his jacket pocket. “I called that lawyer friend of yours. She said if I could find some motive for another person to kill Jimmy, she’d come talk to Carla and see about defending her for free. You had a good idea about searching Jimmy’s route, so I figured I’d start on it myself.”
This end of Jimmy’s route was closest to the police station. That must have been why I hadn’t spotted Dwayne at the station or anywhere along the most direct path from the station to the mission. He’d deviated from the path to start investigating reasons Jimmy might have been killed.
“If you call her again,” I said, “I’m sure she’ll make sure Carla is out before Christmas.”
Dwayne slowed his steps. For a second, I wondered if he might be regretting working so hard to get Carla set free because now she’d be back out, bothering him again.
But then he turned his face toward me. “Will you be joining us for Christmas?”
The sooner I left, the sooner I could start establishing myself in a new place. And yet, Christmas seemed like a day that no one should have to spend alone. It seemed like a day that should be spent with people who were happy to see you.
There wouldn’t be presents to exchange this year. In fact, if I stayed, I’d spend it volunteering at the mission, giving instead of expecting to receive.
I liked that idea.
“I think I have to stay at least through Christmas. After all, we did just manage to get one of the mission’s most avid volunteers arrested. There might not be a Christmas dinner if I go.”
Letter from the Author
These stories were more “set at Christmas” stories than they were “Christmas stories,” but I hope you enjoyed seeing how Nicole and Isabel spent the Christmas after they met.
“Ginger Dead Man” is set before Isabel moves on to Lakeshore, where she has to figure out why someone would kill a hundred-year-old man at his birthday party. If you haven’t read Sugar and Vice yet, Isabel’s story continues there.
Nicole and Mark return to Fair Haven after “Unsilent Nights.” For those of you who’ve been hoping for another Maple Syrup Mystery, you’ll be getting it in 2019!
In the meantime, if you’d like the recipes that go along with these stories, make sure you’ve signed up for my newsletter. I’ll be sharing them there soon!
And if you enjoyed this book, I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews help fellow readers know if this is a book they might enjoy. Even a short sentence helps!
Love,
Emily
About the Author
Emily James grew up watching TV shows like Matlock, Monk, and Murder She Wrote. (It’s pure coincidence that they all begin with an M.) It was no surprise to anyone when she turned into a mystery writer.
Alongside being a writer, she’s also a wife, an animal lover, and a new artist. She likes coffee and painting and drinking coffee while painting. She also enjoys cooking. She tries not to do that while painting because, well, you shouldn’t eat paint.
Emily and her husband share their home with a blue Great Dane, six cats (all rescues), and a budgie (who is both the littlest and the loudest).
If you’d like to know as soon as Emily’s next mystery releases, please join her newsletter list at www.subscribepage.com/cupcakes.
She also loves hearing from readers.