by Sofia Belle
The Chief took one step inside, and I hovered close behind, staying outside of the door as instructed. I glanced over the car in the driveway, trying my best to bring back anything I could remember. I couldn’t say for certain whether that was the vehicle that’d barreled me down, but I couldn’t say it wasn’t either.
The car in Dan’s driveway was black and smallish, which is what I remembered. I took a step closer as the Chief explored the inside of the house, looking at the car, memorizing its features. That’s when I remembered the headlights. The bright, piercing light just before the blinding pain. Forcing my eyes to the headlights, I realized with a jolt that this was the car that’d tried to run me over without a doubt. I’d remember those headlights anywhere.
“What are you looking at?” The Chief joined me a moment later, watching as I walked in a slow circle around the vehicle, stopping beside the driver’s door.
I tried the handle. Thankfully, it was unlocked this time. “The car’s open, too. Did you find anything in the house?”
“No, and there’s not any sign he packed up to leave. Most of the clothes are still in the closet and a set of suitcases is tucked underneath the bed. His wallet is on the table near the front entrance, so it’s almost like he went for a walk.”
“Maybe he did?” I raised and lowered my shoulders. “I don’t know how people that run over others in cars think. Maybe he was exhausted so he went to grab a cup of coffee?”
The hour was creeping later and later, and the moon seemed to glow brighter and brighter, illuminating the dark car and giving me a brief flashback of that terrifying moment when my whole life had almost changed. If it weren’t for Madrina and her fast healing hands… I pushed the thought away and turned back to the car.
Opening the door, I poked my head inside and took stock of the interior. Nothing seemed particularly out of place. The car was clean and well-kept, but no matter how clean Dan had kept the vehicle, it was still old. Slight tears in the fabric and hairline cracks on the dashboard gave away the car’s age, along with the odometer that read into the six digits.
Other than that, it was a fairly typical daily driver without a lot of clutter. The slight scent of dough and marinara hung in the air, along with a slight hint of something fruitier. Wine maybe? Did he deliver wine with the pizza? No garbage or boxes lay around, and only one tissue was on the floor in the far right hand side of the car. The man didn’t even have an old coffee mug in here. It was minimal at its best.
“Anything?” The Chief came up near me, and with my head in the car and my butt outside of it, his close proximity made me self-conscious.
I pulled my head out from inside of the car. “It looks normal to me. Do you think…”
I trailed off, my eyes following the Chief as he walked in a slow circle around the car, coming to a stop on the other side of the vehicle. His eyes took on a gaze that might’ve burned holes in a lesser man. Stepping closer, he dragged his fingers across the front left side of the car. I watched, almost mesmerized at his jerky movements. His jaw twitched.
“Did you find something?” I cleared my throat when I couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer.
The Chief surveyed the vehicle for one more minute. “How?”
“How what?” Finally, my feet unfroze, and I made my way around to stand next to him.
It was easy to spot what he was looking at. Namely, a large dent.
“How are you okay?” He turned hollowed eyes on me. “A dent this size could have killed a deer. Yet here you are, not a few hours later, walking around with hardly a limp.”
I focused my eyes on the floor, figuring out the best way to wiggle out of this one. There were no humanly possible stories that could explain my lack of injuries against the size of the dent. So I didn’t. “Luck?”
“Luck.” He nodded, the word rolling sarcastically off his tongue. “Sure.”
“You hear about people surviving crazy things all the time. I read an article last week about a guy who got shot in the head with a staple gun. Not even a scratch! They pulled it out and he was right as rain.”
The Chief shook his head. “I don’t buy it.”
“Look, Madrina was there right away. She’s a nurse—”
“A nurse of sorts,” the Chief interrupted. “What does that even mean?”
“It means she doesn’t have a license! She uses some combination of holistic stuff and voodoo and modern medicine, and I don’t know. All I know is that she’s good at it. When we were kids, she took care of your broken arm that one time. Don’t you remember?”
The Chief started, as if the memory had eluded him, and it had just come back to him now. “I forgot all about that. My arm healed in about two weeks, even though the doctors said it would take months. They said my arm might never be the same again.” He extended his arm and moved it around a bit, as if remembering the pain from years ago. “I don’t even have a scar.”
“See?” I gave a small smile. “Maybe we shouldn’t try to understand everything. Maybe it’s just best if we accept some of the small wins in life and enjoy them.”
The Chief stepped towards me and before I knew what was happening, he had his arms around my shoulders and my head pulled tight to his chest. He murmured against my hair. “Then I will stop questioning why on earth you agreed to seven dates with a man like me, and I will just enjoy them. When I heard you’d gotten hit by a car…”
His voice trailed off, and the emotion behind his words made my own throat tighten. I leaned into his chest, hiding my face in his shirt.
“I suppose sometimes there is a… magic in life that shouldn’t be questioned.”
“I suppose so,” I mumbled. “Thank you.”
“For?”
“For everything.” I wanted to thank him for not pressing too hard, or asking all of the wrong questions. For demanding answers when I couldn’t provide them. For just being there; a warm, strong force to lean on when I couldn’t stand by myself.
Before I could voice any of those sentiments, however, an idea dawned on me so abruptly that I stood up. The Chief gave a curious shake of his head. “What is it?”
“That Kleenex,” I said. “There’s a single tissue in the car. And the scent—that’s not wine or fruit or juice—it’s perfume. Chief, there was a woman in this car, and I think I know who it might be.”
The Chief’s eyes narrowed, and I could almost hear him thinking back to his meeting with Trisha. She’d blown her nose more times than I could count, and he remembered it too. The perfume had smelled somewhat familiar, but masked by the pizza scent, I hadn’t put two and two together.
“Trisha,” the Chief said, at the same time I lunged for the car and yanked the door open.
“Do you think she left the Kleenex in here as a clue?” I turned to the Chief. “What if Dan took Trisha before he came after me?”
“Why would he come after you?”
“Maybe he couldn’t find Hank. If Dan didn’t know Hank was dead, maybe he thought he’d gone away, or was avoiding him.” I scanned the interior of the car. “She was definitely in here. Or maybe, maybe Dan fooled us all. Maybe he is stealthier than we gave him credit for, and the whole “anger-issue” thing is an act. Maybe Dan killed Hank, and he realized I was asking all the wrong questions.”
“So he tried to run you over,” the Chief said. “There’s only one way to find out. Where would Dan go next?”
Chapter 24
After some deliberation, we went with my plan to follow the scent. Climbing back into my car, we headed towards Trisha’s house to see if we’d missed anything the first time we were there.
“Maybe we have this all wrong,” I said. “Maybe it’s not her perfume, and maybe she’s sitting at home enjoying a cup of tea.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re quiet. What do you think?”
The Chief raised his eyebrows. “I don’t like to give out theories. It tends to color others’ opinions without the facts.”
“And
we all know you’re all about the facts.”
“It’s my job.”
He drove to Trisha’s house, which wasn’t five minutes away. As we stepped from the car, he looked at the house. “My gut tells me something’s not right. I don’t know what, but we’re missing something.”
“I agree.” I gave him a small smile. He hadn’t exactly given me a juicy theory to run with on a story, but it was a start. And it was a sign; a sign he trusted me enough to share his thoughts. “I won’t say anything, you know. I might be a reporter, but I can keep my mouth shut when I need to.”
“I don’t doubt you. Shall we?”
I followed him as we made our way up the path, his footsteps the only sound in the cool night air. The yard was eerie without the sunlight shining down on all of the ornaments. A frenetic, almost psychotic vibe. Statues were scattered everywhere, more than I can remember, and the grasses waved long and prickly in the breeze.
All at once, the Chief turned to me, a dark glitter in his eyes. “I wonder if the door is unlocked.”
I shrugged. “We can try it…” I trailed off, understanding his point. “Oh. Maybe you should go see if Trisha left her… uh, mail out in the front yard.”
The Chief turned to give me my privacy, and I hid a smile. I’d never expected him to bend the rules, although there was probably some technicality that would make it perfectly legal for him to enter the house. Most likely, he was impatient.
I closed the distance to the front door in no time at all. Resting my hand on the knob, I muttered the same unlocking curse that I’d used on Dan’s house while the Chief turned his back to the house and whistled a tune.
I wondered if he thought I had a lock pick set on myself, or if maybe he, too, had magic in his veins. I’d never guessed it before if he had, but I could see it. A very toned-down, non-flashy form of magic sort of like Belinda’s ability to see true love.
As I turned the handle and found the door opening easily, I whispered for the Chief to join me. He was by my side so quickly I considered whether he might have super-speed powers.
“Don’t tell anyone I let you have at that door,” he whispered. “And I won’t ask questions.”
“Deal,” I whispered back, my voice fading to nothing as the door fell open, exposing the interior of Trisha’s house.
Strangely familiar, it took on the same eerie vibe as the front yard under the mask of night. Going inside was the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t particularly have a choice if we wanted to get to the bottom of this.
I tilted my shoulders backwards and did my best not to walk with a limp, though my knee was starting to ache. Even with the help of Madrina’s magical powers, it’d only been a few hours since I’d been hit by a car; it was understandable that I might be a bit sore.
“Are you okay?” The Chief cast a worried look in my direction, his gaze focusing on my injured knee. “Please, stay in the car like I’ve suggested no less than one million and five times.”
“I’m coming with you.” Ignoring the pain, I pushed past him and moved into the middle of the quiet living room. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s here.”
Taking a step in front of me, he pushed across the front of my body and held a finger to his lips. “Let me check, first.”
On a different day, I might have argued. But my knee ached and this place was giving me the creeps, so instead, I nodded and moved to the table in the front hall, poking around the papers scattered there.
A few minutes later, the Chief returned as soundlessly as when he’d disappeared. “Nobody’s home.”
I looked up. “That’s strange. Where is everyone? Is someone holding the annual Fairyvale Ball tonight? If so, they forgot to send me an invitation.”
“Maybe they assumed I’d ask you to be my plus one.”
I ignored his wink and gestured for him to come towards me. “What do you make of this?”
The Chief took the piece of paper I slid his way. I’d found it in the desk around the corner while he’d been checking for signs of life in this house. I wasn’t sure whether the Chief would approve of my snooping habits or not, so I did it while he was away. Ask forgiveness, not permission—that’d been my general motto so far, and seeing how I had yet to end up in jail, it was working for the moment.
“You didn’t go into that drawer over there and look for this, did you?” The Chief nodded towards the exact drawer from which I’d pulled the file. On top was one sheet that’d been already sitting out. Underneath, I’d placed the rest of the files from the drawer where I’d peeked during the Chief’s absence.
“I can’t tell if you want the real answer of the fake one,” I said with a wry smile. “Neither? Okay, fine. This one sheet was sitting out, and I went to the desk drawer to pull out the rest of the stack.”
“It looks like a blueprint.”
Grateful that he chose to ignore my extravaganza into the desk, I breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s exactly what I thought. It looks like plumbing work, doesn’t it? I don’t know much about construction or pipes, but I’m pretty sure that’s a toilet.”
“Wow, you could give Einstein a run for his money.”
I elbowed the Chief playfully. “Funny guy, you are.”
“Why that desk?” He nodded towards the corner. “I couldn’t have been gone for more than five minutes, and this is the first thing you found. What brought you over there?”
“Look at the place.” I gestured to the entire room. “Clutter, clutter, clutter… everywhere here is so clearly Trisha’s domain, but that desk is different.” I pointed towards the corner. “There are no candles, no toothpicks or tissues or stuffed animals, or anything there. It’s as if it’s someone else’s space entirely.”
“Hank,” the Chief said with a nod. “Trisha and Hank dated for so long that it’d be natural he’d have a small space here. Even if they’d been broken up for a month or so. It’s doubtful she would’ve got rid of it so quickly.”
“Exactly. They were so hot and cold that it would make sense for her to leave it here, just in case they got back together. Hank likely worked there if he stayed here on the weekends or something.”
“Smart.”
“But why is this sitting out?” I asked. Our gazes returned to the plumbing plans. “I found the rest of Hank’s work over in that drawer, but this one particular paper was sitting out. Why?”
No answer.
“Chief?” I asked. “Are you thinking something you’d like to share?”
Based on the deep furrows or his eyebrows, he had an idea. “Maybe.”
“Talk out loud. Maybe it’ll help.”
“I’m not a plumbing expert, but I helped my dad a lot with around the house stuff when we were little.”
“You helped us, too,” I said quietly. “Changing lightbulbs and stuff.”
“Half the time I unscrewed the lightbulbs first, just so you’d call me over to help.” He laughed. “Apparently my crush started early in life, and it never faded.”
I didn’t have a good response. The way the Chief turned his head to look at me showed a vulnerable, almost sweet side, which directly opposed his hard, lean body and firm cop stance. The dichotomy of tenderness and tough guy had my heart twisting in knots, and I struggled to find anything to say at all.
“I know what it is,” he said, helping me out of the awkward silence. “This, right here.”
I leaned close to look over his shoulder, not missing the fact that the side of my arm brushed against his chest. The man wasn’t an Armani high fashion model. He was better. His hands rugged, his hair ruffled from hard work and not styling gel, his muscles built from those morning runs I saw him doing three days a week from my office windows.
How had I forgotten to actually look at the man in so long? All of our cat-fighting had distracted me from a few important facts: he was handsome, he was nice, and he was a good man.
“What is that chamber for?” I asked, focusing on the tiny little pocket between the pipe draw
ings.
“That’s the thing. I can’t figure out what it is. It’s not necessary from what I can tell, and I helped remodel my dad’s bathroom. My own house had a bathroom redesign last year, and I approved the blueprints. This wasn’t there.”
“Maybe it’s a secret cave,” I said with a goofy grin. “You know. Where better to hide precious materials and money than underneath the toilet? I certainly wouldn’t go digging around there.”
The Chief straightened up so fast I took a step backwards. “You might be right.”
“That was a joke. I’ve never heard of a secret toilet chamber.”
“A few years ago, back before I was Chief, I worked a case of a money launderer. They always had these huge sums of cash on hand, but no matter how long and how hard we searched, and no matter how many warrants we secured, we could never find their stash.”
“It was in a secret toilet chamber?”
“Well, not a secret toilet chamber, but they’d built something into the wall and disguised it behind a bunch of plumbing work. We only found it because one of the guys in the ring flipped on the others and spilled the beans. We found over a million dollars stashed around the house, all of it stolen and stashed in the walls.”
“Do you think Hank knew what he was building?”
“Hard to say,” the Chief said. “But there’s one way to find out.”
“Is it too late to go over to Reynolds’ house? We don’t really know that he’s done anything wrong. We don’t even really know this is for his house.”
The Chief walked over to the desk, dug around a bit, and pulled out a file with the name Reynolds on it. He flashed it in my direction. “This is enough proof for me. Also, with Trisha being gone, Dan being gone, and you being run over by a car, I don’t mind dragging a few people out of bed in order to get to the bottom of all this.”
“Everything could just be a misunderstanding,” I said hesitantly. “It could be some sort of plumbing thing we’re not aware of.”
“Or it couldn’t. Maybe Dan discovered the plan somehow and came over here.”
“You think he heard about the plan,” I said, taking over. “And he kidnapped Trisha. That’s why she would’ve been in his car. He was trying to find whatever is hidden in these pipes, and he wanted the blue prints.”