by Sara Rosett
I opened my phone and dialed Bonnie’s number. She answered on the first ring, sounding impatient as always. “Yes?”
“Hi, Bonnie.” I had to work to make my voice sound casual. It was especially hard since my heart was pounding. “It’s me, Ellie. I left some papers in your house—”
“I can’t come back there to let you in,” she cut in.
“No, that’s fine. I wouldn’t want you to miss your meeting. I was wondering…do you have a key hidden somewhere or with a neighbor? I could pop in and get the papers and you wouldn’t have to come all the way back here. I hate to bother you, but I really need—”
“Yes, fine. Taped under the mailbox. I’m going into the meeting right now, so I won’t be answering my phone. If you can’t find the key you’ll have to wait until this afternoon.”
She didn’t say good-bye, just hung up on me. Well, that must be some meeting if she wasn’t even going to answer her phone. I had a couple more Hershey’s kisses to fortify me as I checked the street. There were a few kids riding bikes, but they were the only movement. I decided I better go before anyone else I knew arrived and wanted to chat.
I hurried across the lawn, reminding myself I had Bonnie’s permission to do this. It’s not like I was breaking and entering. I was entering, but with permission. Then why did I feel breathless and could practically hear my own heartbeat? I felt like I did during the stroller brigade workout when I’d climbed the steepest hill in the neighborhood. I ran my fingers under the mailbox, pulled away a thick layer of tape, then peeled the key off the tape and inserted it in the lock.
I turned the key and shoved the door open. I was stepping across the threshold when a deep voice asked, “Can I help you with something, Ellie?”
Tips for Busy, Budget-Minded Moms
Storing paperwork
Create a filing system. Have one set of folders labeled with individual accounts like utilities, insurance, retirement accounts, store and charge cards, and charities. After a bill is paid, file it in the appropriate folder.
Make another set of files for long-term storage: mortgage or lease contracts, tax returns, warranties and receipts, and personal documents.
It’s a good idea to create a file for each family member with birth certificate, passport, social security card, shot records, school transcripts, and resumes. Keep this file in a fireproof safe or safety-deposit box. Small document safes can be purchased at discount stores.
Chapter Twenty-one
Colonel Barnes stood on the porch behind me with a quizzical look on his face. He was in workout clothes—a sweat-drenched T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. His shaved head glistened with sweat. He wiped his arm across his forehead, then said, “Seems we’re destined to run into each other at empty houses, Ellie. Bonnie’s not home.”
“I know. I met her here earlier.” I’d completely forgotten that Bonnie had said he would be coming home.
“She told me about that—organizing thing,” he said with the same vaguely suspicious tone that I’d heard many times from spouses of people who wanted to hire me. Sometimes I had to sell organizing services twice—once to each spouse. Of course, that wasn’t the case here, since I wasn’t going to organize anything for them.
“I left some of my stuff here by accident, so I called her and she told me where the key was.” I held it up, like it was evidence that I hadn’t picked the lock.
“Sure, fine, go ahead,” he said as he reached by me and opened the mailbox. He took out several envelopes. “I’ll wait until you’re done before I head back to the squadron.”
I paused. “You ran all the way from the squadron? That’s on the other side of the base.”
He shrugged as he looked through the envelopes. “It’s not that far, only about three miles.” A little of my anxiety at being alone with him eased. He was preoccupied with opening one of the envelopes and wasn’t even looking at me. He didn’t seem to care that I’d been about to enter his empty house.
I hurried down the hallway and into the living room where I leaned down and ran my hand under the edge of the couch. The file was a few inches back. I pulled it out and quickly checked to make sure the photocopied papers were in it.
Colonel Barnes had stepped inside the door. He tossed the mail on a stack of magazines and envelopes on a small table near the door.
“I found it,” I said as I waved the file and hurried past him. “Thanks, Colonel Barnes.”
I was already in the grass of the front yard when he called out. “Ellie, the key.”
“Oh. Of course. Sorry.” I met him on the porch and held out the key. In my hurry to get out of there, I let go of the key a second before he grabbed it and it pinged to the concrete. “Oops. Sorry,” I said and picked it up. “Here you go.”
He took the key, then said, “Wait,” his gaze fixed on the folder I had firmly clutched to my side. I glanced down and saw the papers had come loose when I bent down. Now the edges of the papers where fanned out, peeking over the edge of the folder, the highlighted lines glowing almost neon in the sunshine.
He quickly reached out and plucked a photocopied page from the folder. “Where did you get this?”
I took several steps back. “That? Oh…I didn’t even realize it was in there. Haven’t seen it before.” I took another step back. “I’ve got to go—”
He closed the distance between us and gripped my arm above the elbow. The sharp smell of sweat enveloped me. Obviously, he hadn’t bought my never-seen-it-before ploy, maybe because I kept inching away from him. “Where did you get this?” he demanded again.
“It was in the folder Bonnie gave to me, but I’ll forget I ever saw it, really, if you’ll let go. You’re hurting my arm.”
His tight grip eased, but he didn’t release me. “I have to show you something,” he said, and began marching me to the front door.
“No.” I straightened my legs, resisting.
He pulled harder, practically dragging me. “I just want you to see something.”
“No.” I squirmed, fighting to break free of his grip. I realized I still had the folder in my other hand and started hitting him in the face with it. “Let me go.” I twisted around, but couldn’t break free, so I dug my feet into the soft grass.
He stopped and released my arm. “My God, you’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”
I would have turned and sprinted to the minivan, but his voice, a mixture of incredulity and—surprisingly—fear, held me still.
“I’m not going inside that house,” I said. My hands were trembling and I was breathing hard. I stepped back and saw a trail through the lawn where my heels had ripped up the grass and exposed dark streaks of earth.
“Okay, okay,” he said and backed away, his hands in the air.
A car cruised down the street and we both noticed the driver watching us. Colonel Barnes put his hands down and said, “Look, I only want to show you something. I apologize for grabbing you, but you’ve got the wrong idea—I know it looks bad, but I—just wait here, okay? Please don’t leave, all right?”
I’d never seen this pleading, almost nervous side of Colonel Barnes. I glanced around and saw the kids on their bikes at the end of the street and a dog walker heading our way. Another car was turning onto the street.
What could he possibly have to show me? Part of me wanted to get out of there, but part of me—the curious side I never seemed to be able to quite squelch—wanted to stay. His attitude was so weird. “I’ll stay as long as there are people on the street and I’m in sight of them.”
He glanced quickly up the street and saw the car and the woman walking her dog. He nodded and backed slowly away. At the porch, he stepped inside the door, which was still open, then reappeared outside in a few seconds.
“Here, take a look at that,” he said, holding out an open envelope at arm’s length.
I took it and he said, “Go on, read it.”
The return address read, “Pomeroy & Associates.” I pulled a single sheet of paper from t
he envelope and quickly scanned three lines of text, a preprinted form letter. Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, I am not taking on new clients at this time. I wish you the best in finding representation.
A scrawl in blue pen across the bottom read, Sorry, but I already have several thrillers on my list and there was nothing in your query to indicate your work would stand out in an already crowded market. Best of luck.
The only thing I could make out in the scribble of a signature under the personal note was an enormous P at the beginning of the last name.
I looked up from the letter. “A thriller? As in a book? A novel?”
“Yes. I have seventeen more rejection letters inside, if you’d like to see them,” he said.
Seventeen. Wow. That was a lot of rejection, but instead of looking embarrassed or depressed, he had an eager look on his face as he pointed to the letter. “See that? I’m getting handwritten notes on mine, not just form letters—that’s a good sign.”
“You’re writing a novel?” I asked again, still stuck on this surprising bit of news. Colonel Barnes glanced at the dog walker who was almost even with us, then stepped closer and said, “I’ve already written it, all ninety-two thousand words. That page you saw—that was research.”
Research. Who would have thought that? And from Colonel Barnes. He was about the farthest from a literary-type guy that you could get with his blustery personality and focus on promotion. I thought back to what I’d seen in the dining room. Besides the stacks of photocopies, I’d also seen a three-inch-thick stack of double-spaced pages. If I hadn’t been so focused on the photocopies, I might have paid more attention to the other papers. My thoughts circled back to the photocopies. “I still don’t understand about all those papers. Why would you copy that information? Doesn’t everyone do research on the Internet these days?”
“Nah—I’m old school. I like to have a hard copy and you can’t trust everything you read on the Internet, anyway. Books and magazine articles are much more reliable.”
“So everything in the dining room—all of those papers—it’s all research?” I asked.
“You saw that, too? No wonder you looked petrified. Yes, that’s all research. I have terrorists in my novel killing people, blowing up things. I have to be accurate. Could you please keep quiet about this? I know what you were thinking—that I was somehow involved in Colonel Pershall’s death, but I did that research months ago and it has nothing to do with his death.”
Why would he care if people knew he was writing a book, even a book with terrorists in it? Unless…” Someone’s strangled in your book, aren’t they?”
He sighed, resigned. “Yes.”
“Who? What character?”
“A commander.”
“So when Colonel Pershall died, you panicked and hid your book and research.” Bonnie had said the dining room had been cleaned out and Montigue had said they hadn’t found anything like the papers I described.
“I know it looks bad,” he said, reaching out for the rejection letter. I handed it to him and he added it to the highlighted paper he’d pulled from the file, which he still held in his hand. He continued, “I was with him at the golf course. I knew they’d check me out. Who’s going to believe that it’s a coincidence—that I wrote a scene with strangulation and then my commanding officer is strangled?”
He was using the word strangled, not garroted, so maybe he didn’t know how Colonel Pershall had died, or maybe he did know and was covering by using the wrong word. “So you hid everything? Where did you put it? You’ve got a lot of papers in there,” I said, shifting so that I could glance up and down the street. A car paused at the four-way stop, then continued on.
“I rented a second locker at the gym. No one noticed when I made a few trips to the gym with heavy duffel bags. It took me three trips to move all that paper. But it was worth it. If the police had looked at me more closely—searched my laptop—they’d find out, but since they didn’t find any initial evidence that I was involved, they didn’t look deeper.”
“Writing a novel with a scene like that is a long way from actually committing murder. I still don’t see why you’d want to hide your writing. If the only evidence is that you’ve written about strangulation, then you’re not in trouble.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth and looked at me thoughtfully, then said, “It’s hard to explain. I want to keep the writing thing quiet. You’re the only one who knows now.”
“Bonnie doesn’t know?” I asked, incredulous. How could you keep something like that from your wife? “Didn’t she see you working on it, or notice all your research papers in the dining room?”
He made a dismissive gesture with the letter, wiping away my comments like they were nothing. “When I’m writing, she thinks I’ve brought work home from the squadron. Besides, she’s too wrapped up in her own world to notice what’s going on in mine.”
That was an amazing statement that I couldn’t let go. “How could a wife not know her husband was writing a novel—wouldn’t the extra stacks of paper tip her off? And what about your computer? Wouldn’t she see your files on there?”
“She never goes in the dining room—that’s where I work. We don’t eat in there and we have separate laptops.”
“What about the mail? Wouldn’t she see that letter?” I persisted, pointing at it.
“Why do you think I ran over here today before lunch? Most of my queries are e-queries anyway, so there’s only a few I have to watch for in the mail. But even if she did see one, she’d probably just hand it off to me and keep plowing through her routine. She’s got tunnel vision—her job and the kids are what she focuses on. I’m on the periphery. At least, I was until Colonel Pershall died and she decided I should be squadron commander,” he said wearily.
“And you don’t want it?” I asked.
“No. I want to write and get published and write more books. I’d rather write novels than be a squadron commander.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done a good job hiding what you really want to do. I think everyone in the squadron thinks you want to be a general.” Something about what he’d said earlier was bothering me and I suddenly realized what it was. “Colonel Pershall knew, didn’t he? You said I was the only one who knew about your writing now, like someone else had known about it.”
He smiled weakly. “Yes, Lewis knew. He picked up on all my jokes about promotion. I think it was a case of protesting too much. He realized I didn’t want it. I told him what was going on and he was supportive. He even read the first chapters of my manuscript—that’s why I was in Denise’s house. I had to get those manuscript pages back before Denise or the police found them.”
If he was telling the truth—and I did believe him—then his reason for being in Denise’s house wasn’t as sinister as I thought. The power-walking ladies turned the corner and headed in our direction.
“So,” he said, his voice shifting from the confessional tone to a let’s-wrap-this-up tone, “since you know what’s going on and know it has nothing to do with Lewis’s death, will you keep it quiet?”
“No, I can’t. I’ve already called the detectives investigating Colonel Pershall’s death and told them what I saw.”
He looked scared and I thought maybe I’d made the wrong assessment of him. Perhaps his writing was an elaborate ruse to cover for a murder? He slapped the letter against his leg. “That’s it, then—everyone will know.”
I felt the wariness rise in me again and I began easing back a few steps. “They’ll know what?”
“That I’m a writer.”
“Why do you care about that?” Shouldn’t not becoming a murder suspect be his real concern here?
“Don’t you see? Most agents and publishers reject ninety-nine percent of the material they see. It’s a long shot. If I don’t get an agent and don’t get the book published—it’s another failure and now, if that happens, everyone will know.”
I picked my words carefully, thinking of how he’d sai
d another failure. Was he talking about his air force career? I didn’t see how he could consider himself a failure. Reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel was no easy thing, but if your aspirations—or your spouse’s aspirations—were much higher than that, well, I suppose you could see yourself as a failure. Finally, I said, “I don’t think people are going to look down on you, if you don’t get your book published. In fact, I’m impressed that you’ve written one while you’ve got another full-time job.”
“Thanks, that’s nice of you to say, but I doubt everyone will see it that way.”
He glanced at the house and I knew he was thinking of Bonnie. Remembering their conversation that I’d overheard last night, I could pretty much imagine what her response would be. I bet she’d be upset he’d poured his time into writing a book instead of focusing on his air force career. Yep, she’d be mad. I could almost understand his attitude. “Well, if it’s any consolation, the OSI agent I talked to wasn’t very interested when I told her about the papers I’d seen. She may not even follow up on it.”
“No, that’s too much to hope for,” Colonel Barnes said, his gaze fixed behind me. I turned and saw a security police car pulling to the curb.
A security police officer emerged from the driver’s seat and Montigue stepped out of the passenger side. As they crossed the grass, the officer said, “We had a call about a possible domestic disturbance at this address. Is there a problem?”
I glanced at Colonel Barnes to see his reaction. He looked down at the highlighted paper he still held in his hand along with the letter from the literary agent. He pressed his lips together as he studied the papers, then raised his head.
“Special Agent Montigue, I have something that appears to have drawn some attention.” He glanced at me as he added, “And raised some unfounded suspicions.” He gave her the highlighted paper.
She shot me a long glance before she said, “Well, we better clear this up.”