by Kilby Blades
What if it’s Keenan? What if he found me?
She had taken so many precautions—had been hyper-vigilant about laying low. Maintaining access to her would only feed his delusion that her divorce talk was a phase. She’d been asking for one for more than a year; begging him to enter into mediation; even threatening to serve him papers if he refused. Blind optimism and sheer audacity had him dismissing her only wish. Leaving the way she did had been her last resort.
Not yet certain she would answer the door, Shea took a detour into a spare bedroom that faced the front. If she stood in just the right spot, she’d be able to see a car and maybe even its driver. What she saw through the window made her stomach drop. The only visitor that made her as nervous as an FBI agent or Keenan himself was standing at her doorstep: a cop.
Shit.
She cursed out loud, frozen to her spot for a tense second—one tense second too long. The officer at her door, sensing eyes on him, perhaps, darted his gaze in the direction of where she stood. He made eye contact, flash a perfunctory smile and waved.
Double shit.
With no other option, Shea returned the gesture with a wan smile, thankful that he seemed in good spirits. If he were there to question her, he wouldn’t be so jovial, right? As her feet carried her toward the door she couldn’t not-answer now, she returned to the mantra that would have to see her through:
Act natural.
Act natural.
Act natural.
“Morning, ma’am. Sorry to bother you,” the officer said as Shea swung open the door, clutching the lapels of her robe together for effect. Shea was glad she’d fully submerged her head in her bath water a minute before the doorbell debacle. It had left her hair disorganized, disheveled and all curled up.
“Oh. Hi, officer.” Shea used the lighter version of her usually mellow voice, making certain to sound surprised. “Sorry it took me a minute to answer. I had to put on some clothes.”
“Deputy Brody,” he clarified. He didn’t stick out his hand. He also didn’t apologize for having interrupted her bath. He was younger than Shea, and shorter, and naturally blond in a way that flirted with red. The muscle on his square jaw was pronounced and it flexed as he gnawed fiercely on what smelled like minty gum. Deputy Brody seemed a little intense.
Looking even more intense than the deputy himself was the dog who sat, obedient and alert, at the deputy’s side. She resembled a German Shepherd, only there was something different in her face and something lighter in her coat. Shea never passed up a petting opportunity if a dog looked sweet and the owner looked nice enough to ask. Today, neither of those seemed to be the case.
“You weren’t here the last few times I’ve been by,” the deputy continued in an all-business tone. “Been wantin’ to see how you’re getting along up here.”
"You’ve been up here before?” Shea blinked, not having expected this.
Brody gnawed on his gum for a few beats.
“Standard procedure,” he explained. “For the sake of community safety. We perform weekly welfare checks on anyone we believe to be living alone."
He looked past her then, craning his neck to see into the house at the same time he hooked his fingers into his belt loops.
"You living alone here, Miss Summers?”
"Well, it's not my house—it's my friend's house. But he doesn't really live here. Most of the time, it'll just be me."
Shea managed not to stammer out the answer, but only barely.
"Word around town is, you’re here from New York. You ever lived in the mountains?”
Shea just shook her head. She’d mentally prepared herself to be interrogated with different kinds of questions—questions like, “Have you ever heard of a man named Keenan West?” And, “Where are you hiding the money?” but even this shook her. The difficulty in answering benign questions truthfully proved that Shea was not cut out for white-collar crime.
“I’d like to do a walk-through, if you don’t mind.”
“Why?” She blurted, finally finding her voice as the strongest wave of panic yet set in. The residual moisture from her shower was handy cover for the fact that she’d begun to sweat.
“Ma’am, we get quite a few calls from city folk when they find themselves in a pickle. Word has it, you’re staying a while. You should be prepared for the conditions. Thunderstorm season isn’t over yet. Winter’ll come quick on its heels. If no one’s checked your emergency supplies or shown you how to use the generator, someone should.”
“I don’t know…” Shea hedged, her hand reaching once again to clutch the top of her robe together. It was beginning to get awkward, him outside but obviously eager to come in.
“I’d rather get you settled now than have to come up and assist,” he pushed. “Making sure you don’t get into trouble in the first place is the best use of department resources.”
Deputy Brody didn't say it unkindly, but the implication was clear: city folk were dumber than a bag of rocks.
“I mean, I’m not even dressed…”
She looked down at herself for effect and was buoyed when he had the decency to look chagrined.
“…and once I got dressed, I was planning to head into town. I need to be back by noon for a phone call,” she lied. “Look. I appreciate the offer, but now just isn’t a good time. But my friend who owns the house is visiting soon. I’ll have him show me everything I need. I promise.”
The deputy looked reticent to agree and it took a long moment for him to respond. He took one last look into the house behind her, before looking back at her face. “Don’t wait too long,” he warned, then tipped his hat and issued a reluctant, “Have a good afternoon.”
Shea waited a respectable amount of time before she closed the front door, then made it all the way back into the master bedroom before collapsing against the wall. She’d been too sloppy about the money. So sloppy that, if he’d done said walk-through, she’d have been in deep shit. He’d have asked her for identification. Even if she’d given her birth certificate, legitimizing that she was, indeed, Shea Summers, name change and marriage records would lead him right to Elle West.
Throwing her robe off for how badly she was sweating and catching her breath from what was clearly a panic attack, Shea calmed, then cooled, then walked to the room that held the incriminating evidence.
I can’t just let it sit here like this, Shea thought for the umpteenth time as she walked into the bedroom next to the master. Piles of neatly packed bricks had accompanied her from New York. They’d been stored in more than thirty designer overnight bags hewn from a stylish canvas, transported in a U-Haul instead of an armored car.
Shea hadn’t asked any questions. When Tasha Harris hatched a plan to get you out of a bad marriage, you used her people and did what she said. Tasha was a top-notch divorce lawyer, known within circles of upper-crust women for extricating unhappy wives from marriages with controlling men. It wasn’t unheard-of for people to protect their money in anticipation of a divorce. Tasha assured Shea that proving extenuating circumstances was something she’d done before. It might seem risky in the short term, but it would all come out in the wash.
The room reminded Shea of a staging space she’d once seen for celebrity gift bags they’d given out at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Except, instead of being filled with the hottest new tech gadgets and beauty products, the bags were filled with cash. There was something satisfying about seeing it like this. Maybe that was why she had never hidden it. Even though it paled in comparison to the money she’d married into, three-quarters-of-a-million dollars was more than she’d ever dreamed of earning as a food writer.
Still, the sheer volume of legal tender was becoming a problem. That kind of money was compact if you kept it in large bills. But paying for everything in hundreds would be too suspicious in a small town. She’d had a quarter of it broken up into smaller denominations and those small bills made up three-quarters of the bags. She’d stay off of the radar by paying for everything for the next year in ones, f
ives, tens and twenties.
Credit cards were out of the question. Keenan was no stranger to private investigators. Leaving a digital trail would lead him right to her. He wasn’t dangerous—just manipulative and convinced of the idea that she didn’t really want a divorce, and a master of using information to get the upper hand.
Maybe I’ll put it in storage bins, she thought to herself, wondering where she might find the closest Container Store. She could at least find something that looked decorative and blended in. She put the thought aside for now and opted to grab some bills. Moving the bags would take half a day and she needed sustenance first. She’d drop the cash in her purse, get dressed, then head down to Delilah’s.
5
The Absentee
Dev
“Anything good?” Betty Cheevers wanted to know as she breezed through the automatic door, moving quickly for a fifty-something who spent her career on her feet. As usual, she arrived seven minutes before the official start of her shift, heavy purse over her shoulder and knitting bag in her hand.
Every other day of the week that she worked, she started her shift at two. Fridays were the exception. Dev’s weekly meeting with Sapling’s Economic Development Council—the EDC—meant he had to be up the hill by noon. He’d spent the morning reworking the third version of his economic revival plan.
“Jessie Wakefield’s expecting,” Dev reported. She’d been through that morning. “Bought out every bag of ginger chews and lemon candy in the store.”
Betty stepped up onto the platform behind the desk and stowed her purse in a drawer, leaving the knitting bag on the counter. Afternoons were busier than mornings—especially before the weekend rush—but there would still be plenty of time for her yarn.
“She and Butch had been trying for a while,” Betty reported with her oft-used, knowing voice. “She out of her first trimester?”
“Didn’t ask.” Dev was already packing up his laptop and clearing the desk so that Betty could sit. She stopped long enough to plant her hand on her hip and pin him with a teasingly reproachful look.
“I keep telling you—when people tell you things, you gotta get all the details. You’re not nearly curious enough for your own good.”
Dev just hummed in response, though not in agreement, as he continued to pack up his things. Betty had been “getting all the details” from people for more than twenty-five years.
“I’ll be up the hill at Laura’s,” he announced instead of gratifying her chastisement with an answer. Loose lips notwithstanding, Betty was a good cashier and he needed her.
She’d been one of the original cashiers at Zachary’s and had been forced into early retirement when the former grocery had closed. When she’d found out that Dev was opening a new one, she’d shown up to ask for a job. She knew everything about running a grocery store, had been a quick study on his higher-tech registers and inventory system, and she’d been the perfect person to train the part-timers who worked the other shifts.
“Call me if you need anything,” he instructed, shouldering the gray backpack that held his laptop and nutritional essentials: alkaline water, kale chips, and supplements for the rest of the day. Dev imagined what album he might put on as he climbed into his old pickup—the one he kept in Colorado and had owned since he was a teen. He was thirty seconds into Superstition when the first moment’s peace he’d had all day was ruined by the special alert on his phone.
I’ve gotta change these settings.
He’d thought it the last time, too. If the media ever wrote about John Hamren, Dev was the first to know. Only, the Google Alerts had become intrusive. He didn’t like that they came in at any random moment. He liked it even less that waiting to read the headline always made him hold his breath. The probability was increasing that, one day, the newspaper story about his biological father would tell him the septuagenarian was dead.
Once upon a time, following the man in the news had been simpler. Dev had been ambivalent about ever wanting to meet him back then. And he was wise enough to know that he didn’t need another father. He also didn’t need a scapegoat or a punching bag or some theatrical scene of reckoning. Only, somewhere along the line, things had changed. Dev had changed. And answers had become everything.
Jon Hamren to be honored by the Smithsonian Museum in November
That’s what the headline read. It went on to flatter the illustrious career of the architecture-world icon. Dev had consumed everything that had ever been printed or video recorded about John Hamren’s career: his rise, his fall, his redemption and everything in between.
It wouldn’t be like last time, he told himself.
The pep talk Dev seemed set on was one he’d given himself before. Showing up to see John Hamren was something he’d done in the past. Only, he hadn’t spoken a single word either time. The first, he’d been too filled with rage he hadn’t expected. The second time, he’d been too timid.
You don’t have time for this.
Dev took an extra second at an empty stop sign intersection to close his eyes against unwelcome thoughts—against the debate he couldn’t have with himself now. The meeting at Laura’s would be sobering enough. He needed the drive to bring him solace. He needed his breathing exercises and folic acid to keep his blood pressure in check. His birthday loomed and he didn’t want to end up like his mom.
“More layoff orders from corporate, those fuckers,” the mill supervisor, Cliff Dawson, reported grimly when the EDC meeting came to order. His voice was so deep, you had to listen hard to hear. He was tall like Dev, but burly. His beard was long and impressively groomed. And he cursed a lot when he was angry or needed caffeine.
A bad storm at the beginning of the season had put a tree through a section of City Hall’s roof. Said roof was still being fixed. Lack of official meeting space was why Dev and the others found themselves in the home office of Sapling’s mayor. Laura Peacock preferred to work from her yurt.
It stood at the edge of her property near the top of Caribou Hill and had been built as a space for her clients. A desk was set up at the base of the circle and a PhD in Consciousness Studies was hung behind it on the latticed wall. Next to said degree was a photo of Laura smiling and clasping hands with the Dalai Lama. Its wooden rafters drew attention to the circular skylight at the center of the roof, which cast good light into the space despite the canopy of forest.
“More layoffs? Are they serious? I thought the plants were doing better.”
Stanley Tran was a Member-at-Large. His comment earned a subtle eye roll from Janice Brewster, retired accountant, town Treasurer and conspiracy theorist at-large. Dev didn’t know why Stanley was surprised. Packard Industries—the company that owned the mills—hadn’t let up on the layoffs for the better part of a year.
“Look, Laura,” Cliff continued. “I know you’ve been helping people find work when they get laid off from the mills … but that can only do so much, and these numbers are getting big. We’ve got more people out of work at this point than we have total non-Packard jobs in town.”
Cliff didn’t need to say anything more. Dev knew better than anybody what would happen when jobs dried up. It would solidify Sapling’s slow decline into obsolescence. The sawmills would sputter to a halt and the people who could would leave. It was a common boom-town problem: the inevitable bust.
“I’ve reworked some numbers,” Dev said, not ready to pull out his laptop and show them his charts and graphs just yet. He wanted to inspire them first. “What if I’ve figured out a way to bring back all the jobs we lost?”
Cliff scoffed. “What are you gonna do? Visit Don Packard with three ghosts at Christmas ’til he regrets being a greedy prick? We’re down here fighting for our lives and I can’t even get a phone call with anyone in New York.”
If anyone had agonized over this, it had certainly been Cliff. The plant workers were his people. He’d reported to work at Number Ten the first day it opened. Back then, he’d been a plucky, young supervisor with leadership po
tential. Now the top man at local headquarters, Cliff was well past retirement age. No one would have begrudged him for leaving, and yet everyone knew why he stayed. He had the relationships and the temperament. More importantly, he had the trust of his team. He pulled the marionette strings of worker morale.
“Dev has a secret weapon,” Laura announced sagely from her perch atop a folding chair. Her feet were off the floor and she sat in lotus position. She cradled an enormous ceramic mug that Dev strongly suspected she’d thrown herself on a potter’s wheel. Knowing Laura, it could be anything from tea to kombucha to something even stronger because it was five o’clock someplace and Laura was that kind of mayor.
Cliff said nothing and managed not to look completely skeptical even though he was the natural skeptic in the group. Janice, who always preferred solution talk to problem talk, perked up. Laura looked conspiratorial, as if knowing already that Dev’s plan was crazy and that she was totally in. Poor, clueless Stanley was the only one who bothered to ask out loud.
“Well, do you have a secret weapon?” Stanley wanted to know.
What Dev was about to say couldn’t be unsaid. And it couldn’t go beyond this room—not yet—not until he knew he could deliver.
“We need to make an offer to buy the mills.”
6
The Bakery
Shea
“Hey, Hollywood!”
Delilah greeted Shea with a smile and the nickname she’d called her once or twice. It had come on the heels of Shea’s casual mention of her plans after Sapling. L.A. was one of many places Shea would visit once her screenplay was done. Networking with contacts she knew from NYU and hustling to sell her script were par for the course. Where she went from there would be determined by the ranked list of restaurants around the world she wanted to try. Enjoying the freedom to travel was her master plan’s step four.