Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Sadie nodded and went back to her fruit, pondering what she had learned. Lori lived two hours away from Dr. Hendricks and the life he had here. Though they were divorced, they seemed to have a good relationship, and what she saw in his life was likely what everyone else saw, too. Sadie agreed that a substance addiction was an unlikely possibility because it would affect his work a great deal, but there were other types of addictions: pornography or gambling, for example. And despite Lori’s assurances of his living a clean life, Sadie had seen too many people with a public persona that was different from who they were behind closed doors. Leaving to pursue that kind of addiction would require money, though, and Lori had said nothing was missing—though she might not be aware of everything.

  “Lori!”

  Startled, Sadie looked up to see Caro and Tess come through the doorway. Sadie was instantly reminded of how she’d shut down this investigation less than an hour ago. What would Caro and Tess think of her having changed her mind so drastically?

  Tess headed toward Lori with a huge smile on her face. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Other than Facebook, I mean. How are you?”

  “Hey!” Lori said, just as happy to see her old friend. “Let me wash my hands.” She moved to the sink, and Tess followed her.

  “How’d it go in here?” Caro asked, approaching Sadie as she finished up the last of the watermelon. Sadie’s shoes were sticky from the watermelon juice. Where was that mop?

  Lori and Tess began chatting by the sinks, and Sadie hoped Lori wouldn’t betray the depth of their conversation until she had a chance to explain things to Caro and Tess. “It went well,” she said. Sadie threw the last bit of rind in the garbage can. “How about you guys—did you get everything set up?”

  “Yep. Looks like you two are just finishing up, too.”

  Sadie nodded, dicing the last of the watermelon. When she finished, she picked up a huge, drippy, double-handful of the fruit and dumped it into the bowl. “We still need to mix up the dressing, but we’re pretty close to being done.”

  Tess’s voice suddenly rose above the conversational tones she and Lori had been using on the other side of the room. “Sadie was asking you about Trent’s disappearance?”

  Sadie looked up to see three sets of eyes watching her. Caro and Tess looked surprised, but Lori just looked confused, probably because Tess had made such a point of the question. Tess had the slightest smirk on her face as she turned back to Lori. “Did she tell you about the pictures?”

  “Tess!” Sadie and Caro said at the same time.

  “What?” Tess replied, turning back to Caro with a challenging look. “Sadie’s been in here questioning her the whole time.” She pointed at Lori for emphasis, and Sadie felt her face heating up in reaction to the accusation.

  “Questioning me?” Lori looked at Sadie again.

  “I was not questioning her,” Sadie explained, glancing back and forth between them. “We were just ... talking.”

  “About Dr. H,” Tess said accusingly.

  “Well, yeah, and other things, but—”

  “Wait.” Lori put up her hand, looking somewhat cornered. They all went quiet. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sadie’s an investigator—didn’t she tell you that?”

  Sadie didn’t know what to say. Tess was making it sound like Sadie had been deceptive, which she hadn’t been. The conversation had just ... evolved, of its own accord. Okay, maybe she’d guided it a little bit, but there was so much more to it than that, and she felt cheapened by the way Tess was pouncing on this circumstance without even trying to understand.

  “Did she tell you about the photos?” Tess asked again.

  “What photos?”

  Tess began explaining to Lori all about the photos and her idea about using the scrapbook to get information from people. Sadie couldn’t believe the turn this had taken, and she looked at Caro. Caro shrugged. She didn’t seem upset about Sadie asking questions—which was good—but she certainly seemed curious and wasn’t picking up on how bad Tess was making Sadie look to Lori right now. Sadie looked down at the sticky floor at her feet and tried to think of how to explain what had happened.

  “So—we’re on the case?” Caro asked. She leaned her hips against the counter, folding her arms over her chest and raising one eyebrow.

  “Well,” Sadie said, glancing at Tess and Lori on the other side of the room and reflecting on the new questions her conversation with Lori had raised about Dr. Hendricks’s disappearance. Even with regret sitting heavy in her chest, pulling back now was impossible and she knew it. After all, she’d gathered so much information, and Tess was now in the process of telling Lori everything. Suddenly, another thought crossed her mind.

  “Did you set me up?” Sadie asked, looking at Caro square-on. “Did you know that sending me in here with Lori would end like this?” She hated the idea, but couldn’t ignore the possibility that this might be true.

  “No,” Caro said, and her reply seemed sincere. “I volunteered for the tables because it would keep me away from Lori and any temptation to ask her questions—I think Tess did chairs for the same reason. We assumed you weren’t going to, either.”

  She didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but Sadie felt the reprimand all the same. Sadie couldn’t fault Caro for telling the truth, and yet she still felt manipulated somehow. She glanced at Tess and felt embarrassed all over again because of the way she’d confronted Sadie in front of Lori. Even if Sadie deserved it, there were other ways Tess could have handled it. At the very least, in confronting Sadie like that, she had undermined Sadie’s character to Lori—which couldn’t be in the best interest of the case.

  “You must have learned stuff that changed your mind, right?” Caro asked with a hopeful tone Sadie didn’t like but could totally relate to. She asked herself once again if she really wanted to do this. Did she want to keep dealing with Tess? Did she want to take all the risks inherent to any investigation? Then again, maybe she and Tess would get along better if they were working on this together. And not doing anything about what she’d learned had risks, too. Oh, who was she kidding? She was in. All in.

  “She did tell me some things that make me think we could try looking a little deeper until Sergeant Woodruff calls us back. But just a little.”

  “Ri-ight,” Caro said, a gleam in her eye. “Just a little.”

  Chapter 7

  “Tomorrow, then,” Tess said to Lori half an hour later, after the fruit had been properly stored and the dressing mixed together for the next day.

  “I’ll let you know when I know what time I can meet,” Lori said as the four of them came to a stop in a loose circle near the glass front doors of the church. After learning about the photos, she’d wanted to see them for herself. It would have to wait for the next day because Lori needed to get back to her kids, who were with Dr. Hendricks’s parents at the hotel where they were staying.

  “Perfect,” Tess said, giving Lori a hug and then hurrying back down the hall to say goodbye to Nikki. “Call me when you know when you can get away.”

  “And I need the little girls’ room,” Caro said, pointing over her shoulder in the direction they’d just come from. “I’ll be right back.”

  Lori and Sadie were left in the foyer of the building, a large open space with a purple floral couch, some matching wingback chairs, and a painting of Jesus on the wall that Sadie had admired when they entered. Seeing His face made Sadie think about what Caro had said about hiding lights under bushels. Would He approve of what I’m doing? she wondered. It was too big a question to expect an answer to, and Sadie had struggled with her faith in such things these last couple of years. Her own mortality had come into question very strongly following a case where one of those bushels had caught on fire, as she’d mentioned to Caro. She looked away from the painting.

  Lori began moving toward the front doors—she’d barely made eye contact with Sadie since Tess had announced that Sadie had been questioning her.

&n
bsp; “It wasn’t my intent to question you,” Sadie said to Lori’s back. Lori stopped, her hand on the large glass door, and then she turned to face Sadie. Her facial expression was cautious.

  “I have to hand it to you—you’re very smooth,” Lori said as she, too, surveyed the foyer, possibly as an excuse not to meet Sadie’s eyes. “I had no idea you were trying to get information out of me.”

  Sadie felt her face heat up. “When we started talking, that’s all it was—talking. Conversation.”

  “But you had an agenda.” Now she did meet Sadie’s gaze.

  Sadie shifted her weight. Agenda was such a strong word. “I’d already explained to Tess and Caro that this is a police investigation, not something we should pursue. I wasn’t trying to get anything from you.” Oh, she wasn’t explaining this well, and it frustrated her. She wanted the fact that she hadn’t entered the kitchen with expectations of gathering information to offer some kind of defense, but maybe she was being unfair in trying to justify herself.

  “But you did get information from me,” Lori reminded her. “And you’re an investigator.” Her expression was hard, and Sadie continued searching for a way to make this right. There was only one way to earn back this woman’s trust—complete honesty. Come what may.

  “I used to be a private investigator,” Sadie said, dropping her shoulders in surrender to the truth. “In recent years, I’ve helped solve several investigations. Caro and Tess found the discrepancy with the photos before I got into town and came up with a plan to try to figure out why Dr. Hendricks’s car wasn’t where it should have been. When they told me about it, I told them we couldn’t interfere. Then I ended up in the kitchen with you, and you were so kind and open and ... I guess I got carried away. It began to feel important, not like a story that was so far away from me.” It wasn’t the first time Sadie had stepped over the line she herself had drawn. She feared it wouldn’t be the last.

  “So, then, now that you know my ‘take’ on things, what do you think?” Lori was still guarded, but her expression showed enough interest that Sadie thought she might be thawing a little bit.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I told you all about my marriage and what I know of Trent’s life and disappearance. Did it change your mind about being willing to investigate?”

  “I’d be lying if I said talking to you didn’t make me feel more invested, but I still believe the police are the ones who should be finding the answers to the questions I have now. They have access to more information than I do. They see a bigger picture.” And yet Sadie also knew that the big picture often distracted people from the small details that could change everything. “But they haven’t contacted us yet. Probably tomorrow. Until then, I feel that trying to make some connections would be a good thing.”

  “The police never talked to me other than getting my alibi for that weekend—which was solid if you’re thinking I had something to do with Trent’s disappearance.”

  “I don’t think that,” Sadie said quickly. “The thought never crossed my mind.” For half a second, however, she wondered if it should have. Ex-spouses were often brimming with motive. Sadie was careful to keep any hint of those thoughts out of her own facial expression.

  Lori relaxed a little more as she regarded Sadie again. “Are you really a widow?”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” Sadie said, bristling slightly. “Everything I said was true.”

  Lori looked away for a few seconds, perhaps to gather her thoughts, and then she folded her arms over her stomach. When she looked back at Sadie it seemed as though she’d made a decision. “The police have told me nothing. Anita doesn’t talk to me about the case. Trent’s family only talks to me about the kids. Like you said before, I lost someone important, and no one seems to care.” She blinked back tears and took another breath before she continued. “Do you have any idea what a relief it was to finally have someone talk to me about this? And then find out that they had an agenda for it?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sadie said, wishing she could go back in time and be up front with Lori from the very start of their conversation. “But I meant what I said—you have suffered a loss. You deserve the same opportunity to grieve as anyone else does.”

  Lori looked over her shoulder through the front doors, taking a deep breath that was possibly meant to help her control the emotion she was fighting. It was getting dark outside, and she stared into the twilight. “Even if you did talk to me just to get information—”

  “I didn’t, I swear I—”

  “Even if you did,” Lori cut in, turning her head quickly to pin Sadie with a look, “it gave me a chance to feel understood and supported in my feelings. I think Tess’s scrapbook is a great idea—people will talk to you guys differently than they talk to the police—take it from me. I told you more than I told them because I knew they were looking at me as a suspect, not as a person struggling to make sense of what’s happened to a man I loved.” She paused to take another breath. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said. They were quiet for a moment, looking at each other. Sadie pondered what Lori had just said: “The man I loved.” Did she mean to say “once loved”? It was ambiguous, the way she’d said it, and yet nothing else she’d said had hinted at the fact that she might still have those kinds of feelings for her ex-husband. Sadie needed to say something out loud, and she settled on what came naturally to her—offering support. “I’m sorry you have to deal with so much.”

  “It will help to see those pictures, to be a part of the process to figure out why his car wasn’t where it was supposed to be.”

  “There certainly doesn’t seem to be an easy explanation for that—and his canceling with Joey like he did.” Sadie wished she could better explain the process of how she’d gained her own interest in this, how talking to Lori and learning more about Dr. Hendricks had made Sadie feel a kind of obligation to find answers. But that wouldn’t matter to Lori. It might even be interpreted as further justification of Sadie’s “questioning” her.

  Tess’s and Caro’s voices could be heard approaching from the hallway. Sadie was glad to know that she and Lori seemed to be okay with each other and united in their goal to find information, but she didn’t love the fact that there were now four people involved in this. That meant a lot of opinions to sort through, a lot of coordination, and the big risk that one person might mess everything up for everyone else. Sadie preferred to be the only one responsible. Then she would be the only person responsible for getting herself in trouble.

  “I’d really like to know what happened,” Lori said quietly before Tess and Caro joined them.

  They all said goodbye again, and Lori promised again to call when she knew what time she’d be available the next day. During the ride back to Tess’s house to drop her off, the three women made a plan, just as though they had been together on the case from the beginning. Sadie couldn’t read Tess at all. She’d seemed annoyed with Sadie prior to the conversation with Lori, and now she acted rather cocky about the turn of events. Sadie firmly reminded them both that they were only doing this until Sergeant Woodruff got back to them. They agreed so quickly that she doubted they fully understood what it meant to turn things over to the police. On the heels of that thought, however, was the question of whether she herself were ready to do that.

  Chapter 8

  Despite being tired from the long drive that day, Sadie stayed up reading the articles Tess and Caro had collected. Now that the shift in her thinking had occurred, she wanted to become as familiar as possible with the facts about Dr. Hendricks’s disappearance. She appreciated Caro’s notes and the lines she’d highlighted that made it easier to hone in on what Caro deemed most important. Thank goodness Caro had thought to make copies before they turned over the originals. As she read, Sadie created a timeline of events, starting in December when Anita’s cancer was first diagnosed, though it wasn’t written about until January. In several articles, a few people were quo
ted as saying that Dr. Hendricks had seemed withdrawn in the few months prior to his disappearance—but it was easy to tie that directly to Anita’s illness.

  Too easy?

  While Sadie compiled the timeline, she also made a list of questions the timeline raised. After the third mention of “the boutique” in some of the articles, Sadie turned to Caro, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed with her computer in her lap.

  “What’s the boutique? Lori said something about it, and then it keeps being mentioned—is it part of the foundation?”

  “Yeah,” Caro said, moving her laptop and stretching her legs out in front of her. “Tess said they opened it a couple of years ago. It has a lot of post-cancer items like surgical bras, prosthetics, and tops that don’t go too low.”

  “What’s the name of the boutique?” Sadie asked as she opened a new browser tab on her computer.

  “Pink Posy Boutique,” Caro said. “Tess wants us to stop in some time this week. In addition to their post-mastectomy stuff, they have a line of fitness clothing she thinks I’ll love and then a whole jewelry line with their logo on it—a little pink flower. Part of everything they sell goes back into breast cancer research.”

  Sadie thanked Caro for the information, and then scanned the website when it loaded. The site was obviously done by a professional, not someone playing around with a design program, and Sadie admired the crisp graphics and user-friendly menus that included a full catalogue, online ordering, links to other breast cancer-specific sites, and an explanation about the company. The history included on the site gelled with what Caro had said. “It says here that they donate seventy-five percent of profits to cancer research,” Sadie said, meeting Caro’s eye. “I guess the rest goes to operating costs? Or do they base the profit on net rather than gross?”