Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Sadie nodded and then paused before saying, “I assume that, since it was an unattended death, there will be an autopsy.”

  Officer Nielson nodded.

  “Would it be possible to make a request for them to look for any scarring or other indicators that she had had cancer?”

  Her question obviously surprised him, but it wasn’t his facial expression that told her so ... Rather, it was the change in energy, a kind of toughness, around him. “You question that she had cancer?”

  “Dr. Hendricks said she faked it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Dr. Hendricks said?’”

  “Oh, yeah, I found him.”

  There was a beat of silence, and even the well-schooled Officer Nielson couldn’t hide his surprise. “You found who?”

  “Dr. Hendricks.”

  Officer Nielson started and sat up straight in his chair. “You found him? Alive?”

  Sadie nodded, but she realized she was saying too much too soon, and she put up her hand. “You can’t go barreling up there—he’ll run again.”

  “Up where?” Officer Nielson said, unable to contain his excitement.

  “Um, I need some reassurances before I continue.”

  “What kind of reassurances?”

  Sadie took a breath. “It wasn’t easy for him to talk to me,” she said, even though it hadn’t been particularly hard for him, either, once he decided to trust her. “And he’s very worried about coming back—he’s afraid he’ll face charges for running away.”

  “As far as I know, he hasn’t broken any laws, but we’ll certainly want to talk to him, especially in regard to Anita’s death.”

  The way he said it made it sound like Dr. Hendricks might be considered a suspect in Anita’s death, and Sadie hurried to dispute that. “He doesn’t have a car or anything—he couldn’t have come back to St. George last night.” The last thing she wanted was for him to come back and face an interrogation.

  “Where is he, Pine Valley?”

  “You can’t go up there,” Sadie said again, feeling a bit frantic. “I’ve made arrangements with him and this needs to be done my way.”

  Officer Nielson didn’t like that—Sadie could tell by the way his jaw tightened. He quickly went back to that blank expression she’d seen on the face of so many detectives over the years.

  “I’ll tell you what I know, but only if you promise to stay with the commitments I’ve already made to him.” There was a pleading tone in her voice she couldn’t hide.

  “That depends on what those commitments are, Mrs. Hoffmiller. Surely you can see that I can’t agree to something I’m unaware of. This is extremely delicate.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Sadie confirmed. “He’s promised to turn himself in first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Why then?”

  Sadie explained about the USB drive and the information from Kyle Edger that would help prove Dr. Hendricks’s story. Officer Nielson listened and took notes and, to his credit, didn’t insist on a path other than the one she’d already established. He asked some questions, but he seemed to be careful not to word them in such a way that it would sound as though he were questioning her. She appreciated that. When she finished her explanation, he said his department would take care of the Kyle Edger portion of things.

  “We can also retrieve the USB.”

  “Um, can I let you know if I need your help with that? I’d like to try for that one on my own.”

  He paused a moment. “Why?”

  Sadie wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I just feel like I should do that part—he trusted me in telling me where it was.” And she didn’t want to turn everything over to the police.

  “I’m sure you understand it would take a search warrant for us to retrieve it. I would need to get that this afternoon in order for you to meet your deadline with Dr. Hendricks in the morning.”

  Neither of them mentioned that she didn’t need a search warrant. They sat in silence for several seconds, and Sadie was certain he wanted to know her thoughts as much as she wanted to know his.

  Officer Nielson wrote something down, nodding as though he accepted this course. Sadie was certain, though, that he wasn’t thrilled about it. “Do you have investigative plans for this afternoon other than retrieving the USB?”

  Sadie shook her head.

  “We’ll talk about the meeting with Dr. Hendricks after you get the USB. In the meantime, I’d like to ask you to steer clear of Jacob Waters.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we haven’t spoken to him yet—he’s coming in later this evening. I want a fresh interview with him.”

  Sadie nodded. She hadn’t planned on talking to him. Didn’t plan on talking to anyone, really, other than Caro. Sadie remembered her conversation with Lori and shared that with him. “I don’t know if you’ve spoken to her, but it might be a good idea to check in with her—I didn’t know how much to tell her, but she knows Dr. Hendricks is planning to turn himself in tomorrow morning. If you’re going to talk to her, tonight might be a good time. I sensed that she was hungry for more information.”

  Officer Nielson scribbled another note on his notepad. His phone rang, and he checked it and then returned it to his belt. “I’m afraid I’m out of time,” he said to Sadie. “Please call me with any other significant information.” Officer Nielson paused and looked at Sadie. “Things are happening quickly, and if we’re to continue working together, I need your word that you will inform me as soon as anything new develops.” There was a heaviness to his words and an almost distrust of her that she didn’t like but didn’t know how to fix. She’d come on very strong in this meeting, and he could very well have pulled her off the case completely. That he hadn’t was a compliment to her, but she felt uncomfortable all the same.

  “You have my word,” Sadie said.

  He extended his hand across the table between them and she looked at it for a moment before she took it. “I very much appreciate your help with this, Mrs. Hoffmiller. I had limited options when you first came to me, and, though the department’s interest in this case is now renewed and I’m getting the support necessary, we couldn’t have gotten here without you.”

  “Thank you,” Sadie said, feeling a bit embarrassed at the praise so quickly after she’d regretted having to curb her approach.

  She left the department around four o’clock and checked her text messages as soon as she exited the building into the summer heat. It felt as though the red rock surrounding the town were heat coils pulsing into the valley.

  There was a missed call from Caro and then a text message sent shortly thereafter.

  Call me—something’s up.

  Chapter 32

  When Sadie called Caro, she immediately suggested they meet somewhere. They agreed to meet in five minutes at Frostop, a burger place on St. George Boulevard not far from Tess’s house. Caro gave no indication as to the reason for the meeting, and her tone was suspiciously light.

  Caro was already there by the time Sadie arrived at the fifties-style diner—not a commercialized, retro-looking fifties style, but an authentic style that hadn’t been updated since the actual 1950s. It smelled like French fries, pickles, and hamburgers. Caro was easy to find because only a few of the orange-seated booths were occupied. Sadie slid into the seat opposite her. On the chrome-trimmed, Formica-topped table between them was a huge basket of orange-colored fries—sweet potato, Sadie assumed—and a dipping sauce that looked like Thousand Island dressing. Sadie was instantly concerned. Ordering this type of food was very un-Caro-like behavior.

  “You okay?” Sadie asked.

  Caro looked up at her and swallowed before taking swig of her drink, which looked suspiciously like soda. Caro never drank soda—she said it deteriorated muscle tissue and ate away your stomach lining.

  “You’re totally not okay,” Sadie said, nodding toward the drink as Caro put it down. “What’s wrong?” She reached over for a fry even though she was still full from lunch. She
dipped the fry in the sauce that wasn’t Thousand Island dressing. Yum. There was mayo and ketchup in it, but also something tangy. It was really good.

  “These are sweet potato fries—they have some nutritional benefits, so I haven’t completely lost my mind,” Caro replied. She pointed to the dressing. “This is called ‘fries sauce’—it’s a Utah thing.”

  “Well, then they get points for a self-explanatory title and deliciousness. I think I could drink it. Now, what’s going on?”

  “Well, you heard Tess freaking out this morning, right?”

  “Right,” Sadie said. She ate another fry with the fries sauce.

  “Well, she wasn’t much better when I got to St. George—she was cleaning her house like a madwoman.”

  “Okay ... ,” Sadie said, wondering where this was going.

  “And she was on the phone and on Facebook all day long with friends and things, people wanting to talk about what each of them knew—it’s a pretty close community down here.”

  “Right,” Sadie said, still waiting to hear why this was important.

  “But there was one person she didn’t talk to.”

  Sadie raised her eyebrows expectantly but said nothing.

  “Nikki,” Caro said. “Everyone else was calling and e-mailing and texting, but Nikki never did. Tess called her once and sent her a few texts, and she didn’t respond, which had Tess really worried. So about an hour ago, she called Nikki again—and as soon as Nikki answered Nikki must have told her to go into another room because Tess looked at me and disappeared into the bedroom. I tried to listen in but I couldn’t hear anything but mumbling through the door. They talked for almost ten minutes.”

  “Did you find out what they talked about?” Sadie asked.

  “No. When Tess came out, she wouldn’t talk to me about it. She just said Nikki was upset, and then she got really intense and made me promise not to tell you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re the investigator—she didn’t want you to know that she’d talked to Nikki.”

  “Why not?”

  Caro shrugged and ate another fry. “I don’t know. That’s what has me so worried. I promised her I wouldn’t tell you.” A pained expression crossed her face. “But I knew I had to.”

  “You definitely did,” Sadie said. “But without context, I don’t know what to do with it.” She could take it to the police, but what would they do with it?

  “Maybe you could talk to her,” Caro suggested.

  “Tess?”

  “No,” Caro said quickly. “Then she’d know I told you, and I don’t think she’d give much up to you anyway. She’s still not really over everything.”

  Oh, brother. “So you think I should talk to Nikki?”

  “I know you don’t have much to go on, but something’s up with her, don’t you think? Why else would Tess be so secretive? She and Nikki are good friends, and I get the feeling that Tess feels like she’s protecting Nikki somehow.”

  Sadie considered that for a few seconds, and then her eyes snapped up to meet Caro’s. “Did she tell Nikki about Anita and Dr. Waters?”

  “I don’t know,” Caro said, making a face. “We told her not to.”

  “But that might not mean much. If they’re good friends, Tess might feel some kind of obligation to tell Nikki. And we know she told Lori that we found Dr. Hendricks.”

  Caro nodded and ate another fry. Sadie did, too, needing an excuse to continue pondering. If Tess did tell Nikki about the meeting Sadie interrupted at the church yesterday, what would Nikki do that made Tess feel like she needed to protect her friend? Sadie backed up a step and put herself in Nikki’s position. If someone came to Sadie and told her that her husband had been closeted with another woman, what would Sadie do? She would talk to her husband. She looked at the ring on her hand and smiled slightly at the zing she felt before getting back to the task at hand. Focus. But why would Tess feel protective because of a conversation Nikki had with her husband? The next thing Sadie might do would be to talk to the woman her husband had been closeted with. Sadie’s hand paused halfway to her mouth and a drop of fries sauce fell onto the table as the idea took full shape in her mind. What if Nikki talked to Anita?

  “What?” Caro asked, reminding Sadie that she wasn’t alone. Sadie quickly ate the fry and then explained her train of thought. Caro’s eyes widened as she acknowledged the plausibility of Sadie’s theory.

  “That would also explain why Tess was so hyper about everything this morning. If she’d told Nikki about Anita and Dr. Waters, and then Anita ends up dead ... Oh, gosh.”

  “I need you to go back to Tess and see if you can find out if she told Nikki and, if so, when? Do whatever you can to find out what she’s hiding. I’ll go see Nikki—do you know where she lives?” It occurred to Sadie that going to Nikki’s might help her get into the clinic as well—she could really use a “two birds with one stone” turn of events right now.

  Caro reached into her purse and pulled out a Post-it note that she handed to Sadie. It contained an address, hastily written. “I found it, just in case.”

  “Well done,” Sadie said with a sincere smile. She reached across the table and gave Caro’s hand a squeeze, knowing this was hard for her, feeling that she had betrayed Tess. “Let me know what you find out, and I’ll do the same.”

  It wasn’t until Sadie was three blocks away that she realized she hadn’t told Caro about her meeting with Dr. Hendricks. The case was picking up so much speed that even something as important as that had somehow taken a backseat to this new information.

  1/4 cup mayonnaise

  1/4 cup ketchup

  1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

  Dash salt

  For spicy fry sauce, add:

  1/4 teaspoon onion powder

  1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

  1/8 teaspoon black pepper

  Mix all the ingredients together. Makes 1/2 cup.

  Chapter 33

  The Waters’s house was located on the back side of a little hill on the east side of town that Sadie had seen when she’d entered the city. For some reason, she had assumed that hill was the eastern edge of the city, but according the directions of the GPS on her phone, the hill hid a large part of the city from the view of those on the west side. The farther up she went, the bigger the houses got, until she ended up on one of the topmost streets of the neighborhood. It was filled with some of the largest houses she’d seen in the city so far. She found the Waters house easily enough—even in ritzy neighborhoods like this one, not many people had the letter “W” inlaid with pavers into their driveway.

  She parked at the curb and headed up the sidewalk, taking in the large, two-level home that could probably serve as a small hotel. How many children did the Waterses have? Sadie had seen three at the memorial service, but maybe there were more who hadn’t been there. The red Jeep Wrangler in the driveway was not parked straight, and the smell of baking was heavy in the summer air as Sadie got closer to the front door. Sadie could relate to the idea of baking when you were under stress, but she couldn’t imagine baking when the stress resulted from murdering your husband’s lover. Hopefully she was wrong to even think about that. Every meeting she’d had with Nikki Waters had been positive. She seemed like a genuinely kindhearted woman. But even the kindest of people had a breaking point. Still, Sadie hoped—really hoped—that Nikki would prove Sadie’s worst suspicions wrong. Her hope was so strong she could taste it.

  Sadie knocked on the door, and a few seconds later, a teenage girl answered. Sadie recognized her from the memorial service the day before. Was it really only yesterday?

  “Hi,” the girl said brightly. She had long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and wore shorts with a T-shirt that said, “This little light of mine ...” across the front. A lanyard with a set of keys hung around her neck. Sadie was guessing the Jeep in the driveway belonged to her. There was some heavy metal music playing toward the back of the house, which made Sadie worry that Nikki mi
ght not be home.

  “Hi. Is your mom here?”

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  Sadie hesitated, but the girl pulled the door wide open and then called for her mom over her shoulder before turning back with a smile. “She’s in the kitchen, but she’s not in the best mood—she’s kind of having a bad day.”

  Sadie followed the girl as she led her into the hallway to the kitchen. The back of the girl’s shirt said, “I’m gunna let it shine!” reminding Sadie of Caro’s lecture on using her gifts rather than hiding them under a bushel. Somehow Sadie didn’t think Caro had foreseen Sadie using her gifts to interrogate Nikki. But as she made her way toward the back of the house, Sadie realized that she felt good about what she’d accomplished so far. She had become invested in the people involved in this case. Lori, her children, Dr. Hendricks. Even Anita. And Nikki, too. She knew what hiding from the truth could do to people, and she felt good about the role she’d played in trying to bring the truth to light. She was grateful for this moment of reflection—it helped prepare her for anything ugly that might yet lie ahead of her.

  The smell of what Sadie guessed were cookies became stronger, as did the volume of the music as they proceeded to the kitchen.

  “She’s just down there,” the girl said, jumping to the bottom step of a flight of stairs that led to the upper level of the house.

  “Um, have you guys had dinner yet?” Sadie asked before the girl continued up the stairs. It wasn’t quite dinner time, but Sadie would feel much better if there weren’t kids in the house when she confronted Nikki.

  “Nah,” the girl said good-naturedly. “But we had lots of cookies ’til Mom freaked out and banned us from the kitchen.” She didn’t seem bothered by the ban or by saying such things about her mother to a complete stranger.