by T. L. Haddix
“I’m ridiculous, I know,” Stacy told Chloe. “But I’m jealous of a dead woman. A blind man could see how much he loved his wife. Mallory Gordon was a very lucky woman.” When the cat started to struggle, Stacy let her down and went into the kitchen. She looked around the room, trying to envision how it would look after the rehab. She tried to focus on that, rather than her loneliness. Disgusted with herself, she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then turned off the light.
“How about we do some exercising, little miss?” she asked Chloe. “A few miles on the treadmill should be an effective solution to whatever ails me. What do you say?”
An hour later, drenched in sweat and dog-tired, Stacy climbed the stairs from the basement and headed to the bathroom, stripping her clothes off as she went. Seeing the toilet paper dispenser reminded her of the missing rolls, and she frowned. Too many things had been disappearing around her lately. She was going to have to figure out what was going on soon.
CHAPTER 6
STACY WAS PACKING UP THE kitchen when Gordon arrived the next morning. She had several boxes ready for storage and a few more sitting empty around the room.
He sent her a mock frown. “What happened to sleeping in?”
She blew a loose strand of hair off her face. “Six-thirty came, and I was awake. So I got up.”
As she started to lift a large box, he stepped in, taking it from her with a pointed look at her wrist. “Let me do the heavy lifting, please.”
“I have my brace on.”
“Yeah, I see that. Don’t make me call Wyatt. Where do you want this?”
She stuck out her tongue at him, but stood back. “The guest room is fine, please.”
He made short work of the packed boxes, stacking them neatly in the bedroom before she could finish filling up another one.
“I didn’t realize I had so much stuff,” she muttered from under the sink. She emerged with her hands full of cleaning supplies. “I found three cake safes. Three. I can’t bake a cake to save my life. How’d I end up with three things to store them in?”
Gordon wisely hid his amusement. “I have no idea. Maybe they multiplied in the dark recesses of the cabinets.”
The look she sent him was priceless. “Um, sure. That has to be it. I think that does it.” She sat back on her heels. “If you don’t mind moving the microwave into the dining room, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course not. Are we moving the fridge in there, too?”
“Yeah. The appliance dolly is in the garage. I’ll go get it.”
Before long, the kitchen was cleared out, and the last thing left to do was remove the appliances.
“Do you need to turn the water off to the ice maker?”
Stacy laughed. “No. There is no ice maker. That’s part of the upgrades. I think I’m in love with my new fridge. Which is silly, considering how badly I cook.”
“Would you stop with the cooking remarks?” Gordon let his exasperation show. “You just need some practice, I’m sure.”
“I never would have pegged you for being an optimist. And you’d have to be to think that I’m ever going to be anywhere near competent in the kitchen.”
He tugged the end of her braid, and then squeezed her shoulder lightly before walking away. “You’ve met Beth Moore, right? Ethan’s wife?”
Hands on her hips, she sent him an arch look. “Yes,” she drawled. “I know Beth quite well, as you are aware. Why?”
“Because if she can learn to cook, anyone can. Ask her about it sometime.”
Stacy crossed her arms, and Gordon could tell she wanted to argue. Given Beth’s cooking reputation before her marriage, he knew Stacy didn’t have a leg to stand on.
He grinned. “I’m right, and you know it.”
“Hush.”
Laughing, he slid the dolly under the fridge and lifted it. “Unplug that for me, and we’re ready to roll.”
For a few tense moments, they struggled to fit the fridge through the door into the dining room, but moving carefully, Gordon got it in without doing any damage. Once it was plugged back in and running, he measured the back door. “How big is the new fridge?” he asked, measuring the door coming into the kitchen from the hall.
“Oh, no. It’s much bigger than the old one. The new one won’t fit, will it?”
He grimaced. “Probably not.”
Stacy let her face fall forward into her palm. “I knew I’d forgotten something. Damn it.”
“Well, hang on here. We’ll figure it out.” He looked out the back door at the large deck. “How do you feel about widening this door? You could put a French door in here, or even a wide sliding door. I think there’s room.”
“I think I’ll have to do something like that if I want my new refrigerator in the house, but I hate sliding doors.”
“Okay. French door it is, then. When are the appliances scheduled for delivery?”
“Whenever I call for them.”
Gordon nodded. “You’ll be okay, then. You could probably do a thirty-six-inch door and be fine here. That shouldn’t set you back too much, as far as cost goes. Might eat into your tile budget, though.”
“No. I’d planned to replace the door and windows sometime this year, so it won’t do too much damage. It’s only a matter of finding a place that has the door in stock. We can’t do anything until we find that out.”
“Then why don’t we head to town, see what we can come up with? I’ll even buy you breakfast,” he teased as Stacy’s stomach grumbled loudly.
She flushed. “No, you bought dinner. I’ll cover breakfast. Let me change into something less grungy.”
They took Stacy’s car into town, heading to The Brown Bag first. As soon as they walked in, Gordon heard a squeal. Turning, he saw Beth and Ethan. Beth was bearing down on him with open arms.
“Where the heck have you been?” She enveloped him in a hug as tight as she could manage given that she was over eight months pregnant with twins. “I thought you’d been kidnapped. I haven’t heard from you in so long.”
“I wrote you,” Gordon started to defend himself, but Beth smacked his arm lightly.
“Bull. Two-line messages on social networking sites do not equal ‘writing’ someone. Do they?” she asked Stacy. Without waiting for an answer, she drew back from Gordon to study him with a wide grin. “God, look at you. All tanned and relaxed. The rest of us had to suffer through a miserable winter, and you were on a warm tropical beach somewhere.” Her tone belied the sharp words.
Gordon laughed. “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed. Well, other than you’re… um…” He looked at her belly. Seeing how big she’d gotten, he understood her family’s trepidation.
“Go ahead, say it. I’m huge,” she offered.
“I was going to say that you’re looking very fertile, actually.” He gave her shoulders a squeeze. Ethan scowled, and Gordon’s grin widened.
“Oh, nice save.” Beth winked at Stacy. “Join us?”
“Sure.” She looked at Gordon. “I’m fine with that if you are.”
They got their food and joined Beth and Ethan at their table.
“So what brings you two in here this morning? I hear you’ve struck up a deal of sorts,” Beth commented.
Gordon shook his head. “How did you know that? Doesn’t your doctor have you on house arrest?”
The perky blonde grinned. “I have my ways. So is it true? You’re going to be his study partner for the bar?”
“I am. And he’s going to help me remodel my kitchen.”
“Good deal. It’s about time you put down roots. What in the world made you hare off, leave town in the middle of the night like you did?” Beth waited for Gordon’s response with one eyebrow raised.
He scowled. “I didn’t ‘hare off.’ The opportunity came up to go on a two-week cruise with my mother-in-law. She was in a bad spot at the time, and I didn’t want to say no. So I went. And two weeks turned into two months.”
“Closer to three,” Beth correc
ted him in a sing-song voice.
“You have a good mother-in-law, then?” Ethan asked.
Gordon nodded. “The best. She reminds me a lot of Jackie,” he said, referring to Beth’s mother. “She’s widowed, though, and she recently lost one of her closest friends.”
“It’s good that she had you, then,” Stacy remarked.
“Nah, I’m the lucky one.”
“Hmm. Do you write her when you’re away? E-mail her?” Beth’s eyes were wide and innocent. “Or does she languish, waiting to hear whether you’re alive or dead somewhere in a gutter, I wonder?”
“Oh, now, come on. I wrote you.” Gordon frowned at her.
Beth looked at Stacy. “Yeah. He wrote me. Two messages on Facebook. Brief messages, I might add. And one lousy postcard. One. With one line. ‘I’m alive.’”
A speculative look came over Stacy’s face as Beth spoke. Gordon figured she was remembering the cards he’d sent and the phone calls, the e-mails, and the text messages they’d exchanged. Their communication had been much, much more than a few lines. Thankfully, Beth didn’t seem to notice. Ethan had picked up on Stacy’s reaction, though, and he was clearly amused.
Gordon crossed his arms and answered Beth. “Chase said you wanted to know I was alive, so I assured you that I was. I’m not a great communicator.”
Beth laughed when he kept scowling. “Tell me about it. You know I’m teasing, right? Someone has to give you a hard time. How else would you know we love you?”
“Eww, I don’t love him,” Ethan said. Beth gently elbowed him, and he dropped a kiss onto her forehead. “I guess I’m not too unhappy to see you back in town,” he told Gordon. He let his eyes drift toward Stacy, and a hint of a smile touched his face. “Has Jackie called you about Sunday dinner yet?”
Stacy’s phone beeped, and she dug it out of her purse. “It’s Jason. He has a question about a case. Will you all excuse me for a minute while I call him?”
“Of course. Tell my brother we said hi?” Beth asked.
“I will.”
They all watched Stacy walk outside. As one, Ethan and Beth swung their gazes back to him, and Gordon squirmed.
“What?”
“I heard about what happened at Cristos’ the other day,” Ethan said. “Is she okay?”
Gordon’s jaw tightened as he remembered the hurt on Stacy’s face. “I can’t tell. And I’m afraid to push too hard, not right now.” He hesitated, glancing up to make sure she was still on the phone, then voiced the question he’d been wondering since the night before. “Is something else going on with her?”
All the humor from earlier vanished, and Ethan and Beth exchanged a look. “Why do you ask?” Ethan hedged.
“There’s something… I don’t know what it is, but there’s something just not right.”
Ethan’s hand tightened around his empty coffee mug. “You know she and Robbie were involved in that wreck, right? Well, that was pretty traumatic, to say the least. The guy was taking aim straight at her with his shotgun, and she was pinned. Couldn’t get to her gun. Robbie literally saved her life, and it was a close thing, from what he said. That’s been a heavy burden for her.”
Gordon swallowed. The cinnamon rolls he’d eaten earlier turned to lead in his stomach. “I didn’t know it was that close. I should have been here.”
Beth touched his hand. “Don’t even go there. It’s over, and she’s safe. There’s nothing you could have done even if you had been in town when the wreck happened. Besides, you’re here now.”
The words weren’t much consolation, but Gordon nodded.
“She finally came back to work full time about six weeks ago.” Ethan looked over his shoulder to where Stacy was pacing on the sidewalk. “And someone in the department has been playing tricks on her ever since. Jason, Robbie, and I have been doing everything we can to figure it out, but we can’t. And that bothers me.”
“What kind of tricks are we talking about?” Every hair on Gordon’s body stood up, and his instincts screamed at him to beware.
“Little stuff. Her desk being messed with, rearranged somewhat. Her candy bars going missing. Reports shuffled around, filed in the wrong places. That sort of thing.” Ethan shrugged. “Police departments are full of practical jokers. It’s part of how we deal with the stress. You know that. But this stuff is going too far, and it’s starting to wear on her. It got so bad last week that Wyatt came down and gave the bullpen a strong lecture.”
“Tell him about her running out of gas,” Beth said softly. “I still don’t think it was an accident.”
Ethan’s face told Gordon that he agreed. “She got paged out on a domestic violence call. We took the husband in, and Stacy stayed behind to counsel the wife a little. After the wife’s family showed up, Stacy headed back in. She made it halfway to town, then ran out of gas.”
“It was late, too, almost midnight,” Beth added. “They had to dispatch a patrol unit with a gas can. From what Ethan and Jason said, it really upset her, and I can see why.”
Gordon didn’t like the picture he was being presented. “You think someone deliberately stranded her? Why?”
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t know. Either to make her look bad, or as a joke gone too far is my guess.”
“Who would want to do that, though? That’s the part I can’t figure out,” Beth mused. “Whoever is doing these things has to have access to the sheriff’s department, to Stacy’s car. It’s gone beyond practical jokes. She could have been in serious trouble that night she was stranded. I think that’s what probably set Wyatt off.”
“It was,” Ethan confirmed. “It set several of us off.”
“Has anyone talked to her about what’s going on?” Gordon rubbed his chin.
“Sure, we’ve tried. But she brushes off the concern. She thinks it’s just jokes and that someone has a bad sense of humor.” Ethan was clearly frustrated and worried.
Gordon debated on whether to mention the missing toilet paper, but his concern for Stacy overrode any sense of wanting to keep the incident private, and he told them what had happened. He’d barely finished relating the tale when she poked her head back in.
“I’m sorry. I have to run across the street. Jason can’t find this file anywhere. Do you mind?”
“No. I’ll harass Beth and Ethan to pass the time while you’re gone,” Gordon teased.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. Beth’s a sweetheart. Messing with Ethan is fine, though.”
“Hey, now,” he started to protest.
With an impish grin, she left before he could say anything else. As soon as she was gone, the somber mood returned.
“So she never found the toilet paper?” Beth asked.
“Not that I’m aware, though I didn’t get a chance to ask her this morning. I really don’t like the implications here. There are one of two possibilities. Either Stacy’s having a mental breakdown and is forgetting things, or someone is gaslighting her.”
“I know what direction I’m tending to lean in. Gaslight.” Beth looked at Ethan, who nodded.
“Yeah. If I didn’t know her as well as I do, I’d consider that she’s having a mental break. But aside from these mysterious incidents, which are really starting to irritate her and make her lose patience, she still seems solid. I wouldn’t hesitate to have her at my back in a firefight.”
“Okay, then. So what do we do? I can talk to her about it, but she’s going to be upset that we’ve discussed this.” Gordon looked at Beth. “You’re a woman. What do you think the best way of approaching the subject is?”
“Really? ‘You’re a woman.’ You’re going there?”
He spread his hands in confusion. “Yes. You are.”
She rolled her eyes, but considered the question. “I wouldn’t want to be blindsided by it, but I’d prefer the straight-forward approach. So maybe ease into it? Carefully?” She winced and placed her hand on her side. “Ooh, easy boys.”
“What? What’s wrong?” A burst of adrenaline sh
ot through Gordon. “Are you in labor?”
When she laughed, he felt ridiculous, but relieved.
“No, I’m not in labor. Here, give me your hand.” She held her palm out to him.
Gordon glanced quickly at Ethan, who nodded his approval, and Gordon gave her his hand.
“Feel.” Beth pressed his hand to her side, and after a few seconds, a soft thud landed against Gordon’s palm. Startled, he jerked back his hand.
“What the hell?” His reaction sent Beth into peals of laughter, but she tugged his hand back to her side. The next sensation was more subtle, and he could feel the press of a tiny foot. When Beth pushed his hand closer, the foot pressed back harder.
“Oh, damn. That’s a foot. I can feel it!” Awed, he realized he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t stop. “It’s a foot!”
“Yes, it’s a foot. And it’s attached to one of two very active babies who like to kick. When they both get going, I feel like a popcorn machine must.” She gave his hand a squeeze and let go. “Haven’t you ever felt a baby kick before?”
Gordon shook his head. He rubbed his palm with his other hand. “That has to be the weirdest thing to get used to.”
“Oh, it gets better.” Ethan placed his hand on the curve of her belly and smiled. “They get the hiccups, usually at night when Beth’s trying to sleep.”
She looked up at him, and the moment was so intensely private that Gordon had to look away.
“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to visit the ladies room.”
Ethan moved over so that she could get out of the booth, and they watched her head to the back of the restaurant.
“You’re a very lucky man, you know that?” Gordon told him.
“Yeah. I do.” He sent Gordon an assessing look. “I am glad you’re back. I meant that. Not just because I missed your pretty face, either. I’m worried about Stacy, and I want to see her happy. She’s like a little sister to me. The last time you and I talked, you were still running scared as far as she’s concerned. Has that changed?”
If it had been anyone else, Gordon probably would have told them to go violate themselves. But because it was Ethan, he answered. “Yes. I’m ready to see this through, whatever ‘this’ ends up being.”