“Man, even in small towns they go for this homogeneous esthetic.” Charlie points. “Slow down… there.”
I take another left until we get to the end of a long street. Miranda’s house is at the end, a simple bungalow with an attached garage. Although the yard is well manicured, the only splash of character is the three giant garden butterflies fastened to the white vinyl siding. Tall lilac bushes separate her yard from a small alley that borders the farmer’s field spreading out to the left of her property.
“Your mom likes those, doesn’t she?” he comments now, pointing at the bushes.
I shake my head. “What you notice is freaky sometimes.”
He shrugs. “Personally, I prefer the impatiens that border the sidewalk and driveway.”
I gaze at the little white and pink flowers and laugh. “You done talking horticulture?” I ask, parking a few houses down from Miranda’s.
Charlie studies the view. A neighbour mows his lawn, while a few kids play in a sprinkler in the front yard of another house. In the rearview mirror, two women talk at the end of a driveway and a teenager details his pseudo sports car with a chamois.
“There’s an alley past the lilac bushes. Turn right there.”
I follow his instructions and drive past the house and behind it.
“Go to the next street.”
As we roll past, I see a young couple out walking and a little girl playing hopscotch on the sidewalk.
“One more.”
I continue on and he assesses the next street.
“No nosey neighbours. Perfect.”
I pull over and slip the car into park. “Okay. Now what, detective?”
“Follow my lead.” He grabs his backpack and climbs out of the car. By the time I join him, he’s fiddling with a piece of paper and studying the house numbers.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Faking we’re lost.”
We backtrack down the small lane by the field, pretending to search for a house in case anyone’s looking out their kitchen window.
“How are we getting inside? This isn’t a construction site or a house in the suburbs. People pay attention in small towns.”
“I know.”
I think he’s excited by the challenge. “So what’s the plan?”
“We go through the back.”
“Just like that.”
“Hey, last time we did this, we saved someone’s life.”
“Yeah. And all we had to do was deal with a psychopath.” It’s hard not to be sarcastic with Charlie.
“And wasn’t it worth it?”
“Sure, but Terry’s not likely to be jammed up in Miranda’s attic, is he?”
Charlie tilts his head like Ollie when he thinks I have a treat.
“You don’t really think Terry’s in there, do you?” I ask.
Charlie shrugs. “Only way to know is go inside and case the joint. Look, Shepherd, the back door’s probably not even locked. The rule of small towns is that they trust everyone.”
We walk down the alley until we arrive at Miranda’s lilacs.
The backyard is like the front: well maintained but lacking personality. The old fence running around the perimeter is held together by a few recently replaced boards and could use a paint job. We slip through its gate, behind the shed and into the yard. An open cement pad juts from the back door. She’s got a barbecue and a patio table with two faded plastic chairs, but a potted geranium is the only thing adding any colour to the white exterior of the house or the grey concrete slab.
Charlie saunters up to the back door and points to the welcome mat. “See, she’s inviting us in.”
“You owe me a doughnut,” I say, unhappy about the crime we’re about to commit.
“Fair enough,” answers Charlie.
He tries to twist the doorknob. Locked. He kneels down to study it. “Lock’s pretty new. See, no scuffs or scratches.”
“She must have changed them after she kicked Terry out.”
He steps back and pulls up the welcome mat. Nothing. He drops it back in place.
“You can see where the key used to be under the mat,” he says, “but she’s moved it.”
He crosses to the potted plant, lifting it. Nothing there either.
He studies the back of the house. “She really didn’t want Terry back. If there was any hope of them getting back together, she’d’ve left the locks a little longer.”
He kneels down and opens his backpack, pulling out a little zippered kit. Inside is a series of thin metal strips only a centimetre or two wide.
“What’re those?”
“Lock picks. I made some in shop,” he says.
“What happened to your bump key?”
“See that lock? Really high end. It’s unbumpable.”
“I thought it could get you in anywhere?”
“Too many unsavoury people were using them and lock manufacturers stepped things up.”
I think about this. “But that kind of lock in a town like this…”
“Overkill, yeah.”
“Do you think she felt unsafe?”
Charlie concedes to the idea. “Douchebag Huber did say Terry tried to break in a few times.”
I’m getting anxious. “Can you hurry up? The neighbour’s going to be done his lawn soon.”
It takes him only a second and the lock pops open. He catches my glance. “It’s called practice, Shepherd. Geez.”
“Still weird.”
He gestures to the open door. “Ladies first.”
chapter 33
Here I am, uninvited in another stranger’s house. I’m still not comfortable with it—which I’m thankful for. I hope it never starts to feel right.
“What are we looking for?”
“Any sign of involvement in Terry’s disappearance.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Does anything look out of place? Or too much in place? What’s missing in this picture?”
“Could you be any more vague?”
“Use your instincts, Shepherd. You’ll know it when you see it.”
I shake my head and go to the front of the house while Charlie goes to the garage.
The whole place is very feminine. The interior decor is pastel shades and there’s that cheap, mass-produced, designer art on the walls that everyone buys. I peer out of the small window in the front door and see the neighbours across the street. I can hear the guy with the lawnmower next door. I open the front closet to find nothing unusual, but, taking Charlie’s words to heart, I note there’s only women’s stuff hanging in it, no men’s shoes or coats.
If Miranda’s dating her boss, he’s not staying here.
Several framed photos of Miranda are scattered about, but there are none of anyone else, including Terry. A vase of flowers wilts on the dining room table, and in the kitchen, a couple of bills in her name lie on the counter, along with junk mail from a boat store. Beside this is an electronic tablet. I press the button and it’s password protected, so I leave it, knowing I’ll never crack it.
The stairs to the cellar are off the kitchen, and although my previous experience in a stranger’s basement didn’t end well for me, I move cautiously down them.
The whole space is a dusty-smelling, half-finished mess. There’s a kind of secondary living room with ugly, dated furniture and shelves stuffed with boxes along the far wall. Light from the small basement windows spills inside.
There are a couple of framed-in rooms with half-finished ceiling tiles. One contains a washer and dryer, the other has a salmon pink toilet, sink, and shower.
At the back is what appears to be an office, filing cabinet and desk piled high with file boxes. A cheap treadmill covered by a stack of plastic bags filled with old clothes sits in the corner.
&
nbsp; I can hear Charlie tromping around on the main floor, opening and closing doors and drawers. As I go back upstairs, I hear the toilet flush.
Seriously?
“Don’t judge me. I had to go,” Charlie calls out. How does he always know what I’m thinking? “Besides,” he adds, “I was checking the bathroom.”
We stand at the intersection of the hallway between the front hall, living room, and kitchen. Nothing seems out of place, too precise or in any way out of the ordinary. There’s not much going on here. If a house reflects a person, Miranda has an almost empty personality. It’s not cozy or comfortable. It just is.
“You see anything?” I ask.
“Nobody in the garage, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Nothing up here or in the basement.”
“No. It’s pretty clean. Sort of—”
“Boring.”
“She isn’t interesting enough to be a killer,” Charlie agrees.
“If Terry’s even dead,” I remind him. He smiles at me catching him on this.
We go back into the kitchen. There’s a handful of magnets on the fridge, one advertising Huber Motors, and three little daisies that hold up a grocery list.
Charlie opens the fridge and grabs some sort generic diet cola.
It hisses and pops as he opens it, taking a gulp. “Delicious.” He lets out a quiet burp.
He sees me staring. “You want one?” he gestures.
I decline.
“Not much here, Shepherd. If she was planning to dump him, it was in the works long ago. Nobody clears out that quickly, not even weekend guests.” He takes another sip and his eyes fall on the tablet on the counter.
“Well, now, that’s useful.” Charlie smiles and sets his drink on the counter.
“Let me guess. You think you can figure out her password?”
He raises an eyebrow at me, accepting the challenge, and grabs his backpack. “This one? You don’t even need to guess.”
He pulls out a baggie and shakes out a small memory card and a paperclip. Popping open a little door on the side of the device with the paperclip, he slides the card in, then starts pressing buttons until the tablet restarts and text pops up on the screen. He taps and flicks his way through a couple of screens, confident in what he’s doing. He yawns—I think he’s actually bored—as he restarts the tablet again, and the next thing I know he’s flipping through Miranda’s photos.
“Emails are always good to read, but for my money, photos are the window to a person’s soul.”
But Miranda’s albums are almost all food porn and selfies.
“There’s nothing there,” I say.
Charlie looks at me. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you.”
He scrolls to the bottom of her photo albums and opens the trash folder. “Everyone thinks deleting your photos after downloading them just whisks them away, but most photos require a double delete. Now, let’s see what you’ve been hiding, Ms. Expresso.”
He stops at a photo of Miranda in underwear and high heels—at least, I think it’s her. It’s this kitchen, but the head is cropped.
“More like Ms. Sexpresso, am I right?” Charlie’s got a big goofy grin, but when I don’t bite, he finishes his stolen drink and continues zipping through the pics.
“Wait,” I whisper.
“Yup, I saw it too.” He stops and scrolls back up to a photo of her and Huber holding hands by a brightly lit water fountain in front of a large hotel.
“That’s the douchebag, isn’t it?” Charlie asks.
“Yup. And that place is in Las Vegas.”
Charlie scrolls down some more until he finds a photo of the couple in an airport. “See the date stamp?”
Friday, the day Terry went missing.
“Timing doesn’t work,” Charlie concludes matter-of-factly.
“They’re innocent, ” I say.
There goes the most obvious theory about Terry’s sudden disappearance.
Charlie shuts the tablet off and ejects his memory card, putting it and the paperclip back in the baggie and into his backpack. He rinses out the drink can and finds a recycling bin under the sink.
“Really?”
“Hey, Shepherd, we all need to work together to save this planet. You ready to go?”
“Absolutely.”
chapter 34
As I drive us back to the cabin, Charlie opens the map book he bought from Huber’s.
“What is with you and maps?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can hack into computers and find out the most trivial details with a search engine, but here you are kicking it old school with paper.”
He runs his hand over the page, studying every detail. “I don’t know. I like seeing the lay of the land before me. Screens are always too small to get a good view. But here”—he scrutinizes his surroundings—“here, I can see how all the places in-between are connected.” He leans in close, running a finger over the paper, then peers out the window across a field. “Like here, the road bends because past those trees, there’s an inlet on the lake.” He flips the page, continuing his journey on the map.
The pavement turns to gravel and a long poof of dust trails behind us. Trees and bushes grow to the edge of the road and I love how civilization suddenly feels so much further away.
“Do bears ever attack people out here?” Charlie inquires.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of. Why? You think Terry got eaten by a bear?”
“Maybe. Nature is the only thing that doesn’t make sense. I don’t trust it.”
I don’t know if he’s serious, but Charlie goes quiet again. When I turn at the road to Dyson’s Point, Charlie asks, “Do you mind if we stop by Diane’s before we go home?”
“Um, okay?”
We pull up in front of her property. Lawn ornaments and wind chimes decorate her front yard. A carved sign says this beach life and a four-wheel atv sits in her driveway.
Charlie opens the glove box and takes out a scrap of paper and a pen. “I’ll be right back.”
As he walks to her front door, he scrawls something on the sheet. He doesn’t knock but instead jams his note between the screen door and the frame. Then he goes over to a statue of a raccoon and slips something under it.
He gets back in the car.
“What was that?”
“Just a little medicinal aid.”
“What?” I’m hoping it’s not what I think it is.
“She’s a nice lady, so I thought I’d leave her something.”
“You’ve been carrying drugs around?”
“Relax, Shepherd. I just bought it.”
“From where?”
“The dude who filled our propane.”
“From Huber’s?”
He nods.
“Who—? How—?”
“Don’t blow a gasket. It’s amazing what people share when you ask the right questions.”
“Like what? ‘Do you have drugs?’ ”
“Yeah. It’s all about being direct. Anyhow, it’s just a quarter and Diane could use it.”
“And what? You left a note saying, ‘Hey, it’s Charlie. Here’s some pot. Have fun lighting up.’ ”
He glares at me. “No, it’s anonymous.”
“So?”
“She’s in pain. You know you’re desperate when you’re asking a perfect stranger for help.”
I think about what he’s saying.
“Not to mention lonely,” he adds. “Who hangs out with her? Checks up on her? You?”
I don’t say anything.
“I didn’t think so.”
Who would’ve thought: Charlie Wolfe is a humanitarian.
chapter 35
We pull up to the cabin and carry the bags of groceries into the house
. Dad grabs them and unpacks the steaks.
“Wow, those are some nice cuts. We have you to thank, Charlie?”
“Nope, it’s all Shepherd.”
Dad glances at me.
“It wasn’t me. I was given strict instructions of what to search for.”
“Now, you’ll have to excuse us, Mr. S.,” Charlie says, pulling out the vegetables, “we have to get to work.”
Dad picks up the eggplant, smelling it. “Nonsense. You got all this. Let me make it.”
Charlie folds up the bags. “No way. A deal’s a deal.”
Dad leans in. “Charlie, every time we come out here the rules change and they never let me cook. Give me this one meal.”
I can’t believe I’m watching Dad almost begging Charlie.
“Fine,” Charlie concedes. “But only because I have complete faith in you.”
Dad reaches for a knife, but Charlie stops him. “You have to promise me though that you keep Mrs. S. and Heather’s hands off it.”
“Deal.”
chapter 36
Dad asks me to set up the propane tank before I wander off, so I grab it from the trunk. After I screw it in, I see Charlie down by the shoreline and I grab a couple of drinks out of the fridge before going down there myself.
He’s sitting on the dock, feet dangling in the water. He looks relaxed.
“Thirsty?”
“Thanks.” He takes the can from my hand. “You don’t seem like a pop-drinking family.”
“Oh? What do we seem like?” I’m always curious to know how Charlie interprets us.
He shrugs. “More like some froufrou bottled carbonated water.”
“Maybe with a hint of lemon?”
He nods as he cracks his can. He takes a swig and makes a face. “What is this?”
I’m already smiling. “Generic brand carbonated water.”
“With lemon?”
“Lime,” I laugh.
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