Bitter Roots

by C. J. Carmichael

Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I’ve found his last name.” Nadine put down the phone and punched a fist into the air.

  Zak looked up from his computer screen. “Connor’s?”

  “Yes. It’s O’Leary. I finally tracked down a young woman who’d worked at Jack’s Cellar at the same time as Riley. This girl and her boyfriend at the time went out with Riley and Connor once...and she actually remembered Connor’s last name.”

  “That’s a lucky break. Not many would remember the first name, let alone the last name of someone you’d met just once, four years ago.”

  “She said the name was memorable because she and her boyfriend thought Connor was a jerk and felt his last name was appropriate because he was always leering at women who didn’t belong to him.”

  “Good work,” Zak said, but Nadine was already making a second call and held up her hand to silence him.

  “Hey, Detective, this is Deputy Black from Lost Trail...” She paused as something was said on the other end. From her smile, and the way she started patted her hair with her free hand, Zak guessed the detective was letting her know he was glad to hear from her.

  “Me too,” she said, in response to whatever it was the detective had said. Then she got to business. “I’ve got a last name for Riley’s boyfriend. It’s O’Leary.” Another pause. “Yes, Connor O’Leary.”

  A longer pause this time, during which time Zak supposed the detective was promising to check into the guy and get back to her.

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Another smile. Another stroke of her hair, and then she was hanging up. Hurriedly Zak pinned his gaze back on his notes.

  “So,” he opened, a few minutes later when she hadn’t said anything. “You going to tell the sheriff you found the ex-boyfriend?”

  “Not until I hear back from California and have followed the lead as far as I can. I’m not going to get caught flat-footed again.” She tapped a furious rhythm with her pen against a pad of paper, then sprang out of her chair and went for some coffee.

  He could sense her pent-up adrenaline. Hanging tight and waiting was often the hardest part of this job. “Hopefully the detective gets back to you soon.”

  “He’s in the middle of something urgent right now. He promised to get me some information by tomorrow morning, though. This could be our big break...”

  Zak empathized. She was trying so hard to impress her boss by proving Ford’s pet theory. But Zak was more convinced than ever that it was trouble in Lost Trail—not from her past—that had led Riley to her death. If he turned out to be wrong, then fine. Getting justice for Riley was what it was all about.

  But Zak didn’t think he’d be wrong.

  If Riley had simply been running from trouble she would have been smarter to pick a bigger town or city, where it would be easier to blend in.

  Instead, she’d chosen Lost Trail. And there had to be a reason. Possibly she was trying to find her father. But maybe it had been a romantic interest that had brought her here.

  Since his lunch break he’d been checking into Kenny Bombard’s past, trying to find a link between the former ski guide and Riley, a place or time when their lives might have intersected. So far he’d found nothing, but that didn’t mean the connection wasn’t out there, waiting to be discovered.

  The pitiful crying of a puppy was Justin’s first sign something was wrong when he let himself in through the back entrance of his home. He’d left his law office an hour earlier than usual, worn out after a day of worrying about Willow. He wasn’t sure why he’d been so reluctant to just call her after he spotted her dropping Geneva off at the day care. Was he trying to prove to himself that he trusted her? Or was he simply too afraid about what she’d say if cornered?

  “Hey, Dora. It’s okay. I’m coming to get you.” He tramped fresh snowflakes onto the kitchen floor as he rushed to the crate on the other side of the room. As soon as he unlatched the door, the puppy hurled her body at him, whining and wagging her tail with furious intensity. Inside the crate she’d knocked over the bowls of water and food Willow had left for her. The newspapers piled in the far corner reeked of urine.

  He cradled the puppy to his chest as he carried her outside. When she seemed a bit calmer, he set her down to do her business, but the snow—which had started falling about an hour earlier—was too much of a distraction. She batted at the flakes, then, finally appreciating her freedom, began racing in circles around the frozen yard.

  Justin watched with a faint smile, tamping the growing ball of anxiety in his gut as he tried to figure out where Willow and Geneva were.

  Willow’s car was in the driveway in its usual spot.

  But clearly she wasn’t home.

  To confirm this, once the puppy had calmed down enough to defecate on what in springtime would hopefully be a bed of tulips, Justin toured each room of the house. Silence and emptiness greeted him.

  He ended in the master bedroom. Willow’s bathrobe was on its usual hook. He opened a few drawers and found all her sweaters, T-shirts, and socks, neatly stacked. In the bathroom her pink toothbrush was next to his green one. Her shampoo and conditioner bottles were still in the shower.

  He was about to check the basement when his cell phone rang. The name on the display was the Little Cow Pokes Day Care.

  “Hello?”

  “Justin? This is Debbie-Ann.”

  Debbie-Ann had opened the day care ten years ago, to support herself financially after her daughter Ashley was born.

  “Your wife told me you’d be picking up Geneva at five,” she continued, “but I was hoping you could come a few minutes earlier? My daughter’s car-pool ride just canceled and if possible I’d like to drive her to her ballet class in Hamilton. Geneva’s our last wee one, and I think she’s more than ready to come home. It’s been a long day for her.”

  Justin blinked, processing the rapid flow of information. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  Fingers flying he sent a text message to Willow asking where she was. As he dressed to go out in the storm again, he kept looking at his phone, praying she would reply. But there was nothing.

  He contemplated what to do with the pup. He didn’t have the heart to put her back in that crate, so he’d have to bring her with him. He wrapped a flannel blanket around Dora, then took off across the back alley, running the four blocks to the day care.

  Debbie-Ann had Geneva bundled into her snowsuit and boots by the time he arrived. In her hands Geneva clutched a painting on a large piece of poster paper. The moment she spotted the puppy though, she dropped the art and went to Dora, patting her gently on the head.

  “You’re a doll,” Debbie-Ann said. “I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience to leave work early?”

  “Not at all. I was already home actually. Willow forgot to tell me I was supposed to pick up our daughter.”

  Debbie-Ann frowned and might have asked more questions if she hadn’t been in such a hurry. She picked the painting up from the floor and handed it to Justin. Geneva had painted a mother and a little girl holding hands on one side of the paper. On the other side was a big blob, which she’d made with heavy slashes of black ink.

  The sight of it almost made him sick. What had Debbie-Ann made of this? And what in the world had prompted Geneva to create it?

  Debbie-Ann stooped in front of Geneva. “Good-bye, honey. I hope you come and see us again soon.”

  Geneva said nothing, just stared at her solemnly.

  “Thanks for everything,” Justin said. “Good luck making that ballet class.” He led his daughter outside where she immediately cringed as the cold air and snow pelted her face.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring the car. Want to ride piggyback?”

  She nodded, so he crouched low enough that she could circle her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He felt her hide her face against the back of his parka. Still holding the dog in one arm, and Geneva’s painting in the ot
her hand, Justin loped for home.

  Once back in the warmth of the house, Justin waited for Geneva to ask about her mother. But she seemed content to throw toys for the puppy, who attacked each of them in turn.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No. We had apples and cheese for a snack.”

  “Were there any other kids at the day care with you?”

  “In the morning there were five kids and two babies. After lunch the babies went home. And then the other kids did too.”

  “Were they nice, the other kids? Did you play with them?”

  Geneva looked at him and shrugged, then tossed another of the puppy’s stuffed toys, which sent Dora on the chase.

  Justin sent a second message to Willow, then cleaned up the mess in the crate, and put a frozen lasagna in the oven for dinner. He kept waiting for Geneva to mention her mother, not wanting to upset her by raising the subject first. After they’d finished dinner he set up Geneva with a movie, and paced the house anxiously, every few minutes looking out at the street—surely Willow had to come home soon.

  None of his text messages had been answered, so finally he tried calling her. A few seconds after hitting the green connect button, he heard a faint ringing coming from the other end of the house. He followed the sound to one of Willow’s coats, hanging by the front door. Reaching into the pocket, he found her phone.

  For the first time it occurred to him that something terrible might have happened to her.

  He thought about the young woman who’d been murdered, a little over a week ago. Could it have happened again?

  With his heart banging against his chest, he found the number to the sheriff’s office, then hesitated before hitting the green connect button. There was one last place he ought to check. Racing downstairs he went to the storage room and the boxes of stuff Willow had brought with her when she moved in. He reached for the one that held what had once been her most treasured possession—her camera.

  The box was still there, but the camera case had been replaced with a note.

  I’m fine. Don’t try to find me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was after six and dark when Zak locked up the sheriff’s office. The forecast blizzard had arrived and as he made his way to his truck snow pelted from the sky, biting at every exposed inch of skin on his face and neck. He ducked his head against the onslaught as he fumbled for his keys.

  Once he had his vehicle started he brushed the snow from the windows and scraped ice from the windshield. Despite his gloves, his fingers were prickling from the cold by the time he was done.

  He drove home slowly, along roads with at least five inches of fresh powder. This stuff was great for the ski hill, brutal for driving. He hoped people would be cautious and there wouldn’t be any accidents tonight.

  As he drove, he thought about Riley, a stranger in town, who worked hard all day at the Christmas tree farm, and spent her off-hours in the library, evenings sleeping in the back of her hatchback. It sounded like such a lonely existence.

  Had she had hopes and dreams for her future? The sketchbook with the drawings of a modest, but attractive home, suggested she had...

  As he turned onto Winding Down Way he paused by Miss Christensen’s place. A faint light shone from the living room, and a bluish glare told him the TV was on. Must be a lonely existence for her, with no husband or children, and very few contemporaries still alive to socialize with.

  A flash of light from the cemetery on the other side of the road made him curious. He pulled over and killed the engine. A minute later two teenagers came running down the hill, wearing head lamps, ducking behind tombstones and tossing snowballs at one another. When they got closer to the road, they aimed a few of their missiles at the house across the way.

  One hit the living room picture window, squarely in the middle.

  Zak wondered if Miss Christensen would come out to the stoop, shaking her fist. But instead she drew the curtains closed.

  The boys—for they were close enough to the streetlamps now that he could see their faces—retaliated with another volley.

  Zak sighed, then got out of his truck. The boys immediately started running, each in opposite directions, but they froze when he called out their names. “Trevor! Darren! I’m going to be phoning your parents tomorrow unless you come talk to me now.”

  Darren started running again, maybe he hadn’t heard him, or perhaps he preferred to take his chances with his parents. Trevor Larkin, however, pulled off his head lamp and came trudging through the snow.

  “Hey, man, we were just having fun. Snowballs don’t hurt anything.”

  “No. And they’re a lot easier to clean up than, say, a raw egg.”

  Trevor cringed, which told Zak his hunch had been correct.

  “Please don’t tell my dad. He’s super stressed these days. He’ll be pissed off as hell if he finds out. It was just supposed to be a prank.”

  Zak put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I don’t want to make trouble for you, Trevor. But I believe you may have seen something on Halloween night that you should have told the sheriff about.”

  Trevor’s eyes widened. “How did you know?” Then, as if realizing he’d made a tactical error: “I didn’t see anything. Not really.”

  The boy was trembling now, whether from fear or the cold, Zak couldn’t tell. But he’d had enough of this frigid air himself. “My truck is warm. Let’s talk in there and then I’ll give you a lift home.”

  Trevor didn’t argue. Once the boy was in the passenger seat, Zak turned on the engine and jacked up the heat.

  “Miss Christensen told me those eggs were thrown after two in the morning.”

  “Maybe. We weren’t keeping track of time. I’d turned off my phone so I wouldn’t hear my mom when she texted me.”

  “What was the plan? Tell her your phone died and you lost track of time?”

  Trevor flushed. “We were having fun. And we weren’t hurting anyone.”

  “You were still out pretty late. Streets must have been dead at that hour.”

  “They were. It was so cool. We only saw one—” He stopped abruptly. “I’d never been out so late before. I liked it.”

  “Tell me everything you and Darren did and saw after you egged Miss Christensen’s window.”

  Trevor squirmed. “I can’t really remember.”

  “You know a woman was killed that night, right? This is important.”

  The boy let out a shaky breath. “We ran along Winding Down Way until we got to Second Street, then we went up to Tumbleweed. We were walking in the middle of the street because there was literally no one around. Just when we were about to split up to head home we saw a truck coming down from Lost Creek Road. We jumped off the road, thinking it was heading downtown, but then the truck turned into the alley and ended up behind the medical clinic.”

  “Did the driver see you?”

  “I don’t think so. We saw the lights coming from a long way off and made sure we were out of sight.”

  “Could you see the parking lot behind the medical clinic?”

  “Part of it. It looked like the driver rolled something out of the truck. I couldn’t tell what. It was dark and I was getting spooked. Darren was already gone and that’s when I took off for home, too.”

  Zak berated himself for not following up on the vandalism sooner. He should have realized the kids might have seen something useful.

  “Can you tell me anything about the truck, or the driver?”

  Trevor shook his head. “No. It was too dark.”

  Zak couldn’t decide whether to believe him. He stared at Trevor, waiting to see if he would buckle under the pressure. Change his story.

  The kid remained silent.

  “Okay, Trevor, I’m going to drive you home. But you better tell your folks about this. I’ll expect you and at least one of your parents to come into the sheriff’s office tomorrow to make a statement.”

  An hour before Geneva’s bedtime, Justin realized h
e couldn’t wait for his daughter to bring up the subject of her missing mother. They needed to talk about it now. He sat next to her on the sofa. Exhausted after hours of playing, Dora was snoozing on her lap. He stroked the puppy’s soft coat.

  “She’s so cute when she’s sleeping. Are you glad we kept her?”

  Geneva kissed the top of the puppy’s head. “I love her.”

  “Honey, what did your mom say to you when she dropped you off at the day care? Did she tell you where she was going?”

  Geneva cast her gaze down. A few seconds later a tear dropped onto the puppy’s back. In that moment Justin felt pain like he’d never known before. He took Geneva’s hand and gave it a tender squeeze.

  “S-she said she had to go away. That she would be gone a long time.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. That must have made you sad.”

  She nodded. “She said I couldn’t come. I had to stay with you.”

  He heard fear in her voice, sensed it in her tense little body.

  He had to say something and pray he found the right words. “For a long time I wanted to be a daddy to a little girl—a little girl just like you. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but then one day you and your mom showed up at my house. And since you moved in I’ve been so happy.”

  Geneva didn’t look at him, but he could tell she was listening carefully.

  “I don’t know what your life was like before you moved here, but I promise I will take care of you and I’ll love you. I’ll never touch you unless you want a hug or a piggyback ride, or some kind of help from me. I might get upset at times but I’ll never hurt you or yell at you.”

  Slowly Geneva lifted her head and glanced at him sideways. Her long brown lashes still gleamed with tears. But he thought he could see the beginning of trust in her eyes.

  “I hope your mom comes back soon. I know you’ll miss her until she does. But you are going to be safe with me. You, me, Grandpa Clark, and Dora...we’re a family and we’ll stick together.”

  Geneva’s lips trembled. “B-but what about when you’re working?”