“Doggone it,” Sadie said out loud. “I forgot I was going to cook up a roast tonight.” She turned to Melba. “Can I leave my bag here while I go back for it?”
“I don’t care,” the woman said. Sadie got her roast and was in the other girl’s line before Melba had finished with her over-the-limit customer.
Though they were a chain store, Albertson’s had always been good about employing otherwise difficult to employ people in the community. Mason Dillies, a local man with Down syndrome, had recently been featured in the paper for having worked as a bagger at Albertson’s for fifteen years. Their philanthropic disposition was enviable. However Sammy’s did the same thing, she preferred their produce, and the owners went to her church. The clerk for this new check stand didn’t have Down syndrome, but she had a breezy disposition that seemed to make time move slower in her lane.
The girl was young, early twenties Sadie guessed, with shoulder-length brown hair. She had a fair amount of acne scarring, a general look of naïve unkemptness, and jack-o’-lantern earrings that dangled from her ears even though Halloween was three weeks away. When she said “Good morning,” her words were slow and not fully sounded out.
Sadie smiled brightly, wanting to put the girl at ease. “Did you know Anne?” she asked directly.
“Yes,” the girl said as she picked up the roast and slowly pulled it over the eye of the scanner. It didn’t take. “She gives me rides home so I din’t have to take the bus.”
Sadie smiled and realized how hungry she was to hear something positive about Anne. Until this moment she hadn’t known how badly she needed the reassurance that Anne wasn’t just mean and manipulating. Sadie had seen worth in her; surely she hadn’t been completely wrong in her judgment. “She was very nice, wasn’t she.”
The girl nodded, her nod as slow as the words she’d just spoken. She didn’t offer Sadie any other information as she pulled the roast over the scanner a second time. This time the cash register beeped and she put the roast in a plastic sack.
“Did she get along with anyone else here?” Sadie asked, wishing she’d grabbed more items so as to extend the conversation. She grabbed a pack of gum from the rack behind the conveyor and put it down. “Or were you her only friend?”
The word “friend” made the young girl smile, which relieved Sadie even more.
“She was my friend,” the girl said. She looked up and met Sadie’s eyes. Underneath the scarring and softness of her expression, she was a beautiful girl, with wide green eyes and high cheekbones. Sadie hoped she had wonderful parents who cared for and loved her dearly. She picked up the pack of gum and swiped it across the scanner. This one beeped on the first try.
“I know,” Sadie said, imagining Anne waiting for this girl to finish her shift and ushering her to her car. Good for Anne. Sadie searched for something else to say. “She got along with the customers?” Melba had already said as much, but Sadie wanted it from another source.
“Customers like Anne,” the girl continued. Her eyebrows furrowed. “’Cept the one in the pink shoes.”
“Oh,” Sadie asked, trying not to sound too interested. “What happened with the one in the pink shoes?”
“Well,” the girl said. She stared at the conveyor, concentrating hard. “Anne was givin’ me a ride home, and a lady stopped her car in front of us. Anne stopped fast and I hit my hand.” She lifted her hand as if to show an injury Sadie couldn’t see, though she frowned sympathetically. “And the lady jumped out and yelled mean things.” She shook her head as if still upset about it.
“How horrible,” Sadie said. “Then what happened?”
“Anne yelled too.” The girl looked up and met Sadie’s eyes. She leaned toward Sadie and lowered her voice. “She said bad words.”
Sadie made a face. “That’s not good.”
The girl shook her head slowly and straightened. “Then she took me home.”
That’s it? Sadie thought. “Um, what did this woman say, the one who stopped her car in front of you?”
“She said Anne was a home breaker.”
“A home breaker?” Sadie asked, searching her mind for a definition of the term. “Oh, you mean a home wrecker.”
“Right,” the girl said, smiling as if embarrassed. “Home wrecker. And she said Anne had to go away forever.” The girl’s eyes went wide to illustrate the seriousness of such a demand.
“Forever?” Sadie said, keeping the tension up though her thoughts were moving a million miles an hour now. If Jack was the father of Anne’s baby, only one person would be accusing Anne of being a home wrecker. “That’s a long time,” she said, swallowing and forcing herself not to cover her ears as yet one more person she loved came into focus.
“And then Anne said the bad words I was telling you about. I can’t say them.”
“Oh, no,” Sadie assured her. “I wouldn’t want you to. Um, what did this lady look like?”
“Pink shoes,” the girl said bluntly. “With light hair.” She looked triumphant, as if that explained everything.
“What did her car look like?” Sadie asked, trying to imagine Carrie wearing pink shoes, but finding herself not wanting to think on it too hard even though she couldn’t get Carrie’s newly blonde hair out of her mind. The denial she’d been wresting with in regards to both Ron and Jack was back full force. These things don’t happen in real life! she lamented. Not to me.
“White,” the girl said. “With black tires and a fish on the back.” Carrie’s car to a T. Sadie swallowed as the clerk continued. She seemed to have warmed up to Sadie. “I have a fish, too, you know. She’s a molly fish and I named her Polly. Get it?”
“Polly the Molly,” Sadie said, though she wasn’t sure how much longer she could pretend her whole world wasn’t spinning out of control. “That’s very cute.”
The girl smiled broadly and nodded.
“Was Anne upset when she got back in the car?”
The girl furrowed her brow and then shook her head. “No, she said the lady was crazy but I was scared of that lady.”
“I bet you were,” Sadie said, reaching over to pat the girl’s arm sympathetically.
Someone standing behind Sadie cleared her throat. Sadie turned to look. “Oh, sorry,” she said to the little old lady who’d already loaded all her groceries on the conveyor. She turned back to the clerk. “Thank you for talking to me,” she said with a smile. “Say hi to Polly for me.”
She was a few feet away when she remembered something else. She stepped back, earning an unhappy look from the customer in line.
“When did this happen?” Sadie asked. “The mean lady and the bad words.”
“Um,” the girl said, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. “Monday.”
“Monday?” Sadie asked bleakly. “You’re sure?”
The girl nodded. “I never work on Sunday and I came back on Monday. Anne was s’posed to pick me up on Tuesday after lunch.” Her face fell and a confused expression took residence behind her eyes. “But she didn’t call and she didn’t pick me up. Mama said she’s in heaven now. I bet she’s a pretty angel.”
Sadie tried to swallow the lump in her throat and give the girl a final smile. “I’ll bet she is too.”
Chapter 29
“Hi, Sadie.” Sadie smiled brightly at Mr. Henry who stood just inside his doorway. He regarded her with complete boredom. She could hear a television coming from the darkness behind him and tried not to shiver in the wind that was still blowing. The junipers he had planted around the doorstep helped shield her from the worst of the wind, but it was still very cold. It didn’t surprise her that he didn’t invite her in. That’s why she’d grabbed her heavy winter coat on her way out the door.
He was the only neighbor she hadn’t talked to and she wanted to make sure she’d left no stone unturned before she allowed her suspicions to blossom into a full-grown garden. Already the shoots of such newly planted seeds were pushing up through the ground, making themselves difficult to ignore. When she’d s
een his car in the driveway and realized he wasn’t working today she knew she couldn’t resist.
“Hi, Frank,” she said. Using his first name felt strange on her lips, but she was pretending they were bosom friends who told each other everything, and she’d never call a bosom friend “Mr. Henry.” She held out the plate in her hands. It was still warm and she was hesitant to let it go. “I made you carrot cookies,” she said, smiling widely. The first thing she’d done when she got home was start the cookies. While they baked she took a shower and did her hair—finally—and she’d even put some makeup on and enjoyed feeling like herself again.
He stared at them with longing, then looked up at her with narrowed eyes. “I don’t eat sugar anymore, Sadie. Doctor says I have prediabetic symptoms.”
“Oh,” Sadie said, her voice showing far more disappointment than was warranted. She’d just spent forty minutes baking these cookies. For nothing? “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
He shrugged and began closing the door.
“I could make some soup,” she said quickly, not wanting to lose the opportunity. “I make a fabulous beef-and-barley—no sugar and limited starches. I could bring some over later, it takes about two hours to simmer so—”
“What do you want, Sadie?”
Hmmm, so she wasn’t fooling him. “I . . . just wanted to be a good neighbor.”
He rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes at her attempts of service! “You want something,” he summed up. “What?”
Sadie straightened up and looked aghast at him as a gust of wind blew against her back, causing her hair to blow forward. She wrestled with the now tousled strands, trying to get them back in place. “I am just trying to—”
“Sadie Wright Hoffmiller,” Mr. Henry said. “I’ve got your number, okay? I’ve known you for, what, eight years? And in all that time you only show up with food when you either need to borrow something or want to find out who was visiting me for the weekend.” He stopped and smiled just enough to offend her even more as she raced for an explanation. “Your Christianity is lovely, and the fact that you’re a terrible busybody doesn’t bother me in the least, but I’ve got a show I’m in the middle of and my TiVo ain’t workin’, so just get on with it.”
Oh, fine, Sadie decided, finally lowering the plate and her facade. “Did you see anything yesterday morning or the night before?”
“Nope. Same old stuff as always, ’cept Carrie.”
“Carrie?” Sadie asked as she tried to pull everything she’d heard about Carrie over the last two days to the forefront of her mind. It was weird that the topic she was hoping for more information on was the very thing he would bring up. Could it be fate?
“Yeah, she was loading a suitcase in the car when I left for work—I went in at five to get ready for an audit.”
Suitcase. Someone else had said something about . . . that’s right, Mindy had talked about Carrie taking a trip. Sadie had forgotten all about that. “At five in the morning?”
“That’s what I thought. Funny thing about it,” Mr. Henry said, his eyes dancing as he leaned forward slightly. She’d never seen him so animated and found it a little disgusting that he’d take so much delight in the ugliness of all this. And Mr. Henry had never liked Carrie. Not since the time at the block party that he mentioned he was against war and she called him an anarchist. People don’t generally like to be called anarchists and Mr. Henry was no exception. He’d stood up from the table in Sadie’s backyard and walked away without a word. That was five years ago, and he hadn’t come to a block party since.
“The car left last night but she didn’t, darn my luck. I was gettin’ all excited about her holiday.”
Sadie turned to look at Carrie’s house. Her car wasn’t there. She tried to remember if it had been there last night. All she could remember was Jack’s truck—but it wasn’t there either.
“When did the car leave? Who took it?”
Mr. Henry shrugged. “I saw your girl’s car on the street. The next time I looked out the window both cars were gone. At first I thought Carrie was gone too—I was about ready to celebrate—but then I saw her out talking to Jack for a little while.”
Sadie stared at the porch. “Did you tell all this to the police?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I didn’t pay it much mind till the car was gone and the dragon lady wasn’t. The police haven’t been around for me to tell them anything today and I don’t think it matters to them if Carrie goes out of town or not.” Mr. Henry began shutting the door again. “Ain’t my business, Sadie. If you ask me, it ain’t yours either.”
“Trevor is Jack’s son,” she said quickly, needing the upper hand and knowing that kind of information would give it to her. Mr. Henry startled and his eyebrows jumped up. He pushed the door open a little wider.
“What?” he asked slowly.
She summed up the whole sordid situation in about half a dozen sentences. Mr. Henry looked appropriately shocked and just a teeny bit impressed. She’d have slapped him but she knew full well that wouldn’t help her get any more information. “He didn’t kill Anne,” Sadie said sharply. “I know he didn’t.”
“Then who did?” Mr. Henry asked, watching her carefully as if afraid she might spontaneously combust with all the stress and pressure.
Sadie turned away from him without giving a direct answer, shrugging her shoulders slightly. “If you remember anything else will you let me know?”
“Sure,” Mr. Henry said as she headed down his front walk, the cookies still in hand.
Suitcase.
In the trunk.
“Frank,” she said, turning to face him and knowing he’d be there because she hadn’t heard the door close. He was watching her. “What color was the suitcase?”
“Black, I think,” he said. “And heavy. If it had been anyone else I’d have stopped to help. As it was I enjoyed watching her struggle.”
What a gentleman. “And did you happen to notice if she was wearing pink shoes?”
“Pink?” Frank said. “Only good witches wear pink, Sadie, and Carrie ain’t never been a good witch.”
Sadie nodded and turned away, closing her eyes for a moment as she caught her breath. She was worn out from all the suspecting she’d been doing. She crossed the cul-de-sac, the north wind destroying all the hard work on her hair strand by strand, but she wasn’t paying it much mind. She peeled back the plastic from the plate long enough to grab a cookie and shove the whole thing in her mouth. The orange-glaze frosting filled her mouth as her cheeks puffed out while she chewed.
A suitcase.
A heavy suitcase.
A heavy black suitcase.
Anne’s missing filing cabinet?
She should have asked Mr. Henry if he’d had his glasses on when he saw Carrie, but it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that in the darkness of early morning a two-drawer filing cabinet could look an awful lot like a big heavy suitcase. Without the car here, presumably with the suitcase or filing cabinet in the trunk, there wasn’t much she could do on that front. But she felt an increased urgency to get some answers. She felt so close, both physically and metaphorically. So much had happened right under her nose. It felt as if the only way to validate that she wasn’t a complete idiot for not realizing just how much had been happening was to find out exactly what those happenings were.
With her free hand she pulled out her phone and once she reached the sidewalk in front of Carrie and Jack’s house she began typing a text message to Breanna. She’d have called, except Breanna never answered her phone during class. It took an inordinately long time to type with one hand, even using a few abbreviations. Although she was hesitant to involve her daughter, she needed answers.
Did T drive C’s car home last night? Call ASAP
She put the phone in her pocket and found herself looking at Jack and Carrie’s house. The shades were drawn, the porch cluttered, as had been its state the longer Jack had been away. Sadie wondered how many secrets were
held inside that quiet house.
Inside, she repeated. That’s what she needed to do. Get inside!
She’d try doing it the right way first.
She headed up the front steps and knocked loudly on the door, deciding she’d offer the cookies and tell Carrie she’d left something in the guest room. That would give her a reason to be invited in, and once there . . . she’d come up with another plan.
No one answered.
She knocked again and waited. Nothing. The heavy curtains—too heavy for an entryway, in her opinion—made it impossible to see through the front windows. Entryways should be light and welcoming, not shut out visitors. Sadie tried the door—locked. She went back down the porch steps and around the side of Carrie’s house. The windows were all closed tight, the curtains drawn.
I have a key, she told herself, then remembered that she’d given Jack and Carrie’s key to Detective Madsen. She briefly wondered what he was going to do when he found out the mistake, then pushed that thought from her mind. As she rounded the back of the house she decided to try the back door. If it was unlocked, she could go in and . . . look around. Should Carrie come home, Sadie could use the same forgotten-item excuse to explain her presence there. However, the back door was locked, and try as she might to peek through the mini-blinds of the kitchen window, she couldn’t see a thing.
“Fine,” she said as if giving in to an argument, though she wasn’t giving up. She would get into this house one way or another, but she’d have to get creative or wait until Carrie got home. Sadie headed down the back steps, then paused on the last one with her foot in the air. Her eyes were drawn to the garbage cans lined up against the garage. In two seconds she was standing over the green Rubbermaid containers, but she didn’t have to open them to know what was inside. Her nose was sending out an urgent alarm even as she tried to talk herself out of it. But a mother never loses the ability to diagnose certain things. There are simply some smells that remain embedded on her senses for the rest of her life.
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