Ron finally relaxed his hand, but his face was tight, his eyes full of turmoil. She kept a distance between the two of them and couldn’t stop her mind from reviewing all the possible fire escapes she and the kids used to drill through once a year in case she had to make a break for it.
“She was threatening him—both of us really.”
“Both of you?”
“She was going to tell you,” Ron said, turning his tortured eyes on her. They were still standing in the hallway; she realized he was likely hesitant to go into the living room with so many windows. Being in a small space forced his face closer to her than she’d have liked. “She was slowly cornering us, Sadie. She’d already found a job at Riggs and Barker, and she was going to start next week. Jack had dipped into his 401(k) and done all he could. He felt there was nothing else to do but to tell everyone the truth. But he wanted to wait until after the conference to do it.”
Sadie said nothing, but continued to hold his eyes.
“It wasn’t just about Carrie,” he continued, his tone rising. “He’s got three grown daughters. He has neighbors, friends . . . you.”
“Me?” Sadie said. “Jack knows that if anyone is going to stand by him no matter what, it’s me.”
Ron’s expression showed a moment of frustration, as if his being so familiar with all the details made her unfamiliarity with them hard to understand and empathize with. “But he didn’t want you to have to stand by him, Sadie. He was humiliated, and full of so much remorse for all of it—for everyone. He’d tried so hard to set something up where he was the only one that suffered, but it was falling apart. On the way to Denver he said he was going to call his kids and have them come down on Saturday. He’d tell Carrie first, of course, but he felt he needed to let everyone know. I think . . . he was almost relieved to finally have an end to it. He seemed lighter.”
“But you went to Anne’s house Monday night,” Sadie said, realizing his visit would have been several hours after Carrie confronted Anne in the parking lot.
“She called me,” Ron said. “Monday evening. She called and said she’d waited long enough. She demanded that Jack come see her that night.” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head slightly as his arms hung limp at his sides. “I didn’t even tell Jack. He had a presentation in the morning, and he was already under so much pressure getting ready to tell his family. I thought maybe I could reason with her one last time, help her understand that he wasn’t giving her any more money—he couldn’t.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and continued to stare at the floor. “She was so unreasonable,” he said. “She finally admitted to me that everything she’d done wasn’t about the money. She wanted to be a part of his life. When I told her that wasn’t going to happen, she lost it. She said that in the morning she was going to tell you first thing. She felt that once you knew, Jack would be forced to come home right then and face everything and everyone—her, Carrie, his kids.”
But Carrie already knew, Sadie said in her mind. Ron didn’t know that. Did Jack?
He looked up and met Sadie’s eyes. “I was horrified, Sadie. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
It was the most insulting thing she’d heard all day—and she’d already been told by Cunningham to go knit something. “Why does everyone keep thinking that I somehow live on a different planet?” Sadie interrupted, throwing her hands up in the air for emphasis. “For heaven’s sake, I’m not an idiot.” Though a quick review of all the things she’d missed challenged that pronouncement. “If you all had been honest this would have taken care of itself, and for a man who asked me to marry him, you had an awful lot of secrets. I don’t know how to rectify that.”
“I know,” Ron said, looking down at the ground. “It seemed so straightforward in the beginning when I agreed to go along with Jack. It made so much sense. If Anne had just stayed in Boston . . . if she’d have just stuck with the original deal, none of this would have happened.”
Sadie stiffened. “This is not Anne’s fault,” she said evenly, pointing her finger at him as though he were a student. “She was a young woman trying to do her best with—”
“She was not some kind of hero, Sadie. Don’t put her on a pedestal just because she’s dead.”
The harshness of his words silenced her and she dropped her hand. She didn’t know what to think or how to feel. One minute he was explaining it as if he had been a victim in all this, and the next minute he was angry and spiteful. Could both sides be true?
“And why is she dead, Ron?” she asked calmly, reminding herself of all the questions she needed answered. “What happened?”
His face went slack, a haunted expression flashing in his eyes just before he looked away. “We were arguing, and she was being completely unreasonable. She was demanding—”
“I don’t want to hear how she deserved it, Ron,” she yelled, surprising herself that her voice could even get that loud. “What happened?”
“She fell down the stairs,” Ron said and his eyes stared over Sadie’s shoulder. “We were arguing in the kitchen and I tried to grab her arm so she’d stop walking away from me, but she pulled away real fast and lost her balance at the top of the stairs.”
Stairs? Sadie repeated in her mind. But the family room was cleaned up. And the tieback? She reflected on what Ron had told her yesterday, that Anne was alive when he left her.
“And you left?” Sadie breathed, unable to comprehend how he could have not gone for help.
“She was alive,” Ron said, tears filling his eyes. “She was breathing and she had a strong pulse, but she was unconscious and I didn’t know what to do. She started coming around, moaning. I panicked and I ran. I should have called the police, I know that, but I reacted on instinct and drove straight back to the conference. In the morning, I used a pay phone to call the police to go check on her.”
Ah, so Ron had called in the tip—one mystery solved—but she had little time to ponder on it. Sadie’s instincts would never allow her to leave someone like that. How could he be wired so different? “You must have known she was dead when you called the police, otherwise she’d have implicated you.”
“She wasn’t dead,” Ron said quickly. “And I planned to come back to Garrison later in the day—after I talked to Jack. I needed to take care of a few things and tell my side to the police.”
“If she were still alive, you mean. You had to know that there was a chance she didn’t survive the fall down those stairs, yet you waited until it was convenient for you to call the police.”
He couldn’t looked at her and she was reminded of the quote that said a person’s character was proven in the split-second decisions they make when they think no one will ever know. Ron had chosen to leave, and that said a lot about his character. She felt the last shreds of hope and commitment for their relationship to work disappear from her heart. Jack was her brother, they had been connected their whole lives, but who she married was up to her and she would not choose this.
“I called in the tip from a pay phone, then I went to wait for Jack to finish his class. I was wandering around the hotel, sick to my stomach, trying to come up with the right words when I walked past a security guard. He was on the phone, talking to someone else about a dead girl in Garrison he’d heard about on the scanner—he said something about an Amber Alert for the kid. It was too much of a coincidence and I jumped in the car and drove to Garrison as fast as I could, trying to figure out what to do, afraid you’d seen me that night.”
“And Trevor?” Sadie asked before he had a chance to break off the dialogue.
Ron paused there. Did everyone forget about Trevor in this?
“I don’t know,” Ron said. “I left. I don’t know what happened to Trevor. He was asleep when I got there. It was after midnight.”
Sadie regarded him and tried to line things up. Everything she’d learned about Carrie’s involvement was directly tied to Trevor. Had she simply taken Trevor? Gone over after Ron left? But why? And where was he now? How
did Anne get into the field? Why would Ron tell her this story if it wasn’t the truth and so easily disproved? There was so much to sort through.
After a few seconds, she looked up at him. “I need you to do me a favor,” she said, using the exact same words she’d spoken to Breanna a few minutes earlier. She walked past him toward the phone and picked it up. “Call Carrie,” she said. “Tell her that Jack asked you to call about Trevor. That you’re supposed to help her.”
“Carrie?” Ron asked. He was still standing in the shadows of the hallway, hesitant to step into the wintry light. “What does Carrie—”
She pushed the phone closer to him. “I think she has Trevor somewhere, but I’m sure she won’t talk to me.”
“I don’t want to get any more involved in this than I already am,” Ron said, taking a step backward. “The police are watching my house. I’ve been afraid to go to work, to drive more than a mile over the speed limit. I’m going to turn myself in, Sadie. I know I have to, but I wanted you to know the whole story first.”
“Do you know that Jack confessed this morning?”
Ron’s eyes went wide and he visibly started. “What?”
“He says he killed Anne. I thought he was covering for you, but now I believe he’s covering for Carrie. Anne wasn’t killed by the fall, someone strangled her and dragged her body into the field.”
“But I—”
“You owe me this,” Sadie reminded him. “After all the stews and steak dinners I have made you while you were lying to me, hiding something this big, the least you can do is make one lousy phone call in the hopes of saving this boy whose mother you left to die.”
Finally, Ron took a few steps forward. Sadie dialed the number and handed it to him before hurrying to the extension in the bedroom. She shrugged out of her coat—she was sweating. She picked up the phone carefully, and one ring later, Carrie answered the phone.
“Carrie?” Ron asked, his voice higher than usual. Sadie hoped Carrie didn’t pick up on it. “I, uh, need to ask you some questions. Jack wants me to help with Trevor. He asked me to call you and find out what you need me to do to help.”
Carrie was silent for a few moments and Sadie held her breath. “Jack wanted you to call?” she repeated.
“Yes,” Ron said. “He was, uh, worried about you doing . . . it all by yourself. I want to do whatever I need to do to help. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Is that so?” Carrie asked, her tone superior. Sadie was confused. “Then why are you calling me from Sadie’s house?”
Oops.
Chapter 32
Three things happened at once. Someone knocked at the door, Carrie hung up, and Ron swore—another strike against him.
Sadie was frozen as the triple play took place and in the next instant Ron appeared in the doorway of her bedroom with an angry look on his face. “What now?” he asked in a fierce whisper.
“Answer the door,” Sadie said as she sprang off the bed and headed for the back door. She knew it was Detective Madsen knocking. She also knew that she had to confront Carrie herself, and she had to do it fast. “You said you were going to turn yourself in and now is your chance. Tell him everything.”
“But,” he said as Sadie bolted past him in the doorway. She pulled open the back door, stepped outside, and shut it quietly before Ron had a chance to say anything else. She walked fast toward the back gate, glad for the privacy fence that would protect her from being seen from the street, at least as long as she was in her own yard. She was halfway to Carrie’s back door when she heard an engine start up. She increased her pace, but half a second later, Jack’s truck passed the black walnut tree on its way out of the cul-de-sac.
Carrie was on the run.
Sadie sprinted back to her own yard and fumbled in her pocket for her car keys. Twenty seconds later she was squealing out of her driveway. She slammed the gearshift into drive and sped after Carrie, paying no mind to the irate detective bounding down her front steps. She blew past the stop sign and turned left after catching just a glimpse of Jack’s tailgate ahead.
Once she straightened out she could see the back of Jack’s truck ahead of her. Her heart was thudding in her ears and she fumbled for her cell phone in her pocket.
“Detective Cunningham,” she said to herself, holding the steering wheel with one hand as she held the phone up to her face. She’d called him on her cell phone before, hadn’t she? In between glances at the road, she scrolled through dialed numbers, but none of them jumped out at her. “Shoot,” she said before calling directory assistance for the second time that day. She did not look forward to her bill this month.
“Yes, I need to be connected to the Garrison Police Department.”
“Is this an emergency?”
“Yes,” Sadie said, needing this woman to hurry. She rounded the corner Carrie had taken seconds before.
“I’ll connect you with 911.”
“91—wait. It’s not that kind of—” But it was too late.
“911, what is the nature of your emergency?”
She grunted and hung up. Carrie was at least two hundred feet ahead of Sadie when Sadie was forced to stop at a red light. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, afraid to blink for fear Jack’s truck would disappear. Her phone rang and she quickly answered it, hoping it was Detective Cunningham somehow sensing her need to talk to him. Carrie turned right at the next light.
“Hello?” Sadie said as her light turned green and she hurried to catch up.
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Breanna,” she breathed. “Did you find out anything?”
“Yes and no,” Breanna said. “Trina’s not home, in fact she hasn’t been home since last night when we got back to Fort Collins. And all she did was run in and pack a bag. She told her roommate she was going back to her parents’.”
“She’s not there,” Sadie said even though Breanna already knew that.
“I know,” Breanna said while Sadie took the same right-hand turn she’d seen Jack’s truck make, scanning the cars ahead of her. Sadie thought she saw the truck way ahead, and squinted in hopes of making out the details better, but she couldn’t be sure it was Carrie.
Breanna continued. “Her roommate said Carrie picked up Trina Sunday after Trina got off work. Trina said she’d be back Monday night—because of midterms she didn’t have class on Monday. But then Trina didn’t come home until Tuesday morning after nine o’clock. Aunt Carrie dropped her off and Trina went right to bed, skipping two midterms she had that day. She only came out when her mom called that afternoon. Then Trina called me for a ride back to Garrison.”
Thoughts and ideas swirled through Sadie’s mind all over again. Trina had been in Garrison Monday night? In an instant she pictured Carrie’s calendar, the one she’d pretended to be reading when Jack had come out of the bedroom last night. She’d seen an appointment for Trina just before Jack interrupted her. If Trina was in town then she might have known her mother found the documents at Susan Gimes’s office. The number of people who knew about Anne’s deception was getting bigger by the minute.
“Oh my word,” Sadie breathed into the phone. “Breanna,” she said sternly, her hand clenching the phone. “Trina’s shoes,” she said quickly, as if she might run out of time to get the words out. “What kind of shoes was Trina wearing when you saw her last night?”
“Tennis shoes, I think,” Breanna said, a question in her voice as to why this detail was important.
“Does she own any pink shoes?” Sadie asked, praying Breanna would say no. Trina was only twenty years old and she’d struggled to find a life of her own. Sadie did not want to heap anything else upon the poor girl’s shoulders, the least of which were undeserved suspicions. But ever since talking to the girl at the grocery store she’d been stuck on the idea of Carrie wearing pink shoes. “Does Trina ever wear pink shoes?”
Breanna paused, a pause that seemed to reflect that she knew this was an important question. Finally she answered. “Yes,” Bre
anna said quietly. “She has a pair of pink Converse sneakers. Carrie gave them to her for her birthday last month. Last night was the first time I’d seen her without them in weeks.”
Chapter 33
The silence on the line was thick as Sadie absorbed what Breanna had said. Not Trina, she pleaded, not her too. She continued forward through an intersection, looking for a glimpse of Carrie while simultaneously wondering what she’d do if she lost her sister-in-law. She must be going to find Trina and Trevor.
“Where would they go?” Sadie said out loud. “A hotel?” Maybe she should call Karen Thorgood who worked for Holiday Inn; surely she could call the other hotels in the area to ask if any of them had seen Trevor. Sadie had taught Karen’s three sons when they came through the second grade, and she had no doubt Karen would help her out if she could.
“People would see them, and she’d have to use a credit card,” Breanna added.
“That’s true,” Sadie said. And she couldn’t imagine Trina checking into a hotel when her nerves were already so frazzled. “But if not a hotel, then—”
“What about the cabin?” Breanna interrupted. “If I were going to hide someone, that’s where I’d go.”
“The cabin,” Sadie repeated.
It was Jack’s cabin. Carrie had always hated it, saying it was too cold, too run-down, and too dirty. Sadie didn’t disagree with her much on those points. It was an old hunting cabin Jack bought twenty years ago, and in Sadie’s opinion calling it a cabin was giving it far too much credit since it was basically a one-room shack in the mountains. It had plumbing that continually backed up, a sink, and a stove, but no water heater.
Jack and Shawn used to go there for a week each year when the deer hunting season opened, but over the years it had become more of a retreat for Jack than anything else. When Carrie was making him crazy, or if he just needed a break, he’d disappear for a day or two, returning with a skin thick enough to withstand Carrie’s faultfinding once again. Sadie hadn’t been there herself for years—not since the time she went up with the kids and killed ten spiders in half an hour before heading home. To imagine Trevor being there gave her the chills, but she couldn’t deny it would be a good hiding place.
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