by Lucy Kerr
“I wanted to learn a little more about the Congressman,” I said, leaving out the reason for my newfound political interest. After all, politicians excelled at that sort of evasion. I was simply speaking their language.
“You’re undecided.” She sagged a bit, then forced herself to recover. If she was going to have any future in politics, the girl needed to practice her poker face. A lot. “Well, let’s get you some literature. I think you’ll be really impressed at all the Congressman’s accomplish—”
“Amanda, is that you?” a voice rumbled from the rear of the building. I hadn’t noticed the darkened corridor to the back, light pooling outside the open door.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ve got a constituent here who wants to meet you.”
Again I stayed silent, fighting the urge to flee. I’d wanted to know more about Mackie, hadn’t I? This was my chance to find out about him firsthand.
Something—a chair, hopefully—emitted a long, piercing squeak. A moment later, Mackie himself appeared.
He didn’t look like my idea of a cutthroat politician. He’d been tall, once, though now he hunched over slightly, shoulders held stiff and arms rigid at his side. When he caught sight of me, he pasted on a smile and smoothed his disheveled gray hair. He was jowly as a brindle bulldog, his skin pale as whey, with a belly that spoke of one too many campaign barbecues. I couldn’t help but marvel at the difference between the man in front of me and the robust, ruddy-cheeked Norris Mackie of the campaign poster just behind him. Either it had been taken several campaigns ago, or someone on staff was a wizard at Photoshop.
“Norris Mackie,” he said in a voice that tried and failed to boom.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”
“Not at all.” He waved away my apology. “My time is yours.”
“I assumed you were closed. You know, since the campaigns are both suspended.”
“Terrible, terrible tragedy,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. He scratched his jaw and considered me. “We’re taking a break from the campaign, out of respect for Mrs. Tibbs. But representing the people of the nineteenth district isn’t something I suspend for anything, Miss …”
Rather than give him my name, I said, “That’s very noble—especially so close to the election. It’s a pretty tight race, isn’t it?”
“I have faith in my voters,” he said. “I’ve still got work to do, and I believe they’ll send me back to DC to finish it.”
Amanda pressed a glossy brochure into my hand. “As you can see, the Congressman has laid out an ambitious plan for his next term, but we believe it’s entirely feasible, considering his long and successful track record.”
I studied the paper. “I’m surprised you’re not in your Springfield office,” I said. “Seems like it would be easier to get work done away from all the hubbub.”
“I like to stay connected with my constituents,” he said smoothly. “Keep an ear to the ground.”
More likely, I suspected, he wanted to make sure Steven wasn’t getting all the press coverage. If the cameras were in Stillwater, he should be too. My temper stirred, and I found myself wanting more than a mere introduction—I wanted answers.
“Funny that you and Mr. Tibbs were both at fundraisers that night.”
Amanda ran a nervous hand over her ponytail.
“Necessary evil,” he said with a chuckle, then sobered. “Shame to think that if Mrs. Tibbs had gone with her husband, she might not have had that accident.”
Conversely, if Steven had been in the car with Kate, they might both be dead. Had that been someone’s goal all along?
“Is there a particular issue you’re interested in hearing about?” Amanda asked, stepping forward a shade too eagerly. “The Congressman’s views on the tax code? The upcoming farm bill? Environmental regulations?”
She sounded increasingly desperate, but I smiled at Mackie, trying to turn up the charm. “Are they boring? Fundraisers, I mean? Is it mostly a lot of people in tuxes asking you for favors?”
“It can be,” he said. “More often it’s a chance for me to share a meal with people who care deeply about a cause. I find—”
“You don’t ever sneak out?” I pressed. “I’d totally be tempted to sneak out.”
Dryly, he replied, “That would defeat the point of meeting all those voters, wouldn’t it?”
“So you always stay until the bitter end? Like Tuesday night? Terrible storm, long drive home—you didn’t leave early?”
Mackie and Amanda exchanged narrowed glances. Before either of them could speak, the door opened.
“Aunt Frankie,” Riley called, “come on! Mom’s going to be mad if we’re late, and we are almost late.”
“Frankie,” said Amanda. “I didn’t catch your last name. Are you a constituent? Or a reporter?”
“She’s not a reporter,” Riley said. “She’s a nurse. She works at the hospital.”
“Ah,” Mackie said. “And who might you be, little lady?”
Rather than let Riley shake hands with a potential murderer—which would result in my murder, courtesy of Charlie—I drew her behind me.
“I’m a citizen,” I said firmly. “Is there a problem with me asking about your campaign events?”
“You can ask.” Mackie’s voice was stern, but sweat beaded along his hairline. Amanda watched him closely, biting her lip. “I’ve already made my statement about the tragedy, and I don’t intend to speak further on it.”
Beside me, Riley squirmed with impatience.
“I won’t take any more of your time,” I said. “Thanks for the brochure.”
“Don’t forget to vote,” Amanda called after us as we made our escape.
“Who are they?” Riley asked me when we were out on the sidewalk. “They looked kind of mad.”
“They did, didn’t they?” I’d pushed too hard, asked too many questions. While Mackie hadn’t given me a real answer, the evasion was an answer of its own: he was hiding something.
Twice now, my instincts had been correct—first Josh Miller, now Norris Mackie. I’d learned my lesson about ignoring my gut. Never again, I promised myself, the same way I’d instructed Jess. Now I needed to find the connection between my two instincts and bring the proof to Noah.
Riley tugged on my sleeve, bringing me back to myself. “I said, ‘Why’d you go in there?’”
“I made a bet with your mom. About grown-up stuff.” Before she could ask, I added, “Boring stuff.”
“Who won?”
I sighed. “Your mom. I owe her a milkshake.”
Nine
Happily, my sister was nowhere in sight when we arrived at the store. Matt hailed us from aisle four, where he was restocking the bins of fasteners.
“Charlie’s at the hospital,” he said after he’d recovered from Riley’s tackle-hug. “She wondered if you could handle some of the paperwork, place the orders.”
As a teenager, if there was anything I liked less than working behind the counter of Stapleton and Sons, it was working in the office. Tallying accounts, placing orders, arguing with vendors … it had never been my strong suit. Even charting was my least favorite aspect of nursing. But I could see the value in it, which helped keep my butt in the chair long enough to do the work. If doing a stint upstairs would help me get a better sense of what Charlie was facing, I could probably manage that too.
I poured myself a cup of coffee from the pot behind the counter and headed up the narrow wooden steps to the office.
The apartment above the store had served many functions over the last century—family home, bachelor pad, storage space. A tiny kitchenette sat unused in one corner and both of the bedrooms were now filled with file cabinets and spare stock, while the bathroom’s shower stall served as a catchall for various broken pieces of furniture. My boxes and bags added to the jumble, creating towers and pathways reminiscent of a reality show about hoarding. I could barely see the pale-yellow walls.
Our old dining table sat in the center of the living room, the aging computer surrounded by stacks of paper spilling out of trays and file folders—though knowing Charlie, each one was meticulously labeled.
I dumped my backpack on the floor and took a closer look.
I was wrong.
The files were color-coded. And labeled.
A sticky note was attached to the monitor, the precise lettering looking more like a cipher than a letter.
F—
Nudge 30+
Spec/Rec Ord
R FRACTIONS!!!
—C
I scowled. Pester past-due accounts, place and bill the special orders, do the same for our monthly recurring ones, and help with math homework.
Naturally, she’d leave the dirty work to me.
Then again, only a few weeks ago, Charlie had nearly bitten my head off when she realized I’d peeked at the store’s accounts. Asking me to work with them now was a sign of progress.
Really, really boring progress. A half-eaten tray of sandwich cookies sat on the kitchen counter. I scooped up a handful, scowled at the note again, and dove in.
I found a surprising number of past-due accounts. Not enough to put us into the black, but definitely enough to staunch the bleeding, at least for this month. Getting regular accounts to pay up was a tricky business. Too nice, and they took advantage of you. Too tough, and they’d go elsewhere. From what I could tell, Charlie was tilting too far toward nice. If she’d struck a balance, it wasn’t a comfortable one.
Letting me loose on those accounts was almost guaranteed to upset things.
Maybe that was the point—she wanted me to play bad cop to her good cop. It was a canny move, actually, and since my visit to Mackie had left me tired of double-speak and evasion, I was more than happy to oblige.
The office door creaked open while I was on my third call. Riley, correctly interpreting my tone, tiptoed into the room, stuck a cookie in her mouth and took one in each hand, then curled up on the couch. I waved, smiled, and continued to make calls.
By the time I was done, she’d fallen asleep, crumbs trailing down her shirt. I stood, rolling my neck to work out the kinks, and covered her with a ratty old blanket. She stirred but didn’t wake.
“You used to do that when you were little,” my mother said from the doorway. “You and Charlotte would take opposite ends of the couch, or the bed in the spare room. You’d always say you weren’t tired, and five minutes later …”
The memory of the scratchy mustard-colored upholstery was vivid on my cheek.
“Should I take off her shoes?” I whispered.
“Leave them,” my mom replied. “She needs the sleep.”
Judging from Riley’s slow, deep breaths—unbroken by her usual snores—Mom was right.
Probably for the best, considering. I pinned my mother with a glare.
“Art Gundersen?”
“He’s a nice man,” she protested.
“You think he’s so great, you date him.”
She flushed, and the guilt struck me immediately. After my father’s death, my mom had never found anyone else. He was irreplaceable, she’d said whenever anyone broached the subject. Besides, she’d often point out, with me, Charlie, and the store, her hands were plenty full.
I was about to apologize, but she continued, “Lots of women think he’s quite a catch.”
“Are any of them under fifty?”
“Well,” she said, seemingly unruffled, “it’s not as if you’ve had much success with men your own age. Have you returned even one of Peter’s calls? I’d thought perhaps you and the MacLean boy would try to make a go of things again, but he hasn’t come around in weeks. I thought someone older might be a …” She paused, searching for the words. “A steadying influence.”
“I don’t need a steadying influence.”
Her expression made it clear she disagreed. “I want you to be happy, Francesca.”
I am happy, I nearly said, but then I considered the words more carefully. Was I really? Sleeping on the bottom bunk, working a temporary job, and harassing contractors to pay their bills?
I wasn’t unhappy, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. It wasn’t just my current situation—I’d been not-unhappy in Chicago too. Usually that meant it was time for a change—to indulge my wanderlust, to throw a dart at a map and find a new city, a new view. But the energy that typically fizzed in my veins at the prospect of starting over didn’t fizz when I considered it now. Rather than figure out what that meant, I said, “I don’t need a guy to be happy. You’re happy, right?”
Her hesitation was so slight, I barely caught it. “Of course.”
“Well, there you go. I’m following your lead.”
She twisted the single strand of pearls around her neck, sputtering, but I cut her off. “Quit sending people to the hospital. Those beds are for genuine emergencies.”
“Art was genuinely sick,” she pointed out.
“I am a professional,” I ground out. “When I’m on duty, one hundred percent of my attention needs to be on helping people. On saving their lives. It’s not a place to meet guys. No more, Mom.”
She bowed her head.
“Promise.”
“I promise,” she said. She sounded exactly like Riley swearing to do her homework after “a few more minutes” of soccer. She lifted her head, an unrepentant glint in her eyes. “Speaking of the hospital, why didn’t you tell me you’d treated Josh Miller?”
I bit my lip. “Where did you hear that?”
“You know what this town is like. News travels faster than you’d like—especially bad news.”
“I was hoping to be the exception,” I mumbled.
She put two fingers beneath my chin and gently forced me to meet her eyes. “Francesca, nobody blames you. You couldn’t have known what he’d done.”
The shame rose up again, a hot choking pressure. “I let him get away.”
“You treated a patient, and then you treated another one, exactly as you were supposed to. If you were in charge of deciding who was worthy of help and who wasn’t, you’d be God—and I think we can both agree you are not the Almighty.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” she said firmly. “Of course people are talking. That’s what they do, and they’ll talk until there’s a new story to replace this one. Since when has Stillwater gossip ever bothered you?”
This was different than the usual gossip, though. This was my career. People would hear this story and think I was a bad nurse, and when I had so little else in my life that was stable, undermining that identity would leave me with nothing but rubble.
For all her flaws, my mother was a perceptive woman. Her expression softened for a moment, her mouth drawing down and her forehead creasing with concern. Then the moment passed, and her face turned cool and practical. “Enough wallowing,” she said. “If you don’t like the topic, change the conversation.”
“How? Kate Tibbs is all anyone’s talking about.”
“You’re a smart girl, Francesca. Show some initiative and figure it out.” She paused and brushed a microscopic piece of lint from her jade-green sweater. “Josh Miller can’t hide forever, after all.”
I goggled at her. “Wait. You know him?”
“I know of him,” she corrected, pretending to look over a sheaf of bills. “Which is more than enough. He lives over on the south side of town, you know. The whole area’s gone downhill.”
“What do you mean?” The southern edge of Stillwater had already been pretty far downhill when I was living here. One would think it didn’t have much further to go. Noah had grown up there, but sometime in the last twelve years, he’d moved and left that part of his dark damaged past behind. I hoped so, anyway.
“Drugs,” she said. “That neighborhood has always been rough, but people used to be able to make a life there. Now people move out as soon as they can, and nobody moves in—or if they do, they bring trouble with them. The city’s tried to clean it
up, but it never works.”
“Noah said Josh was a dealer.” I reached for my phone and googled Josh Miller’s address.
Mom watched over my shoulder, frowning. “Francesca, you’re not thinking of going over there, are you?”
“You’re the one who said to show initiative.”
“I meant you should offer to help Noah. You two might reconnect! I certainly did not mean you should go skulking around terrible neighborhoods. The police have already searched his house. They’ve canvassed the neighborhood. What makes you think you’d find something they’ve missed?”
Truly, my mother’s intelligence network was a marvel.
“I don’t know.” There was no logical reason to go over to Josh’s place, but I couldn’t resist. It was like a sore tooth that you couldn’t stop poking at—fruitless, painful, and impossible to stop until the cavity was fixed. “I want to understand it, I guess. Because we couldn’t save Kate, and now that little boy is going to grow up without a mother.”
“So you’ll give him justice instead?” I couldn’t tell if her pity was directed at me or Trey. She tapped the pile of paperwork and sighed. “Did you finish calling the past-due accounts?”
“Taken care of,” I said firmly. “Really taken care of.”
“Good girl,” she said and made a shooing motion. “Go on, then, if you’re so set on it. You’ve only got an hour or so of daylight.”
Ten
My mother’s parting words made perfect sense as I parked down the block from Josh Miller’s house. This was not a neighborhood I wanted to hang out in past sunset. Between the neglected houses, with their weed-choked yards and dangerously sagging rooflines, and the snarling dogs, straining at their chains as I emerged from the car, I had enough sense to cross the street briskly, radiating “don’t mess with me” as hard as I could.
Ill-tempered dogs aside, I was alone on the street—no sidewalks, only the crumbling shoulder of the pavement. I’d been in these kinds of neighborhoods before when I was out with an ambulance crew. The kinds of places where it was best to mind your own business. To see little, say less, and stay inside.