Buried Leads (An Avery Shaw Mystery)

by Amanda M. Lee

  “Then don’t go in the newsroom,” Fish said simply. “Go to a coffee shop and email me a short story that just covers the press conference. Then you can be done for the day.”

  “You’re rewarding me with an afternoon off?” I couldn’t help it, I was surprised.

  “I don’t see a lot of other choices, do you?”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  I followed Fish’s orders and went to a coffee shop downtown. It only took me about twenty minutes to write up the story and ship it off to Fish. I was now at a loss what to do with the rest of my afternoon and evening.

  When my cell phone started to ring, I felt a jolt of anxiety course through me. I could only hope it wasn’t Jake – or my mom. I didn’t want to talk to either of them right now. I was relieved when I saw Carly’s number pop up.

  “Hey.”

  “The wedding is off!”

  This was about the tenth time the wedding had been called off due to a Carly freak out in the past six months. I wasn’t particularly worried that this one would hold. “What’s wrong now?”

  “His mom wants me to sign a prenup,” Carly choked out.

  “Why? It’s not like Kyle owns anything of value?”

  “She says that I’m a gold digger and I’m after her family money.”

  “Does Kyle’s family have money?” I knew his mom drove a Bentley, but I figured that was just because she was pretentious.

  “They’re have some money. It’s not like they’re rich, though,” Carly replied.

  Carly was a well paid accountant for an insurance agency. I wasn’t quite sure what Kyle did – but I didn’t think he earned a lot of money hawking whatever Internet wares he was peddling on a regular basis. “So? Sign it. You’ll make more money than him anyway.”

  “That’s not the point,” Carly sounded irritated with me now. “She’s already planning for our divorce.”

  “You’ve called off the wedding ten times,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t be a pain”

  “I’m just saying, from her perspective, you might seem a little fickle.” I’m loyal to Carly, but I’m also honest.

  “I didn’t call you to be rational,” Carly argued.

  “Oh, sorry. She’s a bitch. You want to egg her car again?”

  “No, she would know that was us,” Carly pointed out. We had done just that a few months ago. Even though Harriet Profit couldn’t prove we had done it, I knew she had her suspicions.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I suppose you have to work tonight?”

  “Actually, I’m done for the day.”

  “You want to get drunk?”

  That sounded like a great idea – as long as I hid her phone so she couldn’t drunk dial Kyle or his mom late in the evening and I hid my own so I couldn’t do the same. “Always.”

  “Come over to my parents’ house. They’re gone for a long weekend. They said I was a bridezilla and they needed a break from me.”

  I could see that.

  “I’ll be over in an hour.”

  “Bring a fifth of something.”

  “What? Hot Damn?”

  “No. I haven’t been able to drink that since we threw up on it that one time.”

  “Whiskey?”

  “Yeah. Bring sour mix, too.” That would be much more pleasant to throw up on.

  “See you soon.”

  I arrived at Carly’s with a fifth, two packs of smokes, and a handful of DVDs.

  “What did you bring?”

  “I didn’t know what you would be in the mood for, so I grabbed The Goonies in case you wanted to laugh, My Girl in case you wanted to cry and The Shining in case you want to fantasize about killing someone,” I explained.

  “The Shining. Definitely.”

  That was my choice, too.

  Carly started mixing drinks while I popped the movie into the DVD player. She seemed calmer already.

  “Have you talked to Kyle today?”

  “He says he doesn’t want to talk to me if I’m just going to threaten to call off the wedding, again.”

  “Won’t you be glad when you’re finally married? Then you can start to threaten him with divorce.”

  “We’re getting married in the Catholic church,” Carly said. “We can’t get divorced. I’ll have to threaten him with an annulment. My mom will pitch a fit if I get divorced.”

  “Well, that will be just as fun.”

  Carly turned to me suddenly. “How are things with Eliot?”

  I told her about my day, not leaving anything out. I knew Carly wouldn’t tell anyone. She was stunned when I finished.

  “You’ve had a shitty day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long do you think Eliot will be mad?”

  I shrugged. I had no idea.

  “How long do you think Jake will be mad?”

  “Only a year or so. He eventually forgives me. He’ll throw it in my face forever, though.”

  “Well, at least he didn’t arrest you,” Carly offered helpfully.

  There is that.

  After watching The Shining, we were ridiculously drunk. We decided to take a walk around the block to get some air and sober up. The walk turned into an hour-long affair, especially after Carly fell in her neighbor’s bushes and I couldn’t anchor myself well enough to pull her out, so I fell in, too.

  It took us almost a full five minutes to extricate ourselves from the bushes. When we finally did, I couldn’t help but notice a man sitting in a blue SUV parked across the street from us – about three houses down from Carly’s parents’ house. It was dark, so I could only make out a silhouette, but the occupant was obviously staring at us.

  “Who is that?” Carly asked, slurring her words a little.

  “One of your neighbors,” I don’t know.

  “It’s probably Mr. Peterson.”

  “Does he own a blue SUV?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a big truck like that. He’s probably going to tell my parents I was drunk.”

  “You’re an adult, why would they care?”

  “Why do you still wear Star Wars shoes to specifically drive your mother insane?”

  Point taken.

  Carly and I carefully made out way back to the sidewalk and headed towards her house. I stopped once to see if the man was still staring at us. He was. I shot him the finger, which Carly quickly tried to cover up.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “He’s a dick.”

  “You don’t even know him,” she admonished.

  “Any guy who watches two girls fall in a bush and does nothing to help them is a dick.”

  “You have a point,” Carly ceded, turning around and flipping off Mr. Peterson, too. She would regret that in the morning, I figured.

  When we got back to Carly’s house, we both passed out on the floor. For such a shitty day, the evening had actually turned out to be somewhat fun. I doubted I would be feeling the same way in the morning, though.

  Twenty-Seven

  I woke up with one thought on my mind: I think I’m dying.

  My head felt like something was pounding at my cranium trying to get out, my mouth was dry and my eyes were practically crusted together. I groaned in pain when I felt the sunlight from the window hit my eyes.

  “I’m never drinking again,” Carly moaned next to me.

  “We always say that. Then we dry out long enough to forget what this feels like and we do it again,” I reminded her.

  “I blame you.”

  “How is this my fault?”

  “You brought the whiskey.”

  “You told me to.”

  “You ignore everyone else in the world when they tell you to do something but you suddenly listen to me?”

  “What can I say? I’m easily manipulated.”

  I climbed to my feet and grabbed two bottles of water from the refrigerator. I handed one of them to Carly, who was rummaging in her purse for a bottle of aspirin. She handed me two, which
I swallowed wordlessly.

  “What time is it?” I asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” Carly said. “Why? Do you have to work?”

  “Yeah.”

  I dug tin my purse until I found my cell phone. I grimaced when I saw that I had missed six calls – two from Lexie, two from Eliot, one from Derrick and one from a blocked number. None of them had left a voicemail. I had also missed six texts from my mother – all of which had gotten increasingly dire, and threatening. I had also missed one FaceTime request from her – which I was actually thankful for. In my drunken stupor, I would have probably accepted it – and then never heard the end of it. Great.

  “What time is it?” Carly was looking at my phone over my shoulder.

  “It’s a little before eight,” I said.

  “Looks like you were popular last night?”

  “Yeah, that’s me, little miss popular.”

  We both jumped when my phone started ringing. Eliot’s number popped up. “Hey,” I greeted him hoarsely.

  “Where are you?”

  “Carly’s.”

  “I was worried about you. You just disappeared and then you didn’t go home last night.”

  “Carly was having a meltdown and I was a little anxious so we decided to approach our problems with a fifth of whiskey and The Shining.”

  “That’s a great movie.”

  “It is,” I agreed.

  “You still should have called me. I was worried.”

  “I thought you were mad at me,” I admitted.

  “I am. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried about you, too.” Eliot’s words were sweet but his tone was gruff.

  “That’s sweet, but I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” I glanced over at Carly, who was pulling shrubbery from her hair. I smothered a bizarre urge to laugh. Carly saw me smiling in her direction and reached over and pulled a twig out of my hair and waved it in front of my face. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that funny.

  “I didn’t say you weren’t capable of taking care of yourself,” Eliot barked. “You just seem to wander into trouble, though. For all I knew you could have been lying dead in a ditch.”

  “Nope, just falling down drunk in a bush.”

  “What?”

  There really was no way to explain that. “Have you heard anything else?”

  “We’re not done talking about you yet,” Eliot countered.

  “Eliot, I’m an adult. If I want to get drunk with my best friend I’m allowed.” He was starting to irritate me. The hangover wasn’t helping matters.

  “I didn’t say you weren’t. All I’m asking is a heads up on your whereabouts, especially the night after we discover a bloody rag and broken saw while investigating a missing woman.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized, even though I didn’t really mean it. “I didn’t realize I’d picked up another parent, though.”

  Carly flashed me a thumbs up. “That’s the way to get him to forgive you,” she said. “Insult him.”

  “Is that Carly?” Eliot asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell her to shut up.”

  “Eliot says hi,” I said to her.

  She smiled happily. “Tell him I said hi back.”

  “Carly says hi back.”

  “You’re unbelievable,” Eliot grunted.

  “I’m sorry Eliot. I didn’t really think about it. I thought you were mad and I knew I was fine. Next time I’ll text you or something.”

  “Fine,” Eliot muttered.

  “Fine.”

  “So what are you doing today?”

  “I have to go to the daily press conference. Then I have family dinner tonight.”

  “Again? You were just there last week.”

  “It’s a weekly thing,” I reminded him.

  “A weekly visit to the asylum.” Eliot was obviously still cranky.

  “Do you want to go with me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” I said wanly. “I’ll call you after the press conference and tell you how things go.”

  Eliot was quiet on the other end of the phone. I wondered if I’d accidentally dropped the call. “Eliot?”

  “Yeah,” he blew out a sigh. “I’ll pick you up at your house at 4:30 p.m. for dinner.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to go?” I was surprised.

  “I don’t want to let you out of my sight even more.”

  That was kind of sweet.

  “Why don’t we meet there? I don’t know how long I’ll be at work.”

  Eliot didn’t seem to like the idea, but he obviously didn’t want to make a thing out of it. “Okay,” he said finally. “Call me after the press conference anyway.”

  “You got it,” I said with faux brightness.

  “Uh, don’t talk so loud,” Carly ordered, covering her face with a pillow.

  “I’m going to start limiting your time with her,” Eliot warned, but I could tell he was joking. The storm seemed to have passed – for now. “Unless I’m invited, of course.”

  “You want to get drunk with us?”

  “Carly is hot.”

  “You’re a pervert.

  “Derrick told me you two used to make out to get free beers at the bar,” Eliot explained.

  “When did you talk to Derrick?”

  “He called me when you didn’t answer your phone last night. He was worried. He figured you were with Carly.”

  “He wasn’t worried,” I scoffed. “He just wanted to yell at me because of that whole Devon and Shelly fight.”

  “Or, he was worried about you and that’s the way he expresses himself,” Eliot argued.

  “Everyone is worried about me,” I lamented.

  “Everyone is worried you’ll do something stupid,” Eliot countered. “There’s a difference.”

  He had a point.

  Twenty-Eight

  I showered and changed at Carly’s. I dressed in simple jeans and my new “Looking for love in Alderaan Places” T-shirt. Only a true Star Wars geek would get it – and my mom would hate it. She didn’t find pseudo incest half as funny as I did.

  I left Carly sleeping on her couch. I had no idea if she was going to miss work, but I figured she had her own affairs under control and didn’t need another pain-in-the-ass mother figure in her life.

  I texted Fish and told him I was going straight to the press conference. He didn’t text back – which wasn’t unusual – so I assumed he had expected me to do just that.

  When I got to the sheriff’s department, I wasn’t surprised to see Derrick loitering around the main entrance. He clearly wanted to talk to me before I went inside.

  “Hey,” I greeted him warily. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were still alive,” Derrick shot back snarkily.

  “Please, I already know you’re phone buddies with Eliot,” I scoffed. “I’m sure he already texted you and told me where I was. Actually, I bet you knew where I was the whole time.”

  “With Carly? Yeah, I figured that out.”

  I paused before entering the door – mostly because Derrick wasn’t making a move to follow me inside. “What’s going on?”

  “Why do you think anything is going on?”

  “Because you’re shadowing me like some creepy lurker.”

  “I’m just making sure you make it inside the building safely.”

  “Even I can walk without killing myself.”

  Derrick regarded me solemnly. He didn’t speak, even though his mocha eyes said volumes.

  “You’re supposed to escort me in and out of the building aren’t you? Make sure I don’t get in any trouble?”

  “I wasn’t specifically ordered to do that,” Derrick replied. “I was however told that when you arrived, it might be a good idea to keep you in my office until the press conference starts.”

  “Why? Is Jake on the warpath? Or is it Shelly?”

&
nbsp; “I think it’s pretty much everyone,” Derrick said evenly.

  “Great.”

  “This can’t come as a surprise to you?”

  “It doesn’t,” I admitted. “I’m actually surprised I’m being let into the building at all.”

  “It’s a public building.”

  “Yeah, but Jake . . .”

  “Jake is more worried than angry at this point. You’ve totally fucked things up, but things can always get worse. And, I think he’s actually worried that you’ll somehow find a way to make them worse.”

  Well, that was a little insulting.

  I followed Derrick into his office, throwing myself into the chair across from his desk. “I didn’t know you were phone buddies with Eliot.”

  “He was worried,” Derrick pointed out.

  “He was overreacting,” I corrected him.

  “You cause a lot of people to lose their senses,” Derrick smirked.

  I bit my tongue to keep the sharp retort on the tip of it from escaping. Derrick was one of my only allies in the department at this time, I couldn’t piss him off – anymore than I already had – at this point in time. It would be counterproductive.

  I changed the conversation direction instead. “Have you talked to Lexie lately?”

  “Yeah, last night when I was looking for you.”

  “And?”

  “And? And she’s crazy.”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “And I can admit she’s crazy.”

  “She’s not crazy, especially for our family. She’s just a little eccentric.”

  “She thinks she’s going to be able to start a yoga studio?” Derrick looked beyond doubtful.

  “She might be good at it.”

  “Don’t you think she should actually teach yoga before she tries to own her own business specializing in it?”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t think like you and I do.”

  “Don’t equate my thinking patterns with that tangled mess you have,” Derrick grunted.

  “I’m just saying we should encourage her. It’s good for her to have a dream.”

  Derrick shrugged. Even he couldn’t argue with that. “Did you know she has a boyfriend in rehab?”

  “Yeah, Raymond, she told me.”

  “Is he black?”

  “Dominican.”

  “There’s a difference?”