“Well,” I said, “if you won’t come in, I guess I’ll come out.”
He looked off to the side at nothing and let out a long exaggerated sigh and then faced me.
“I have a job to do. And all this,” he said and pointed to the food, “it’s a distraction.”
“It’s eggs and toast,” I said. “You have to eat, right?”
I held the plate out and wiggled it a few inches from his nostrils in an attempt to rouse his appetite, and for the first time since we’d met, he cracked a smile. It was slight and barely noticeable to the untrained eye, but there nonetheless. It may not have been a mouthful of bright whites, but it was a start.
“I’ll eat this lady, but then you have to go back inside, okay?”
“I can live with that,” I said.
We sat across from one another and ate our food in silence. I was leery about whether I should engage him in a verbal exchange he didn’t want to have so I tried my best to act like it felt natural to sit there and remain mute. After a few minutes in complete silence, I started to crack. Taye managed to shovel gargantuan-sized spoonful’s of eggs into his mouth without the slightest glance toward his plate which fascinated me enough to endure the silence. While he chewed, his eyes darted around to the street, the side yard, the bushes and then back to the street again.
A car turned up the road and steered its way in the direction of my humble abode. Taye didn’t miss a beat. He shoved his plate into my lap and stuck his hand under the side of his shirt and placed it on his waist and rested it there. The few inches of skin he exposed revealed a six pack, the likes of which I’d only seen in the movies, and I couldn’t peel my eyes away from it.
“You should go back inside,” he said. “Now.”
I arched my body over the side of my chair and stared out into the street.
“It’s just Nick,” I said.
He squinted and rose from his chair to get a better look.
“Detective Calhoun?”
I nodded.
“Wonder what he’s doing here,” he said.
“He, uh, lives here,” I said.
Taye Diggs twisted his face into a shape that reminded me of one of those apples that people let sit forever, and then when they were good and rotten, they made faces out of them and sold them to the public under the false pretense that they resembled a famous celebrity.
“You and him, you’re together?” he said.
I nodded.
“Huh,” he said.
I got the impression he didn’t hold Nick in the highest regard, and I wondered why, but before I could say anything more, Nick had parked and got out of the car and walked up the drive. The two men glanced at one another and Nick made it a point to glare at the two plates in my hand, but neither smiled and no pleasantries were exchanged. Nick blew past Taye Diggs like he was a gnat he wanted to get rid of and opened the front door and waltzed into the house like he needed to prove his status in the pecking order. I turned to follow him inside.
“Hey,” Taye Diggs said when I started through the door, “thanks for the food.”
I smiled and nodded.
When I shut the door behind me, Nick had settled in on a stool at my bar.
“I came to take you to lunch,” he said, “but I can see you’ve already eaten.”
“I got a late start today. If you would have called I wouldn’t have—”
“Yeah, well, happy birthday,” he said.
The tone in his voice reminded me of when I went to dinner at some stranger’s house with my parents when I was a kid and my mom forced me to go up to the unknown mystery person and thank them for the invite to a house I never wanted to enter in the first place. It was every child’s worst nightmare—the strained powwow with the unknown adult.
“I take it you’re still upset,” I said.
“Still upset? I can’t believe the mess you’ve got yourself into.”
Even on my birthday he couldn’t miss the chance to tell me yet again about what a mistake he thought I’d made. This summed up our life together over the past several months. If he didn’t like something, I was sure to hear about it. He missed the reality of how it affected me, and I didn’t have the patience for it anymore.
“I need to jump in the shower,” I said. “I have a lot to do before the party tonight.”
“I’m trying to talk to you, Sloane. Don’t you care about what I have to say?”
“If you want to rehash the same topic again, I’ve said everything I want to say on the subject,” I said. “I can’t take back what happened, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I can’t help that.”
I grabbed a towel out of the hall closet and walked into the bathroom.
“So what, discussion over because that’s all you have to say?” he said.
I turned away from him and closed my eyes and just took a moment to relax my accelerated heartbeat.
“Let me have this one day, Nick—okay?” I said. “Just this one.”
He shook his head.
“I’ll see you tonight.” he said. He yanked open the front door and hurled it shut behind him. A picture that clung to the wall in my foyer of Gabby and me when we were kids plunged to the floor and glass eradicated into tiny fragments.
CHAPTER 10
Every year since Gabby died, I always visited her grave on my birthday. I usually went alone, but under the circumstances, flying solo was out of the question. Taye did his best to give me the privacy I needed and kept a comfortable but close distance. The warmth that radiated down from Park City’s summer sun filled every inch of me with peace, and being there with Gabby was one of the only places I could go where I felt that way.
“I wish you were still here Gabby,” I whispered, when I reached her headstone. “There are so many things I want to tell you about my life. I feel like I’m just going through the motions while the world spins all around me. You don’t know how much I could use your advice right now.”
Wherever Gabby was, I was sure she had a flabbergasted look on her face. I had always been the strong one of the two of us. I never leaned on anyone for anything. My life’s motto was easily summed up with the familiar words: if it has to be, it has to be me. It’s not that I wanted it that way; it was just the way it had always been.
I knelt down and placed the wildflowers in my hands in front of the marble stone, and when I stood back up, I caught a glimmer of something under a rock the size of my fist that sat on top of the center of her headstone. I must have been too swept away in the moment when I first arrived to notice it. I lifted the stone from where it rested. Beneath it was a slip of paper, and it was pink. I set the rock aside and stared at the paper like I was in some kind of trance, but before I had the chance to unfold it; Taye Diggs was at my side. He didn’t miss a beat.
“You want me to open it?” he said.
I shook my head.
“I can do it,” I said. And I reached out and unfolded it.
YOU’RE COLD, SLOANE MONROE
VERY, VERY COLD
***
Fifteen minutes later a half a dozen people milled around the gravesite, including Coop. The note and the rock had been preserved in plastic and passed off to the appropriate person, and I doubted I’d ever see it again. I gazed on my sister’s grave and couldn’t help but focus on all the people who swarmed around it without much care for the young woman whose remains were beneath. It was dusted and searched for prints and evidence that would never be found.
“What I want to know is how’d this Sinnerman character know she was going to be here today?” Coop said.
Taye Diggs shrugged his shoulders.
“Who knows,” he said.
Coop turned to me with a baffled look on his face.
“Why you?” he said. “I don’t get it.”
I did. Sinnerman had grown tired of the little game he played with the person who never caught him the first time around and had moved on to who he hoped would
be a more worthy adversary.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But since he reached out to me, it might help if we work together on this.”
“That your idea of a joke?” Coop said. “Because it’s not funny. What makes you think I’d ever work with you?”
I guess the fact the killer had now decided to communicate with me wasn’t a good enough reason for him.
“Have you considered for a moment that I might be able to help you?” I said. “I know everything about this case.”
Coop sneered and had a look on his face like I’d just asked him to sit with me through every single scene of The Notebook.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I said. “We’ll see who finds him first.”
CHAPTER 11
By the time I arrived at Moll’s Tavern for dinner, everyone was there, even Nick. With all that was going on between the two of us, I wasn’t sure he’d show. And he was there alright, but not with bells on. He appeared to be the only one at the table who hadn’t opted to participate in the jovial repartee that was in full swing, which meant he was still pouting over the recent events that rocked our lives.
Maddie’s eyes were focused on the chief, who was clearly in awe of her. It was something I didn’t see from him too often. Next to them sat Marty, the former mayor of Park City and his wife, and on the other side were some of my old friends from my college days and Gabby’s former boyfriend. All in all, it had been a crappy birthday thus far, but my heart swelled to see everyone gathered around the table in spite of all that was going on.
“There’s the birthday girl,” Maddie shouted when I walked in.
Everyone at the table gazed up at me at the same time with smiles smeared across their faces except Nick. He ogled the drink in his hand with all the fascination of a paleontologist who had just discovered a rare dinosaur fossil within the cavity of a rock.
I said my hello’s and then walked around the table and sat down next to him.
“I went ahead and ordered your favorite martini,” Maddie said.
“Thanks, it’s been a long day.”
Nick rose from the table, and for a moment, I thought he was going to propose a toast.
“Excuse me for a minute,” he said and he turned and walked away.
Once he was out of earshot, Maddie piped up.
“What’s his freakin’ deal?”
“Who knows?” I said.
“Well, don’t let his pissy attitude ruin your special night. Besides,” she said with a finger pointed to the center of the table, “look at all those presents.”
“You guys didn’t need to get me anything,” I said. “Just being here is enough.”
“Oh please, Sloane,” Maddie said. “What’s a birthday party without presents? I don’t care how old I get; it’s still all about the gifts. And on that note, I want everyone here to know that my birthday is coming up next month, and early gifts are accepted.”
I looked around the table and realized how good it felt to be among friends. Every single person seated there had been an important part of my life in some way. Even the chief, who at the moment was beguiled by Maddie’s charms. They’d known each other for years, and never once had I considered them a match.
“How’s the birthday girl?” said a voice from behind.
I turned around and almost missed the pint-sized Moll standing beside me. She was the owner of the place. Her fiery red hair was pulled back into a tight bun that exposed a starry sky of freckles on her circular face.
“Hungry,” I said.
She scanned the table.
“What are we having then?”
In unison, everyone spouted off their orders.
“Now hold on right there,” Moll said. She took her pen from the top of her ear and angled it in my direction. “One at a time now. Sloane, let’s start with you.”
I gave my order and then we went down the line, this time in an organized manner.
“And Detective Calhoun,” Moll said, “I could have sworn he was here a minute ago unless my eyesight’s gone off the reservation again. Where’d that boy run off to?”
Right here,” Nick said.
Moll looked over at him and then placed one hand on the side of her mouth and leaned toward him. In a whisper she said, “You’re flying low tonight, detective.”
Nick didn’t comprehend her statement and Moll wasn’t the type to wait around until he did. She tried again, this time more plainspoken than before.
“Your zipper dear, it’s undone.”
He glanced down and turned away from the table and fixed himself up and then sat in his chair and did his best to pretend it never happened.
“I’ll get your orders right out,” Moll said. “And Sloane, yours is on me tonight.”
She walked away and Nick looked at me and smiled for the first time that evening. It seemed forced, but at least it wasn’t a scowl.
“What do you say we open your presents while we wait?” Maddie said.
Before I could respond, she’d already dug her hands into the pile and moved them down one by one.
“Mine first,” she said.
Maddie’s gift was an envelope that contained two gift cards: one to Nordstrom and another for a spa day, and at the moment, I was in desperate need.
“I love this,” I said.
“So do I,” she said, “it’s for two, and by that I mean the two of us are going to have a great time together.”
I opened a few more gifts, and then it was time for Nick’s. His present was in the smallest package, but the box was an unmistakable bluish color and one every woman on the planet recognized and dreamed of their entire life. Everyone except me, and I tried not to squint when I opened it. Inside was the most beautiful necklace I’d ever laid eyes on, a simple but elegant round pendant with the initial S engraved on the front. I suppressed the urge to breathe a sigh of relief and turned to Nick and smiled.
Nick rose from his chair and separated the necklace from the box and wrapped the dainty piece of silver around my neck.
“Do you like it?” he said.
“It’s perfect, thank you.”
“One more present to go,” Maddie said.
She lifted up the last box and shook it.
“Alright,” she said, “who got Sloane a gallon of milk for her birthday?”
The last box was wrapped in burgundy paper with felt embossed black lotus flowers all over it. All four sides were adorned with thick black satin ribbon that rose up the sides and formed a perfect series of bows in the center at the top.
“Wow, you’re not kidding,” I said to Maddie when I relieved it from her grip. “This thing’s heavy. Who’s it from then?”
I looked around the table and no one uttered a word, and there was no card of any kind affixed to it.
“Oh come on you guys, who’s going to take credit for the best wrap job of the night?”
“Maybe it’s a surprise,” Maddie said. “And you’re not supposed to know who it’s from until you open it.”
I shook the box in my hands.
“Feels like a bag of flour.”
“Come on, Sloane,” Maddie said. “Enough with the suspense. Open it already!”
I pulled off the ribbon and took my time removing the paper. I didn’t know why; it wasn’t like I’d ever use it again, but it was so unique, I didn’t want to take the chance of it getting ruined. Once the paper was off, it unmasked a simple white box made of cardboard. I pulled open the lid and peered inside.
“Well?” Maddie said. “What is it? I’m dying over here.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It looks like a bottle of some kind.”
I spread my fingers apart and reached down the crevices of the box until they touched the bottom. Clear liquid sloshed around in the container while it rose to the top. Maddie curled her body over the box and pressed her fingers into the sides so it was unable to move while I lifted it. When it was halfway out, the mayor’s wife couldn’t take the anticipation any longer.
With eyes that sparkled like a child full of wonder on Christmas Day, she leaned over to get a closer look and then clamped her hands over her mouth and let out a scream that echoed through every orifice of the restaurant, and in an instant the loud, boisterous atmosphere evaporated until all that remained was silence.
CHAPTER 12
“What in the hell is that?” Maddie said.
The chief and Nick launched out of their respective chairs and hovered over me like a couple of eagles protecting their nest. By the time I had the bottle all the way out of the box, no less than six pairs of eyeballs were riveted on the liquid substance within the glass and what floated around inside of it: a severed finger.
“What is this, some kind of sick joke?” Nick said.
The chief held his hand out to me and folded his fingers back toward himself.
“Lemme see that,” he said.
I handed it over and then tipped the box on its side and peered in again. A slip of pink paper was taped flat to the bottom and on it, a message:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SLOANE MONROE
I HOPE YOU LIKE IT
YOURS ALWAYS, SINNERMAN
“There’s a note,” I said.
“Don’t touch it,” the chief said. He flung his arms to the side like he was an umpire who’d just declared the player that slid into home plate safe. “No one touch a thing.”
The chief reached over and confiscated the box from me, and with great care he lowered the jar back into the depths of its cardboard home.
“Madison,” the chief said.
“I’m way ahead of you,” Maddie said. “We can take this to my lab right now.”
She stood up and walked over to me and gave me a hug.
“I’m sorry to leave you like this on your birthday sweetie.”
“With all that’s happened, this trumps my big day,” I said. “Keep me posted on what you find out.”
She leaned in until she was a couple inches away from my ear.
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