by Dixie Davis
“Did she confide in anyone else? Ray? Mitch?”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t know. Ray’s never admitted it if she did. It was always hard to talk about Debbie with Mitch after everything he went through.”
“I heard he was arrested.”
Katie tore off a corner of the sweet roll and a bit of strawberry tumbled out onto the napkin. “He was. Spent a couple weeks in jail until he came up with bond.”
Lori winced inwardly. A single weekend there was enough to scar a person for life — as Lori knew too well. Adding on losing your wife and being falsely accused?
And now Mitch was back there.
“Did you think that he did it?”
Katie plucked the strawberry bits from her napkin and put them in her mouth. “I didn’t know. I didn’t want to believe it. Mitch had never seemed capable of it. He was more bewildered than guilty. And sad. Awfully sad for a person who’d supposedly killed her.”
Lori concentrated on her fingernails. She didn’t have a ton of experience with murderers, but it seemed to her that being sad could also be a side effect of killing someone. Regret.
“Did you think she was still alive?”
Katie’s blanket over her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “I couldn’t imagine her being dead. But how could she just drop off the face of the earth like that? She never called or wrote or emailed ever, not even to say, ‘Hey, Mom, I’m still alive.’”
“Do you think she knew what a controversy she’d caused?”
Katie took another bite of the roll portion of the strawberry roll. “I don’t think she knew, but maybe she did. Maybe she wanted that? Maybe she meant for Mitch to suffer? All she had to do was drop a postcard in the mail, for heaven’s sake. Not one word — for ten years?”
Unlike most people, Katie didn’t raise her voice as she fell deeper and deeper into the sorrowful sermon. Instead, her voice grew softer, almost a whisper by the time she finished. As if the anger was wearing her out right in front of Lori’s eyes.
She had a decade’s worth of anger built up. Of course it was burning right through her. Lori couldn’t fault her one bit.
Lori tried again. “I’m guessing you didn’t know anyone who did have contact with her during that time?”
“As far as I know, the whole town was pretty convinced she was dead.”
“Including Mitch?”
Katie nodded, pausing to chew another bite of the strawberry roll. “You know, my memories aren’t the sharpest from that time — it was right before I took sick.”
Lori still had no idea what specifically ailed Katie, but obviously it was fairly serious if she’d been bedridden for a decade.
Katie fell into silence, picking at her strawberry roll. “Would you like a drink?” Lori asked.
Katie pointed at a tall glass of water on the table. “I’m just fine, thank you. Why don’t you head down and keep an eye on that husband of mine? He’s liable to act out.”
Lori laughed, but she had to wonder whether Katie was serious. Had he done something rash the first time they’d lost their daughter?
Lori headed back down the stairs to the kitchen. Ray didn’t seem to have moved, though the strawberry roll in front of him was gone.
“Feast or famine,” he murmured as Lori settled at the table next to him. “Either you’re too upset to eat or too upset to stop.”
Lori cast a meaningful glance at the other two rolls in the pan, but she assumed they were still there. Ray didn’t look up to catch her joke.
“Ray,” she said gently, “Miss Katie wants me to look into this. What do you want?”
A fist slammed down on the table, and Lori jumped. “I want my daughter back.” His voice was low, almost menacing.
“I wish I could give you that.” Lori slowly reached for his hand, giving him plenty of time to pull away if he wanted. He let her rest a hand on his forearm. “But since I can’t, I want to do what I can. What I’ve done for other people.”
Ray buried his face in his other hand but nodded.
“Can you help me understand the background a little more? Katie said her memory of that time is a little off because she took sick.”
Ray nodded. “Yes, because of the stress, the doctor said. Tripped a switch in her system we’re trying to reset.”
Oh. Lori hadn’t realized Katie’s condition was a direct result of the mystery — controversy — surrounding Debbie’s supposed death.
And now they got a replay of all the stress. “Has she been all right? This time around, I mean?”
Ray heaved a shuddering sigh. “So far. But it was the accumulation of stress that did it last time, I think. And the not knowing.”
Lori supposed that at least they could know for sure now what had happened to their daughter. But that came with baggage of its own. Like, where had she been and why didn’t she tell us she wasn’t dead all these years?
She honestly couldn’t say which would be easier to bear. But it hardly seemed fair that some of the nicest people in town had to bear both.
Ray’s shoulders shook, and she realized he was crying. Lori gave his wrist a squeeze. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice as gentle as an ocean breeze at sunset.
“It’s not that — it is, it is, but it isn’t.” He took a deep breath and wiped his face. “I’ve lost my daughter twice, and now — I’ll lose Katie too.”
“She’ll be okay. It’s hard, I know, but —”
“Debbie disappearing almost killed Katie. What will returning from the dead do to her? To know that we weren’t good enough for her, that all our worrying and heartache over the last ten years meant nothing to her, to know that she could have made it all better at any second if she’d just picked up the phone, but she didn’t want to.” He jerked his wrist free of Lori’s hand and slammed his fist down on the tabletop over and over again.
She’d never seen Ray truly angry before today. She barely recognized him. Normally, Ray would never hurt a fly. Right now, Lori was pretty glad she wasn’t an airborne insect.
Anger was a natural part of the grieving process, and she didn’t begrudge him that. Violence, on the other hand, wasn’t.
What had Katie said before Lori left her? Ray was liable to act out?
Had he done something when Debbie went missing to make Katie say that? Or was she kidding?
Ray shook out his hand. Somehow, he seemed even more weathered and old than normal now, even though he’d just shown off the fact that he still had his strength.
“Why weren’t we enough for her?” His whisper was little more than a plaintive exhale. “Why wasn’t our love enough?”
Ray broke down in tears. Lori stood to rub a hand on his back, doing what little she could to try to soothe him.
Some wounds only time could heal.
And some wounds time couldn’t.
Ray sniffled loudly, wiping his face again, pulling himself together. Not for her sake, Lori hoped. “When she — the last time —” He paused to gulp air. “I was so angry. I just couldn’t understand how a person could just up and disappear like that.
“So I confronted Mitch. Went to his house, late at night, practically banged down the door.” Ray shook his head at his foolishness, as if this had been a youthful misjudgment. “I told him he had to tell me. I might have even punched him.”
Lori was grateful she stood behind him, sparing him the shock she couldn’t hide. She couldn’t imagine Ray and Mitch ever not getting along.
“And that was before Katie got sick.” The last word was squeezed out around the edges of emotion, and Ray wiped his face again.
“I would do anything for my Katie. Anything. And I’m just going to lose her all over again because of this.”
Ray slid back into silent sobs, and Lori resumed rubbing his back as if she were comforting one of her boys as a sick child.
And as if Ray hadn’t acted out the last time his daughter was in danger.
Leaving her plenty of time to investigate.
Lori went to her office to write down what she’d learned from talking to Katie and Ray. The list wasn’t extensive, and after she’d finished, she still felt unsettled, like the list was incomplete.
The last things Ray had said to her in the kitchen still rang in her mind. She added to her list:
The stress of Debbie’s disappearance triggered Katie’s illness.
Ray worries Debbie’s death might make Katie worse, even kill her.
Ray would do anything to help Katie. Anything to protect her?
The unease settled in the pit of her stomach like a giant lemon, puckering everything inside of her. Ray was willing to do anything to protect Katie. Did that include confronting the daughter who’d nearly killed her when Debbie came back to finish the job?
Lori didn’t like that idea one bit. But she’d also watched Ray pound the table and heard him confess to possibly hitting Mitch. She couldn’t pretend there wasn’t a violent bone in his body when she knew there was.
Was Ray capable of hurting his daughter to protect his wife?
Lori definitely couldn’t rule it out. And that didn’t make her very happy at all.
Well, then she’d have to find another avenue for investigation.
Lori stared at the yellow legal pad. Obviously Mitch was a suspect. Obviously she should write that down. Obviously he didn’t do it. Her own anger had burnt out, leaving only the hurt — but even that wasn’t really his fault, wasn’t something he’d done on purpose. She’d have to keep looking. She wasn’t really sure which way to turn next. Her house was clean enough that she didn’t really have that distraction, and she’d talked to the people who were closest to the case at the time.
Well, she hadn’t exactly talked to Mitch. Or made eye contact with him. But she’d talked to Ray and Katie. The only other person who might be able to help would probably be Chip.
Chief Branson.
Probably the person least likely to help Lori’s investigation in the history of Dusky Cove.
She didn’t need a full rundown of his rivalry with Mitch, how much worse it had gotten when Mitch married the girl Chip loved, and how it had soured even further when, Chip assumed, Mitch murdered her.
As far as Lori knew, Chip had never married. She’d heard whispers that he still carried a torch for Debbie, and she’d seen how Chip treated Mitch whenever there was an opportunity to put him down. Mitch had never escaped the cloud of suspicion in the chief’s mind.
On the other hand, it was a miracle he’d gotten out from under it in the rest of the town’s.
But she’d never spoken to Chip about it. Maybe she was misinterpreting things. Reading too much into his actions.
Or maybe Chip was so mad that the woman he loved had chosen another man and then run away from him without giving him a second look. After all, he was there, still waiting for her to change her mind, loving her from afar.
Lori tossed the legal pad onto her desk. Now she’d gone a little too far, imputing motives to real people who might not actually feel that way. That didn’t quite seem appropriate, especially for the chief of police.
Then again, wouldn’t that be the perfect cover identity? No one would suspect the chief.
Lori shook her head at herself. She sounded like a soap opera, even in her head.
But that soap opera did have a point. What if Chip had seen Debra first and lost his temper?
No. That didn’t sound like the chief. He could hold a grudge for thirty years, blame Mitch for every crime, nearly ruin his life . . . Well, maybe Chip was capable of a crime of passion.
The easiest, most direct way to resolve these questions would be to talk to Mitch himself. As hard as that sounded given what they’d just learned, she wanted to be there for him. After a quick Internet search, Lori found the phone number for the county jail. She listened to the menu options and pressed the right numbers to get to the visitors’ hotline. Finally she got ahold of an actual person. “I’m calling to arrange a visit to Mitch Griffin,” Lori said.
“All right, let me see.” The line was silent for a moment. “Um, it says here he’s not taking visitors.”
“No, that can’t be right. Is he not allowed visitors?” Could the county be just as biased against Mitch as Chief Branson?
“Um.” The operator paused again. “It looks like he has declined all visitors.”
“Even Lori Keyes?”
“I don’t have any exceptions listed.”
Lori sank back in her chair. Mitch didn’t want to see her? That couldn’t mean . . .
No. “Thanks,” Lori murmured before she hung up.
All right, then. The second easiest, most direct way to resolve these questions would be to talk to Chip himself. Which he probably wouldn’t like. Especially not once she started poking directly at his alibi.
At least once, her interviews had gotten her in trouble. There had been that one girl in particular who threw a whole glass of iced tea at Lori for asking about her alibi.
Lori had known Chip for two years. Granted, they’d never been close enough to be friends, but in the last twenty-four hours, he’d been a different person from the one she’d known.
He’d punched Mitch. He’d wept over Debbie’s body. He’d intimidated her.
She’d obviously known he was the jealous type already. You had to be to hold it against a guy when a woman chooses you over him and grasp that grudge like a lifeline even after you thought she was dead.
Until you found out she wasn’t, and your whole world turned upside down. Innocent exterior. What was lurking on the inside?
Lori gathered her courage and drove the short distance to the police station. Inside and out, it wasn’t hard to tell that it was a converted house. The stucco exterior did little to hide the shape of the original home — especially with the cozy porch and rocking chairs out front. Unless the police needed a kindler, gentler image — unlikely in a town small enough where the police force was related to half of it — it showed how laidback the town and its law enforcement normally was.
Or was before Lori had moved here.
Lori marched right up to Doris, the nonagenarian dispatcher, and laid her hands on the desk. “I need to speak with the chief,” Lori announced.
“He’s in a meeting,” Doris said. “Feel free to wait.”
Lori settled, wishing she enjoyed a handicraft like knitting or crochet or even needlepoint, but she wasn’t coordinated enough for that kind of thing. Plus, when she’d tried, she’d always managed to lose all her accouterments and that was the end of her handy traveling hobby.
Still, it would have been nice to have something to keep her mind off the waiting and the persistent nagging of what she was about to do.
Lori glanced around the police station. Inside, the floor plan still resembled a residence. The living room was now a reception area, the kitchen a break room, and the bedrooms offices. She didn’t even think they’d changed the carpet when they’d converted it. As far as Lori knew, they didn’t even have a holding cell here in town. When they’d arrested her two years ago, she’d gone straight to the county jail.
A memory she’d rather erase.
How had she not known all these years that Mitch had been through the same thing?
And it was very likely he was going through it again. She pushed aside a pang at the thought of him all alone there. Was that what he wanted?
At least the chief hadn’t suspected Lori herself of Debbie’s murder. She made a decent suspect, really. Why wouldn’t the new girlfriend want the old wife out of the way?
But, then, there could have only been one suspect in the chief’s mind.
A door i
n the back opened, and Lori hopped to her feet. The chief strode out of the back hallway, followed by someone who seemed vaguely familiar. Lori thought she remembered him from the crime scene the night before.
“Thanks, Edelblute,” the chief murmured, shaking his hand before the other man left.
The chief didn’t seem to notice Lori, but he definitely could have been ignoring her. Wouldn’t have been the first time.
“Chip?” Lori tried. Better to appeal to his humanity than his office, maybe?
He glanced at her, but turned back to Doris, pointing out something in the papers on the desk. In addition to working dispatch, Doris was their secretary, office manager and pretty much mother.
The chief finished with his instructions and turned for his office again.
“Chief,” Lori said, in a tone that she hoped sounded like she knew he wouldn’t dare to ignore something so urgent.
His shoulders dropped, and he turned back to her. “What do you want?” His voice said he already knew and didn’t want to hear.
But she was going to say it anyway. “I want to talk. About Debbie.”
The word seemed to wound him, and he winced. “We’ve got a handle on it, Lori.”
Although his tone wasn’t harsh, Lori wasn’t going to stand for that. “Do you want justice for her? Or do you just want to punish Mitch?”
“Can’t I have both?” Chip cracked a smile. He looked younger than her with that face. At Lori’s stern expression, he quickly sobered.
Good to know she hadn’t lost her motherly touch.
“Listen, Lori,” he said, trying that gentle tone again, “I don’t want to be doing this. I wish none of this had happened.” His voice fell to a murmur. “You have no idea how much I want that to be true.”
“I know. I really do.”
Chip nodded, acknowledging that this wasn’t easy for her either, watching someone she loved suffering. Or, not watching right now. “You find a better suspect, you tell me,” Chip said. “But right now the guy I’ve got behind bars is the one who’s spent the last ten years thinking his wife was dead, with the rest of the town saying he’d killed her. How mad do you think he’d be to find her alive? What do you think he’d be capable of in that situation?”