Pumpkin Roll (27 page)

When asked about the investigation taking place in regard to Detective Peter Cunningham, the original investigator into Mr. Nutson’s murder, the sheriff’s office had this to say: “Detective Cunningham will remain on administrative leave indefinitely as we continue to explore the timeline of events that took place.” Mr. Fruge, Mr. Nutson’s landscaper, was arrested in part due to the information Detective Cunningham received from Ms. Michaels. The landscaper was later cleared of that crime but has filed a lawsuit against the department for negligence and wrongful arrest.

Ms. Michaels is currently being held in a Phoenix jail awaiting extradition to Billings, Montana, where she will face charges of aggravated murder.

When she finished reading, Sadie understood why Pete had been hesitant to call the Boston police when things had started getting strange. But surely the police wouldn’t think this somehow placed suspicion on Pete. The crimes were very different and on opposite sides of the country. Even so, Pete himself had said police hated coincidences and patterns and they would have no choice but to take Pete’s past into consideration as they investigated the attack on Mrs. Wapple. Apparently he
hadn’t
just been referring to Sadie’s recent past.

She closed the second article and did some more digging, filling in the gaps until she felt she had a pretty good view of the big picture. Pete had been set up all those years ago by Terry Michaels, who had misled him because she was the person guilty of murder. It was a poor decision for Pete to have trusted her, but Sadie could only believe he’d been desperate to find answers. Why else would he accept help from a psychic? Regardless, he hadn’t done anything illegal or immoral—he’d simply made a bad choice.

A glance at the clock revealed it was after 11:00—no wonder her eyelids were so heavy. She closed the computer and put it back on the charger, grimacing as she stretched out the kinks in her back. She should have sat at the desk to use the computer and not stayed on the bed. Her fall earlier surely didn’t help, and she got an ibuprofen out of her first-aid kit in her suitcase. She’d likely be even more sore tomorrow, though she was grateful her injuries were only some sore muscles and a few bruises. She hadn’t always been so lucky.

Her hair had dried in frizzy waves; it would need some serious attention in the morning. She checked on the boys one last time. Their room was across the hall from hers, and she wanted to be able to hear them if they needed her, so she left both bedroom doors open. Confident that everything was safe, she slid between the chilly sheets and pulled the covers up to her chin before turning to face the window.

Soft light glowed around the edges of the slats of the mini-blinds and Sadie’s thoughts turned to Mrs. Wapple. Would the doctors take the time to give her a full psychological assessment in addition to the physical one? Was she going to be all right? Would Sadie dig deeper into Mrs. Wapple’s past tomorrow? Would she investigate Gabrielle? Would she take Jane up on her offer to keep looking for answers in search of closure? What would the police think of the similarities between the Michaels case and Mrs. Wapple?

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to ease her mind and rest her soul with thoughts of peace and calmness while praying for sleep to overtake her and for the night to be uneventful.

The calm, peaceful sleep lasted for exactly one hour, as though someone were timing her REM cycles.

Chapter 24

BAM!

Sadie shot up in bed, blinking and looking around, trying to figure out where she was and what had woken her up.

BAM!

Boston.

The boys!

She scrambled out of bed and ran for the bedroom door. When she heard the first boy start crying, her heart jumped into her throat, and she reached for the knob, instantly realizing that one of those BAMs had been her door slamming shut. She’d left it open when she’d come to bed.

“It’s okay,” she yelled to the boys as she pulled open the door, not even thinking about what might be on the other side. It was cold in the hallway as she ran to the boys’ room. The door, which she’d also left open when she went to bed, was closed—the second BAM?

Pete came flying out of his room moments behind Sadie, his gun in his hand. Sadie looked at him long enough to note he was only in his boxers as he ran to the front of the house.

“It’s okay,” she said, running toward Fig, who was crying. The other two boys converged on her, and she pulled them close, kissing and whispering and assuring them everything was fine. She didn’t even think about Pete again until the boys had calmed down and he reappeared in the doorway still dressed only in his boxers but had donned a T-shirt. Sadie turned her face away and kissed the top of Chance’s head.

“The front and back doors are open,” Pete said breathlessly. “No one’s here.”

“Someone came in?” Kalan asked, his eyes wide, even in the dark.

“No,” Pete said, running a hand through his hair. “I mean, yes, or . . . I . . .”

“It’s okay,” Sadie said again, smiling at Kalan. “We’re going to a hotel.” She stood up and crossed the room to flip on the light. Everyone squinted, but she hurried to the dresser and began pulling out folded clothing. Her heart was thumping. “Boys, get your shoes and coats. Pete, go find your pants.”

They didn’t question her and immediately did as she said. By the time Pete returned, properly dressed, Sadie had the boys’ things nearly packed into the overnight bag she’d found in the living room closet.

“Are you going to call the police?” she asked Pete as she grabbed an extra pair of socks for each boy.

Pete didn’t answer and an unexpected wave of anger rushed through her, which she quickly tried to suppress. This wasn’t Pete’s fault, but she couldn’t help but wonder what his hesitation to involve the police may have cost them over the last few days. She met his eyes, wishing she could tell him everything she knew. Instead, she said, “Call them.”

He nodded and disappeared. Within ten minutes, a single bag was packed and everyone’s shoes were on. Sadie had put her hair under the faucet after she’d passed the mirror and scared herself. She doused it with gel and anti-frizz spray, which was a vast improvement over the Don King impression she’d had a few minutes earlier. In the meantime, an officer had responded to Pete’s call, and the two of them had checked out the locks, specifically the new eyebolts Pete had installed that afternoon, both of which seemed perfectly intact.

“Is there a crawl space?”

“No,” Pete said, shaking his head and putting his hands on his hips. “I asked my son.”

“Broken window locks?”

“I’ve checked them half a dozen times.”

They kept discussing and rejecting options until Sadie noticed the dish soap lying on its side in the kitchen. Forty minutes later, their best guess was that the lock on the windows—circa 1950—could have been jimmied open with a butter knife. Or maybe the intruder had disabled the eyebolt with a bit of wire—the back doorjamb allowed more slack than the front. Pete wasn’t satisfied with either answer but even he had to admit that sometimes the “how” didn’t get explained.

Finally, the officer gave them permission to leave for the hotel. Chance and Fig had fallen asleep on the couch by the time they were ready to leave; Kalan was barely awake as he watched
Cars.
Sadie and Pete herded the kids out to the minivan. It was after 1:00 and freezing cold outside. A drizzly rain was still falling, which had melted the snow but left behind slushy conditions. It would likely freeze during the night and make for a dangerous commute in the morning.

While Pete backed out of the garage, Sadie turned around in her seat and tried to get the boys to calm down. Fig was crying again and Kalan and Chance were trying to be brave, but Sadie’s heart was breaking at the look on their tired little faces.

Pete pulled out of the alley and drove past Browden Street in time for Sadie to see the taillights of the responding patrol car disappear around the opposite corner. Sadie watched Jared and Heather’s house, looking so silent and innocent. As they passed the alley that ran behind Mrs. Wapple’s house, Sadie saw a person—a man—stand up from behind a car in one of the driveways farther down the road. He wasn’t looking at the minivan. Like her, he was looking toward where the cop car had disappeared. Had he been hiding? She craned her neck around as they drove further out of sight. The man hurried down the alley with something under his arm. She couldn’t make it out—maybe a box or a really fat newspaper?

“Pete,” she said, hitting him in the arm. “Go back. Someone’s in the alley.”

“What?” Pete said, his tone sharp.

“There was someone in the alley behind Mrs. Wapple’s house. Go back.”

Pete shook his head. “No way am I going back,” he said without even slowing down. “Call the officer and tell him to check it out. We need to get these boys to the hotel.”

Sadie felt bad about not considering the boys, but she called the officer—he’d given Pete his card—and gave all the description she had, which wasn’t much. The officer assured her that he’d look into it.

“You said you found a room?” Pete asked as soon as she hung up, clarifying that his curiosity was not engaged in the lurker from the alley.

Sadie shifted her thoughts and told herself that it was probably nothing—some neighbor on a beer run. She picked up the GPS she’d brought with her from Garrison, the one she’d nicknamed Dora. “The Courtyard in Brookline where I stayed those first nights,” she said. “Parking’s ridiculous, but we can’t be taking the T.” She typed in the name of the hotel. “I’m just glad they had two connected rooms.”

“Turn right in point eight miles,” Dora said a moment later. Pete followed the directions.

“Turn right in point three miles.”

They pulled up to the hotel ten minutes later and quickly herded the boys inside. Within ninety minutes of the banging doors, Chance and Kalan were tucked into one bed of the queen suite and Fig was asleep in the king bed he’d be sharing with Sadie in the connecting room.

Pete was leaning against the wall when Sadie came out of the bathroom; she nearly screamed. He waved her back into the bathroom and then shut the door behind them.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” Sadie said, instantly picking up on his obvious anxiety. She wondered what it was that caused him to be this nervous and then, just as he opened his mouth, she knew what it was. Terry Michaels. She was all ears and leaned against the counter.

“Have you ever wondered why I’m a detective in a small town police department?”

“No,” Sadie said, shaking her head. “I assumed you wanted to be a detective in Garrison.”

“I do want to,” Pete said. “But I haven’t been able to accomplish all I hoped to accomplish when I started out in law enforcement. There are things that kept my career from advancing.”

Sadie was tempted to let him off the hook and tell him she already knew, but she forced herself not to. She was curious to know what he’d say about it. “What kind of things?”

“Several years ago, when I was working in Farmington, New Mexico, there was a murder.” He took a breath, looking between Sadie, the towel rack, and the tile floor before continuing. “The victim was a wealthy horse breeder who lived on the outskirts of town. We rarely had homicides in that town—plenty of assaults and property crime, but very few murders—and my partner and I worked every angle we could of the case. Nothing really panned out. The victim didn’t have family; he wasn’t involved in scandal. He just raised horses and made a lot of money doing it. A week into the investigation, a woman contacted me at home. She said she was a psychic and that she’d had a vision about the case.” He sought Sadie’s eyes for . . . understanding? Support?

“You believed her,” Sadie said, hoping it sounded more like a question than the statement of fact she knew it to be. She wanted to hear Pete’s side of the story.

Pete nodded. “At first I didn’t. I told my partner about it and put a note in the file. A week later she called me again. She knew about a piece of evidence that hadn’t been made public—a red bandana that had been stuffed into the victim’s mouth. When all our leads dried up, I went back to her—on my own since my partner thought she was a crackpot. I don’t know why I was willing to go against procedure and endanger everything by following her lead, but . . . it was my first murder case in that department and I wanted to make a name for myself.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Anyway, the short of it is that she’d made a living out of conning wealthy men through her supposed psychic powers, but things had escalated over the last few years and she’d turned from criminal to pathological. She’d attempted a con on our victim but when he didn’t buy into everything she said and even threatened to expose her as a fraud, she killed him. Then she led me to the evidence she had planted that implicated someone else.