Twenty
Mackenzie’s brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, but quickly shut it. Then she gasped.
Eliza watched her face carefully, and with every passing emotion, the lead balloon on her chest lifted higher and higher.
“Wait.” Mackenzie handed the tassel back. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Eliza tucked it into her pocket and dropped her voice to a whisper. “At the very least, it means he’s been lying to me.”
“Do you think he’s…?” She paused. “You know. Him? ”
The room lurched beneath her and bile pooled at the back of her throat.
Steady. No throwing up in the tea shop. “Maybe.”
Mackenzie gasped. “And if he is? What’s he going to do to you when he knows you’ve figured it out?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering myself.”
“Did you tell the police yet? Or whoever came to the bank – the FBI?”
“The ATF,” Eliza corrected. “I hadn’t gotten there yet. I went back to the bank in town. The manager was really nice and helped me apply for a loan, but she didn’t remember anything new. Then at the coffee shop, I saw Stacy, the ATF agent who was mean to me.”
Mackenzie winced. “Aw, man. You don’t want to tell her. She’ll be mean to you again.”
“No. I didn’t see her, exactly. Wally showed me a video of her throwing the wheelchair from the robbery into the coffee shop dumpster.”
Mackenzie’s mouth popped open. “What? Why? What is going on? That was evidence, wasn’t it?”
She nodded. “As far as I know, yes.”
“Why would she throw it away?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been trying to figure it out all week, and I’m not sure where else to look.”
Eliza rubbed her face with her hands. Her eyelids were swollen and heavy. She’d been up late trying to find out more about Joey, but to no avail. Aside from pictures of his fabulous travels, his online presence was void of any substance.
“I’m scared of Stacy and I can’t find anything about Joey that would make this make sense.”
Mackenzie bit her lip. “Don’t you kind of want to ask him and see what he says?”
“So he can get spooked and fly away?” She shook her head. “No way.”
“Hm. Good point.” Mackenzie leaned back against the kitchen counter. “They could be working together, somehow. Him and Stacy.”
Leave it to Mackenzie to suspect a secret liaison.
But she wasn’t wrong. Eliza shut her eyes. “It’s possible.”
“Or maybe…it’s something more than that? Something romantic?”
She slowly breathed out, distancing herself from the sting. “It’s crossed my mind.”
Mackenzie crossed her arms over her chest. “Stacy’s got to be in on it. Are you sure the bank robber was a man?”
Eliza nodded. “That, at least, I’m sure of.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Wait, I just remembered! When you went to look for that truck, she just happened to be there.”
Her stomach lurched at the memory of Joey greeting her then. Were they partners in crime? Partners in love ? All this time, she hadn’t a clue…
She brushed the thought away. “I guess…I don’t know. This is going to sound crazy.”
“Hit me with it,” Mackenzie said, a grin on her face. “I’m just a sounding board, remember?”
Eliza smiled back at her. Mack was doing well with this whole non-judgmental thing and Eliza did feel better, even if they were coming to the same exact conclusions. “What if he’s the robber and he thought I might be able to recognize him, so he tried to, you know, seduce me so I’d fall in love with him. After he met Stacy, he thought she was onto him, so he seduced her, too.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I’ll be honest, that’s a lot of seducing. I don’t know that Joey has it in him.”
Eliza laughed. “I’m just brainstorming.”
She put up a hand. “Nothing surprises me anymore. Maybe he didn’t seduce her, just offered her some of the money he’s stolen. He’s gotten millions at this point, right?”
“I guess. Yeah.”
“Or he could’ve just offered her a ride for the right price.”
The idea that perhaps Eliza had been the only one he’d tried to charm romantically lifted her spirits for a moment, but she quickly swatted them down.
It was absurd. He was probably a criminal. Any feelings he’d had toward her were fake. She was nothing more than a tool to him.
A chill ran down her spine and her shoulders quivered.
Mackenzie reached out to touch her hand. “You don’t look so good. Why don’t you go back to the cottage and take a nap?”
“I’m okay.”
“I insist. I’ll cover for you here and, afterwards, we’ll make a plan. I can find out more about Stacy.”
She shook her head. “We can’t go digging for stuff on her. Won’t she know if we look her up? She’s a special agent.”
Mackenzie scoffed. “You watch too many movies. No, don’t worry—we do this all the time in sales. We spy on our customers. Well, not spy, but get an idea of who they are using creative techniques.”
“Ah.”
Eliza was only half listening. What was Joey doing right now? Laughing at how dumb she’d been, how easy she was to trick?
“Go on. Take a nap, then we’ll reconvene.”
The suggestion of sleep made her head feel even heavier. She yawned. “Are you sure?”
“I am.” Mackenzie tugged at the strings on Eliza’s apron and pushed her toward the door. “We’ll figure this out. I’m glad you told me.”
She smiled. “Me too.”
Back in her room, Eliza took off her glasses and slipped under the covers. The sheets were cool and soft and within seconds, she was out.
The next time she opened her eyes was to darkness. She sat up, grabbing her glasses and trying to remember what day it was.
“Hey,” Mackenzie called out from the bottom bunk.
Eliza climbed down. Mackenzie was sitting on her bed, her face lit by the glow of a laptop.
“I found the business card you got from Stacy and dug up some information about her.”
She pulled a sweatshirt on and sat next to her. “Are you sure she’s not going to get a notification you’re investigating her?”
“I doubt it.” She clicked to another screen. “I friended her on Facebook and I can see all of her pictures. It’s all just there. ”
“You friended her? Are you out of your mind?”
“Relax. It’s not me; it’s one of the fake profiles we use at work to investigate people.”
Eliza frowned. “You work at a weird place.”
“Tell me about it.” She clicked through Stacy’s pictures one by one. “She fell for our ‘handsome man’ profile pretty fast.”
Interesting. Eliza had fallen for a handsome man once. “Any pictures of her with Joey?”
“No.”
Eliza breathed out. “He’s not online much anyway.”
“My first thought was that maybe she’s not a real ATF agent, but she is. I confirmed it. She used to work at the DEA before this.”
She clicked to a picture of Stacy standing on a picnic table and shotgunning a beer.
“Oh my,” Eliza said. “I didn’t take her as a party girl.”
“Yeah. She’s only a few years older than me.” She paused. “That was from the DEA family picnic.”
She sputtered a laugh. “That was a work event?”
“Mhm.” She tapped through the pictures, stopping on one of Stacy with her arm around a man with salt and pepper hair.
“Is that her dad?” Eliza asked.
“He was her director at the DEA.” Mackenzie tilted her head. “I have a theory—she had to leave the DEA because they were having an affair.”
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Just a feeling I have. Look how close her face was to his. He’s married, you know. At least, he was.”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “So you’ve decided she’s a federal employee problem child? You’re just making up biases.”
“It makes sense, though. Before she was at the DEA, she was teaching marketing part time at the community college.”
Eliza frowned. “That is a strange career path, but it doesn’t mean anything.”
“She started with a degree in criminal justice.” Mackenzie tapped her fingers on the keys. “I don’t know—she’s all over the place. She got expelled from her college dorm during her freshman year.”
“Where did you find that?”
“From an article she published in the school paper. She’s a terrible writer.”
Eliza laughed. “I really feel like you’re not an impartial investigator. You just really hate Stacy.”
“I’m impartial! But, yes, she was mean to you, and she seems like the least serious federal agent I’ve ever seen.”
“Have you known a lot of them?”
She turned her nose up. “Maybe I have.”
“Yeah, okay.” Eliza sighed, sitting back. “This is all interesting, but it doesn’t prove Stacy is involved.”
Or that Joey was innocent.
“I’m going to find something.” Mackenzie clicked on a picture of Stacy drinking from a large bottle of champagne – New Years 2019. “I just know it.”
Mackenzie’s answer came early the next morning when Stacy posted a picture of herself in Anacortes. The caption read, “Living my best life – crab buffet brunch!”
“Get your shoes, come on, come on!” Mackenzie rushed around the room, grabbing bags and coats.
“We can’t stalk a special agent!” Eliza said. “She’ll put us in jail.”
“For what? I like crab. I just want to get some crab.”
Eliza buried her face in her hands. “I don’t think this is a good idea. And I need to work.”
Mackenzie finally stopped moving and looked her in the eye. “It’s not the best idea, but you might be in love with a criminal, so we have to do something. Cora came back for a few days and she owes us one. She can cover the shop. Come on!”
Mackenzie had her there.
Eliza groaned. “I’ll drive.”