Chapter 15
Chapter 15
“Who’s that?” Ceecee asked, her face stuck between the two front seats as she looked through the rear window.
“I’m not sure,” Calvin replied, but he had a fair idea. He buckled himself in and checked on his sister. “Face the front, Ceecee. We’ll go see what they wanted.”
“A car chase?” Her face lit up as she bounced on the seat.
“Something like that,” he said, and swung the truck around to follow Greta’s Honda. He could have sworn Daphne had been sitting in the back seat. But what would she be doing outside his mother’s house?
“They went that way,” his little sister said, pointing. “I saw them turn.”
“Good work, kiddo,” Calvin said, taking the turn. The Honda’s taillights turned in the distance. They were heading toward town.
“Catch them!” his little sister urged, one hand gripping the door, the other curled around the edge of her seat. “This is way better than the movies.”
Calvin hummed and followed the road, though he’d lost sight of the other car. “You don’t mind doing this? We can still go to the movies.”
“No way,” his sister said. “I want to see why they were spying on us.”
“We don’t know that they were spying,” he said, but his eyes narrowed. He was pretty sure Daphne had been spying on him, along with her grandmother and company. Had they followed him to the house? Why?
Heart thumping, Calvin turned toward Carlisle. He grimaced when there was no sight of Greta’s car. Ceecee looked around, peering down every cross street, her feet kicking as she did.
“You see them?” he asked.
“No. They got away.” Her eyes were wide as she glanced over at him, disappointment clearly written on her face. “What are we going to do?”
Calvin pulled in to the side of the road and turned to his sister. “Well, that’s up to you,” he said. “Today’s our hangout day, so you get to decide. We can still make the movie, then have dinner and ice cream like we planned. Or we can drive around and try to find them.”
“Drive around and try to find them!”
He bit back a smile. “Okay, but Ceecee, you have to do as I say. If you’re riding along with me, it means you listen when I tell you to do something.”
“I will. I promise.” She gave him a huge smile. Her two front teeth had a gap between them, and her cheeks were full and rosy. She was a cute kid, and she lit up when he made time for her.
This was why he was on Fernley Island. That smile. That little girl, who deserved so much better than what he’d had.
Calvin’s heart gave a thud. When he’d rung the doorbell at his mother’s house, he’d shifted his weight from foot to foot and tried to ignore his discomfort. His mother had answered the door, and her face lit up with hope that she’d quickly tried to hide. She’d led him to Ceecee’s room, which was clean and full of toys. Nothing like his room had been at nine years old.
Ceecee had run over to give him a hug, then wrapped her arms around her mother’s middle while Eileen bent down to press a kiss to Ceecee’s head. They’d seemed like a perfect mother-daughter pair. Calvin’s heart gave a lurch, and a strange mix of longing and jealousy had moved through him.
But what if it was a lie? An act? What if, under the surface, Ceecee was going through what Calvin had endured?
If so, Calvin knew that even though she lived in a bigger house, with nicer clothes and new shoes anytime she needed them, his little sister would be alone. She’d be learning that the adults in her life didn’t care enough to get to know her. Didn’t care enough to listen to her, to spend time with her. Soon she’d be a teenager, and the hurt growing under the surface would turn to anger. Anger would turn to self-destruction.
He knew, because he’d been through it.
He couldn’t let that happen.
If he’d had one person—just one person—show him the kind of attention he’d needed, Calvin wondered if he would’ve struggled the way he had. He had his first drop of alcohol at fourteen years old. By eighteen, he was a drunk. It took three more years to clean himself up, and those were the hardest three years of his life. He had to feel all the pain he’d numbed for his entire existence. Had to take stock and decide to be better.
Ceecee wouldn’t go through what he’d gone through. He couldn’t let it happen.
So, as he met his little sister’s glittering gaze, he knew that he’d give her anything she wanted as long as it put a smile on her face and saved her from the kind of pain he’d experienced. Even going after a bunch of old women and Daphne to question them about their loitering outside his mother’s house.
“Pinkie swear,” he said, sticking out his finger. Ceecee grinned at him and hooked her pinkie around his. They shook, and Calvin repeated: “You do what I say. No complaining.”
“No complaining,” she vowed, and Calvin’s eyes narrowed when she didn’t repeat the first part of the promise.
“If I tell you to stay in the car, you stay in the car.”
“I promise.”
They kept their pinkies hooked around each other, and Calvin met her eyes. “Let’s go find them.”
Ceecee let out a squeal and clapped her hands, then slapped them against her mouth, then let out another squeak. He laughed, easing back out onto the road as he made his way to Daphne’s street.
If it had been anyone but Daphne and her insane grandmother’s group of friends, he would’ve called it in and gotten someone on duty to check it out. But after what had happened the night before at Mickey’s, Calvin wasn’t going to let anyone else question the woman he had in his sights.
Daphne was his, whether she knew it or not.
As he parked outside Daphne’s apartment, he glanced up at the building. He wasn’t sure which window belonged to her, so he got out, gave Ceecee a stern look, and told her to stay in the car, and then went to ring Daphne’s buzzer.
No one answered the intercom, but he did hear the whir of a car window going down. Turning, he watched Ceecee’s face take on angelic innocence through the opening as she said, “I’m still in the car.”
He gave her a flat look and turned around before his smile gave him away. Little rascal. After buzzing again, he waited, then pulled his phone out and called her. He wandered over to the passenger side of his truck and tweaked Ceecee’s nose as the phone rang. His sister squeaked and jerked back, then let out a laugh.
Then Daphne answered. “Hello?”
Calvin straightened. “You home?” He turned to study the building again.
“I—what?”
“Are you at home?”
“No. Why?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a question I had,” he said. “I’m at your place.”
“I’m not home,” she answered. “I’m busy.”
Frowning when he heard a voice in the background that sounded older and female, Calvin grunted and headed for the driver’s door of his truck. “Busy sitting outside my mother’s house in a car with your grandmother and her friends?”
“What?” Daphne’s voice went up two octaves. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She was a terrible liar. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Oh, you’re breaking up. I gotta go!” And the line went dead.
Ceecee was staring at him, eyes wide. “Who was that?”
“She was sitting in the back seat of that car.”
“Who is it?”
“Daphne Davis,” Calvin replied through clenched teeth.
“Oh, your girlfriend!”
Turning to meet his sister’s gaze, Calvin frowned. “What?”
“Mom was soooooo shocked when she heard. But then she got all happy because she said you were settling down. And then she tried to play it cool, but I could tell she was all over the place.”
“What does ‘all over the place’ mean?”
“She asked me if I wanted a snack like seventeen million times.”
Calvin huffed. It didn’t sound like the mother he’d grown up with, but what did he know?
“Is she really your girlfriend?”
“Who?”
“Daphne. Is that why she was spying on you? She wanted to see what you were up to.”
“No,” Calvin replied, then paused. He didn’t know what Daphne had been doing. “It’s complicated.”
“Are you in love with her?”
“What? Why are you asking me this?” He drove down the street and turned toward one of the main arteries through town. Where would they have gone? Mabel’s house, or one of the other two?
“It’s just that usually, people date people they love.”
“Not always.”
“So you don’t love her?”
“I—Ceecee, drop it, okay?”
“Mom said Jenna Deacon had been asking about you, but she was happy you’d been telling the truth about having a date.”
“Of course I was telling the truth,” Calvin grumbled, even though he hadn’t been. “Did she not think I could find a date on my own? And what do you mean, Jenna Deacon was asking about me?”
Ceecee shrugged. “I dunno. That’s just what she said.” She kept her eyes peeled, scanning the road around them. “Where do you think they went?”
“They’re not criminal masterminds, and the island isn’t that big, so I think we can find out.” He pressed a few buttons on the console until his phone rang through the system to connect to the station.
Teri answered on the second ring. “Sheriff?”
“You know Daphne’s grandmother and her two friends?”
“Sure,” Teri answered.
“Where do they live?”
“Mabel lives up on the north end with Claude and Helen Davis. Harry and Greta are neighbors. They share a duplex on Fourteenth Street.”
“You know the addresses?”
“I’ll find ’em,” she said. “Something wrong?”
“No, just checking up on them.”
“Roger,” the woman said. “I’ll send the addresses through shortly.”
Calvin waited for Teri’s message as he headed toward Fourteenth Street. Once the address came through, he parked in the duplex’s leftmost drive, gave Ceecee a stern look as she lowered the window with an impish look on her face, then headed up the path to knock on the door.
There was no answer on either side of the duplex. A neighbor poked her head out.
“Something wrong, Sheriff?”
“I’m looking for Greta and Harry,” he called over the hedge.
“Haven’t seen either of them since this morning. They were heading to the Sunrise Diner for breakfast.”
And after breakfast, they’d hung around his mother’s house. Which meant there was only one more place they could be.
“Thanks,” he said, and got back in his truck.
“We’re heading to the north end?” Ceecee asked, following the direction of Calvin’s thoughts.
He reversed out of the driveway. “We’re heading to the north end,” he confirmed.
“This is so much fun,” Ceecee proclaimed. “But what if they’re not at Mabel’s house? Where will we go?”
“We’ll do exactly what they were trying to do to us, kid,” he said, grinning. “Stake ’em out and wait until we get some answers.”