Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
AVERY
“ D id you put the address in the nav?” I asked.
West shot me a quick grin. I loved the way it made his eyes crinkle in the corners. “I got it,” he said. “Should take about forty minutes to get to Wolf Mountain, give or take.”
“Cool,” I said, settling back into my seat, sipping from the latte I’d grabbed when we’d stopped by Sweetheart Bakery. “I hope this isn’t another dead end.”
“Could be. We won’t know until we get there. I’m just hoping she’s home.”
“True,” I agreed. “Considering she doesn’t like answering her phone, who knows where she is? At the least, we can look around outside, see if we can pick up any signs she’s been around home recently.”
We had tried calling the designer three times over the last two days, but had struck out—voicemail every time.
He reached across the console to squeeze my hand. “Don’t stress about it. It’ll be what it is.”
“How are you so chill?” I asked. We might be forty minutes from answers about the necklace—about my father and who’d killed him—if the necklace was related. I shifted in my seat, my fingers tapping on the armrest, unable to calm the tension inside me.
He shrugged. “Because this is what investigations are like. One step forward, two steps back. Things you think you know but can’t verify.
Witnesses who disappear. It’s all about building a case piece by piece, and those pieces rarely fit together cleanly or as fast as we want them to.
So, you just keep going, digging away until you find enough.
Maybe this will be enough. Likely it won’t.
But one way or another, we’ll know more at the end of the day than we do right now. ”
“That’s encouraging,” I said. “I think. But kind of unsatisfying. I want to know everything, not bits and pieces.”
“I’ve heard that before.” West rolled his eyes.
“People think it’s going to be fun and dramatic, like stumbling on the secret diary filled with evidence or someone confessing everything.
And sometimes—rarely—that does happen. But most of the time it’s more like this—little pieces that eventually add up to enough . ”
I sipped my coffee and watched as the last of the town faded behind us. Trees flashed by, a riot of fall color. It wouldn’t last much longer. It was getting decidedly chilly in the mountains. Snow seemed to come later and later these days, but we’d get some, eventually.
“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked, thinking idly about the holidays to come.
“I usually eat at my parents’,” West said. “Why? Want to come? ”
I looked at him, surprised. I hadn’t gotten that far on a lot of levels. He laughed at my expression. I wondered if I looked shocked or nervous—both emotions were fighting for dominance in my gut.
“You don’t have to,” he said with a smile.
“Maybe you guys should come to Heartstone,” I offered before I thought about it.
Instead of wishing I’d kept my mouth shut, the idea settled.
Did I want to be on the hot seat in West’s mother’s dining room?
No. But could the Garfield family fold into the mayhem of Thanksgiving at Heartstone Manor?
Definitely. Edgar would be there. Harvey would probably show up, too, which would give West’s dad some company.
“That’s an idea,” West said. “I don’t know if my mom would go for it, but we can figure it out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve got time.” A thought popped into my head. “Sterling thinks Harvey and Edgar know something.”
“They know a lot of things,” West said. “She thinks they know something about what?”
“My dad’s murder,” I said, taking another sip of coffee.
West’s eyebrows raised, his eyes on the road, and he made a sound in his throat I couldn’t decipher.
“You don’t think so?” I asked.
“I haven’t ruled anyone out,” he said. “It’s possible.
Prentice had a lot of secrets, and if anyone knew them, it was Edgar, Harvey, or maybe my father.
But I don’t know.” West shook his head. “My gut says none of them would have let Ford go to jail if they’d had evidence to stop it.
Be arrested, maybe. But once he pled guilty for a lighter sentence, once those charges went officially on his record, I don’t know.
I can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. ”
“Sterling didn’t like the way Harvey seemed to know we’d found the designer’s address. I thought that was weird, too.” I waited for his response, curious how that had landed for West. He lifted his chin and glanced my way before fixing his eyes back on the road.
“I hear you. That felt weird to me, too.”
“Shit,” I said under my breath.
“I don’t want to think Harvey’s in on anything, but he let the necklace get stolen,” West said, “and he didn’t report it to me. He was thick with your dad. His hands are not entirely clean. Nothing I can arrest him for, but…”
I nodded. “I know what you mean. And then he’s nosing around to see what we know. It’s just weird.”
“I can’t arrest him for being weird, but I’m with you. I didn’t like it.” He let out a sigh. “I’ve been considering the possibility that I have a leak.”
“I hate not knowing who to trust,” I said, not liking the idea that there was anyone at the police station who didn’t have West’s back. “Any idea who?”
West let out a short laugh. “It could be anyone,” he said.
“I thought I knew this town when I became police chief. I thought it’d be a cinch.
I’d spent a couple of years working in Charlotte, got some big-city police work under my belt.
I thought I could roll back into Sawyers Bend, and handle stuff just fine. ”
“It didn’t work that way?” I asked, suddenly curious. I was in high school and college back then and hadn’t really clocked West being gone. Then he’d been back and took over as police chief. He’d slid into the role so seamlessly that it seemed like he’d always been police chief.
“Everybody has secrets,” he said. “No one is exactly who they seem to be. And when you’re the police chief, you learn a lot you’d rather not know.”
I didn’t bother to ask for details. West understood discretion. “I don’t want to know everybody’s secrets,” I said. “Just this one.”
West shook his head. “I have a feeling when we finally get the answer to that one secret, it’s going to open up a can of worms.”
“Hmm.” I had nothing to say to that. He might be right.
He might be wrong. It didn’t matter. I wanted to know who’d killed my father and tried to put Ford in jail for the rest of his life.
Who’d come after my family over and over since my father had been killed.
I wanted the answer. I’d deal with the fallout later.
We lapsed into silence, West finally switching on some music.
As we left the valley and climbed up to Wolf Mountain, the small town where the jewelry designer lived, the trees grew denser, the roads narrower.
We made a wrong turn but finally found the overgrown gravel drive marked only by a single mailbox that clearly led to her house.
West stopped at the head of the drive and checked the rusted mailbox. It was stuffed full of letters and advertising circulars. He shut it and climbed back in the SUV. “There’s a good chance she’s not home,” West said as our tires crunched down the drive.
“Or she might not have gone out in the last few days,” I said, hopeful.
“We’ll see soon enough.”
At the end of the drive, the densely packed trees parted to reveal a small clearing, a bright blue cottage sitting in the center.
The trim and front door were a vibrant purple, and orange pumpkins sat on either side of the porch, uncarved.
A car was parked under the carport. Nothing looked abandoned or as if the owner hadn’t been here recently.
My palms tingled, itching to knock on the door.
She could be right there with the answers as to who’d ordered that necklace made and for whom.
One more piece in the puzzle. We were so close I could taste it.
I unclicked my seatbelt. “Avery,” West said, reaching out a hand to stop me.
I hopped out before he could. He met me at the front of the SUV. “Avery, for now, let me take the lead. Understand?”
I wanted to argue. I didn’t. West wasn’t wrong. He was the police chief. It made more sense to let him take the lead. I was just impatient. We were so close. Ever since we’d found the necklace, we’d been trying to get here.
“All right, let’s go,” I said.
We climbed the front steps of her tiny porch.
The concrete looked recently swept, the mat arranged just so.
It did not look like the front porch of someone who had been out of town for a while.
The doorbell sounded, a happy chime echoing through the small house.
I waited, breath held, for the answering sound of footsteps. There was nothing.
“Her car’s here,” I said to West .
“I know. It doesn’t mean she is. Or she could be in the shower or working. Relax.”
His hand rested on my lower back, the heat of his palm spreading through me, anchoring me, but not slowing the frantic beat of my heart. My anticipation was too heady to shut down.
West rang a second time, and again we waited.
Still nothing. No sound, just the chime of the bells and silence.
After the third time, West gave up on the bell, opening the storm door to pound on the wood of the door.
“Ms. Novak? This is West Garfield, the police chief in Sawyers Bend. I need to have a word with you.”
Nothing.
“So now what?” I asked.
“Now we peek in some windows. Stay close to me. Don’t wander off by yourself.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, following him down off the porch, staying a pace behind as he circled the house. The side windows were too high to see in from ground level. At the back, there was a small deck and a sliding glass door.