Chapter 17
Main Street, the unoriginally named road that runs through the heart of Doomwood Falls, is dressed in grays and browns.
Massive flower pots cup a variety of fall flora, and bare dogwood trees jut up through tiny square gardens along the wide sidewalk.
Moss creeps up brickwork, fog clings to ankles, storefront windows blink awake.
The bell above the jewelry store exit dings as I step onto the stone walkway clutching my repaired necklace in a cream-colored bag. Of course it makes me think of Ivory.
I dial her number. It rings until it doesn’t.
“Where are you?” I mutter, staring at my reflection in the storefront glass. My face looks thinner, stretched by the warped window. “Why won’t you pick up?”
I don’t leave a voicemail because I can’t. Her inbox is full from all of the other countless messages I’ve left since she disappeared. Or ran off on her own accord. At this point it feels like the same difference.
A call comes in before I have a chance to return my phone to my purse. It’s about time. I answer on the first ring, “Ivory?”
A bored female voice says, “This is Doomwood Falls Correctional Facility. We have an inmate requesting to speak with—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I already know who it is. Only one man in my life turns the phrase correctional facility into something routine. “Put him through.”
There’s a click and then—
“Shari?” Luca sounds breathless, like he’s escaping a burning building that he set fire to. Honestly, with Luca, nothing would shock me.
“Did your little tryst with an eighteen-year-old girl finally catch up with you?” My joke doesn’t land well.
“Shut up. And no, it’s not about Freida. She’s not talking to me, so it’s probably over.” He lowers his voice. “If I tell you, can you swear you won’t freak out?”
“I’m already freaking out. I have no money for your bail, Luca. Why don’t you ask Mamma to cover it?”
“Yeah, right. Over both of our dead bodies. I cannot stress this enough, but please do not tell Mamma.”
“What did you do this time? Is this about Marshall?” A stiff silence hangs between us on the line. “Because he showed up at my house in the middle of the night, Luca. My home!”
There’s a long, guilty silence. I can practically hear him rubbing the back of his neck.
“Please don’t leave me here. I can explain everything.”
“Luca—”
He groans dramatically. “Can you just come bail me out first? You can yell at me as much as you want, and threaten to disown me, and that’s fine, but can we please do it after I’m not wearing county orange?”
Of course I’m going to bail him out. What else am I supposed to do—let him rot? I may be irritated, under-caffeinated, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but I’m not heartless.
“I’m on my way.”
I close my eyes, wishing for another life where I had a normal family, a live husband, maybe a kid or two, and a clean record.
But instead I’m estranged from my mother, a childless widow, and Ivory is missing, or maybe not missing, or maybe screaming for help from the trunk of a car.
Now my brother, the human tornado disguised as a man, has landed himself in jail again.
I lower the phone and slip it into my purse, then search for my car keys. Doomwood Falls exhales around me as wind whips through the narrow alleys between tall brick buildings. A delivery truck rattles by, radio crackling with a song from another decade. Somewhere a church bell marks the hour.
“Shari Catalano?” The voice is gravelly and holds authority.
I glance up. “Yes?”
The man speaking to me towers over me wearing a black leather jacket with jeans. His grizzled brown beard that skims his collar looks familiar, but I can’t place where I’ve seen his face.
“I’m Detective Erazem Yankovic. I’m working on the missing persons case for Ivory Cobb. I understand you two were friends.”
“Are friends,” I correct him. I refuse to let anyone refer to Ivory in the past tense.
I eye him, suddenly remembering him from the news. He stands a few feet away, thumbs hanging onto his belt loops, coat too heavy for the mild weather today. He looks like he was born tired, with dark-rimmed eyes sweeping me the way people scan a menu they don’t like.
“Detective Yankovic,” I repeat. “Are you stalking jewelry stores now, or am I special?”
His mouth twitches. I almost detect a smile underneath all that facial hair. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“That makes one of us.”
“I need you to come down to the station. We have some questions about Ivory that we need to ask you.”
“What about her?”
The look he gives me is one I recognize from my past interrogations, like he’s counting my lies before I tell them. “As you know, she’s been reported missing. And according to our intel, you were the last person to see her alive.”
It’s not true, but apparently Freida doesn’t count as a witness.
I swallow. “I can drive to the station and meet you there in,” I check my phone, as if I have somewhere to be, “an hour.”
“No,” he says gently, which somehow makes it worse. “I’d prefer to take you. Your car will be fine here.” He points out the street sign posted to the old-fashioned streetlamp that states free parking from 8:00 to 5:00. “I’ll bring you back when we’re done.”
It’s not worth the risk to argue with an officer of the law, so I unlock my car and drop the jewelry bag onto the passenger seat, tucking it into the growing accumulation of clothes, props, makeup, and other random photography-related stuff I might need at a moment’s notice.
I hesitate, fingers lingering on the jewelry bag like I’m saying goodbye to something alive.
It’s my only connection to Ivory right now, and I hate to leave it behind.
Detective Yankovic walks me to his cruiser and opens the back door for me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, because lying is easier than explaining the flashbacks of last time I was in the back of a cop car. “Just thinking.”
He nods, like thinking is dangerous business.
The door slams shut on me, and the town slides past the window as we pull away.
We pass The Alibi Café and the bank, but it’s near the courthouse’s neoclassical pillars when I feel a tingling between my shoulder blades.
I glance down the alley between two red brick buildings.
A man stands against a flagstone wall, half-hidden by a lamppost. Although his face is swallowed by distance and mist, the shape of him rotates as I pass. He’s watching me.
Is it Marshall, with his lingering threat to destroy my business? Or maybe Ali, with his disarming smile and too-perfect timing. But the obvious choice is Fred, with an easy view of my house and who most likely told Detective Yankovic where to find me.
I blink and he’s gone, along with everything else on Main Street as our vehicle turns the corner. One thought pulses louder than the rest: Please, please let this day not get any worse. This naturally means it absolutely will.