Chapter 11
Abigail had planned to be home well before Byron was supposed to arrive to help her fix up the plaster in the hallway and the office, but everything that happened at the ice cream parlor had sent her reeling. The owner had come out and wanted to make sure she was okay, insisted she sit down and have a glass of water and a refund—though Abigail felt almost certain that last part was to help foster enough good will to avoid a lawsuit. By the time she had convinced them she was fine and walked home, sodden notebook in hand, Byron was pulling up to the curb.
“You seem... Damp?” he commented.
She was just glad he hadn’t said moist.
“Sure am, pouring a full cup of coffee all over yourself will do that to you,” she replied, “I don’t recommend it.”
“Poured on purpose?”
Abigail fixed him with a glare, “yes, Byron, obviously—it’s all the rage. Because I’m especially stylish, I decided that the most dignified method of self-dousing was to first breathe it in and suffer a coughing fit so bad passersby nearly called an ambulance.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah.”
She could feel her embarrassment picking back up and tried to divert it by focusing on their current problem.
“So, the house is a mess and everything is terrible,” she said, “I’ll understand if you don’t want to deal with my ridiculousness today and come back another day...”
“Even if you were ridiculous, which you are not,” Byron said, “it would be fine... Come on, let’s head inside and you can get cleaned up while I get the hallways ready or make you some tea—if you’re not off hot beverages out of spite?”
Her resolve crumbled under the weight of his warm smile and kind eyes, so she sighed dramatically instead.
“No, I don’t hold hot beverages responsible for my treacherous lungs.”
She regaled him with the details of her day as they made their way indoors. He parked himself in the kitchen while she showered and got changed; it was going to be a leggings and oversized t-shirt kind of afternoon. When she returned to the kitchen, Byron had produced a plate of snacks—little cubes of cheese and slices of deli meats.
“I... Did not have any of this in my fridge,” she said, “where...?”
“My truck has a camping fridge unit, I did my groceries earlier and had left them in there,” he explained, “from what I gathered, you haven’t eaten at all today except for two bites of ice cream and about a mouthful of coffee? Yeah, I thought so, here.”
She tried to protest, but the cheese really looked good. It only took a few bites of cheese for Abigail to realize that she needed to tell Byron about the office and she let out a long sigh.
“Thank you, for this. It’s really kind of you,” she said.
The intent had been to keep talking but a large, warm hand had come to rest on hers where it lay on the countertop and, for whatever reason, that meant her mouth stopped working.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice serious and low.
Abigail swallowed hard. “Uh... Well. Why?”
He smiled, which did not help her mouth start working, and said in an equally low and concerned tone. “You just seem... Very upset. I know the coffee and whatever, but your level of upset seems disproportionate to the spilling of coffee. I saw how annoyed you were outside, and telling me you’d understand if I didn’t want to deal with you? I know we haven’t been friends long, but that doesn’t seem like you.”
They were friends? Abigail’s heart leaped at the statement. She’d been busy convincing herself he was only being nice to her because she was his client and they had a contract—but friends? She allowed herself a small smile, which she did her best not to let spread across her face like a grinning fool.
“There’s some other stuff… there were these guys in the shop and one of them was being a jerk and it kind of triggered a memory. Not a good one,” she said, taking a deep breath before continuing, “and also... There’s a bit of detail missing from the story I told you about how the hallway and office got this way... But I don’t want you to freak out.”
Byron stopped chewing and swallowed, looking concerned and confused, he raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh?”
“Yeah, so the first bit was one hundred percent true, I did yank on some wires and pull chunks down, and those wires did go into the office and further yanking did indeed reveal a very poorly patched over shelving unit. But, uh... The reason I was so hesitant to have you go in and look at it is because of what Cleo and I found in there.”
“If you say dead body, I will absolutely freak out,” he said, joking but clearly not joking that much.
“Not a dead body, I’d have left a me-shaped cut out in the front door if it had been a dead body,” she said, “but uh, there was a safe. Which I tried my dad’s go to code on and it opened... There were a ton of papers in there, and photos, and a... Well and a gun. That I didn’t know we ever had, and am pretty damn sure my dad never had a license for, but I’m clarifying that this week when some of his papers get couriered in—”
“You found a gun!? In the walls!?” Byron exclaimed so loudly that Abigail jumped.
“Sorry,” he said seeing her reaction, “a gun like a hunting rifle? Or...?”
“A handgun,” she answered, “I don’t really know about brands or whatever...”
“Have you reported it?”
She shook her head.
“What! Why not?”
Shrinking away from his criticism, Abigail found herself turning red again.
“I... Didn’t really know what to do,” she explained, “part of me wondered if I’d get in trouble, but I think I was just afraid of what it might mean about my dad. I... Was scared, honestly.”
Byron reclaimed his composure, running his hands over his face so that when he spoke next, his words were muffled. “All right, let’s go look.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Who else knows?”
“Just Cleo,” Abigail said as they rose and headed for the office.
Byron paused, “just Cleo? You haven’t told Bee?”
That tweaked Abigail’s interest, “What? No... Why?”
He snorted, then caught himself and shook his head, “no reason, sorry, that sounded rude.”
“No... It kind of just was rude,” she said, “I have been hanging out with her a bit, she’s nice.”
“Oh yeah? What do you guys talk about?”
They’d paused in the doorway and she looked up at him to try and figure out where this was coming from.
“True crime, mostly,” she said.
“Seriously?” he asked, making her face warm.
“Yes?”
“That’s... That’s rich,” he said, “listen, I don’t want to sound weird but just... Just be careful with her. Okay? She might not be who you think she is.”
Abigail stared at him, “are you serious? Why don’t you like her? Is she your ex-girlfriend or something?”
“What!? No!” he exclaimed, “absolutely not—”
“Or a casual dating ex—whatever that’s called,” Abigail said, trying to sound uninterested despite having just asked the question.
Byron was shaking his head, vigorously, “no, no absolutely not. Nothing like that.”
“Okay!” she said loudly, hating how upset she sounded about it, “sorry for asking! Jeez. Why don’t you like her then? She’s funny and nice and she can cook! You always act like she has a bad smell.”
The silence between them was more awkward than Abigail could have imagined possible.
“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing towards the office.
“Sure.”
Abigail strode ahead and had unlocked the safe by the time he had stepped around the door.
“It’s mostly order records and inventory lists… we did find one that was linked to a big finance scandal though,” Abigail said, handing him a sheaf of papers that Cleo had stacked up, “and photos, taken from up there.”
She gestured to the spot on the shelf where Pride and Prejudice was glued into the bookshelf.
“Photos? Of who, his clients?”
“Not sure,” Abigail said, grabbing the stack, “we only recognized Jacob’s dad.”
“That’s definitely weird,” Byron said, “this auto repair shop ordered nearly three hundred pounds of shrimp...”
“They’re all like that,” she said, turning to face him, “nothing that actually stands out as... You know, powdered sugar from Colombia, pack it in exactly one pound packages please. Just all a little weird, or at least extravagant.”
His questioning expression was back as he looked up from studying one of the inventory sheets, “huh?”
“Like, the finance company scandal? There was a local office of some massive investment firm and the local section went rogue apparently, started scamming folks,” she said, “and my dad obviously had something to do with them because their name is on one of these sheets. They spent nearly three million bucks in a few months on refitting their office and upgrading their fleet cars... Stuff like that.”
Byron nodded, “hmm...”
He seemed entirely engrossed in the inventories, but she held out the stack of photographs for him to consider and he eyed them warily.
Why’s he so hesitant?Abigail thought, shaking them a little to get him to take them.
Slowly, he put the papers down and reached for the photos. As he studied the top one, the one showing Jacob’s dad sat on the couch looking very annoyed, Byron leaned around the door to peer at the couch and up to the spot on the bookshelf.
After their first big session, Cleo and Abigail hadn’t sat down to go through much more of the papers and it loomed large in the safe. She sighed as she contemplated how much work it might be to go through them.
“There are date stamps here, did you see that?” Byron said, walking to the desk and spreading them out in front of him, “ten photos across six months...”
His voice trailed off behind her.
“Yeah?” Abigail replied, “I had seen them but I hadn’t looked so closely at them as that.”
She didn’t want to reach down into the dark to grab the gun. She wasn’t entirely sure why but every instinct in her told her not to—what if it was loaded and she accidentally set it off?
With a sigh, she grabbed at the stack of papers, fitting almost half of it in her grip at once, and pulled it back towards her, hoping she wouldn’t drop them and send them flying everywhere. She approached the desk with them balanced precariously against her chest and eased them onto the stable surface. Byron’s face was grave as he studied the photographs that he had laid out in two neat lines on the desk.
“You all right?” she asked, she had never seen him look so blank before.
“Yeah,” he said flatly.
“Are you sure?” she asked, turning back to the safe to extract the rest of the files.
This time, he took a few seconds to answer, and when he did, it was in the same flat voice as before.
“Yeah, uh, sorry, Abby, I have to go.”
“Huh!?” she replied, looking over her shoulder.
Byron was gone. Abigail turned slightly too fast and dropped the stack of papers onto the floor. They flung themselves further than she’d have thought possible and she swore as she watched the mess unfurl.
“Byron!?” she called, but the only reply she got was the sound of a truck starting up and tearing off.
Her heart began to race and Abigail swallowed hard. Trying to stay calm, she picked her way across the paper scattered floor.
“What the heck...” she muttered as she stuck her head out into the hallway and saw that he had left the front door wide open, “he must have sprinted out of here...”
A trilling musical ringtone sounded from back inside the office. It was the twins ringtone and she had placed her phone down on the shelf next to the safe. With a sigh, she headed back carefully to the safe and picked up the call.
“Hi girls,” she said as she lifted the phone to her ear, but what she saw made her stomach drop and whatever the girls were saying on the phone faded into a blurry hum.
The safe was empty.
She dashed forward and pressed her hands against the walls of the safe, looking desperately for a hidden compartment or shelf she hadn’t noticed, but there was nothing. Whirling around, she heard the voices on the other end of the phone.
“Mom? Mom can you hear us?”
It was Hannah, she sounded annoyed. Abigail couldn’t process that though, as she stepped towards the desk where nine photos lay in two neat lines. There was a bare spot on the bottom row, right in the middle. Byron must have taken it with him when he rushed out, she realized.
Could he have taken the gun too?She wondered, turning to look at the safe again.
No, he couldn’t, he was never close enough.
Her heartrate was painfully high and her vision was starting to blur, the only thing cutting through was Hannah’s voice.
“Honey I can’t hear you, I’ll call you back,” she stuttered.
Hanging up clumsily, she rushed towards her open front door, nearly slipping on the loose papers. After slamming it shut, she bolted it closed, pressing her back against the door.
Someone had broken into her house, opened a locked safe, stolen the handgun, and left again without her knowing. How long ago had this happened?
Panicked thoughts whirled through her head but she kept coming back to what scared her the most—how did they know about the gun?