going to die of embarrassment.”
“Everyone has . . .” Between the calendar’s November and December pages, tucked in at the top, was a photo. I whisked it out of view. “Everyone has a moment like that in their life. With any luck you’re already done.”
“Hope so.” Devon helped me to my feet. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little red.” She tapped her cheeks.
“Embarrassment will do that to you.”
“Yeah. Give me a yell if you need anything.” She ran off to answer the phone.
I slid the snapshot out from under the calendar and took a long, slow look at the people in the picture. Looked at the back. “Eva and the boys,” someone had written. I laid the photo down next to Eric’s calendar notes and studied them both. Same handwriting, no question.
Violet had said there was a secret here. I thought again about the purple message slips. Who wouldn’t bother leaving a last name? A long-term client, a good friend, or a family member.
But clients were green.
I spread out the slips from Eva. She’d called every twenty minutes. What good friend would call that often? None. What family member would? Only a wife. A wife . . .
Eva and the boys.
“Oh . . .”
Things went
Eric Stull ran an international software company.
The company was doing business in South America.
Eric had a second family there.
Sam was killed because he could have read about Eric’s South American wife and children.
Eric’s schedule said he was headed to South America next week.
And one last, solid
“He’s never coming back,” I said out loud.
Chapter 18
My fingers were fumbly with cold as I tried to speeddial Marina’s house. “C’mon, fingers, work.” Though my car’s heater was cranked to high, it was going to take a few minutes to combat the thirty-degree temperature. Finally, I pushed the right buttons. As soon as the line opened up I started talking as fast as I could.
“Marina, don’t talk, just listen. Eric Stull killed Sam. Meet me—”
“You have reached the Neff household,” Marina’s DH droned. “Please leave a message and we’ll—”
I clicked him off and pushed at the number for Marina’s cell phone. Voice mail there, too.
I clutched my phone and yelled at it. “What good are you if I can’t talk to anyone?” The phone made a satisfying
Now what?
I held my gloved hands in front of the lukewarm air pouring out of the vent and tried to think.
Where could Marina possibly be that she wasn’t answering either of her phones? Fear twitched its hairy fingers and I shivered. What if Marina had gone outside for the mail and slipped on the ice? What if she was lying in the driveway, hidden from public view by the shrubbery? What if—
“You moron,” I said out loud. It was a half day for Tarver. This morning at breakfast the kids had been all bouncy in anticipation of one of Mrs. Neff’s surprise trips. These could range from stone-skipping contests to llama rides. Marina was undoubtedly at this very minute driving my children and the other day-care kids to an adventure they’d never forget. Marina, ultra-responsible while driving, would never answer her cell phone and might not check messages until all were home safe and sound.
So Marina was out. Should I talk to Gus? He’d take notes and promise to check things out, but would he take this seriously? Maybe, maybe not.
I could call Deputy Wheeler, but her response would be even more tepid than Gus’s. If I’d cultivated a friendship with the deputy, things might have been different, but I couldn’t get past the conviction that she thought I was a bubble-brained suburban mom who had nothing better to do than dream up wacko theories about my neighbors. No, Deputy Wheeler was way down on the list of people to call.
I put the car into Drive and headed to the Stulls’ house. Maybe Rosie would be there. Maybe she’d have a rock-solid alibi for Eric and I could go on my merry way. Maybe talking to her—without giving away what I knew— would help me make sense of all this.
As I drove, snow started falling. First it came in flakes so scattered that you could pretend they didn’t exist. Then the flakes came thicker and faster and wetter and I had to turn on the windshield wipers to see the road.
Swipe, swipe, swipe. At each swipe the windshield cleared, only to become completely obscured before the next time the wipers came around.
I flipped them to high and slowed way down. Safe driving. “But I’m in a hurry!” I banged the steering wheel. “Why are you snowing? We never get two storms in November. We hardly ever get one!”
The snow paid no attention to me, so I slowed a little more and concentrated on my driving.
The few vehicles on the road in midafternoon on a suddenly snowy day were also driving slowly. At least most of them were. Every so often someone would pass, slopping windshields with slush and risking a multicar crash. I swerved to avoid an oncoming van. “Hope you have four-wheel drive,” I scolded it. “And you better be wearing your seat belt.”
Cars were rapidly pushing the snow into linear heaps that made driving difficult at best, dangerous at worst, and I was glad to turn onto the side road where the Stulls lived. If Rosie was home, I’d ask if she wanted to help with the mini-golf event. No? How about the senior story project? Easy enough to sidetrack into talk about her husband. Easy enough to ask some pointed questions.
I crept down the block, peering though the snow at all the large houses, which were all looking very similar under a layer of snow. I squinted at the house numbers. What was the Stulls’ address? No idea. Their house was light gray, I remembered. Two stories, lots of dormer windows, a three-car garage. Which didn’t exactly narrow it down in this neighborhood.
In one driveway a bundled-up figure was out snowblowing, flinging snow halfway across the yard in a long and chunky arc. If I couldn’t find the Stulls’ house, I could always stop and ask him.
But five drives farther down, someone was shoveling. Even in a thick coat, navy blue hat, and boots, he looked thin and frail. I took my foot off the accelerator and slowed. A nice quiet shoveler was much more approachable than a noisy snowblower.
As I was rolling to a stop, the person shoveling staggered, stood, staggered again, and fell to the ground.
I was out of the car in an instant, running up the driveway, trying to remember my long-ago lessons in CPR. Why,
I dropped to my knees in the snow. “Are you okay?” I touched his shoulder. “Do you need help?”
The navy blue hat turned to face me. “Beth?”
Not a little old man at all. I was such a moron. “Rosie, what’s wrong?”
“Just a . . . little sick.”
Her voice was weak. She started to push herself up and dropped back down. “Eric said I should . . . shovel before it . . . snowed too much. But I’m . . . so tired.”
