Envy

Coming from any other cop, the words might have felt condescending. Not Annie Garnett. With all that she’d been through to get where she was, Annie never forgot what it felt like to be on the sad side of things.

Mindee nodded and searched her purse for a tissue.

Just in case.

“I love Jake, yes, I do,” she said. “After Adam left me … I don’t know what I would have done without him in my life.”

“Understood,” Annie said, her slightly deep voice resonating a kind of calmness that was needed right then. On occasion, Mindee could be a bit of a train wreck and she needed to be handled with some care. “You know why he’s here. And since you’ve come in, I’d like to ask you some questions, all right?”

“He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly and decisively.

A deputy passed the open doorway. When she caught him looking at her exposed thigh, Mindee brightened a beat. Finally someone noticed how sexy she was. What more did she have to do get any attention around Port Gamble?

“How does he get along with your kids?”

“Fine. He gets along with them just fine. Okay, maybe they have some issues. But nothing out of the norm.”

“What kind of issues?” Annie asked, her voice soft but unmistakably authoritative.

Mindee crossed her legs and pushed the balled-up tissue to the edge of Chief Garnett’s desk. The hairstylist was signaling that she was moving on and the conversation wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Just issues,” she said. “You know … the kind any kids have when a new man comes into their mother’s life. He didn’t try to be Adam. But as far as Starla and Teagan could tell, he was a replacement for him. Which he wasn’t.”

“All right. Did you ever see him do anything inappropriate?”

The word inappropriate hung in the air. It was the word law enforcement used instead of the more, well, appropriate word sleazy.

“You mean around me?” she asked.

“Yes, but also around your kids, around Katelyn?”

Mindee shook her head adamantly. “Never!”

The next question was the ringer in its directness, and Annie Garnett knew it. It was the kind of question that one never wanted to ask a friend—or even a hairstylist, for that matter.

“Did Jake touch the kids?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Mindee’s.

The words hurt, and it was clear on Mindee’s face. It was like she stopped breathing for a moment.

“You’re offending me now, Annie. I don’t like your tone or what your question implies.”

Annie knew that. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to ask. It’s my job.”

Mindee went for her purse and her keys. “No,” she said, quite convincingly. “He absolutely did not.”

“Mindee, we have evidence that suggests Jake was stalking Katelyn.”

She turned to leave but thought better of it. “What evidence?” she asked.

Chief Garnett got up and faced her, weighing every movement, every single tic.

“E-mails,” she said.

Mindee didn’t like being backed into a corner, but she didn’t blink.

“What e-mails?” she asked.

Again, there was a flat expression on Annie’s face as she said, “Sent to Katelyn.”

“Why are you being so vague here? I’ve cut your hair for years.”

“Fine,” Annie said. “E-mails that originated from your house.”

Even under her carefully applied dusting of Bare Minerals powder, it was easy to see that the blood quickly drained from Mindee’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m leaving now. I’m going to have my lawyer get Jake out. He’s a good man. He’s no stalker!”

With that, Mindee turned on those strappy heels and left the police department. It was a good thing that it was after work. If it had been in the middle of the day, the woman sitting in the number-two chair at the Shear Elegance salon might actually have gotten those scissors shoved deep into her eardrum.

Mindee Larsen was fit to be tied—and not in a good way.

chapter 44

MINDEE BRACED HER HEAD against the steering wheel of her car outside her house. Her world was unraveling. She remembered how the Katelyn mess had started, and she wished—no, prayed—she could go back in time to undo things. She’d been drinking that evening, and while she knew that was no excuse, it was the only one she had. She grabbed the steering wheel and let out a quiet scream.

That day. That moment of truth. If only …

Starla was hovering over her mother as she had pushed the SEND button.

A little tipsy, Mindee had leaned back and sipped her wine, her glass just about empty.

“Who are you going to get to meet her in Seattle?”

Mindee looked over at Starla, the vision of what she’d been meant to be when she was growing up in a modest South Seattle neighborhood—before she got pregnant by Adam and was forced to drop out of college. Mindee hadn’t always dreamed of cutting hair. In fact, her dreams, both day and night, had always been of other women fussing over her.

Like they do and will always do for Starla.

“No one,” Mindee said, tilting her empty glass to indicate that Starla had better fill it. “That would be too over the top.”

Starla shook her head and took the glass. “Like this isn’t?”

“We want to teach her a lesson, don’t we?”

“Yeah, but what lesson is she going to learn from going to Seattle and finding that her fake boyfriend doesn’t exist?”

“The best kind of lesson, Starla. The kind she won’t ever forget.”

As the memory replayed, Mindee steadied herself before getting out of her car and going inside.

This was, she was sure, the worst day ever.

She had no idea just how bad it really was.

STARLA CORNERED HER MOTHER in the kitchen. In doing so, she effectively blocked Mindee from the refrigerator and the wine that was beckoning the frazzled hairstylist from behind the shut door. Mindee wasn’t happy about that, but Starla didn’t care. They were in big trouble, and it seemed it was getting bigger all the time. Mindee had just returned from the police station, upset and shaky.

“Mom, we’ve got a colossal problem here, and I want to know how you’re going to fix things.”

Mindee tried to push her daughter away. “Me? How am I going to fix this? This whole thing is your fault. You wanted me to make Katelyn pay.”

Starla’s blue eyes were cold even when she was merely miffed. This time they shot out a stream of liquid nitrogen.

“You can’t be serious, Mom,” she said, standing her ground. “You know damn well that you came up with the idea to make her a fake boyfriend. And then you wrote that creepy note: ‘Watching you.’”

Mindee took another step, and there was barely room to do so. Refrigerator magnets and the bric-a-brac they held fell to the dingy floor.

“Do not use foul language with me,” she said.

Starla would not back down. It was as if someone had substituted lesser quality pom-poms and tried to trick her.

“Like, really? After all you’ve said and done, you’re going to blast me for my language? I’d laugh if I wasn’t so mad at you already!”

Mindee managed to wriggle away. “Exactly how would you have me fix this?” she asked, once more eyeing the fridge door.