Samantha looked away. A row of bright yellow school buses had converged out front. The morning kindergartners were going to line up soon to be taken home.
“I loved Mandy. But this isn’t about her anymore. OK? Please just leave me alone. Please, I’m begging you, Sheriff Kenyon.”
“What do you mean, isn’t about Mandy? Are you all right?”
Heather Jonas opened the door with two cans of Diet Coke, but before she could say a word, Samantha stood up and started for the door. “I’ve said more than I should say. Please. Let it go.”
“Is everything all right?” Ms. Jonas asked, stepping out of Samantha Phillips’s way.
Neither Emily nor Samantha responded as they trailed out the door. No response was needed. Things were clearly far from all right.
Emily stopped Samantha as she opened the driver’s door of her Volvo wagon.
Samantha looked up. Tears were streaming down her face.
“Look,” she said, “I got a call right after Mandy disappeared. The person told me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut about what I knew, my kids would die.”
“Oh, Samantha, who was it? And what is it that you know?”
Samantha got into the driver side and reached in her purse for a tissue. She was sobbing and her tears made it hard for her to see anything in the car’s dark leather interior.
“I really don’t know who it was. I don’t know anything. Mandy was having an affair, but I don’t know who it was. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Was it Mitch who threatened you?”
“No. No. It wasn’t him at all.”
“Are you sure?”
She dabbed at her ruined eye makeup. “I’m sure, Sheriff. The caller was a woman.” She turned the ignition. “Please,” she said, “I’m begging you. Keep me out of this. If I knew something I’d tell you. I promise. I’d like to kill the bastard and the bitch who’ve made me feel like Cherrystone is no better than L.A. or Chicago.”
Emily drove back to the office, nearly out of breath from the shock of Samantha’s disclosure. Who was it? Was it Tricia Wilson? Who and
Her cell rang.
“Hi, babe.” It was Chris on the phone, calling from the drive back to the airport for a flight to Seattle after checking things out at the bank in Spokane. “Tried you earlier. How’s your day going so far?”
“Hang on.” Emily searched for a spot to pull over. Frozen snow crunched under her tires as she pulled into a parking place in the Mayfair Market lot. “You tell me how the bank went first,” she said.
“Is this like ‘Show me yours, I’ll show you mine’? We’ve already done that.”
Emily ordinarily would have laughed and teased him back, but she was still reeling. “I’m processing my talk with Samantha.”
Chris didn’t catch the anxiety in her voice. Emily could hold it inside and she chose to do so just then.
“OK,” he said. “Bottom line here is that Mitch Crawford has never been a customer of the branch that sent the cash to Tricia Wilson. Absolutely not. I got it from the woman who works the circle.”
“The circle?”
“Yeah, the customer circle. It’s a bank thing. Don’t ask.”
“So, if the money came from there, someone else paid off Tricia, right?”
“Yeah. We just don’t know
“All right. I don’t think she’s a liar. She says she was threatened. She’s a mother. Once she told me of the threat, she’s not going to protect some creep.”
Chris understood, at least he said so. “All right. I’ll talk to you tonight when I’m back in Seattle.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Back at you.”
Before pulling away, Emily hit the speed dial for Camille’s private line.
“Camille, it’s me.”
“Yes? Do you have something so soon?”
Emily could feel the lift in Camille’s voice. “No. Hold on. I have until five. Here’s what I know. Bank employees confirm that whoever made the transaction—and remember this is without a warrant, thank you—it was
“We need a warrant, of course. Cary McConnell will be all over this. He smells blood like a shark.”
“Don’t I know that,” Emily said. “Based on what we know, Mitch didn’t pay off Tricia.”
“Who else would do that? Who else would tamper with a witness?”
Emily was surprised at the prosecutor’s question, but she answered it anyway.
“The only person I can think of is someone with a whole lot to lose. Someone with more to lose than Mitch.”
The line was silent for a second. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I also talked to Samantha Phillips. This thing is bigger than just Tricia Wilson’s bank account.”
Camille paused. “How do you mean? You think Samantha’s involved?”
“No. No. She’s frightened. Someone threatened her after Mandy’s disappearance.”
“Threatened her?
“Her kids. Killing her kids if she talked.”
In her mind’s eye, Emily could see Camille’s face just then. Anger turned her face a shade of pink. A vein on her temple had likely risen to the surface of her otherwise flawless skin.
“That goddamn Mitch Crawford’s a complete snake!”
“Cammie, it wasn’t Mitch. Sam said it was a woman.”
“What kind of woman would threaten another’s children for that monster? Darla?”
Emily liked Darla and saw her as a young woman who’d already figured out that she’d made too many mistakes. “I don’t think so. She’s not the type.”
“Tricia?”
“Could be. Or someone else.”
Chapter Sixty-one
Michael Barton’s meeting with his long-lost Sarah never took place. It had been planned. It had been dreamed about, at least by him, since the day they’d been separated. But two days before Michael and Olivia were going to catch a flight to Seattle, a call came from a woman whose voice Michael did not know.
“Mr. Barton?”
“Yes?”
“This is a hard call to make. One that I don’t want to make.” The woman was on the verge of tears. Her words were held tightly in her throat before each emerged, one at time in a staccato sequence. “You were my daughter Sarah’s biological brother.”
The word “were” caught him off guard. He knew something was wrong. He spun around his office, and stared at the window.
