I scoff as I take the three loaves of day-old bakery bread I got from the discard rack and put them aside so I can cut them up and dry them for dressing.
“In order to do an interview, they would actually have to find the members of The Order. Which brings us right back to not knowing what the hell is going on. The thing is, I’m just as confused as everybody else about why Gabriel was part of this at all. Why was he in Harlan? Obviously, he’s the one who broke into my house looking for the key, but what would he want with it? How would he even know I had it? At that point, I hadn’t seen Gabriel in weeks. After his grandmother died, he left the store and got compassionate leave so he could bring her back home. He was still gone by the time I went to Harlan to investigate Lakyn’s death.”
“There’s no way he would have known about it,” Sam says. “You didn’t even find out about that key until you found Lydia. Someone had to tell him about it.”
“Who? Who in Sherwood could possibly have known that I got a key out of evidence from a years-old case? And even if someone did find out and told him about it, why would anybody care? Nobody around here knew Greg. I still don’t know what that key goes to, or why he insisted I have it,” I say.
“But somebody does,” Sam says. “There’s obviously someone who knows exactly what that key is for and why you have it. And they want to get their hands on it. Babe?”
“What?” I ask.
“Exactly how many people are coming to this thing?” he asks.
I turn away from the refrigerator where I just put the huge containers of heavy cream I plan to whip up for banana pudding next week. Sam is holding up two ten pound bags of russet potatoes and another sits at his feet.
“Well,” I say with a deep sigh. “We’ll have plenty left over for Hanukkah. And by the way, we’re celebrating Hanukkah this year.”
I go over to the table to go through the remaining groceries and start folding up the empty bags.
“Do you know anything about Gabriel that you didn’t think about? Anything about his family, where he comes from, where he went to college, anything?” Sam asks. “A reason he might be in Harlan?”
“He was the cashier at the grocery store I go to when I’m not too busy to grocery shop,” I shrug. “We didn’t exactly create a deep bonded relationship. He was a sweet kid, but we didn’t know each other well. All I know about him is that he came here to take care of his grandmother when she was sick. He never said it, but it came across that he was the only one who was capable, or maybe the only one at all. He never mentioned a college. He didn’t even seem old enough to have graduated if he did go. He never mentioned Harlan. When he talked about coming to take care of her, it sounded as if he’d come from pretty far away.”
“And you don’t know where his grandmother’s home was? Where he was taking her body?” Sam asks.
I shake my head as I add another bag to the pile. “Nobody specified. And he didn’t have a heavy accent or anything that might help me pinpoint it. But I wouldn’t think that escorting his grandmother’s body to a town less than two hours away would justify the dramatic declaration of taking her home, or weeks of compassionate leave. He had to have brought her further than that.”
“Maybe you can find out,” he says.
“I would need his employment records to do that, and something tells me Gretchen isn’t looking forward to seeing me again any time soon. She’s definitely not just going to cooperate and hand over records because I ask her to. And the last thing I need right now is to get Creagan any more in my hair than he already is. The Order case has him crawling up walls, and I’m the one who gets to pick up all the work that isn’t getting done by the other members of the team.”
“Crawling up the walls anxious and upset, or excited?” Sam asks.
“You know, I think this is one of those situations when those mean the same thing,” I muse. “It’s pissing him off that he hasn’t figured it out and been the big hero solving this freaking spider web of murders, but it’s also always a thrill for him to be the face of something high profile.”
“You should be the face of it,” Sam says. “And because you’re the one who actually uncovered it and solved some of the murders, not just because your face is so much prettier.”
I smile. “Awww. That was sweet. But I think my days of playing poster girl for the FBI are over. Being out in the open hasn’t exactly worked out well for me. Maybe twenty or thirty years from now when I’m a little less recognizable, they can throw me up onto a billboard or something.”
“Twenty or thirty years from now?” he asks. “Are you seriously thinking you’ll still be an agent then?”
It’s the kind of conversation I never wanted to have with him. Moments like this are the reason I broke up with him all those years ago. My mind briefly flickers again to the very visible lack of a ring on my hand.
“Does that matter right now?” I ask.
Sam shakes his head and smiles. “No. As long as I’m there with you.”
He comes over and gives me a kiss. It settles the trembling in my stomach a little, but that moment really threw me off. As he walks back over to his own little mountain of groceries
