As I drive past a small park full of little children so bundled in coats and hats and mittens they can barely move as they play, I notice red and blue lights flashing down the street. Pulling up behind the row of police cars, I see a forensic van.
Badge in hand, I get out and head for the nearest officer, getting to him just as a gurney with a body draped in a sheet rolls down the sidewalk toward a waiting ambulance.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Her name was Marissa Francisco. She was found by her husband in the driveway, shot twice. The killer must have used a silencer because no one in the neighborhood heard anything. The piece of coal was found in her hand as if she’d picked it up right before she was killed.”
Sam wraps his arms around me, pulling me close. As soon as I called him and told him there had been another murder, he took off and came to me. I argued with him, but he insisted he wasn’t staying in Sherwood when this was going on.
“Did you play the voicemail for the police?” he asks.
I nod. “As soon as I heard her name.”
I take out my phone and put it on speaker so Sam can hear the message again.
“I’m calling for Emma Griffin. This is Marissa Francisco. Please call me back. There are some things I think you need to know. It’s about Julia.”
“That house is in the neighborhood near where Samantha Murray was found. The night she died, she told her friends she was going to a networking gathering at her professor’s house. I remember one time running into Julia at the bus stop right outside that neighborhood. It must have been the same stop where she saw Jeremy. I asked her what she was doing there, and she told me she was just at her professor’s house. Then she said it was for a networking event.”
“How do you remember that?” he asks. “It was at least thirteen years ago.”
“Observing is what I do, Sam. Remember, this was right after my father disappeared. I was latching onto everything that seemed unusual. That night, she was trying to act as though everything was fine, but she was crying. It was early in the semester.”
“So, maybe Julia and Samantha went to the same types of networking events?” Sam muses. “A professor can’t have all of his or her students in the house at the same time. They would need to do small groups.”
“Of course. But Samantha and Julia didn’t study the same things. You’re not going to end up being invited to the home of your general education course teacher. It’s going to be someone from your major. Someone with whom you’ve made a connection. They wouldn’t have the same professors.”
“So, maybe Julia wasn’t actually at a networking gathering,” Sam says.
“Then why was she there?” I ask. “And what did Marissa know about her?”
Sam finds me sitting up wrapped in a blanket with Julia’s day planner in my lap at 3:00 the next morning. He emerges from the bedroom rubbing his eyes and comes to stand in front of me.
“Babe, you should get to bed. It’s late,” he says in a sleepy voice.
“I know. I can’t sleep. I keep going over this, trying to figure out what I’m missing. There has to be something.” I point to the date she borrowed the scarf. “This is when she lent her car to Lynn. It says ‘he’ didn’t give her a ride. The references to this guy throughout the whole calendar bounce around so much. There are times when it sounds as if she really loves him and she’s longing for what they used to have, then there are times when it sounds as if she can’t wait to get away from him and she talks about how dismissive he is.”
“This one makes it sound as though they were hiding their relationship,” Sam notes, pointing to a note about his pretending not to know her on campus.
“It seems she had a lot of that going on in her life,” I say. “But the one at her old school wasn’t real.”
“Maybe this one wasn’t, either,” he suggests.
Before I can answer, we hear a shuffling sound on the front porch. Sam immediately darts for the door, while I go for the front windows. There’s no one on the sidewalk or street, but a burst of light from behind the house says someone ran in that direction.
I turn around and see the door standing open. Sam walks back inside, shaking his head.
“By the time I got to the other side of the yard, whoever it was disappeared. You should look at this.”
I go to the door and look out on the porch. A small box wrapped in plain brown paper with a red bow is sitting in the middle of the porch with a note attached. The heavy parchment cut out in the shape of a tag reminds me of the notes from the Advent calendar.
“It has my name on it,” I say.
“Who drops a Christmas present off at 3:00 AM?” I ask.
“I highly doubt it was Santa Claus. Do you have your phone on you? Take pictures of it before we bring it inside.”
Sam snaps a couple pictures, and I pick up the box. Bringing it inside, I set it on the table and get a pair of scissors to cut away the bright red ribbon. Using the tips of the scissors, I pop open the flap and move the paper aside so I’m touching the wrapping as little as possible.
Opening the box reveals a mound of tissue paper. The smell coming up from it makes my stomach turn. Sharp and sweet at the same time, it’s not an odor I would ever want to smell coming from a gift. I push the
