Stranger in Town (13 page)

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I said.

He placed a finger in front of his lips and pointed across the meadow.  “Do you see it?” he said in a hushed voice.

I saw nothing but trees and various kinds of sagebrush.  “See what?”

“Here, look through my binoculars,” he said, handing them to me.

I held them in front of my eyes.  “I can’t see a thing out of these; it’s blurry.”

He reached over, messing around with a knob in the middle.  “You gotta adjust them a bit.  Turn this dial until you can see clearly.”

I tried what he suggested and gasped when I looked through the lenses again.  The animal was far off, but viewing it through the binoculars made it seem closer.  Too close.  “That’s the biggest deer I’ve ever seen!”

Cade smacked the side of his pants and laughed so hard I thought he’d fall off the log we were sitting on. 

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“That’s no deer, woman.  It’s a bull elk.”

Woman?

I shrugged.

“Deer, elk, same difference,” I said.

“Actually, they’re not the same at all.  Elk are about three times bigger than deer, and their hair is yellow.  A deer has brown hair.” 

The elk seemed to notice our presence, even though it didn’t seem likely given our distance.  It glanced around and slanted its head upward, making a noise Cade later explained as “bugling.”  Then it camouflaged itself inside a group of trees.  I tried to find it again, but it was gone.  

Cade scooted a little closer to me.  “Would you look at that?”

The sunrise was among the prettiest I had ever seen and worth every moment I’d spent whining about the chilly temperatures.  Just looking at it made me feel warmer.  

“It’s beautiful,” I said.  

Cade scooped the eggs onto two paper plates and handed one of the plates to me along with some hash browns that he’d mixed with pieces of bacon.  I took a bite.  They were surprisingly good. 

“What do you think?” he said.  “Does it meet your standards for breakfast?”

I nodded.  He tossed a couple pieces of wood, stoking up the fire. 

“I, uh, wanted to apologize for getting angry with you the other night,” he said.

“You had every right.  I would have done the same thing in your position.”

“I was frustrated and tired, but not just at you,” he said.  “Coming back hasn’t been easy.  The guys at the station make me feel like an outsider even though I grew up around here.  And when the chief announced I’d be filling my father’s position, it didn’t go over well.  I suppose I understand why, but I went to school with some of these guys, and they’re being completely ignorant.”

“Have you talked to them about it?”

“Tried to, but they haven’t been very receptive,” he said.  “Chief Rollins and my dad go way back.  They lived next door to each other when they was boys.  Rollins is more like family to me than anything else.  The other guys know it, think he’s playing favorites.  And maybe he is, but they don’t know how qualified I am for the job or how many years I’ve been at it.  They don’t care, neither.”

“In many ways, I know how you feel,” I said.  “It’s not easy being a private investigator.  I have a love/hate relationship going on with the police department in my town.  It doesn’t matter how much I’ve helped them over the years, they don’t want me around.  Not really.  They probably feel like I make them look bad when I get something right that they couldn’t.”

“The truth is, I know a lot more about you than you think,” he said.  

I pulled my knees up in front of me, resting my chin on top.  Then I repositioned the blanket.  “Like what?”

“For starters, you’ve solved every case you’ve taken.”

“How did you know?  Did Maddie tell you?”

He shook his head.

“I looked into your background the day you met with Tate,” he said.  “Impressive.  But what I don’t understand is why’d you become a PI instead of a cop?  You would have made detective by now.”

“I don’t like people,” I said.   

He raised a brow.  “Care to explain yourself?”

“I don’t possess the
works-well-with-others
gene.  Never have.  I like being on my own with no one to answer to but myself.”

The look on his face let me know he could relate.

“The chief ran the paper Tate gave you.”

“And?” I said.

“I’m not sure.”

“About what?”

“The guys won’t tell me if they got anything off of it.  Right now, I’m not a member of their ‘club,’ but that’s fine.  If they’re gonna continue actin’ how they are, I don’t wanna be.”

“What about the envelope?” I said.  “I’m guessing you handed it over too.”

“Nope.  Your friend Madison has it.”

“Maddie?  Why?”

The envelope had gone from Mr. and Mrs. Tate, to me, to Maddie, to Cade, and back to Maddie again.  It would be a miracle if it produced anything useful at this point.

“I’ll explain later, but right now, I was hopin’ you’d tell me more about what you know about the case.  You said a few things at Tate’s house, and I have some questions.”

I set my plate down and stood up.  “Is that why you invited me out here, so you could get me to tell you what I know?  I don’t think so.”

I considered walking back to the hotel, but I had no idea where we were.

“Calm down, would ya?  It’s not what you think.  I want us to work together.”

I almost spit out the mouthful of eggs I had been chewing.  “What?  Still?”

“You heard me,” he said.  

“No one in law enforcement has ever wanted to work with me—not when they had another choice.”

“Maybe they’re intimidated because you’re a woman, or maybe it’s because you don’t wear a badge,” he said.  “You’re feisty as hell, but I don’t scare easily.  And besides, this is my dad’s case.  If anyone else is going to solve it besides him, it’s going to be me.”

There it was—the motivation behind why he wanted to work together.  Cade knew the other guys were keeping things from him, doing all they could to make his job harder.  They wanted him to fail.  Either that or for him to reach a breaking point and leave, giving one of them his father’s job.  But Cade didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who got pushed around.  He wanted to find Savannah for his father, but he also had something to prove.

“Is that why Maddie has the envelope?”  I said.

He nodded.

“No one besides the three of us knows you found it.”

“And you’re not concerned about—”

“I only care about one thing right now: finding out what happened to Savannah any way I can.”

He sounded more like me all the time.

I told Cade about the other missing girl and her parents who had also received a coloring page in the mail.  I told him about my visit to Maybelle’s Market and about meeting Todd, the only person to have seen the kidnapper.  I told him about meeting Kris and Olivia’s stepdad and the two old coots who thought Terrence was somehow involved in Olivia’s abduction.  Talking about it to someone else made me feel like I hadn’t been such a failure, but it still wasn’t much to go on. 

Cade remained silent until I finished, and then he stuck his hand out.  “You interested in tryin’ this again?”

It seemed silly, but I shook his hand anyway.   

“What now?” I said.

“Now you go back to the hotel and say goodbye to your friend.  She said she needs to get back to her lab in order to process the envelope.”

“And then?”

“Then you’re going to meet Chief Rollins.”

CHAPTER 25

I saw Maddie and Lord Berkeley off and joined Cade at his father’s house.  Cade wanted the meeting between the chief and I to take place outside of the police station, away from the scrutiny of the other members of the department, and I agreed.  I hadn’t wanted to meet the chief at all, but Cade insisted.  He felt the new developments in the case needed to come from me.  I wasn’t so sure.

When I arrived, Chief Rollins was already there waiting.  He said nothing to me when I entered the kitchen.  Cade, his father, and the chief were huddled around the table arguing over a recent football game.  Cade and his father smiled at me.  The chief didn’t even look up.

Cade’s father didn’t look well.  His skin had yellowed even more than the last time I saw him, and he was nothing but skin and bones.  I couldn’t have been the only one to notice.

“Good, you’re here,” Cade said.  “Chief Rollins, this is Sloane Monroe, the woman I was telling you about.”

The chief still hadn’t made any effort to look at me.  I wasn’t sure what Cade thought would happen by throwing the two of us together, but it couldn’t have been this.  I sat down and thought about getting up and leaving, but I didn’t.  Cade looked at me like they were all waiting for me to say something, so I did.

“It’s nice to meet you, Chief Rollins,” I said.  

He looked up, but he didn’t smile.  He squinted at me through a pair of glasses that were too big for his narrow face.  They had the thickest lenses I’d ever seen.  And they were dusty, like they hadn’t been cleaned in ages.  How he could see anything out of them was a mystery to me.  The look on his face was neutral.  I’d learned to read most people over the years, but I couldn’t read him.   

Without saying a word, the chief reached into the front pocket of his blue flannel shirt.  He pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen, flipped to the first page of the pad, and snapped the top of the pen.  He then looked back at me and twirled his hand around as if to say, ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Cade sensed the obvious tension in the room and said, “Why don’t you tell him what you told me?”

The chief took notes as I relayed what little information I had that they didn’t.  He seemed to find what I said interesting, but not enough to ask any questions. 

When I finished talking, he said, “Anything else?”

I shook my head.

“Good, you can go now,” the chief said.   

I could see this shocked Cade, from the look on his face, but I’d gotten used to it over the years.  I didn’t want to be there any more than the chief wanted me there. 

Cade placed a hand on my arm before I could go anywhere. “Wait a minute.”  

The chief flicked his hand toward the door.  “Let her go.  We got what we needed.”

“That’s not why I asked her to come over,” Cade said.  “Sloane’s good at what she does.  She can help us.  I don’t see why she needs a badge.  We all have the same goal here.”

The words rolled off his tongue like he truly believed it, and maybe he did.  But he was naïve to think he could put us in a room together and we’d get along.  

“We don’t need her,” the chief said.

The sleep forced on me by Maddie had made me feel a lot more like myself again.  And I didn’t intend to stand there and listen to him talk like I was already gone.

“Of course you don’t need me,” I said.  “You were doing a great job before I came along.”

“Your sarcasm is unnecessary,” the chief said.  “As are you.”

“Come on now, Harold,” Cade’s father said to the chief.  “The girl’s just trying to help.  I’m grateful for what she’s done.”

Detective McCoy’s eyes widened, and he gave me a look that said:
He’s not always like this
.

“You have a missing girl, a dead mother, and a father who wants nothing to do with any of you,” I said.   

Cade and his father exchanged looks but said nothing.  The chief didn’t take his eyes off the notebook.  

“Best if you went back to your hotel, packed your things, and were on your way,” the chief said.

“I’m not leaving.  I was hired to do a job, and I’ll stay here until I see it through.”

“Tate should be working with us, not with you,” the chief said.  “Why he sought you out in the first place baffles me.  I’ll make sure he corrects his mistake.  He’s only to deal with us now.”

 I leaned across the table until I was uncomfortably close to the chief’s face.  “Don’t
ever
speak to me like I’m some second-class, second-rate person.  You don’t own me, and you don’t own Mr. Tate.”

“I never—” 

“You can’t even look me in the eye when you’re talking to me,” I said. 

He closed the notebook and glared at me.

“You know nothing about me.  Before I came here, you had no leads.  I’m the one who tied the two cases together.”  I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder.  “I’m leaving.  What I choose to do after I walk out the door is none of your business and none of your concern.  And since you don’t ‘need me,’ you don’t have any reason to worry about it.”

The chief opened his mouth to reply, but I held my finger out.  “Don’t.”

When I got to the door, I heard Cade say, “I want her help on this.  If it bothers you, no one else has to know.  You brought me here.  You said you trusted me.  I need you to trust me now.”

The chief replied, “It’s not your decision.”

“She stays, or I go,” Cade said. 

“You don’t mean that, Cade,” the chief said.  

But somehow, I knew he did.

CHAPTER 26

“I’m very sorry to bother you, Mr. Tate,” I said.  “Are you doing okay?  How’s Lily?”

Noah Tate stood in the doorway of his house looking like he hadn’t had any sleep since the last time I saw him.

“Lily’s with my sister.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I said.

He shook his head. 

“What about dinner?” I said.  “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I can’t hold anything down.  I haven’t been able to since…”

He hung his head, shielding his eyes with his hands. 

“I’ve lost my wife, my daughter—there’s nothing left.  Nothing.”

“You still have Lily,” I said.  “And you have me.  I haven’t given up on finding Savannah.  No matter what the outcome, I intend to keep looking.”

“I don’t think I can take one more death in my family, Miss Monroe.”

“But we don’t know what’s happened—”

“Please,” he said, placing his weak hand on my shoulder, “I need to be alone for a while.”