A large wedding portrait hung over the couch.
Except for Candace, nothing appeared out of place.
He stepped back, bowing his head to say a quick prayer, mostly thinking of how devastated Cody would be.
“Everything is as it should be.” Oscar proceeded to fill Riley in on his and Candace’s history, last time he’d seen her, family and friends. After a few minutes, he asked, “What do you know about Cody’s whereabouts?”
“He’s supposedly at a two-day meeting in Albuquerque. We’ve got the police there looking for him. He’s not answering his cell, and it doesn’t look like he was in his hotel room last night. No one’s seen him since yesterday morning.”
“I know Cody. He wouldn’t kill his wife.” Oscar heard the conviction in his own voice yet knew the husband was always the first suspect in a case like this.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Riley said, but Oscar could tell he didn’t mean it.
It was after eleven when he made it back to his office and started searching the computer for information about where Shelley might be. With Ryan, she’d need to stop. And since she was eight months pregnant, she’d likely need to stop, too. A lot.
He called Townley, who was able to tell him that Shelley had withdrawn two hundred dollars from an automatic teller before she left town. If she used her debit card again elsewhere, she could be tracked.
Townley suggested that Oscar head for Santa Fe. It was big enough to get lost in. “She has no known relatives except her father,” Townley reminded him. Oscar added the address of the father’s care center to his notebook. Townley sent a file detailing Shelley’s history, including names of college roommates, instructors, people she’d worked with.
Oscar printed it out and compared it to the file Sarasota Falls had on her, looking for repeated names. There weren’t many, as her local file had more to do with her connection with Larry Wagner.
Wagner had stolen and scammed roughly seven hundred thousand dollars from the good people of Sarasota Falls.
Over three hundred thousand of that came from the sale of Shelley’s family home and its furnishings.
Riley was good. Thorough. He’d ferreted out two women who’d had affairs with Wagner during his short marriage to Shelley. One worked at the bank. The other wasn’t named, but a desk clerk at the Sarasota Falls Inn swore Wagner had checked in with a high-class blonde at least five times. The signature on file matched Wagner’s handwriting. Unfortunately, the female hadn’t signed any receipts, and Wagner hadn’t called her anything but Sugar.
Picking up the phone, Oscar called Riley. “I’m going to head over to the care center where Shelley’s dad is.”
“Good idea. Wait for me. I’m coming in.”
“State police arrived?” Oscar asked.
“An hour ago. A couple of pretty decent guys. They looked over our reports of what the people in the neighborhood did and didn’t see. They took even more photos than I did. They think she was pushed and happened to hit her head on the table. But, based on the condition of the bedroom, they know there was a struggle. Coroner arrived right after they did.”
“Struggle in the bedroom. Did...?” Oscar hated that his attempt not to contaminate the crime scene meant he’d gone no farther than the front door. There’d been more to see, more that other people might miss.
“Lead guy said he didn’t think so. Seems someone broke in and disturbed her while she was getting dressed.”
“Time of death?”
“Between six and eight a.m., but only because she was dressed. The coroner says it could have been earlier. He prefers, for now, to say midnight and six.”
“If she fell and hit her head, then it might not be a murder.”
There was a full ten-second pause. “There are marks on the back of her shirt that could be handprints. Then, too, the way she landed implies speed and gravity. They figured this out by measuring. At the very least, it’s involuntary manslaughter.”
“Yes, but—”
“They’re still gathering evidence, from a strand of hair they found on the floor to a drop of blood taken by swab from the edge of the coffee table.”
“Have they moved her body yet?”
“Yes, but it will be a few days before we know anything.”
“And you’ve told them about Shelley Wagner and—”
“Yes,” Riley interrupted, “and they find it quite interesting that from the window of Shelley’s garage apartment, you can see right into Candace’s living room and backyard. One of Candace’s coworkers said Candace noticed the young woman across the street watching her and was spooked about it.”
Tell and you’ll be sorry.
SHELLEY HAD ALREADY been frantically packing when the text from her ex-husband arrived. It had only made her pack faster because—just great—after Larry had taken her life savings and left her to deal with the authorities, her first communication from him was a threat.
Sorry? She was already sorry. Sorry for making such a bad decision as marrying Larry.
Unfortunately, every decision she’d made in the hours since receiving the text had been wrong, really wrong, and downright stupid.
If she could do one thing over, she’d scream for the man with the dog to come back. She’d scream as loud as she could. Scream so loud they’d hear her in the next county. There’d been a moment when she could have brought down her husband.
The memories of what he could do when angry had stilled her voice; the memories hadn’t stilled her feet. Which was why her first instinct had been to run.
She squinted at a green sign up ahead and shook her head when she could make out the town’s name. One more small town she’d never heard of. She’d already put almost three hundred more miles on her old green Impala. She wasn’t even sure where she was heading.
She checked the rearview mirror. Ryan slept at last. She’d not handled him well, either. It was her own fault she’d wound up traveling with a tired, confused three-year-old because she’d utterly failed during the split-second packing stage. She’d correctly grabbed his worn Thomas the Train backpack and necessary box of Legos. However, she’d undervalued the beloved Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal.
She’d never do that again.
The only thing she’d done right, because she couldn’t leave that poor woman lying in her living room with no one knowing she was there, was stopping at a convenience store and telling the cashier that she thought she might be in labor and needed to call her husband but didn’t have a phone.
Sometimes being eight months pregnant got results.
She’d called Crime Stoppers. Then she’d headed west. That had been over four hours ago and it was time to stop for gas and check her messages. She had one.
And not from her ex-husband; she’d blocked his calls.
A nurse at her dad’s care center texted to say her dad was having a bad day and was restless and confused. Would she please come?
If not her, who else?
A new wave of guilt and worry overtook her. She couldn’t run away from Sarasota Falls. Her dad was all she had left of her old life, and there was no one else who cared as much as she did.
And, really, where was she heading to? How would she survive? Who could she turn to?
She’d been