Page 15 of Silent Ridge

“I’ll tell her.”

Yeah. Right.

I leave the cigarette butt and other stuff with Nan. I give her the request form to give to Marley and tell her he’ll be in this morning looking for us.

“Where will you be if he asks?” Nan asks.

“It’s none of his business,” I say.Or yours, I think. I know Marley will be disappointed that Ronnie isn’t here, but I think he’ll have fun asking about the panties.

We leave before Nan can burn me to death with her death star glare.

“Where to first? Port Orchard?” Ronnie asks.

I start the car and glance up in the trees to see if my stalker has taken up position. There’s no one.

I asked Ronnie to do some more digging into Gabrielle’s background. She found the picture of Gabrielle and her son while she was doing a search for Monique. But she only copied it because she thought the woman and Monique looked so much alike. I never knew Gabrielle’s last name. I assumed it wasn’t Delmont because she had a son.

Ronnie had done what she called “dumpster diving” and found marriage records for Gabrielle and a birth certificate for her son. Sebastian Wilson was born around the same time that Leanne Delmont was murdered by my biological father. Gabrielle’s husband had died when the boy was six months old. She graduated from Portland State University and moved to Port Orchard. Ronnie found an address but the phone number was no good.

Figures it would be in Port Orchard. Most everything bad in my life happened there. It’s where Rolland, my stepfather, was murdered. It’s where I had to fake my own death and flee. I don’t think I look like that girl anymore but I’m not anxious to ever go back there.

“I talked to Crime Scene and they didn’t find a cell phone yesterday,” Ronnie says as we get on the road. “No phone service at the house, either. No cable. Nothing. Don’t you find that strange?”

I did, but I didn’t want to get into it. “We need to get Monique’s phone records for her home in Tacoma, cell phone, anything.” I don’t tell her I have the phone numbers memorized. “Also phone records for Gabrielle’s nonworking phone. Maybe she and her mother talked recently.”

“I already sent a subpoena,” Ronnie says. “The records should be waiting for us when we get back. I asked for a hard copy and they’ll send it to my phone too.”

Anxiety seizes me as I think about returning to Port Orchard. I’m not too worried about someone recognizing me, but Caleb still lives there, as far as I know. I would have tried to look him up if I hadn’t brought Ronnie along. Caleb knows what I did, what I’m doing now, and what name I’m going by. I can’t risk him calling me by my old name, Rylee. Not in front of Ronnie.

“I’ve never been to Port Orchard,” Ronnie says.

That’s good. Make this your last trip, I think.

“I visited when I was a kid,” I tell her. “Not much to see.”

She’s on her phone and starts telling me all the touristy attractions. I let her rattle on. Nothing new there. I don’t want to go back to those days. Or to the town, for that matter.

“We could have called Detective Osborne to see if the address is still good,” Ronnie says.

“What?” I haven’t followed anything she was saying for about twenty miles now. “You mean Clay?”

“He owes us. We solved his last big murder for him. Besides, I think he’s kind of sweet on you.”

Clay is a sheriff’s detective for Kitsap County. He’s a hunk but I don’t need anyone being “sweet” on me. I’m having enough trouble doing my job; processing my confrontation with my brother whom I hadn’t seen for years; and pursuing a relationship with Dan Anderson. I met him during a homicide investigation in Snow Creek.

Gabrielle’s last known address is near Veterans Memorial Park, and we’re almost there before I relax my grip on the steering wheel.

“Are we going to Tacoma after this?” Ronnie asks.

“Maybe. I need to talk to Monique’s neighbors.” I still say “I.” I’m used to working alone. Ronnie doesn’t seem to notice that I don’t always include her, but I’m working on it. If I don’t, she’ll have to get over it.

Ronnie is looking at her phone. “Tacoma has the highest violent crime rate in the state. Two hundred thousand people, and the violent crime rate is almost a hundred people per hundred thousand.”

I give her a glance that says “So?”

“Mrs. Delmont may have pissed someone off with her victims’ advocacy work.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

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