Page 112 of Call Back

“Oh, my,” Belinda said, sitting upright in her seat. “That looks like a terrible house fire.”

My heart heavy, I drove past the turn and continued on down the road.

“Why do I have a feeling that’s where we were going?” Belinda asked.

“Because you’re smart.”

“Well, it sure explains the smoky smell. What was it?”

Now that I thought about it, there might be one bright spot out of all of it. Perhaps burning the place down would bring one aspect of the past to light. “The place where Bill James’s first wife might be buried.”

“What?”

I told her about Momma’s suspicions, about how Bill James had bought the house years after Momma and Daddy had moved out of it.

“Why would he have bought it?” she asked, her forehead furrowed.

“If you’d buried a dead body under a concrete slab in a basement prone to leaks,” I said, “wouldn’t you want to make sure it stayed buried? What better way than to buy the house? And it’s vacant. No one lives there.”

“That’s . . . not normal.”

“Exactly.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you thought we needed to come here.”

I hadn’t told her about the files I’d hoped to find, and I decided it didn’t matter now—anything flammable in that house had been destroyed—and besides, I’d already told her plenty she’d have to keep from Roy, whose motivations I didn’t begin to understand.

“Just a hunch.”

We drove the rest of the way to her house in silence. As soon as we went inside, she turned to me with dull eyes. “I’m going to go to bed. You’ll sleep in the guest room tonight. I’ll show you where.”

I followed her upstairs, and she stopped at the first door on the left. “Here’s your room. There are towels and toiletries in the attached bathroom. I’ll bring you a nightgown and clothes for tomorrow.” She paused. “I have to be in the office at nine.”

I could read between the lines. “So what time do we need to leave? Eight forty-five?”

“I’ll be downstairs making breakfast at eight.”

“You don’t need to make breakfast for me,” I protested.

“I do it every day for Roy,” she said with a tight smile. “It’s good to develop and maintain habits.”

And my Stepford sister-in-law was back.

“Belinda. You don’t have to stay with him. Come live with me. My apartment’s small, but we can make it work.” I gave her a goofy grin to lighten the mood. “I’ll even let you have the bed.”

She pulled me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe. Then she let go, looking more defeated than ever. “You can’t tell Roy what we did tonight.”

“I won’t.”

“Thank you.” She turned and walked out of the room. “If you want to start your shower, I’ll just put the clothes on your bed.”

“Belinda,” I called after her, and she came back to fill the doorway. “Thank you for everything. For trying to protect me. For being my friend.”

Tears filled her eyes again. “I think you and I are more alike than you realize,” she said. Then she turned and left the room.

What could she have meant by that?

But I was exhausted and about to drop. I took a quick shower and found a pile of clothes on the bed, just like Belinda had promised. After I put on the nightgown and brushed my teeth with one of the packaged spare toothbrushes in the drawer, I grabbed my phone out of my purse to call Brady about what I’d found.

But I dropped the phone on the bed when I saw the message on the screen.

It was a photo of my magnolia necklace on top of a topographical map—just like the map of the Jackson Project I’d seen in the basement of Bill James’s house.

The text that came with it sent icy fear through my veins.

Missing something?

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