Page 104 of Heating Up (Nugget)
Chapter 20
“Hello? Hello? Anyone there?” For the fourth time in an hour, Dana hung up the house phone in frustration.
Ordinarily, she would’ve written the strange, silent calls up to a malfunctioning phone line or someone on the other end having bad cell reception. But there was no caller ID, which seemed odd. Even with those annoying robocalls, a telephone number always flashed on the landline. With these, no number whatsoever.
She wouldn’t have been bothered by the calls if someone hadn’t tried to burn her office down. Arson tended to make a person edgy, and Dana was definitely jittery.
Now, she was on high alert and wished Aidan was home. He’d called on her cell to say that something in the case had come up and he wouldn’t be home until late. She tried to pass the time by organizing the silverware drawer. Somehow the salad forks had gotten mixed in with the regular ones and it was driving her batty.
She took all the utensils out, gave the basket a good scrubbing, and put everything back where it should go. Although exhausted from moving furniture around and packing up files so the hardwood guys could lay down her and Carol’s new flooring, she found the mindless work of sorting quite soothing. Dana decided that while she was at it she may as well reorganize the pantry too.
The house line rang again and she nearly jumped out of her skin. This time when she checked the phone’s display there was a number. A local number, but she didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Dana. This is Sloane. Is my brother there? I’ve been trying to call him on his cell, but he’s not answering.”
“He’s not here,” she said and told Sloane that Aidan was working late on the fire cases, that he might have a lead.
“Do you know what it is? Brady and I were in San Francisco all day.”
“I don’t. He’s careful about what he shares. You didn’t by any chance try to call here a couple of times earlier, did you?”
“No. Why?”
“I keep getting strange calls where the person on the other end is silent. They must’ve disabled their caller ID because I don’t get that either.”
Sloane was quiet for a second, then let a long sigh. “It may be Aidan’s ex-girlfriend. She’s been looking for him. That’s actually why I was calling. I’m sorry if she scared you.”
“Sue? Why wouldn’t she just ask for him?” Unless Aidan told her not to. Dana didn’t like the implications of that.
“I don’t know. It’s not characteristic of her, but she has been trying to reach him. Wyatt’s on duty; I’ll have him do a drive by.”
“That’s not necessary,” Dana said. “Really, I’m sure it’s just someone with a bad cell connection.” But she went around the house locking the doors and windows just in case.
“Write down my number,” Sloane instructed, and Dana jotted it down on a pad in the junk drawer. “Call me if anything else weird happens. But I’m sure you’re right about the hang-ups.”
After disconnecting with Sloane, Dana called her parents’ house. She hadn’t talked to them since she and Aidan had slept in the pool house and needed to check in. Betty answered on the fifth ring. As usual, she didn’t have much to say and rushed to get off the phone. Dana often considered what would’ve happened if she’d been the one to die. Would her parents have buried themselves in the same kind of grief they had for Paul and by doing so ignored their only son? She didn’t think so.
From the time of his birth, he’d been their prince and Dana an afterthought. As a child, it had never troubled her. Despite the extra attention they’d given Paul, there’d been enough left over that she’d felt loved and cherished. The Calloways had always been a patriarchal family. Dana supposed that kind of upbringing had conditioned her to accept her status as second class to her brother without bitterness. But now that she was all her parents had left in the world, she didn’t understand their indifference. She also couldn’t change it.
The pantry began to take shape. Dana lined up the cereal boxes in a neat row on one shelf. Spaghetti sauces, cooking oils, and canned goods she stored on another. Because Aidan did most of the cooking, he’d screw her order up in no time, but she didn’t care. She’d just organize it again.
In the laundry room she found new rolls of shelf paper and used it to reline some of the cupboards where the old paper had become sticky from syrup or molasses, Dana couldn’t tell. By the time she finished and glanced at the clock, more than an hour had passed. Save for the streetlights it was dark outside, the moon barely visible. It was also stuffy. She wanted to open the back door to let a breeze in, but given the fire and phone calls, a flimsy screen didn’t seem like much of a barrier between her and the outdoors. So she went in the living room, turned on the cooler, and surfed through the channels on the television.
About ten o’clock Aidan came through the door.
“Hey,” Dana said. “How did it go?”
“Good.” He beamed and threw himself on the couch next to her. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about it, but we may be on to something.”
“Not even a hint?”
He deliberated, then said, “We seized a piece of evidence that may help us close the case.”
“What’s the evidence?”
“Can’t say.”
