Page 23 of The Whisper Place
“Good night, Max.”
Retired farmers were seriously underrated investigators; they had a lot of time on their hands and an ingrained need to fill it. Earl had been in a wheelchair since I’d met him and he communicated mostly by text, but none of that kept him from googling with thebest of them. After I got to the house and filled him in on Kate’s case, he started compiling a list of independent bakeries in Iowa and Illinois while I made dinner.
Eve had left ingredients and a recipe for jerk tofu bowls with plantains and quinoa. She made or picked up mostly vegan dishes in light of Earl’s condition, citing all the evidence in favor of low salt, low sugar, plant-based diets for stroke survivors. Earl put up with it, but he’d been the happiest I’d ever seen him when I brought steaks over a few times while Eve was in Australia. Tonight, we had bloody ribeyes with onions and baked potatoes that we drowned in butter, sour cream, and bacon. I opened all the windows, hoping most of the meat smell would air out before she got home.
It felt right being here, sitting side by side as we licked our plates clean and mapped possible prior bakery jobs for a missing woman. If Eve were home, she’d be arguing with Earl over the benefits of tofu, her hair glinting off the pendant lights, her eyes sparking with love and logic and the challenge of getting her meat-and-potatoes father-in-law to admit he liked curdled soy milk.
It’s functionally the same process as cheese-making, she would say.
Cheese doesn’t taste like soggy cardboard, Earl would jab out on his iPad.
And I would let them bicker, listening to the affection weaving in and out of their heads as I cleared the table. We’d bubbled over the pandemic and I knew where all the dishes went and which utensils Earl could use with the least amount of problems. I knew the looks Eve would shoot me behind Earl’s back, the grunts Earl would send in my direction when he knew he was losing the fight.Everyone lost their fights with Eve. She won every debate because she was smarter than all of us and she saw our points coming days and weeks ahead of time. She’d been trained to dissect storms long before they crested the horizon.
After we finished the list and dinner, I lingered longer than I should have. Eve didn’t say when she’d be home and I resisted the urge to text her. Earl was watching the news and playing Candy Crush, perfectly content on his own. There was no reason for me to stay. Except that I wanted to see her.
Our date this morning had ended when I’d dropped Eve off with a stitch in my side and covered in dried sweat. Any thought of kissing her had evaporated during an intense discussion of the woman holding a gun on Charlie’s neighbor’s property and a debate over the difference between explicit and implied threats. And for the rest of the day my brain had been on a loop, watching her climb out of the car again and again. I’d see her soon. I knew that, rationally. But my body wasn’t in a place of logic.
A thwack brought me back to reality. Earl hit the couch again, inviting me to sit down and join him.
Eve hadn’t told Earl that we were dating yet, and I understood her hesitation. Earl was her father-in-law. They were bound together through a dead man whose picture still hung on a few walls in this house. Eve and I being together wouldn’t only change our relationship; it could change things between them, too. If she got home and both of us were sitting here, it might be awkward for her.
“I should go.” I picked up the list of bakeries and clapped Earl on the shoulder. Satisfaction and gruff affection emanated through him. “Thanks for the legwork.”
Thanks for dinner, Earl typed.You can throw the tofu in the trash on your way out.
“Nice try. I’m not taking the heat for that.”
I drove around the city for a while, staying well clear of the restaurant Eve and her colleagues were at, and made myself think about bakeries instead. Pastries & Dreams sat on a side street in the shadow of the ped mall, an old converted house with gables and a wide porch. The sign in the window said closed, but as I drove past, covered windows glowed with light in the back of the bakery.
I parked and paced up the block, inhaling sweet explosions of lilac bushes crowding the sidewalk, the faint stink of a dumpster due for pickup, and the sharpness of cut grass from an apartment building lawn. The city had quieted, as it always did, after graduation and the exodus of the undergrads. Even the noise of the bars on the ped mall was muted, letting the quiet of the early summer night steal over the city. I breathed deep, centering myself in the here and now, in the case I needed to solve to prove I could. I could be part of a world outside my nightmares, the world where Eve lived.
Security cameras were mounted on the front door and along the narrow, overgrown sidewalk to the backyard. I skirted the house and tried the gate to the backyard, which was locked. The fence was privacy height, too tall to climb. I could’ve knocked on the front door, but something told me not to, to keep moving to the other side of the house, where a path had been worn toward the gap of a loose board in the fence.
I squeezed through and crept into the backyard, where motion-activated security lights immediately flooded the grass with mestanding in a black trench coat, hair obscuring most of my face. The blinds on the bay window were yanked up, revealing two people inside. The woman screamed when she saw me. And through the wood and glass and the stutter of shock piercing the night, I understood what was really happening at Pastries & Dreams.
Darcy
I woke up in the middle of the night to a faint banging noise, the sound of a door closing, maybe, or a window hitting the frame. I ran to the living room, searching the entrances, looking for the source of the intrusion, but there was nothing. The door to the deck was latched with the pole of wood notched firmly in the sliding glass frame. The windows were empty of everything except shadows and the door to the stairs was closed, too.
“Blake?” As I moved to her bedroom door, another bang stopped me cold. It came from downstairs. Knocking quietly, I pushed open Blake’s door. Her bed was empty. Maybe she was the one making noise downstairs, but she’d also gone out last night with a guy and I hadn’t heard her come home.
Slipping to the apartment kitchen, I pulled a carving knife out of the block and crept to the stairs. My heart knocked against my ribcage. If I had to use the knife, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d attacked someone. I guess some things didn’t get easier with practice. Shifting my grip on the handle, I paused at the bottom of the stairs. Voices drifted from the other side of the door as metal scraped against metal. Someone was definitely here. Icouldn’t run or hide, not if Blake’s business was in danger. Taking a deep breath, I shoved open the door and sprang into the bakery kitchen, making both of the people standing next to the stove jump in surprise.
Blake and Charlie.
Blake dropped the pan she was holding with a crash. Charlie tried to lunge in front of her, slipped on the pan and fell into his sister, sending them both to the floor. I stood frozen, knife raised, in complete shock.
“What. The fuck!” came Blake’s voice from somewhere behind the butcher-block counter.
“I thought someone broke in,” I whispered. It felt like all the air had been knocked out of me. With the adrenaline fading, I felt weak. Trays of silicone molds filled with tiny gummy doughnuts wavered in front of my eyes.
Suddenly, Blake was right in front of me. She was talking, but I couldn’t hear what she said.
“What are you making?” I asked eventually, trying to breathe.
She looked at her brother, who stood behind her and wore a bright pink apron over his flannel. He glanced at me before nodding to Blake.
“Chooch is a farmer, and his best crop is . . .”
