Page 36 of The Whisper Place
“Working late?” It was almost dinnertime. I’d texted Shelley from the car that I was close to wrapping up and asked if she needed anything at the store. She replied with a kissy face emoji that I took as a no.
Jonah made a half-awake noise, not stirring from his computer. He was hunched over, barely propped on one arm while clicking through grainy black-and-white footage.
“Pastries & Dreams security cameras?”
Another noise, this one sounding even less conscious.
The resolution wasn’t the worst I’d seen, but Blake clearly hadn’t sprung for the deluxe cameras. At least she’d paid for the thirty-day archive. From the date stamp on the screen, it looked like Jonah had worked through at least a week of footage already.
“Any sightings?”
He flipped to another window, backed the video up fifteen seconds, and clicked play.
There she was.
Kate/Darcy parked in the spot next to the garage behind the bakery. She got out of the car with the overnight bag that was sitting in Charlie’s bedroom right now, and opened the gate to the backyard. With the angle of the camera and the position of the gate, the car’s license plate would’ve been visible if Kate and her bag hadn’t blocked the entire front of the car. She locked the gate behind her, cutting off the view, before crossing the yard to the back steps.
“Shit. They all like that?”
“So far. She didn’t use the car much. I’ve only found her going in and out six times. No luck on any of them.”
Jonah backed it up again and we watched Kate cross the yard, approaching the back door and the camera. She kept her head down, one hand gripping the bag slung over her shoulder, the other holding her keys. She didn’t seem to be in any hurry, maybe tired or lost in thought. She looked older than I’d assumed based on the picture Charlie had given us. It was something about the way she moved, a carefulness I didn’t associate with anyone under forty. Or maybe it was just because she didn’t have a screen glued to her hand.
“I’d still say mid-twenties.” Jonah weighed in on my internal debate. “She’s got some baby fat left in her cheeks.”
“How is baby fat different than regular fat?”
“Gravity.”
Before she disappeared inside the bakery, Kate looked around, scanning the yard behind her in a move that seemed automatic.
“Yeah, she does that every time,” Jonah said, again talking to my thoughts. “Sometimes she pauses for longer.” He flipped back to the other footage, hitting play and slumping further down in his chair.
I went to the safe. “We got another payment from Charlie.” The brick of cash had weighed down my coat pocket the whole way back to Iowa City, but I hadn’t felt comfortable putting it on the passenger seat. Even now, the pile of bills stuffed on top of the random papers crammed into the safe gave me heartburn. I locked it quickly and went to find some Tums.
“What is it?” Jonah asked.
“Nothing.” The Tums jar was empty. Shit. I trashed it and made do with an aspirin. But by the time I came back to our desks, Jonah had turned around and was frowning at me.
“I said it’s nothing.”
We both knew I was lying. Jonah waited me out, scanning me like an emotional MRI.
Stalling, I grabbed a beer out of the fridge. “Want one?”
He shook his head.
I sat down at my desk, directly across from his, and took a long drink. There was no avoiding this anymore. Frankly, I was shocked Jonah hadn’t heard me thinking about it once in the past year. I must have been better at compartmentalization than I’d thought.
“I was worried when we started out. About getting enough clients. Making ends meet.”
“That’s changed?”
“Christ, just let me say it.”
He leaned back, crossed his arms, and waited.
“One day, a few months after we opened this place, I got a package.”
