Page 37 of The Whisper Place
I’d been alone in the office, listening to the sound of the furnace heating with money we didn’t have, a hundred dollars for each degree, while I went through the books. Every column ended in red at the bottom, and every red number sent my blood pressure rising that much higher. We had some clients, but this was before ACT had come on board with their steady monthly checks and cascade of referrals. We didn’t have enough cash to pay rent next month, let alone our paychecks.
The idea of explaining to Shelley that the business had failed less than six month after it started sent me to a new tab on mybrowser looking through part-time jobs. I skipped past the few private security positions advertised, even though that was the natural fit; the thought of a knockoff uniform and the little self-important desks where those jack-offs sat on their asses doing nothing made me angry just thinking about it. Bartending could have been good money, except I barely knew how to do anything other than open a beer can. I was considering a second-shift warehouse job—the pain in my shoulder had been getting better and I could easily forget to mention it on the application—when a FedEx truck arrived.
The package didn’t look like anything special—a cardboard box, blank except for the postmarks. The return address was a rural route in Iowa I wasn’t familiar with. It was addressed to Celina Investigations, c/o Max Summerlin. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
I opened it and dropped the box cutter on my desk, staring at the contents.
It was cash. Stacks and stacks of cash.
There was no note, no indication of who sent it or why, but in my gut I already knew. I took it to the back room, even though the odds of a client walking through the door were slim to none, and counted.
“How much?” Jonah asked.
“Two hundred thousand.”
He made a noise and leaned against his desk, face in his hands. “Kara.”
“I think so.”
Kara Johnson had been my quasi partner during a DEA task force operation, which turned out to be my last assignment in law enforcement. The DEA had been hunting for the money from amostly busted drug empire. I didn’t know if they ended up finding any after I resigned, but apparently Kara had. And she was sharing.
I traced the return address to an animal sanctuary in the middle of the state. Nothing on their website indicated Kara was there, but there wouldn’t be. She lived firmly below any standard radars.
“And you decided to keep it without telling me.”
“I didn’t want your hands to be dirty, too.”
Jonah shoved away from the desk, standing up. “What are you, my father? You don’t get to decide that for me, Max.”
“I know I—”
“No, you don’t.” Jonah slammed the laptop closed and pulled the cord out of the wall. He grabbed his coat off the desk, making papers fly. Photographs of missing persons flapped across the office, black-and-white faces landing everywhere. “You don’t know what having a partner means.”
“Believe me, I—”
“Right.” He laughed, shoving the front door open before turning around. “Carrying more than your share is one thing. I knew that was going to happen. But this?” He shook his head, looking at me with an open disgust I’d never seen on my best friend’s face, before walking out.
Jonah
Eve’s house was always intrinsically Eve. No matter where she lived, whether it was an over-the-top renovated Victorian mansion or an accessible townhouse on the edge of a cornfield, she made every space undeniablyher. And I needed that more than I wanted to admit right now.
I washed sky-blue dishes and looked out a window lined with delicate beakers holding leaves and branches of all shapes and sizes. A gauge mounted above the greenery measured at least four atmospheric things. I recognized temperature, or at least I was pretty sure it was temperature. The breakfast bar was covered with academic journals, scribbled notes, a pill reminder box, and more vases dotted with single flowers in each one—a black calla lily, a dahlia, and more I couldn’t name. Magnets with scientific formulas covered the fridge, along with several pictures—mostly of Eve and Earl. The largest one showed Earl with his late wife, her laughing as he kissed her cheek in front of their apple orchard. Another was a black-and-white photo of Marie Curie working in her lab. There was a picture of me I didn’t remember Eve taking. I was facing away from the camera, sitting on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in my backyard.
The first time I saw that picture, displayed next to Eve’s family and heroes, I’d felt suddenly strangled by a mix of hope and dread. A panic attack clawing at the edges of everything I wanted. I’d tried to ignore it, both the feeling and the photo, and pretend my heart wasn’t crashing waves against my chest for the rest of the night. I think we played Scrabble—word games were part of Earl’s ongoing post-stroke therapy. I know I lost.
Now, the photo calmed me. I felt centered, focused for the first time since I left the office in the wake of Max’s asshole confession. I belonged here, among the formulas and foliage, taped up on Eve’s fridge and washing her dishes, with people who didn’t lie to me for my own good.
Beyond the small kitchen, Eve and Earl sat at the dining room table together. They’d been huddled in front of my laptop studying the Pastries & Dreams security footage ever since they’d finished devouring the Chinese takeout I’d picked up on the way here.
Earl typed something on his iPad and Eve nodded. “It’s like she hears distant thunder.” Then, checking an app on her own phone: “No storms that day. Overcast skies, zero precipitation.”
“The working hypothesis”—I framed it for Eve’s benefit— “is that she was running from something or someone in her past. That’s why she had no ID, no phone, no name or any means of tracking her down.”
They both nodded and for once Eve didn’t question the theory or demand more evidence. She understood, better now than she would have a few years ago, what it felt like to live looking over your shoulder. Not that the drug trafficking ring she’d helped bust had anyone left to hunt her down—the major players were either dead or in prison—but the trauma of watching your husband gettortured in front of you, of being almost killed yourself, didn’t dissipate with any application of logic. I could feel the tension in her whenever the doorbell rang, the momentary panic before she smiled at Earl and went to answer it. I knew why she still kept a baseball bat in the coat closet. It was hard not to feel like I’d brought that into her life, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Her husband was the one who’d involved himself with a drug lord, who’d gotten himself kidnapped and eventually killed, for money or glory or whatever made people do the shitty things they did. But she’d been oblivious to it until he disappeared, until I’d knocked on her door and told her I could help her find him, and we’d uncovered the whole ugly truth together. It wasn’t my fault that she panicked before opening doors now, but guilt was a lot like fear. It didn’t fade with logic.
Earl wheeled to the bathroom as I put the last of the dishes away. Eve waited until the door clicked shut before coming to the kitchen and leaning against the counter. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and all thoughts of guilt and fear hazed into something warmer and much more insistent. I moved into her space and braced my hands on the counter on either side of her, boxing her in.
“Hi.” She smiled, her face inches from mine. At this distance I could count each individual lash ringing her eyes and feel the heat of her skin.
