Page 45 of The Change
“Harriett,” he pleaded. “You have to help me.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. You can have what you need. But this time, you’ll have to pay a fair price for it.”
“I’ll give you anything.”
“Anything?” she asked. He seemed so eager.
“What do you want?”
“Your firstborn child,” Harriett said.
Chase blanched. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to talk to Bianca.”
Harriett couldn’t keep a straight face.
“So you were kidding?” Chase exhaled.
Harriett howled with laughter. “I never wanted a baby when we were married. Why the hell would I want one now? I want you to take me and my friends to Jackson Dunn’s Memorial Day party.”
He wasn’t quite buying it. “That’s all you want?”
“That’s it,” Harriett said. “I assure you there is nothing else I could possibly want from you. I wouldn’t even fuck you these days. Frankly, I find you rather repugnant.”
She hadn’t intended to be cruel. Those were just facts.
“You know, you’ve really changed.” Chase sounded wounded. “You used to be sweet.”
“That was before you set fire to our marriage and tried to steal my house.” Harriett walked to the door and held it open for him. “I thought it all would destroy me, but it didn’t. It just turned meinto something new. And now that we’ve made our little deal, you should get out of my house. My friends will be coming back soon.”
“So this lady doesn’t have a car?” Nessa asked. The Stop & Shop where Amber Welsh worked was off a six-lane highway. The sixteen-wheelers racing by were streaks of red and white light.
Jo thought of the rusty Corolla parked in front of Amber’s trailer. “She has one, but it’s not running at the moment.”
“I don’t understand.” Nessa looked around. There were no sidewalks, and the shoulder on the highway was little more than two feet wide. “How does she get here?”
Jo had been wondering the same thing herself. “I have a feeling she walks,” she said.
“You’re kidding. She’s going to end up getting killed on that road.”
Jo checked the time on the dashboard. It was 7:16, and she and Nessa had been parked in front of the Stop & Shop for half an hour.
“Where is she?” A bad feeling had settled over her. “I’m gonna go in and check on her—make sure she hasn’t gotten cold feet.”
Inside the store, a fluorescent light flickered as yacht rock played over the store’s sound system. Jo headed for the nearest cashier, a woman with a massive bosom and the imperious air of middle management. She was ringing items up for an elderly couple who seemed eager to get home with a shopping bag filled with unusually phallic vegetables.
“Pardon me,” Jo said. “I’m looking for Amber Welsh.”
“Well, when you find her, you can tell her she’s fired,” the woman snipped without lifting her eyes from the scanner. Her name tag identified her as Linda Setzer, Manager. “I know she has problems, and she’s got my sympathy. But I just can’t run a store this way.”
“I’m sorry, what way?” Jo asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman finally looked up at her. “Amber was a no-show today. I couldn’t get anyone else to cover, so I’ve been manning the cash register since noon.”
“Shit.” Jo muttered. She knew what would come next. Every true crime podcast started much the same way—with a woman not showing up for a shift.
“Tell me about it,” the manager said. “You ever worked a till? My legs are numb from standing all day and my back is spasming. I’m going to be crippled for the rest of the week.”
“I’m sorry,” Jo said, and the manager shrugged. “So you haven’t heard from Amber at all today?”
