Pumpkin Roll (22 page)

But she was in serious need of help.

She stood up, reaching for her phone in her pocket. She turned on her sock-clad heel, pulling open the door of the bedroom and running for the sliding glass door.

In her haste she forgot about the paint and slid across the tile in her socks. A pile of boxes was the only thing she could grab for, but they weren’t steady and she pulled them down with her as she fell. She landed hard on her side with an “oomph” as the contents of the boxes spilled all over the paint-covered floor. Spools of thread, some pens, and numerous papers went everywhere. Sadie’s phone was somewhere in the midst of the new mess she’d made, and she got on her knees, scrambling to find it in the debris. She was moments away from abandoning the phone completely when she found it partially covered in wet paint. She tried to wipe off the paint with the clean tail of her blouse as she ran into the backyard.

The run across the yard wasn’t very long, but as soon as she was out of the house she began to doubt everything she’d seen. Paint on the wall. Spilled paint on the floor. Dark house. A single light in a single room. The strangeness made Sadie want to go back and verify all the details before she pulled Pete in, but then she pictured Mrs. Wapple unconscious on the floor and she sped up. A car honked as she ran into the street; she hadn’t looked both ways. She waved her apology but didn’t break her stride. She ran up the front steps of Jared and Heather’s house and threw open the door.

“Pete!” she called out breathlessly. Was he still outside? “Pete!”

He looked up from the table, where he was helping Fig stir some mini-marshmallows into his hot cocoa. As soon as Pete saw her, he straightened, dropped the spoon, and hurried toward her.

“What happened?”

Confused by his intensity, Sadie looked down and saw the red paint on her hands and smeared down the left side of her pants and shirt where she’d fallen on the tile. She hadn’t even registered the pain from the fall when it happened, but now it caught up to her as her hip began to burn and her shoulder throbbed. She hurried back to the parquet wood by the front door, not wanting to get paint on the carpet.

“Blood!” Kalan blurted out.

Sadie looked past Pete to see Kalan staring at her with wide eyes. Fig sipped his cocoa with his spoon, and Chance spun around in his chair to look at her.

“It’s not blood,” Sadie hurried to assure them. “It’s—”

“Paint?” Pete said, leaning closer and sniffing. He lifted his hands as though he wanted to put them on her shoulders and hold her still, but inches away from her, he changed his mind and took a step back while looking her over.

Sadie nodded, feeling oddly vulnerable beneath his inspection. “Yes, it’s paint.” She gave the three boys a fake smile as she reached for Pete’s hand. “Everything’s fine,” she said in a high-pitched voice. She could feel herself beginning to shake as the shock set in. “Keep drinking your cocoa.”

Pete pulled his hand out of reach, and she looked down to see the paint on her fingers. “What’s going on?” he asked quietly, looking at her with an intensity she didn’t like. It felt accusatory somehow.

Sadie took a breath and explained it all in two sentences, finishing with, “We need to call 911.” Her phone! She held it up in both hands and realized the 911 call she’d attempted at the house had been dropped at some point. Pete headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

“Where are you going?” Sadie said, stepping toward him before remembering the carpet and moving back to her square of fake wood.

“You’ll need to stay with the boys,” he called back to her.

Sadie bent over and peeled off her paint- and snow-drenched socks and balled them up by the door before hurrying to the doorway of his room, careful not to touch anything. She watched as he dug into his suitcase and pulled out the leather clip with his badge attached. Then he punched in the code to his portable gun safe and grabbed another magazine; he’d been wearing his shoulder harness all day.

“Why are you taking your gun?” Sadie said, scared that he was armed for some reason. Maybe it just made it that much more serious. She held her phone in both hands, knowing she needed to call 911, but . . .

Pete glanced at her, and she immediately recognized his detective-face expression. “Promise me you’ll stay here.” He put the magazine in his front pocket. “Don’t change your clothes. And don’t wash your hands either. Call 911.” He nodded toward the phone she was still clutching.

“Of course,” Sadie said. He pushed past her, causing her to lean against the wall, but she stepped away quickly for fear of painting the doorway.

Sadie followed Pete down the hall, wishing she was going with him, but then feeling glad she wasn’t. “Go through the backyard, and mind the paint inside the sliding glass door.”

Pete headed toward the front door while Sadie punched in the numbers for 911 a second time. Kalan was watching her carefully—scared—and Sadie tried to give him a reassuring smile as she went into the living room and watched Pete disappear through the gate leading to Mrs. Wapple’s backyard.

It was all so surreal, and she found herself still questioning what she’d seen as she put the phone to her ear and listened to it ring on the other end. What if she’d somehow created this in her mind? What if it wasn’t real? The heavily accented voice on the other end of the phone brought her back to reality with a sharp sting. “This is the 911 dispatchah. What’s ya emahgency?”

Chapter 19

For the next hour and a half everything was sheer chaos. Sadie put a movie on for the boys while she answered the dispatcher’s questions, but it only diverted their attention until the first siren came blaring down their street. There were two more patrol cars, an ambulance, and a newspaper reporter within minutes of the first responder. Pete stayed at Mrs. Wapple’s house, which meant Sadie had no idea what was going on. She closed the curtains and tried to keep the boys distracted from what was happening outside, finally resorting to letting them eat chocolate chips straight from the bag and turning the sound on the movie way up.

Per Pete’s instructions, she didn’t change her clothes, but she could feel everyone staring at her when an officer came to the door and invited her outside so she could talk to him without the boys overhearing. She put on her clogs but didn’t dare grab a coat for fear that the paint might still be wet in some places. The left side of her body was saturated with it; she could feel her clothing sticking to her skin.

It was nearly dark outside and she shivered on the porch amid the lightly falling snow, though no one else seemed bothered by the weather. Another officer stood inside the front door, keeping an eye on the boys. The ambulance was already gone.

“Had you evah been in Mrs. Wapple’s house before this aftahnoon?” the officer asked.

“No,” Sadie said, trying not to notice the reporter standing on the sidewalk writing frantic notes as he looked at her, covered in red paint. “I hadn’t been inside—just in the backyard yesterday. Is she okay?”

“She’s stable, if that’s wha’ you mean,” the officer said, skimming his notes. “She’ll be fully assessed at the hospital.”

“Thank goodness,” Sadie said, bouncing on the balls of her feet in an attempt to warm up.

“You went ovah to her house today because of a phone call whe’ Mrs. Wapple asked for help?”

“Yes,” Sadie nodded and shifted her weight. She was freezing.

“How did you know it was Mrs. Wapple?”

“She said she was Delores.”

“What exactly did the callah say?”

“She said ‘Help me’ over and over, and when I asked who it was, she said Delores.”

“And yet you also believed this to be the same woman who broke into your house ahlier today. Why did you go ovah?”

“Because she said she needed help.”

“Why not call the police?”

“Because it felt urgent.”

“Were you, perhaps, angry with hah and wantin’ a confrontation?”

Sadie stared at him and could no longer ignore the trap being spun around her. Anger began rising in her chest and neck. They could not think she had done this. “I know it looks bad,” she said, waving toward the paint that had dried solid on her clothes. “But I did not hurt her. Why would I? I went over there to help her. Trace the number—whoever made the call set me up.”

He didn’t answer her but kept taking notes.

She noticed Pete and another officer exit the gate at Mrs. Wapple’s. Someone had let him get his coat at some point, or had he grabbed it on his way out the front door? For a moment she thought he was coming back to the house, but the officer stopped and the two of them continued talking on Mrs. Wapple’s sidewalk, Pete glancing up at her every so often. Sadie wondered if he was answering the same type of questions she was.

After another volley of accusations meant to sound like questions from the officer she was talking to, Sadie watched as Pete crossed the street, only to be stopped by yet another officer. She wanted so much for him to be next to her, supporting her, not looking at her like she was a criminal.

“I undahstand you called social sahvices this mornin’ to report a problem with Delores Wapple,” the officer said.

“Um, no, I didn’t place the call. Pete Cunningham did.” She inclined her head toward Pete, who was standing just outside the chain-link fence surrounding Jared and Heather’s yard. An officer opened the gate and Sadie noted that it didn’t squeak. When had Pete oiled it? Had she remembered to ask him to? “When we saw her outside a couple of nights ago she seemed to be in a lot of pain. Our attempts to contact her family were unsuccessful.”

“Why, exactly, were you so detahmined to involve yourself with this woman who you don’t know and who you felt was harassing you?”

Pete was suddenly beside her. Finally. He took her elbow and steered her away from the officer, explaining he’d return her in just a moment. His voice must have held the right amount of authority, since the officer didn’t try to stop him and instead turned his full attention to the notes he’d been taking.

When they were a few feet away, Pete let go and leaned toward her, lowering his voice. “They want you to go to the station.”

Sadie’s heart jumped. “Why?”

Pete simply looked down at her paint-covered clothes. “They say they need pictures.”

“They say?”

“They are being very careful about what they tell me, probably because I’m with another department and they feel like I’m critiquing their investigation. I don’t know. I’ve never dealt with a case outside of my own jurisdiction.”

Panic began setting in. She didn’t want to go to the police station. She didn’t want pictures taken, questions asked. “But why would they have me come down? Do they think I attacked her?”

“It’s a reasonable conclusion for them to reach,” Pete said, looking past her and scowling at the reporter who was talking to one of the other officers. “But we’re in a bit of a catch-22. If you don’t go, they’ll think we’re hiding something. If you do go, however, you’ll likely be subjected to further questioning and . . . I can’t be there with you.” His voice fell for the last part of his explanation. Sadie nearly asked why he couldn’t be there, but then realized that if they were going to question her officially, the only person she could ask for was an attorney. She didn’t know any attorneys in Boston! Heck, she didn’t know any attorneys in Colorado except Frank Barton, who went to her church. But he handled divorce cases, not criminal accusations.

“Heather couldn’t get a flight out of Dallas until early tomorrow morning,” Pete continued.

“Does she know what’s happened?” Sadie asked, her stomach in knots. It didn’t take much imagination to picture what it would feel like to be thousands of miles away from your children when something like this happened. Even as easygoing as Heather seemed to be, this was way up on the list of things to panic about while out of town.

“Jared called to give me the flight information about twenty minutes ago and I updated him on what’s happened since we last spoke.” Pete shook his head and pushed his hand through his hair. “I can’t just leave the kids with a neighbor.”

“No,” Sadie said, pulling herself up by her emotional bootstraps. She’d met the neighbors and none of them were the type she’d trust with Pete’s grandchildren. “You can’t leave them, especially now. I’ll be fine.”