When she was done, Sam had rescued the cat from the tree and smoothed over things at the fender-bender scene. The day was done, so they both headed home.
After making a pit stop at one of the stores near the Laundromat, Jo drove the police car to her small cottage in the woods. They often took the cars home if they’d been out late. Her own car, a Volkswagen, sat in the lot in town. She liked the Crown Vic better.
She took a cardboard box carefully out of the trunk. On the porch, she balanced the box on her hip and dipped her index finger into the planter full of purple pansies that sat on the porch railing. It was still cold for annuals, but pansies liked the cold. The dirt inside the box was cool and damp.
The wooden screen door of the cottage was thick with layers of chipped paint and squeaked when she pulled it open. The front door had almost as much paint, but the lock was new and shiny, and she put her key in and pushed the door open.
Inside, the cottage was small but cheery. Once a seasonal camp, it had been converted to year-round and had been painted in light colors. Jo had furnished it with comfortable overstuffed furniture from thrift stores and yard sales. It was all chipped, worn paint, large floral and striped prints, and muted colors. She supposed the decorating magazines would have referred to it as cottage chic, but she’d just cobbled together the best value for her budget.
She passed through the living room, the wide pine floorboards creaking as she made her way to the kitchen, which had been remodeled extensively. The ceiling rose up in a peak, and the old wooden cabinets had been painted a sunny shade of yellow. They stretched all the way to the ceiling—too high for Jo to store anything on the top shelf without getting on a step stool even though she was five foot seven.
Jo put the box on the butcher-block countertop. She carefully pulled out the small round goldfish bowl and set it on the counter. She leaned over so her face was at counter height and peered in at the fish. Its orange-gold fins flapped as it turned to face her. She wondered what she looked like from his perspective. Probably just a gigantic distorted face like when you looked in a fun-house mirror.
She took the jar of flake food out of the box and pinched one tiny flake between her index finger and thumb. She dropped it on the surface of the water. The fish zoomed up and devoured it, practically jumping out of the bowl to do so. He must have been hungry.
She contemplated putting another flake in, but Irving down at the pet store had warned her about overfeeding the fish. Too much food produced too much waste and could turn the water toxic. He’d also suggested a small tank with a filter. Fish bowls apparently weren’t the best environment for keeping fish in. She’d consider that later—best to see how this worked out first.
She sat at the old farmer’s table to admire her new companion. She thought about Lucy with her bright eyes and wagging tail. Reese had taken her back to the shelter. Jo hoped the dog would find a loving family. Maybe someday she could graduate from a goldfish to something with four legs.
When she’d come to White Rock four years ago, she hadn’t expected to be there very long. It had seemed smarter to rent. That way she could pick up and leave once she’d finished her business. She’d told Sam in the interview that she needed a change of pace—someplace more rural. That was only half true. He didn’t need to know the real reason she was here. But as time had marched on, she’d come to love the job and love working with Sam. The real reason had faded into the background.
She’d never imagined she’d want to put down roots, but she’d come to love her cottage. It was small, but perfect for just one person. Her favorite part was the setting. It was secluded, set by itself in the woods, surrounded by pine trees and wildlife. To the east she had a view of the mountains, and there was a bubbling creek out back. It had the comfortable, secure feeling of home.
She supposed it wouldn’t be so bad to settle down here. Maybe she could buy the cottage. She didn’t have family to draw her to any other area.
Thoughts of her family stirred unpleasant memories. Images of the empty chair at the table where her eight-year-old sister, Tammy, should have been sitting. Her mother’s vacant eyes. Her father’s anger. The hollow, empty feeling that Jo should not have had to experience at the tender age of ten.
After Tammy had disappeared, there had been a flurry of activity. People searching. Cops asking questions. Jo had been terrified and intrigued at the same time. And sad. Especially when she would peek into her sister’s room every morning, hoping that she’d see Tammy there. Hoping it had all been a bad dream. But instead she saw Tammy’s toys sitting alone exactly in the same place Tammy had left them the last afternoon she’d played with them. It was almost a year before her mother even went in the room and picked them up.
Jo had snuck in herself a few times, though. Somehow, she knew her mother wouldn’t want her in there. But she’d had to go in. To touch Tammy’s favorite purple shirt. To smell the scent of her that still clung to her pillow. To wish her back.
But Tammy never came back.
Eventually, the activity died down. And then Jo was left with only her mother, her father, and her older sister, Bridgett. The idyllic childhood Jo had known up to that point vanished, replaced by a cold and empty existence.
The grief had sent her mother to an early grave and turned her father into a stranger. She hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Bridgett had eventually turned to drugs. She lived a few towns over. That was one of the reasons Jo had moved here. But Bridgett had refused all the attempts Jo had made to help her.
She hadn’t made a lot of friends since she’d come to town, but that was just as well. Friends would want to come over to her place, and coming over to her place might mean looking through her things, and, well… she couldn’t have that.
Sam was about the closest thing to a friend that she had, unless you counted Marisol, who did her hair down at the salon. Sometimes they went out for beers and had even gone shopping a few times together. She liked Mari’s quirky sense of humor and her down-home common sense.
But she didn’t share nearly as much with Mari as she did with Sam. It made sense because Jo and Sam worked together every day. They had to trust each other; their lives depended on it. But, even so, their relationship had boundaries. Jo and Sam did their hanging out at Spirits. They’d only been to each other’s houses a few times. Which was just fine with Jo. She didn’t get close to people. What was the point of getting close to someone when they could just be ripped out of your life forever without even a moment’s warning?
Jo reached over to the hutch that sat against the wall and pulled out a pencil and pad of paper and started scribbling down clues. Sometimes just brainstorming was a good way to get the mind working on solving a case. But it wasn’t just the Palmer case she needed to think about. She hadn’t told Sam about seeing Dupont and Thorne going to Lago. She hadn’t told him about Kevin lying about being in there either. Truth was, she didn’t know if Kevin actually was lying. He only said he didn’t have lunch—maybe he was in Lago for some other reason.
It was possible Dupont and Thorne were just there at the same time as a coincidence. It didn’t mean they were having some sort of nefarious meeting. Jo knew she shouldn’t make assumptions. She’d gotten in trouble for that before at other jobs, but what had happened to her sister had given her a suspicious nature, causing her to always think the worst. Heck, she even suspected there was more to Tyler’s shooting than met the eye when she had no good reason to think it.
She didn’t want Sam to think she was the type that always jumped to the worst conclusions. She wanted him to value her opinion, and the only way to do that was to back her suspicions up with evidence.