Saltwater Secrets - Amelia Addler Page 0,55
you know, sprayed you.”
“Oh I remember,” he said, turning to put some bread into the toaster.
“You kept saying that you’d tell us anything that we wanted to know. What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I was under duress. You can’t take anything I said seriously.”
“I just need to know if someone else is going to come after me.”
He sighed and took a seat across from her at the table. “I don’t think so. But your troubles are far from done.”
A chill ran down Jade’s back. “What do you mean? All we have now are the final presentations for county council, and then the vote. I thought after that I’d be left in peace.”
He sat back, arms crossed. “Maybe, maybe not. You know – powerful people want you out of the picture.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. Because they’re powerful people – you don’t cross them.”
Jade let out a sigh. This is probably where Morgan would threaten Eddie and say that she’d been recording the entire time.
But Jade didn’t work like that. So far, this entire ordeal was handled by people other than her. And sure, maybe her denial stage went on a bit too long. But she was the one with the broken window, the burglarized house, and the fire. She was the one that had to deal with all of this – and she wanted to be the one to end it.
“Would you say these powerful people had the idea for…breaking into my car?”
He nodded.
“And then sneaking into my house?”
“Sort of – that was just to spook you. Not to steal anything, just to scare you off.”
“And the fire?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed them with his hand. “Let’s say powerful people wanted the heat turned up. And they used the phrase ‘turn up the heat.’ ”
Jade sat back. “Wow. So what comes after that?”
Eddie put his hands up. “I swear I don’t know! That really freaked me out. I don’t want anything to do with it and I stopped taking his calls.”
Jade narrowed her eyes. “Whose calls?”
The toaster popped and Eddie got up to fetch his breakfast. Toast let out a little whine, clearly expecting that some of it must be for him.
“I told you already that I can’t say.”
Jade watched him for a moment. He wasn’t a monster – he clearly felt bad about what he’d done. It was a comfort that he didn’t mean to kill her – he was an idiot, sure, but he wasn’t a killer. She could work with that.
“Did you know that by the time that I woke up, my entire bedroom was filled with smoke? I could hardly see anything and I couldn’t take a breath without choking.”
Eddie flinched.
Jade stared at him for a moment before continuing. “If Matthew hadn’t showed up when he had, I would be dead.”
She sat back. Jade wouldn’t break the silence – she was much more comfortable with it than most people.
“That’s awful,” he finally said.
“It was. But I’m still alive. And I’m not going to give in that easily. Will you help me?”
He paced across the room once, twice before tossing the crust of his bread into the sink, much to Toast’s dismay.
“Alright, I’m in. What were you thinking?”
Chapter 22
As expected, Chief didn’t think that they could do much about Eddie.
“Even if we got a warrant, what’re we going to find at this point?” he said.
“Yeah,” Matthew replied with a sigh. “And I’m disappointed I didn’t figure it out sooner. Maybe we could’ve recovered some sort of evidence, at least with the fire.”
Chief nodded. “Yeah, but it’s long gone now. I don’t fault you for it. We didn’t have much to go off of – and Margie was a woman on a mission.”
“Did you know what she was doing?”
Chief shrugged. “Not exactly. I knew that she was up to something – and I knew that she was spending a lot of time worrying about Jade, checking up on her, you know. It seemed like she didn’t want me asking questions, though, so I let her do her thing. I trust her.”
“Of course.”
Chief continued. “She just followed her gut, really. And it sounded like she got Eddie pretty good.”
“Yeah, I think so. He was still scared when I went and talked to him.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by too,” Chief said with a laugh. “I can’t believe he would do something as dumb as starting a fire. Actually – I can believe it. But, you know.”
“Unfortunately, he’s not