When the Bough Breaks (Rose Gardner Investigations #6) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,36
more careful than Mark. That the cops were sniffin’ around. He said he wasn’t as stupid as him.”
“And you didn’t blurt any of that out?”
“Nope. Just the moan. And then Calista threatened to call the police.”
She made a strangled sound.
“Are you laughin’?”
“Of course not, honey,” she choked out, clearly trying to hide her giggles.
“This isn’t funny, Neely Kate! It was unprofessional! I’ll never be able to show my face there again.”
She burst out into laughter. “I know. I’m sorry. But I doubt she’ll call the police. Sounds like she wants to avoid them.”
Thank goodness she was probably right.
“We need to have someone follow her after she gets off work,” I said. “I’d do it, but I suspect she’d run me off the road, then beat me with a baseball bat for being a pervert. I was holding on to her shoulder when I…moaned.”
Neely Kate burst out laughing again. “Jed’ll take care of it. What’s she look like?”
“Strawberry blonde, freckles on her cheeks. I don’t know what kind of car she drives. I don’t even know her last name.”
“I’ll tell Jed. We both know he can work with what you’ve got. I’ll let you know when we find something.”
“If you find something,” I said.
“We will,” she said assertively. “We will.”
I hung up and took a deep breath. I hoped she was right. If not, I’d mortified myself for nothing.
Still parked in the restaurant lot, I finished filling out the paperwork, then sealed everything up in a mailer. It needed to go to the post office, but I picked up my phone again. It was time to move on to my first source.
Taking a deep breath, I scrolled through my contacts and sent Mason a text. I’d met with him back in November to tell him about the break-in at Violet’s attorney’s office and ask if he knew anything about Mike’s presumed criminal activities. He hadn’t heard anything, but he’d cautioned me to proceed carefully. The kids had lost their mother—did I really want to take their father from them too? I’d agreed with him at the time, but now I wondered if I should have pushed it. Could I have prevented this from happening?
Guilt ate at my stomach as I texted him.
There’s been a new development. Any chance you can meet with me today?
I stared at the phone for several seconds, hoping he’d respond right away, but the three telltale dots failed to appear, so I started the truck and proceeded to the post office. After I dropped the envelope in the mail, I headed out to Bruce Wayne’s job site. He and his crew were working on a gazebo in the client’s backyard, and it was over halfway finished.
He saw my truck pull up to the house and headed over to greet me.
“I checked out the azaleas,” I said, meeting him a few feet from the curb. “I think they’ve been poisoned.”
“Poisoned?”
I pulled out my phone and showed him the photos. “Stewart said they were perfectly fine last Friday, then they were dying by the time everyone returned to work on Monday. And now they’re pretty much dead.”
He frowned as he scrolled through the photos. “Does he know what happened to them?”
“No, and when I asked him if they’d dealt with any disgruntled employees or customers lately, he assured me they hadn’t.”
“Something happened to these bushes,” he said, still scowling. “They almost look burnt.”
“You think someone poured some type of acid or bleach onto the soil?”
“Maybe…?”
“I took a couple of soil samples and sent them off to Little Rock. We’ll need to replace the plants, but no sense doin’ that till we know something about the state of the soil.”
“Good thinkin’,” he said, “but if I’d thought you’d need to take samples, I never would have asked you to go.”
“It’s my job, Bruce Wayne.”
“Still…” he said, giving me a worried look.
I knew I was about to make him a whole lot more worried, but there was no avoiding it. I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Ashley and Mikey are missing.”
His head jutted back. “What? Why didn’t you lead with that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes burning. “I don’t like thinkin’ about it, I guess.”
“Rose…”
I told him everything I knew, from Mike’s ruse about the flu to Joe’s search of the house, leaving out only what Neely Kate and I had done.
“Is Joe issuin’ an Amber Alert?” he asked.
I stared at him in surprise. “I hadn’t thought about that.”