Big Ghosts Don’t Cry Read online

  “Who are Gerald and Winnie?”

  “Sabrina’s parents,” I said, turning back to face the street.

  Lucas nodded, as though he’d expected that answer. “So, they think Russ is good for it, too?”

  “Sure sounds like it.”

  With a final glance over his shoulder at the looming house, Lucas exhaled. “Looks like we need a new angle to get info. We just burnt that lead.”

  “Should we try to talk to Scott Putnam? Go straight to the source?”

  The idea alone made me nervous. Lucas pulled the full criminal record and it appeared he’d served time for two counts of aggravated assault following a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Both the girlfriend and boyfriend ended up in the hospital, and Mr. Putnam went to prison for three years. If there was an angry bear I didn’t want to poke, it was Scott.

  Lucas shook his head. “Not yet.”

  We headed back to the SUV.

  “Quick thinking with the PI thing,” I told him.

  “It wasn’t actually a lie,” he said. “I got my license a while back. I thought that might be what I wanted to do, back before I got into private security.”

  “Oh. Good to know.”

  The conversation with Gwen flashed back into my mind. There was still so much we didn’t yet know about each other. How many other surprises were left to uncover? And shouldn’t we unearth all of them before deciding on something as permanent as marriage?

  We stopped at the end of the driveway to wait for a passing school bus. Air brakes sounded and the bus pulled to a stop in front of the Hutchins’ house. When it pulled away, a teenage girl with strawberry blonde hair stood opposite us.

  “Is that Miranda?” I whispered.

  As the girl neared, the question answered itself. There was no denying the girl was Sabrina’s daughter. They had the same eyes and noses.

  “Hi,” Miranda said shyly as she approached.

  “Hello,” I replied. “Are you Miranda Hutchins?”

  The girl gave a tentative nod. “Yes. Do I know you?”

  “I knew your mom,” I told her. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Oh.” The girl’s face fell as her gaze drifted to the sidewalk. “Were you dropping off a casserole?”

  “Um, no,” I replied slowly.

  Miranda glanced up. “That’s usually why people come by. We have at least six lasagnas in the fridge, and the freezer is full of casseroles.”

  I smiled sadly. “I see.”

  Miranda adjusted her backpack straps and considered Lucas. “You a cop or something?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “You look like one.”

  I smiled. “Lucas runs a security company.”

  “Did my dad order a new system or something?” Miranda asked. “Some kind of feature for the new owners, I guess.”

  “Is the house for sale?” I asked.

  Miranda nodded. “The listing should be up next week. The real estate agent was here a few days ago, taking pictures.” The teen frowned. “She made me take all my posters down. She said they were distracting, but I think she just doesn’t like movies.”

  “I used to keep posters in my room, too,” I told her. “Where are you moving to?”

  “California,” Miranda answered. “My dad got a job offer down there a while ago. He just couldn’t take it until now.”

  “That’s right. I think Sabrina mentioned it.”

  Miranda scoffed. “That doesn’t surprise me. She told anyone who would listen for more than a few minutes, but if I asked about it, she wouldn’t answer any questions.”

  “That must have been frustrating,” I replied. “But I’m sure she was just trying to keep you focused on school and didn’t want to put you in the middle of anything.”

  “Oh, I was in the middle anyway.” She breathed a hollow laugh, shaking her head in disbelief. “They thought they were keeping me out of it, but I’m not an idiot. I could hear them arguing on the phone all the time. Half the reason I wanted my driver’s license was so we didn’t have to do the pickups and drop-offs anymore. Once I could drive, they wouldn’t have to see each other anymore.”

  I winced. “It was that bad?”

  She nodded glumly. “I know it wasn’t my fault they got divorced, but I was the reason they had to keep seeing each other, and every time they did, it was a bad day.”

  “I’m sorry, Miranda. That’s awful.”

  My own parents weren’t the picture of marital bliss, but I couldn’t remember them ever having full-on verbal battles. At least, not in front of me.

  “Was it always about the custody arrangement?” I asked.

  “Most of the time,” Miranda replied. “But sometimes they’d drag everything else into it. My dad’s affair, my mom’s OCD. All that crap.”

  “So, you wanted him to move?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “I would have missed him, but it sounded cool having a place by the beach. And it would have stopped the fighting.”

  My heart hurt for the girl. It couldn’t have been easy to be stuck in the middle of her parent’s game of tug-of-war.

  “Plus, it would have forced my dad to move on. He hasn’t even started dating again.”

  “You want him to start dating?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He doesn’t do well on his own. He works too much and eats like crap. He’s going to give himself a heart attack.”

  “Was your mom dating again? I don’t remember her mentioning anyone special.”

  “There was one guy. She didn’t want me to know,” Miranda said, her delicate features crinkling. “I broke my cellphone and she had me use hers while I waited for the company to send me a replacement. She had the dating apps in a locked folder on the phone, so I never got to see everything, but I knew she had the apps and for the few days I had her phone, she got messages like constantly.”

  “Were there any that stood out?” Lucas asked.

  Miranda shrugged. “I couldn’t see the messages, just the notifications. You know you have a new wink or RedTruck27 wants to connect. That kind of thing.”

  Lucas nodded. “Got it. And she never mentioned any specific men in her life?”

  Miranda shook her head. “Not like that, anyway. The one who messaged her the most was Sean, wait, no, Scott. Yeah. I think his name was Scott.”

  Lucas looked at me, his brows lifted. “Scott Putnam?”

  “Maybe.” Miranda shrugged. “I told Dad that Mom was dating again, you know, to try and nudge him along.”

  “How’d he take that?”

  “He didn’t seem to care. But he asked which app she was using. I guess so he could avoid that one. Can you imagine? If they’d been matched up?” Miranda smiled. “Maybe I should have planned some kind of digital Parent Trap.”

  “You wanted them back together?”

  “Not really, I guess. Mostly, I just wanted them to stop arguing over me. And part of me thought that maybe if we all moved to California, it could be a fresh start. Mom would have left her stressful job, Dad would have had his dream job, and we could have left all these problems behind. Maybe it would have worked itself out.”

  I smiled at the girl. Something about the wistful look in her eyes told me she knew her scenario wasn’t based in reality, but it was a comfortable daydream she’d constructed for herself.

  Miranda’s eyes glossed over. “I guess I’m getting part of what I wished for. I just wish my mom was going with us.”

  I swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry, Miranda.”

  The teen hurried to wipe at her eyes and shook her head. “Thanks. I should get going. My dad will wonder where I am. He’s been pretty protective since this all happened.”

  “Good luck with the move,” I called after her.

  She waved and then hurried up the driveway past us.

  I exhaled when she was gone. “She’s so young to have gone through all this.”

  Lucas nodded.

  We
got into Lucas’s SUV and he started the engine, though I wasn’t sure what our next move was. The dots were starting to line up, but they pointed in a direction we couldn’t follow.

  Chapter 14

  Chief Lincoln was happy to see us, at least, right up until the point where we told him we’d been digging around in his murder investigation. “So, let me get this straight, you think Russell Hutchins hired a hit man fresh out of state pen to murder his ex-wife because he wanted to move to California?” he said, alternating his skeptical glance between me and Lucas like a painstakingly slow tennis match. “And you know this how, exactly?”

  I drew in a breath and glanced at Lucas.

  “We found a burner phone in his trash.”

  I blinked, surprised he hadn’t attempted to sugar coat it.

  Chief Lincoln kept his poker face up, but he straightened in his chair and dropped his hands to the desk, linking his fingers together.

  “Uh oh, Dad’s mad,” Flapjack whispered.

  I ignored the spectral stowaway. He’d been at the flower shop when we got back from the Hutchins’ house and had insisted on tagging along to see Chief Lincoln.

  “I’m not sure what you expect me to do with this knowledge,” Chief Lincoln said. “If the phone was illegally obtained, I can’t use it or any of its data to get a warrant, let alone as evidence in a future trial.”

  “Do you have the victim’s phone?” Lucas asked. “She was using dating apps to meet men. It seems like it would be pretty easy to pull the information on the men she was in communication with. If Scott Putnam is among them, that should be enough for an interview, maybe a warrant.”

  Chief’s brow furrowed. “Wait, I thought Putnam is your proposed perp.”

  “Yes, he is. But we think he might have gotten to Sabrina through the dating app. Her ex knew she was a member because their daughter told him about it,” I explained.

  “There were no signs of a break in, right?” Lucas asked.

  “Nope,” Chief said, shaking his head.

  “So, it seems that whoever attacked her was welcome in her home. Someone like a new boyfriend.” Lucas glanced at me and then added, “Do you have the victim’s phone? I have the number Russ called on his burner. It’s linked to an account in Putnam’s name. If that number is in Sabrina’s phone, that connects all the dots and brings this thing full circle.”

  “We do have Ms. Hutchins’ phone,” Chief Lincoln replied cautiously. He hesitated and drew in a breath. “We can cross reference her call logs with the number you have for Putnam, but as far as going through dating app info, I’ll level with you and say we don’t have the resources we need to chase down leads like that. This case doesn’t even belong to our department. I’m acting as something of a backup for the Pine Shoals PD because they’re even smaller than we are.”

  “Well then let us help,” Lucas said.

  “He has his PI license,” I hurried to add. “Doesn’t that mean he can act as a consultant? Like you do with Nick Rivers?”

  Chief leaned back, mulling it over. “You have the tech to search her phone?”

  Lucas nodded. “I do.”

  “All right. I’ll give you an hour with the phone. Will that do?”

  I looked to Lucas.

  “I can make that work,” he said. “If I turn anything up pertaining to Putnam, you’ll be the first to know, Chief.”

  “I’ll do some digging into him as well,” Chief said. “Come back in an hour. I’ll have the phone brought over from the Pine Shoals station.”

  Lucas stood and I hopped up to join him. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know what possessed you two to get involved in this,” Chief said, shaking his head.

  “Don’t suppose he’d believe the devil made us do it?” Flapjack wondered.

  We said goodbye and left the station before he could change his mind.

  * * *

  Chief Lincoln held to his word and was there when we circled back to the station an hour later. He’d had his deputies comb through the call logs and recent calls listed on Sabrina’s phone but there was no record of Sabrina ever calling or texting with Scott Putnam.

  Lucas took a seat at one of the empty desks in the bullpen and started going through the phone. I watched nervously over his shoulder next to the chief. Lucas worked quickly, his fingers flying over Sabrina’s screen. Every few seconds, he paused to jot down information on the legal pad he’d brought along. After fifteen minutes, he twisted in the seat and handed the phone back to Chief Lincoln.

  “That’s it?” Chief Lincoln said, glancing at the phone resting in his open palm.

  “I got what I need,” Lucas said. “She kept a list of all her passwords saved as a draft in her email folder. I have the login for the dating app. So, I’ll dig in and see if maybe Putnam tried connecting with her that way. If not, maybe something else will jump out at me.”

  Chief Lincoln gave us each a wary look but didn’t voice his concerns. “All right. Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do. Thanks again, Chief.”

  The chief’s puzzled look only deepened as he slipped the phone back into an evidence bag and then shuffled to his office.

  We went back to my apartment and Lucas fired up his laptop. Within minutes, we were logged into Sabrina’s account and poring over the dozens of messages she’d received since becoming a member of the virtual dating service.

  “Whew. There are a lot of accounts here,” Lucas said.

  “I’m not surprised she had a lot of interest,” I said. “She was an attractive lady and she had her life together. The real question is how we’re going to find out who any of these people really are? None of them use real names. It’s all B-ball4Life and BobcatBill68.”

  Lucas started opening messages, and it didn’t take long before we both felt the need to take a long shower. Innuendos, propositions, and straight up dirty talk filled the majority of the messages.

  “Men are pigs,” I groused, sliding Lucas a side eye. “What is wrong with your species?”

  Lucas chuckled. “Hey, these guys are in a class of their own. I don’t claim any of them.”

  He clicked to the next message and a graphic image filled the screen. Lucas swore and quickly clicked out of it.

  “Gross.” I shuddered. “I’m gonna need some brain bleach to clean all that out.”

  “Tell me about it.” Lucas soldiered on, opening and closing message after message.

  I went to the kitchen and started opening cupboards. “Guess you know your place is secured, if that’s what’s waiting out there in single-lady territory.”

  Lucas laughed. “Good to know.”

  “So, the grocery situation around here is kind of pathetic,” I said, closing the cupboards and moving to the fridge.

  “I noticed that this morning,” Lucas said.

  “I’ll run out and grab some staples while you work on thinning out the pool of creepers.”

  Flapjack perked. “What day is it? Friday? Hmm. They should have salmon out at the market today.”

  “It’s disturbing that you have the fish schedule memorized,” I said.

  Lucas gave me a strange look.

  “Flapjack.”

  “Figured,” he said with a grin. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I grabbed my purse and keys from the hook by the door and headed out to my delivery van. The market was within walking distance, but I wasn’t in the mood to haul three bags of groceries back in the cold. Flapjack shimmered into the van’s passenger seat.

  “We’re not buying any fish,” I told him.

  He frowned, his whiskers twitching.

  “Where’s Hayward tonight?” I asked once we were out on the road. “Is he out with Gwen?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t ask. Mostly because I don’t care.”

  “How heartwarming.”

  Flapjack rolled his shoulders. “We’d be better off if he went to live with Gwen, if you ask me.”

  “You don’t mean that.”
<
br />   “Why not?”

  I smiled. “You can keep your little tough guy thing going if you want, but I know the truth. Hayward is your friend.”

  He grumbled something and stared out the passenger window. I pulled into a spot outside Thistle, Beechwood’s only market, and cut the engine. “You can come with me, but I don’t want any tantrums.”

  Good grief. Sometimes I really had to wonder about my life choices.

  Flapjack went his own way when we entered the store. Pouting, no doubt. I grabbed a basket and started making a mental list in my head of everything I needed to make dinner for the next few days. Thistle wasn’t a large grocery store, but they had a decent selection, and I didn’t usually have trouble finding what I needed. After winding through the produce department, I cut to the cold case, grabbed some beer and a bottle of sparkling water, then breezed through the freezer section, grabbing a few bags of ready-made meals. The kind that could make me feel like an accomplished cook, while in reality all I had to do was dump a bag of flash-frozen food into a pan and turn on a burner.

  There was one aisle left to go, but when I rounded the corner, I stopped short. Karla was standing halfway down the aisle, considering the ingredients label on a bottle of BBQ sauce. I tiptoed backward and bumped into another shopper.

  “Watch it!” the man barked, drawing Karla’s attention.

  “Scarlet?” she asked.

  I scurried out of the man’s way and then lifted a hand toward Karla. “Hi.”

  “Ugh. Small towns,” Flapjack muttered, appearing at my ankles. Apparently, he’d gotten his fill of fish stink for one night.

  “Tell me about it,” I mumbled.

  Karla set the bottle of sauce back on the shelf and came closer. “I was actually meaning to call you. Is there any news on the case?”

  “I’m working on it,” I told her quietly. Rocking back on my heels, I glanced around the tower of boxed soda stacked at the end of the aisle. Deeming the coast clear, I leaned back in, my voice low. “Are you sure there’s no way to call Sabrina back sooner? If I could just ask her a few questions things would really go a lot faster.”

  Karla shook her head. “I don’t have it in me yet. My magic is depleted.”