CHAPTER 24
Lizzy walked to her car, frustrated and tired. She hadn’t been sleeping well. The notion that someone had taken Shelby was too much for her. And then there were the people on Melony’s list—targets, every one of them.
And the man who was watching her.
Fuck this life of hers.
Not a day went by that Lizzy didn’t feel his eyes on her, crawling over her skin like a tick looking for its host—sensing body heat and vibrations.
And yet the cameras Tommy had hooked up in the front yard and backyard had yet to show anything tangible: deer, raccoon, the usual culprits you would expect to see on any given night.
Once she was inside her car, she looked over the list of names Melony Reed had provided her. She stopped at Dean Newman. According to Melony’s scribbled notes, Dean had grown up in a wealthy family. His father owned Merrick’s Lumber and Hardware. The way Melony told it, the things Dean had done in high school ended up being too much for him and drove him to drink. Sounded to Lizzy like this could just as easily be Melony’s own guilt talking, but who knew? Whatever the reason, Dean was definitely a drunk. Kicked out of college in his junior year, he’d moved back home and even ended up on the street for a short time until he’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous. As far as Melony knew, he’d stayed sober since then.
A quick check with DMV records provided her with an address in Roseville. It was a nice house at the end of a cul-de-sac off East Roseville Parkway near the Galleria mall. It was past ten in the morning when she knocked on the front door.
A woman answered with a burp rag thrown over her shoulder and a baby in her arms. Judging by the dark shadows under her eyes, she hadn’t slept any better than Lizzy had.
“I don’t want any,” she said.
“I’m not selling anything. I need to talk to Dean Newman. Does he live here?”
“You tell me,” the woman said. The baby began to cry, and she moved the infant from one arm to the other. She started to walk away and said over her shoulder, “Come on in and shut the door behind you.”
Lizzy stepped inside.
Big mistake. Had she known the woman was going to wheel around and plop the baby in her arms, she never would have followed her. “I’m not good with babies,” Lizzy warned her. “I haven’t held a baby in years. I might drop her.”
“It’s a boy,” the woman said from the kitchen. She held a bottle beneath the water, waiting for it to heat up. “You’re doing just fine.”
Lizzy had to agree. The tiny human in her arms had stopped crying, and he was looking up at her with bright-blue watery eyes.
“Nobody ever told me taking care of a baby would be so hard,” the woman said from the kitchen. “All of my friends made it look easy. They all said breast-feed, cuddle, change the diaper, and repeat. What a crock of shit. Blake refuses to breast-feed. He cries when I cuddle him. And he won’t sleep for more than ten minutes at a time. I’m at my wits’ end.”
“I’m sorry,” Lizzy said, wondering what to do now that Blake was grabbing fistfuls of her hair and pulling. He was stronger than he looked. It hurt, but she didn’t want to make him cry, so she let him be. When his chubby fingers got a little too close to her nostrils, she made googly eyes at the kid and then lifted her chin. Blake must have found her amusing because he giggled.
“Did he just laugh?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzy said. “I think so.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Stay right there. Don’t move. I need to get my camera.”
Lizzy’s bottom lip was being twisted and pulled.
“Blake, that really hurts,” she told him. “Maybe you should go back to pulling my hair.”
He smiled.
“You’re pretty cute, but you already know that, don’t you?”
He started to coo and gurgle.
“OK,” the woman said as she returned to Lizzy’s side. “Do it again. Make him laugh.”
“I don’t think I can. I have no idea what I did the first time.”
“Maybe it’s your voice. I’ll just keep the video running while you talk . . . about anything.”
“Let’s talk about Dean Newman.”
As if on cue, the baby laughed.
“You did it! He laughed.”
Blake did laugh. And then he proceeded to spit up on Lizzy’s shirt.
The woman stopped recording and handed Lizzy a rag.
Lizzy cleaned herself as best she could, considering she still cradled the baby in her arms. She followed the woman back to the kitchen and tried to hand Blake to her, but she wouldn’t take him. “I’m sorry,” Lizzy said, “but I really don’t have time for this. I need to get going.”
“I thought you wanted to know about Dean.”
“I do, but I’ve been here for almost fifteen minutes and I know more about Blake than I do Dean.”
“Fine,” the woman said in a huff, crossing her arms. “Dean and I have been living together for five years now. He’s also Blake’s father. Three days ago, Dean came home from work and told me he needed to deliver another one of his stupid letters apologizing to someone he feels he may have slighted in high school.”
Lizzy waited for the woman to continue, but that seemed to be the end of the story. “Are you saying he never returned?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. He’s done this before. Every once in a while he falls off the wagon and doesn’t return home for days.”
“Did you report him missing?”
“Nah, what would be the point? He’ll come back. It might be another day or two, but he’ll come back to me with a bouquet of roses in his hands and a mountain of apologies. This is exactly why I won’t marry him. He’s not ready. It’s sad, really,” she said as she reached for Blake, took him into her arms, and held him close. “He’s missing out on so much.”
Now that Lizzy was empty-handed, she felt a strange sense of loss that confused her. It took her a moment to figure out what she wanted to say. “Could you let me know if Dean returns? I really do need to talk to him.”
The woman reached up and smacked her forehead with her free hand. “Oh, my God! I’m sorry. Ever since Blake was born, I’ve been out of sorts. I haven’t even asked you your name or why you’re even looking for Dean.”
“My name is Lizzy Gardner. I’m an investigator.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I recognize your name. What could you possibly want with Dean?”
“A woman he went to high school with hired me to investigate a string of accidents.”
“I don’t understand. Does she think Dean was involved in these accidents somehow?”
“No, not at all. Dean is on the list of people she’s concerned about. She and Dean and others had formed a group when they were in high school together—the Ambassador Club.”
“I’ve heard Dean mention that club before.”
“Melony Reed, the woman who hired me, was worried that people in the Ambassador Club were being targeted.”
“So she thinks Dean could be in danger?”
“Yes. The list of letters you talked about Dean delivering . . . you wouldn’t happen to know or recall the names of the people he’s been apologizing to, would you?”
“No. I never asked. I feel like a dunce. I should have talked to him about it, asked him more questions. What if he’s been hurt?”
“I’ll leave my card right here on the kitchen counter,” Lizzy told her. “If Dean returns or you remember anything at all about the people he was setting out to apologize to, I’d appreciate it if you could give me a call.”