“The same thing you were thinking when you went into that call today when you knew it wasn’t safe.” Collin shoved the last few bits of blood-covered gauze into the Piggly Wiggly bag and then twisted the handles together in a knot. His hands were still red. “I was thinking that my brother needed help. And I don’t care what your little police buddy has convinced you of—Caleb didn’t hurt anybody, much less Amelia. He’d step in front of a bullet to save your sister, you know that. Half of Broadlands knows it. I think even Steve knew it.”
She searched her thoughts on the crime, what she’d seen, where the bodies were, where the blood trail led as she spent those fifteen horrific minutes trying to keep her sister alive. Caleb didn’t shoot her sister, no, probably not, but she had to admit the likelihood that he’d shot Steve. The possibilities built up like a tower in her mind, an unstable, wobbly tower that might topple over at any moment.
“I don’t think Amelia was the target,” she said. “Travis thinks that Caleb and the masked guy were working together. That it was another disgruntled employee, and they were trying to get what they could from the safe. And if he really was in love with Amelia, then screwing Steve probably seemed like a great idea, don’t you think?”
“You and that Travis guy. You just follow him like a little puppy, don’t you?” Collin yelled, and then threw the bag he’d been holding. It missed Ellie but came close enough to blow free the strand of hair she’d been putting behind her ear all day, and the discarded medical shears clanked loudly against the wall.
“Collin, what the—” Her normally calm and loving Collin, the one with gentle, healing hands, was now leaning in close enough that Ellie could tell the difference between the flecks of orange on his face that were freckles and the ones that were blood spatter. She scrambled backward, suddenly scared in a different way.
“Don’t you get it? Caleb didn’t need any money. He’s got tons of it. Tons. Your loser brother-in-law is the one with the money problem. If you want to follow the money trail, I’d tell your friend Officer Friendly to start there.”
“He’s not . . .” Ellie started to defend herself about Travis again, but another thought crashed through her. “Wait, how did Caleb get so much money?”
Collin stood up and straightened his shirt and pants as though about to head into a meeting. They were also spotted with blood. She could only imagine that he’d tried to assist Caleb without turning on any lights. He leaned over and opened the cabinet door Ellie had just smashed with the side of her hand and pulled out a white bottle with a molded plastic handle. Bleach.
“I can’t believe you don’t know this already, being such a big Steve fan.” Collin pulled up the silver stopper on the back of the sink and turned on the hot water with one flick of his wrist. As the steaming water started to fill the sink, he opened the child-safety cap and poured the yellowish liquid in. The sting of the bleach reached Ellie’s eyes, making them flood with tears. “Steve’s a bookie.” Collin said it simply like he was telling Ellie about some food allergy or what college Steve had attended.
“A bookie?” Ellie asked, annoyed. She was more than done with Collin’s sarcasm and obfuscation. “Broadlands doesn’t need a bookie, Collin. There are maybe two people who would even want to bet on anything more significant than who will catch the biggest fish at the derby this year.”
“I’m not making it up. Didn’t Amelia know about this?” Collin glanced at Ellie, who was still keeping her distance after his outburst, then slid open one of the drawers under the sink and retrieved an old towel, dunking it in the hot, bleachy water.
“I’m positive Amelia didn’t know about any of this,” Ellie said, crossing her arms. “That’s if it’s even true.”
“It’s true,” Collin responded as he climbed up on the edge of the tub and fiddled with the rings holding up the plastic shower curtain. Focused on the work of covering up all signs of Caleb’s visit, Collin’s report sounded so matter-of-fact that it seemed almost more convincing than if he’d sat down and seriously explained things.
“And he’s not just a bookie for Broadlands. He’s mostly a bookie for the college kids. But Caleb is apparently really really good at picking the winning teams. For a long time, Steve was paying him twice his salary nearly every week. He’s been paying my parents’ mortgage since my dad had to retire because of his back. But then Steve made a ‘no employees’ rule, and Caleb was back to his normal salary, not that it mattered. His bank account is pretty stuffed still. Mom told me that Caleb had started looking at places to buy in town.”
He unclipped the last shower-curtain ring, and the stiff fabric fell down into his arms. He wrapped it up into a ball and tossed it on top of the growing pile of garbage. Without pausing, Collin took the bleach towel, squeezed out a large stream of pinkish water, and went to work wiping down the tub. It was more housework than Ellie had ever seen him do in their whole relationship. She found herself mentally colluding, making a list of all the things that would need to be replaced. The carpet, the towels, the toilet paper.
“Then why doesn’t he just come in and tell the police everything?” she asked, not convinced but willing to dig deeper if it meant finding out what happened to her sister. It might be a wasted use of her energies, searching, questioning, hunting, but it was also the only thing that numbed her pain. “I mean, there is no reason to keep up this fa?ade anymore, and he could break the case wide open. He could clear his name.”
“I don’t know, Ellie.” Collin paused in his cleaning, and the tender part of the man she’d said yes to just six weeks ago was back. “He was really scared, but I don’t think it was just the police he was scared of. It was . . . something else.”
Ellie took a deep breath, the bleach fumes filling her lungs and burning as they settled there. She let the breath out in a loud rush, her head spinning from the confrontation and the chemicals.
“I guess we will know a lot more when . . .”
Ellie was cut off midsentence by a loud knocking at the front door and a booming voice that echoed through the tiny apartment and beat against her eardrums for the second time that day.
“Police, open up!”
CHAPTER 22
AMELIA
Monday, April 25
Two weeks earlier