All Good People Here(37)

Schneider-Schmidt nodded slowly. “If they don’t want a reporter telling the story, though, why write the thing on the barn? One minute they’re drawing attention to it, the next they’re threatening people who listened? It seems a little…disorganized.”

“I don’t know.” Margot threw up her palms. “Maybe they’re not the same person.”

He nodded again, but it was indulgent, condescending. “We are looking into the barn note, Ms. Davies. And we’ll look into this too.” He nodded at the piece of paper. “I can promise you that.”

“And the woman I described? Are you gonna try to find her?”

Schneider-Schmidt narrowed his eyes, glanced down at his notes in front of him. “The woman with the…auburn hair.” He hesitated. “What is auburn, by the way?”

Margot’s eyes bulged. “It’s a mix between red and brown.”

“Huh. That sounds pretty. And you’ve only seen this woman the one time?”

She inhaled a long, deep breath. “Yes.”

“I have to be honest with you, Ms. Davies. A middle-aged woman doesn’t exactly fit the mold for the type of person to graffiti a barn wall. And since you’ve only seen her the once, it’s possible she hasn’t been following you. It’s possible you just bumped into each other.”

Margot wanted to scream. And it wasn’t because she wasn’t being taken seriously; it was because he was probably fucking right. In this conversation, she sounded like the irrational one, not Schneider-Schmidt. Was she being completely paranoid? Were all these messages just a part of some teenage boys’ prank? Was the auburn-haired woman just a woman walking outside a building Margot also happened to be outside of? Worst of all, was she wasting precious time trying to use this message on the barn to connect January and Natalie when there was, in fact, nothing to connect?

She stood slowly, pressed her palms onto the table top, and forced a polite smile. “Thank you for your time.”

She was on her way out of the police station’s double doors when she heard her name. “What?” she snapped, spinning around.

Pete Finch, who’d been jogging toward her, stopped in his tracks, his face stricken.

“Oh,” Margot said, feeling chastened. “Pete. Hi. Sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

“What’re you doing here?”

So, she told him.

“Oh shit,” he said when she finished. “No wonder you’re shaken up.”

But the truth was, it wasn’t just that note that had Margot feeling so irascible. It was everything. It was getting fired and getting that call from her old landlord. It was wondering how she was going to pay for an apartment she was no longer living in on top of everything else. It was seeing Natalie Clark’s face on the news every time she walked past a TV and the déjà vu it gave her from when she’d reported on Polly Limon three years ago. It was the gut feeling that something was happening that no one else could see and the conflicting, terrifying dread that maybe she was actually the blind one. It was being back in this claustrophobic town and watching her uncle, her favorite person in the world, slowly lose his mind.

“I’ll take a look at the report, okay?” Pete was saying when she tuned back in. “I’ll try to keep an eye out for that woman.”

Margot smiled weakly. “Why’re you being so nice to me?”

“I mean, it is my job.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re more diligent than the other guy.”

“Well. I guess it’s also a little bit of payback.”

“Payback? For what?”

He ducked his head. “Oh, come on. Don’t make me say it.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Third grade…? Recess…?”

Margot gave him a look.

“Wait. You really don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Well, shit. Now I wish I hadn’t brought it up.” Pete laughed, running a hand through his hair. “So, there was this one day during third-grade recess when I went to that part of the playground where no one really went, you know? With all the trees, and it was kind of lower than the rest?”

Margot nodded.

“I went down there because earlier, I’d been hanging out with a bunch of kids and Jordan Klein said something that cracked me up—I don’t remember what it was, but I laughed so hard, I sort of peed my pants.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah. Obviously, I was mortified and didn’t want anyone to see, so I just put my hands over my crotch and slunk away to the nearest place I could find that wasn’t swarming with kids. I couldn’t go to the bathroom because I would’ve had to cross right past that big red jungle gym where everybody used to hang out. Anyway, I was standing on the far side of this big tree, blocking myself from view of the rest of the playground, when suddenly, you appeared.”

Margot narrowed her eyes, his words dredging up the long-forgotten memory. “That’s right. I remember now.” As usual, she’d been reading in her favorite tree when she’d heard footsteps.

“I was trying not to let you see,” he continued. “But I guess you already knew, because you grabbed my arm and dragged me over to the water fountain no one ever used and started splashing water all over both of us. Remember how water fights used to be a thing? Every once in a while, two kids would try to see who’d get the other the wettest?”