Missing Pieces(61)
“Hal’s right,” Celia said soothingly. “More than ever, we all need to stick together. It’s the only way we’re going to get through the next few days. Dean, why don’t you and Hal go to the funeral home so someone is there when they come back with Julia, and I’ll go with Jack and Sarah to see Amy’s attorney.”
“Of course you will.” Dean glared at Celia.
“What?” Celia challenged. “Do you want to go with Jack?” Dean pressed his lips together but didn’t answer.
“I don’t think we need three of us to go see the attorney,” Sarah said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice. Somehow Celia always seemed to be able to insert herself in Jack’s path. “Jack, you and Celia go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you later. Excuse me,” she said, needing to escape, not caring that her exit was abrupt. The tension and anger in the room was overpowering.
Sarah went upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom, grateful for the quiet. Was Dean jealous of Jack and Celia? In all of this Sarah hadn’t thought of Dean and how he felt about Jack and Celia’s past relationship. How would it feel to marry your cousin’s girlfriend, the girl Jack had plotted to run away with? Did he feel second best? Was he now comparing himself to his younger, fitter, more handsome cousin? Sarah could relate. Celia with her ethereal beauty. She exuded confidence and an elegance that Sarah wished to have. And if Sarah hadn’t witnessed that momentary lapse of anger when Celia had struck Dean, she would have thought she was the perfect wife.
Sarah stepped into the shower, turned on the tap and let the steady stream of hot water pour over her. She missed her girls, she missed her home and she missed her own large, beautifully tiled shower that Jack had spent hours constructing for her fortieth birthday gift. Now she stood beneath the meager spray of Celia’s showerhead until the hot water ran out.
She took her time dressing and as she was pulling her sweater over her head she caught sight of the closet door, slightly ajar. She thought of the shoe box with Jack’s name written on it on the closet’s upper shelf. Moving quickly, she pressed the button lock on the bedroom door. She opened the closet door, her eyes flying to the shelf. It was empty. Sarah pushed aside the heavy winter coats and checked the floor. Nothing. Someone had removed the box. Jack. She was sure of it. Had he known that she had come across the box the other day? Was there something inside it that he didn’t want her to see? Sarah shut the door in disgust. She quickly riffled through drawers filled with what looked like Celia’s old clothes and a tangle of discarded jewelry. No shoe box.
Reluctantly she went downstairs and was glad to see that no one was there, but annoyed that Jack hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. He had scrawled a note in his cramped handwriting explaining that he and Celia were going to see Amy’s attorney and then would go to the funeral home so they could be there when Julia’s remains arrived and finish up with the final funeral arrangements. A sudden surge of alarm flooded through her. The evidence box. She had left it in the trunk of the car. What if Jack and Celia had taken the rental car to see the attorney and for some reason opened the trunk? How would she explain how she came into possession of the documents?
She ran outside and with relief saw that the car was still where she parked it. She had to return the box to Margaret but wasn’t quite ready to. She felt that if she just had more time with the documents she could figure out what had happened, understand just why Jack had hidden so much from her. She dug through her purse in search of her keys, opened the trunk and peeked inside just to make sure the box was where she’d left it. She may not be able to hold on to the original documents any longer, but she could make copies of everything in the box if she hurried. Jack and the others would return from the funeral home soon to get ready for the wake, and she didn’t want to have to explain her absence.
She looked up the directions to the public library, climbed into the car and sped away from the farm, kicking up bits of gravel and dust, and leaving behind an opaque cloud in her rearview mirror.
Twenty minutes later she turned onto Franklin Street, a wide street lined with mature maples with leaves that had just begun to turn the jeweled tones of fall. By chance she passed the funeral home, a three-story structure painted white and trimmed in black. Such a large building for such a small town. She recognized Hal’s truck and pulled directly behind the battered white Ford. Sarah took a deep breath as the unmistakable silhouette of a low-slung black hearse crept slowly past. All of Sarah’s self-righteous anger trickled away, leaving her ashamed. There was a real person in that hearse. A wife, a mother, a beloved aunt. Sarah thought back to her own father’s funeral. At the time nothing else mattered, no one else mattered. She just wanted her father back, to see his face, to hear his voice one more time.
Sarah thought of the document she had spied in Gilmore’s office that mentioned the poison. If sodium fluoroacetate was the true cause of Julia’s death, how would Amy get access to it? It was a tightly regulated poison.
She pulled into a parking spot in front of the Sawyer County Public Library and looked through her purse for the thumb drive that she used to back up her Dear Astrid correspondence. If the library was up to twenty-first century standards, it would have a copy machine where she could scan all the documents to her thumb drive.
Unlike many of the buildings in Penny Gate, the library appeared to have been constructed in just the past few years. She stepped from the car and popped the trunk. Careful to make sure that the writing on the side of the cardboard box was hidden, Sarah entered the front entrance. She approached the circulation desk where a young man was bent over a stack of books.