THIRTY FOUR
Making a list of one’s enemies is a humbling chore.
I had to think of all the things I’d done over the years that might piss people off, no matter how small.
But the truth was, I couldn’t think of a single person who might be angry enough with me to try and set me up for murder. I always tried to be nice to people I met. I was always the first one to volunteer for something when no one else was willing. I was the one piling kids in my car to run them home when their parents had somewhere else to be. I was usually the one trying to placate everyone when tensions grew.
It didn’t mean I didn’t ever rub people the wrong way or have people irritated with me. I immediately thought of the real estate agent Thornton had hired to sell our McMansion. Bambi Riggs. Thornton had thought her name was cool; little did I know he’d also been dating her. She’d produced black and white brochures riddled with misspellings and refused to correct them; she then tried to get us to sell to the first person who put in an offer—at thirty percent below our asking price. I’d told Thornton that if he didn’t fire her, I would. It had been tense, but I didn’t think Bambi had the intellect to concoct something as complicated as framing me for murder.
I thought harder. There was the Wal-Mart greeter who constantly asked to see my receipt when I bought unbaggable items like toilet paper and giant jugs of orange juice—and who I always refused. The school nurse who flew off the handle when she saw I’d exempted Emily from the chicken pox vaccine. The homeschool moms who constantly invited me to Bible Study and my kids to youth group, and who we’d politely turn down. There were always frowns and shaking heads when we said no, over and over again. Emily’s English teacher this year, with whom I’d exchanged several curt emails as I struggled to understand why, in Honors Lit, they still hadn’t read a novel and it was already well into the second semester.
None of those people were enemies. They were just every day problems and nuances that people dealt with on a daily basis.
I sighed. I wasn’t going to say I was perfect, but I just didn’t make enemies.
I was staring at the blank yellow legal pad without any enemy names when Sophie walked into our room, rubbing her eyes.
She yawned. “Is my dad asleep?”
I smiled and pointed at him. He was flat on his back, his mouth open, snoring quietly.
“Okay,” she said.
“You okay?” I asked.
She stood there, still rubbing her eyes, then shrugged.
“Come here,” I whispered.
She came around to my side of the bed and I held out my arms. She climbed up onto the bed and laid down on me. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her.
I’d worried the most about her when Jake and I got married. She was the one who was being uprooted and being thrust into a family that was completely different from what she’d known before. A new state, new siblings and new friends. Everything was new to her, including me. So I’d worried about her and how she was going to feel about her new life.
But she was like Jake. She was even-keeled, accepting, easy going. She was a happy kid and she didn’t seem to be fazed by being thrown into the fire that was our new family. Jake told me over and over again how much she wanted to come to Minnesota, to have siblings and a stepmom, but I’d remained dubious..
And now? After she’d gotten here and settled in?
It felt like she’d always been here.
“Bad dream?” I whispered.
“Kind of,” she admitted. She looked at me, her blue eyes wide. “There were these dragons and they were trying to get into our car.”
“And that was just kind of a bad dream?”
She giggled. “Well, I couldn’t tell if they were friendly or not. But then one of them set the garage on fire. That’s when I woke up.”
“I’m glad you woke up,” I said, squeezing her and kissing the top of her head. “You wanna sleep in here with us?”
She wiggled against me. “My dad always says he likes it better when we sleep in our own beds.”
I knew he did. I’d always had an open door policy for my room and the kids were used to rotating through like it was a revolving door. Sometimes there’d be one in the bed with me and sometimes all three would pile in. It never bothered me. Jake was a different story. He preferred our bed to have two people in it: me and him.
“Look at him,” I whispered in her ear. “I don’t think he’ll even know.”
She raised her head up and giggled again. “Okay.”
She slid off of me, in between me and her dad, but she kept her arms around me. I pulled the blankets over us, switched off the light, and snuggled up next to her.
Maybe I did have enemies I couldn’t place or name or remember.
I was just glad that Sophie wasn’t one of them.
THIRTY FIVE
I woke up before the sun, my mind still spinning, trying to figure out who might have it in for me.
I couldn’t come up with a name, so I focused on Helen again.
And before the sun came up, I had a plan.
Sort of.
Jake was up and out of bed early, rolling his eyes when he saw Sophie buried under the sheets. I just shrugged and smiled and extricated myself from her arms. I headed downstairs to get a cup of coffee while Jake showered. Twenty minutes later, he was dressed and herding Emily out the door so he could drop her off before heading to an early morning meeting at the plant.
I waited for Jake’s car to round the corner before I went back upstairs. I peeked in on Sophie; she was splayed out across my bed. I glanced into the room she shared with Grace. She was dead asleep, her mouth hanging open, her bedraggled stuffed teddy tucked under her arm.
I crossed the hall, wincing as the floor squeaked under my feet. I sat down on the edge of Will’s bed and, after a moment’s hesitation, touched his shoulder. He made some unintelligible noise and burrowed deeper under his blankets. I touched his shoulder again, shaking him a little this time. He cracked one eye open and frowned at me.
“Good morning,” I whispered.
“Why are you waking me up?” he grumbled.
“I need your help.”
He stared at me blankly and then closed his eyes.
“Will. Did you hear me?”
“Okay,” he said, pulling the blanket over his head. “Give me a couple minutes.”
I knew a couple minutes meant a couple hours. And I didn’t want to wait.
I peeled the corner of the blanket back. “No. Like, now.”
He sighed under the blankets. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Ten,” I said, relenting. “I’ll be downstairs. And don’t wake up your sisters.”
His response was to grab his pillow and put it over his head.
I was in the kitchen, nursing my second cup of coffee and waiting for a bagel to finish toasting when he stumbled downstairs.
He crashed on the sofa, pulled his knees to his chest and grabbed the cream-colored afghan draped over the armrest. “I should not be awake,” he complained.
“I know,” I said, sitting down on the couch next to him. “I’m sorry. But I really need your help.”
“Right now? You need my help right this second?”
“Yes.” The bagel popped up in the toaster and I stood up and walked back into the kitchen.
I buttered the bagel and brought it over to Will. “Here you go.” I thrust the plate in his direction.
He stared at the bagel. “Who eats this early?”
“People who are awake.”
He sighed and righted himself on the couch. He took the plate and, after a minute, picked up the bagel and took a bite. I went back to the kitchen, poured him some orange juice and brought it over to him.
He finished the bagel and drained the juice. “This is freaking me out,” he said.
“What is?”
“You letting me eat breakfast in the living room.” He stared at me. “You never do that.”
I shrugged.
He eyed me suspiciously. “Did someone else die?”
“No,” I said. “No.”
“Well, it must be something big if you’re making me breakfast and letting me eat on the couch.”
Little punk.
“I just need some help,” I said.
“You said that before,” he said, pulling the blanket up to his neck. He looked like one of the Lost Boys, with his sleepy eyes and hair standing up on end. “With what?”
“With computers.”
Will was the undisputed computer expert in the house. He could build them, he could reprogram them and he could find nearly anything on the Internet. He loved video games and he was constantly playing around with writing his own software and creating his own games. He had a following on YouTube where he posted videos about the games he played. I didn’t understand most of it, but I knew he was good at it and I had no doubt he was going to end up doing something professionally with computers.
“Are you locked out of yours again?” He stifled a yawn. “I told you. All you have—”
“I’m not locked out,” I said, mildly irritated. I’d gotten locked out of my laptop one time and now anytime I had a problem, he immediately went to that. “It’s…more than that.”
He yawned again and closed his eyes.
I sat down next to him, accidentally coming down on his feet. He groaned and shifted away from me. “How hard is it to get into someone’s account?” I asked.
He opened an eye.“What do you mean?”
“Like, how hard is it to find someone’s password to get into their account?”
“Do you know the username?”
I paused, then shook my head. “No.”
“So you need a username and a password,” he said. He closed his eyes again and I thought he was done dispensing advice. But, with his eyes still shut, he said, “What kind of account?”
“It’s from a dating website.”
His eyes flew open. “What?”
“Not for me,” I said quickly. “I’m just…I’m looking for some information.”
“Is this about the dead guy?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Could you do it?” I asked. “If I asked you to?”
“You want me to hack?” The corner of his mouth turning upward.
“No.”
“Well, that’s what I’d have to do if you want someone’s username and password. It’s totally hacking.”
I hated the sound of that word. It just sounded bad. He used it all the time when people were cheating at games or modifying software. He was usually critical of it, too. He had my sense of fairness and rule-following.
Most of the time.
“Let’s not worry about what it’s called,” I said. “Could you do it?”
He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Probably. As long as the encryption isn’t totally brutal, I can probably figure it out. And even if the encryption is crazy—”
I cut him off. “Alright, alright,” I said. I didn’t think I wanted to know just how much my thirteen-year old knew about the cyber world. “So you could do it. I need you to do it.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “What’s in it for me?”
“You got to eat in the living room.”
He made a face. “That’s not a fair trade. You want me to hack some website for you. I could get in trouble.”
“Ten bucks,” I said. “And you won’t get in trouble. I’m your mom and I’m giving you permission.”
“Fifty,” he said. “I’m not worried about you. What if the police find out?”
I was pretty sure Detective Hanborn wouldn’t care that an underage kid had hacked a dating web site. In fact, I was pretty sure no one would care. “Twenty-five,” I countered. “And I’ll take the blame.”
“Forty,” he said. “It’ll take me awhile and I might have to download some new software to do it.”
I sighed. “Thirty. And that’s my final offer. Take it or I’ll make you do it, anyway. And you’ll get nothing.”
He frowned, ready to argue but he must have noticed the look on my face because his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Okay. Thirty bucks. Deal.”
We shook hands.
“How long will it take you?” I asked.
He kicked off the blanket. “I’ll grab my computer. Write down the site and what you need. Maybe an hour. Probably less.”
I grabbed a piece of paper from the printer and scribbled down the web address for Around The Corner and Helen Stunderson’s name. He came back downstairs with his laptop and his gaming headphones, a black and green pair that looked like something the ground crew would wear at the airport. He set his laptop on the dining table, powered it up and glanced at the sheet of paper.
“So what is this about, exactly?” he asked. The screen lit up and he typed in his password. His eyes flew back to the paper in front of him. “Isn’t this the same last name as the dead guy?”
I didn’t want to go into details, especially when I wasn’t sure what I was looking for in the first place. “I’m just trying to figure something out,” I told him. “Find a missing piece.”
He glanced at me. “Like a puzzle?”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “And, uh, let’s not mention this to anyone else.”
He nodded and slipped his massive headphones on over his ears. “Gimme a little bit.”
I knew how much he hated it when his sisters watched him play games over his shoulder, so I did my best to busy myself and kill time while he worked. I did the first round of breakfast dishes and brewed another pot of coffee. My phone rang and, when I saw it was Brenda, I picked up and we made plans for getting together the following week. By the time she and I hung up, a half hour had gone by and Will was still parked in front of his computer, studying the screen, a look of intense concentration on his face.
I went back in the kitchen and started hauling out ingredients for a chicken crockpot recipe I’d found online. I chopped celery and carrots and onions and cut chicken into bite-size pieces and dumped them into the pot. I added broth and seasonings and was just settling the lid on top when I heard Will’s headphones hit the table with a thud.
“Done.”
I hurried over to the dining room table. “Yeah?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m in.”
A ridiculous thrill ran through me. I went to my wallet and pulled out a twenty and a ten. I handed over the money. “Write down the username and password.”
He folded the money into his hand. “You don’t want to just get on right now?” He gestured at the screen. “I’m already in for you.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I need to wake your sisters up,” I told him.
But it was more than that. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told him earlier that he wouldn’t get in trouble for doing it.
He wouldn’t.
But I needed to make sure the illegal snooping I was about to do was done on my computer, not his. Just in case Detective Hanborn got wind of it.