Devil's Food Cake (24 page)

“It’s Mrs. Hoffmiller—Shawn’s mom and your third-grade teacher.”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said carefully. “Sorry about that. Nobody calls me Jonathan anymore. I thought you were a collection agency.”

“I’m sorry to bother you but, well, I don’t have my phone where I programmed Shawn’s phone number and I really need to call him. I wondered if you had it?”

“Shawn’s cell?” Jonathan repeated.

Sadie didn’t remember him being so slow in the third grade. “Yes, Shawn’s cell.”

“Well, yeah, I’ve got it. Hang on a minute.”

Sadie covered the mouthpiece and turned to Eric. “Do you have a pen?”

Eric flipped open the glove compartment, producing a pen just as Jonathan returned to the line. She wrote down the number he gave her on the cover of the phone book and then read it back to him.

“That’s it,” Jonathan confirmed. “Uh, Mrs. Hoffmiller?”

“Yes, Jonathan?” Sadie replied, keeping the urgency in her voice so he would know she was in a hurry.

“What’s going on?”

“Shawn will have to fill you in on that a little later, dear,” she said sweetly. “I’m afraid I haven’t the time right now. But Shawn’s fine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried about Shawn,” Jonathan said. “He’s not the one they just issued an APB for—you are.”

Chapter 30

What?” Sadie said, her pulse speeding up again. She hoped it wasn’t bad for her heart to react so quickly all the time. If so, she’d likely have taken five years off her life tonight. Eric must have heard what Jonathan said as he turned to face Sadie quickly, his eyebrows raised.

“It just came across the scanner,” Jonathan said. “The police are calling you a person of interest in the hotel shooting.”

Sadie swallowed. “Oh,” was all she could think of to say, though it seemed terribly inadequate.

Jonathan continued. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Hoffmiller, I won’t turn you in or anything.”

“Th-thank you,” Sadie said, wondering why she should be surprised by the APB. Of course the police would want to bring her in. The question was, why? Were they going to lock her away? Or did they simply want to confirm the information she’d spouted out in the ballroom? Unfortunately, Sadie’s trust level of the police was at an all-time low and she was unable to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Eric tapped her arm. She realized he’d come to a stop along the curb at the corner of Highland Drive and 1500 West. He pointed both directions and shrugged, needing directions on where they were going.

“I’ve got to go,” Sadie said into the phone. “But I promise to have Shawn call you and tell you everything as soon as possible, okay.”

“Sure, Mrs. Hoffmiller. Whatever it is you’re doing—good luck.”

“Thanks,” Sadie said before hanging up. She needed all the help she could get.

She shut the phone and stared out the front windshield. “I’m a person of interest,” she said, humiliated to have her name attached to such a title. Would they put that on her permanent record?

“Now that you’ve got Shawn’s number, where are we going?” Eric asked, completely ignoring her pity party as he pulled back into the street. “Your place or mine?”

“I beg your pardon!” Sadie said, turning to face him.

He looked over at her and chuckled. “I need Internet access,” he clarified. “To determine where the key is from. We can go to my house and use my Internet or go to yours, assuming you’ll let me use your computer.” He nodded at the phone in her hand. “You can call your son now, right?”

“Oh,” Sadie said, looking away with embarrassment. “The police are probably on their way to my house,” she said, swallowing. This was unbelievable. “I guess we should go to your house—if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Eric said, turning right.

“I’ll call Shawn,” Sadie offered aloud, glad to have something to do instead of obsess on her current status with the police. She dialed the number and was relieved when he answered it immediately.

“Shawn!” she said with almost a gasp. “You’re okay?”

“Sure,” he said easily. “We’re fine. Where have you been? I’ve almost finished making the Evil Chicken, which means you still owe me since I had to make this batch myself.”

“What?” Sadie asked in confusion. “You’re home? And you’re cooking?”

“Yeah,” Shawn said as if that were obvious. “Since we didn’t really figure out a meeting place, I figured you’d have to come home sometime.”

“Where’s Josh?” Sadie asked, trying to figure out what had happened on Shawn’s end of things since they parted ways. If he was almost done with the Evil Chicken, then he’d been home for awhile. Had he lost Josh that quickly? Was Josh already on his way to Switzerland?

“He’s right here,” Shawn said.

Sadie startled in her seat. That was not what she’d expected to hear. “Right there!” Sadie repeated too loudly. “At the house?”

“Sure,” Shawn said. “Like I said, I’ve been waiting for you to come home. Didn’t you have all kinds of questions you wanted to ask him?”

Chapter 31

Sadie was too stunned to speak.

“Mom?” Shawn asked. “Are you there?”

“I-I’m here,” Sadie said. “But I’m very confused. Josh is with you?”

“Yep,” Shawn said in an I’ve-already-told-you-that-three-times tone of voice.

“He was okay having me ask him questions?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say
that.
But he was easily convinced that coming without a fight was better than having me stuff him in his duffel bag and haul him in.”

Sadie felt her stomach drop and her hand tightened around the phone. “Please tell me you’re kidding. You didn’t . . . make him come, did you?”

“Like I said, I
convinced
him to come,” Shawn said, not picking up on Sadie’s alarm. “I can be quite convincing, Mom. It’s a gift.”

Sadie closed her eyes and braced herself for the answer to her next question. “Is he tied up?”

“Tied up?” Shawn repeated. “No, he’s not tied up. He’s more like strapped in.”

Sadie tried to take a deep cleansing breath, but it didn’t work. “You have got to be kidding me!” she yelled, causing Eric to flinch and the car to veer right sharply enough that Sadie fell against the door. She took the phone from her ear and hit Eric’s arm with it. “We need to go to my house,” she said quickly before putting the phone back to her ear to finish chewing out her son. “Shawn, you can’t just convince people to come with you against their will. It’s against the law!” The words had no sooner left her mouth than her own actions of the evening flashed through her mind at warp speed. It was a brutal realization.

“I didn’t hurt him,” Shawn defended. “Besides, isn’t that what you wanted? To talk to him? Isn’t that why you had me go after him?”

“No,” Sadie said. “I’d hoped you’d call the police so they could catch up with him. I didn’t want him to get away without him talking to the police first.” She moved the phone away from her mouth again while Eric rubbed his arm with his other hand, looking at her strangely.

“Fifteen Peregrine Circle.” She put the phone back to her ear. Eric made a U-turn and Sadie had no choice but to brace herself against the door since she couldn’t hang onto anything.

“I figured
you’d
call the police,” Shawn said. “Besides, we only made it a couple of blocks. He turned onto Carson’s Road—you know, the one that looks like it goes under the freeway, but gets cut off by the railroad? He’s been out of Garrison for awhile I guess. So as soon as he tried to turn around, I ran up to the car and convinced him that coming with me quietly was a better option than my making him do it.”

Sadie could imagine her enormous son banging on the window and offering Josh a choice. No one in their right mind would invite Shawn to use force. She closed her eyes and shook her head, sympathetic to the terror that must have been running through Josh’s veins.

Eric came to another stop sign and once again looked to Sadie for directions. She pointed straight ahead.

“What’s Josh doing?” Sadie asked into the phone.

“Looking through the yearbooks,” Shawn said. “I haven’t talked to him much. He said he was hungry when I asked if he’d eaten, and I was starving, so it all worked out. Listen, I really need to go—I don’t want the brown sugar to turn into toffee on me.”

“I don’t think you have any idea what you’ve done,” Sadie said, wanting to crawl into a hole and die for fear of what would happen next. She’d been arrested and fled the scene, and now Shawn had kidnapped Josh Hender. And yet, if Josh was the murderer, it was better that he was at Sadie’s house instead of making a getaway, right? She forced herself to calm down a little bit, but she suspected she’d need the rest of the drive to complete the task if she were going to confront her son without going ballistic on him.

“We’re a couple of minutes away,” she said flatly. “Go back to your meal. We’ll deal with this when I get there.”

After hanging up Eric’s phone, Sadie leaned back against the seat and tried to wrap her brain around what was happening. What had started out as a fund-raising dinner had turned into an absolute mess. This was the third murder investigation she’d been in the middle of in the last four months. That was not normal and it was hurting the people she loved. Why did this keep happening to her?

Eric cleared his throat, reminding her he was still there. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Right,” Sadie said, nodding at the wisdom of his request and glad to have something else to think about. They passed Cypress Road, which meant she had a few blocks to give him as many details as possible. Lucky for Eric, Sadie could compact a lot of information into very few words when necessary. Lucky for Sadie, Eric was a very good listener, nodding as the details were laid out like stepping stones.

They rolled up to Sadie’s house a few minutes later and both looked at the illuminated kitchen window. The sheer drapes were pulled, which limited their view inside.

“We’ve likely only got a matter of minutes before the police catch up,” Eric said. “What do you want to do?”

Sadie didn’t have an answer to that. “Maybe I should let them arrest me,” she said. “If they find Josh here, then it lends credibility to what I told them, right?”

“And slaps a kidnapping charge on your son,” Eric summed up.

Sadie’s mouth went dry. Seriously, what was Shawn thinking? She stared at the house for a few more seconds. “I have no idea what to do,” she said, deciding there was no reason to be anything but perfectly honest. “I’m in trouble. My son is in trouble. And I’m getting you in trouble too. I should just take my lumps and get out of this mess. Maybe if you and Shawn went to your place, I could convince the police to go easy on you. But . . .”

“But . . .” Eric prompted her.

She couldn’t help but take the bait. “But I
do
want to ask Josh some questions. I want to know what he was doing on stage, what he meant when he said there were two murders. He could very well be the person everyone needs to find. He could be the murderer.”

“Well, he’s definitely connected,” Eric said.

Sadie nodded. “And maybe if I can figure out his connection, the police will be a little more understanding of the means I employed to get me to that end.” The truth was that Sadie really, really, really didn’t want to go to jail.