“Good job,” Nick said.
“I try my best.”
The rest of the game went by fast, and the Jazz drove a hard bargain, but on this particular night they proved no match for my Lakers.
CHAPTER 13
Audrey checked in with me early the next morning.
“Any news?”
“Not yet,” I said.
I shared the events of the past two days, which included my conversation with the chief.
“I didn’t mean to get you into any trouble, but those smug detectives didn’t even give a crap.”
“From now on you need to check with me first,” I said. “No more conversations with reporters, alright?”
The line went silent.
“And if I don’t agree?”
“Then I’m out,” I said.
And I meant it.
“I want to help you and I will do everything I can, but I need you to trust me,” I said.
Her tone relaxed a little.
“I suppose I owe you an apology. When those reporters got in my face, I lost it.”
“You’ve been through a lot, it’s understandable.”
“What more can I do to help?”
“I need an address for Parker Stanton,” I said.
“He has a house in Park City off Silver Lake Drive in Deer Valley. It’s the second or third house on the left. He also has some investment property downtown in Salt Lake City. The last time Charlotte mentioned it she said Parker rented it out to some tenants. I think the name of it is Lakewood something or other, but I’m not sure what number.”
“You said before that his schedule changed at the end.”
“In the last month or two of their relationship he was away a lot more. Most of the time he only came home to see her on Saturdays and by Sunday night he left again.”
“Perfect,” I said.
It was time to pay Parker Stanton a visit.
CHAPTER 14
The lights at 112 Silver Lake Drive were off. I situated my car behind a broken lamppost down the street. It was pitch-dark and there wasn’t anyone in sight. The only luminescence came in the form of the full moon which shone down from a starry sky. A stray cat meandered around a trio of pine trees that hovered in the yard like a protective mother bear shielding her children from the outside world.
It wasn’t long before my thoughts turned to Gabrielle. Three years had passed since her death, but to me it seemed like yesterday that we sat together at a café and reminisced about our lives. She remained as vivid to me as the day she died and sometimes I imagined I would open my front door to find her standing in the doorway ready to spend the day together again.
A car turned up the street. I slid down in my seat and watched it pass and then turn around and come back again. It slowed to a snail’s pace when it reached Parker’s house. I took out my binoculars and sized up the vehicle and its passenger, but it was too dark to see much. He gave the house a long, hard stare and then drove two houses down and parked.
A couple minutes went by and his car door opened. A roundish rolly polly man braced himself against the car and lifted his body out. The man was dressed all in black and wore a long trench coat and a beanie cap on his head. He walked up to Parker’s front door and looked over his shoulder. When the coast was clear he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small white envelope and then leaned into the doorway and shoved it into the door jam and then hustled back to his car. I took out my camera and zoomed in on his license plate and snapped a photo before he sped away.
My first instinct was to pilfer the envelope and look inside, but Parker could be home at any moment so if I wanted take a peek I needed to act fast. I dashed to the door and reached for the envelope which was left unsealed. Inside was a small index card with words scrawled across the front in bold black marker, LEAVE HER ALONE OR ELSE.
Another car turned at the bottom of the street and headed up the hill toward me. I pressed the card back into the envelope and crammed it into the door jam and then hunched over and started to run, but it was too late. Parker’s garage door opened and a car drove inside. I flattened my body on the ground and assumed an army crawl position and took cover behind the pine trees.
It only took a few minutes for my clothes to become saturated from the snow that melted beneath me, and my body cried out for warmth of any kind, but I couldn’t move––not yet. The garage door went down and a single light illuminated from a room inside the house followed by another, and I had a clear view of Parker who paced back and forth in front of an undraped window. He was engaged in a conversation on his cell phone and a smile was plastered across his face. Every now and then he stopped and laughed. I pulled my binoculars from my coat pocket to get a better view. Parker was much skinnier than I imagined, too skinny for my taste, and the way his hand flicked when he talked exposed an air of confidence, like someone who reeked of money.
A few minutes later he pressed a button on his cell phone and turned his back toward the window. I sprinted for my car and got half way there when I felt it. The cold, hard ice collided with my gluteus maximus and I slid bum first down the hill. Pain shot through me like an ice pick and set off explosive fireworks inside my body. In my haste to escape I had forgotten all about the condition of the road. The pain overwhelmed me, but I managed to stand and I limped my way back to the safety of my car.
I had my hands on the steering wheel and my key in the ignition when Parker’s front porch light turned on. Clad in a pair of striped flannels and a cotton shirt, he opened the door. The envelope dropped to the ground. He didn’t seem to notice it at first when he crouched down to retrieve the newspaper. But then his eyes fixated on it and he picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He threw the newspaper into the house and then reached inside the envelope and extracted the index card. Parker stared at it for a moment and then took a step backward into the house and flipped a switch and the entire front yard lit up. It wouldn’t take long for him to see the prints I made in the snow. In his bare feet, he took a few steps further and focused his attention on the footsteps that went up the driveway. He scratched his forehead and then turned back toward the house. Right before he reached the door he spotted my size seven footprints in the snow and followed them across the lawn. He didn’t make it far before his bare feet reacted to the cold and he turned back toward the house. I didn’t wait for him to return.
CHAPTER 15
The next day the afternoon sun struggled to shine through the clouds that served as a blockade against it. I sat on Parker’s street and waited. Parker’s car, a Porsche 911 that resembled the color of a canary, came as no surprise to me. All flash and flare and probably paid for in full with his daddy’s money. It was parked out front which meant it had already been out to play that day.
After some time my stomach indicated its discontent. I removed the lid off my bowl of brown rice and broccoli and reached for my water on the passenger seat and took a sip. It would have served as a healthy lunch would it not have been for the bag of chocolate chip cookies I had in my bag for dessert.
I glanced at my watch. Three hours had passed and there was no sign of Parker or the pudgy man in black. With my book read, my food gone, and Parker’s car still asleep in the driveway I took my leave. I didn’t have long before he would fly out again.
CHAPTER 16
Nick answered the door clad in a black apron and gave me a complete 360.