Envy

chapter 43

HIS HAIR SLICKED BACK WITH A SHELLACKING of hair gel, Jake Damon sat on a concrete cot in one of two holding cells set up in the back of the Port Gamble Police Department. For a man arrested on charges that he’d had an outstanding DUI—a man who was likely the stalker of a teenage girl—he was remarkably composed.

“You need anything?” Chief Annie Garnett, a S’Klallam tribe member, asked.

“Just an apology,” Jake said.

“I was thinking about a candy bar or something,” she said.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “You’ll see.”

“You have a history, and we have the IP addy tying you to the e-mails and chats sent to Katelyn,” Annie said.

“IP addy? I don’t know a thing about that. What history?”

“Bellevue,” Annie said. “We’re getting the personnel papers about your dismissal.”

Jake blew up, his neck veins popping like roots under blacktop. “That? You think that’s some big deal that got me canned?”

“It involved an inappropriate relationship with a student, Jake.”

Jake regained his composure a little and shook his head. “Boy, are you going to look stupid.”

Annie had heard that before. So far she’d never looked stupid.

“We’ll see about that,” she said.

Jake stepped up to the bars of the holding cell. “No, you will. The ‘inappropriate relationship with a student’ that got me fired was because I gave money to the kid and his mother. Their house burned down. They had nothing. I wrote ’em a few checks. It was against district policy because I didn’t go through channels. That’s why they fired me.”

“I’ll need to verify that,” Annie said, turning away.

“You’d just better,” he called out.

Annie stopped and did an about-face. “Okay, if it wasn’t you, then who was tormenting the girl next door?”

Jake looked in her eyes and shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “Your information is crap.”

EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS WEARING A SILVER MINI and her go-to strappy heels, Mindee Larsen couldn’t turn a single head with her good looks as she arrived at the Port Gamble Police Department. Forget that it was the dead of winter and such a getup was so, so wrong. But the truth of the matter was, no one was looking at Mindee because she was hot, pretty, or anything like that at all. They watched her every move because she was the girlfriend of the man in the holding cell, an Internet stalker who’d pushed fifteen-year-old Katelyn Berkley to the brink, and then coldly shoved her over its cruel edge.

Chief Garnett led Mindee to her office. It was a comfortable space, as police chief offices go. The walls were decorated with citations and S’Klallam tribal artwork. Behind her was a bookcase full of case files—perfectly ordered and complete. Most crimes in Port Gamble were property crimes, and those were usually solved in short order.

Annie knew Mindee quite well, at least on a professional basis. It was Mindee who did the chief’s hair—color and cut. From the very beginning, the chief had liked Mindee. She liked her over-the-top sense of style. She didn’t consider herself a Native American version of RuPaul, but if Annie had the body for a silver mini she’d be shopping at Forever 21 instead of Lane Bryant at the mall.

If only.

“Annie, just so you know, Jake could not have done this,” Mindee said, planting herself in a visitor’s chair across from the chief.

The chief offered her some coffee, but Mindee declined.

“I just bleached my teeth and they’re still a little porous,” she said. “I know you care for Jake,” Annie said. Coming from any other cop, the words might have felt condescending. Not Annie Garnett. With all that she’d been through to get where she was, Annie never forgot what it felt like to be on the sad side of things.

Mindee nodded and searched her purse for a tissue.

Just in case.

“I love Jake, yes, I do,” she said. “After Adam left me … I don’t know what I would have done without him in my life.”

“Understood,” Annie said, her slightly deep voice resonating a kind of calmness that was needed right then. On occasion, Mindee could be a bit of a train wreck and she needed to be handled with some care. “You know why he’s here. And since you’ve come in, I’d like to ask you some questions, all right?”

“He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly and decisively.

A deputy passed the open doorway. When she caught him looking at her exposed thigh, Mindee brightened a beat. Finally someone noticed how sexy she was. What more did she have to do get any attention around Port Gamble?

“How does he get along with your kids?”

“Fine. He gets along with them just fine. Okay, maybe they have some issues. But nothing out of the norm.”

“What kind of issues?” Annie asked, her voice soft but unmistakably authoritative.

Mindee crossed her legs and pushed the balled-up tissue to the edge of Chief Garnett’s desk. The hairstylist was signaling that she was moving on and the conversation wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Just issues,” she said. “You know … the kind any kids have when a new man comes into their mother’s life. He didn’t try to be Adam. But as far as Starla and Teagan could tell, he was a replacement for him. Which he wasn’t.”

“All right. Did you ever see him do anything inappropriate?”

The word inappropriate hung in the air. It was the word law enforcement used instead of the more, well, appropriate word sleazy.

“You mean around me?” she asked.

“Yes, but also around your kids, around Katelyn?”

Mindee shook her head adamantly. “Never!”

The next question was the ringer in its directness, and Annie Garnett knew it. It was the kind of question that one never wanted to ask a friend—or even a hairstylist, for that matter.

“Did Jake touch the kids?” she asked, her eyes fixed on Mindee’s.

The words hurt, and it was clear on Mindee’s face. It was like she stopped breathing for a moment.

“You’re offending me now, Annie. I don’t like your tone or what your question implies.”

Annie knew that. “Sorry,” she said. “I have to ask. It’s my job.”

Mindee went for her purse and her keys. “No,” she said, quite convincingly. “He absolutely did not.”

“Mindee, we have evidence that suggests Jake was stalking Katelyn.”

She turned to leave but thought better of it. “What evidence?” she asked.

Chief Garnett got up and faced her, weighing every movement, every single tic.

“E-mails,” she said.

Mindee didn’t like being backed into a corner, but she didn’t blink.

“What e-mails?” she asked.

Again, there was a flat expression on Annie’s face as she said, “Sent to Katelyn.”

“Why are you being so vague here? I’ve cut your hair for years.”

“Fine,” Annie said. “E-mails that originated from your house.”

Even under her carefully applied dusting of Bare Minerals powder, it was easy to see that the blood quickly drained from Mindee’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m leaving now. I’m going to have my lawyer get Jake out. He’s a good man. He’s no stalker!”

With that, Mindee turned on those strappy heels and left the police department. It was a good thing that it was after work. If it had been in the middle of the day, the woman sitting in the number-two chair at the Shear Elegance salon might actually have gotten those scissors shoved deep into her eardrum.

Mindee Larsen was fit to be tied—and not in a good way.