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Elizabeth Marks wasn’t dead yet. There was still hope.
“LIFE SURE DOESN’T TURN out the way we plan, does it?” Becca Parsons asked Wednesday morning, holding her friend’s hand as they sat together on the cream-colored leather sofa, a new addition to the mayoral office in downtown Shelter Valley.
Martha had arrived a few minutes early for a meeting the sheriff had called concerning Ellen’s attack six days before. Being with Becca was the hardest. Martha constantly had to fight the urge to break down and cry.
Because if she started, she was afraid she’d never stop. There was just so much grief and rage inside her. All things that weren’t going to change.
“You and Will have been pretty lucky,” she said now, grateful for the reminder that while there was no point in hoping or believing in things unseen, there was still the possibility of a benevolent fate descending during a lifetime.
“That we have,” Becca said with a smile. “But look what we had to go through to get here.”
Twenty years of agonizing disappointment and the near loss of their love and marriage. And during most of that time, Martha had felt herself so lucky….
“Your time will come again,” Becca said in that way she had that usually instilled such confidence.
Martha shook her head. “I think mine was opposite to yours,” she said. “I used up all my luck during the first forty years of my life.”
“No, you didn’t.” Becca shook her head, her blue eyes filled with a compassion that spanned their long friendship. At forty-six, Becca was still as beautiful as ever. Tall, slim, model-like in her poise and dress. The tiny lines on her face only enhanced her authority. “I’m not letting you give up, so you might as well lose that idea right now.”
Martha smiled, as she’d been meant to, and wished her determined and powerful friend could turn back the clock. Because she was afraid that was the only way she’d ever be able to look at life again with any measure of trust.
“I mean it,” Becca said more firmly. “Look at me, Marth. Four years ago I was forty-two and childless, with high blood pressure, broken dreams and a failing marriage. And now I’ve got a beautiful daughter, a baby son whose smile is known all over town, a job I love and a husband who adores me as much as I adore him. If I’d given up when I thought I had no other choice, I’d have lost everything.”
“I know.” And she did. But what Becca didn’t understand, and Martha did, was that it was all a crap shoot. Luck of the draw. And she couldn’t embrace the idea of a future happiness that was so fleeting.
She might have told her friend as much, but was saved the lecture such a pronouncement would have procured by the knock on Becca’s office door. It heralded the arrival of the only two other citizens of Shelter Valley who knew about Ellen’s attack—besides Ellen herself. Pastor David Marks, who’d visited Ellen several times during the past week. And Sheriff Greg Richards, who’d called this meeting.
“It’s been six days and I have not found a trace of information to lead me to the man who picked up Ellen outside of Wal-Mart,” the thirty-eight-year-old sheriff said as soon as they were all seated in the conversation area in a corner of the office. His intense, dark-green gaze touched them all in turn. Becca and Martha were still on the couch. The men had each taken one of the two matching armchairs on the other side of the teak coffee table.
“What about the landlord at the apartment building?” David asked, frowning.
“That room was rented before he bought the place. The only contact he has is a post office box. Rent is paid yearly by money order. According to him, the place is used fairly often, but not every week, and by a variety of people.”
“He has to keep some kind of records,” David said, his voice not at all the calming one Martha was used to. Later she might be bothered by how personal an interest he was taking on Ellen’s behalf. For now she just wanted the rapist found.
“Typical for a place like that, he’s just pleased to have it rented and didn’t really care if records were kept,” Greg Richards answered succinctly. Everyone knew how obsessive Greg got when protecting his own. If he was running true to form, he wasn’t going to allow himself any rest until this crime was solved.
Martha hoped to God he ran true to form.
“What about the other residents?” David asked.
“Mostly transient. No one was around the night of the attack. To date I’ve been able to track down a total of two. And neither of them had anything to add about the residents of the room Ellen was taken to. For most of those types, one of the laws of survival is to keep their eyes straight ahead and not notice a thing.”
“Someone had to have seen something,” David said, sitting forward, elbows on the arms of his chair, as though ready to push off.
While Martha found the testosterone level in the room a bit overpowering, at this point she didn’t care who did t
he talking as long as Ellen’s attacker was found, prosecuted and strung up by his balls for what he’d done.
“The only thing that’s come up more than once is that the occupant or occupants of this apartment appear to be businessmen of some description,” Greg said.
“What about damage to the place? Any of that ever reported?”
“None,” Greg said. “No noise or trouble, either.” The respect in his eyes as he watched the other man wasn’t lost on Martha.
“I’m guessing you didn’t call us all here just to report on a lack of progress,” Becca murmured.
“You’re right.” Greg looked at Martha, and she didn’t like what she saw in his eyes.
