Lost & Found - Jacqueline Sheehan [85]
“Does this mean you’re speaking to me again?” he asked.
“Yes, and it means a lot more than that. It means I’m not going to quit my job, which I was going to do, and it means some really good things happened along with some moderately terrifying things. Can we be friends again? I’m sorry,” she said. They agreed to meet at his office the next morning.
She told him everything, or mostly everything, leaving out the breaking and entering. And she didn’t tell him how confused she had been when Hill said he had slept with Liz, that he had known her. She did say that she was done with her archery lessons.
Isaiah asked her why. “You worried about crossing the bay in bad weather? If the crossing is dangerous, the ferry doesn’t run. And there’s a place to practice in the winter. The VFW in Portland has a crappy banquet hall that they used to let people use for archery way back when. That’s an indication of how bad the banquet hall was; they had one section with hay and targets.”
Rocky considered telling him everything about Hill, and she knew Isaiah would be the perfect person to tell. He had heard everything when he was a minister, so she wasn’t worried that she’d shock him or that he’d judge harshly. But to her surprise, she had already carved a space for Hill where she afforded him temporary protection. She had told no one about the paper target with Hill’s mark on it that she had seen at Liz’s old house in Orono. Tess had already guessed that Rocky was falling for her archery teacher. She told Rocky that her color was vastly diminished since she’d banned Hill from coming to visit. Rocky quickly switched the topic before Isaiah went down the same road.
“There’s one more thing. Liz’s old boyfriend probably has figured out that I have Cooper by now. I sent him on a false trail, and unless he’s an idiot, he knows what I did. He sounded determined to get him. This guy has no right to Cooper, but he still sounds obsessed with Liz, and now that Liz is dead, Cooper has become his focus.”
Rocky didn’t tell Isaiah exactly how scared she was after Peter drove off. She already saw Isaiah’s eyebrows moving together in a mountain of worry.
“What’s his last name?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I might be able to find out. I met a friend of Liz’s in Orono.”
“Once you get his name, I can call the Portland police. They’re used to me calling about ridiculous things. But I doubt there’s anything they can do about a man with poor social skills who wants a dog that doesn’t belong to him.” The older man paused.
“Did he threaten you?”
“No, it wasn’t me who he threatened. It was like he was still after Liz, or anything that belonged to her. I’ve worked with a few men who became obsessed with ex-girlfriends, and their ability to stay focused on one person was staggering,” said Rocky.
“I’ve known them too, and I’ll tell you what works with them; a slap on the head. They give men a bad name and we’re skating on thin ice as it is.”
Rocky had still not been able to find out Peter’s last name. Shelly, the receptionist at the Orono Animal Clinic said she never knew it, and she only met him once. When Liz started up with Peter, she left everyone behind.
Peter’s last name came from a surprising source. The Townsends called her to say that Peter had called them right after they got back to Providence. They also mentioned that their house had been broken into and they figured it was Peter. Jan said, “And the nerve of that guy. He called us the next day to see if we had Cooper. I told him he was one sorry son of a bitch and if he came anywhere near here, we’d call the police. He made like he was surprised and insulted.”
Rocky felt queasy. “Well maybe it wasn’t him who broke into your house. Could be a coincidence.” She pressed her lips together to keep from confessing.
“I think you’re right. The police said the same thing. They said the footprints were more like a young boy or a woman.”
Footprints. Rocky decided to throw her running shoes away the next day and get another pair