One more room to clean, the boss’s office, and Alisa Gosling could put the long, work-burdened day behind her. She’d taken on way too many jobs in her quest to own a house of her own. Somewhere away from the city. Somewhere perfect like a small town.
Alisa adjusted the earbuds as she listened to sea shanties and reached for the business owner’s door. Opening it, she flicked on the light. The place looked clean, other than an overflowing trashcan. Still, she’d dust and polish it. She couldn’t afford to lose her largest client.
After she finished dusting and her playlist looped back to the beginning, she reached for the trashcan. Several pages fell to the floor, joining an errant piece under the desk. Alisa dropped to her knees and reached as far as she could. Aha. Her fingers closed around the wayward pages.
She glanced down at the paper on top. It was a torn-up letter. Not handwritten but typed. If she hadn’t spotted the words corrupt and police, she would’ve tossed the pages. Instead, her curiosity piqued, and she lay the sheets on the desktop and put them in order.
Ice water trickled down her spine. The letter was a threat, exposing Mr. Barker, the construction business owner, of cutting corners and padding pockets. The sender went so far as to accuse Mr. Barker of bribing city officials and the police to look the other way. The writer promised to expose the entire thing.
A beep sounded, signaling someone exiting the elevator.
Alisa shoved the pages in her pocket, locked the office door, and scurried under the desk. She peered out, her heart in her throat.
A man’s shadow paused in front of the door. She could see his cupped hands around his eyes as he peeked through the frosted glass.
Alisa held her breath. Her cleaning cart sat right outside the door. Whoever was out there would know she was in the office.
The door handle rattled.
Alisa gasped.
A key clicked in the lock.
Another voice from someone she couldn’t see called the man away from the door.
After several tense minutes, Alisa crawled from under the desk, the papers in her pocket crinkling. She’d turn them over to the police the first chance she had.
Stuffing the rest of the garbage in her cart and putting a fresh plastic bag in the can, she took another long look around the room. In her haste to hide, she’d forgotten to turn off the lights. Whoever had stood on the other side of the door knew someone was in the room. Who other than the cleaning lady after hours?
She unlocked and opened the door. After peering up and down the hallway, she pushed her cart out. In an attempt to look innocent in case someone saw her, Alisa strolled nonchalantly toward the elevator, singing along with the song coming through her earbuds.
Outside the elevator on the first floor, two men, one of them Mr. Barker, stood near the reception desk in muffled conversation. Alisa smiled and kept on walking, hoping they couldn’t hear how hard her heart beat.
Did one of them just call out to her? She wheeled her cart into the supply closet and grabbed the bags of garbage along with the supplies she carried back and forth. Without looking back, she kept singing and hurried out the back to the dumpster and her car.
Her hands started trembling so violently she could barely turn the key in the ignition. She backed from the space and sped away from the building. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Mr. Barker and the other man standing there watching as she drove away.
Why would someone be stupid enough not to shred such an incriminating document? Had Mr. Barker realized it hadn’t been done and came back to make sure it had? Or was she jumping to conclusions?
A man as wealthy as Mr. Barker was sure to have enemies. People who accused him of all sorts of things. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t shredded the letter. He hadn’t felt as if he needed to. Then why show up at the office well after eight p.m.? If he had more work to do, wouldn’t he have simply stayed late?
She gave herself a mental shake as she pressed the garage door remote on the visor of her SUV and pulled in. As the door lowered behind her, she released the breath she’d been holding. Her shaky hands were the result of having read too many mystery novels. A business owner could show up at his business any time he wanted.
She set her purse and car keys on the kitchen island, poured herself a glass of sweet, sparkling wine, and settled in front of the television—her nightly ritual in order to wind down after a long day.
A news reporter stood in front of Barker Construction. Alisa turned up the volume in time to hear that a woman had been found dead and stuffed in a closet.
The hand holding her wine started shaking again. The woman turned out to be Mr. Barker’s secretary. They weren’t saying how she died, but the fact Mr. Barker had found her in a closet signified it hadn’t been pleasant. As if murder ever was. And Alisa would bet her favorite pair of shoes the woman had been murdered.
Alisa couldn’t wait until morning to turn over the letter to the authorities. She reached for her phone and called the police department who promised to send an officer over right away. Again, she put the pieces together on her kitchen table and snapped a photo with her phone. Just in case. When she wasn’t pacing, Alisa peeked repeatedly through the blinds for someone to show up. Hopefully, the police and not someone who suspected she had the letter.
Relief swept through her like a burst of air when a van pulled in front of the apartment she rented, and a uniformed officer climbed out. She should never have taken the letter. Stupid.
A few moments later, a knock sounded at the door. Alisa opened it and ushered the officer in before locking the door again. “It’s in pieces, but here it is.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You say you found this in the garbage? Are you in the habit of digging through the trash bins of your clients?”
“No. I noticed it when a couple of the pages slipped out of the overflowing can and fell under the desk. I’d really convinced myself it meant nothing until watching the news tonight.”
“Why would that matter?”
“Because a woman was killed either while I was cleaning—”
“Wouldn’t you have heard something?”
She shook her head. “I wear earbuds and listen to music while I clean, so I never hear anything.”
Why did she get the impression his shoulders relaxed at her response?
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Miss Gosling. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.” He nodded and helped himself out.
Peering through the blinds again, she watched him slide into his van.
The officer hadn’t shown his badge, and now he stared through the windshield at her apartment. The streetlamp cast a shadow on his features. The part Alisa could see sent spiders along her skin. She let the blinds fall back into place.
The next day, that same dark blue van appeared in front of every house she cleaned. Surely, that wasn’t coincidence.
Instinct told her she’d stumbled across something dangerous. That it was time to run as far from Westport as she could go. Rather than go to her last job, she headed home, taking care not to act suspicious. As per her routine, she pulled into the garage. Inside the house, she turned on the television which would flicker through the blinds.
Then, she turned on her laptop and searched for a sanctuary. A town called Misty Hollow sounded like just the place. Cradled in a valley, the town was surrounded by miles and miles of wooded forest. She found a small two-bedroom house for rent on some ranchland and jotted down the address. Alisa erased her browser history and slid her laptop into its bag. Then, she emptied her cabinets of all dry food and bottled water before heading to her room to pack.
How would she leave without being followed? She hurried to the front window. No sign of the blue van. All the cars out front belonged to her neighbors. So far so good. Maybe they’d decided she wasn’t a threat after all. It didn’t matter. Alisa wasn’t sticking around to find out.
Behind the protection of the closed garage door, she loaded her vehicle with as many personal belongings as would fit, grateful for a large-model automobile. When she’d packed in as much as she could, she did a final run through of the apartment, filled a thermos with coffee, and then slipped into the driver’s seat.
Alisa backed away from the house she’d rented for five years and sped toward the interstate. She cast many looks in her rearview mirror but didn’t see anyone following her. Of course, she wouldn’t unless they were obvious. She wasn’t a detective in any sense of the word.
Thank goodness for the coffee. She didn’t cross over the Misty Mountain into Misty Hollows until the sun started to peek over the top. Alisa glanced at her GPS and drove slowly through the quaint little town, making note of the store signs, then continued down a country road. Five miles from town, she turned right onto a dirt road that passed under an arched sign announcing Leaning O Ranch and stopped in front of a sprawling ranch-style house. She’d arrived.
Alisa yawned and plodded onto the porch then rapped on the front door. A dog barked inside. A sleepy voice told it to hush.
A few seconds later, a man wearing plaid lounge pants and nothing else opened the door. A large mixed-breed dog with a brindle coat peered around his leg. “Yeah?” the man said.
Alisa cleared her throat. “I’d like to rent the house you listed online.”
He blinked rapidly, then ran his hand through hair kissed with auburn on the ends. The bluest eyes she’d ever seen narrowed. “Why didn’t you call first?”
“I was on the road.” She tilted her head. “Is it available? I clean houses for a living. I could clean yours for a break in the rent. Either way, I’m here and need a place to stay.”
He rubbed his hands briskly down his face. “The cabin is available. It’s out back and unlocked. Can we talk about this once I’ve had a chance to wake up?”
“Of course.” Alisa smiled. “I’ll unload my bags. Thank you.” Her steps perked up on the way to her SUV. She had a place to stay. The ad had said fully furnished, so as long as things were serviceable, they’d do just fine. She wasn’t picky.
The house with white aluminum siding looked like something out of a magazine, inside and out. Inside, it had been decorated with blues and yellows. Clearly a woman had lived here at one time.
The master bedroom contained a queen-sized poster bed. The hours of driving and the stress of looking over her shoulder made her tired. Alisa lay on top of the quilt and fell asleep.
~
“Well, find her! Search every small town near here, then branch out to the surrounding states. She’s a woman alone and wouldn’t have gone far.” He slammed the phone down, cracking the screen protector. The woman was only a cleaning lady. How smart could she be? He ought to have Barker killed along with his secretary. Stupid woman. Didn’t she understand what a shredder was for?
If news got out about this, he’d be ruined. They had to find that cleaning lady.
- Publisher : Winged Publications
- Publication date : March 6, 2022
- Language : English
- Print length : 248 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1956654283
- ISBN-13 : 978-1956654288