Nearly an hour passed when her phone rang.It was Aiden, his voice tight and urgent.“Sam.Where are you?Are you okay?”
“At home.Why?What happened?”
He breathed a sigh of relief before saying, “Right before I got your text, my neighbor, Elsie had a medical issue.She doesn’t drive anymore, so I took her to urgent care.By the time I was able to get my phone back out and saw all the cops at the bank, it just scared me.”
“Cops at the bank?What happened?”
“It’s Gerald Parker.He’s dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sam’s stomach dropped.“No.No, I just talked to him.”
“I asked my cop friend what was going on at the bank, and he told me.When Gerald didn’t come out from his lunch break, a member of the staff came looking for him.He was dead at the bottom of the employee stairs leading down to the patio.”
“No.Those back stairs?”She felt sick thinking of it.Had Gerald been so upset by their conversation that he’d slipped and fell?
“That’s right.”
Sam asked, “Does it look like an accident?When I left him an hour ago, he was sitting outside having his lunch.”
“My friend said it looked like a suspicious death.They’re treating it like a homicide for the time being.”
Sam’s voice shook.“I can’t believe this.It must have happened right after I left.”
“I’m coming to see you.”
“Aiden—”
“I’m already in the car.Be there in five minutes.”
Sam sat, her phone still in her hand, feeling numb.Arlo put his head on her knee like he knew something was wrong.
Her thoughts were racing.She’d confronted Gerald.Upset him.Then he went up those stairs alone, shaken by what she’d told him.Had he missed a step and fallen down those steep stairs?Had someone met him at the top of the stairs, shoved him while he was so distracted, and killed him?If so, didn’t that mean that there was something Gerald knew that the killer didn’t want revealed?Why hadn’t he said something?
She’d exposed Gerald, made him vulnerable.If he had been murdered, the killer might have seen Gerald speaking with her.They’d have realized Gerald was talking, and they wouldn’t have known what it was about.
