“It could be worse,” Vero said.
“Really? Tell me exactly how this could get any worse.”
“They could have brought home a dog. Whatever you do, don’t mention it to Delia. I just got her to stop crying.”
“Why was she crying?”
“Steven took them to the shelter this morning, but Sam was already gone.”
“Someone else adopted him?”
“That guy Aaron—you know, Patricia’s friend. The shelter worker told Steven he took Sam home after work last week. She said it was odd, because he’d just adopted two dogs a few weeks ago, and three dogs aren’t easy to travel with.”
A sinking feeling dipped low in the pit of my stomach. “Travel? What do you mean travel?”
“He left that afternoon. Said he was going on vacation, but he never came back. No one knows where he’s gone.” Our eyes caught. Held. “You don’t think…？”
That must have been right after I’d met him, when I’d asked him all those questions about Patricia. I’d filled out the application using Theresa’s address. Theresa and I lived on the same street. If he’d seen that street name before—like the night Harris died—Aaron could have recognized it and figured out who I was. And why I was searching for her.
Rescues make great companions.
Had that been it? Had Aaron closed the garage door, determined to save Patricia from her abusive home, just like he’d done for Sam and the rescue dogs at the shelter, not realizing she’d already made plans to handle it herself? Had I abducted Harris from the bar before Aaron had a chance? Had he followed me here, then taken the opportunity to finish the job I was too afraid to?
I couldn’t hear much of anything over the dogs down the street … They seemed to quiet once he was gone.
Barking dogs. I’d heard dogs barking in the parking lot that night at The Lush as I’d loaded Harris into my van. And again later that night, while I’d been on the phone with my sister. According to the news report on the night she went missing, Patricia didn’t own any dogs. But Aaron had adopted plenty.
Had Molly and Pirate been with him in his car?
I thought back to the brown Subaru I’d seen in Patricia’s garage, with two human stick figures and two stick-figure dogs. In the photo in the break room at the shelter, Patricia had been sitting beside Aaron with Molly and Pirate, and she hadn’t been wearing her ring. Had Aaron been more than a friend? Had he been a boyfriend? A lover? Had they planned a future together? Was that why they were both so eager to be rid of Harris? And if so, who’d helped Aaron shut Harris in my garage?
If he really had been alone, like Mrs. Haggerty said, how would he have kept the garage door from slamming closed without being close enough to … hold it?
I turned to Vero and took the ice cream scoop from her hand, dumping it in the ice bucket. “Give me your belt,” I said.
“My belt?”
“Just trust me.”
Vero unbuckled her leather belt and pulled it through the loops in her jeans. It was thinner than the one Aaron had been wearing the day we saw him at the shelter, but it looked just as sturdy. “Stay with the kids. I’ll be right back.”
I hit the remote button on the wall of the garage. Late-afternoon sunlight poured over the concrete and I stood in the middle of it, staring up at the tracks, searching for a way to use the belt to keep the door from falling, the way Aaron had used his to prop open Sam’s kennel.
In the front corner of the garage, at the top of the tracks near the curve where they turned, two metal bars intersected. I grabbed the step stool, climbed up, and looped the belt around them, securing it just below the bottom of the open door. Then I moved the stool to the center of the garage, climbed up, and pulled the release cord.
There was a soft snap as the door disengaged from the motor. It sagged, suspended in place against Vero’s belt.
Aaron had killed Harris.
Not Theresa and Aimee. Not Feliks and Andrei. Aaron had done it alone. He knew the door would slam and I would come running, the same way the self-closing kennels had wreaked havoc in the shelter when Vero set the animals loose and let the doors bang closed. Aaron had tied his belt to the track. Then he’d pulled the cord to free the door from the motor. Quietly, he’d unhooked his belt with one hand, and he’d gently lowered the door.
But if Aaron had killed Harris to be with Patricia, why bother leaving town now that Patricia was dead? I was the only person who knew the truth about Harris’s death, and, as guilty as I looked, I wasn’t any more inclined than Aaron to report what I’d uncovered. With Patricia gone, Aaron could just as easily have stayed here in town and moved on with his life. Unless …