I had called Shelia and she agreed to meet me with Ben if I flew her out. I was lucky she was off work for the week, using some of her vacation hours. I didn’t feed her all the details, but I braced myself for all the questions she’d throw at me as soon as she saw me.
Seeing as Calvin was a sex offender, his address was easy to find. Nothing about him was private anymore. All of it was public knowledge, so I used that to my advantage. I booked the tickets, sent the hotel info to Shelia, and left the mansion.
* * *
After the plane landed, I met Shelia and Ben at a Holiday Inn twelve miles out from Calvin’s address. I parked the rental car and spotted them standing near the entrance, deep in conversation.
Drawing in a long breath, I collected my tote bag and keys and climbed out. Shelia noticed me first and smiled as I made my way toward them.
“Samira! Girl, I’ve missed you!” she cried, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tight.
I smiled over her shoulder and hugged her back. “I missed you too.”
“So you went and married a golfer,” she said, quirking a brow, grinning.
“A crazy-ass golfer,” Ben quipped, and I turned toward him to play punch him. “Hey, Ben.”
“Don’t hey Ben me. You dragged us all the way to another state for what? See, Shelia might fall for that ‘don’t ask any questions, just do’ stuff, but I’m not Shelia. I’ve got a lot of questions.”
“I know. And I’ll answer them, but let’s go inside first.”
I checked us in, making sure to book two rooms with my own credit card and not the one Roland gave me. Shelia and Ben dropped their bags off and later met me in my room.
“Is this about him? Your husband?” Shelia asked, eyeing me worriedly.
“Sort of,” I said.
“We need more than that, Mira,” she murmured.
I sighed, then pressed my back against the wooden headboard of the bed. “It’s about Roland in a way, but it’s really more so about what happened to his first wife.”
They looked at each other, then back at me. “Wasn’t it ruled an accident or suicide or something?” asked Ben.
“It was at the time, but the police brought Roland in as a suspect because they found bruises on her body and suspected homicide. They couldn’t prove anything on Roland’s end, but the case is still open.”
“I knew it!” Ben exclaimed. “And you think he killed her, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!”
“So then why are we here?” Shelia asked.
“I found these journals from Melanie, Roland’s first wife. She wrote about this guy named Calvin. Well, Kell found an article from years ago that explained exactly who Calvin was to her. He raped her and her sister when they were fifteen, and went to prison for a couple years. He was sentenced to twenty-five years, but I just found out that he got out early.”
“She had a sister?” Shelia asked.
“Yes. They were pretty close.”
“So where is the sister now?”
“That’s the thing, I have no idea. No one knows. Roland said he didn’t hear from her after Melanie died. Said she just disappeared.”
“And you think this Calvin guy might know something about where she is?” Ben asked.
“I do.”
“This sounds dangerous, Samira.” Shelia fidgeted on the bed. “If you don’t think Roland had anything to do with it, what if this man did? You can’t just show up to his place and confront him with something as serious as this. We’re talking murder here.”
“She’s right.” Ben’s head shook from side to side. “He sounds like a loose cannon. And he’s a fucking rapist. There’s no way in hell I’m letting Shelia or you around someone like him.”
“Trust me, I understand that, but I really need to know what he knows. Something about all of this isn’t adding up and I don’t know what to believe anymore. My marriage is already falling apart and I feel myself going crazy over this.”
“Why don’t you just leave Roland? Forget about all of this? It’s not your burden to carry. You’re still young, Samira. I—I didn’t realize you’d jump at the chance to marry him after I told you Ben was moving in. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have said a thing about you going—”
“No—Shelia. Stop.” I sat forward and grabbed her hand. “Don’t try and pin my actions on yourself. I agreed to marry him knowing there could have been some drama along the way. I just didn’t think it went this deep. And when he told me he had nothing to do with her passing, I believed him.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
I bit into my bottom lip and shrugged, fighting tears as Shelia watched me. All of this was a mess. I was digging myself into a cavernous hole and had no idea how the hell I was going to get out. “None of what I’m doing makes any sense to me anymore,” I mumbled. “But there’s something about all of this that is screaming at me. I—I feel it breathing down my neck. Like it’s attached to me. Even if I walked away from Roland, I wouldn’t let this go. It would haunt me forever.” And it would. Images of Melanie haunted my dreams at this point, pulling me out of the little bit of sleep I managed to get.