Thirty-One and a Half Regrets
Page 35

Mason looked up from writing. “Wait. Some guy left you at Jasper’s?”
“To be fair, he didn’t want to go out with me at all. Violet coerced him into it. And he was terrified that I had killed Momma.”
Mason shook his head and lowered his gaze to the paper. “What an idiot. What happened next?”
“Sloan was the bartender.”
He looked up again, his eyes wide. “Sloan Chapman?”
“Yeah, just one more coincidence that dug me even deeper into the whole mess. I’d never had wine before, so I had no idea what to order. He was really sweet and helped me figure it out. Then Daniel Crocker came in. He’d seen me in the restaurant with my date, but he didn’t recognize me because I had a different hairstyle and was wearing makeup. I looked different. Still, he said he knew he’d seen me somewhere, and it was driving him crazy that he couldn’t place me.” I paused, taking a breath. “Sloan saw Crocker hitting on me and came over to intervene. He told Crocker that I was his sister and to back off. Crocker did, but he wasn’t happy about it.”
Mason looked up. “Do you realize the risk Sloan took defending you?”
I nodded, tears in my eyes. “He was shot a few days later, after Crocker came back to the DMV and figured out who I was. He had been looking for me every day while I was off for Momma’s funeral. He figured out that Sloan wasn’t my brother, and then he asked me if he was an undercover cop. I was horrified and told him no. But I didn’t know anything then. I had no idea that Sloan was working with the state police. I got him killed.” My voice broke. “I’ve lived with the guilt of that ever since.”
“Rose. It wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing.”
I shook my head. “The next time I saw Crocker was at Sloan’s visitation. That was the night that I had another vision of myself dead. It was also when I finally figured out why he was interested in me: He thought I was the DMV informant with a flash drive of information. He told me to meet him the next night at The Trading Post at 10:00 p.m. and bring him the flash drive. But I was clueless about what was supposed to be on it.”
Mason kept his eyes on the legal pad. “The report says you went and gave him a flash drive with false information, and then Joe showed up and helped you escape out the back window. That’s pretty skimpy.” He looked up again. “What else happened that night?”
“Why do you think something else happened?”
His face hardened. “Crocker has a…reputation.”
I hesitated. “When Joe realized I really wasn’t part of the whole mess, he drove me to my car, which was still at the funeral home, and gave me the fake flash drive. The reason I agreed to meet with Crocker was that I was trying to save Violet—Crocker had put a photo of her under my door to remind me what was at stake.” I swallowed and looked toward Mason’s shiny stainless steel refrigerator. “He’d expressed an interest in how I was dressed at the funeral home the night before, so I wore a low-cut shirt and tried to dress sexy, hoping to distract him from the fact that I didn’t have what he wanted. When Joe gave me the flash drive, he told me I had the right idea but warned me not to let Crocker get me into bed. He was known to be…rough.”
Mason continued writing, his knuckles turning white from his strong grip on the pen.
“When I showed up, Crocker seemed eager to show me how interested he was in me. After his men did a quick check of the flash drive and it passed, Crocker insisted on celebrating with tequila shots.”
I heard Mason’s pen scribbling.
“After the first three shots and some sloppy kissing, I excused myself to the bathroom to throw up. Joe was in there waiting for me. He told me to go back out and said that he’d help me escape the next time. So I did three more shots with Crocker, with some kissing in between, and then I went to the bathroom to throw up again. And I escaped with Joe.”
Mason scribbled down several more lines and then looked up, expressionless. “And when did you see Crocker again?”
“The next day. After we left The Trading Post, Joe took me to his house and hid me in his attic. Crocker’s men showed up, but Joe swore he hadn’t helped me, that he’d been home alone all night. They said they’d kill him if he was lying. When Joe went off the morning of the big bust, I had a vision of him getting shot, but he insisted he’d be fine and that I needed to stay in his house until it was done.
“Instead, I chased Muffy behind Joe’s house. While I was out there, Crocker’s men showed up and busted Joe’s door down and found my shoes in his house. The ones I’d been wearing the night before. I knew my vision was going to come true, so Muffy and I stole Miss Mildred’s car and drove out there with a gun that Joe had planted in my shed. We broke in the back of Crocker’s warehouse. Muffy and I hid in a storage room until Crocker came storming out of his office, demanding that Joe tell him where I was. So I rushed out and told Crocker that Joe had nothing to do with it. I said I’d left on my own because I was looking for a real man.”
Mason stopped writing and looked up at me wide-eyed.
“What?” I shrugged. “I had to come up with something.”
He still didn’t say anything.
“Crocker was going to shoot me, but I told him he should prove he was a real man before killing me, so he dragged me up the stairs to the office.”
Mason kept watching me, expressionless.