Just Keep Breathing, GS Rhodes [best book club books for discussion TXT] 📗

“You were looking,” she said. “I don’t want you to get any more lost than you already are.” She knew what he’d been doing, snooping, looking for answers to questions he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask. But she wasn’t about to call him out on it.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re very kind.”

He walked out of Sarah’s bedroom, sliding past PC McCulloch and towards the open door of the bathroom.

“They’ve already done a search of the room,” PC McCulloch said quietly. “It’s the first thing they do, you know that.”

“They didn’t find anything,” Kidd said. “Looks like they ransacked the place.”

“And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Find anything,” PC McCulloch asked.

DI Kidd smiled at her. He turned and pointed to the bathroom. “I found exactly what I was looking for.”

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him before PC McCulloch could ask him any more questions. He took the phone from his sleeve and put it in his jacket pocket. He’d been looking, but as far as she knew, he’d not taken anything. She couldn’t prove it. The only thing now was that there was an old phone burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to fire it up and see what was on it.

He relieved himself, washed his hands, and left the room to find PC McCulloch still waiting for him to appear. No chance he was getting back into Sarah’s room just now. Little did she know he might have already found what he was looking for. He nodded at her on the way past and headed downstairs once again, snapping pictures of the photos on the stairs as he passed, just in case there was anything in them that they could use.

DI Kidd walked down the hallway towards where the sound of clinking could be heard. DS Sanchez was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, the cold, white light from the garden making everything looking a little washed out. She eyed him carefully as he walked in. Laura was on her feet, shuffling around, getting mugs out of the cupboard while the kettle boiled on the stove.

Kidd did a double-take. She was using a vintage-looking metal kettle on the stove.

Each to their own, he thought.

“Sorry,” Kidd said as he reappeared. “Took me a minute to find it.”

Laura turned around from the cupboard, three pastel pink mugs balanced on the ends of her fingers. She was smiling, though it seemed a little strained. “No problem,” she said. “DS Sanchez and I were just talking. Did you bump into PC McCulloch on your way down?”

“Yes,” DI Kidd said. “She gave me quite a fright. Wasn’t expecting to see another one of ours here today.”

Laura laughed. “She’s been awfully good to us,” she said. “Always making sure everything is alright, asking if we’ve had any contact with Sarah, if we remember anything that might have…” she trailed off. “I suppose we’ll come to that in a moment, won’t we?”

The kettle whistled aggressively behind her. She poured the tea and brought it over to the breakfast bar, sitting across from them. She wrapped her hands around the mug, her nails a little chipped, the only thing about her that maybe wasn’t quite as put together as the rest of the house. Her knuckles were white with the ferocity with which she held the cup, like it was a lifeline. He could tell that she’d already prepared herself for the worst. Maybe she was already grieving in her head.

“So,” she said softly. “Where do you want to start?”

Kidd cleared his throat. “Is your husband here at all?” he asked. “It would be useful if—”

“He’s at work,” Laura interrupted. “The world hasn’t stopped for him like it has for me. He still gets up every day at five o’clock, heads down to the office, does his day’s work, and returns sometime around seven.” She looked up at the two of them, her eyes looking a little misty. “Not that I mind, of course, it’s keeping a roof over our heads.”

“Maybe that’s just his way of coping with it,” Zoe said. “Everyone deals with things like this differently.”

“Very true,” Laura whispered, taking a sip of her tea. She winced at how hot it was, chuckling a little before returning her mug to the breakfast bar. “What do you want to ask me?”

“It really would be great if we could talk to your husband at some point,” Kidd said. “I know he’s a busy man but—”

“Well, he’s trying to keep the business afloat,” Laura said, nodding. “But I can give you the number of the office and I am sure he would be more than happy to set something up. He wants her found as much as I do.”

“Has the business been struggling?” Kidd asked.

“There were layoffs,” Laura said. “He had to make some very difficult decisions, stop some of the properties he was building mid-build, fire people who we were close to.”

“Are you not close with them anymore?”

She blinked. “What’s that?”

“You said ‘were’, Mrs Harper,” Kidd said. “Have your relationships changed?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“I’m only thinking out loud, Mrs Harper—”

“Call me Laura.”

“Laura, then,” Kidd said. “I’m only thinking out loud. If your husband has made layoffs recently, upset people, it is possible there could be a connection to Sarah’s disappearance.”

“Like revenge?” she whispered.

Kidd had seen it happen many times before. People get low, people get desperate, and it makes them do desperate things. Of course, at this stage there likely would have been a ransom note, some demands that needed to be met, so it was pretty low on his expectation list but he wanted to cover as many bases as possible here.

“It’s possible, Laura,” DI Kidd said. “I’m not trying to upset you, I’m just trying to build a picture.” She nodded, so he continued. “Could you give us a list of those people? It might be useful and it would give us places to look, just in case.”

She nodded again. “I can