Chapter 3 - GRANDMA SAID IT WAS A SECRET
Méndez moved Salomé away from the table before anyone else touched the backpack.
She didn’t frighten her.
She crouched beside my daughter and spoke gently.
“Salomé, sweetheart, can you tell me exactly how that phone got into your bag?”
Salomé looked at me first.
I nodded.
“It’s okay.”
She twisted one backpack strap between her fingers.
“Grandma put it there.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
My heart started pounding.
“Did she tell you why?”
Salomé hesitated.
Grant stood near the door.
His face had become strangely rigid.
Méndez noticed.
“Officer Grant, wait outside.”
He didn’t move.
“I’m assigned to this visit.”
“You’re no longer needed.”
Something passed between them.
Then Grant left.
The door closed.
Only then did Salomé continue.
“Grandma was cleaning Daddy’s old things.”
“What things?” Méndez asked.
“A box from the garage.”
She swallowed.
“She found the phone and got scared.”
“Scared how?”
“She started crying.”
My daughter looked down.
“Then she said we were going to visit Mommy today and maybe God wanted Mommy to have something.”
That didn’t sound like Evelyn.
Evelyn had spent nearly a year restricting my contact with Salomé.
She had refused additional visits.
Blocked phone calls.
Returned birthday letters.
She had told social services that seeing me made Salomé emotionally unstable.
Why would she suddenly send Adrian’s missing phone to me?
Unless she hadn’t meant for me to receive it.
“Did Grandma tell you to give it to me?”
Salomé shook her head.
“No.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“What did she tell you?”
“She told me never to open the little pocket.”
Méndez and I exchanged a look.
“Then why did you?”
Salomé’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because Grandma was talking to somebody downstairs.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
Salomé took a shaky breath.
“She said, ‘They can never find the phone.’”
My stomach turned.
“And then?”
“She said she was taking me to Aunt Carol’s after visiting you.”
Salomé looked terrified now.
“She said we might not come home for a long time.”
Méndez stood.
“Where is Evelyn right now?”
“In the parking lot.”
Méndez immediately reached for her radio.
I stared at the backpack.
Evelyn hadn’t hidden Adrian’s phone inside it so Salomé could bring it to me.
She had hidden it there because a child’s backpack was the last place anyone would search while she moved it somewhere else.
Salomé had ruined the plan by finding it.
But one question remained.
“Salomé.”
She looked at me.
“Who told you that was Daddy’s phone?”
Her answer made Méndez lower her radio.
“Nobody.”
May you like
She pointed toward the device.
“I know because Daddy gave it to me the night before he died.”
