Her First Mistake by Carey Baldwin (books for 10th graders txt) 📕

Ideas, though not necessarily good ones, began percolating.

The first option that occurred to her was, like Dr. Baquero suggested, to simply confess to taking Celeste’s keys and deal with the fall out. But that fall out included the likelihood that Alma, and all her family, would want nothing more to do with Mia. And Detective Samuels had already flagged Mia as a person worth watching. If he found out about the “lost” keys, that just might bump her up to a full-blown suspect.

Her second option was to call Keisha’s bluff. Maybe Keisha figured she’d give it a shot, seeing as how she didn’t have the cash for her car, but wouldn’t carry out her implied threat because she had nothing to gain, really, by doing so. And if she did, it would only emphasize to her boss her foolish mistake in deleting the footage.

A corollary of option two was to call Keisha’s bluff but be prepared to deny everything if she did go to Samuels with her story. With no CCTV footage available, it would be Mia’s word against Keisha’s—but lying outright to the police was something Mia didn’t have much of a stomach for, as was evident from the ongoing burning in her esophagus.

The third option was to sleep on it, and then return to the Piano Man to try to reason with Keisha. Keisha looked to be a twenty-something like her, struggling to carve out a career, not an expert in extortion. If Mia had to bet, she’d put her money on this blackmail attempt being something of an impulse buy. A scheme Keisha might already regret. Maybe all Mia needed to do was give her the opportunity to take it back. Mia would give anything for the chance to undo her own wrongs.

She liked the final idea best, especially because it didn’t involve Mia cowering in a corner. She’d been fired from her job, her fellow teachers had turned on her, even Ruth and Paul Hudson had teamed up against her, but that didn’t mean she had to take it without fighting back.

The way Keisha had called her a nobody really hurt—it was past time for Mia to stand up for herself.

“Mia! Wait up!” Detective Samuels came trotting down the alley toward her.

Half-heartedly, she waved. She did need to tell him about Paul Hudson following her, but must she do it today—right this minute?

She could use a breather, but the look on his face let her know he was flagging her down for a reason. Resigning herself to her fate, she sat down on a sidewalk bench in front of a gelato shop, mere steps from her Jetta—she’d almost made it—and waited.

“Mind if I join you?” he said as he arrived, dropping beside her and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

“You didn’t have to kill yourself. I wasn’t going to make a break for it.”

“Just getting my exercise.”

“Okay. Anything interesting in the alley?” she asked, not that she expected him to answer. He hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about his investigation to date.

“Not really. Just wanted to have another look. You never know when some small detail will jump out at you and break a case wide open.”

That seemed true enough. “Mind if I ask where they found Celeste’s purse?”

He pointed. “Underneath that dumpster.”

“So it was hidden from view?”

“What’s your point?”

“You do know, don’t you, that bag’s expensive? Even used, someone could get hundreds for it on Craig’s List.”

“I’m aware—that is I was made aware by some of my colleagues, and it’s an interesting observation. I suppose you’re wondering, like my colleagues did, how that purse lasted in the alley from Friday night until Saturday afternoon when we recovered it.”

She nodded.

“Apparently, we just caught a break. The purse was in a hard-to-spot space under the dumpster.”

She didn’t bother to point out, because Samuels undoubtedly knew, that a certain segment of the population in San Diego had perfected the art of dumpster diving—and that included any and all areas above, below, and around the dumpsters. “A really lucky break. Was there a reason you chased me down?”

His expression, which had been just this side of light-hearted, suddenly turned grave. “You and I need to have a serious talk, Mia.”

“I agree. Do you want to go first, or should I?”

Twenty-Eight

“Ladies first,” Samuels said.

He probably thought if she revealed her information first that would give him the upper hand, but Mia was okay with that. There was no changing the facts. Paul Hudson had been following her. He’d lurked outside the Coopers’ house and given her a “warning” accompanied by a threatening gesture. And that’s what she relayed to Samuels, as thoroughly as possible, providing all the details she could think of, including that at one point she’d thought she’d lost the Lexus tailing her, but later Hudson turned up at the Coopers’ anyway. She wasn’t quite sure how that happened, but it had happened, nonetheless. The black Lexus couldn’t be a coincidence. It must’ve been Paul all along. She finished up with: “I think you should get a handwriting sample from Paul Hudson. I think he’s the one who left that note on my car.”

Detective Samuels, who’d been diligently jotting down what she told him, put away his pen and paper and met her gaze. “Paul Hudson didn’t write that note.”

“You got the handwriting analysis back already? I was hoping to hear soon, but I worried the FBI would take longer.”

“If I’d handed the note off to the FBI they would’ve taken months, possibly more to get back to us, which is one reason I didn’t send it to them.”

“But the FBI is assisting your department, because of those other women—right?”

“They’ve provided input, and they’re making their resources available. We’ve sent priority evidence to their labs, spoken to their behavioral analysts, and accessed their databases, but the note on your car is not necessarily vital to this case. We got a guy here, in homicide, who took a class in forensic handwriting examination. He’s got a