Paper Heart Goodbyes

Ch. 17

Tess woke up with a smile on her face. She and Chris talked for 2 hours the night before and even if it wasn't anything of real importance, she just needed to hear his voice. After falling asleep next to someone for so long, it's the strangest feeling to now be without them. She told him all about the yoga class and her conversation with the girls. She even played a few minutes of the taped conversation for him. He, again, reminded her to be careful and stay vigilant. Who knows where the killer could be.

Now it was a new day in California and she needed to prepare for her conversation with Tyler. She went to grab her phone off the nightstand to check the time and see if she had any messages. Again, there seemed to be something....off...but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Did she leave her phone like that, face down, last night? She hardly ever does that. Chalking it up to how tired she was when she finally hung up with Chris last night, she thought nothing more of it and got out of bed.

"Pancakes?" Becky asked Tess when she came out of her room. She could smell the coffee and the bacon cooking on the stove. The sizzling sound and the aroma was making Tess' mouth water.

"Yes, please. Everything smells delicious!"

Becky flipped the pancakes and turned to Tess. "The coffee's still hot. Help yourself," she motioned to the coffee pot with her spatula clad hand.

A few minutes later, both girls were sitting at the table with their breakfast, eating heartily.

"Does Lena want to eat with us?" Tess asked, not wanting to be rude and exclude Becky's roommate, even if she is a little odd and antisocial.

"She already left for the day. She had an early morning meeting."

"Oh, okay. What does she do?" Tess asked as she cut into her pancakes.

"She's in pharmaceutical sales so she travels to different medical offices. She basically travels up and down the state multiple times a year, but the majority of her time is spent here in the city."

"Wow you sure do know a lot of people who travel a lot for work - Lena, Brian, and you do some work travel too, right?"

"Some, not as much as them. But sometimes I get to go to the book expos in different cities and other conferences."

"That's cool. I guess my job will have me traveling a bit too. Once I start getting story assignments that is. Unless they keep me doing local news, which is fine. I can't afford to be picky this early in my career."

"Speaking of your career," Becky segued the conversation to the interview today. "We should probably prepare the questions you want to ask Tyler today at lunch."

"Yes, I was thinking about that, hold on just a sec," Tess ran to her room to grab her notepad where she had jotted down some notes last night.

"Okay, so I came up with a list of questions and some possible follow up questions to various answers he might have. Obviously, all these questions might be trash if what he tells us is something I did not prepare for at all. But, at least we have these to reference in case."

'May I see?" Becky held her hand out and was eyeing the notepad, but it was upside down for her.

"Sure," Tess handed her the spiral notepad. She had wrote down questions like "How close were you and Matt?", "Did you know his wife, Rachel, well?", "Did Matt tell you anything about a new friend Rachel may have made at yoga?", 'Was there anyone new in their life?", and a few more.

Becky's eyes roamed the pages, "These all look good," she passed the notebook back to Tess. "I'll try to actually speak this time," Becky facepalmed.