by RJ Scott
“I need coffee for the PD and an extra for my guest.”
“You know what he wants?”
Luca already knew what each of the PD drank, but Special Agent Beaumont was an unknown quantity.
“Last night he had coffee, and also hot chocolate from a mix.”
Luca turned to the machine and began making coffees to order, his wife’s first, and then we watched her walk over to the library. I didn’t miss her subtle middle finger gesture, and that made me smile. Unfortunately with her gone, and Luca making coffee, Nonna had time to talk to me.
“You know, Josh, your Harry is so talented,” she began.
“Of course he is. He takes after me,” I deadpanned.
That was actually pretty far from the truth. Where I’d inherited my dad’s gift with numbers, Harry had gotten everything from Sadie, the woman who’d left town to be a talent agent and had ended up being an artist who lived in New York with her wife, Lucy. Apart from the way he looked though, that was all me; dimples, dark eyes, and messy brown hair included.
“He showed me a drawing he did of the man who is a spider, red and blue, with a mask.” She imitated a spider with spindly fingers, making a definite crawling motion as they traced my T-shirt, and I shuddered because if there’s one thing I hate it’s spiders.
“Spiderman,” Luca said helpfully as he finished the last of the order. He’d written on every cup so far in his neat handwriting, but he’d need to know Lucas’s name. Only if I told her, then Nonna might know that I had the hots for the new guy, or tell Chloe. Both women were impossibly psychic that way.
“Yes, the man spider.” She laughed and did the spider thing again, but thankfully Luca had the last coffee done.
“Name?”
“Leave it blank. I’ll know.”
“Are you feeling better today after being way too ill to come to poker last night?” he teased.
I nearly blew my cover story. After all, I’d concocted an elaborate excuse to miss poker, which involved a broken faucet and mild food poisoning. It had been too elaborate by far, but Luca had bought it with only a subtle raising of one eyebrow. “You look ill”—Nonna poked at my chest—“Are you still being sick?”
“I feel better.”
“Good job you weren’t there. Doc took us for every cent of our ten dollars each,” he grumped. The poker games we played weren’t high stakes, it was more about pride, and I could see that Luca was frustrated.
“We’ll get it back next week.” That was the way of our poker games. We were all so evenly matched, and none of us had poker faces, so our wins were cyclical. Next week it might be my turn to have luck.
I could do with some luck.
Armed with coffee, pastries, and the promise that I’d be at next Friday poker, I headed for the PD, but just my freaking luck Sandoval was heading my way, and I couldn’t avoid him. Not that I didn’t try. I went left; he copied. I crossed the street, and he followed.
“What?” I asked him, wincing inwardly at the bags under his eyes and his disheveled appearance. Every time I saw him now, he looked less like the cop he’d been and more like a vagrant.
“How is Harry?” he asked immediately but I ignored him, and bypassed him. “Josh! Keep an eye on Harry!”
I stopped then and faced him. “Excuse me?”
“He’s a good kid, just… so many secrets… and it’s not safe in town. Okay?”
He turned on his heel and headed off toward the park, and feeling unsettled, I carried on to the PD, dropping the first coffee with Tate, who blew me a kiss and had first pick of the bag of pastries. He took his time examining the contents, and just as I was getting to the point where I was going to choose for him, he finally took a bear claw and settled back in his seat.
“If I wasn’t with Jennifer, I’d ask you to marry me as well,” he murmured and then stared up at me with wide eyes. “Yeah, anyway, they’re in the back,” he added and then got very busy on his keyboard, bear claw hanging from his teeth and covering his desk with crumbs. Interesting. I filed that off-hand comment away, but the town could do with a wedding, and Jennifer could do with someone like Tate, who adored her.
“Did you just say that you asked—”
“No. I said nothing. If you mention it to anyone… ” he waved a pen at me, which wasn’t that threatening, but I offered a fist to bump.
“Congrats,” I whispered, and he went scarlet even as he grinned.
There was no sign of Logan or Heather, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be in Sawyer’s office, which was full to bursting. It wasn’t that big of a space to start with, and when I stopped at the half-open door, I saw Sawyer pointing at something on the board, Logan and Drew leaning on the desk, their arms crossed over their chests like matching bookends. Heather wasn’t there, but that meant there was an extra coffee that I might just sit and drink here with them.
Which just left Lucas Beaumont, standing with his back to me, gesturing at the board, and I caught the tail end of what he was saying.
“… no evidence that’s even possible.”
I knocked on the door, and all four men turned to me. Sawyer was exhausted, the bookend twins had eyes only for the coffee and pastries, and Lucas simply seemed confused.
“Hey, guys,” I announced. “Lucas, you didn’t have breakfast.”
“It’s okay. I know you don’t offer it at the hotel, and you wouldn’t have had time to cater cereal like you said.”
“Yeah, well, I double-checked at the deli and the diner. You didn’t buy anything at either of those places.” I held up a white bag and a tray of coffee. “So pastries, muffins, and Cali-coffee for all.”
The three men behind Lucas were polite enough not to shove me out of the way, but it was close.
“Give. Me. Now,” Sawyer demanded, and I dished out his caffeine and shook the bag of goodies under his nose. He took the first thing he reached, a huge fluffy blueberry muffin, before sitting in his desk chair and starting both before anyone else had even had time to react.
I held the bag of pastries out so that Lucas got second pick, and he chose the same kind of muffin and smiled at me in gratitude. I picked out a bear claw and then put the bag on the table for Drew and Logan to fight over.
“I didn’t expect breakfast.” He blinked at me as if he couldn’t understand why someone would go out of their way to help him.
“I don’t want you to get hungry,” I murmured and then winked. “I’m a caring kind of guy by nature.”
“Well, thank you,” Lucas finally said as he glanced at the coffees.
“Luca at Calabresi’s made you this.” I passed him the blank cup, and he took a tentative sip, letting out a sigh of pleasure, a soft sound that sent my blood south and made me think all kinds of sex-driven things in the few seconds before he took the nearest chair and began to eat his muffin.
“Around here we call that Cali-coffee,” Sawyer explained.
“It’s heaven in a mug,” Lucas murmured.
There was nowhere for me to sit, so I chose the floor, with my back to the wall, feeling at home in this tiny space.
From that position, I couldn’t see the board with all the pictures, but after catching a glimpse of it on a couple of occasions, I didn’t want to see if Sawyer had added a picture of the hand, or any other limbs, come to think of it. Neither did I want to see the smiling Casey McGuire, because the loss of him had broken the McGuire family apart, and I’d missed Drew. I’d also fucked up with him big-time, but he was cool with me now after we’d had a mutual meltdown in this very office. Water under the bridge, I hoped.
“How’s everything going?” I asked the very general question of all four men in the room. Sawyer shrugged, Drew shook his head, and Logan sighed. Only Lucas, who was a weird combination of shocked and confused, seemed to want to say something.
“I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to be in the room,” he said and brushed at a crumb on the corner of his mouth.
Oh, to have been a crumb
and be that close to pink lips that begged to be kissed.
He’s probably straight. But if he is, why is he staring at me so intently?
Because I’m not a cop, and this is a private meeting. I think if my cock had a brain, it would’ve been convincing me that Lucas was a sexy man who wanted in my pants. He looked at me just a shade too long for it just to be concern that I was in a private meeting, but then he was probably expecting me to give him an answer.
“You going back to Adam’s place?” I bypassed Lucas and spoke straight to Sawyer, who nodded tiredly and gripped his coffee so hard I could see the cup indentations in the side. I made a mental note to talk to Chris to see if he, as Sawyer’s partner, could persuade Sawyer to slow down a little. I knew he’d wanted to get ahead of the FBI for when they arrived, but I didn’t notice any weirdness in the dynamics here. It wasn’t as if Lucas was standing there shouting out orders. I understood he was only one of the agents planning on coming to town, but he’d had a very relaxed body language when he’d been talking with Sawyer.
Not so much now. Now he was tense, staring at me as if he wanted to label me.
“Yeah, it’s on our list,” Logan said instead of Sawyer.
“You think it was him?”
Sawyer nodded, rubbed his eyes, and then sat back in his chair.
“You remember the bandana?” He pressed a hand to his throat, and I knew exactly what he was talking about. Old Man Gray had always worn a scarlet cloth around his neck. I recalled it from when we were kids.
“Yeah, the one we thought hid some tragic wound.”
Drew huffed. “The one you said you’d steal from him if he fell asleep.”
“In my defense, if you remember, we were only six, and we’d just read ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ at school.” I smiled, caught Lucas’s narrow-eyed gaze, and backed down from starting a remember-when-we-were-kids memory walk.
“The bandana was there.” Sawyer spoke with quiet grief, and I saw the pain in my best friend’s eyes. “If only we’d gotten Veteran Services to come here sooner—”
“He was murdered. It wouldn’t have mattered what Veteran Services did or what you did. It’s whoever is out there shooting people between the eyes and then chopping them up,” Drew interrupted with impatience in his tone. Knowing Sawyer as well as I did, they’d had to listen to the self-recrimination from Sawyer before. He always did carry guilt when it wasn’t warranted.
“What Drew said,” I added as if that might help. Old Man Gray had been a fixture in this town. Not that we saw much of him. Only a couple of times up by the Dwyer cabin, when we took the back way to swim in the lake or that time with the poison ivy incident.
“This is police business,” Lucas murmured, “and I don’t think you should be here, because—”
I interrupted whatever Lucas was going to say about police procedure or rules. “I’m going.”
I finished off my bear claw and sucked my sugary fingers, picked up my coffee, and then stood slowly, stretching tall. Lucas’s eyes were wide, and he was definitely staring at me when I licked my fingers.
Cock 1, brain 0.
“Later,” I said, then thought of something and stopped. “Do you need me to bring you lunch, Lucas?”
“No, I… that’s not part of the service… I don’t… We’re all heading out soon.” He tripped and stumbled over his words, and I swore twin flags of scarlet darkened his cheeks.
“No problem. Let me know if anything changes.”
I really hoped things changed.
I headed back to the hotel, narrowly avoiding Grandma Garton with her sharp tongue and her quick wit. She was standing at the front door of the hotel, cake in hand, chatting to Doc, so I took the back way into the hotel, over the wall, through the garden and past the stable conversion. Which was how I surprised Harry at reception, not working on his homework but instead staring into the distance.
“You okay?” I asked him gently so as not to surprise him too much, but it didn’t matter. He yelped and jumped up in shock.
“I did my math,” he defended himself.
“Okay, that’s fine, Hubble.”
I leaned over, and managed to ruffle his hair before he could stop me. I could still hear him grumbling as I headed off to clean the first bedroom.
Seven
Lucas
Josh leaving the office was the best and the worst thing. His unscheduled delivery of coffee and baked goods had highlighted more about the dynamic of the group in the office than any ten-hour meeting could.
And all the time Josh was in the office and we exchanged glances, he would smile at me, and the smile reached his incredibly dark, fathomless eyes.
I will not get turned on by small-town charm.
He was a catalyst for smiles in this group, a friend, happy, not embroiled in the case, and able to see things with a dispassionate eye. I assumed he, Sawyer, and Drew went back a long way. How far I didn’t know, but the way they talked made it sound as if they’d grown up together. Josh was quirky, cheeky, just ever so slightly loud, and his face, including that wide, gorgeous smile, wouldn’t have been out of place in a modeling campaign. His hair was a little too long, almost fluffy in places, curling at his neck, and he had to sweep his bangs from his eyes on more than one occasion. He dressed casually in cutoffs and a T-shirt emblazoned with the water logo of the Falls Hotel, and he had an easy manner that invited confidence.
I knew because when he’d asked us how everything was going, I wanted to blurt out that I was nervous and scratchy and that I needed a stiff drink. Instead, I’d been forced to go for the officious fed persona who didn’t want the captain’s best friend anywhere near the case. Maybe he was used to being part of the team in this office, but that wasn’t the way I ran things. Even having Drew there was pushing my limits, but I got the sense that he would be useful to the team and that we needed him. Like Grandpa Toby said, always follow your gut. I cast a look at the remaining men in the room.
Drew was the wildcard. Heartbroken over losing his brother, he was passionately vocal about what he wanted. He was there to solve the case, and I didn’t think for one minute I would be able to pry him away from being there with us. I wasn’t stupid, and I would never discount the fact that skewed passion and dedication to examine things from a different perspective would be invaluable.
Sawyer was a man in control, good at his job, confident, standing apart from the gossip that inevitably ran through this town. Logan was another good guy, dedicated and focused, and desperate to get this case closed for the town and more importantly, for Sawyer, whom he clearly respected. Sometimes when a case drew in a small-town department, it pulled in the mess that was a nest of secrets going back years, but this department was different, forward-thinking, not afraid to examine itself as being part of the problem. Part of that was the removal of Mr. Sandoval, who’d retired, but who was being investigated by the same team here dealing with human remains at their front door.
Logan had a spotless Army record. I hadn’t checked into Drew’s record yet, but I’d read Sawyer’s file from his time in Chicago. Alongside two commendations, there had been burnout after an undercover case had gone horrifically wrong. Clearly, he’d come home to the place he’d been born in.
Running to a place he knew.
I know that feeling. I noticed the deliberate space left on the board between the details on Adam, the pastor, and his wife, and the rest of the information. Sawyer’s instinct was that those things were connected to the bones somehow, but he appeared reluctant to look at everything as one big problem. Maybe he was right, but in a town this small, three deaths in the space of a couple of months had to be suspicious.
I waited until the door shut behind Josh, and after taking a few deep, restorative breaths, I launched into my question.
“What’s your take on the murder-suicide?” I caught Sawyer in a yawn. Maybe he’d slept as little as I had, or maybe this case was destroying his head. I felt compassion for what he was going through a
nd even more determination to get this fixed.
“I’m sorry. I was up late, looking at old files, lost track of time.”
“It’s okay. I expect before this is done each one of us will be propping his eyelids up with matchsticks, but we will get this done.” I faced Drew, who was in the process of exchanging pointed looks with Logan, probably wondering what in hell kind of FBI agent they had in their midst. “Drew, you want to take over telling me what you witnessed in the church?”
“Didn’t you have time to read the transcript from the incident?” Sawyer rifled through papers on his desk and pulled out a letter-sized sheet. He didn’t wait for me to say yes or no before summarizing the notes from an event that had ended with Drew being trapped in a fire and Logan dragging him out. I’d really wanted Drew’s perspective, but I’d get it some other way.
“Beverly Kirkland set a fire near a gas can and admitted to Drew that she had committed vehicular manslaughter, confessed it was she who’d killed Casey McGuire. She added that her husband knew where to throw bodies, was paid to keep secrets, then denied all knowledge of what he’d been involved in, which leads us to think that potentially he had something to do with the bones in the sinkhole.”
“Drew? You have anything to add?”
“That covers it, aside from…” He frowned. “Does anyone else here think that despite the pastor being implicated in the hiding of Casey…” He swallowed, and the emotion was raw on his face. I wondered if he would ever be able to say his brother’s name without pain. “… the earliest of the original remains we know about is Jessica vanishing in Buffalo in 1974, right? At that time, William Kirkland was at a church over a hundred miles in the opposite direction and well away from here. In fact, he was employed at that church until the mid-eighties, so that would cover the disappearance of both Angela, also from Buffalo, and Melissa, from Corning. Would he really have come back to town with bodies in the trunk to throw them in Hell’s Gate?”
“Good point,” Sawyer agreed. “Beverly Kirkland said he knew where to throw the bodies, that he was paid to keep secrets, not that he killed and disposed of the women we know about so far.”