The Eleventh Hour

by Anina Collins

  And it was just as possible she’d been the one to make her that way.

  She was close to Geneva, or at least she claimed to be, so she had opportunity since a friend would let another friend into her house willingly. But could she strangle her? I thought back to my time with Shelley and tried to imagine her positioned behind Geneva. Standing at least three or four inches taller than I did at five foot six, Shelley was definitely taller than her friend, who was about my height. She was also bigger than Geneva, who could best be described as thin. Shelley had the appearance of someone who enjoyed too much of her newfound wealth. Like all that shopping and indulging had given her a soft, meaty look.

  I couldn’t help but think she had the size and strength necessary to overpower Geneva and strangle her to death. But then there was always the mystery man who visited in the dark of night.

  Who was he?

  That Geneva could conduct a secret love affair in Sunset Ridge impressed me. As small towns went, it was typical in that everyone seemed to know what everyone else was up to, no matter how much a person tried to keep their goings-on private. I knew firsthand how quickly gossip spread in my hometown, and if someone had gotten a hold of a piece of juicy news like Geneva Woodward having a secret love affair, it would have spread like wildfire.

  Closing my eyes, I remembered having to explain to my father the time I began dating Jason Durrow, sneaking out in the middle of the night to go to a party with him and thinking I’d gotten it past my parents, only to find out that the local rumor mill had informed them of everything I’d done just a day later in vivid detail. In a small town, having a private life was next to impossible.

  Prying eyes were always on her simply because she was like Sunset Ridge royalty. So how had Geneva kept this man visiting her a secret?

  My eyes flew open. She hadn’t. Shelley had known. But was it believable that she wouldn’t share that piece of gossip? And was it believable that no one else had found out about this mystery man?

  I needed to find someone else who saw the overnight comings and goings at Geneva’s house. As I set my sights on heading over to Geneva’s other next door neighbor, my phone rang and I looked down at the screen to see it was Bethany.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she asked in response to my hello.

  “Just doing some work.” That wasn’t a complete lie. I had done some work earlier.

  “Work work, or trying to figure out who killed Geneva Woodward work?”

  I chuckled at how well Bethany knew me. “Well, I tried to get some work done for The Bottom Line, and I guess you could say I succeeded, but I couldn’t help it. My brain is stuck on this murder case.”

  “I still can’t believe we have a murderer in town, Poppy. I just got back from a walk to the bank, and all I could think was that I might have passed him or her on the street. They might have been right next to me, and I wouldn’t even have known it.”

  Bethany’s assessment was right on the nose. The murderer was very likely someone from town who we both had seen hundreds of times. “I know. I can’t help thinking that too. It’s not like we get that many newcomers here. I mean, the Hotel Piermont is rarely more than half full on any given night.”

  “And that’s more like a bed and breakfast anyway, so it isn’t like half full means hundreds of people arriving in town,” Bethany added.

  “Well, only if bed and breakfasts had a seedy feel to them,” I joked. “And we all know that the most common type of person that hotel gets is the husband who’s been thrown out of his house by an angry wife.”

  Bethany giggled as she described the other main types of visitors the Hotel Piermont got. “Don’t forget the couples who go there for a quickie and cheaters.”

  I tried to imagine Geneva being involved in anything called a quickie. No way. I didn’t know what she was up to, but I couldn’t see her checking into the local hotel for some afternoon delight. Plus, if what Shelley had said was true, Geneva was using her own home for her trysts.

  Knowing I shouldn’t tell Bethany about that detail, I changed the subject to my unpleasant first meeting with Alexander Montero. “While I was at Derek’s office at the station today, I met someone new.”

  As few new people ever came to town, she reacted with surprise. “Someone new in Sunset Ridge? Had he been arrested?”

  “No. He seemed to be someone Derek knew. His name is Alexander and he was a Baltimore policeman. Well, he was before he retired.”

  Bethany’s disappointment came out in a deep sigh. “Just what we need. Some fat, old retired cop. I bet he’s bald, isn’t he? Why don’t we ever get hot guys coming to this town? Just once I’d like to hear one of us say that we met a hot guy and he’s single. Is that too much to ask?”

  I thought about Alexander and smiled. “Your wish seems to have come true. He’s retired, but I don’t think he could be any older than thirty-five, if that. And he’s good looking. I mean very good looking.”

  “Are you kidding? How is it I haven’t seen him yet? I’m out every day in this town, and I haven’t seen this mythical creature you speak of roaming the streets of Sunset Ridge.”

  “And although I don’t know for sure, I think he’s single.”

  My bombshell made Bethany go silent for a moment, but when she’d recovered, she said, “I hear something strange in your voice, Poppy. You say he’s very good looking and single, yet you don’t sound like you’re that impressed. What’s up?”

  The memory of Alexander’s rude behavior floated through my mind, and I grimaced. No matter how good looking he was, acting that way was never okay.

  “Let’s just say he didn’t make me want to run off with him to the Hotel Piermont this afternoon. He has the personality of a piranha.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, no doubt curious about him since I rarely said anything that negative about people.

  “He was really quite rude, to be honest. I asked a few polite questions just to break the ice, and he barely could mutter one word answers. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter how gorgeous a man is. If he can’t be bothered to even be pleasant when he meets someone for the first time, then I can’t be bothered to give him the time of day.”

  “So he was gorgeous, huh?”

  Bethany had a terrible way of focusing on all the wrong things. Her history with men wasn’t exactly stellar, and it was littered with more failures than successes, mainly because she went after all the wrong men.

  “Looks aren’t everything,” I said, chastising her. “A gorgeous face and body fade over time and then what are you left with? Some surly guy who’s rude.”

  “So he was gorgeous and had a great body?” she asked excitedly.

  I stood from my desk to stretch my legs after hours of sitting and took a deep breath. “You’re just going to ignore what I said about his piranha personality, aren’t you?”

  “No. Well, maybe. It’s just that with so few good looking men around, a girl can’t be too choosy, Poppy. I keep telling you that.”

  “And I keep ignoring you. I think I need to make myself something to eat. I’ve been at my desk for hours, so it’s time for a snack break. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay. I’m going back to my boring job to fantasize about this new guy in town. Thanks for giving me something to pass the rest of the day away.”

  I rolled my eyes at her silliness about men. “You’re too funny. Talk to you later.”

  After a snack of some crackers with cheese and more iced tea, I thought about walking over to talk to Geneva’s other next door neighbors but I couldn’t get Alexander Montero out of my mind. Unlike Bethany, I had no problem not wanting men who were bad for me. Bad boys, by their very nature, weren’t good for me, but I didn’t have the sense that Alexander was bad.

  In fact, he seemed more angry than bad. That difference made me curious about him. If he’d been simply bad, I wouldn’t have given him another thought, but angry people were hiding something.

  So what was Ale
xander Montero hiding?

  The internet is a wonderful thing for finding out the answer to that very question. And I was no regular online stalker. Nope, this girl knew how to search in ways most other people had no idea of. If there was something in his background and history, I’d find it.

  I decided to start with the obvious. If he’d been a Baltimore police detective, then there would be newspaper articles that mentioned him. That was my first stop to find out what Alexander Montero was hiding.

  Sometimes a search yielded a paltry few results at first, and yet other times all I had to do was type in a name and a person’s entire life came up on the screen in front of me. However, Alexander’s name made neither of these things happen. I certainly found a plethora of articles containing his name, and they all pointed to the same conclusion.

  He’d been one hell of an investigator when he was a cop. Of course, that begged the question as to why he’d left that job. Even assuming he’d become an officer in his early to mid-twenties, retiring less than a decade later seemed strange for someone who’d been as successful as he’d been. He’d risen to the rank of detective in record time, according to one write-up about him.

  So why did he retire so young?

  I searched for any information that might indicate he’d been hurt on the job and found it less than fifteen minutes later. He’d suffered an injury from a shooting on the job in 2010, but it hadn’t been life threatening. The wound had earned him a commendation from the mayor himself, and it appeared he returned to work in a little over a month.

  But he didn’t retire right after that. Had the shooting made him leave the job, or was it something else?

  For over two hours, I searched through everything I could find on Alexander Montero. Much of it involved his job, but one search result came up not with his name but with the name Helena Montero. An obituary, it listed her as passing away five years ago at the age of twenty-eight. As I read through the last things written about her life, I saw her husband had been named Alexander. The write-up mentioned no children but told of how she’d been a chef at a well-known Baltimore restaurant and a kind person who helped out those in need whenever she could.

  Reading about her made me feel bad about looking up information on Alexander, and I closed my laptop without searching any further. I’d found what I was looking for. He was exactly what Derek had said he was.

  A great detective who had retired early.

  But I couldn’t help but wonder if that woman named Helena had been his wife. What happened to her to make her die so young? And was her death why Alexander had left the force and moved to Sunset Ridge?

  Was that why he seemed so angry?

  Chapter Four

  McGuire’s Bar had been a part of Sunset Ridge since before I was born. My father loved to tell the story of how he came to own the bar that used to be called The Watering Hole. One night he was playing poker with the owner of the bar, a notorious womanizer and gambler named Campbell Grave, and in one hand the man lost his business to my father. I was sure with each retelling that my father left out some of the more important parts of the story, but I never asked mostly because I didn’t want to think badly of my father and something told me he hadn’t gotten the bar entirely legally. Nevertheless, from that night, he’d owned the bar and Campbell hadn’t been seen in Sunset Ridge.

  I took a seat at the bar and hung my purse from the hook near my knees as my father poured me a glass of my favorite beer, a summer wheat he’d arranged to keep stocked up on year round so I could have it any time I wanted. That’s the kind of man my father was.

  Taking a sip, I let the taste of it linger on my tongue before I swallowed. No matter if it was freezing cold outside or on the cusp of warmer weather like it was earlier that day, drinking this particular beer made me think of sultry summer nights on my back porch having a good time with friends.

  “So what’s new with my Poppy?” he asked with one of his trademark big Irish grins.

  I thought about my day and tried to find a way to explain it. A murder in Sunset Ridge. Taking on my first criminal investigation. Some work done at both my jobs. And meeting someone who seemed to take an instant dislike to me. It had been a full day.

  Finally, after deciding there was no great way to describe it, I answered, “A lot. Not much. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You look like you have a lot on your mind, honey. Something bothering you?”

  I hesitated to tell my father about Derek’s allowing me to poke around asking questions about his case. My father had a tendency to worry about me, and hearing I was involved in a murder investigation likely wouldn’t give him much peace of mind.

  He’d find out anyway, though, so I just had to find the right words to break the news. As any daughter knew, it wasn’t what to say but how to say it that mattered.

  “I’m fine, Dad. I took on a new job today. Well, it’s sort of a job, and my mind’s been busy mulling it over all day.”

  My father wiped down the bar in front of him with a damp cloth and nodded. “Sounds good. Anything you want to talk about?”

  “I’m helping Derek, sort of, with one of his cases. Nothing big. Just working some things out for him.”

  My attempt at finding the right words was failing spectacularly if the confused look on my father’s face was any indication. Well, when in doubt, I’d always found being truthful was the only way to go. Taking a deep breath in, I exhaled slowly and then did just that.

  “I’m helping Derek with the Geneva Woodward murder case.”

  I waited for my father to begin lecturing me on the danger of a murder investigation and how I wasn’t part of the police, but it never came. Instead, he smiled and slowly nodded, as if he was processing what I’d said and weighing his response. When he finally spoke, his voice was surprisingly even.

  “I could ask how this happened or tell you I’m going to be worried sick about you doing this, but there really isn’t a point, is there? You’re just like your mother. Always so curious. I just want to know you’re going to be careful. Someone murdered Geneva, Poppy, and that person is going to do anything to keep from being found out. I need you to tell me you know that.”

  Reaching across the bar, I took his hands in mine and looked him dead in the eye. “I know that, Dad, and I’m going to be careful. I promise. Thank you for understanding and being supportive of me in this.”

  He squeezed my hands and with a chuckle said, “I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling support, sweetheart. I do understand, though. As I said, you’re so much like your mother. She never could let a mystery go, no matter what it meant. Her patients loved her for it, though.”

  The sadness in his voice when he talked about my mother still lingered, even after her death nearly a decade ago. I knew how he felt. I missed her too. Sometimes the loss pressed so heavy on my heart I couldn’t imagine how I’d get through to tomorrow.

  I hated seeing him like that, so I quickly moved to change the subject. “So what do you think of this Geneva Woodward murder case, Dad? Derek says it’s been years since a murder was committed in Sunset Ridge.”

  My father nodded. “He’s right. It’s been a very long time since the police had to solve that kind of crime. I’m sure Derek’s feeling like fish out of water right about now.”

  “Well, I’m helping, and anyway, he doesn’t even think it was a murder so much as a robbery gone bad. I think he’s crazy.”

  “Geneva Woodward. Now there’s a story,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest. “Small town royalty is what they used to call the Woodwards.”

  “They still do. She certainly acted like she was head and shoulders above the rest of us,” I said as I took a drink of my beer, instantly thinking I’d been disrespectful of the dead. “That wasn’t nice. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That woman was a piece of work.”

  My father’s snide remark about Geneva surprised me. I leaned back away from the bar and chuckled. “Is there something you’d l
ike to share, Dad? It sounds like you knew her better than I did.”

  “You could say that.”

  His coyness made me want to know what he had to say even more. “Well, are you going to give me the details? I’ve never heard you talk about her at all, so this makes me curious. What are you hiding?”

  “I’m not hiding anything,” he said as he rolled his eyes. “I just happened to see her more than you did. She used to come in right before closing time when everyone was already gone for the night.”

  “Are you saying Geneva had the hots for my father?”

  He shrugged and said, “The hots for me? Well, I guess.”

  The thought of her wanting any man surprised me, strangely enough, even though Shelley had said there was a mystery man in her life. She was so cold and imperial in her ways whenever I saw her in town that thinking of her as a sensual being just didn’t work.

  “Are you going to give me the details, or do I have to beg?”

  My father poured himself a glass of soda and slowly took a drink. He liked to play games like this because he knew I could be impatient. When he finally answered, it was more non-answers, in truth.

  “She and I never went out, if that’s what you’re asking. I wasn’t interested, but I can say she was insistent. She’d come in every night a few minutes before two and sit down right where you’re sitting. I can’t say she ever propositioned me directly, but she made it clear that she was interested in knowing more about me.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  Looking up toward the ceiling, he thought about my question and sighed as he lowered his head. “I want to say about three weeks. She just stopped one night about a month ago. Not that I wasn’t relieved.”

  “Geneva Woodward could have been my stepmother. Wow! I’d never think that was possible in a million years,” I teased.

  Turning serious, he frowned and shook his head. “It wasn’t possible. Isn’t possible. There is no other woman for me but your mother.”

  His words pinched at my heart, and for a long moment I remained silent. I knew my father meant what he said. He’d never remarry again, so he’d be alone for the rest of his life because he still loved my mother and he’d never hurt another woman like that. He was an honest man, and even though I wished more than he knew that he’d let himself love again, he wouldn’t.