by Paula Graves
J. D. COOPER SAW THE redhead from the cemetery enter the pub and stride straight to the bar, her long legs eating up real estate like a pissed-off thoroughbred. She bellied up to the bar and ordered a shot of Tennessee whiskey, downing it in one gulp. J.D. watched in fascination, wondering if she’d tell the bartender to hit her again, like a cowboy in one of those old Westerns his son, Mike, liked to watch on the classic movies channel.
She ruined the effect by taking a napkin from the metal holder and delicately blotting leftover drops of whiskey from her pink lips. She ordered a ginger ale chaser and settled onto a bar stool, drinking the soda from a straw and scanning the bar’s murky interior with the eyes of a woman who knew she was completely out of place, which she was.
A woman like Natalie Becker didn’t walk into a place like Millie’s every day.
She was a deputy sheriff. Sister of the deceased. Daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the South. That much information had been easy to glean, even for a stranger in town.
Although technically, he wasn’t a stranger. His connection to Brenda had opened a few mouths; all he’d had to do was mention his wife’s name to some of Millie’s customers to find out what he’d needed to know. Of course, he’d also had to suffer through the looks of pain and pity at the mention of her name. Brenda had been as well loved here, in her hometown of Terrebonne, as she’d been back home in Gossamer Ridge.
Stopping at Millie’s had been a pure guess. At the cemetery, he’d seen the bulge of a weapon hidden beneath the lightweight jacket of the redhead’s summer suit. Yes, this was Alabama, and a lot of women in the state carried concealed weapon licenses, but damned few of them wore lightweight summer suits in this unholy heat. That left law enforcement. Cops got used to wearing uniforms of one sort or another, regardless of the weather.
J.D. had considered going straight to the Ridley County Sheriff’s Department and asking if they employed any redheads, but that was a little too direct for his purposes. So he’d done the next best thing—he’d found the only bar in town that looked like a place where cops would hang out.
“Another Sprite? Or would you like something stronger now?” The ponytailed waitress stopped at J.D.’s table, her tone a little more friendly than it had been earlier, when he’d ordered a soda instead of liquor.
“I’m good,” he said, earning a frown. The waitress drifted off toward more lucrative tables.
For a Wednesday mid-afternoon, the place was doing decent business. Some of the customers were farmers taking a beer break during the heat of the day, while others were workers coming off a seven-to-three shift at the chicken-processing plant a couple of miles away. No police had dropped by yet.
None but Natalie Becker.
Her wandering gaze finally drifted J.D.’s way. Her clear green eyes met his and she gave a start of surprise.
What would she do? he wondered, seeing a flicker of indecision in those pretty eyes. Pretend she hadn’t seen him before? Come over and ask him his business?
Since he was trying to keep a low profile while he was here in Terrebonne, he should be hoping for the former. But Natalie Becker had information he needed—more information, probably, than anyone else on the police force—given her relationship to Carrie Gray. So he felt a thrill of satisfaction when she got up from her stool at the bar and walked slowly in his direction.
He stood as she came near, his sudden movement catching her off guard, halting her forward movement. Her watchful gaze made J.D. reconsider his earlier comparison to a thoroughbred. This Natalie Becker was a feral cat, all wary green eyes and sinewy-muscles bunched, ready for flight.
“Who are you?” Her low, cultured voice rose over the twang of a George Strait ballad on the corner jukebox.
“J. D. Cooper.” He extended his hand politely.
She ignored his outstretched hand, moving forward slowly until she was even with his table. “You were at the cemetery.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Visiting a grave.”
“Mary Beth Geddie?”
He frowned, confused. “Who?”
“That’s the name on the gravestone where you were standing.”
“Oh.”
“You weren’t visiting her grave?”
“No. I was visiting your sister’s.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you?”
“J. D. Cooper.”
She winced with frustration. “Is that supposed to mean something to me? What did you want? Why were you visiting my sister’s grave?”
He cocked his head, wondering why she hadn’t jumped to the obvious conclusion. “You aren’t wondering if I’m the one who killed her?”
Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t speak for a moment as if he’d rendered her speechless. Finally, she asked in a strangled voice, “Did you kill my sister?”
“No,” J.D. answered. “But I think I know who did.”
Natalie closed her hand over the back of an empty chair nearby and pulled it around so she could sit down.
J.D. scooted his chair closer to her and sat as well. Reaching across, he placed his hand over hers where it lay on the table. “Are you okay?”
She jerked her hand from beneath his. “I’m fine.”
He raised both hands to reassure her he meant no harm. “I could get you some water—”
“I said I’m fine.” The words came out in a sharp snap. She flushed, looking embarrassed. He guessed Beckers didn’t make scenes in bars. “Thank you,” she added.
He saw her studying him closely, as if trying to take his measure. He wondered what she saw. At a distance, he knew he looked younger than his forty-four years, thanks to keeping up with his Navy fitness regime even after he retired. But up close, the years of grief and obsession showed around his eyes and mouth. Someone had once told him he had old eyes.
“What do you know about my sister’s murder?” she asked. “How do you even know about it? Where are you from?”
He reached into his pocket. She tensed immediately, her hand automatically sliding down to her waist, as if she expected to find a weapon there. Her lips flattened with anger.
J. D. Cooper finished pulling out his wallet to give her his Cooper Cove Marina business card.
“You work as a boat mechanic?” she asked.
“My folks own a marina up in Gossamer Ridge,” he said. “It’s a little place in the northeastern part of the state. When I got out of the Navy, I went to work for them doing boat repair and maintenance.”
She flashed a quick smile. He wondered why.
She laid the card in the middle of the table between them. “That doesn’t explain how you know about Carrie’s murder. Did it make the news up there or something?”
“You’re from a rich, influential family. One of you gets murdered, it makes news everywhere in the state.” He folded his wallet shut and put it back into his pocket. “The Gossamer Ridge paper didn’t give many details about the murder. Neither did The Birmingham News. But I know some folks around here, so I did a little digging.”
“Why?”
“Because I think the man who killed your sister is the same man who killed my wife.”
Chapter Two
Natalie sat back in her chair, watching him through narrowed eyes. “Your wife?”
He nodded. “She was murdered twelve-and-a-half years ago. Late at night while working alone at a secluded office building. Nothing else around for at least a half mile.”
The air in the bar seemed to grow chill. Natalie hugged her jacket more tightly around her. “Late at night—”
“Just like your sister.”
She swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“Do you know anyone named Alex?”
The question threw her. “Alex?”
“That’s the name he uses. I don’t think it’s his real name, but it could be a nickname.”
“You know his name but you don’t know what he looks like?”
J. D. Cooper’s only answer
was to pick up the business card and pull a pen from his shirt pocket. He wrote something on the back of the card and shoved it back toward her. “I’m going to be hanging around town a few days. Here’s where I’m staying. My cell number’s on the front of the card. I figure you’ll want to look into what I’m telling you, so I’ll leave you to do that.”
He unfolded his long legs until he towered over her like a giant tree, casting a shadow across the table. “I’m going to keep looking into your sister’s murder, whatever you decide. I just think it’ll be easier if we didn’t butt heads about it.”
He pulled out his wallet, laid a ten dollar bill on the table for the waitress and walked out of the bar.
It took a couple of seconds for Natalie’s legs to cooperate enough to go after him. By the time she burst outside the bar, he was driving away in the same black truck she’d seen at the cemetery earlier in the day. She noted the make and model—a Ford F-250—but couldn’t make out the license plate.
Torn between irritation and curiosity, she returned to the bar and retrieved his business card from the table.
J. D. Cooper, she read silently, her fingers tingling with the memory of his big, warm hand closing over hers.
She had a feeling he was going to be a boatload of trouble.
J.D. CALLED THE MARINA as soon as he reached the blessed coolness of his motel room. The place was cheap but clean, and the bed was big enough to look inviting to a man his size.
Waiting for someone to answer, he picked up the files he’d brought with him. It was twelve years’ worth of notes, police files and newspaper clippings he’d compiled since Brenda’s murder. Most of the pages were dog-eared and fading, while others were fresh photocopies of papers that had already started to fall apart.
He’d handled them all, at least once a day, for over a decade. An obsession, he supposed, but he couldn’t stop now. He was closer than he’d ever been, thanks to his brother Gabe’s recent trip to a college town three hours north of Terrebonne.
Ironic, that. Gabe being the one to blow the case wide open, since he was the one who blamed himself most for letting Brenda down the one night she really needed him.
His brother Luke answered the marina’s office phone, catching J.D. by surprise. Luke ran a riding stable and wouldn’t usually be there at this hour. “What are you doing there?” J.D. asked.
“I turned the stable over to Trevor and Kenny, and I’m meeting Abby here for dinner with the folks.”
God, he sounded happy, even though he had plenty of reasons not to be. Eladio Cordero, the South American drug lord who’d put a price on Luke’s life—and the life of anyone he loved—was still out there, biding his time. But at least Luke was home with his family now. The Coopers were pretty tough, always ready to guard each other’s backs. And Luke had that beautiful wife and kid of his to come home to every night.
J.D. tried not to envy his brother—all his brothers, really, who’d now found the kind of happiness J.D. hadn’t known in over twelve years. Even Gabe and Aaron had been bitten in the backside by the love bug. Aaron and Melissa were getting married in a couple of weeks, and Gabe had come home from his trip last month to Millbridge with a cute little college professor named Alicia Solano in tow. She still hadn’t said she’d marry him, but anyone could see she was crazy about him, too. And Gabe could be a bloody damned nuisance when he wanted something. J.D.’s money was on him.
“Have you picked up Mike yet?” Luke asked.
“No, not yet.” His thirteen-year-old son, Mike, had spent the last couple of weeks with his grandparents, right after his graduation from eighth grade. Brenda’s parents had come up to Chickasaw County to see their only grandson’s graduation and ended up taking Mike back with them to spend a few weeks.
J.D. had used Mike as an excuse to head south to Terrebonne, but Mike wasn’t due to come back home until just before Aaron’s wedding. J.D. hadn’t wanted his family to know his real reason for coming here until he found out more about Carrie Gray’s murder. They’d worry about him, and J.D. was tired of being the object of everyone’s concern.
“How’s Stevie?” he asked aloud to change the subject.
“He’s great!” Luke answered. “Abby’s been teaching him to speak Spanish, and he’s starting to get better at it than I am.”
J.D. laughed. “Well, tell him hola from his Tio J.D. I’m going to hang down here a little longer. Tell Dad he can get Jasper Noble to take care of any boat maintenance issues that come up while I’m gone. Jasper loves being useful since he retired—”
“How much longer?” Luke couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. Though Luke had been away from the family for ten years before his recent return to the fold, he’d apparently heard enough family gossip to know J.D. rarely visited Terrebonne anymore.
“A few days. No more than a week.” He hoped.
“Okay. I’ll tell everyone.”
“Thanks. Hey, is Gabe anywhere around?”
“He’s out unloading his boat. Just came in from a guiding job. You want me to have him call you?”
“Yeah, do that.” J.D. might not want the rest of his family to worry about him, but he wanted Gabe to know what he was really up to. After all, Gabe had put his life on the line to solve Brenda’s murder just a few weeks earlier, taking on a psychopath who’d been holding Alicia hostage.
A psychopath J.D. intended to visit in the Okaloosa County Jail up in Millbridge as soon as the visit could be arranged. Because Marlon Dyson wasn’t just a crazy stalker. He’d been partners with the man J.D. believed had killed his wife.
Gabe called a few minutes later, and J.D. gave him a quick rundown on his reason for heading south to Terrebonne in the first place. “I wanted to get the local view of things, just to be sure,” he told his younger brother.
“And what did you find out?”
“It’s our guy. I’m almost positive.”
Gabe was silent for a long moment. “Do you think he’s picked up a new partner?”
“That’s a question for your girl, I guess.” Gabe’s new girlfriend, Alicia, was close to getting her doctorate in criminal psychology, and she’d been the one who’d figured out there were two killers at work in the series of murders J.D. and his family had been trying to solve. Over the course of those years, the “alpha” killer, as Alicia termed him, had worked with at least two partners that they knew of—Victor Logan, who’d died in a mysterious house explosion a couple of months earlier, and Marlon Dyson. “And while you’re at it, I want you to have her call up her friend in the Millbridge Police Department and get me in to see Dyson.”
“J.D., are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s a damned good idea,” J.D. answered firmly, ignoring the wriggling sensation in his gut that belied the confidence in his voice. “Dyson helped that son of a bitch kill three women in the past year. Maybe more.”
“Even the FBI can’t get him to talk. What makes you think you can?”
“I’m motivated,” J.D. answered flatly.
“Yeah, I’m a little worried about just how motivated you are,” Gabe responded.
“Don’t try to stop me. You’re already on my bad side for keeping this information from me as long as you did.” His little brother had a bad habit of trying to protect J.D. when it came to this murder investigation. Some sort of misplaced guilt for having screwed up and gotten to Brenda’s place of work later than he’d agreed, J.D. knew. Gabe blamed himself, as if he could have stopped what happened to Brenda if he’d just been on time.
But he couldn’t know that. Nobody could. The cold air that November night had slowed decomposition, making it hard to be sure when she’d died. Could have been a few minutes before Gabe arrived. Could have been as much as an hour. He could have been on time and still been too late.
On the other hand, if J.D. had left the Navy when she’d wanted him to, she probably wouldn’t have been working at the trucking company in the first place—
“Maybe I shoul
d meet you in Millbridge,” Gabe suggested. “I could go in with you to see him—”
J.D. snorted. “Like you could stop me if I went after him.”
“I figure the guards would take care of that,” Gabe shot back flatly. “I’d be there to pay the bail.”
J.D. grinned at the phone. “I’ll be fine, Gabe. I promise.” His grin faded. “I’m this close to finding the son of a bitch who killed Brenda. I’m not going to screw it up by losing my head.”
Gabe’s answering silence was an unwanted reminder of just how close to the edge J.D. had gone over the past twelve years. Wild-goose chases, con artists trying to earn a buck off his grief, the emotional roller-coaster ride of chasing leads that never panned out—they’d all worked together to crush his fading hope and lead him to some very dark places over the past few years.
His family had worked overtime to keep him from falling apart. At times, they’d been all that kept him sane.
He broke the silence. “Will you see if Alicia can set it up? And call me back with when and where?”
“Of course,” Gabe agreed. “J.D., Luke said you haven’t even seen Mike yet. You left town two days ago. What’s the holdup?”
J.D. looked down at the files in front of him. “I don’t like him to see me this way.”
“Obsessed?”
“Focused,” J.D. corrected. “I’m looking at files I don’t want him to see.”
“You’ve been doing that for a lot of years now. Looking at things you don’t want him to see.” Gabe’s voice held no censure, only a bleak sadness that resonated in J.D.’s own heart.
J.D. knew he’d let his grief and rage steal too much time from his kids, not seeing until too late that he was throwing away moments, hours and experiences he could never get back. Thank God for his parents, who’d given his children the time, attention and unconditional love he’d been too broken to offer.
He was trying to repair the damage, one step at a time. But Cissy was nearly grown up now, heading into her junior year of college, and Mike would be entering high school this fall, taking giant steps toward an independent life of his own.