“I guess some people are more used to it than I am.”
“I thought all journalists were skeptics.”
She seemed to surprise herself by smiling. “Maybe that’s why most people don’t try to lie to me.”
Daniel searched her face—her eyes, her mouth, the set of her jaw—for a sign of what Cozie Hawthorne was really feeling. Although direct and outspoken, she was, he decided, adept at suppressing especially powerful emotions like fear, grief, guilt, perhaps even love. The major exception was anger. The woman had no trouble letting folks know when she was ticked off.
She blew lightly on her cider, then took a small sip, remaining by the stove, as if she needed its warmth. “If Julia Vanackern wasn’t aboard your helicopter when it crashed—if you didn’t even see her and her parents when they were in Texas—why do you think the Vanackerns know anything about what happened?”
Not just the Vanackerns, Daniel thought. Your brother, too. But he said carefully, “I’m not sure that they do.”
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find out.”
“I’m going to do what I have to do.”
“Suppose,” she said, unrelenting, “I decide not to keep what I know about you to myself. I could put one of my reporters on the story. That’s what any other editor in my position would do.”
“Even if it involves a Vanackern?”
“Why not? I wouldn’t stay on at the Citizen another minute if the Vanackerns tried to interfere with editorial policy.” She drank more of her cider, her natural self-assurance returning. “So what would you do if I had someone investigate what you’re really doing in Vermont?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Obviously she didn’t believe him.
“That’s right. You can make what I have to do here more difficult, Cozie, but you can’t stop me.”
“I never said I wanted to stop you.”
“Then you just want me to satisfy your curiosity.”
He set his mug on the wooden arm of a chair and moved to her side at the stove. The fire was going good now, radiating a heat that was a damned good measure of his mounting desire for one green-eyed Yankee with a mop of reddish blond hair and a mess of troubles. Her caller, her brother, her new fame and fortune. Him.
But he wanted her. It wasn’t something, he now realized, that wasn’t going to decrease the more he was around her. Quite to the contrary.
“I’d better go,” he said thickly.
She glanced up, taking him in with eyes suddenly more blue than green, trying to guess what he was thinking, maybe even what he wanted. How fast would she kick him out if she knew?
But her common sense prevailed. “Thanks for the ride home.”
He managed a smile. “Anytime, Ms. Cozie. I’m just up the road. Someone comes around pestering you, you just give a holler.”
She laughed, and her eyes sparkled, the blue in them receding. He could see her tension ease. “Right, Hoss. Thanks.”
Back outside, the sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving behind streaks of orange and red that could almost pass for a Texas sunset. At home, Daniel thought, he’d be on his front porch, thinking about all the work his ranch needed, maybe doing a little dreaming. J.D. just had a place by a muddy creek near what he liked to call “company headquarters.” He was always ready for the next call, no matter where it was. Their nomadic life suited him. For the past three years, it had suited Daniel.
When he got back to his house, his phone was ringing. He picked up the extension in the sawmill kitchen, and J. D. Maguire said, “I’ve been cursing your miserable butt all day.”
“You’re in good company.”
“I hurt, Danny Boy. I really hurt.”
Daniel listened intently to his friend’s words as he stared out the window, down at the old stone dam. The golden sunset glinted on the still water of the ice-cold pond. “The nurses and doctors treating you all right?”
J.D. grunted. “They haven’t killed me yet. How’s Vermont?”
“My landlady figured out who I am. Threatened to toss me out on my ear.”
That perked up his partner. “Now that I’d like to see.”
“J.D., I can’t have her meddling.”
“You’re a big boy. Tell her to back off, keep her nose where it belongs.”
“Cozie Hawthorne isn’t one to do anything just because someone tells her to.”
“So? Make her.”
Daniel had to smile at the thought. “Obviously you haven’t met the lady. I found out more about the threats she’s been receiving.” He told J.D. about the message on Cozie’s machine, the log of calls she kept in her kitchen junk drawer. “She says she’s going to talk to the police. I don’t know. I think this business shakes her image of herself. It’s not easy to admit someone hates you enough to leave nasty messages on your answering machine. And I’m betting she’s beginning to realize it’s probably someone she knows.”
There was no response on the Texas end of the line.
“J.D.?”
Nothing.
In a moment, a nurse picked up. “I’m sorry, Mr. Maguire has dozed off. Can I leave a message for him?”
“He’s okay?”
“He’s in a great deal of pain today, but his condition is still stable.”
It was something, Daniel thought, then added quietly, “There’s no message. Just tell him I’ll stay in touch.”
“You’re…”
“Foxworth. Daniel Foxworth.”
“Oh,” she said sharply, and he knew she’d made the connection: he was the reckless SOB who’d put J.D. Maguire in the hospital—but who’d also saved the Texas and Louisiana coastlines from a major oil spill. “Yes, of course. I’ll tell him.”
When he hung up, Daniel became aware of the blood pounding behind his eyes. He wondered what all Cozie Hawthorne had found out about him. Had she learned that no one who knew him could figure out why he hadn’t managed to kill or maim someone before now? That people believed he was arrogant and single-minded, a man addicted to danger, who would put himself and others at risk to get what he wanted? That it was his fault, and his fault alone, that J.D. was burned and broken and might never fight an oil fire again?
If word got out he was in Vermont, people would say he was there to find a scapegoat for something for which he himself was responsible. Because he was a Foxworth and that was the Foxworth tradition: never admitting to weakness, never admitting to making a mistake.
The early-nineteenth-century New England sawmill along Hawthorne Brook seemed even quieter, almost eerie in the shifting shadows of the waning day. The woodstove popped and hissed with a steady efficiency, giving off a welcome heat. Daniel tugged open the refrigerator, trying to repress images of J.D. twisting and turning in pain in his hospital bed, suffering as he shouldn’t have to suffer.
Could he have done something wrong—something stupid, negligent, arrogant—and caused the explosion?
Could he have reacted faster, better, gotten the damaged copter safely back to land?
He slammed the refrigerator door, frustrated with his own inaction. In nearly a week in Vermont, he’d accomplished precious little besides allowing himself to be hopelessly smitten by his green-eyed, wild-haired, skeptical, and very much in trouble Vermont landlady.
If J.D. had been there, he’d have told Daniel that Cozie Hawthorne was an uptight, big-mouthed Yankee who needed a few more liars and cheats in her life. He could hear his friend’s booming laugh.
What would J.D. have made of the message on her answering machine? “Hello, Cozie Cornelia…” No matter what he thought of his partner’s pretty, suddenly famous landlady, J.D. wouldn’t take to having someone trying to scare her. Being a man of action, he would do something.
Daniel swore softly under his breath, but he already had his jacket in his hand, and he headed outside, moving fast, needing to do, to act, before the fear and the grief and the guilt could paralyze him.
The sky was clear an
d black, a perfect background for the stars and quarter moon as Daniel walked along the isolated dirt road toward Seth Hawthorne’s small farmhouse. The cold seemed to seep into his soul. He could hear the crunching of tiny rocks under his feet and the occasional lonely cry of an owl, the rustling of some small animal in the brush.
Once again, Seth’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, and the house was dark, its windows reflecting the shadows of the swaying branches of the butternut tree. Daniel knocked on the front door, not expecting an answer.
None came.
The doorknob, however, turned in his hand.
Strike while the iron is hot, his granny—his mother’s mother—had always told him.
He pushed open the door and entered the dark, quiet front hall.
“Anybody home?”
Feeling around in the dark, he found a light switch at the bottom of a steep, narrow, uncarpeted staircase. A dim overhead came on.
He entered a living room to his right. It was simply furnished, with a hardwood floor whose gleam suggested a recent sanding and oiling. Two tall windows, with plain off-white curtains, looked out onto the front yard, two more onto the side yard opposite the driveway. An overstuffed couch that had a grandmother’s-attic look about it was pushed up against the wall between two of the windows, directly across from a fairly up-to-date entertainment center. There were also two Craftsman-style rocking chairs and a big, worn, comfortable-looking upholstered chair.
The one print on the wall, Daniel noticed, was of a hawk in flight.
He scanned a stack of periodicals on a rickety side table: Vermont Life, gardening catalogs, guides for skiers, hikers, canoeists. No Texas Highways.
A double doorway led to a dining room, its floor also hardwood and recently redone. With the light from the front hall insufficient, Daniel flipped on another dim overhead. Seth Hawthorne didn’t waste any money on lightbulbs.
An oval oak table occupied what had to be the best spot in the house: a bay window with views to the southeast, across the rolling apple orchard. Daniel could see rangy Seth Hawthorne drinking his morning coffee and watching the Vermont sunrise. There were worse fates.
He turned his attention to a massive oak rolltop desk that must have come with the place. It was in poor condition, dividers missing, the oak veneer scarred and dirty. The front of one drawer was off, others were misaligned.
Feeling only a twinge of disgust at prying through another man’s affairs, Daniel started with the overflowing nooks and crannies. He found old books of matches, rubber bands, paper clips, yellowed index cards, canceled checks, bank statements, receipts for payments received for forestry work, cordwood, guide work, brush clearing, even for building a stone wall. There were cash register receipts for everything from groceries to chainsaw parts.
A family of savers, the Hawthornes.
His latest bank statement revealed a hand-to-mouth existence, not, Daniel thought, atypical for an unattached man in his mid-twenties.
But his eye was drawn to the familiar red lettering of a canceled airline ticket, stuck under a mason jar of pennies. He tugged it free.
In the dim light of the overhead, the destination and departure and return dates were still clearly visible.
Here was irrefutable proof that Seth Hawthorne had flown into Houston the day before the helicopter crash and departed—by design—the day after. He’d paid top dollar for his ticket, an indication it had been a spontaneous trip. Given what Daniel had seen of his neighbor’s financial situation, the cost must have cleaned him out.
He set aside the ticket and continued on through the pile under the mason jar, discovering a small white envelope in a heavy, expensive paper, addressed to Seth in a distinctly female hand. Daniel withdrew a simple white notecard. The handwriting was graceful and fluid, in black ink. There was no date, just:
Dear Seth,
I’m sorry for how I treated you in Texas—I was upset. I hope you can forgive me. You don’t know how much you mean to me. I only wish things could be different, for both of us.
Always,
Julia
“Well, well.” His voice seemed to echo in the isolated, empty house.
Seth Hawthorne, indeed, had a fling going—or gone—with Julia Vanackern, and they’d argued in Texas, just like J.D. had said.
Had Seth, several years younger than Julia, taken their relationship more seriously than she had? Daniel had seen it before. A privileged, beautiful woman looking for fun with a safe, good-looking, regular sort of guy. The guy smitten.
He’d also, he thought, seen the reverse.
But could Seth have been so upset at finding he’d been used he tried to blow Julia Vanackern out of the sky?
He still didn’t seem the type. As hard to pin down as the guy was, Daniel couldn’t peg him as someone who’d fly into a rage and commit murder.
“And maybe,” he muttered, “you’re letting your attraction to Ms. Cozie interfere with your judgment.”
Tough questions remained to be asked. Why, for instance, had Seth apparently told no one—including his wild-haired sister—he’d gone to Texas? Why hadn’t he told Daniel he recognized him? How did he recognize him?
And what about the harassing calls and messages Cozie had been enduring? Were they the work of a secretly jealous and troubled younger brother?
Daniel shoved the note back into the envelope. He had to keep an open mind, and he had to get the answers he needed to be able to go back to Texas and face J.D., face his family, face himself. He returned the ticket and note to their spot under the mason jar and continued into the kitchen.
It was small and badly designed, with the stove, refrigerator, and sink all on different walls and virtually no counter space. He opened up the refrigerator and checked the cupboards, just blindly rooting around. He found a glass quart of whole milk, a half-gallon jug of homemade cider, rapidly browning ground beef, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch, a couple of boxes of dry cereal, a few cans of soup, dried beans, two brown-spotted bananas, and about a half-dozen apples.
That told him a hell of a lot.
Tempted to call it quits, he took the steep stairs up to the second floor. Straight ahead on the landing was a tiny bathroom. He skipped it and went into the larger of the two bedrooms. With just a double bed on a simple metal frame and an oak dresser, it, too, had that life-on-a-shoestring look. But the front window would have a view of the orchards and the mountains beyond.
A copy of Mountain Views was on the floor by the bed. It wasn’t sliced to ribbons or marred in a fit of anger in any way that Daniel could see, but it didn’t look dog-eared either. He opened up the front cover. In a scrawl that only slightly resembled the precise handwriting in the log she’d kept of her harassing calls, Cozie had autographed the book for her brother.
Take care of yourself, brother. Thanks for always being there. Cheers, Cozie.
Nice sentiment, no lingering sibling tensions evident between the lines. Daniel shut the book and put it back where he’d found it. He knew he was pushing his luck. Seth could drive up at any moment, and a confrontation on an isolated hilltop in the dead of night wasn’t how Daniel wanted to top off his day. He scooted back downstairs, shutting off all the lights behind him, and slipped out the back door through the kitchen.
Standing still a minute or two, he let his eyes adjust to the dark. The cold helped clear his head. He headed along the back of the house, opposite the driveway, the grass soft under his feet. As he was about to cross into the side yard, he heard the putter of an engine. In another few seconds he saw headlights, and Cozie Hawthorne’s Jeep pulled alongside her brother’s house.
Daniel didn’t move in the pitch dark shadows of the old house.
She climbed out, trotted up onto the cracked landing, and knocked on the front door. “Seth? Seth—you home? It’s me, Cozie. I need to talk to you.”
About who her tenant really was? Did she know about her brother’s trip to Texas after all? But obviously Seth wasn’t ho
me, and after another couple of knocks Cozie gave up and started back to her Jeep.
It was maybe twenty degrees out, and Daniel hunched his shoulders against the cold, wishing he’d worn a sweater under his jacket. His northerner landlady seemed unaffected by the precipitous drop in temperature.
He heard a sound at his feet and looked around. A skunk waddled calmly within a yard of him, its white stripe plainly visible. Daniel swore and automatically stepped out of its path.
He backed right into a wheelbarrow, upending the thing and almost breaking his damned neck. He swore some more, just managing to stay on his feet.
Cozie spun around. “Seth? Is that you?”
Daniel was more interested in the skunk, but the beast apparently had slipped off to quieter haunts. He righted the wheelbarrow, a heavy, old contraption with wooden handles. “No—it’s me, Daniel.”
“You!”
He thought he might rather take his chances with the skunk. Cozie came barreling around to the side of the house, her hands shoved in the pockets of her field jacket. He couldn’t make out her features in the darkness, but he would guess she wasn’t thrilled to see him. Under the circumstances, he didn’t blame her.
He emerged from the shadows. “Evening.”
“I don’t believe you. What are you doing up here?”
“Looking for your brother.”
“He’s not here.”
“I know.” He decided to give it to her straight. “I searched his place. It’s not the sort of thing I usually do in my spare time, but I’m not apologizing. He was in Texas when my chopper went down, Cozie. I found his canceled airline ticket if you want proof.”
She stared at him. “Seth was in Texas?”
“That’s right. J.D. saw him with Julia Vanackern.”
“Julia? But he never said—”
“They argued right before our helicopter went up. After he left she changed her mind about going with us.”
Cozie had begun to shiver in the cold. Daniel could sense her rising confusion and indignation, wondered how he’d feel if someone showed up out of the blue and made similar insinuations about his sister as he was about Cozie’s brother. He’d probably knock the son of a bitch silly.
Finding You Page 10