Winter Frost (A Chris Matheson Cold Case Mystery Book 2)

by Lauren Carr

  “No, there’s lots of things she wants to do before we start a family.” Murphy shrugged his shoulders. “Besides, I’m gone so much, it wouldn’t be fair. My dad used to travel a lot and my mother had her hands full. She had five kids.”

  “Five?” Chris laughed.

  “Dad used to say he traveled a lot and Mom got lonely,” Murphy said. “It’s hard to be lonely when you have five kids around.”

  “Did your father leave his family behind to go halfway around the globe for two years?” Chris asked.

  “Dad was active military. He didn’t have a choice. He’d done a couple of deployments, but generally—”

  “Blair was not in the military,” Chris said through clenched teeth. “She had a choice. When it came down to it, she chose her career over our family.”

  “Maybe—”

  “I know it sounds sexist, but it’s not,” Chris said. “I left a good career path in undercover work for my family—my wife—before we had kids. Family comes first. That’s how I was raised.”

  “I was raised the exact same way,” Murphy said. “But when I chose to join the military, I made the conscious decision to put my country first. When Jessie and I got married, I told her up front that I would put my country before her. She went into our marriage with her eyes wide open.”

  “You chose to serve your country because of patriotism. Blair didn’t. Her decision was because of—” Lost for words, Chris pounded the steering wheel.

  In silence, Murphy wrapped his empty yogurt cup on a napkin and placed it in the fast food bag, which he crumbled up. “I don’t know Blair or what your family life was like—but, based on what I saw my mom go through—it’s hard being a wife and mother. You spend so much time taking care of other people’s needs. You do that day in and day out. Sometimes, you can feel like you spend so much time taking care of other people, that you feel—” He searched for the right word.

  Chris recalled his conversation that night five years earlier. “Under appreciated.”

  “When she got that offer to go to Switzerland, she felt like it was a chance for her to do something for herself.”

  Chris slowly shook his head. His voice was soft when he said, “Blair could be so self-absorbed sometimes. It was like …” His voice trailed off. “Like she wouldn’t know what was going on around her.”

  “Ditzy?”

  “No, she was smart,” Chris said. “Like … a little over a week after I got word that she had been killed in Nice, I got a watch from her.”

  “That must have been awful,” Murphy said.

  “I was stunned. It was a Rolex watch—engraved with my name. ‘Darling Chris, Fly Away With Me. Your Angel, Blair.’”

  “She did love you,” Murphy said.

  “She loved watches and clocks. She had a dozen of them. All different kinds and watchbands. But you know what.” Chris held up his arm. “I don’t. Never wore watches and never will. She sends me this expensive watch that she had to know I would never wear. I can’t sell it because she had it engraved with both our names. It’s been sitting in my jewelry box ever since.” There was a growl in his voice when he said, “And now, just as Helen and I get back together, Blair decides to come back from the dead and drag me into Lord knows what.”

  “Look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side? People are trying to kill me.”

  “You met me and because of that you’re not sitting in a federal holding jail for firing a weapon at a crowded subway stop and killing an international assassin.” Murphy flashed him a broad toothy grin. “You’re welcome again.”

  An hour later, the BMW came to a stop at Route 340. They were on the Virginia side of the Shenandoah River. The tiny town of Harpers Ferry rested on the other side of the river, which marked where the Shenandoah River flowed into the Potomac.

  With a snort, Murphy woke up, righted his seat, and looked around.

  “We’re almost there.” Chris pressed his foot on the accelerator and turned left to drive along the river.

  “There where? Where are we going?” Murphy looked out the window at the dark murky river as Chris drove across the bridge and up a hill.

  At the top of the hill, the road widened at an intersection marking the national park of Harpers Ferry. Instead of turning into the park, Chris turned right and drove past the visitor’s center. He made another left turn to travel down a small side road next to a middle school.

  “One of my daughters goes to that school,” Chris told Murphy.

  The next building was a single-story building with a sign out front reading, “Harpers Ferry-Bolivar Public Library.” Chris made a sharp left turn into a small parking lot and around to the back of the building.

  Surprisingly, the lot contained several vehicles. Chris wasn’t surprised to see his truck parked next to the door.

  There were lights on inside the library. Murphy checked the time on the BMW’s dashboard. It was one o’clock. “Kind of late for the library to be open, don’t you think?” He reached into his pocket for his weapon.

  “Book club meeting.” Chris slid out of the driver’s seat.

  “Book club?” Murphy threw open the door. “What kind of book club meets at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “The Geezer Squad, that’s who.”

  The library was divided into two sections. The children’s wing had a wide, round house effect to make for an airy, forest atmosphere.

  The older wing was a traditional library with stacks and bookcases between the library’s check out station and the side entrance. Four conference tables had been joined together in the common area. An assortment of snacks, including three pizza boxes, filled the center of the tables.

  A white board filled with notes was stationed at the head of the table. Armed with a black marker, an attractive older woman with long blond hair wrote notes and drew diagrams.

  In a wheelchair, a man with thick eyeglasses and gray beard and a short woman in a thick sweater scrolled through articles on their respective laptops and compared notes.

  Donning a tweed deerstalker hat not unlike the type Sherlock Holmes wore, Sterling the German shepherd studied an array of playing cards. He placed a paw on a pile of chips and pushed them toward a bigger pile resting between him and a tall, slender man.

  The other card player had the sophisticated bearing of an executive, but the weathered face of a man who spent much time outside. He set down his wine glass and shook his head. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Sterling doesn’t bluff,” the man in the wheelchair said. “Bruce is never going to learn, huh, Francine?”

  “Nope,” the woman in the sweater said.

  Sterling took his paw off the pile of chips and nudged a pile of cards in his direction with his nose.

  Bruce turned over Sterling’s cards. After seeing them, he tossed his cards down.

  At the other end of the table, the blonde paused in her writing and turned to him. “Beat you again, huh, Bruce?”

  Bruce got up from the table. “I know you’re cheating,” he whispered into Sterling’s tall ears on his way to a side table filled with wine bottles, soft drinks, and an ice bucket. “I just can’t prove it.”

  Sterling stuck his snout into a bowl of popcorn and proceeded to chow down.

  “Have you checked to see if he has any cards hidden in his dog collar?” Francine laughed at him without looking up from where she was reading an article on her laptop.

  “How does it feel to get cleaned out by a dog at every meeting?” the man in the wheelchair asked.

  “He’s not a dog, Ray,” Bruce said while refilling his wine glass. “He’s a shark in a dog suit. What have we got, Jacqui?”

  The woman at the whiteboard stepped back to study her findings. “We have a lot of nothing.”

  “Where’s Helen?” Bruce asked.

 
Jacqui pointed in the direction of the library director’s office. “She’s in Doris’s office. Chris’s old partner called. Maybe she can make heads or tails out of this.”

  Chris and Murphy threw open the side door and walked in. “Well,” Chris called out, “I see Helen called out the troops.”

  Ray rolled back from the table and spun his chair around to face them. “It’s about time.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now we can get this party started.” He frowned when he saw Murphy. “Who’s the kid?”

  “This is Murphy.” Chris jabbed a thumb over his shoulder in Murphy’s direction. “He’s with me.”

  Ray scoffed. “I have underwear older than he is.”

  “But not nearly as fine.” The woman in the sweater jumped out of her chair and hurried over to Murphy with her hand held out. “I’m Francine Duncan. Did you work undercover with Chris in the FBI?”

  “Actually, his former partner and I worked together on a few assignments,” Murphy said.

  “So you’re with the FBI,” Bruce said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “He’s CIA,” Chris said.

  When Murphy shot a glare in his direction, Chris said, “You might as well just cop to it. They’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “We’re very good at what we do.” Francine wet her lips while looking Murphy up and down.

  “Chris, if you keep bringing young people into the club, then we’re not going to be able to call ourselves the Geezer Squad,” Bruce said. “We’re just going to be the ‘Squad.’”

  “I had to bring him along,” Chris said. “He saved my life tonight.”

  “We had each other’s backs,” Murphy said.

  “We’ve had a very rough evening. It didn’t go at all the way I expected. Speaking of which, where’s Helen? I saw my truck outside.” Chris passed the table and food to go into his mother’s office.

  Francine gestured at the pizza boxes and food. “You look hungry,” she told Murphy. “Why don’t you eat and tell us all about yourself? You can start with your marital status.”

  “He can tell us about himself later,” Bruce said. “We want to know why our state department declared Chris’s wife dead when she wasn’t. We also want to know why an international assassin was trying to kill her.”

  Chris found Helen sitting in the corner with her head in her hands. The bright cocktail dress and wool coat that she had put on earlier for a glamorous evening out with her guy had lost its glitz hours earlier.

  “Helen?” When he entered the office, Chris couldn’t help but smile at seeing her. Just the sight of her brought a smile to his lips.

  With a quick motion, she wiped her cheeks and rose to let him take her into his arms. He kissed her on the mouth and then held her in a tight hug. “Ripley told me that they let you go,” she said into his neck.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  She pulled away. “We all saw it on the news. The FBI released a bunch of bull about you being undercover and that Mancini was a serial killer that you’d been tracking …” She let out a shuddering breath. “They’re covering it up. I’m glad you’re not in jail, but why the cover up and how were they able to do it so quickly? Obviously, the FBI knows a lot more than they’re telling.” She looked up into his eyes. As her hand brushed across his shoulder, she noticed that he had changed his clothes. “Whose clothes are those? Where did they take you? What happened tonight?”

  “It’s a long story.” Chris took her hands. “In a nutshell, they know about as little as I do.”

  “They who?”

  “The FBI. CIA.”

  “CIA?”

  “That’s who Murphy’s with,” Chris said. “I think. Someone called him ‘Lieutenant,’ and he told me that he was active military. He must be military intelligence on loan to the CIA.”

  “If you don’t even know who he is, and they’re covering up assassinations, then why did you bring him here? He could be working for the same people who hired that hitman to kill Blair.”

  Chris shook his head with determination. “No. I may not know exactly who Murphy works for, but I do know that whoever it is, he’s on our side.”

  “And you know this because—”

  “My instinct. My instinct has never failed me. It told me who I could trust when I was undercover. If Murphy wanted me dead, he could have killed me hours ago. We were hit by a death squad who killed one of his men. He could have escaped. Instead, he risked his life to come back and save me.” He kissed the palm of her hand.

  Helen let out a sigh. “He knows you’re Blair’s husband. Could he … maybe he’s using you to lure Blair out into the open so that he could kill her.”

  “He didn’t even know who she was until I told you and Ripley.”

  Helen shook her head. “None of this makes sense. If no one even knew she was alive, then she must have been safe. Why now, has she suddenly shown up out of nowhere with hired guns trying to kill her?”

  “Good question.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Finally, someone who appreciates the value of healthy eating.” Jacqui cast a grin at her fellow Geezer Squad teammates as they watched Murphy eating a second slice of vegetarian pizza, something Jacqui had insisted on ordering to go with the other two pies.

  Murphy had changed out of his bloody and damp clothes into a spare set that Bruce kept in his truck for emergencies when working in his vineyard. They were just a bit loose, but wearable. The shoes were much too big, so Murphy opted to take off his work boots and dry them by the heater.

  “If you’re so health conscious, why don’t you drink wine?” Bruce asked. “They say everyone should have one glass of red wine every day to prevent heart disease.”

  “I need to keep my mental faculties at their best at all times,” Murphy said.

  “Because you’re a spy with the CIA?” Francine asked.

  Murphy flashed a grin at each of them while they waited anxiously for his response. “Tell me about the Geezer Squad.”

  “We’re a book club,” Ray said.

  “That meets in the middle of the night?”

  “We’re retired,” Bruce said. “It isn’t like we have to get up to go to work in the morning.” He puffed out his chest. “I was the Virginia state attorney general. Bruce Harris.”

  “I heard of you,” Murphy said. “You were an officer in the navy before you went to law school. Naval intelligence.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’ve studied some of your past investigations.”

  “All of my work with the navy was classified,” Bruce said with a furrowed brow.

  “What do you do now that you’ve retired?”

  “I own a winery over in Purcellville—just across the state line in Virginia.”

  Murphy turned to Francine who was grinning. “What role do you play on the Geezer Squad, Francine?”

  She held out her hand. “Investigative journalist. I was with the Associated Press.”

  Ray clasped Murphy’s hand. “Ray Nolan. Retired from Homeland Security. Got transferred over there when they were established after 9/11. I set up their cyber warfare system.”

  “Ray here was shot in the back by a home-grown terrorist after he ended up on Al Qaeda’s hit list,” Jacqui said.

  “I hope they got the shooter,” Murphy said.

  “My daughter blew the guy away right there in the parking lot at Chuck E. Cheese.” Ray shook his head. “Mess with my daughter’s family and you mess with her—and it’s never a good idea to mess with my daughter.”

  Murphy turned to Jacqui. “What do you do besides watch all of their diets?”

  “I was the state medical examiner in Pennsylvania,” Jacqui said. “I retired with my husband. We’d built a big house up on Eagle’s Nest.”

  “Eagle’s Nest?”

  “Top of
the mountain,” Francine said. “Jacqui’s house has a bird’s eye view of the whole valley.”

  Murphy saw a shadow of sadness cross Jacqui’s face.

  “Eight months after we had finished building our dream house, my husband died,” Jacqui said. “He was my whole world. I became a recluse—only coming into town once a week to get groceries and visit the library. One day, I saw a notice on the wall for a book club for law enforcement retirees. They read only crime fiction. I came to the very next meeting and—”

  The members around the table grinned at each other.

  “The Geezer Squad gave me a new purpose. They’re my family.”

  With a chuckle, Murphy sat up. “I don’t see any books on this table.”

  Perched on the other side of the table, Sterling was staring at him.

  “I do see a German shepherd wearing a hat, though.”

  “Sterling’s retired, too,” Francine said. “He was a police K9. He and his handler got caught in an ambush. Sterling survived but failed the psyche exam for returning back to duty.”

  “He’s eccentric,” Ray said. “That’s why he fits right in with us.”

  “I see that,” Murphy said while taking note of the tweed hat on Sterling’s head. “Must be a German shepherd thing. My father-in-law’s German shepherd has psyche issues, too. He’s a kleptomaniac.”

  “Sterling’s a card shark,” Bruce said.

  Narrowing his eyes, Sterling let out a low bark.

  “What does the Geezer Squad do, if you don’t read books?” Murphy asked.

  Bruce made a shushing sound. “What’s our number one rule?”

  “Never talk about the Geezer Squad,” they said in unison. Sterling let out a bark and a low growl to punctuate their statement.

  “We investigate cold cases,” Bruce said. “We each have proficiency and connections in our areas of expertise. When we put our talents together, we’re able to come at a cold case from a totally different direction in order to heat it up again.”

  “Why the secrecy?”