He was frantic to reassure her; he couldn’t lose his second chance. “I swear, it’s not relevant. Listen to me, none of the arrests happened for two to three hours after the drivers left, so there was no reason for them to think there was a rat yet, and they could never take the chance of the moonshine sitting around in one place for too long, so they couldn’t get to the delivery early.” Henry was sitting up in the bed and sliding forward as if he was going to try and get out of the hospital bed with all of his wires still attached. Shane stepped forward and eased him back down in the bed.
Devin came to the side of the bed and held Henry’s hand. “Shh, calm down Henry. It’ll be fine.”
But he wasn’t done. “We were loading the moonshine into the cars around ten o’clock, but according to the Coroner’s report, she was already…” His eyes took on a glossy sheen, and no matter how many times he cleared his throat his voice just would not steady under the weight of his grief. “She was already gone by ten.”
Devin held on to Henry’s hand with both of hers and tried to keep her voice steady for him. Where is the harsh abrasive exterior I rely on? This stupid town is making me all “in touch with my feelings”.
“Henry, those are all very valid points. But moonshining was a very risky and paranoid business, what if they got suspicious and sent someone out to the Summit before the delivery? What if Laney was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
Again the purr of the mustang’s engine and the whistling of the wind were the only sounds as Devin and Shane made the drive between the hospital and Fenton. She wasn’t necessarily driving recklessly. Forcefully might be a better word, whipping the car into turns and yanking the shifter thru the gears.
When she blew past the exit for Fenton doing eighty, Shane lay back in his seat and drawled out, “Is there something on your mind? Or are we fixin’ to be on one of those police car chase shows, you know where they follow you with a helicopter?” He used his hands to mimic a land and air chase. “I always thought that would be really cool. I just thought I’d be in the helicopter, you know what I mean?” He rolled his head over to the side to look at her.
Devin laughed despite herself. “You are such an idiot!” She let off the accelerator and dropped her speed to seventy. “I drive. It’s what I do. When I’m angry or sad or need to think, I drive. No one in my tiny dysfunctional family knows how to express feelings, so this is the coping mechanism I developed. At least that’s the crap the department shrink spews off.” She laid one hand on top of the wheel and the other out the window in the warm night breeze as she glanced at him with mischief in her dark eyes. “Of course usually when I’m driving I don’t have an idiotic southern defense attorney riding shotgun and giving me commentary.”
Shane rose up in his seat. “Oh, ho, we want commentary do we? How about this? Going around these big bends at high speeds, I notice your Mustang gets a little loose. She can handle the S curves, but not the sweeping bends.”
Devin was indignant. “She can, too! Don’t you dare take this out on the car. If you have something to say to me, just spit out, but my baby can grip any curve in the road.”
Shane was grinning as he lay back in his seat again. “Interesting. You mean we should just talk about our feelings rather than taking them out on others?”
Devin glared out the windshield. “I hate you.”
“You love me.” He was still smiling. In a sing song voice he asked: “So what are you feeling?”
“Besides the urge to strangle you?” It would be a justifiable homicide.
Surely all the judges in the county known him and would have mercy on me.
He was still staring at her expectantly, grinning like an idiot. It was obvious he was not going to let this go. “Basically I saved my neighbor, and friend, from a burning building yesterday just to kill him today with the knowledge that he was inadvertently responsible for the violent murder of the love of his life. I’m not a gambler, but if I were, I’d take the wager that if his heart doesn’t give out in a few days, he’ll commit suicide by the end of the month.”
Shane’s voice was soft, “Devin, you don’t know that…”
“Yes, I do. I don’t have a lot to thank my family for, but one thing is the creepy intuition I have for knowing how something is going to go down. My crazy grandma had it too—ask any of the old-timers around town. You have family here; they ought to be able to tell you.”
“Yeah, I have a couple generations of family in Fenton, above and below the ground.” He laughed at his own joke as Devin got off the interstate and headed home on a scenic byway. She slammed on the brakes when he yelled out “Uncle Bailor!” expecting to see Shane’s relative standing in the middle of the road. But he shook his head explaining that his great uncle, Bailor Whitlock, had been buried the previous spring.
Devin was starting to think Shane could have Grandma’s bed at the Looney Bin. “Ok, I’m…sorry?”
Shane waved her condolences off with his hand like a pesky fly. “No, no, no. He was old, he was ready to go and be with his wife. The point is he used to work for the government as a revenue agent.” Devin stared at him blankly until he rolled his eyes. “City girl. A revenue agent was an agent that went after stills and moonshine runners.”
Devin sighed in the first moment of relief all day. “Shane Whitlock, I could kiss you right on the mouth!”
Shane’s smile spread from ear to ear. “Well wait until you hear this—you’ll want to pick out china patterns. The Whitlocks hail from a looong line of packrats. When he passed away, we cleaned out boxes and boxes of files, notes, photo albums, memorabilia, you name it, about all his cases. It took us a week to sort through all of that stuff packed in his tiny little house down in Boca Raton. All of that information is now tucked safely away in my aunt Frannie’s basement right here.” He flew his finger down to point into his thigh, making a little popping sound with his tongue. “In Fenton, Virginia.”
Devin’s fingertips tapped out a hyper rhythm on the steering wheel as her brain spun. “Shane, the names of anyone involved with moonshine in the area are in those files. If Laney stumbled into something she shouldn’t have, that person is in those files. What could have happened that would have warranted killing her in such a brutal way and trying to kill Henry so many years later to keep it quiet?”
Shane was silent for almost a full minute before he spoke. “You aren’t still on that whole conspiracy theory kick, are you?”
“If by conspiracy theory you mean I don’t believe it was some huge cosmic coincidence that someone tried to burn down my neighbor’s house with him in it at the exact same time my house was broken into and my case files about said neighbor were rummaged through, then yeah, you could say I’m still on that kick.” They were at a stoplight and she looked over at him as if analyzing whether he even had as many brain cells as an amoeba.
Shane rubbed his temples with one hand. He hated debating a stone wall. The wall never moved, and you just ended up battered and bruised for your efforts. What was the definition of insanity again? Repeating the same behavior over and over…
“Devin, nobody was in your house. You’re just used to there being criminal activity everywhere you turn. It’s not like that in Fenton.”
He was very lucky that they were pulling into her driveway, because he could have had a long walk back to his truck. Devin got out slamming the door, and they met leaning across the roof of her mustang. Her eyes were black with fury and the mahogany hair that had glowed like a halo earlier seemed to boil like impassioned flames around her shoulders, surging with her rage.
“Don’t talk to me like the victim from one of your cases that you think is cracked.” She was using the pointer finger on her right hand like a weapon, jabbing the air and sending ill will in his direction. If she used any more force her wrist might snap. “I am a decorated police detective. I take the cases no one else can solve. When there is no evidence, no leads I can see things no one else thinks to look for. I can fe
el my way through a crime scene.” She pulled her bag over her shoulder and set the car alarm. “So don’t stand there and try to say that I can’t tell when someone has been in my house.” Devin was up on the porch now scratching Bo behind the ears, who was staying with her until Henry was well enough to take care of him. “If you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend the wind did it, like a two-year-old, be my guest. But mark my words, this will come back to bite you in the butt.”
“Devin, would you just calm down for a minute? I didn’t mean...” Shane was trying to follow her up on the porch.
“Bo, kill!”
“Whu? Ha! Devin he’s a fifteen-year-old hound beagle mix, I don’t think he’s gonna…”
A low growl rumbled out of the dog’s chest. Shane looked down at the dog and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Oh, really? Now you want to play Rottweiler?”
Devin just smirked and turned to unlock her door. Shane reached across the barking dog and grabbed Devin’s arm and yanked her towards him. “Please,” he begged, “give me just a second to explain.”
Devin’s keys clattered onto the concrete porch floor. Her voice was a low chilly whisper and her face went hard. “Take your hands off me right now.”
If he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I just always say the wrong thing, or it comes out wrong, or you take it the wrong way…” He probably didn’t even realize that he was gripping her so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.
Devin was pushing into him, backing him towards the porch railing.
“Shane. I am not playing with you. Let go, or you are going to fly off this porch.” She didn’t let him say another word, when he didn’t instantly let go, she wrapped her hand around his right forearm that was gripping her so tightly and twisted the arm and shoulder harshly backwards. Her sharp right jab caught him in the left eye and snapped his head back. He dropped his hand from her as he stumbled in backwards into the railing. The only thing Devin had left to do was calculate how hard she needed to kick him in order to pitch him over the porch railing without breaking his sternum. She settled on a gut kick to be safe—the spinning round house was just to show off. She leaned over the porch railing and scowled down at him gasping for air on the ground. “You’d better not be smashing any of my geraniums.”
“Yes ma’am,” he gasped out the words and then raised two fingers to his forehead in a little salute. “Keep my hands to myself, got it.” His hand dropped back to the ground.
She sighed in exasperation. “Would you like some ice?” “Yes, pleeaase.” It came out in more of a moan than a gasp.
Because of Shane’s work schedule, it would be two days before they could meet at his aunt’s to go thru Bailor Whitlock’s boxes. In the meantime Devin had been keeping a close eye on Henry. The doctors hadn’t shared her concerns for his cardiac health, but sure enough, last night he’d starting having chest pain which changed everything, and today he was getting a whole barrage of tests. He had no family to speak of other than a few cousins twice removed in California that he’d never met before. So Devin hung out at the hospital waiting for test results and keeping Henry occupied with tales of strange arrests and games of poker. He returned the favor with stories of the stunts her father had pulled as a teenager.
After lunch she was languishing in the radiology waiting room, flipping thru a magazine evaluating the red carpet fashions at the 1982 Academy Awards, while Henry was having a CAT scan.
A familiar voice piped up from behind her. “I think they could have laid off the shoulder pads, but that’s just me.”
“Adam! What are you doing here?” Devin was thrilled to have someone else to talk to and lit up like a child on Christmas morning when she saw him.
He squatted down and leaned on the back of the orange vinyl waiting room chairs so he could be on the same level with her. “A little birdie told me you were up here with Henry, and I thought you might be getting a little stir crazy by now and could use a visitor yourself.” He had been tracing the edging of the seats with his thumb instead of looking at her. He looked up now with a crooked grin and ears that were turning pink. “I happen to know that the cafeteria makes a mean frozen yogurt, and I don’t want to brag...” he paused to polish his knuckles on his shirt, and then rushed through the last part of his proposal, “but, I have my own private picnic table.”
Devin flung the magazine over her shoulder without bothering to see where the fluttering pages landed. “Why are we still here?”
The frozen yogurt in the cafeteria consisted of a self-serve machine with three choices: vanilla, chocolate and the fruit of the week, which turned out to be peach. The toppings bar would put most ice cream parlors to shame with every candy, fruit and nut known to man. Devin began making gagging noises when Adam added what looked like crushed candy canes and gummy bears to his peach yogurt. Not very khaki!
“That is repulsive! You’re like the boys in elementary school that used to eat the worst things possible just to gross out the girls.”
He laughed at her wrinkled up nose. “Don’t knock it, you are going to try it! Once you get over the idea of it, there’s this refreshing burst of summer flavor.”
Devin gave him a questionable once over laughingly gauging his mental stability. “Yeah…I’m gonna take your word for it and stick to good old fashioned chocolate, hot fudge and peanut butter cups.”
She was surprised when they passed all the tables in the courtyard and he led her around the corner to a private picnic table tucked away underneath a beautiful oak tree. She’d been shocked though that the table actually had an engraved plaque that read “Reserved for Detective Adam Lentz”
“So how did you score your own picnic table?”
He worked his frozen yogurt over a bit to keep it from dripping before he answered her. “I wish it was nicer story, that I could just tell you I’m that well liked.” He wrinkled his nose at her and gave her a half-hearted grin. “Unfortunately, sixty percent of our cases involve children in some way. Whether it’s a situation where the kids are witnesses to a crime, they’ve committed a crime, or children are being removed from the home because both of the parents were mixed up in something. Then, of course, you have your standard domestic situations, neglect, abuse whether it be physical, mental or sexual.” He had choked on the last words as if they were so vile they couldn’t pass through his throat without becoming stuck.
They were both quiet for a few minutes eating their frozen yogurt and studying the hospital’s flowerbeds quivering in the breeze.
“When we had a kid that needed to be interviewed I would bring them out here for frozen yogurt, and we would talk. It was never like an interrogation, and the kids felt more comfortable opening up under a tree than in a conference room or precinct. It just sort of became my thing.” His warm smile was genuine and hers matched as she leaned a shoulder into his.
He gave up trying to coax her into having a bite of his sundae and strode over and pitched the remains in the trash. When he came back he sat on the bench next to Devin, but with his back leaning against the table top.
“I think that’s wonderful what you do with kids. I’m not very good with miniature people myself.”
He looked confused. “What? I thought kids would love you. All those girls at the self-defense class thought you were cool.”
“Um, yeah. Kids love me, but I don’t know what to do with them. I raised my brother from the time he was nine, and let me tell you, that did not turn out so well.” The sun shifted further onto them so Devin turned around on the bench as well and stretched her legs out into it and tipped her face up into the light with her eyes closed. “So I do not do the kid thing.”
“What about your godson?”
She was still soaking up the sun. “Hmm, that’s different. He has parents to raise him. I just come in to spoil him with gifts and play dates.”
He flicked a rogue gummy bear off the table top just inches past her ear. “So you’re like a hip young grandma?”
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She raised her head to lift an eyebrow at him. “Watch it. This hip young grandma can kick your butt.”
“Yeah I know. Shane’s still limping around the office.” He paused as if debating if he should keep his mouth shut. “Personal space issues?”
“You could say that.” Devin smirked as she closed her eyes again. “I don’t deal with a lot of children in my cases. I see mostly serial crimes, rape and murder, occasionally robbery if it’s something really high end.”
Adam had gradually let his leg slide over until now his thigh was resting against hers. He began playing with a strand of her hair, and she found she didn’t mind. “Do you have a special unit for child cases?” he asked.
“No, we handle it in Major Crimes. Those cases just don’t get assigned to me anymore because of all the bureaucracy.”
“What do you mean, bureaucracy?”
“You know, ‘Devin you can’t punch the child molester,’ ‘Devin you can’t break the child molester’s nose,’ Devin you can’t threaten to cut of his…’ I mean there’s just so much red tape in dealing with those cases.”
Adam’s laugh burst out from deep within his belly, but he quickly slapped a fist over his mouth to contain it. Devin cracked an eye to study his shaking shoulders.
I bet there’s a lot about Adam that he keeps contained under all that khaki.
When he could finally speak calmly, Adam turned and picked up her trash from the table. “You know the best part about that? I’m not sure that you weren’t dead serious!”
Devin just gave him a mischievous little grin and shrugged her shoulders.
Chapter 17
It was mid-afternoon when Devin arrived at Aunt Frannie’s. The bank thermometer read ninety-seven degrees. There was a note on the door from Shane to come on in and make her way down to the basement. As she peered thru the doorway, Devin thought they were using the term basement awfully loosely. More like dark creepy dirt hole with nasty crawly things. The wooden planks that formed steps didn’t look like they could support the nails that were in them, let alone a person. Devin gingerly picked her way down, testing each spot before putting all her weight down.
Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) Page 15