Cape Refuge

by Terri Blackstock

  Morgan had remained distant from him and avoided speaking to him, but Blair seemed moved by the help he had brought.

  “Looks like maybe I can open again tomorrow,” she said. “That’ll be good . . . getting back to work.”

  Cade leaned against the wall, crossing his arms as he looked down at her. “Tomorrow? Don’t you think that’s too soon?”

  “No, the sooner, the better,” she said. “Besides, I’ll be here, anyway, at my computer. Figuring out who killed my parents.”

  “Blair, come on. Let me take care of this.”

  “You’re not taking care of it, Cade,” she whispered, glancing back at Morgan who was still dusting in the back. “You’ve got the wrong guy.” She started to walk away, but he touched her arm, stopping her.

  “If Jonathan didn’t do it, then we’re going to find who did,” he said.

  “Well, I’m going to help you,” Blair told him. “If there’s anything I can do, it’s research. I can find anything you want to know faster than anybody you know can do it.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, Blair, but it could get dangerous. If Jonathan is not the guy, then somebody else is. I don’t want you walking into any traps. And I’ll tell you something. I’m sure not anxious to investigate another homicide.”

  He realized instantly that the words had been insensitive. Her face went pale.

  “You’re not going to talk me out of it, Cade,” she said quietly. “I’m going to find out who killed my parents if it’s the last thing I do. This killer has met his match.”

  He looked down at her, pensive. She had pretty, thoughtful eyes, the same color as the water off of Cayman Island. It was the only place he had ever seen that exact color. Her eyelashes were long and always looked a little wet. She was prettier than Morgan, he had always thought. Only she would never believe it.

  As he gazed down at her, her hand came up to cover the scar on her face. It always did. He had never looked seriously at her when she didn’t raise her hand up to scratch an itch just under her eye.

  “Well, just do me one favor,” Cade said. “If you find anything, let me have a look. It might help.”

  “Will you do the same?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Cade, I’m not interested in sharing information with you if you won’t share it with me.”

  “Well, are you interested in catching the killer?” he asked.

  “Of course I am. Aren’t you?”

  “My point,” he said, “is that it could happen faster if we share information.”

  “My point too.”

  “Yeah, but I’m an official. I am the police chief of Cape Refuge.”

  “And I’m the official librarian,” she said.

  “I don’t want you and your sister playing detective and getting into trouble. We have a police force in this town. We can do this.”

  Blair looked up at him, her gaze sinking deep. “I know you loved them, Cade. They were your friends, even your mentors. They meant a lot of things to a lot of people. But they were my parents.”

  He swallowed and looked at his feet. “I know.”

  “And you know me,” she said. “You know what I do. I look things up. I chase things down. I get the facts.”

  “I always said you should have been a detective.”

  “I prefer to chase my facts down on the computer or the telephone.”

  “Well, just don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re safe,” Cade said, “that nobody’s watching or listening or reading. Because you and Morgan could be pretty vulnerable right now.”

  “Funny. That’s what Jonathan told her.”

  “Well, he’s right,” Cade said. “I’m going to have my men patrol your house a lot more than usual. You two need to stay together, and you need to watch your backs. Call me if anything happens. If you hear a noise in the night, if a dog barks that you’re not used to hearing, if the wind even blows too hard, you call me. You hear?”

  Blair looked up at him. “I hear.”

  “But will you do it?” Cade asked.

  She thought about that for a moment. “Of course I will. I don’t have a death wish.”

  “Middle of the night, two in the morning—I don’t care,” Cade said. “I’m there in minutes.”

  She looked up at him, met his eyes. “You talk real scary for a man who thought he had the crime solved,” she said. “If you’re so sure we’re in danger, why is Jonathan still behind bars?”

  “I’m covering all my bases,” he said.

  Blair just stared at him. “I do have a .22 in my closet. By Georgia law, I can carry it in my purse, since I have a license. I’ve never really felt the need to carry it, but maybe I should start.”

  “As long as you use it for self-defense,” Cade said, “and don’t go off half-cocked, taking the law into your own hands.”

  “Who me?” Blair asked.

  Cade sighed. He stood straighter and caught Morgan’s eye in the back of the library. “See you later, Morgan,” he called back.

  She only turned away. He wondered if Morgan would ever speak to him again, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He had a job to do, and he needed to get back to the station and do it.

  C H A P T E R

  30

  Morgan was seething when Blair came to the back room. “We could have put the library back together ourselves,” she muttered. “We didn’t need his help. Coming in here like he’s still a football star, his arms all pumped up . . .”

  “Well, we got it. And now it’s done. I’m glad it’s behind us.”

  “He arrested my husband,” she said. “On the worst day of my life he took my husband away from me.”

  “He’s just trying to do his job.”

  “It’s not his job to arrest innocent private citizens in their moments of grief.”

  “He means well, Morgan.” Blair realized the irony of the role reversal. She couldn’t remember when she had ever defended anyone to Morgan. She was usually the fault-finder.

  Morgan swept the last of the dust into a pan, dumped it, then dusted her hands off. “Well, at least it’s done. I’m ready to go through Mama and Pop’s things.”

  They carried the boxes into Blair’s office and set them on her desk. “I figured out a way to do this,” Blair said as Morgan sank into a chair. “I was thinking that the first thing we need to do is get information on the tenants at Hanover House. I can be doing that on the computer while you start digging through the files.”

  Morgan reached into the box and withdrew a stack of papers. Her face betrayed her fatigue and dread as she began flipping through them.

  “The first thing I’m going to need is some information about the tenants,” Blair said, tapping the keys. “I need full names if I can get them, social security numbers, birth dates. Do you see a tenant file in there where Mama might have kept up with this stuff?”

  Morgan pulled a file out and looked through the contents. “Yeah, this might be it.” She took it over to Blair’s table and pulled up a chair. “Here’s some stuff about Gus.”

  “Perfect.” Blair took the sheets out of the file and entered the information onto the database that she used. Then she entered Rick Morrison’s.

  Before she had gotten it all entered, the computer chimed, telling her that Gus’s profile was already complete. Quickly, she pressed print and waited as the pages came off of her printer.

  “Okay, look at this,” she said. “His rap sheet. Looks bad.”

  “Well, we knew he had a past,” Morgan said. “That’s no surprise.”

  “But he’s a three-time convicted felon,” Blair said. “He served more time in prison than he’s been out of it. Car theft, drug dealing. There’s one here for beating his girlfriend back in the eighties. Armed robbery was just the latest.”

  “Let me see that,” Morgan said, snatching the paper out of her hand. “Spent ten years just for the armed robbery,” she said. “Paroled six months ago. No surprise there.”
Morgan scanned the rest of the list, then handed it back to Blair. “Okay, so he abused his girlfriend, stole cars, committed armed robbery. It doesn’t say he killed anybody. And he’s changed.”

  Blair flashed a look at her. “What is it with you and this guy? I’ve just shown you that he has a terrible history of criminal behavior. And you’re trying to tell me that since he hasn’t been in jail for murder, then he couldn’t be a killer?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Morgan told her. “I just can’t see it. I know Gus. I’ve been there since he moved in. When he first came to Cape Refuge he was really confused and quiet. He was the most depressed and troubled man I’d ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen Mama and Pop turn him around. I’ve seen how they ministered to him, and he’s slowly changed. He does things for other people now. He thinks of the other tenants. He cried at Mama and Pop’s funeral service.”

  “Of course, he cried. If he had anything to do with it, maybe he was feeling remorse over it. Or maybe he’s just a good actor.”

  “I just don’t think he did it,” Morgan said.

  “Well, your own husband thinks he did.”

  Morgan got to her feet and crossed the room, looked out the window. It had started to drizzle, and the sky was darkening with the promise of more. “You keep flipping sides, you know that, Blair? It makes me dizzy just to be around you. Yesterday you thought Jonathan might have done it, and today you’re telling me to listen to him because he’s right about Gus.”

  “Okay, I admit it,” Blair said. “Everything’s a little confusing right now.”

  Morgan turned back from the window. “I’m not saying that we should just give up the possibility that Gus could have done it. I think everybody’s got to be a suspect. And if you show me any viable evidence that he did, I’ll believe you. But until then, I’d rather think the best of him.”

  It was clear that fatigue, grief, fear, and hunger were all combining to take its toll on Morgan. “Look,” Blair said, “I know that you’ve spent an awful lot of your life trying to get Mama and Pop’s approval, and that you look at everybody like they have some kind of halo around them, but when your parents have been murdered, it’s okay to think badly of people.”

  “What do you mean, I was always trying to get their approval? So were you. That’s what daughters do.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t make it my life’s work.”

  Morgan turned on her. “I did not make it my life’s work. If you think that, you don’t know me at all. I just wanted to be like her.”

  “Well, you succeeded,” Blair said, beginning to type again. “At least one of us did.”

  Though Blair kept her eyes on the screen, she could feel Morgan’s anger as she stood over her. “Why do you do this?” Morgan asked. “All I’m doing is digging through these files to find the information that you think we need.”

  “And you don’t think we need it?”

  “What is wrong with you?” Morgan demanded. “I’m here with you for comfort, for security, and for my own sanity, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a safe place.”

  That sent Blair’s own anger up a notch, and she set her mouth and typed faster. “Another one of Mama’s words,” she said. “Safe place. She and Pop made a safe place for everybody in the world. Everybody but—” She stopped before the word was out of her mouth.

  “Everybody but who?” Morgan asked. “You?” She said the word as if she couldn’t believe it, and Blair wished she hadn’t even started this. She kept typing, harder, faster.

  “They always provided a safe place for you, Blair.”

  Blair shoved her keyboard away and got up, facing her sister. “It wasn’t safe for me, okay? Cape Refuge—the haven for everybody in the world who needed a safe place—was not a safe place for me.”

  Morgan’s voice was as loud as Blair’s now. “Why wasn’t it, Blair? Because of the scar?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Blair said. She started to sit back down, but Morgan grabbed her arm and turned her around. “Mama and Pop offered you a lot of safe places. You just chose not to take them. And it’s not fair for you to have so much contempt toward me just because I did.”

  “I don’t have contempt for you, Morgan,” she said. “I’m just speaking my mind. I’m sorry if it hurts you.”

  “Oh, give me a break.” One of Morgan’s tears spilled over her lashes and raced down her cheek. “You’re not sorry, Blair. It’s your intention to hurt me, and I’m not sure why.” She sighed and sank back into the chair next to the file cabinet. “I’m sorry I mentioned the scars.”

  Blair breathed a mirthless laugh and plunked back into the chair. “I know I have scars, Morgan. I can handle your mentioning them.”

  “No, you can’t. Every insecurity in your life, every regret, every disappointment, goes back to those scars.”

  Blair didn’t say a word, for her anger was rapidly escalating into fury. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Morgan. I’m not one of your projects.”

  Morgan set her arms on the file cabinet and dropped her face into them. “This is crazy. We’re supposed to be supporting each other, and instead we’re tearing each other down. I hate this. If I had anyplace to go, I’d leave right now. But I need you, and you need me. We’re kind of stuck together for a while, until this murder is solved. We need to get along. But when this is over, Blair, I’m going to do everything in my power to make a safe place for you.”

  Blair was desperate to change the subject. “While you make it for Gus Hampton?”

  “When you work in Hanover House every day like I do, and you see the people and get to know them as your friends, it’s not easy to think of them as killers, okay? I’ve heard their stories, Blair. They’ve shared their hearts with me. I’ve sung with them in church and praised God, and I’ve watched them change.”

  “Hasn’t Jonathan?” Blair asked. “If he’s watched them change right along with you, then why wasn’t he so keen on Gus?”

  “You know Jonathan’s temper,” she said. “Gus made him mad. He saw me comforting Gus when he had just shared something really personal with me, about how he felt like he was never good enough for Christ, and how forgiveness seemed like something he could never quite have. And I gave him a hug. It was spontaneous, Blair. It didn’t mean anything except that I was a Christian sister who loved him and cared about him. And Jonathan walked in and went ballistic.”

  “Why wasn’t he mad at you?” Blair asked.

  “He was at first, until he understood the way I felt about it, that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was trying to comfort a friend. But then he started thinking that Gus had ill motives.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Tell you what? You knew what Jonathan thought. Gus didn’t do anything wrong.” She flipped idly through the files. “But that’s when Jonathan decided he wanted him out of our house. That’s all there is to that story. But in my mind, Blair, Gus Hampton is the same man I’ve watched grow over the last few months. He has the same past now that he had when he came to Cape Refuge. It’s just that we weren’t all privy to it. But Mama and Pop were. You mark my word. People told Mama and Pop things that they didn’t tell ordinary people. They shared their lives and their hearts with them. I want to be like that, Blair. I like people, and I can love them. I can empathize with them; I can relate to what they’re thinking. Mama always said it was a gift, but you act like it’s a curse.”

  “It’s not a curse,” Blair said, typing again. “I never meant it was a curse. At least not your curse.”

  “Then who does it curse?” Morgan asked. “You, Blair? Does it curse you?”

  The keys clicked at record speed. “I’m not like you, Morgan. I’ve never been like you.”

  “Of course you’re not,” Morgan said. “You’d go nuts. You’d pull your hair out. You’re not supposed to be like me.”

  “But you’re the one most like Mama. You’re the one people love.”

  “That’s becaus
e I’m out there,” Morgan said. “I’m not hiding away in a library trying to keep anybody from ever getting close to me.” Morgan’s voice broke, and she dropped her forehead against her palm. “Oh, Blair, I miss them so much. I miss Mama’s hug every day. Have you thought about that, Blair? Both of us, we had her hug every single day of our lives. I wake up in the middle of the night and just hunger for it.”

  Blair stopped clicking and just stared at the screen.

  “And I miss Pop,” Morgan said. “I miss the way his jaw felt at the end of the day, like sandpaper—and that twinkle in his eye. Whenever he looked at you, you just felt it going into you, warming you up somewhere deep. I miss his corny jokes. I miss how much he loved us.”

  Blair set her hands on her desk. She didn’t want to cry, not here, not now, not in front of Morgan while they were fighting. But it took a valiant effort not to.

  “And I miss Jonathan,” Morgan said. “I miss my husband because I need him now. And there he is, locked up behind bars for something he didn’t even do. All I have is you.”

  Blair turned and started to say something cryptic about how she was sorry to be the last resort, but Morgan beat her to it.

  “And here you are, taking potshots at me like I’m the one who kept you from having a safe place.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Blair said.

  “I know what you meant,” Morgan bit out. “It’s the same thing you’ve meant for years, that I follow my emotions. You’re too smart to have any. But maybe sometimes my heart clears things up for my head, Blair. Have you ever thought of that? Maybe it makes me see things a little clearer than you do.”

  “And maybe it blinds you,” Blair said.

  Morgan wilted and leaned against the cabinet. Blair hated seeing her cry. She thought of crossing the room and pulling her sister into her arms just the way her mother would have done. Maybe it would have made up for the lack of hugs they had gotten lately. But it would be too hard to be that soft, and it might lead to Blair’s breaking down. She couldn’t take that chance.