I felt a little bad hearing him say that. Derek had never been a great cop, but I had a feeling he did the best he could. “It doesn’t sound like you have a lot of faith in him anymore. Is that because he hung on to you being guilty for so long?”
Alex shrugged, but it was clear he did hold that against Derek. “He’s a great guy when it comes to cats in trees and making the neighbor stop parking in your spot, but he’s not very good when it comes to detective work.”
“Ouch. You’re going to make me want to defend our chief with that kind of talk.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m still angry about how easily he thought I could kill Bethany like that. Whatever it is, I think you and I have better resources to get to the truth of this case and Michael Thompson, so better to leave Derek in the dark for a little while longer. On that note, I think it’s time I call in one of those better resources.”
Taking his phone out, he dialed a number as I wondered who this resource could be. “Have you been holding out on your partner?” I joked, hoping that’s all it was. I didn’t want to think he’d truly been hiding things from me. Not knowing he’d gone to see Bethany after leaving my house on Sunday was more than enough secrets for me.
He dodged my question and began talking to his friend from his days on the force in Baltimore. “St. Clair, it’s Alex. How’ve you been?”
John St. Clair’s answer made him chuckle. “Nope, still just partners in crime. That’s what I’m calling about. I need your help with a case we’re working. I need to find out if a man named Michael Thompson has a record, but I need to see the reports on any arrests too. He’s from Ellicott City, though.”
Alex stood silently listening to St. Clair for a few moments more before he said, “Okay, anything you can find out I appreciate it. Nine o’clock sounds good. If it’s good for Poppy, I’ll bring her along too.”
My curiosity piqued, I waited until he ended the call and asked, “Where are we going at nine o’clock? Are we meeting St. Clair somewhere?”
“Yeah. He’s going to get all he can on Michael Thompson and meet us at Schultz’s at nine.”
“Schultz’s? Is that an old haunt of yours?” I joked, happy to think I’d get to see more of his life before he came to Sunset Ridge.
“One of the oldest. It’s not much, but hopefully, you won’t hate it.”
Looking across the desk at him, I smiled and reminded him who he was talking to. “I’ve spent many a night at the corner bar, Alex. You’re looking at the poster child for old haunts. I’m sure I’ll love it.”
I liked the idea of seeing St. Clair again since I’d enjoyed the time we’d spent with him a few months before. He was funny and brought out a lightness in Alex I rarely saw. But why did we need his help?
“What can John do that you can’t? Don’t you two have the same ability to check if Michael Thompson has a record?”
Sitting behind his desk, he explained, “I can find that out, but I can’t get a look at the reports since Ellicott City is under the county control. St. Clair has a connection with the county, though, so I’m hoping he’ll be able to get the details.”
“Is there some reason they wouldn’t just give them to you, a Sunset Ridge police officer?” I asked as I threw my coat over the back of a chair and took a seat.
“It seems our illustrious police chief got into it with someone in the sheriff’s office a while back, so we haven’t had an easy time getting much of anything you’d call support from them since. Now you see why I didn’t want him handling this part of the case.”
“Ah, so there is method to your madness.”
He smiled that sexy grin that never failed to make my stomach flip and arched a single, dark eyebrow. “Always.”
Chapter Twenty
Schultz’s reminded me of my father’s bar in some ways. Although it was certainly dingier than McGuire’s and had a far grittier feel to it, the place had a warm, friendly vibe that made me feel right at home. We walked in through the front door to find the bar empty, except for the bartender and a few patrons who sat in front of him watching an old television above his head. John St. Clair sat on a barstool near a red and blue neon sign advertising some beer I’d never heard of. Smiling when he saw us, he opened his arms wide and came to greet us.
“Alex Montero, good to see you again!” he said as they shook hands. “How the hell are you?”
“Too long away from this place, I think. How’ve you been, St. Clair?”
“Same old, same old. You know it is.”
St. Clair looked past Alex and pushed him out of the way to say hello to me. “Poppy McGuire, the investigative journalist turned detective and the best looking partner this guy has ever had. How are you, darlin’?”
He encircled his arms around me to give me a bear hug that nearly took my breath away and made answering how I was doing impossible. When he finally released me, I inhaled deeply for a few seconds and answered his question, happy to see him again.
“I’ve been okay. It’s good to see you again, John.”
My use of his first name made him laugh, and he clapped Alex on the back as he led us to a table near the back of the bar. “I think she’s the only person other than my mother who calls me John. So what’s going on up there in that tiny town of yours? It sounds like you two are neck-deep in something.”
We all sat down at a round table with uneven legs that made his beer splash over the sides of his glass. Realizing we hadn’t gotten drinks when we walked in, he raised his hand and waved to the bartender at the front of the room.
Alex stopped him, though. “I can get our drinks. You two talk while I grab a scotch for me and…” He looked down at me for an answer to what I wanted. “Light beer?”
This case had been too hard for a light beer. Shaking my head, I pointed at him. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
For a moment, Alex looked surprised that I’d want a scotch too, but he simply smiled and headed off toward the bar to get the drinks, leaving me alone with St. Clair.
“He’s a good guy, you know?” he said as he raised his glass to his lips.
I did know that. In the months that I’d worked with Alex, he’d shown me time and time again how good a man he was, and this case, even though it had made me question him for a few hours, had ended up only strengthening my belief in that goodness I’d found in him.
Turning my head to watch him as he made small talk with one of the men sitting at the bar, I nodded my agreement with St. Clair’s assessment of him. “He is.”
“So what about you, Poppy McGuire? What should I know about you?”
I looked over at him, unsure where the conversation was going. “There’s not much to know about me, to be honest. Small town girl living a small town life. Pretty boring stuff compared to you here in the big city.”
St. Clair shook his head. “I don’t think so. My friend wouldn’t spend so much time with you if all you were was some ordinary, run-of-the-mill, small town girl. If Alex finds you interesting, there’s a whole lot more going on with you than meets the eye.”
I had to smile at his assumptions. I liked to think there was more to me than what the gossips in Sunset Ridge liked to tell everyone, but most days I simply felt like ordinary Poppy McGuire.
“What makes you think he finds me interesting?” I asked, knowing that he probably thought I was fishing for compliments. What I really wanted was some clue to understand why the man I loved still hadn’t let me into his heart like I believed he could. While the reason for my joking around to hide my true feelings was something he knew all about, Alex’s way of keeping himself closed off from even me made me unsure we’d ever move from where we were to something more.
St. Clair looked up toward the bar and then back at me. His dark brown eyes filling with admiration, he smiled and said, “I’ve only seen him look like this with one other person. Since I know how he felt about her, I have to assume he finds you far more than merely interesting.”
Her.
St. Clair wouldn’t even use her name, like some word he didn’t want to say in front of me for fear I’d know the importance it held. But I knew what she was to Alex—what she continued to be to him.
I couldn’t go on with her specter haunting my time with him, though, so I swallowed hard and said her name. “Helena. His wife.”
“The only other person I’ve ever seen Alex truly care for. He cares about his friends. We all know that, but it’s not the same. I see it whenever he looks at you, and I hear it when he talks about you.”
The right words suddenly seemed impossible to find, so I sat silently smiling at the compliment I understood in St. Clair’s words. Nothing would make me happier than to know I came anywhere close to the place he held her.
“And you care about him too. I don’t know you nearly as well as I do him, but I see it written all over your face. Have you told him? Not that he wouldn’t know, but we men can be stupid sometimes.”
My cheeks flushed the warmth that came from my usual blushing when I was embarrassed, and St. Clair chuckled. “Maybe you are that simple small town girl you claim to be, Poppy McGuire. What do I know about anything, right? I’m just a single guy, but I remember when Alex and Helena were dating. I knew it was real then too.”
“Did you tell him you knew?” I asked, curious how Alex and his friends acted around each other when they weren’t talking about work or drinking beers together.
“I mentioned it once or twice, but everyone knew and we were happy for him. Well, most of us. Ken didn’t think she wasn’t right for Alex. I never told him what he said and I know Ken never told him. It was probably just him being jealous. Guys are like that. We all want to be happy and to have our friends be happy, but sometimes we can’t find the right way to say it.”
Curious, I started to ask more about Ken Bryer but Alex returned to the table with our drinks and I didn’t have to chance. St. Clair and Alex immediately launched into a discussion about how Schultz’s hadn’t changed in all the years they’d been coming there, so I quietly listened as I sipped my very strong scotch and soda and liked that his friend had the ability to bring out a side to Alex I hadn’t seen much of since this case began.
“Do you remember the time I got so drunk after fighting those guys from the tenth and you had to carry me home up the three flights of stairs to my apartment?” St. Clair asked with a big belly laugh.
Alex smiled and turning toward me, explained, “You see how big he is? Try carrying all that up all those stairs. This guy was like dead weight. I wasn’t sure I’d see him at work the next day, but lo and behold, he showed up right on time for his shift. He looked like a bus had hit him, but he was there.”
I chuckled at the thought of St. Clair that drunk. Much larger than Alex, I imagined it would take nearly a bottle of whisky to get him that loaded. “I bet you were hurting that day.”
He closed his eyes and grinned. “You have no idea. I swore off the hard stuff since that night and haven’t gone back to it.” Raising his glass, he said, “Now it’s just beer for me, but it’s still good enough for a toast. To my good friend and his good friend.”
Alex and I clinked glasses and then tapped ours on St. Clair’s while he toasted his friend in return. “To the kind of friendships that last forever.”
I took another sip of my drink and curious about their third friend asked, “Why didn’t you ask Ken to join us tonight?”
St. Clair quickly answered, “Ken doesn’t drink. Hasn’t for years. So asking him to hang out at a bar would be a waste of time.”
“You guys do make an odd group, you know that? You’re gregarious, St. Clair. Alex is quiet but when he comes out of his shell, he’s got that life of the party thing simmering in there. But Ken is nothing like you two.”
They looked at each other and nodded. “I guess you’re right,” Alex said. “Ken’s a unique kind of guy, but that’s probably because he spends so much time with the dead.”
St. Clair joked about how he could never do a coroner’s job, and Alex and I agreed. For me, the whole dead thing definitely creeped me out. I considered telling them how odd even his office felt when I visited just a few days earlier, but I assumed they knew since they’d been friends with him for all those years. So I kept my comment to myself as they gradually finished talking about the old days and turned to the case at hand.
“So, what’s going on with this Michael Thompson guy? You sounded like you were dealing with something big when I talked to you on the phone,” St. Clair said before taking a swallow of his beer.
Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Bethany was murdered Sunday night. I’ve been the prime suspect since about two minutes after she was found.”
It felt like the entire bar fell silent. I saw the pain in his eyes when he said those words and wondered if it would ever leave him. Or me.
“Who’d want to kill Bethany?”
St. Clair’s question was the same one everyone had asked and we still didn’t know the answer.
“We think it was Michael Thompson,” I said. “They had been dating a while back and he didn’t seem to be able to let go when they broke up. I found threatening letters he wrote her.”
Alex took a sip of his drink and slowly lowered his glass to the table. “They slit her throat.”
“Like Helena?” St. Clair asked in horror. Shaking his head, he added, “No way is this a coincidence. Nobody has two people in their life murdered the same way. Would this Michael Thompson know how Helena died?”
“I don’t know. All we know about him is he was seeing Bethany before I started dating her and he’s lost his mind now because his wife took the kids and left him when she found out he was cheating on her.”
His shoulders sagged as he explained what we knew about Thompson, and I knew the stress of this case was finally getting to him. I gently touched his hand resting on his thigh to let him know he wasn’t alone and I believed in him.
“Did you find out anything about him, John?” I asked. If he could give us something that would show Michael was the kind of man who would be violent, we could take that to Derek and have him brought in.
St. Clair reached into his coat and took out a sheet of paper he began to read from. “He’s been through the ringer lately, it seems. The police have had to go out to his house eight times in the past six months. Most of the calls have been about him doing strange things like blasting music out his window in the middle of the night and sitting in his car for hours on end. He doesn’t sound balanced. Once, though, back in September, was because the neighbors reported hearing screaming between a man and a woman.”
“That was probably when his wife left him,” Alex suggested. “Anything else?”
“The report said that the woman involved in the incident was named Mariah Lewis,” St. Clair said. “Maiden name? The officers noted that Thompson was clearly upset when they arrived and spoke to them, but the female, Ms. Lewis, appeared calm.”
Alex and I looked at each other in stunned confusion. What would Mariah Lewis have been doing with Michael Thompson at his house in Ellicott City?
I asked, “Did they describe the woman? Was she injured? Had he hurt her?”
St. Clair scanned his notes and then lifted his head. “No injuries. It seems that they were just making too much noise with their fighting and the neighbors called because they were afraid it was getting out of hand. All it says about the woman was she was in her early thirties.”
What was going on? Why had Mariah been anywhere near Thompson when she lived in Ohio? Had she been a part of some conspiracy with him to kill her sister? And if so, why?
Clearly shaken by the information, Alex thanked St. Clair for his help and stood to leave. “We better get going. I’ll be in touch.”
Before I could get my coat on, he walked away toward the door. I gave St. Clair a meek smile, not knowing what to say, and finally just said, “He’s taking this case hard. Thanks for your help, though, St. Clair.”
He stood
to hug me goodbye and joked, “You finally got my name right, Poppy. Take care of our guy there. He says you have the best instincts he’s ever seen. Use them and figure out who the hell is trying to make it look like he’s a killer again.”
I promised I would and ran to catch up with Alex, who stood waiting for me on the sidewalk outside, his coat wide open in the cold night as he stared straight ahead with a look of stunned sadness.
Cradling his face, I kissed his lips. “It’s going to be okay. Let’s get home. It’s getting late.”
He just stood there staring down into my eyes. He looked lost, like he didn’t know where to turn now. My heart broke for him seeing him like that, and as I buttoned up his coat so he wouldn’t freeze to death, I wished I knew a way to bring him the peace I knew he so desperately wanted.
Peace about what happened to Bethany, but even more now, peace about the death of Helena.
He stopped my fingers as I moved to the top button. “We need to talk to Mariah Lewis tonight. I don’t want her leaving town without explaining why she was with Michael Thompson.”
“Are you sure? You look pretty shaken up.”
“Michael Thompson is the best lead we have to solve Bethany’s murder, and now we know Mariah was with him recently. That’s too much of a coincidence. We need to find out what happened to make him kill her and if her sister was part of it.”
I brought his ice cold hands up to my lips and kissed them. “Then let’s go and talk to Mariah.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Derek had put Mariah Lewis up at the Hotel Piermont, and she was awake when we knocked on her door at nearly eleven o’clock. I knew Alex wanted to force answers out of her, but I hoped he wouldn’t be too hard on her, just in case she had nothing to do with anything Thompson had done and was truly just a grieving sister.
The Darkest Hour Page 18