First Comes Love

by Heather Heyford

  “What about me?”

  “You know all about me. I know nothing about you.”

  “Not much to tell.”

  “Were you ever married?”

  He peered down into his wineglass. “For about five minutes. It’s hardly worth mentioning.”

  “My brother also reminded me that, just like all defense attorneys aren’t bad, neither are all cops.”

  “I’m liking this brother of yours more and more all the time.”

  She smiled and her face softened. “He’s very special. And if you ever tell him I said that, I’ll deny it to my dying breath.

  * * *

  “Well, well, look who’s here?” Laurel the bartender arrived for the start of her shift and started in with her usual friendly banter.

  “How have you been?” she asked Kerry.

  “Fine.”

  “I can see that.” Eyeing Alex sitting next to her, Laurel’s eyes twinkled.

  “Don’t see something where there’s nothing,” warned Kerry.

  “Whatever you say,” Laurel replied in a singsong voice. “How’re your drinks?” she asked, peering down her nose into their glasses.

  When both Kerry and Alex said they were good, she made her way down the bar to check on the other patrons.

  “How do you know Laurel?” asked Alex.

  “She and I go way back. Looks like she’s still spring-loaded to fix people up. That’s always been her thing.”

  “It’s good you set her straight where we’re concerned. We’ve both got our hands full.”

  “For sure.”

  “You with your family, and me with”—He scrambled to compile all the reasons—“my blog and my birds. Not to mention work, of course. Work keeps me slammed.”

  “Work, work, work,” she said cheerfully. “It never ends.”

  “Glad we got this straightened out.”

  “Me too,” said Kerry, finishing her drink. “Well. I’d better get back and put Ella to bed.”

  “I’ll see you after boxing practice.” He held out his hand in friendship. The gesture couldn’t have been more different from the way he’d clutched her arms in his driveway.

  Kerry looked at it, then her eyes rose to his as, automatically, she placed her hand in his.

  Despite her skill at maintaining a straight face under pressure, Alex thought he saw a flicker of emotion in her eyes.

  But this was all they were destined to have. Like she’d told the bartender, it just wouldn’t work.

  And like Curtis had said, Women. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Have you heard? Lewandusky’s lawyered up.” Alex had learned to remain standing when he was called into the chief’s office rather than subject his oversize frame to one of those cruel yellow plastic chairs.

  “Can’t wait to hear his excuse for laying by the roadside with a hunting rifle.”

  “Maybe he thought it was deer season. At any rate, the DA will be in touch to go over your testimony.”

  “Who’s defending Lewandusky?”

  Compared with the number of felony cases that went to trial in Portland annually, Alex had told himself it might be years before he was forced to butt heads with Kerry O’Hearn in court again.

  “Kerry O’Hearn. That was her daughter in the boxing exhibit at the pool, wasn’t it?”

  It was a rhetorical question. No response was needed.

  “I think I remember telling you that Newberry’s the kind of place where everybody knows your name.” The chief eyed Alex closely.

  Alex wondered if Chief Garrett had been aware of the Sullivan trial, back when it was going on. Even if he had been, the chances he still recalled it after ten years, let alone knew of Alex and Kerry’s joint involvement, were slim. Not that it mattered. Kerry couldn’t be expected to recuse herself—and lose out on a hefty fee—on the grounds that she and Alex had been on opposite sides of the courtroom once before.

  It was just a good thing they had backstepped before things had gotten out of control.

  “Next item of business. How did you find Curtis when you were out there at his place?”

  “Seemed okay. A little toasted, but okay. Why?”

  “He’s back at it.”

  “You said this is a habit with him. What do you want me to do?”

  “I never minded taking a break now and then, sneaking a sip of ’shine in the shade while the wife was at choir practice, but now that the spring concert’s over, she’s home more in the evenings.”

  Alex didn’t get what Chief’s wife’s chorale practice had to do with Curtis.

  “Why not just fine Curtis again and be done with it?”

  “Curtis doesn’t give a hoot about the fines. Just pays ’em, and then the next week, he’s burning his trash again. He knows his neighbor’ll call us and then someone’ll come out and see him about it.”

  Realization dawned. That explained why there were two plates out. Curtis was counting on company from law enforcement.

  “If companionship’s what he wants, why doesn’t he ask you straight out?”

  “That’s not how he operates. Curtis was once a fully functioning member of society. Did you know he’s a certified public accountant? Hell, I trusted him to do my taxes for years.”

  “From his appearance, I had him pegged as a guy who’d spent his life working outside, maybe as part of a road crew.” So much for his astute powers of observation.

  “After his wife left him, he secluded himself to the point where he can’t admit he needs people, even to himself. He’d rather break the law and pay repeated fines than concede that he’s lonesome.”

  “I thought his wife died in an accident.”

  “That’s the story he convinced himself of to deal with her leaving him and taking their child. No sense arguing with him at this point.”

  “His leg?”

  “Fell off a ladder working on his roof. Too stubborn to ask for help.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  Chief sat back in his chair. “Since around the time my wife joined the chorale. Going on ten years.”

  Alex’s head jerked back in surprise.

  “You might see it as a little unorthodox, but it’s making the best of a sorry situation. Curtis gets his company, the town coffers get a regular injection of capital, and whoever takes the complaint gets some grilled salmon or a sirloin—done to perfection, I might add.”

  Alex shrugged. “I won’t dispute that.” When he thought of that steak, his mouth watered all over again.

  “Didn’t think so. So, what do you say? You want to hop on down there again for me, or should I ask Zangrilli or Myers?”

  Put like that, what choice did he have? Both Zangrilli and Myers had kids. “No need to take married officers away from their families at suppertime.”

  But that evening, when Alex walked around back of the log house expecting to find Curtis standing behind his grill with his barbeque fork in hand, he found him instead lying faceup on the ground, his long fork next to his open palm.

  Alex jogged over to feel for a pulse in his neck, but by the time he saw his face up close, he already knew he wouldn’t find one.

  Immediately, he alerted Dispatch, then took stock. There was no blood, no sign of trauma. Nothing suspicious. Other than Curtis, everything was the same as the last time he’d been there. There was the remainder of the charred white contents of the burn barrel, the smoky petroleum smell of charcoal in the grill. A raw steak lay on a plate, waiting to be cooked. It appeared Curtis had died of natural causes the same way he’d lived, all alone.

  “Rest in peace, Curtis,” he said softly, to the sound of approaching sirens in the distance.

  * * *

  Scarcely a handful of mourners showed up at the Newberry Memorial Park in a fine drizzle for Curtis Wallace’s simple service. Among them were Alex, Chief Garrett and Olivia Bartoli.

  Somewhere in his eulogy, the minister admitted he had ne
ver met Curtis. Alex tuned out his generic platitudes, thinking instead about how Curtis had cast off society, thrown away his money, and, ultimately, his life.

  During a pause in the service, Livvie came up to him.

  “The chief told me you’d been out to see Curtis. Thank you for being a friend to him.” Tears glistened in Livvie’s eyes.

  “How did you know Curtis?” asked Alex, thinking perhaps their connection had something to do with her profession as a counselor.

  “He was my brother.”

  The sister Curtis was on the outs with. That was this woman standing before him holding an umbrella over her head? That was Olivia?

  He wondered if she knew about the still Curtis kept hidden in the garage.

  “He had been suffering from liver disease secondary to alcoholism for a while. Basically, he drank himself to death. It tore me apart, him keeping me and our mom and everyone else who could have helped him at arm’s length for so long. But ultimately, only he could make the decision to become a hermit.”

  Alex searched the detached faces surrounding them, but they were mostly other middle-aged men like himself. “Are your parents . . . ?”

  “Our mom died last year and our dad lives on the East Coast somewhere. He”—she looked down, embarrassed—“couldn’t be here.”

  He fumbled for words that expressed his regret without sounding too clichéd. “Maybe Curtis felt he had no other option.”

  “As long as there’s breath, there are options. His choice to isolate himself ended up costing him a small fortune in fines and dragging more people under with him.”

  “Sorry about your loss.” So much for not resorting to clichés.

  Heads bowed for the benediction. From where Chief Garrett stood, Alex heard snuffling. He opened one eye to catch the chief wiping his nose with his handkerchief. Unobserved, his gaze traveled over the others, and it struck him that for the most part, everyone present stood slightly apart, inside his own personal space. By and large, they were all a bunch of solitaries.

  He gazed beyond the people at the rain-soaked tombstones planted in the lawn and wondered if, now that he was a citizen of Newberry, this would be his own final resting spot. This was as good as any, he supposed. His parents had divorced before their passing, their ashes buried miles apart. And there was no room next to his paternal grandparents’ graves. If he wanted to be buried in their cemetery, he’d have to purchase a separate plot, alone among strangers.

  He’d never been to his maternal grandparents’ gravesites. He didn’t even know what town they were in.

  That being the case, who did he think was going to visit his grave? Easy: no one.

  A trickle of rainwater ran down his collar and he shivered.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Alex poured an ounce of the same wine from each of two successive vintages into glasses and sat down to compare them with his laptop nearby, prepared to take notes on differences in color, aroma, and taste.

  He turned his focus to his blog notes. What he needed was a third vintage to compare with the other two. Most wineries released the same label wines around the same time every year, often in the springtime.

  A quick search of the Net revealed he was in luck—May was the release month. And this year, rather than purchasing it at his regular shop in Portland, he could practically walk to the winery where it had been bottled.

  That’s what he needed to elevate his blog—a visit to the winery, complete with his own photos. Even better would be if he could somehow get a behind-the-scenes tour, obtain exclusive shots that would scoop all those other wine bloggers competing with him for readership.

  He carried his wineglass out back and crept stealthily to a spot beneath the roofline where he’d seen the purple finches carrying wisps of dried grass, to check on the progress of the nest.

  But it was nowhere to be found. The half-built nest had been so fragile . . . it must have blown away in the wind.

  He looked around, but the birds themselves had disappeared, too.

  As usual, whenever he was perplexed or disappointed, his thoughts defaulted to Kerry O’Hearn. Why, after so many years, did she still occupy such a disproportionately large space in his mind?

  Around the time of the Sullivan trial, Alex had completed advanced, science-based training designed to optimize his powers of observation. By viewing a series of objects flashing in progressively faster microseconds, he’d learned to rapidly distinguish between, for example, a wallet, a cell phone, and a handgun.

  Back then, he’d viewed Kerry as a frigid shrew with a heart of stone.

  But maybe he’d been overconfident in his powers of perception. Now that he’d gotten to know her, doubts had begun to poke holes in his original assessment. No longer did anger threaten to swamp him every time he thought of her. He’d seen a gentler side of her, like the way she’d rescued Ella without panicking when she’d fallen face forward in the pool so that she wouldn’t develop a fear of water. How she made sure her middle child always felt included.

  She could be a tiger mom, like the time she’d set aside her misgivings and brought Shay to find out about boxing so she could learn to defend herself.

  Then there were those passionate kisses in his driveway, the way her eyes burned hot and intense. Alone at night in bed, he’d replayed the scene in his head so many times, he knew each kiss by heart.

  In the corner of his eye he saw a flash of magenta feathers and followed one of the finches carrying a twig in its beak to his gutter.

  Maybe he and Kerry could never be lovers. But where was the law against a cop and a defense attorney being—dare he even think something so radical?—friends?

  Without friends, Alex was more like Curtis than he cared to admit.

  His pulse began to pound, bringing on a rush of second thoughts. He must be crazy. Keeping his eye on the nesting birds, he pulled out his phone and punched in Kerry’s number before he came to his senses.

  * * *

  When Kerry saw who was calling, she set down the coffee she’d made to get herself through her afternoon slump and picked up her phone, almost dropping it in her haste. Why was Alex Walker contacting her? This was no social call. Probably he wanted to talk about Shay being in another boxing exhibition.

  Ignoring the fluttering of her heart, she cleared her throat. “Kerry O’Hearn.”

  “How are you?”

  They hadn’t had many phone conversations. The technology made his voice sound even deeper.

  “I’m fine.” Blindly pacing the carpet in her office, she clutched her phone tightly and forced her breathing to remain even. “You?”

  “Good. I, ah . . . I was calling to ask a favor.”

  Kerry froze in her tracks. The embezzlement case suddenly seemed like it was eons ago. Ella had been resisting her naps lately at day care, making her cranky and easily frustrated in the hours between dinner and bedtime, and Chloé had dropped Hobo’s leash and gotten poison ivy chasing him through the hedgerows surrounding the vineyard. The lotion Kerry applied to Chloé’s rash at bedtime didn’t last through the night, so she’d been showing up next to Kerry’s bed in the wee hours, scratching and miserable. When Kerry’s alarm clock went off at five thirty, she dragged herself to the bathroom sink, splashed cold water on her face, and groaned at the dark circles under her eyes.

  But Alex’s call had reawakened her senses like a brisk slap in the face.

  “Do you think you could introduce me to Hank Friestatt?”

  Hopes she didn’t know she possessed plummeted. What had she been expecting? That out of the blue, Alex was calling to take her out to a relaxing, grown-up dinner, someplace with white tablecloths and real napkins, where she didn’t have to referee two kids’ constant taunting and hold the third over the restroom potty to keep her from falling in?

  Not a chance. This was about his wine blog.

  “I’ll call the Sweet Spot and see when Hank will be around.”

  What was she doing?

  �
�After that, I can text you my work schedule for the next week,” said Alex coolly.

  She wished she felt as serene as his voice sounded, and that she didn’t have to fist the phone so tight to keep her hand from trembling. Well, she could act cool, too. She’d done it a thousand times in court. “And then I’ll have to find a sitter.”

  “Sorry. Sounds like a lot of trouble for you. Maybe we should just forget it.”

  “No!” She winced. “I mean, no. You brought it up. Now I’m holding you to it.” Her heart thudded against her ribs. Far from sounding cool, she sounded desperate. Blame it on that part of her that wouldn’t give up—the part that would scratch and claw for her clients until the bitter end. The same part that couldn’t stop thinking about his kisses.

  “Is that right?”

  Was that a smile she heard in his voice? Was he on to her? Her face burned, but she had come this far. She wasn’t backing down now. “That’s right.”

  “What do you think you’re going to get out of this?”

  “I’ll tell you what. A few precious hours of adult conversation without fighting anyone to eat their broccoli and no mention of either My Little Pony or the Powerpuff Girls.”

  “Fair enough. But I got to warn you . . . I’m not big on broccoli either.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  When Alex asked Kerry for an introduction to Hank Friestatt, he hadn’t figured on her coming along. Then again, he hadn’t thought it through at all, merely acted on impulse.

  Now, here he was, waiting for her in the parking lot of the Sweet Spot. When he saw her 4Runner pull up, he walked over to meet her.

  “Hope it wasn’t too much trouble getting away,” he said as he tried not to stare at her slender calf emerging from the SUV.

  “My parents live right next door. When I have to run out unexpectedly, I can rely on them to watch the kids. But they drove to the coast for a couple of days. And even if they were around, they don’t have as much energy as they used to. Whenever I’m going to be gone longer than an hour, I usually ask one of my brothers and their wives.”

  “Which one drew the ace card this time?” he asked as they took their time strolling under the oak trees toward the tasting room entrance.