“Are you calling me a chickadee?” Craig said weakly, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Peter laughed. “Never. But you know what I mean.”
Craig nodded. “So what brings you around today?”
“I can’t stop by to see how you’re feeling?”
Sinking deeper into the stack of pillows behind him, Craig sighed. “I know you better than that, Peter. Something’s on your mind, so spill.”
Peter rubbed his temple and stared at his boots. “Have you heard anything else from the sheriff about who is behind your poisoning?”
“Lester Atkins is the only arrest the sheriff’s made.”
“Yeah, and we both know he didn’t act alone. Someone paid him. Someone supplied the arsenic.”
Craig nodded. “Sheriff Colton said he’d look into the possibility Atkins had help.”
“Sheriff Colton is first and foremost a Colton,” Peter scoffed. “I’d bet anything the Coltons had a hand in this. Maybe Damien was wrongfully convicted fifteen years ago, but I wouldn’t put it past his family to have arranged my dad’s real murder—and your poisoning—as revenge. Or to cover some other crime. Or…hell, the possibilities are endless when it comes to the Coltons.”
Darius Colton and his offspring knew how to wield power and intimidate the right people. They’d been a thorn in the Walsh family’s side since before Mark disappeared and Damien Colton was accused of his murder.
“I’ve considered the possibility that the Coltons could be involved myself. Finn’s been treating me for the poisoning, so I don’t think he’s our man.” Craig closed his eyes and sighed. “But if another Colton is responsible, how do we prove it?”
Peter gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Not through official channels, that’s for sure.” Because Wes Colton was the sheriff, Peter needed to find a way to circumvent the sheriff’s department and get to the bottom of his father’s murder and Craig’s poisoning.
“I can hire someone to look into the matter. Money is no object for me.” Craig paused for a breath, his weakness from the poisoning still evident. “You and your mother are family to me, and I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of these attacks. Until whoever is behind this mess is stopped, we’re all still in danger. That includes you and Patrick.”
A chill shimmied through Peter. Craig was right. He had to protect Patrick.
Despite his heavy case load—cheating spouses, insurance fraud, missing teenagers, adopted kids looking for their birth parents—Peter had to find the person behind the attacks.
He met Craig’s dark eyes with a level stare. “I’ll do the legwork myself. I have resources at my disposal, law enforcement and investigation training.” If not much time.
He hated that taking on a private investigation into his father’s death would mean more time away from Patrick. But how could he let Craig’s poisoning, Mary’s attack and Mark’s murder go unsolved?
Craig’s wan face creased with worry. “Are you sure you want to dig into your father’s business and expose yourself to his skeletons?”
Peter’s gut churned at the thought of the dirt he was likely to uncover on his father if he undertook this investigation of his murder. “I’m sure. But I’ll need your help.”
“My help?” Craig lifted the numerous IV tubes and tipped his head. “I’d love to assist you, but I’m kind of tied down at the moment.”
“I need information from you. I need you to try to remember anything suspicious that may have happened at Walsh Enterprises in the weeks before my dad was murdered. Did my father contact you? Did you know he was alive?”
Craig’s gaze softened. “If I’d known that, I would have told you and your brother and sisters and your mother, Peter. You know that.”
“Okay.” Peter waved that issue away. “Then what about the company? Any suspicious activity in the accounts or operations?”
“I’ll check on that, but…my memory is a little muddled. The arsenic caused me a bit of confusion and lapses in my memory.” He twitched a wry grin. “Thank God it was just poison. I thought I was getting senile.”
Peter forced a grin, but reminders of how close he’d come to losing the man who’d been a surrogate father was no laughing matter. “What about threats? Had anyone contacted you—”
When Peter’s cell rang, he scowled, checked the caller ID.
Honey Creek Elementary.
His pulse spiked. If the school was calling in the middle of the day, it couldn’t be good news. Was Patrick sick? Hurt?
Had his father’s killer come after his son?
He jabbed the talk button, his heart in his throat. “Peter Walsh.”
“Hello, Mr. Walsh,” a sweet female voice began. “This is Lisa Navarre. I’m Patrick’s teacher.”
“What’s happened? Was there trouble at school?” Peter was already out of his chair and putting on his coat.
“Well, yes, there’s been an incident. I need you to come to the school as soon as—”
“I’ll be right there.” He disconnected the call and squeezed his eyes closed. Patrick was his whole world. If anything happened to his son—
Panic rising in his throat, Peter met Craig’s concerned gaze.
“Is Patrick all right?”
“I don’t know. His teacher said there’d been an accident. I have to go.” He backed quickly toward the door. “But we’ll talk more later. I want the people responsible for doing this to you caught, Craig. I won’t rest until I find everyone involved in this conspiracy.”
Chapter 2
“E yes on your own paper, Anthony.” Lisa Navarre gave the student in question a firm but kind look to reiterate her directive.
Cheeks flushing, Anthony DePaulo lowered his head over his geography quiz and got back to work.
Lisa checked the clock. “Fifteen more minutes. Pace yourselves. Don’t spend too much time on a question you don’t—”
Her classroom door slammed open, and a tall, dark-haired man—an extremely handsome man—burst through. His eyes were wide with alarm, his manner agitated. Even before Mr. Handsome Interruption’s gaze scanned the room and landed on Patrick Walsh, Lisa knew this had to be Peter Walsh. The father was the spitting image of his son. Or vice versa, she supposed. Dark brown hair roguishly in need of a trim, square-cut jaw and a generous mouth that was currently taut with concern.
“Mr. Walsh, I—”
“Patrick!” Peter Walsh rushed to his son’s desk and framed his face, tipping his head as if checking for injury. “Are you all right?”
“Da-ad!” Patrick wrestled free from his father’s zealous examination, while the class twittered with amusement.
“Settle down, kids. Finish your work.” Lisa hustled down the row of desks to rescue Patrick from further embarrassment. “Mr. Walsh, if you would?” She tugged his arm and hitched her head toward the hall. “We can talk in the office. As you can see, the class is in the middle of a test.”
Peter Walsh raised dark, bedroom eyes—okay, not bedroom eyes. He was a student’s parent, so maybe that descriptor was inappropriate…but, gosh, his rich brown eyes made her belly quiver. Confusion filled his expression, then morphed to frustration or anger. Now her gut swirled for a new reason. She hated dealing with angry parents.
“Fine.” Mr. Walsh gave one last glance to his son before stalking out to the hallway.
“Keep working, kids. I’ll be right back.” Lisa swept her practiced be-on-your-best-behavior look around the room, meeting the eyes of several of her more…er, loquacious students before she joined Mr. Walsh in the corridor.
He launched into her before she could open her mouth. “What’s going on? You called me here because there’d been—”
“Mr. Walsh.” Lisa held up a hand to cut him off, then caught the attention of the school librarian who was walking past them. “Ms. Fillmore, would you mind sitting with my class for a few minutes while I talk with Mr. Walsh in the office?”
“Certainly,” the older woman said w
ith a smile.
“They’re taking a geography quiz. You’ll need to pick up the papers at exactly two-thirty if I’m not back.”
“Got it. Two-thirty.” Ms. Fillmore gave a little wave as she disappeared into the classroom.
When Lisa turned back to Patrick’s father, she met a glare that would freeze a volcano. “You lied to me. You said Patrick had been in an accident. Do you have any idea how worried I was on the way over here?”
Patience. Keep your cool. Let him vent if he needs to.
Drawing a deep breath to collect herself, she flashed him a warm smile. “Let’s go to the office where we can speak privately.” She motioned down the hall and started toward the front of the school. When Mr. Walsh only stared at her stubbornly for a moment, she paused to wait for him to follow. Handsome or not, the man clearly had a temper when it came to his son.
Lisa could understand that. Most parents had an emotional hot button when it came to their children. Sweet, soft-spoken members of the quilting club became growling mama bears when they thought their cubs needed protecting or defending.
Finally, Peter Walsh fell in step behind her, his long-legged strides quickly catching up with hers. “Why did you tell me there’d been an accident?”
“I didn’t,” she returned calmly.
“You di—”
“I said incident. With an i. You hung up before I could explain the nature of the problem.”
Mr. Walsh drew a breath as if to mount an argument, then snapped his mouth closed. His brow creased, and his jaw tightened as if replaying their brief phone conversation and realizing his mistake.
“I’m sorry if I alarmed you. Patrick is fine, physically.” They reached the front office, and Lisa escorted him into a vacant conference room. “Please, have a seat.”
Patrick’s father crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed a suspicious gaze on her. “Thanks, I’ll stand.”
Okay. She faced him, squaring her shoulders and staring at his forehead…because looking into those dark eyes was just too distracting. Too unnerving.
Darn it all, she was a professional. She couldn’t let this man rattle her.
“Mr. Walsh, I called you because Patrick was disrupting class today and—”
“Disrupting how?” he interrupted, his back stiffening.
“He burped.”
Mr. Walsh’s eyebrows snapped together in confusion. “Excuse me? He burped?”
“Yes.”
He shifted his weight and angled an irritated look toward her. “You called me down here to tell me he burped?” His angry tone and volume rose. “Kids will burp sometimes, lady. It’s a fact of life. Maybe you should be talking to the lunch ladies about the food they’re serving instead of calling parents away from important business to report their kids’ bodily functions, for crying out loud!”
Patience. Lisa balled then flexed her fingers, struggling to keep her cool. She made the mistake of meeting his eyes then, and her stomach flip-flopped. Good grief, the man had sexy eyes!
“It wasn’t just a small, my-lunch-didn’t-sit-right burp, Mr. Walsh. It was loud. Forced. Designed to get a rise out of his classmates.”
Peter Walsh rocked back on his boot heels, listening. At least, she hoped he was listening. Some parents wore blinders when it came to their kids’ behavior. Their little darling couldn’t possibly have done the things she said.
Lisa took a slow calming breath, working to keep her voice even and non-confrontational.
“He’d been disruptive all morning—talking, getting out of his seat without permission, making rude noises, even poking the girl in front of him for no apparent reason. The loud belching was just the final straw.”
Peter Walsh had the nerve to roll his eyes and shake his head. Lisa gritted her teeth.
“With all due respect, Ms. Navaro—” he started in a tone that was far from respectful.
“It’s Navarre, Mr. Walsh.”
“Navarre,” he repeated, lifting his hand in concession, but his disposition remained hard and challenging. “It seems to me keeping order in your classroom is your job. Send him to the principal’s office if you need to, but don’t drag me down here every time my son acts up in class…or burps. You shouldn’t have to call a kid’s parent away from their job to handle a minor behavior problem. If you can’t keep a ten-year-old boy in line for a few hours a day, perhaps you’re in the wrong profession.”
Lisa’s hackles went up. She’d already wondered if teaching children was the best place for her, but for reasons that had nothing to do with her ability to discipline her class. She suppressed the ache that nudged her heart and focused on the matter at hand.
“I’m perfectly capable of maintaining order in my classroom, Mr. Walsh.” She drilled him with a look that her students knew well, the one that said she’d reached the limits of her patience. “Especially if I have the cooperation of the children’s parents in addressing at home any issues that may be at the root of behavior problems.”
He scoffed. “My son does not have a behavior problem. He may be having a bad day today, but you know as well as I do that he’s not a troublemaker.”
“Which, if you’d let me finish explaining, is why I called you to come down for a conference. Usually Patrick is quite well-behaved. In fact, since the beginning of school, it seems he’s become more quiet, even withdrawn. His grades have slipped in recent weeks. Did you know that? I’ve sent home his test papers to be signed, but you never sign them. His grandmother does.”
“My mother babysits him most afternoons until I can get home from work. My job keeps me on the road a lot, and I’ve had to work longer hours lately, so Patrick’s grandmother handles his schoolwork.”
“But you’re his parent, Mr. Walsh. You need to be involved.”
His face darkened, and he narrowed a glare on her. “Are you telling me how to parent my kid?”
Why not? You were just trying to tell me how to do my job! Lisa bit back the caustic retort that would serve no purpose other than make her feel better for five minutes. Then she’d feel bad that she’d lost her temper and kick herself for being reactionary.
“No, sir. I’m not.” She purposefully infused her tone with calm and concern, enough to capture the agitated father’s attention. She had to be sure he heard and understood the importance of her next statement. “But earlier today, when I warned Patrick that I would have to call you if he didn’t behave, his response was, ‘Go ahead. Call my dad. He won’t care. He’s too busy to care about what I do.’”
Peter Walsh jerked back as if slapped, his expression stunned. “That’s…crazy! He knows I care about him. He knows I love him! More than anything in this world.”
“Maybe up here he knows that.” She tapped her head. “But kids need to see that love and affection in action to reaffirm what you say. He needs to see you express interest in his schoolwork, in his friends, in his life to really believe it here.” She moved her hand to her heart.
A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he shifted his glowering gaze to a bulletin board on the far wall. “The last few months have been…especially difficult for my family, Ms. Navarre. I’ve tried to protect Patrick from most of the fallout, shield him from the worst of it, but…” He heaved a sigh and left his sentence unfinished.
“I read the newspaper. I know about your father’s murder, and I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
His eyes snapped to hers. Pain shadowed his gaze, and her heart went out to him. She’d seen a similar sadness in Patrick’s eyes too many times since the school year had started. “The reason I called you here is not because Patrick was acting out. I can handle disciplining students when it is called for.”
Chagrin flickered across his face, and he shifted his weight.
“I called because I’m worried about Patrick. I think the recent events in your family have upset him, and he doesn’t feel he can talk to you about it. He feels alone because he thinks you’re too busy for him. He’s confused and scared.”
/>
Worry lined Peter Walsh’s face. “He said that?”
“His withdrawal said that. His grades said that. His misbehavior today said that. I’ve been a teacher for six years. I’ve seen this before. He just needs reassurance from you that his world is safe, that you care, that he is your priority. Mr. Walsh, more than discipline, what Patrick needs is his father.”
Peter squared his shoulders, a bit of his temper returning. Obviously, he took her last comment as an indictment. “I’ll talk to him tonight. You won’t have problems with his behavior again.”
Lisa’s heart sank. Had he heard her at all?
Peter Walsh, his square jaw tight and his back stiff, turned to stalk out of the conference room.
“Mr. Walsh, I—”
But he was gone. All six feet plus of seething testosterone and brooding eyes. Lisa inhaled deeply, hoping to calm her frazzled nerves, but instead drew in the enticing scents of leather and pine that Peter Walsh left in his wake.
She had no business thinking of her student’s father in the terms that filtered through her head—sexy, virile—but with a man like Peter Walsh, how could she not?
Lisa dropped into a chair and raked fingers through her raven hair. She needed to collect herself before she returned to her class.
But five minutes later, as she headed back to her room, her mind was still full of Peter Walsh and his smoldering dark eyes.
Patrick tossed his backpack on the floor of Peter’s truck and gave his father a forlorn glance as he climbed onto the seat. “So I guess I’m in big trouble, huh?”
Peter shrugged. “Depends on what you call big trouble. I understand you gave your teacher a good bit of grief today. You were loud and disruptive in class. You know better than that, sport.”
“Am I grounded?”
“Do you think you should be grounded?”
Patrick hesitated, got a scheming glint in his eyes. “No? I think I’ve learned my lesson, and we can skip the punishment?” He lifted hopeful dark eyes to his father.
“Seriously? I think I hear a question mark in your answer. You know I can’t just let this slide. What if I’d been working a big case out of town when I got called to the school? Huh?”
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