Hud sat down at the end of the bar and looked up at the blank TV that sat opposite the trophy shelf. A big mirror sat in between the two shelves, giving Hud full view of the door, of anyone coming in or going out. He was glad the TV was off.
“I figured you’d be in sooner or later,” Tilt said, wiping the top of the bar in front of Hud with a clean white towel. Tilt wore a blue-striped Oxford shirt, with the long sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, khaki shorts, even though it was October, and a pair of well-worn L.L. Bean boat shoes. “It’s been all over the news all day.”
“I suppose it has.”
“Murder’s big news around here.”
“Bad for business, I suppose.”
“Would be in the high season. If there’s any luck in this at all, it’s October not July.”
“I suppose so.” Hud reached for his pocket, then stopped halfway. The Demmie was a no-smoking bar. State law said you had to stand eight feet from the outside entrance of a place where food was served to smoke a cigarette legally. It was a silly law, as far as Hud was concerned, but it was the world he lived in. He sighed and let the thought of smoking a cigarette fall away for the moment. When he looked up, he caught a knowing look from Tilt. “I guess I’ll need to quit one of these days,” he said.
“They’ll just come after something else.” Tilt kept on wiping the bar, eyeing Hud as if he was still in the process of sizing up his mood, how the day had affected him.
“You’re right about that.” A smile flickered across Hud’s face, then disappeared. He used to go buy cigarettes down at the Dip for his mother when he was a kid. That couldn’t happen now. A lot of things couldn’t happen now.
Almost as if by magic, a tumbler with two fingers of Wild Turkey appeared in front of him. Tilt was a quick study, but Hud made it easy. He only ordered one drink, never strayed from the Turkey.
“Thanks,” Hud said. “But I better have a cup of coffee if you have any brewing. My day’s not over.”
“Oh?” Tilt answered curiously, waiting for a second longer than he normally would.
Hud offered no explanation. He offered Tilt the best glacier stare that he could muster.
“All right, then” Tilt said, moving away toward the coffeemaker.
Movement caught Hud’s eye, drew his attention away from Tilt, to the mirror. He watched a blonde woman stand up from the table in the corner and look his way, then followed her every step as she made her way to the restroom. Even though he hadn’t seen her in twenty years, there was no mistaking who she was. Goldie Flowers. The princess of the lake, daughter of the coroner, heir to one of the wealthiest families in the county. At least she had been once upon a time. Maybe that had changed, too. Hud didn’t know. He hadn’t kept up. He regretted waving off the Wild Turkey.
The Jones ballad ended and the music was replaced by a string of commercials, with a promise of the news to come. Tilt traded the whiskey for coffee, but Hud didn’t notice. Goldie had exited the lady’s room and was walking directly toward him, ignoring her friend in the corner.
“I thought that was you, Hud Matthews,” she said, coming to a stop a foot from Hud. Her jasmine perfume and red lipstick had both been freshened up, but there was no erasing the years that had accumulated on her face since he’d last seen her. Even in the dim light, Goldie’s attempt to hide her crow’s feet with the best dime-store makeup she could find had failed. The wrinkles were ditches full of flesh-colored mud; her skin still held onto her summer tan, making the flaws more distant but still noticeable. Her once-luminous blonde hair was cut short, highlighted to cover the dawning gray, and her eyes looked clouded, not bright and hopeful like they once had. Her body had held up well, though that could have been an illusion too. All of her curves were still in the right places, even with a thin sweater and a skirt that came to her mid-thigh. Her shapely legs looked to go on forever, and Hud resisted the urge to remember her in a bikini, worshiping the sun. Her sweater was a V neck, and Hud’s eyes lingered on the sight of her healthy cleavage a second longer than he should have. She was less than perfect now, which made her as beautiful as she ever had been, if not more.
“Good to see you, Goldie.” Hud glanced down briefly, saw the fresh white band on her tanned ring finger where a wedding ring had recently rested. Some histories were easy to read.
“This is last place I expected to see you today,” she said softly, staring into Hud’s eyes.
“Just taking a break.” Hud broke her gaze, looked past her to the man at the table. He was watching them intently. Hud wasn’t interested in the man. Thankfully, he didn’t look familiar. He hoped he wouldn’t be a problem.
Goldie continued to ignore her friend. “I was just going to step outside for a breath of fresh air and a cigarette. Care to join me?”
“What about your friend?”
“Who said he was my friend?”
A smile flickered across Hud’s face. He couldn’t have fought it off he’d wanted to. “I was just thinking I could use a smoke.” He got up, letting her lead, and left the steaming cup of coffee behind him. He’d settle his tab with Tilt later.
Chapter Six
The air was cool, but not too cold to be outside, and the rain had weakened into a thin, familiar mist. Goldie disappeared into the darkness, around the corner from the entrance of the bar, leaving only a hint of jasmine in her wake.
The parking lot to Johnny Long’s Supper Club stood empty, but all of the lights were still on, flashing aimlessly, like the old Wurlitzer inside the bar, to an uninterested and preoccupied world. A slight wind pushed off the lake, rustling the oak leaves in the trees, the ones that hung on through the winter, stubborn about their release, the timing of their fall. The rest of the trees had already shed their bounty. The ground was covered with red maple, yellow birch, and brown sycamore leaves as big as a pie tin. Wet leaves made the ground slippery as ice; Hud nearly lost his balance in pursuit of Goldie, then righted himself and took more deliberate, cautious steps.
A flash of light illuminated Goldie’s face as she brought a flame to the cigarette perched between her lips. She was pressed against the clapboard wall of the hotel. Waves lapped up to the rock seawall five feet away. “How long’s it been since you left?” she asked after distinguishing the flame and exhaling smoke.
“Twenty years, give or take.” Hud leaned against the wall so he was shoulder to shoulder with Goldie. He had lost his urge for a cigarette. The smell of hers was enough. All he’d ever wanted was to be alone with her. He was surprised she knew who he was. “I couldn’t wait to get away from this place.”
“And now you’re back,” she said, with a half-smile in her voice.
Neither of them looked at the other, just stared out into the blackness of the moonless night. The water and the sky had joined; it was hard to see where one left off and the other began. The only light came from the hot end of Goldie’s cigarette and the flashing signs in the background. The neon buzz accompanied Vacancy as it reflected in the water to the left of Hud.
“I said I’d never come back,” Hud said. And it was true. He’d said it over and over again as a kid.
“And then Gee up and died. Never say never, right?”
A wave of discomfort washed over Hud. “I’m sorry. I mean about her arrangements. It was what she asked for.”
“I have no interest in the family business. Too depressing. Makes no difference to me that you used another funeral home. Daddy might care, but not me.” Her eyes narrowed, and she drew on the cigarette tightly, inhaled the smoke as deep as it would go.
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” She exhaled a thin stream of smoke from her nostrils. Her words vanished as soon as they appeared. Goldie turned and looked at Hud, then flipped the cigarette as high as she could toward the lake. The tiny hot orange orb looked like a falling star, diving from the sky, offering a brief moment of light, of hope.
Hud looked away, followed the streaming flight path, and blinked
just before it hit the water in a sizzle. He saw the outline of the decaying Ferris wheel across the lake and felt remorse for not seeing its demise. When he turned back to Goldie, she was inches from his face. She smelled of smoke and expensive perfume and something else—something unexpected—she smelled of need and want.
The day had been long and trying. He wasn’t immune to seeing a dead body, a young woman shot in the back of the head. The death affected him, like they all had, but he hadn’t faced it. He’d tried not to. Until now.
He leaned in and kissed Goldie Flowers long and hard, pressed her up against the wall. He wanted to feel young again, alive in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. To his growing pleasure, she didn’t object, responded to his kiss in kind. It was a moment he’d dreamed of a million times as a thirteen-year-old boy, fantasized about, ached for at every sight of her. He explored her body with his hands, unstopped, just like he had with his eyes as she’d made her way from the table to the restroom. His right hand careened downward to the hem of her skirt and beneath, not hesitating, expecting the touch of silk, but came into direct contact with warm, welcoming flesh. She wore no panties. Goldie gasped at his touch, nibbled his ear, encouraged him to go farther, all the while pulling his zipper down, releasing his hard, pent-up desire almost immediately. There was no turning back. Just as he entered her, his cell phone rang.
“Don’t stop,” Goldie begged. “Jesus, don’t stop.”
It was a special ring. It was Burke’s ring. The theme song to the old TV show Dragnet. The search warrant for Sherman’s house must be in. Hud stopped but couldn’t bring himself to pull away from Goldie, to give up, leave her. He was panting, his heart was racing, all the while he considered the consequences of not answering his phone, ignoring his new boss. “I have to.”
Goldie grabbed each of his ass cheeks and pulled him closer to her, deeper into her. “You have to finish this.”
Hud could barely restrain himself. He gasped as Goldie wrapped herself around him as tightly as she could. “I can’t,” Hud said. “I have to go. Goddamn it, I have to go.”
The Shermans’ house sat at the end of the lane on the backwaters of the lake. It was a world away from the tourist cottages and the murder scene on the opposite shore. All of the surrounding houses belonged to full-timers as far as Hud could tell. Even at night, they looked more like homes than places to party for a few days.
The backwater was shallow, weedy, and full of cattails and water lilies in the summer. It throbbed with migrating ducks in the spring and fall—making the spot less than desirable for pleasure seekers and sun worshippers. A thick woods populated the farthest end of the marsh. It was state-owned land; a nature preserve named after a dead war hero that Hud couldn’t remember. Duck stamps were handed out by lottery in the county, but Hud had never hunted ducks in the backwaters—he’d been more interested in fishing than hunting as a boy. He’d learned how to tell a bufflehead from a merganser because of his time spent in the shallow end.
The CO’s house was a simple cedar-sided, pre-War bungalow. All of the windows blazed with light and gleamed with the discipline of a twice-a-year application of elbow grease and pride. Two ricks of wood sat neatly piled alongside the garage, ready for the coming winter. A silhouette of a stove pipe protruded from the roof at the back of the house, and Hud figured Sherman used the wood to heat the house as much as possible.
A good sized dog barked in the distance as Hud stepped out of the Crown Vic. The mist was thick, the air even colder now since he’d left Goldie behind. He stopped, did a full turn to get his bearings, and took in the sight of the house again. The dog didn’t belong to the CO, or if it did it was a long way from home. Hud was glad of that. He was in no mood to deal with an overprotective guard dog, a big German Shepherd from the sound of the bark.
The lane that led up to the house bothered him. It was one way in and one way out. The only other escape route was over the lake or into the preserve. Even at this time of year, the land there was sink-to-your-ankles soft and full of critters and slithery things that would do anything to protect themselves. Hud shivered at the thought.
He was certain that Sherman had at least one personal boat, as well as the state patrol boat, and he likely knew the lake as well as, or better than, anyone else. Night added to the disadvantage, but there were plenty of spotlights to go around to search outside the house. It was beyond, searching the preserve if the need arose, that concerned him.
Hud hadn’t been out on the water in a boat since his return. It would take him more than a minute to figure out where he was if he had to go out on the lake. His memory of the coves, of the landmarks of his youth, were out of reach, locked in a place he had never thought he would have to rely on ever again. He realized that it had been a mistake, not taking some time familiarizing himself with his old haunts, his old life, before returning to work. His navigation skills were rusty.
He shrugged off the regret and headed over to the county cruiser sitting in front of the house. The drizzle hadn’t let up. It was like a cloud hung over the world, encasing everything in sight in its grey dampness.
“Detective,” Bob Varner said, as he rolled down the driver’s side window, making no effort to get out of the car. “Fancy meeting you here.” Varner had been the deputy who had arrived first at the murder scene earlier in the day. He was a little older than Hud, but they had not been friends as kids. The deputy wouldn’t have been easy to forget. Most assholes weren’t.
Varner stared up at Hud with the same distant animosity he’d shown at their prior meeting. Hud decided right then and there that the man’s attitude had nothing to do with him, and, if it did, then the pecking order disdain wasn’t his problem.
Hud smelled a recently extinguished cigarette from two feet away from the cruiser and ignored it the best he could. “You seen anything?”
Varner shook his head. “Been quiet since we told the wife that a search warrant was coming. No one’s been by, no one’s left. I take it that’s why you’re here.”
Hud nodded. “Burke’s on his way.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Garbled voices on the radio chatted back and forth, the volume low but unmistakable. Standard talk, nothing worth Hud’s attention. He’d left his walkie-talkie in his vehicle. “How was the wife?”
“A tad bit confused and upset,” Varner said. “Who wouldn’t be?”
“It was genuine?”
“You don’t know Kaye Sherman, do you?”
“Not that I know of. I’ve been gone for a long time.”
“I heard that, too.” The radio drew Varner’s attention and he looked away from Hud. “Burke just turned onto the lane. Looks like it’s show time.”
“I can hardly wait,” Hud said, looking down the road, still uncomfortable about the only other way out.
“You really thought the man that owned the Dip fed your mother to the lion?”
“I was a kid. It made sense.”
“But you gave up on that idea.”
“Sure, if you say so.”
“You still think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know what I think. But I know this: a healthy, happy woman just up and disappeared, and the whole world was pretty quick to come to the conclusion that she had run off just because of her reputation.”
“She liked men.”
“Get it right.”
“She liked married men.”
“Yes. They were easier, I guess. They didn’t want to live happily ever after. They just wanted her, and I think she was all right with that, that that’s what she wanted, too. No attachments, no heartbreak. She’d had enough of those kinds of troubles to last a lifetime. You try losing the person you love in a fiery car crash.”
“Gee told you that?”
“Gee told me everything once I got old enough to understand. Or, at least, I thought she did. One of the last things my mother told her was that she was in love and that it was going to change everything. And she wa
s right. It did. Everything changed.”
Chapter Seven
Burke pulled up behind Varner’s cruiser in his own Crown Vic. Even in the dark of night and inclement weather, it was obvious that the chief’s car was brand new. Modes of transportation were synonymous with rank, no matter the department. Hud glanced over to his own battered Crown Vic, just to reaffirm his own status. Best to know where you were on the totem pole going in.
Burke wasn’t alone, which made things a little more interesting. He had another detective with him, one of Hud’s counterparts, Tina Sloane. Her presence didn’t surprise Hud at all. The scope of the case had grown by the second. It had been clear to Hud once Sherman disappeared from the crime scene and became an immediate suspect that the investigation wasn’t going to be a one-man show. Burke would’ve been a fool to throw the reins to Hud with complete authority, given Hud’s lack of time in the department. Once the media sniffed their way in, everybody wanted their face time, no matter how small the TV market or the size of the readership of the newspaper asking the questions. Hud had seen the competiveness inside a department blossom before, and he didn’t expect it to be any different in a small county than it was in the big city.
Tina Sloane had been a detective for five years. She was a no-nonsense woman, who always wore plain pant suits, usually in black, gray, or tan, and had short brown hair that complimented her soft oval face and brown eyes. Beauty wasn’t Sloane’s thing, not like it was for Goldie, but it was there, purposely obscured, undeniable in the genuineness of her face and the shape of her body, regardless of what she did to hide it. Hud hadn’t been around Sloane enough to know anything of substance about her, only the basics. She was native to the area, had been born and raised in the county seat twenty miles to the south, so she had attended a different high school than him and Burke, and her deceased father had been a small-town cop. It was easy to see that law enforcement ran in her veins all the way down to the durable, comfortable shoes she wore. Other than that, the slate was blank. Hud had no opinion of Detective Sloan, of how good a cop she was. Not yet, anyway, but he figured that was about to change.
Where I Can See You Page 4