by Karen Harper
Nick said, “Claire, did you hear me? As my wife and my forensic psychologist, don’t go there!”
Jace swung around to face her. “You’ve always been a bleeding heart, but he’s right. I say steer clear too,” he insisted, pointing a thumb at his own chest.
“Boss, you got a way to contact Patterson?” Heck asked as if to break the tension.
“Did have. Julia. But he’ll surely hear about this and will contact us. Soon, I hope.”
“If he flies in while I’m at the airport,” Jace said, “I’ll brief him, get him here—as long as no one’s followed him in.”
“Yeah,” Nick said, still twisting his watch as if he’d rip it off his wrist. “Who knows that Ames and his lackeys don’t have a tail on Rob, even if he’s FBI.”
“Rob’s not stupid,” Jace insisted. “And Julia wasn’t either, so what the hell happened? Maybe, considering what Claire said about her father, they argued and he pushed her. The guy’s obviously delusional and dangerous to hit Bronco like that.”
“If he hit Bronco like that,” Nick said. “I repeat, we can’t make assumptions.”
“Got that, counselor,” Jace muttered. “So why does it seem you’re controlling a court scene and Claire’s testifying?”
“Come to think of it,” Claire put in, as a thought she’d buried hit her, “and this is a fact, not an assumption—there had to be someone else there at the house. If only Bronco could remember, even if he told the sheriff it was all a blank until the rescue squad came. I smelled smoke in the room where we found him. Nita can back me up on that.”
“A distant fire?” Nick asked, still in lawyer mode despite his denials. “Their fireplace downstairs?”
“More like a cigar. Upstairs.”
“Bingo,” Jace said, smacking his palm on the table. “I’m sure there’s more than one cigar smoker around here, but Kirkpatrick smokes stogies that must be real expensive. He puts them out if they’re partly smoked and saves them in a fancy-dancy tooled leather case that matches his Western boots.”
“Unless he keeps the butts because he doesn’t want his DNA around, but duly noted,” Nick said. “Still, I repeat, we can’t jump to conclusions, and we can’t get involved.”
“Easier said than done in this case,” Claire insisted. “Well, it’s not a case yet. I’ve got to go upstairs and take my meds and check on Lexi,” she said, standing and pushing her chair back. “Thank heavens, Sheriff Archer said he’s coming to take Nita’s and my statements first thing in the morning instead of tonight, because I hardly know what I’m saying.”
Fearing she’d break into tears again, she hurried from the room.
* * *
The bedside clock read 2:00 a.m. in bright red numerals, and Claire still couldn’t sleep. Nick had finally quit thrashing and sighing and slept the sleep of the dead—no, that was a terrible way to think of that.
Carefully, Claire slid out of bed and felt for her slippers on the cold floor. She grabbed her flannel robe, one perhaps Julia herself had picked out for her to face the coming cold winter here. She had to comfort herself by just peeking in to see that Lexi was all right. She’d be careful not to wake Nita and Gina, who slept in bunk beds across the room from Lexi’s bed.
The dim hall was lit only by night-lights from the two open bathroom doors down the way. She tiptoed across the short space from their room, but the floorboards of the old house creaked as if two people walked here. She was grateful there was not much wind for once so the shrieking from above was a mere moan—or was that sound coming from this room?
Carefully, she turned the doorknob, then pushed the door open. Her eyes were well adjusted to the dark. A dim night-light in the room illuminated Lexi’s little bed with its carved maple headboard.
Empty!
Claire gasped and her stomach went into free fall. Not again! First Ames took her, then the search for her in the Havana hotel when...
She got hold of herself. The child could have crawled in with Nita or even Gina up above since there was a bunk-bed ladder. But she usually came to Claire if she woke up. Holding her breath, she bent to look in Nita’s bed, where she slept alone, one arm flung out. On her tiptoes, Claire peered at Gina, curled into a ball alone.
Though tempted to wake them to help her search, she backed from the room and quietly closed their door. When she found Lexi, she was going to be much firmer with her. However disturbed she was—and rightly so with all that she’d been through—she had to stop just wandering off.
All right, Claire told herself, search the house, then wake up the others. Keep calm. Julia was dead, and they were refugees from their loved ones and all they knew, but she had to keep calm. Perhaps Lexi had even gone downstairs to the den, was watching TV or getting something to eat.
She froze partway down the hall. Low voices. Jace’s? Could Lexi have gone to him?
She hurried toward the front left bedroom. A sliver of light shone under Jace’s door, so at least he could help her search. But—yes, Lexi’s voice! Oh, thank God, she’d just gone to her father.
She knocked quietly on the door, and Jace called low, “It’s open.”
Claire pushed it inward. Jace sat in bed with Lexi in his lap, her face glazed with tears. He’d put one of his big sweatshirts over her nightgown, and she wore his huge socks on her little feet. He wore a T-shirt and plaid Jockey shorts with only his feet stuck under the ruffled sheet and quilt.
“Don’t scold her,” he said. “She knew something was wrong and wanted to know, so I told her there had been a bad and sad accident.”
“Mommy, Julia fell and got killed!”
Leaving the door ajar, Claire went in and sat on the side of the mussed bed where she could reach Lexi but avoid Jace’s long legs. She leaned closer to pat her shoulder, then hold her hand.
“Yes, sweetheart, and we are all so sorry because she was our friend. I was going to tell you in the morning because I wanted you to sleep first.”
“Looks like you haven’t,” Jace observed. “Did you take your precious midnight meds?”
She just narrowed her eyes at him. One reason their marriage had blown up was because she’d tried to keep her narcolepsy a secret, even hiding and sneaking doses when he was home. It hurt her too that Lexi had run to Jace instead of her.
“Mommy, what about Scout?”
“I don’t know, honey. I’ll bet we can visit him, but without Julia to be your riding teacher, I just don’t know. I do promise, though, we’ll get you riding lessons someday, somewhere.”
“But I want them now. If I can’t have Scout and Julia for new friends, you have to get Lily back from where you sent her.”
Claire’s wide-eyed stare slammed into Jace’s gaze. She opened her mouth, then shut it. She didn’t want to upset Lexi even more.
“No psych words of wisdom?” Jace asked. “Don’t get involved with all this, Claire, like Nick warned. Just take care of our girl.”
A voice made them all jump. “At least, I heard my name in here.”
Nick swung the door wider. Shadows silhouetted his big form. “Is she all right? Meggie, I mean. Bedside family reunion?”
Claire stood and turned to face him, still holding Lexi’s hand. She felt caught between the two men in her life. Nick looked distressed, and she could feel Jace’s stare boring into her back. “She woke and came here, and he told her about Julia,” she said.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Nick told Lexi, coming a few steps in and peering around Claire. “I know you liked Julia and her horses. We all liked her.”
“I’ll bet she didn’t fall,” the child said. “I’ll bet somebody bad hurt her like they try to hurt us!”
“A sad worldview,” Jace muttered, with a glare at Nick. “Here, better take her back with you so I don’t have to go in Nita and Gina’s room later.”<
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He kicked back the covers and stood, handing Lexi to Claire. Their foreheads, faces, lips almost met as he passed the child to her.
“Mommy, can I sleep with Daddy? I mean, with Uncle Seth?”
“Not tonight, sweetheart. Besides, remember how much he moves around and might bump you?”
“Oh, yeah. Did he use to bump you too?”
At that, Claire clung to Lexi, went past Nick and hurried out and down the hall. She heard nothing else between the two men but a closed door.
“We’ll all miss Julia,” Claire whispered to Lexi as Nick caught up to them. He was walking better than before. She saw he had no robe or slippers on and had left his cane behind, perhaps panicked at first when both she and Lexi were gone. And then, when he’d found them with Jace...
“I’ll miss Scout if I can’t see him lots,” Lexi said, with her arms clasped even tighter around Claire’s neck. “I know Julia’s daughter, Liz, will miss her too, ’cause I sure would miss you if you got dead.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Claire told her. “We’ll all be fine and we’ll take good care of you.”
Strange then, but as Nick opened their bedroom door for them, the shrill sound on the cupola overhead started in again, as if the widow’s ghost was mourning Julia too or warning of dangers yet to come.
21
Sheriff Archer arrived just after Claire and Nick shared a solemn, almost silent breakfast. Archer said he wanted to talk to Nita in the parlor first. Jace had seemed only too happy to head for the airport for once, promising to keep an eye out there for anyone they knew—or didn’t really know.
“I mean like Kirkpatrick coming or going again,” Jace had told Nick. “I know you said lay off, but we can certainly pass intel on if we get it.”
Nick had nodded. The two men had been on even tenser terms than ever this morning, Claire thought. Heavy frost had blanketed the grass this morning, and that was the way it felt in here.
“Nita’s really nervous,” Heck said, hovering in the hall after she went into the parlor with the sheriff. “But she’ll do just fine. Poor girl. She didn’t ask for any of this. At least Bronco’s splitting headache is better, even if he still doesn’t remember one thing from the time the old man wanted to show him that six-shooter.”
“Did you ask him if he smelled cigar smoke?” Claire asked.
“He doesn’t remember.”
“Cigar smoke—inadmissible, right, counselor?” she asked Nick, trying to cajole him a bit. Lexi had slept in the middle of their bed last night, but Claire felt there was more between them than that. Surely, he didn’t think she’d been the one to seek Jace out so they could tell Lexi about Julia’s death together—or for any other reason. She wanted to clear the air on that, but so much else was going on.
After about fifteen minutes, Nita came back into the dining room, looking shaky with watery eyes, though she wasn’t crying. “He said you can come now, Jenna,” she said. “Berto,” she said to Heck, “you promised you’d let Meggie play a game on your laptop, so can you do it now while I keep an eye on Cody?”
“Sure. Fine. That’ll keep her busy for a while. Come on up with me.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Claire called to Nita as she left the room with Heck.
Claire stood and took a few steps toward the parlor door. “And the same to you, Jack-Nick,” she whispered.
“Good to hear,” he said, but he didn’t even look at her as she left to talk to Sheriff Archer.
* * *
Trying to buck herself up, Claire went into the parlor and slid the pocket door closed behind her.
“Hope you don’t mind a voice recorder,” the sheriff said. “Full disclosure. I’m lousy at taking notes and listening too.”
“I sympathize with that,” she said, sitting down in the upholstered chair facing his. “When I interview witnesses, I’m the same way.”
“Yeah, I read you’re a forensic psych,” he told her and hesitated with his hand hovering over the on button on his recorder that looked like one she’d left in Florida. “So let me get right to the nitty-gritty here, and I know you’ll understand.”
He clicked the recorder on and went through the protocols of identifying the two who would be speaking, the time and date and place—and the investigation of the death of Julia Collister, age forty-eight, a resident of Mackinac Island in Mackinac County, Michigan.
Gripping her hands in her lap, then telling herself to relax as she had tried to calm many a witness, Claire sat waiting to hear what he considered the nitty-gritty.
“Of course,” he said, “the four possibilities for any apparently unobserved death like this are natural, accident, suicide or homicide. Jenna, in the time you spent with Julia Collister on the day she died, and as a trained psychologist who has worked with people under pressure before, did you pick up on anything that might indicate Julia was suicidal?”
Claire’s insides cartwheeled. This man might be sheriff on a far-flung island, but he knew how to go for the jugular. She didn’t want to overemphasize that aspect of Julia’s personal sharing time with her, in case it was an accident or someone had murdered her.
“Let me note first,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and calm when she felt just the opposite, “that I did spend a few minutes with her privately, earlier that day—early afternoon—on those Spring Trail stairs, which might have been the spot from which she—maybe fell later. She said the view from there was her favorite and she could spend a lot of time there. And she did mention that her mother had a heart attack there, evidently years ago, and died there.”
“Actually, ten years ago, yesterday,” the sheriff put in. “I wasn’t in office then, but I looked it up in the records of the island newspaper, The Town Crier.”
Claire nodded. She’d known suicides could be triggered by anniversaries, especially tragic ones. And she really hadn’t answered his question about suicide yet.
“She didn’t mention the date of her mother’s death,” she said. “She did tell me she was having a hard day.”
“Did she say anything to indicate why it was a hard day, if she didn’t reference her mother’s death? I’m already aware of her father’s dementia, which made him hostile at times, and her distress that her daughter was planning to leave the island for ‘the big city,’ as Julia put it to me once. Those things could lead to depression.”
“They surely could. And I think it unnerved her that her former husband was back on the island not only to advise Liz but to see Julia.”
The sheriff sat bolt upright. “She told you that? I didn’t know Michael Collister was here again.”
“Actually, I—we—met him. Julia introduced us when he showed up at her house as we were setting out in the wagon for Arch Rock earlier in the day. He wanted to stay at her father’s house but she said no. She asked him if he’d be staying at the Island House again. Technically hearsay, I know, but it’s my testimony.”
“So things seemed tense between them?”
“They both seemed under control, but yes. He’d brought her roses she didn’t take and she said to give to Liz, but he said he’d brought some for their daughter too.”
To her surprise, the sheriff snapped off the recorder. “Sorry,” he said, “but we’ll have to continue this later today. I’ve known Michael Collister for a long time from his visits. Mr. Charm, but a guy who manages to get his own way. I’ve got to go find him. I used to have his cell number, but he changes it a lot. The way word travels around here, he has to have heard of her death, so maybe he’s with Liz. The Collisters had a custody battle over her when they divorced, but she stayed with her mother. I hope we can keep this interview open-ended, so I can pick up on this later. I wanted to explore the smell of cigar smoke where you found Cody Carson, which your nanny, Lorena, mentioned.”
He rose and gathered his things, still talking.
“Each of you have given me a valuable person of interest, because she said your brother-in-law Seth had a little run-in at the airport with that guy Kirkpatrick from Las Vegas. Julia told me he wouldn’t take no for an answer about getting his hands on Hunter Logan’s Western collection. Cigars sprout from Kirkpatrick’s mouth along with ordering everyone around, including me. I’m telling you this so you all steer clear of him. Sorry to run, but I know you understand.
“And,” he said, turning back at the door, “I’ll try to keep this all low-key, even if I can’t keep it hush-hush. This may turn into a situation where you have to testify in an inquest or worse. Maybe you can do it in absentia, but we’ll see, as I know you all have to fly under the radar. I’ve contacted Julia’s one-step-up colleague in the FBI. He seemed very, very upset and said he’ll contact me soon and send someone to settle things with you.”
Settle things with you sounded ominous. “Thank you. We need that,” she managed.
He touched his hat brim and headed out the front door. Only after he was gone did Claire see Nick hovering in the hall.
She walked toward him and explained, “He didn’t know Julia’s ex, Michael Collister, was here, and he’s going to find him.”
“Gotta watch those ex-husbands who still carry torches, because those can burn,” Nick said and went back into the TV room.
* * *
Jace pedaled his bike hard through the cold morning wind toward the airport. Snow was imminent, even before Halloween here, and he’d have to drive a snowmobile then. All of them had to learn how. They’d managed to get a third used one from a neighborhood garage sale.
But his thoughts were on more than that. He was scared to death to tell Claire or Nick—anyone—that when he’d got off his shift early about three yesterday afternoon, he’d gone to Julia’s house to talk to her, kid her about showing him the sights at Arch Rock since he’d missed the tour there. He’d found her in the stable. He was amazed when she’d said she was going back to Arch Rock, but that she wanted to be alone. Actually, she’d seemed strange and abrupt, put him off and gave him the cold shoulder. Still, he’d really wanted to see it, and like an idiot, he’d followed her at a distance.