Falling Darkness--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Karen Harper

  Claire sucked in a big breath. “Jace, you should have told us.”

  “Yeah, maybe so. With this artwork in the backyard tonight, I’m starting to think I had a crack in the head to try to get involved with him.”

  “Just great,” Nick put in. “You may be aiding and abetting a murderer.”

  “It was a way to keep an eye on him, maybe make it up to Julia—hell, you know what I mean—if I could help find her killer. I don’t think she’d slip. She knew the area, her mother had died there, Claire said, and we all saw how sure-footed she was in more ways than one on that rocking ferry that brought us to the island the first time we met her.”

  “And you fell for her,” Claire put in after that rush of words and emotion. Then she added, “I didn’t mean it that way—fell for her.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Jace said, turning his mug of hot cider in his hands as if to keep warm when Nick saw sweat already beading his upper lip. “I was odd man out in our new little family and didn’t know how I was going to make it through the winter here. I still don’t.”

  Nick said, “I see why you tried to get close to Kirkpatrick, but you can be known by the company you keep. He’s leaving soon, isn’t he? Grand Hotel, where he’s evidently hanging out, is closing the day after Halloween.”

  “And great timing for that,” Jace muttered. “Ghosts and goblins and witches—maybe some pre-Halloween prankster did that drawing outside, and—”

  “The point is,” Nick interrupted, “someone has made a move, as if he or she knows we’re working on who killed Julia. I think Jace and I should take turns keeping an eye on the backyard for the rest of the night—front yard too, maybe—and I’ll call Sheriff Archer at eight in the morning to come look at this. And, Seth, take it from your older brother, Jack, and tell Archer what you’ve told us tonight.”

  “He’ll blow my undercover work if he goes to recover the stuff or interviews Kirkpatrick again.”

  “Nick,” Claire said, “remember how Mr. Logan was sure he was missing things, and Liz said they weren’t the things she and her dad took to sell? Despite the fact that Mr. Logan makes next to no sense, he did insist he’d never hit someone over the head or shove them off a cliff. But as I told you, people with dementia sometimes project what they’ve done onto someone else. And that smell of cigar smoke in the room—Kirkpatrick must have just been there.”

  “Is Julia’s father really a suspect?” Jace asked, looking strangely hopeful, Nick thought.

  “I’d say he’s in the second tier of the sheriff’s persons of interest,” Nick said. “Archer is no more accepting of the coroner’s undetermined or accidental-death verdict than we are. After all, the medical examiner didn’t know Julia and only had a battered body to make his ruling. But when we get the sheriff here tomorrow, I’ll try to find out more about who he’s targeting. It sure muddies the waters that Julia’s dealt with criminals for years, even WITSEC witnesses. Like a criminal lawyer who’s made a lot of enemies, she could have too, and some came back to—to haunt her.”

  “In short,” Jace said, getting up to slosh the rest of his cider in the sink, “Ames aside, you could have other enemies out there somewhere who would like to settle a score with you. I’ll take the first watch and you come on down around five. I probably couldn’t sleep anyway—and looks to me like you two should give it a try after all you’ve been through.”

  Nick saw Claire blush. For a woman who was usually so aware of body language, she’d been frequently brushing back her tousled hair.

  “Of course,” Jace went on as he cracked open the kitchen curtain over the sink to peer out again, “now that we’ve got ghost woman on the roof silenced, maybe she got angry and came down to mess things up at ground level.”

  Nick didn’t like his words or his tone, but at least he was helping. He pulled out Claire’s chair for her and ushered her upstairs.

  * * *

  “Who did that, Mommy? They are so bad. I would like to stomp on them! They aren’t very good drawers either! If Daddy—I mean, Uncle Seth—was watching, why didn’t he stop them?”

  “No, I said, both your daddy Jack and your uncle Seth were watching it after it happened. They didn’t see who did it, but the sheriff will be here in a few minutes and he will want to find out who did it.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking crestfallen. “So Uncle Seth feels bad about it too, just like he did when Julia got dead?”

  “Yes, we all felt very bad about that, didn’t we?”

  “I could tell he really did. ’Cause when he told me she was gone—then I had to ask, ‘Gone where?’—that he was almost crying and mad at himself. I could tell.”

  Claire’s insides flip-flopped. “Did he say anything else about it?”

  “He said he was very, very sorry and that people make mistakes. I should remember that, but here I almost forgot. Know what, Mommy?”

  “What?” she said, pulling Lexi to her for a hug.

  “I know you don’t like my bad friend Lily, but I think Da—Uncle Seth, I mean—might have a pretend friend that does bad things too.”

  Claire held her close. She’d resented Nick’s thinking Jace could have hurt Julia, even accidentally. There was so much tension among the three of them, and this whole role-play situation was a powder keg, but could Jace know more than he was saying about Julia’s death too?

  She had to admit that she’d much rather believe the possible murderer was Julia’s ex-husband than her own.

  29

  Jace kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His footprints were out there in the snow, just down the hill too, and he figured the sheriff had seen them.

  “The thing is,” Sheriff Archer told him, Claire and Nick as he came back onto their small back porch and stomped the snow off his feet, “that crude drawing is so obviously accusing Vern Kirkpatrick that it makes me think someone else is setting him up. Actually, if he did this sketch of himself—which I doubt—I’d say he’s doing it to cast doubt or blame on the other two. Besides, there’s a second set of footprints down there aside from whoever added that crude murder scene,” he said, pointing to the slant of hill that went down from their backyard and led toward the shoreline far below.

  “Mine,” Jace told him, realizing he had to come clean on that. “When I saw it last night, I looked around, walked around. I only realized I shouldn’t have later.”

  “So Jack here says Kirkpatrick told you his cigars are Cuban imports. That’s illegal, but not enough to snag him on. And he told you what about Castro?”

  Jace’s gaze snagged Nick’s. He was grateful Nick had only told the sheriff that much, or he’d be all over him about working for Kirkpatrick. Nick had said that it was up to him if he wanted to explain about their relationship. If he was going to tell the truth, at least about that, now was the time.

  “Yeah,” Jace said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I told Jack and Jenna that, according to Kirkpatrick, he smokes the brand made ’specially for Fidel Castro. Of course, he was bragging they were as expensive, but I don’t know how he gets them. I first met Kirkpatrick at the airport, and he offered me a kind of gofer job, which I turned down. But after I’d heard how Julia was standing in the way of his buying her father’s big Western collection—and after she was found dead—I decided to take him up on that job to see if he’d say anything incriminating I could pass on to you.”

  “A noble cause but dangerous and maybe even destructive,” Sheriff Archer said when Jace hesitated. Jace knew he had to watch what he said here. It was one thing to implicate Kirkpatrick, but he had to keep quiet about the fact he’d talked to Julia and she’d told him to leave her house the afternoon she’d died.

  Folding his arms across his chest, Jace decided he’d better go for broke—at least about Kirkpatrick, so he said, “He’s either bought or taken some of the Gene Aut
ry items and stashed them near the airport. If you tell him I said so, he’ll be gunning for me too, one way or the other like he maybe did for Julia, so I hope you don’t tell him that, at least right now.”

  “You followed him there? Saw where he stashed the items?”

  “Playing along, I helped him do it.”

  “Damn it, man. I figured it would be your two comrades-in-arms here who would jump in with both feet when all of you should steer clear and you know why. I’m the pro tem contact for all of you until WITSEC gets someone else here, so you’re going by my rules, got it?”

  “I figured we owed it to Julia,” Jace insisted with a frown at Claire and Nick. Why didn’t they speak up? They usually did. It was like they were letting him hang in the wind. They were in this in their own ways with both feet. Finally, Nick spoke.

  “Sheriff, is there any way you could question Kirkpatrick again without tipping him off to the fact that Seth is keeping an eye on him for you? Why don’t you step inside and have some coffee while we figure this out?”

  “Thanks, but I need to push on. Yeah, I’ll try that with Mr. Las Vegas, because, like any FBI refugees here, you need to keep a low profile, a lot lower than at least one of you has been keeping. Seth, you’re in deep right now, but the rest of you steer clear, unless you have anything else to divulge. So do you?”

  Jace could tell Claire wanted to say something. He’d like to think she’d somehow come to his rescue, since even Nick had tried.

  She said, “Sheriff, Jack and I were at the Collister house yesterday, and there seemed to be some tension between Liz and her father. Did Michael just happen to be here when Julia died, or has he been here often?”

  “Not often. Off and on. I thought he and Liz were supporting each other pretty well through all this.”

  “Does he ever bring his wife here? I thought some of it might be over that, which would certainly be understandable.”

  “She hardly ever comes. I think she’s a high-up exec at an interior-design type store, maybe an East Coast chain of them. But it was a contentious divorce for some reason, not that many aren’t. Look, all of you, I know it’s tough losing your contact and handler Julia like this, since you also saw her as a friend, but just enjoy the beauty of this place and the people and avoid the outsiders, even if you’re outsiders yourselves, okay?”

  “Sure,” Jace said, figuring he’d got off easy. “No doubt good advice, and thanks for all your help.”

  “I may ask you to show me where Mr. Las Vegas stashes his stuff—once I’m sure where he is. He told me he’s staying for a few more days, and is furious he has to vacate his room at Grand Hotel when they mothball the place soon. Of course, he thinks he should be the exception to all kinds of rules.”

  “That’s exactly what he told me,” Jace said. “I think his exact words were ‘The rules are for those who need them. The rest of us rise above.’ He wasn’t real happy when I turned down working for him at first. Like I said, I only agreed after I heard he had it out for Julia and then she—she fell.”

  “Got that loud and clear. Thanks to all of you and sit tight.”

  He touched his index finger to his cap and walked off the back porch and around to the front of the house. The three of them went inside. From the front parlor windows, Jace watched the sheriff drive away on his snowmobile. At least those things were so loud you could hear them coming. The four men here had mastered driving them but the women had all said they’d rather not. Still, one of these evenings, they were going out on them in a group, taking a lantern-lit path through the state park, evidently a popular thing to do around here.

  Everybody else had a sweetheart, but he’d be odd man out again. Still, if Lexi could ride with him, that would be fun. He just hoped the trail Nick and Heck had said was good for beginners didn’t go anywhere near the steps facing Arch Rock.

  * * *

  For once Claire couldn’t sleep, and it annoyed her that Nick had conked out so fast tonight when she wanted to bounce ideas off him. Why didn’t her usual sleepy-time med kick in? However much she coped with life, sometimes memories of her terrible narcoleptic and cataplexic days haunted her: dropping off to sleep in the wrong place; feeling temporarily paralyzed at times when she woke up; suffering from terrible nightmares, usually that she was being chased and couldn’t move. Sometimes, especially when she felt alone, all of that haunted her worse than the memory of the wind on the roof that sounded like the shrieking soul she used to be...

  No, she had Nick and Lexi and a new child on the way. She couldn’t let those dark days get to her. She had to think logically, to reason things out, but that scared her too.

  Her frenzied thoughts kept bouncing back and forth between her latest two obsessions and fears. One, that Wade Buxton was WITSEC and that he might therefore know, or guess, that they were too. He could have a criminal past. He kept popping up in her life, just as he, no doubt, had in Liz’s. Yes, Wade Buxton reeked of smugness and danger. He reminded her of a cat toying with a mouse it meant to kill—like the master of terror, Clayton Ames.

  Two things the sheriff had said today made her think Buxton might be WITSEC. He’d said I’m the pro tem contact for all of you. Of course, all of you could mean all of them living here at Widow’s Watch, but she felt sure he would just have said you then. He meant he was a temporary contact for at least someone else here.

  Second, the sheriff had said they were like any other FBI refugees here and that they should avoid outsiders. Was that a cloaked comment to avoid Wade Buxton? Didn’t that mean there was at least another WITSEC refugee here, or did he mean avoid Vern Kirkpatrick or even Michael Collister? But worse than all her worry about Wade was her fear for Jace.

  Because she’d realized today that Jace might be lying, and to the sheriff, no less. Yes, he’d admitted some things. But she knew Jace almost better than she knew anyone, his strengths and his weaknesses. She’d loved him once, his bravado and self-confidence that actually hid his insecurities. He was lucky he’d emotionally survived his brutal father, who had loved the young marines he was in charge of more than he loved his son. Much of Jace’s early career and quest for excellence had been to either please or defy his father.

  When the four of them had stood on the back porch today in the cold, Jace, who never really felt the cold or let on if he did, was shaking, however confident he’d seemed. He’d folded his arms over his chest as if to protect himself, and he’d stood on one foot, then the other. His voice had been a bit too loud when he told Sheriff Archer about his dealing with Vern Kirkpatrick, as if he was trying to convince himself of something as well as the sheriff. She understood some of that, of course, but there was something Jace was still holding back. She sensed it and she feared Nick knew it. Even Lexi had picked up on it.

  Oh, please, dear Lord, she prayed, don’t let Jace have had anything to do with Julia’s death.

  * * *

  “The checkout girl at Doud’s Market joked that we’d brought the polar vortex with us this year,” Claire told everyone at dinner before they planned a group ride on their three snowmobiles. “She said because the ice is forming early, the winter boat with the double hull, I think it’s called the Huron, usually runs from about November fifteenth until the lake freezes. But it’s so cold now, it’s already running and may not be able to for long.”

  She tried to sound lighthearted, but she’d felt as if she was being watched today and followed as she’d walked back from the store. No one was in sight, but she’d been alone, and the sensation was strong. Of course, there had been others on the streets or on snowmobiles. Half expecting to see Wade Buxton appear only to disappear again, she’d hurried home out of breath, glancing back. She felt foolish and didn’t even mention it to Nick.

  Heck said, “Yeah, it’s cold so early that the lake’s starting to freeze solid already. The entire US and Canada are supposed to have a
rough winter, according to what I’ve read online.”

  Jace said, “I heard they send out some daring souls to try the so-called four-mile-long ice bridge between here and St. Ignace. Then, in the New Year, everyone donates their Christmas trees to line the safest, strongest path over the ice. I also heard the ice is often crystal clear, so you can see water swirling below.”

  “Caramba! Did anyone ever break through it?” Gina asked.

  “I heard so,” Jace told her. “One guy even put down snag lines and resurrected his snowmobile, though how he hauled up all that weight, I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Claire said, “we’re not going over any ice bridge on those heavy snowmobiles across one of the Great Lakes. No way.”

  “But it will be fun tonight, Mommy,” Lexi coaxed, for once, seeming like the adult. “Don’t be afraid.”

  They finished up and went outside into the vast, cold night, studded with stars. Their breath made puffy white clouds when they spoke or even breathed. All bundled up, even with scarves across their faces under their helmets and goggles that made them look like a group of bandits—Mr. Logan would have had a posse after them—they mounted their snowmobiles. Bronco steered the first one with Nita sitting behind him. Jace drove the second alone but towing Heck and Gina, who rode in the large sled box, which would ordinarily carry groceries or supplies. Bringing up the rear to keep an eye on the others, Nick drove the largest one, and Claire held on behind him with Lexi warmly wedged in between them. Jace had planned to ride with Lexi, but the stubborn child had wanted to stick with Claire. Poor Jace—again, she thought.

  They took what Andy Archer had told them was the shortest and tamest of the two-lane, two-way trails through the snow-laden trees. Battery-powered lanterns were hung along the path at regular intervals, though their headlights also lit the way and others had left tracks to follow. Claire felt good that people were on this dark path, as they headed into the dense forest of firs. The tree limbs had snagged snow, making a beautiful sight, as if the dark green branches were etched in white. Claire thought the only problem with the frosty beauty of the night was the noise their machines made. It would be so perfectly lovely if it was silent here. People increased on the trail, both ahead and behind them, and occasionally coming at them, shining headlights, or sometimes even helmet light, in their eyes.