Unmarked Graves

by Christine Pope

  But if the police had been here, there was always the chance they’d found the hard drive and taken it with them, especially if Caleb had just dropped it on the kitchen table or something before he headed back to Glendale. Which begged the question as to why he would have gone back to the house in the first place, but Rosemary feared he’d taken that particular bit of information with him to the grave.

  Since Linda was looking at her, obviously expecting her to say something, Rosemary said quickly, “Um, I think I left my earrings in Caleb’s bedroom. Let me just go and check.”

  She hurried off, leaving Linda and Will standing in the entry. The landlord said, “It was so nice of you to come with your sister over here,” to which Will murmured something Rosemary couldn’t quite hear, although she guessed his response would be noncommittal and not anything that would rouse the woman’s suspicions.

  If it had felt strange to walk into the house at all, it was stranger still to enter Caleb’s bedroom. Nothing here had changed, as far as she could tell — the same black and white classic monster movie posters hung on the wall, and the same mismatched furniture stood where it had been when Caleb had brought her here to…well, to have sex with her. Thank God her instincts had finally kicked in and allowed her to get away before anything had actually happened.

  Which made her wonder why it had taken her so long to realize — subconsciously, if nothing else — that something wasn’t quite right about Caleb Dixon. Usually, she had much better instincts about people than that. For all she knew, he’d been using his demonic powers to subtly coerce her, to make her think she was attracted to him. It seemed a plausible enough explanation, one that neatly let her off the hook for her lapse in judgment.

  Anyway, she didn’t have time to waste wondering about such things. Since the police had already come and gone — and since they already knew that she and Caleb had been seeing each other — she didn’t worry too much about leaving fingerprints behind on anything, only opened the nightstand drawers and the drawers in the banged-up highboy in the corner, and then opened the closet door so she could go on her tiptoes and peek at the shelf inside, in case he’d deposited the hard drive in the closet.

  However, there was absolutely no sign of the damn thing in any of those places, and it wasn’t under the bed or hidden between the sagging mattress and the worn box spring. Frustrated, she let go of the mattress and smoothed the bedclothes — a gesture born of habit more than anything else, since the bed hadn’t been neatly made when she came in, and she doubted anyone would have noticed her snooping.

  A frown creased her brow as she paused at the doorway to listen. It sounded as though Will and Linda were still talking quietly, and therefore providing an opportunity for Rosemary to look through the rest of this part of the house. There was a second bedroom furnished with more hand-me-downs and some Marvel movie posters on the wall, but something about it felt contrived, as if Caleb had only set it up that way so the room would look as though his mythical roommate actually did live there.

  That bedroom didn’t yield anything; the drawers were all empty, and the closet only had a few men’s shirts in it, shirts she suspected had been purchased at the local Goodwill or some other thrift store. That left only the bathroom, and while it seemed to have been used — Caleb’s razor was still lying on the counter, and the medicine cabinet had deodorant and aftershave and a half-used bottle of ibuprofen in it — there definitely was no hard drive to be found in that room, either.

  Something about seeing the razor there on the tile countertop made a hard little lump form in Rosemary’s throat. Just as she’d done when Detective Phillips asked her to identify Caleb’s body, she tried to tell herself that the world wouldn’t miss Caleb Lockwood, that he wasn’t even completely human, and yet it still seemed horrible and tragic that he’d left his razor in the bathroom, thinking he’d use it again the next day, and now he was dead, erased from this world.

  Don’t lose it, she told herself, and did her best to blink away the hot tears from her eyes. True, Linda probably wouldn’t be all that surprised to see her return to the entryway looking upset and weepy, but Rosemary knew Will would wonder what was going on with her, and she honestly didn’t know if she could completely explain her reaction. After all, Caleb had tried to kill the both of them. He wasn’t the sort of person she should be crying over.

  She forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths, then went back out to where Will and Linda were waiting for her. As Linda sent a questioning look in her direction, she shook her head.

  “No, I couldn’t find them,” she said. “I know I left them on the nightstand, but they’re gone.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Linda replied. “Why don’t you give me your phone number, and if they turn up when I’m clearing out the house, I’ll give you a call.”

  Rosemary manufactured a smile, although she really didn’t want to give the other woman her contact information. Then again, she could give Linda a wrong number, one with a digit incorrect. That was the sort of thing that could be explained away as a simple mistake.

  “Sure,” she said, and waited as Linda got her phone out of her pocket, then rattled off the number, purposely replacing the 8 in the last four digits with a 5. “Oh, and they’re little gold earrings with amethyst drops, just in case you do find them.”

  The other woman nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “Well….” Rosemary let out what sounded to her like an exaggerated sigh, although Linda appeared sympathetic. “Thank you for letting me look. We’ll head home now.”

  “It’s no problem,” Linda assured her. “And I really am sorry about what happened to Caleb. He seemed like such a nice young man.”

  There really wasn’t any way Rosemary could respond to that comment without uttering another bare-faced lie, and she didn’t think she was up to the task right then. Instead, she nodded and went out the front door, Will a couple of paces behind her. Wisely, he remained silent until they were safely back inside the Challenger and headed back down the hill.

  When he spoke, it was with an amused lilt to his voice. “You know, I’ve been trying, but I don’t see much of a family resemblance between us.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said, not bothering to temper the rebuke in her tone. “I had to come up with some kind of lie to explain you. I doubt Linda would have been quite so sympathetic if I’d showed up at Caleb’s house with my new boyfriend in tow.”

  “Am I your boyfriend?”

  Rosemary risked a quick look over at him. He now appeared quite serious, head tilted slightly to one side as he awaited her reply.

  “I don’t know,” she responded honestly. Before he could begin to speak, she went on, “I mean, there’s obviously something going on between us. But calling you my ‘boyfriend’ sounds a little…trite.”

  “You have a point.” Will was quiet for a moment, waiting until she had safely merged back on to the freeway before continuing. “I’m glad you think there’s something going on between us. I suppose there’s no real need to codify it.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” she said, and he chuckled.

  However, his expression sobered quickly enough. “I wish we could have searched the entire house.”

  “I know.” Rosemary had been thinking pretty much the same thing, but she knew they’d pushed their luck as it was. Linda probably would have wondered exactly what was going on if Rosemary had started tearing the kitchen apart in the search for her missing earrings, whereas it had been logical enough for her to look for them in the bedroom. There really hadn’t been any place to hide the hard drive in the living room; the coffee table there didn’t have any drawers, and the entertainment unit was actually just a table with a TV sitting on it. No real storage, which meant the kitchen seemed to be the only other place where the hard drive might have been stashed away.

  Except the garage, or maybe his truck. She tried not to sigh in exasperation and told herself they’d done their best.

  Will re
ached over and touched her knee. “It’s all right. We tried.”

  “And what if we end up going all the way to Indiana, only to find out all we’ve accomplished is to ‘try’?”

  He didn’t answer right away, although out of the corner of her eye, she could see his shoulders move in what might have been a shrug. “Then at least we tried. We’ve both already acknowledged that there’s a chance Caleb or one of his associates has already destroyed the drive and the files it contained. But until we have proof one way or another, we shouldn’t give up.”

  “You’re right, of course.” Rosemary let out a gust of a breath and wished she wasn’t so tired. Then she would have suggested that they have a glass of wine together once they got home and talk it over some more. Now, though, she knew the best thing to do was to go straight to sleep. Thank goodness their flight didn’t leave until the afternoon; at least they wouldn’t have to be up at the crack of dawn.

  “I don’t know about ‘of course.’” He gave her arm a squeeze and then let go so he could lean against the back of the seat. “But we both know that information is too valuable to be lost, so we forge ahead.”

  “Together,” she said, and he nodded.

  “Yes, together.” His left hand reached toward her, and she let go of the steering wheel with her right so she could clasp fingers with him, feel the strength of his touch and the welcome warmth of his skin.

  Whatever happened, she wouldn’t be doing this alone.

  Chapter 13

  A loud knock at the front door woke Will. He sat up in bed and cast a bleary eye at the clock next to his bed. The alarm had been set for eight, just in case he somehow managed to actually sleep in, but it was only a little past seven now.

  Who the hell would be knocking on his front door at this hour?

  He pushed back the covers and got up, stopping for a moment to pull on his sweat pants. The night before, he’d been so tired that he’d collapsed in bed still wearing a T-shirt, although he’d planned to take it off before he slept. Now, though, he supposed it was a good thing he hadn’t gotten that far.

  When he opened the front door, he saw Detective Phillips standing there, flanked by a pair of uniformed officers. At once, a cold thrill of fear worked its way down his spine, but Will managed to keep his voice level as he asked, “What can I do for you, detective?”

  “Rosemary McGuire is staying here, correct?”

  “Yes,” Will replied. “What do you want with her?”

  Detective Phillips didn’t blink. “That’s between me and Ms. McGuire. Go wake her up, please.”

  “I’m already awake,” came Rosemary’s voice.

  Will glanced back over his shoulder and saw her standing a few feet away from him, wild curls sticking out every which way and her face pale. She came closer and peered past him. Despite her obvious worry, she sounded calm enough when she spoke again.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I might ask you the same thing, Ms. McGuire,” the detective replied. “Do you want to tell me what you were doing at Caleb Dixon’s home last night at approximately 8:50 p.m.?”

  She couldn’t really go any paler, but Will watched the muscles in her throat tighten as she swallowed. “Looking for my earrings, just like I told his landlord,” she said evenly.

  “And why was that errand so urgent that you had to go running out at almost nine o’clock on a Sunday night to take care of it?”

  “Because,” she began, then paused. One hand reached up to push a tangle of curls behind her ear. Watching her, Will wished he could step in and do whatever might be necessary in order to offer a defense for her actions, but he knew the best thing to do was remain silent. Any interference from him would only antagonize the man who stood before them now. “Because I got to thinking about it, and I realized if I didn’t go over there and try to find them as soon as I could, then whoever ended up clearing out Caleb’s things would probably take them for themselves or sell them or whatever. I didn’t want that to happen.”

  “These earrings are that important,” Detective Phillips said, both his dubious tone and the lift of his left eyebrow seeming to indicate he didn’t believe a word of her story.

  “Yes,” Rosemary replied, her chin lifting. “They belonged to my grandmother.”

  “And yet you left them behind at Caleb Dixon’s house.”

  “Because we had a fight, as I told you before, and I left in a hurry.”

  This explanation didn’t seem to move the detective. He stood there, watching her with narrowed flint-gray eyes, and another chill moved down Will’s back. “You and Mr. Dixon seem to have quarreled a lot for a couple who was only dating casually — to use your words. Over at Colin Turner’s house in Glendale, you told me that you’d had an argument at the Eden Garden Café, and that was when you broke up.”

  Oh, hell. Will could excuse Rosemary for not keeping her stories straight — she’d just been woken up abruptly and had been through hell over the last forty-eight hours — but he knew Detective Phillips would use her gaffe as more ammunition to prove her guilt.

  Voice still calm, she said, “Actually, yes, we did fight a lot. That’s part of the reason why we broke up. The argument at the restaurant was just the last straw for me. But we’d quarreled at his house before then.”

  “Do you have anyone to corroborate your statement?”

  “No,” Rosemary replied, an edge to her tone that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. “Because the only other person who was there was Caleb, and obviously, he’s not around to tell you anything.”

  She stopped there, tears beginning to well up in her eyes. Will had seen her give in to that strange sorrow over the part-demon twice before, and so he wasn’t too startled by the display. The detective, however, stared at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of a suspected murderer who wept over the death of her supposed victim.

  Figuring he’d better step in, Will said quietly, “The earrings were very important to her. Maybe she had a lapse in judgment, but that’s not a crime, is it?”

  “No,” Detective Phillips responded. “But it is suspicious behavior.”

  Rosemary crossed her arms and glared up at him. Her eyes still looked full of tears, but none of them had fallen. “What did the autopsy tell you?”

  “That Caleb Dixon probably died sometime between eight-thirty and ten-thirty that night,” he replied.

  Relief rushed through Will. If the estimated time of death had occurred during that period, then Rosemary couldn’t possibly be charged with Caleb’s murder, since she’d been at the hospital that whole time. The detective seemed to understand the situation as well, because he continued.

  “Which means you’re cleared…for the moment. But something very strange is going on here.”

  Well, that was only the truth. Unfortunately, there was no way either Will or Rosemary could tell the detective what they were really looking for, or why Caleb had been at the house on Las Flores Drive at all. Eventually, his murder would end up in a cold case file, since Will had a feeling the Glendale P.D. would never be able to discover who had really pushed him into that pool…or why.

  To her credit, Rosemary didn’t use the detective’s revelation about Caleb’s probable time of death as a chance to crow about her newly established innocence. Instead, she said politely, “Do you have any other questions? Because I was about to get in the shower.”

  “Not at the moment,” Detective Phillips said, looking irritated. “But make sure you’re available if something else comes up.”

  “I will,” she replied. “Have a good day.”

  The expression on the detective’s face seemed to indicate that he definitely was not having a good day, but Will wasn’t going to worry about that. He gave the other man a nod and shut the door, then reached out and pulled Rosemary into his arms. She burrowed into him, holding on for dear life, as though she was afraid the police would return and tear her from his embrace.

  A minute or so later, she sh
ifted and looked up at him. “I thought for sure they were going to haul me away and place me under arrest.”

  Those same fears had passed through Will’s mind, but he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I have a feeling Phillips showed up in person to try to throw you off balance, to see if he could get you to confess to something incriminating.”

  She let out a breath. “Well, that strategy might have worked, except I had you here with me. That gave me some extra strength.”

  “You didn’t have anything to confess,” he pointed out, and she shook her head.

  “I did, too. I searched Caleb’s house under false pretenses.”

  “I’d consider that a minor infraction at best.”

  “Still.”

  Despite having the shadow of a murder investigation lifted from her, Rosemary’s expression remained worried. Will clasped her hands in his and gave them a gentle squeeze. “The detective doesn’t need to know why we were there. Our reasons for looking in his house have absolutely nothing to do with Caleb’s death.”

  Rosemary didn’t respond right away. Her brow furrowed slightly, and then she said, “But…what if they do?”

  He sent her a questioning look. “I don’t follow.”

  “What if…?” The words trailed off, as though she was trying to pick apart the train of thought that had led her to this point before she went any further. “What if someone else wants that footage, too? Someone who was willing to murder Caleb to get it?”

  That was an angle Will hadn’t even thought of. He said, “Maybe. But if we’re going to tackle a thorny question like that, I think we need some coffee.”