by Paula Graves
One of Darcy’s eyebrows notched upward, but that was his only reaction to the touch of mockery, and Cain immediately felt like a heel.
“Sorry,” Cain said. “I can be an ass.”
Darcy’s lips curved slightly. “Indeed.”
Cain laughed. “You headed home?”
“Thought I’d have a bite to eat first. You?”
“Not sure.”
“I wouldn’t mind company,” Darcy added as he shrugged on his jacket. Unlike most of the other agents at The Gates, who dressed for comfort and mobility, Darcy dressed like a businessman. Or, more aptly, Cain supposed, he dressed like the State Department employee he used to be.
Cain watched through narrowed eyes as Darcy straightened what looked like a very expensive silk tie, wondering how to respond to the invitation. Did he have an ulterior motive for asking Cain to join him? Was he gay and looking for romance?
Darcy seemed to read his mind. “I’m neither gay nor working any sort of agenda. I simply tire of eating alone in public. In a town such as this, a man dining alone provides an opportunity to stare and whisper without compunction.”
“It might be your choice of vocabulary,” Cain suggested, grabbing his own well-worn leather jacket and nodding toward the exit. “Remind me to teach you a little redneck, Jeeves.”
A town the size of Purgatory, Tennessee, offered few sit-down restaurants to choose from even during regular dining hours. After seven, the choices dwindled to two—the steakhouse on Darlington Road near the old marble quarry and a Lebanese restaurant that had opened since the last time Cain had been in town. He was inclined to go for the steak, but of course, Darcy headed straight for the brightly lit storefront of the Lebanese place, where photos of the old country filled the window display, interspersed with wrapped packages of pita bread, jars of spiced almonds and sticky triangles of baklava providing a mouthwatering visual temptation. The restaurant name—Tabbouleh Garden—gleamed in bright teal neon over the door.
“Ever been here?” Darcy asked as they entered.
“No,” Cain admitted. “I’ve eaten plenty of Middle Eastern food in my time, though.”
“Right. You were in the Army, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Afghanistan?”
“And Iraq and Kaziristan before that.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose at the mention of Kaziristan. “Before or after the embassy siege?”
“After. You?”
Darcy’s expression went dark. “During.”
Cain grimaced. The embassy siege in Kaziristan had been a nasty, brutal business. “Diplomatic Security?”
Darcy nodded, looking relieved when a pretty, dark-eyed waitress came to seat them and take their drink order. She looked Lebanese, but her accent came out in a pure Tennessee mountain twang. “Here’s your menu,” she said with a friendly smile. “What’ll y’all have to drink?”
Cain ordered sweet tea, while Darcy asked for water with lemon. “I’m afraid my taste for tea is rather English. I can’t accustom myself to the Dixie version.”
“No worries,” Cain said, stifling a grin. “Though you might not want to call it the Dixie version. The word comes out a little sneering in your fancy accent.”
“Dreadfully sorry,” Darcy said, and Cain could tell by the glitter in his eyes that he was laying on the accent extra thick.
“You’re a wicked bloke, aren’t you?” Cain murmured.
“I’m told I have my moments,” Darcy concurred.
“So why’d you give up all those fancy State Department perks to come down here to hillbilly country?” Cain asked a few moments later, after the waitress brought them their drinks and took their food orders.
“Why did you come back?” Darcy countered.
Before he could formulate an answer, Cain heard a woman’s voice call his name. For a second, he thought it was Sara, but when the woman spoke again, he realized the tone was all wrong. Tamping down an unexpected ripple of disappointment, he followed the sound of the voice until he spotted an attractive, slightly plump blonde sitting a couple of tables away. As his gaze met hers, she blushed prettily and smiled.
He excused himself and crossed to her table, knowing he should recognize her. She looked familiar, but it had been a long while since he’d spent much time in town.
“You probably don’t remember me—you were a few grades ahead. Kelly Partlow. Well, I was Kelly Denton in high school.”
He placed her then. Flute player in the marching band. A freshman to his senior. He’d known her older brother, Keith, better, since several of their high school teachers had insisted on alphabetical seating. Cain and Keith had often been seated either side by side or one in front of the other.
“Right,” he said aloud. “Keith Denton’s little sister.”
She grinned. “Haven’t been called that in, oh, ten minutes. How’re you doing? I didn’t realize you were back in town.”
He could tell she was lying about that. He had a feeling everybody and his brother probably knew Cain was back in Purgatory by now. Not much got past the gossipmongers in a small town.
“Just been back a couple of weeks,” he said, searching his memory for what else he could recall about Keith Denton’s sister besides her flute-playing. “So, you got married?”
She smiled. “Thirteen years ago now, can you believe? I married Josh Partlow—you remember him, don’t you? He and Keith hung around together all the time back in school.”
Cain had a vague memory of a football player with a wicked sense of humor, but he hadn’t exactly hung out with the jocks during his years at Purgatory High.
At his glance at the empty seat across from her, she smiled. “He’s outside, talking to some client on his cell phone. He says he hates people who talk on phones in restaurants, but his solution is to spend most of the time at a restaurant outside talking on his phone.” She rolled her eyes, though he could tell she wasn’t really upset. “He’s a lawyer now. Can you believe it?”
He hadn’t really known Josh Partlow well enough to know whether a career in law was something he should find astonishing. “Good for him. It’s really good to see you, Kelly, but I should get back to my friend—”
“Oh, of course.” She blushed again, and he got a glimpse of the cute little teenager she’d once been. “Listen, the reason I hollered at you like a crazy woman is to tell you Purgatory High alumni are holding a get-together this weekend at Smokehouse Grill—you know, that steakhouse out near the quarry?”
“Right,” he said, trying not to grimace. A high-school alumni get-together? That had to be one of the lower levels of hell.
“Anyway, if you think you’ll still be around this weekend, you should come. Saturday, six-thirty to whenever. We’ve reserved one of the private rooms at the back of the restaurant, and it’s always so much fun to catch up with what everyone else is up to.”
“Yeah, sounds great,” he lied. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it, but if I can—”
“Oh, do try! It would be such a fun surprise, since you’ve been away from Purgatory for so long!” She seemed sincere enough, but he could tell from the little sparkle in her eyes that she wasn’t unaware of what a stir his presence at the reunion might cause. He hadn’t exactly left Purgatory High on good terms, especially since he’d made his escape not long after Renee’s death, while a whole lot of folks still wondered if he’d been the culprit.
“I’ll see,” he answered, keeping his tone noncommittal. “Nice to see you again, Kelly.” He made his escape back to the table, where he found Darcy watching him with a look of bemusement. “Small towns,” he murmured. “Everybody knows everybody.”
“She’s rather cute.”
“She’s rather married.”
“She’s sitting rather alone in a restaurant, making eyes at you.”
“Not because she’s looking to cheat on her husband, I assure you.” Cain was spared having to continue the conversation by the arrival of their orders. He dug into h
is falafel plate, relieved that Darcy didn’t seem inclined to ask any more questions.
Still, he found his thoughts going back to Kelly Partlow’s invitation. If he were behaving like the professional investigator he was supposed to be, the invitation to the high-school get-together would offer an unexpected opportunity to dig around a little more into Renee Lindsey’s past. He hadn’t been her only friend, after all. She’d had girlfriends, too, hadn’t she? And, obviously, the secret lover who’d fathered her child.
The mystery man might be there on Saturday. Any investigator worth his salt would go to the get-together and try to figure out who it might be.
But the thought of revisiting his teenage years was enough to make Cain want to flee town at the earliest opportunity.
* * *
“YOU’LL NEVER GUESS who I saw at Tabbouleh Garden!” The voice on the other end of Sara’s phone didn’t bother to introduce herself, but she knew the voice almost as well as she knew her own. Kelly Partlow was one of the few old friends from her Purgatory days who still stayed in touch, mostly because her husband’s legal career had occasionally brought him down to Birmingham on business. Between pregnancies, Kelly often accompanied him, joking that a business trip was as close to a vacation as she was likely to get between her workaholic husband and her three rowdy children.
“What is Tabbouleh Garden?” Sara countered.
“It’s a new Lebanese place in town. I thought I told you about that in one of my emails.”
She probably had, Sara thought. “Who did you see?”
As soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Kelly’s excited squeal merely confirmed it. “Cain freakin’ Dennison! Can you believe he came back to town? It’s all anyone can talk about.”
“I’ll bet.” Sara closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the hard oak headboard of her grandparents’ four-poster bed. She’d declined her parents’ invitation to stay with them in town, since she’d ostensibly come back to Purgatory in order to figure out what to do with the lovely old mountain cabin her grandfather had left her in his will.
“He was eating dinner with one of those guys who work at The Gates—you know, that detective agency that’s opened in the old Buckley Mansion on Magnolia.” Kelly released a soft gasp. “Oh, wow, do you think he might work there, too? Cain Dennison, a detective! Oh, my word, now I really hope he shows up!”
“Shows up?” Sara grinned as Kelly’s chatter reminded her, once again, just how hard it had always been to keep up with her friend’s frenetic mental gymnastics. “Shows up where?”
“Oh, I haven’t even told you that! We’re having a get-together this weekend. Anybody and everybody who attended Purgatory High. We all hooked up on Facebook a while back and now we do these get-togethers every couple of months. It’s a ton of fun!”
For someone like Kelly, maybe, Sara thought. But her friend had always been more of a social butterfly than Sara had. “I’m not sure I’m up for a high-school reunion, Kel.”
“Oh, Sara, don’t say that! It really is a lot of fun. Not like high school at all. And so many people ask about you, all the time. Couldn’t you do it, just for me? This Saturday, six-thirty, at the Smokehouse Grill.”
Sara tamped down a shudder as she pictured what a night with her old schoolmates might entail. Still, she hadn’t seen Kelly face-to-face in a long time. Since just after she went back to Birmingham after she got out of the hospital, she realized with a start.
She really had hibernated from life for the past three years, hadn’t she?
“Just promise you’ll think about it,” Kelly wheedled.
“I promise I’ll think about it,” she said.
And she did think about it, an hour later, after she and Kelly got off the phone. Apparently she’d become quite the hermit since Donnie’s death, if her parents’ not-so-subtle hints at dinner earlier were anything to go by. What could it hurt to drop by, see some of the old gang? If it became too unbearable, she had a car and knew how to drive herself home, right?
She pulled up the calendar on her phone and punched in the time and date before she lost her resolve.
* * *
THE EARLIER RAIN had passed through by the time Cain reached his grandmother’s place up on Mulberry Rise just below Miller’s Knob. Despite the cool night, he wasn’t surprised to find Lila Birdsong sitting on the crude wooden front stoop of his Airstream trailer, a colorful crocheted shawl wrapped around her lean, aging body.
His grandmother always seemed to know when he needed someone to talk to, even before he realized it himself.
She scooted over to make room for him on the stoop. “You’re later than usual. Long day at the office?” She grinned a little as she said it, her strong white teeth shining in the moon glow filtering through the trees overhead. She knew how odd it was for him to be working in an office setting, even one as atypical as The Gates.
“I went with a colleague to grab dinner. We tried that new Lebanese place in town. I’ll take you out there soon. Let you try the baba ghanoush.”
“I’ll wash your mouth out with soap, young man,” she teased.
He grinned back at her, already feeling better. “Where are the girls?” he asked, referring to Mia and Charlotte Burdette, the two girls Lila had recently taken in to care for while their parents were working out their problems in rehab.
“They finished up their homework early, so I let them have the TV remote. I think they’re watchin’ some singing show.” Lila made a face. “I’m too soft.”
“You’re just right.” He kissed her on the temple, making her chuckle. Pulling away, he added, “At the restaurant, I ran into someone I used to go to school with. Well, mostly I knew her older brother. She was a few years behind me.” He nudged his grandmother’s shoulder with his own. “And before you ask, she’s already married.”
“Did I ask?” Lila asked, the picture of innocence.
“You were about to.”
“She remembered you?”
“I was pretty notorious there for a while, Gran.”
She squeezed his knee. “Was she mean to you?”
He smiled again. “No, actually, she was very kind. Rather charming, really, in a slightly scattered way. She invited me to some get-together she and some other Purgatory High alumni have started holding regularly. This Saturday night at the steak place over near the quarry.”
“You goin’, then?”
He shook his head. “Not a good idea.”
“I think it’s a real good idea,” Lila disagreed. “You’re too much a loner, Cain. It ain’t good for your soul.”
“Gran—”
“How long you gonna let your daddy call the shots in your life? He’s been gone a long spell now. Let him go.”
He grimaced. “Believe me, I’ve made my peace with the man.”
“Have you now?” Lila pushed to her feet with remarkable agility, as lithe as she’d been thirty years ago. She turned and caught his chin in her hand. “Go to the party. Look at it like takin’ medicine. Try the first dose, see if it helps. If it don’t, you can skip the second dose.” She dropped a kiss on top of his head and walked silently back to her house.
Cain watched her go, his chest tight with the conflict warring inside him. He knew, gut deep, that the party would probably be a disaster if he showed up. But his grandmother was right. He’d spent way too much time alone recently. It wasn’t good for his soul.
And, if he wanted to look at the idea more pragmatically, going to the party would be a prime opportunity to pick the brains of a few former classmates about what they remembered of Renee Lindsey’s last months and days.
Maybe someone at the party knew something he or she had never told anyone before. Maybe the killer himself would be at the party.
There was only one way to find out for sure.
With a sigh, he pulled out his cell phone and put a note in his calendar. Saturday, six-thirty, Smokehouse Grill. He closed the phone and stuck it back in his pocket, gazi
ng up at the bright moon overhead.
Look out, Purgatory High, he thought with a grimace of a smile. The Monster of Ridge County is back in town.
Chapter Five
Sara spent the days leading up to the high-school get-together cleaning out her grandfather’s old cabin and trying to assess whether she’d be able to get a decent price on the real-estate market. The location was secluded, which could be both a plus and a minus. But the cabin’s bones were solid, the need for structural repairs less urgent than Sara had feared, and the charm of the old place had already started working on her, tempting her to stick around Purgatory rather than start looking at bigger cities for employment.
“I still have a little pull in the sheriff’s department,” her father had reminded her that morning when he’d dropped by to see how the clean-up was going. “If you’re serious about looking for work here, that is.”
Was she serious? She’d fled Birmingham because the ghost of Donnie was everywhere she looked. How could Purgatory be any better? She’d met Donnie here, fallen in love with him here, married him here. His parents still lived in town. Many of his old friends were still around, guys he’d played baseball with, friends he and Sara had shared in common.
His grave was here. The roadside memorial was here. There’d be no escaping his memory in Purgatory, Tennessee.
But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she’d been spending too much of her time and energy trying to escape his memory rather than facing the loss and dealing with it.
She thought about Cain Dennison, eighteen years past Renee Lindsey’s murder, still visiting the scene of the crime and looking as haunted as if her body had been found that morning.
She didn’t want to be that person fifteen years from now, the one who couldn’t let go and move on. She was going to go to the party tonight, renew a few old friendships and enjoy herself for the first time in three years.
The evening temperatures had begun to plunge as fall swallowed up summer in big, gulping bites of cold air rolling into the hills from the north, so she grabbed an ice-blue cardigan on her way out to cover the short-sleeved brown dress she’d selected for the evening out. Flats for her feet, of course, not just because she was tall but because her calf muscles had already had their workout for the day, thanks to all the sweeping and mopping.