by Lisa Jackson
They acted like polite strangers.
Ridiculous.
“Are you . . . are you going to the cemetery?” Rachel asked.
A pause. “Yes.”
Stupid question. “Want company?”
“You’re going?”
No, I hadn’t thought I was, but . . . “Yeah.” She glanced at the clock and mentally calculated her day, what she needed to get done before she picked up the kids from school. “I’d guess before noon.”
“Maybe I’ll see you then. I’m not sure. I . . . I just don’t know how my day is going to go.”
Rebuffed. Quietly. “Oh. Okay.” Rachel wasn’t going to push it.
The conversation waned, and after promising to visit with the kids “soon,” Melinda ended the call.
Rachel thought about her mother. Tall and slim, with even features, once-vibrant hair she kept shoulder length, and brown eyes that seemed to know too much, Melinda had been a loving mother all those years ago. Back then she always had a quick smile and a wink whenever Rachel had caught her sneaking a cigarette. “Don’t tell Dad,” she’d warned, but had laughed because at that point in time Ned Gaston had been hopelessly in love with her . . . but that had been long ago, before the marriage had cracked and long before her only son had been taken from her, shot dead by—
“Oh, stop it!” Rachel yelled aloud, and Reno, who had settled onto his bed near the back door, gave out a sharp bark. God, what was wrong with her? “Yeah. Sorry.” So now she was apologizing to the dog? God, Rach, you are really losing it. Try to treat today just like so many others, will you?
But as she stared at the coffee stains all over the bills and junk mail, she knew she was kidding herself.
CHAPTER 6
Rachel wasn’t home.
Her car wasn’t parked in the garage and she didn’t answer the door.
Cade didn’t think twice, just pulled his key ring from his pocket, inserted the house key he’d used for years, and stepped through the front door and into the house he’d once called home. “Rachel?” he called, passing through the living area with the attached dining room to the kitchen, where her tablet and cell phone were charging on the table.
No wonder she hadn’t answered.
He tried again. “Rach? It’s me.”
She’d be pissed as hell to find him inside what she considered her turf, the house he’d given her in the divorce. No strings attached. No clause in the decree declaring that she had to sell when the kids were in college, no lien against any equity. Nope. He’d figured she deserved it.
“Rachel? Are you here?”
Obviously not. And yet he felt as if he weren’t alone. He stopped and listened. Nothing. Other than the soft hum of the refrigerator and the whisper of a breeze slipping through a partially open window near the table.
Huh.
The kids were in school and even the dog was missing, along with the car. He started to leave, but paused, glancing at the familiar objects. Her favorite cracked coffee cup now in the sink, the faded message “World’s Best Mom” barely visible. The kids’ artwork from years before, still on display on a bulletin board, the cracked linoleum flooring that she hated and he’d promised to replace in the small kitchen, the dog bed near the door.
He felt a stupid wave of nostalgia. He’d wanted to tell her about Violet himself, and when he’d gotten no response to his calls and text messages he’d stopped by on his way to the station.
Hopefully, she’d return his call when she got home.
But, by then, it would probably be too late.
Reporters had already started gathering at the Sperry house by the time he’d left. The image of Violet’s broken body still hung with him, and his quick interview with Vi’s husband, Leonard, brought him to the same conclusion Kayleigh had come to: innocent. Or up for a damned Academy Award. Leonard Sperry had been a broken man, unable to stop the unending flow of tears and barely able to communicate as he’d sat in the police car. He’d been murmuring, “No, no, no . . . oh, Vi . . . no, no,” and working his hands, alternately glancing out the window and then at the floor of the cruiser.
His story hadn’t altered. He’d been in Bend with friends. Come home early. Found her on the floor, the dogs locked upstairs in the bedroom. He couldn’t think of anyone who would want to harm her or him and, no, he knew she wouldn’t have done something like take her own life by throwing herself over the railing. Leonard seemed to think she must’ve stumbled down the stairway, though, from first glance at the scratched railing, Cade suspected otherwise.
Cade checked the calendar hanging on the cupboard near the back door, a Grumpy Cat calendar with notes scribbled all over it. Rachel, a true techie, still marked appointments on a hanging paper calendar. “Just so we’re all on the same page,” she used to say even though she kept a digital calendar on her phone and computer as well. Or at least she had when they were married. And there it was. Today’s date. The day Luke had died . . . and now, the same could be said of Violet Osbourne Sperry. Both violently. Twenty years apart. For a second he wondered if there was any connection, but he dismissed the stupid thought as quickly as it had come. A coincidence. Like people born on the same day.
Well, not really.
He glanced at Rachel’s phone and picked it up, then noticed that the screen was lit. As if someone had just been using it.
But no one was in the house.
Or...
The muscles in the back of his neck tensed. Again, he had the sensation he wasn’t alone, but as he walked through the first floor and swept his gaze through the rooms on the lower level, he saw no one, not in the living and dining areas nor in the mess that was his son’s bedroom. He paused for a second in Dylan’s space, noting the empty bottles and wrappers and mussed bedding. Clothes were tossed over the two chairs in front of a space-station of computers.
But no one hiding in here nor in Harper’s somewhat more organized chaos.
Then what?
It was the smell. The hint of cigarette smoke? Or his imagination? No one that he knew of smoked. Not Rachel. Not the kids . . . well, that he knew of. And besides, the odor was so faint . . . nah.
He even ignored the tightening in his chest and went upstairs for the first time since he’d left. The rooms had been changed, bedding and towels more feminine than when he lived here. But her robe was the same, a ratty old blue thing flung over the foot of the bed. He touched it. Swallowed and in his mind’s eye remembered how they’d made love the first night they’d bought the new mattress. The kids had been gone for the night and they’d spent the hours here, under this slanted ceiling, making love like teenagers. He remembered the taste of her skin, salty with sweat but smelling of that cologne that drove him crazy, how slick she’d been when . . .
Shhh.
Click.
What? He froze at the familiar sound, the sweep of the back door opening and closing before the latch caught.
How was that possible?
Before he finished the thought he was down the stairs and into the kitchen. The back door was closed but he walked through, into the backyard, and saw that the gate was ajar, moving slightly.
Had it been that way a moment before?
He didn’t think so and it seemed unlikely.
Sure enough it moved with the wind, unsecured. Which wasn’t the way Rachel ever kept the yard. And why the hell was the back door unlocked? Ever since the kids were young and the dog a pup, she’d been a nut about keeping the backyard secure, buttoned up tight.
His feet crunched on the wet gravel walkway. Pushing through the gate, he caught a glimpse of someone walking away, a block beyond, a man in a dark jacket and black pants, watch cap pulled low and hurrying beneath the branches of the fir trees from neighboring houses.
Had he been in the yard?
Or was he just a neighbor out for a walk?
Time to find out. Cade started running only to see the guy fumbling in the pocket of his jacket.
Oh, shit, did he have a weapon?
&
nbsp; Slowing, his eyes trained on the man, Cade was ready to leap over a fence and dive into a nearby hedgerow until he spied the man withdraw a key fob and point it at a sedan parked on the street. The car bleeped, lights flashing as Cade called out, “Hey!”
About sixty, unshaven, and wearing glasses, he stopped and turned. Bushy gray eyebrows pulled together beneath the watch cap. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“Maybe.” Cade reached the car, a white Buick. With out-of-state plates. Idaho. “Do you live around here?”
“Eight or nine blocks over.” He hitched his chin toward the main road. “On Toulouse. Frank Quinn.”
“Cade Ryder.”
If the name meant anything to him, he didn’t show it. “I’m over here looking for my dog. A damned beagle. Got out again and took off after a squirrel or something, I don’t know.” Lines of worry furrowed his brow. “I’m going to have to get a tracker for him or build a brand-new fence. Don’t suppose you saw him.”
“Sorry.” Cade shook his head. “But I thought you might have been by that house, there, the cottage with the red shutters?”
“I was . . .”
“In the backyard?”
“No. But I peered over the fence.”
“Didn’t go through the gate?”
“Nope.” He scowled. “Why?”
“The gate was open.”
“Was it?” He rubbed his jaw, scraping his whiskers. “I don’t think so. I leaned against it, y’know, to look over.”
“But you didn’t unlatch it?”
“No. Didn’t want to risk trespassing. Well, unless I’d spied Monty. Then I would have.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“In that yard?”
“Coming out of the house?”
“Nah. And I would’ve noticed, cuz I was lookin’ for . . . well, speak of the devil—” His worried face cracked with a relieved smile as a small beagle appeared from the bushes of a house three doors down. Baying, he came running, bounding over puddles and splits in the sidewalk where tree roots had lifted and broken the concrete.
“So, the prodigal dog returns. You little pain in the ass!” Quinn said, leaning down for the dog to jump into his waiting arms. “You know you’re a bad boy?”
White-tipped tail wagging like a whipsaw, Monty licked Quinn’s silvery-stubbled jaw.
“Yeah, as if you was lookin’ fer me,” he said, opening the car door and setting the dog behind the wheel before shooing him over to the passenger side. “He’d drive if I let him, but I make him settle for shotgun.”
Laughing at his own joke, Quinn slid into the car, then drove off.
Innocent.
Cade made his way back to the house and his pickup parked out front. Maybe he’d imagined it all. Maybe his nerves were jangled from the article in the paper about Luke Hollander’s death, and then the homicide scene. Maybe everything was fine.
Then again, maybe not.
* * *
Rachel picked up a bouquet of daffodils from a roadside stand, then drove to the cemetery. The day was gray, which seemed fitting, and although the rain had subsided for the moment, the ground was sodden. The long, wet grass soaked the edges of her tennis shoes as she wended through the markers to find her brother’s headstone, marking the spot where his ashes had been buried.
A landscaper’s truck was parked on one of the gravel lanes at the perimeter of Edgewater Pioneer Cemetery, and a man with a shovel was digging around one of the pine trees that marked the periphery of the graveyard. In another tree a bold gray squirrel scolded from the pine’s gnarled branches.
Melinda Gaston was already here, a solemn figure standing on the rise where Luke’s ashes were buried. In a long black coat and boots, her head bent, she seemed older than her years. The fingers of one hand curled over the handle of a folded umbrella that she was using to prop herself up as she stared down at her son’s grave.
“Hey,” Rachel said as she approached and saw that her mother had been crying, her eyes red rimmed though she managed a thin smile.
“Hi.” Melinda blinked, then turned to stare again at the ground where a bouquet of white roses marked Luke’s grave.
Rachel added her drooping daffodils. “This is always such a hard day.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I told myself I would stop coming.”
“But . . .”
“But I guess I’m not ready.” She cleared her throat and added, “I wonder if I’ll ever be.”
“I hope so.”
“Me too.”
A gust of wind, thick with moisture, blew past, toying with the hem of Melinda’s long coat, billowing its skirt around her slim legs. After a beat, her mother said, “You know that I don’t blame you, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Melinda had said as much over the years.
“Try believing it.”
“I do.”
Her mother eyed her. “Then you should quit blaming yourself.”
“I don’t.” The lie came easily.
One of Melinda’s eyebrows cocked, and though she still used the umbrella for support with one hand, she grabbed Rachel’s fingers with her other, then squeezed gently. “I felt that I lost two children that night, you know, both my son and daughter. Luke . . . he was gone, yes, but you retreated.”
That wasn’t quite true. Rachel had drawn away from her family, yes, guilt propelling her. And most of her friends had abandoned her after that night, caught up in their own lives. Rachel had found comfort and strength in Cade Ryder’s arms when he’d come back to Edgewater.
“You and I . . . we lost more than Luke,” her mother said, nearly inaudibly as the wind kicked up again.
“I’m working on that.”
“Well, work on it a little harder, would you? It’s been twenty years. Time to let go.” Then she placed a gloved hand to her lips, kissed her fingers, and touched the edge of the gravestone. “You need to move on.” She was nodding. “And so do I.” Hesitating, she bit the edge of her lip, as if something were on her mind.
Rachel asked. “What?”
“He’s out, you know,” Melinda said softly as rain began to fall again. Big, fat drops that reminded Rachel of tears.
God’s tears, her grandmother used to tell her. For the fate of humanity. Rachel had never believed it.
“Who?” she asked, eyeing her mother. “Out from where?” What was Melinda talking about?
“Bruce.”
“Bruce?” Rachel repeated before she understood. Bruce Hollander was Luke’s biological father. Rachel had never met the man, a convict who’d been sent to prison before Rachel was born. Her dad, Ned Gaston, had worked the Hollander case as a rookie detective. “Oh.”
“Right. ‘Oh.’”
“He contacted you?”
“No. He can’t. Or he’s not supposed to and so far he hasn’t. I heard it from my attorney, who had been informed by Bruce’s parole officer.”
“Does Dad know?”
Melinda lifted a shoulder and her face, if possible, grew grimmer. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
A beat. More raindrops. “We don’t talk much.”
The understatement of the year. “Maybe you should work on that.”
Melinda only whispered a noncommittal, “Mmm.”
Together they moved away from Luke’s final resting spot and she watched her mother cross the wet grass to the parking lot, where she’d left her car. Rachel had parked on the street, and as she climbed into her Explorer, she looked back at the cemetery and remembered that day so long ago, when the shock was still fresh, her life in chaos as they’d laid her brother to rest.
It seemed like a lifetime ago in some ways, though some details of those days were still vivid and painful.
She watched her mother drive away and noticed the landscaping truck was gone as well. She was alone.
On the seat beside her, Reno whined. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching over to pat his neck,
only to feel the stiff hairs at his nape at attention. “What?” The dog was staring through the rain-spattered windshield, eyes trained on the rise where Luke’s ashes were buried.
Rachel felt an unwelcome chill. “You see the squirrel?”
But no . . . the chattering had stopped, the gray squirrel was gone, and the cemetery was silent aside from the plop of raindrops and the rush of the wind.
Her throat went dry. She stared at the lonely hill and saw no one.
And yet . . . she had the feeling that she wasn’t alone.
“You’re spooking me,” she whispered to the dog and felt his shoulder muscles bunch. “It’s nothing.”
Just an empty graveyard on this gloomy day in May. Nothing, not one thing out of the ordinary. But as she started the Ford, its old engine turning over and catching, she couldn’t quite convince herself. She reached for her phone, realized she’d left it charging in the kitchen, and pulled away from the curb.
As she did she noticed in her rearview mirror that a white car that had been parked farther down the street did the same. It followed her for a few blocks, caught behind her Explorer at the light. The driver was hunched over the wheel, his dark cap visible as the wipers slapped the raindrops off the glass, a dog on the passenger seat with its long snout sticking out of the partially open window.
Nothing. It’s nothing. Your nerves are shot.
The light turned green and she turned right, heading back home to grab her phone and make some calls before the meeting tonight. The white car followed and she tried to make out the driver—a man—but did she know him?
It’s just a stranger in a car you’ve never seen before, but no big deal. Get a grip, Rachel. It happens all the time. Every damned day.
But her heart was racing and she hit the gas.
The white car followed, increasing its speed, but keeping the same distance between them.
That was weird, right?
Or not.
At the next intersection, rather than driving directly home, she turned away from the town, toward the highway, and sure enough the white car followed.
Don’t panic.
But she was and she took a corner a little too fast, her vehicle sliding, tires screaming.