Toot gravely nodded back.
“She was over there. Had probably gone over for…” Toot shrugged in lieu of saying anything. “Then she found him. Called Beau. Man, that had to get him in the gut, his wife calling him from where she’d been planning to screw some other guy and then she finds him dead.”
Toot’s watery blue eyes narrowed and he added, “Some people are saying it’s a conspiracy. That Beau actually killed him and they fixed this all up so Beau would look innocent, because who’d believe she’d actually call him like that.”
“Officer Shaw didn’t kill him,” a man next to him said with a snort.
He flagged down the bartender, a solid-looking black man with an easy, affable smile. “Glenlivet.” He paused, then said, “A double. Neat.”
A smile creased the man’s dark face. “Been a lot of that goin’ around today. Now the man who could really use a drink can’t really have one, though.”
“I’m sorry?”
The bartender’s brows shot up. “Roger Hardee, man. He’s dead.”
“Dead.” He said it slowly and then shook his head before looking over at Toot. The old man grimaced.
“You heard me.” Nodding, the bartender set him up with his scotch and after he put the whiskey down, he braced his elbows on the counter. “It’s why we’re so crazy busy in here. Everybody’s here to speculate, make no mistake.”
“Poor bastard.” He lifted his glass to his lips and took a slow drink, even as he fumed inside. Miserable bastard was more like it. “What happened? He didn’t…” He grimaced and then added, “Well…”
“Wasn’t suicide, I don’t think.” The bartender shook his head and then looked up as a big, bearded man shouted from the other end.
“Chap!”
The black man grimaced and shoved away from the bar. “Gotta move. You running a tab?”
He nodded and turned his attention back out the window.
Hannah’s lights were still out.
It was a mild irritation, but only a mild one. He’d put a great deal of thought into that but now, he had other concerns.
What had gone wrong?
“Well, I heard it was his heart.”
Tensing, he shifted his attention to the mirror that ran the length of the bar, following the voice, waiting until he could assign it to an owner.
The old bat who let her dog shit everywhere. Mouton.
She had her hand pressed to her chest as she leaned in, talking to the stooped old figure that was Janet Stafford. Her daughter-in-law, Jennie Hayes Stafford, now owned the bookstore that had been a fixture in town for years. Janet and Mrs. Mouton were fixtures themselves, gossips. Fountains of information, really.
Janet Stafford nodded, her frail hand gripping a glass similar to the one the man at the bar held. There would be no fine Scotch in it, though. She preferred her whiskey cheap, akin to paint thinner. Claimed it kept her young and her mind sharp.
Nobody would argue with her, either. She was ninety-five years old and sharp was just the tip of the iceberg.
“His heart, alright,” she said, sipping her whiskey and shaking her head. “In more ways than one. His daddy died of a heart attack. Wasn’t even sixty. Should have tried having two fingers of whiskey a day instead of the crap red wine everybody talks about these days.”
Mrs. Mouton leaned closer, looking around. Secrets, of course.
But then her voice carried.
Everybody sitting within ten feet made a show of doing something else, talking to their neighbor, checking the time.
As soon as she looked back at Janet, the matron said, her voice strong and clear, “My granddaughter was getting some bloodwork done a few months ago when he had to get one of them stress tests. His ticker was shot. He didn’t do it here, though. Went into Baton Rouge. She had to—her insurance and all…”
She waved a hand, dismissing her granddaughter’s reasons for not getting whatever she needed done here, although everybody knew the likely reason.
Bethany Mouton was five months pregnant.
Nobody cared about that.
They all latched onto the other key bit of information.
A stress test.
Blindly, he stared into the amber liquid in his glass. The surface trembled slightly and he lowered it, then pressed his hand to the surface of the bar.
His hands were shaking.
It was a fine tremor, likely unnoticed by anybody.
He’d noticed though.
Roger Hardee’s heart had been bad.
That was why he’d died.
It wasn’t that much of an issue, not really.
But it was a fact he should have known.
He’d missed it.
He’d messed up.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hannah pressed her back against the door and closed her eyes. She stood inside her dark, quiet apartment and took a moment to just breathe. That was all she wanted.
A few moments of quiet.
She had had days from hell but nothing like this.
Brannon …
Her heart ached, like a gaping, open wound and there was no emergency medical treatment in the world that could provide any relief for this pain.
More and more memories were slowly churning their way free, like she’d dragged a rake through the soil of her brain and now all those little rocks were stabbing tiny holes into her heart.
But he’d looked at her like he was the one who’d been torn open. Like he was the one who’d had his chest cavity pried open, his heart ripped out and stepped on.
He’d been doing that to her for years. Then he’d lied to her.
All of these months. Coming over here.
Making her think he cared. Like they had a chance.
She swallowed and dashed at the tears that had started to fall.
Screw that.
Screw the tears.
Hadn’t she hurt enough over him already? All her damn life?
All he had to do was be honest. Tell her they’d slept together and if he wanted to be part of the baby’s life, she would have let him. Why did he have to mislead her like that? And he’d told her he loved her.
But all he’d been doing was making himself feel better or some shit like that. Assuaging his guilt, maybe. It wasn’t like she’d blamed him. He wasn’t at fault for what had happened.
Groaning, she dragged her hands up and down her face. Now she was thinking about Roger, too. And how he had looked at her. Her stomach twisted violently and she swallowed back the bile that had been threatening to rise all afternoon. She was well past the morning sickness stage, but her stomach had never exactly returned to normal and this was a little more than she could take.
That poor bastard.
She’d never really cared for Roger Hardee, but she knew he’d loved his wife. Now Shayla had annoyed Hannah something awful, had pushed all her buttons in the worst way, but Roger had just been a nuisance.
Then he’d been pitiful, and pitiable.
He’d loved his wife. Roger had loved Shayla and grieved for her and pushed to find who had killed her. Now he was gone, too.
He’d come to Hannah, all but begging her to help, to remember.
There was still a pit in her mind, a few holes left to be filled. The amnesia was nothing she could control and she knew it, but it didn’t help the knot of guilt she felt inside.
Tears burned her eyes while a headache pounded inside her skull and her muscles knotted with fatigue.
As a day, today had been a complete and total pain in the ass. Of course, it had been worse for others. Gideon had to have his hands full, dealing with everything going on from Roger’s death, not to mention still trying to tie up everything from Senator Robert’s strange suicide. The cops around the small town needed a bonus—and lots of chocolate.
She still needed to call the chief and update him, but she’d do it later, when she wasn’t so exhausted.
She couldn’t even find it in herself to shove away from the doo
r or turn on the lights.
She was so tired. Resting a hand on her belly, she said, “It has to get better. Right?”
She laughed and the cynical sound of it bounced off the walls, came back to her.
For some reason, it sounded … wrong.
Slowly, she reached out a hand and flipped the switch for the lights but nothing happened.
At the same time, she took a step forward, bracing her body. For what, she didn’t know.
Something crunched under her work boot. Something fine and brittle. Like a light bulb.
The lights didn’t come on.
She pulled the pen light she used for work from the pocket on her cargos and flipped it on.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth.
Simultaneously, she jerked open the door behind her, letting light shine in as she grabbed her phone from her pocket. But she didn’t dial. She just stood there, fear a scream in her brain.
Hannah didn’t handle blind terror well.
She didn’t handle terror well period.
Most of it had been burned out of her as a child, at the hands of her stepfather, then it had been choked out of her as she’d watched him brutalize her mother even as Hannah begged the small, terrified woman to leave, to run away.
Years of watching that kind of abuse had strengthened Hannah’s core to one of tempered steel.
But she could still feel fear.
What she saw in the wedge of light shining in from the hallway behind her left her frozen with the soul-stealing numbness of terror.
She was staring at a threat.
Possibly more, but absolutely nothing less.
Nor was it an empty threat.
Her mind flashed back to the robe, to the rock that had been left in the robe’s pocket.
Such an innocuous thing, that rock. She had seen hundreds of them. Thousands. When she ran along the path by the river, especially down there by the house boat, she saw them all the time. How could she have forgotten something so simple as that?
He had been warning her. Perhaps even mocking her.
And now he was doing it again.
Hannah gripped the penlight tighter as the fear slowly gave way to another emotion. It started out as an ember and she fanned it, nursed it until it was a raging inferno, one born of fury.
Anger was better than fear any day.
The fear didn’t die and she was fine with that because Hannah understood the value of fear, just as she understood the value of anger.
Fear wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself.
Fear could be healthy. Fear could keep you alive.
But she needed the anger.
Slowly, she pushed away from the doorframe and used her penlight to stare into the apartment. First, she checked the floor. It had been a lightbulb, the one from the lamp by the door most likely.
Clothes, movies, books, knickknacks and pictures were thrown across the floor, like an isolated tornado had been set loose in her home and been given free reign.
Her gaze landed on the picture of her and her mother. The last one that had been taken of them before her mother died.
The frame lay shattered on the floor and a knife had been driven through the picture and backing. One of her steak knives. Something, probably that knife, had been used to jab ugly gouges into the picture, ruining it forever.
“You son of a bitch,” she said softly.
Her voice echoed in the confined space, the way it does when you’re alone.
And she knew.
Whoever he was, he was gone.
She lifted her phone and dialed 9-1-1 as she strode into the kitchen and pulled out the Maglite she kept for emergencies. Then she flipped it on and moved back to the door, refusing to risk being caught in a small, dark space, even though all her instincts screamed that whoever had done this was gone.
She used the beam of the light to sweep the room and it landed on a phone sitting on her coffee table. She recognized the model immediately. It was just like Shayla’s had been. She saw the note and felt a smile twisting her lips.
“You evil son of a bitch,” she said again.
A voice came across her phone just as she had said it.
“Nine one…” There a pause as the woman on the other end of the line processed what Hannah had been saying and then she continued. “One. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
Hannah gave her name and address, then said “Somebody’s broken into my apartment. I’m pretty sure he’s gone now but he’s totally trashed my place. And he left a message for me. Call Chief Gideon Marshall and tell him to get his ass over here.”
“Is anybody in the apartment with you now?”
“I don’t think so. But I can’t be sure.”
“You need to vacate the premises.”
Hannah stared hard at the message that had been left for her. “No. I’m not vacating the premises. Get Chief Marshall. I want him here. Now.”
“Ma’am, I’m advising you to get out of the apartment—”
“Look, the longer you argue with me, the longer I’m in this apartment alone.”
The call-taker paused and Hannah heard the resignation in her voice. “I’m contacting the police. Please stay on the line.”
Bet your ass I’ll stay on the line.
* * *
Gideon punched in a number. It rang. And rang. And rang. When it finally went to voice mail, he left a short, pissed-off message. “Something’s going on with your woman, Brannon. Get your ass to town.”
Then he hung up and swung through the door that led up to Hannah’s apartment.
He should have sent Deatrick over, but he felt responsible for Hannah and not just because she was a citizen of the town he’d sworn to protect. She was a friend of Neve’s. She was involved with Brannon. Gideon was so tangled up with the McKay family, he knew he’d never be free of them, even if he ever did find a way to sever the ties that held him to Moira.
He thought of the pretty deputy with the sheriff’s department and told himself he should ask her out.
He’d refrained from getting involved with anybody—physical relationships weren’t the same thing as getting involved, but even his physical encounters were limited to when the need just became too strong.
But he was tired of fooling himself, tired of waiting, tired of hurting. Deputy Maris Cordell would never be Moira, but he was starting to realize he and Moira were just never going to happen.
Yeah, it had taken twenty years, but Gideon hadn’t ever claimed to be a quick study. Especially not when it came to matters of the heart.
What he needed was somebody who wasn’t Moira. Somebody who wouldn’t cut him to ribbons every time he thought of her. Every time he saw her. Every time she looked away and pretended she didn’t feel exactly what he felt.
Of course, what he needed right now was five more uniformed officers and a couple more detectives. A double of himself wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But since none of that was possible, he’d focus on what was.
Gideon was a man who believed in priorities.
Right now, he needed to find a man who had probably killed at least two people and just might be involved in whatever was going on with Hannah Parker. One of his uniformed officers met him at the top of the steps, eyes bright, almost viciously so. “Her place is trashed, Chief. Seriously trashed.”
“Where’s Hannah?” he asked.
Officer Stanton grimaced. “Ah. Inside her apartment. She won’t leave. Hasn’t touched anything, she says, but she won’t leave.”
“Son of a bitch,” Gideon muttered, shaking his head. He grabbed his phone, checked it. Brannon still hadn’t called.
Then he strode down the short, wide hallway. The building boasted four units. The upper two units were for residential apartments and the lower two were business units. The apartment on the left only had a sporadic occupant—a professor from the nearby college campus. She spent most of her nights with a boyfriend, but liked to have her own sp
ace. It was an arrangement that had been going on for quite some time. Gideon didn’t even have to check with the woman to know she wouldn’t have seen anything. She only came into Treasure on the weekends, and that was just once or twice a month.
They weren’t likely to have any witnesses. But because he was thorough, he nodded at the other door. “Track down Dr. Huxly out at the campus. See if she was here at any time over the past forty-eight hours.”
Stanton pulled out his notebook. “Already did. She was here last weekend, but not since. Didn’t notice anybody suspicious—unless you count Barney and Bert.”
Cocking a brow, Gideon waited.
“They were having a row.” Stanton shrugged.
“That’s normal, not suspicious. I’d want to know if they weren’t having a row.” Gideon ducked into Hannah’s place and found himself staring at what looked like the remnants of passing tornado.
“Damn.”
Hannah was standing at the window.
She turned her head and stared at him over her shoulder, then nodded slowly. “That about sums it up, Chief.”
He pinched the bridge of his noise and then looked back at Stanton. “Get Lloyd…” Then he stopped, shook his head. Lloyd Hansen was back in prison, serving out the rest of his sentence. And his wife had left the state, moving up to Wisconsin, living with a cousin. Couldn’t be Lloyd. “Okay. Okay.”
Hannah turned and pointed to the coffee table.
His eyes narrowed on it and he saw the phone lying there.
“That’s not yours, is it?”
“No.” Her voice was faint, but steady as she said, “Shayla had one just like it. I don’t think it’s hers, but the message is pretty clear.”
What did you see?
What did you hear?
Gideon stared at the words, printed out in block print on plain, ordinary white paper.
He imagined it was the kind of paper anybody could buy in reams of five hundred at just about any office supply or discount story anywhere in America.
The block print was simple, the kind of font that could come off just about any computer, found in just about any house anywhere in America.
He wouldn’t find shit from it.
But at the same time, he felt a slow, satisfied smile spread across his face.
The Trouble with Temptation Page 27