Ground

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “What would it have changed? Nothing happened. It was all over.”

  His hands fisted. “How did he get inside?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don't know! Do you think I haven't been trying to figure that out?”

  “This is serious, Jayce.”

  “Oh, really?” I snapped. “I had no idea.”

  “That's mature.”

  “Right, because I'm such a child compared to you. You're a whole ten years older than me, another great excuse for us never to...” I hung my head. I wasn’t angry about his appearance here or his critique of my self-defense skills. We couldn’t be together, and he didn’t know it yet.

  I hadn’t told him we were going nowhere. But that had always been our direction, hadn’t it? And that’s the way it would always be. A piece of me seemed to fragment deep in my chest.

  Behind me, something splintered, cracked, and I whipped around.

  In the plastic carrying tray, a crack traveled up the side of one of the mugs, still hot from the dishwasher. The white mug split in two, the pieces seeming to leap away from each other.

  “Weird,” Brayden said. “The heat must have expanded a hairline fracture.”

  I pressed a hand to my chest. “That's probably it.” Because he’d never believe it was magic, my unconscious magic acting out through metaphors and symbols.

  “Look, Jayce—”

  “No, Brayden. I'm working. This isn't a good time.”

  “Oh.” His expression turned… not blank exactly, but unreadable.

  “Brayden—”

  The sheriff strode through the brown-and-gray streaked curtains and stopped short. Her gaze flicked upward. “I thought you might be here.”

  Two deputies crowded in behind her.

  “It's mid-day,” I said. “Of course I'm here.”

  But she was glaring at Brayden. “This makes things convenient,” she said. “I need you both to come to the station for more questioning.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “More questioning?”

  “Why?” Brayden asked. “We've already told you everything we know.”

  “The deputies will escort you to the station,” she said. “Ms. Bonheim, you can come with me.”

  “But...”

  She gave me a hard stare, and I stopped arguing.

  “May I tell Sal that I'm leaving?” I asked. “She'll need to call someone in to help close up if I'm going to be long.”

  The sheriff nodded.

  Two deputies escorted Brayden outside. He wasn't in handcuffs, but he wore the hunted look of someone who'd been rounded up.

  I spoke briefly to Sal then followed the sheriff. To my surprise, she opened the front, passenger-side door of the SUV and nodded to it, before walking around to the driver's side.

  Fractionally, I relaxed. Riding in the front seat had to be a good sign.

  The sheriff dropped her hat on the seat between us and started the SUV. “Since we've still got your truck, I figured you could use a ride.”

  And she'd come to collect me herself? My stomach hardened with suspicion. I buckled up, one hand resting on the metal seat lock. “Thanks.”

  She pulled onto Main Street. “Did you see Mr. Zana earlier on the day he died?”

  “If you mean the day my truck was stolen, no. I didn't see him in the pub.”

  “He wasn’t in the Bell and Thistle, earlier?” She rumpled her curly, blond hair where the hat had pressed into it, leaving a dent.

  “No,” I said, confused. “Why?”

  “We're trying to figure out Mr. Zana's movements that day,” she said conversationally.

  My breath quickened. Liar. “I should call my lawyer.”

  “Do you need him to tell you where you were?”

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  “This isn't official,” she continued. “I want to find the person who killed Matt Zana. I think you want that too.”

  “Of course I do. But I don't know anything.”

  “You didn't know that your boyfriend was seen arguing with Matt earlier that day?”

  I sucked in my breath. What?

  She turned onto the highway, lined with pines, and glanced at me. One corner of her mouth angled down. “From your reaction, I’m guessing you didn't.”

  “Why would Brayden argue with Matt?”

  “We'll ask him that at the station.” She slowed behind a truck piled with redwood logs. “Strange that he didn't mention the argument to either of us. Or maybe it isn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A muscle jumped beneath her skin. “Sometimes, the people we care about aren’t honest for fear of disappointing us.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t say anything, because it didn't happen. Maybe whoever told you Brayden and Matt argued was wrong.”

  “Maybe,” she said, noncommittal.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Your boyfriend's last wife died under suspicious circumstances.”

  “You caught the killer. The murderer confessed.”

  “Mm. Still, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? A lot of death seems to follow him.”

  She was trying to split Brayden and me, make us doubt each other. Maybe she thought I knew something and was covering for him. But Brayden hadn't killed his wife. We knew who'd committed that crime. And Brayden sure hadn't stolen my truck and dumped Matt Zana's body inside the bed.

  “We were together when my truck was stolen,” I said. “He couldn't have stolen it to dump Matt's body.”

  “So you say.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “Lovers have been known to cover for each other.” Her face tightened. “It isn’t worth it.”

  “We're not lovers.”

  She raised a blond brow. “Oh?”

  “We're friends. We've always been friends.”

  “Hm.”

  “I get that it’s your job not to believe me—”

  “And I don't. But what's important is what the D.A. believes. And then, maybe a jury.”

  “A jury!” I turned to the window and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. Beside the highway, pines flashed past. “You're arresting me?”

  “Did I say I was arresting you?”

  She pulled into the Sheriff’s Department parking lot. The sleek, glass building rose before us. She parked in a spot marked SHERIFF, beside the front steps, then turned to me. “Try and look at it from my perspective. Your boyfriend was seen arguing with the victim the morning before he died. That evening, you say your truck was stolen, but we only have you and Brayden's word for that.”

  “People saw us at the bar.”

  “They saw you in the bar. They didn’t see what happened when you went outside. And Brayden conveniently left his argument with Matt out of his statement when we first pulled him in for questioning.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt. “If you think I'm covering for anyone, you're wrong. Brayden didn't kill anyone. And if I thought he had, I'd tell you.” Because if he'd killed someone — and I knew he hadn't — then he wouldn't have been a man I could love. Terror washed through me, and I steadied myself, clutching the door handle. I still loved him, and the sheriff thought he was a murderer.

  The sheriff led me inside.

  “I want to call my lawyer,” I said.

  “You've got your cell phone?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then call.” She stuck me in a small, cinderblock room. I'd been in rooms like this before. A video camera angled in a high corner. A mirror, which everyone who ever watched TV knew had detectives behind it, flashed dully in one wall. A metal table with two brackets to chain a prisoner squatted in the center of the room. There were three plastic chairs. I knew which one was for me, and I sat opposite the door. Above it, a clock ticked.

  I pulled my cell phone from my purse and called Nick Heathcoat.

  “What's happened?” he asked, brusque.

  My gaze dar
ted around the cinderblock room. “I'm at the sheriff's station, in an interrogation room. They've brought Brayden and me in for questioning.”

  “How do you know they have Brayden?”

  I winced. “He was in Ground when the sheriff came to get me.”

  “You're calling from your cell phone,” he said.

  “Yes.” And then I understood. Last summer when I'd been brought into the station, the sheriff had always confiscated my phone. She’d made sure the only calls I made were on her payphone. Sure, someone might be listening to this conversation from the other side of that mirror now. But letting me keep my phone was unusual. Could she actually believe me?

  “I'll be there in twenty minutes,” he said. “Don't say anything more.”

  “Thanks.”

  I sat and waited, watching the red, second hand of the wall clock tick forward.

  Twenty-three minutes and eighteen seconds later, Nick in his sleek business suit strode through the door. “Let's go.”

  I rose and pressed my fingertips into the cold, metal table. “We can go? What about Brayden?”

  “He's not my client.”

  “But—”

  “He has his own lawyer,” he said. “I ran into her in the atrium. Brayden’s well represented, don't worry.”

  Feet dragging, I left the station with Nick and got into his black SUV.

  He twisted in the seat to face me, his left arm draped over the wheel. “What happened?”

  “Not much. The sheriff drove me here—”

  “The sheriff herself?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She even let me sit in the front seat.”

  “And she asked you questions, didn’t she? Tell me you didn’t answer.”

  I winced, feeling foolish. “Maybe a little.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “She asked if I'd known that Brayden had argued with Matt Zana the morning he died.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. And I don't believe it. She implied we might have been colluding — that my truck hadn't really been stolen. How did you get me out?”

  “I asked,” he said. “The deputy told me you were free to go.”

  I flexed my fingers on the seat belt. She'd been trying to shake me. “This was all a game.”

  “Not a game. You need to watch yourself, Jayce. The sheriff is deadly serious.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I paced my darkened apartment and stared at the phone in my hand. Candles flickered on the low table before the fire. A log snapped, sparks shooting up the chimney. A program on the Civil War played silently on the TV. I liked history – the stories were dramatic and real – but I hadn’t been able to sit still and watch.

  I'd left half a dozen messages for Brayden, and he hadn't returned a single one. Was he avoiding me or still in custody? In either case, I was starting to embarrass myself with all the voicemails.

  My blood hummed, electric. I needed to get out, to do something. My options were limited without wheels, but Doyle was a small town, and I lived downtown, such as it was.

  I shrugged into a burgundy sweater-coat that hung to my knees. Looping my beigey scarf around my neck, I trotted down the exterior steps to the alley.

  Main Street’s old-fashioned hotels and B&Bs were darkly quiet, emptied of their weekend tourist hoards. A lone pickup cruised past, its tires swishing on the damp pavement.

  I walked beneath iron street lamps and past blackened windows. Across the street, a pink neon sign in the shape of a cocktail shaker blinked, calling to me. Antoine's.

  The interior of the bar was rough, unpolished wood and dim lighting. A jukebox sat unlit and unplayed in one corner. Framed, old-timey photos littered the walls, and three brass chandeliers hung the length of the narrow bar. The owner and bartender, Antoine, stood behind the empty counter.

  I scanned the bar, Monday-night dead. A man’s white hair bobbed behind one of the smooth, wood booths, as if in time to music only he could hear. I discovered I was holding my breath. Feeling sick, jittery, I released it. A small, insane part of me had hoped to find Brayden.

  I slid onto a cracked barstool.

  Polishing a beer mug, Antoine ambled along the bar to me and grinned. “Haven't seen you here for a while. Where you been?” His curly white hair was tight against his head. There was something almost boyish about the older, African American man and his easy smile, trim figure, and soft skin. Boyish, until you looked into his deep, brown eyes, which spoke of wisdom and experience and sympathy. Antoine had been married to the same woman for fifty years, and I’d given up trying to keep track of their grandkids.

  “The police questioned me again.” I looped my purse on one of the hooks beneath the bar. “I’m starting to think the sheriff doesn’t like me.”

  “Don’t take it personally. I reckon she doesn’t like anybody these days, not with her husband up for early parole.”

  I blinked. That put a different complexion on our interview. “Do you think he’ll get it?” Her husband had been caught embezzling from the county. The sheriff had been a witness for the prosecution.

  “Who can say? I doubt he’s given the prison guards much trouble.” His face creased. “I heard they commandeered your truck.”

  “Word gets around fast. Hear anything else?”

  “Want a drink?”

  I nodded. “The usual.” Antoine would say what he needed to say in his own good time.

  The older man turned his back on me, grabbed a bottle of vodka.

  A floorboard creaked behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder.

  Wynter Swanstrom, Doyle's city manager, sauntered to the bar. He set his empty mug by my elbow. “Hi, Jayce. Drinking alone?”

  I smiled. “Not anymore.” I wasn’t flirting. And so what if I was? Neither of us were married, and Brayden hadn’t called.

  Antoine slid the martini down the bar, and it stopped precisely in front of me. He was the only bartender I knew who could do that with pretty much any type of glass. “Another?” he asked Wynter.

  “Yep,” Wynter said.

  I studied the two men, with their white shocks of hair. Antoine, with that smooth, well-tended sheen that all Doyle citizens had, his white hair lit with silver. Wynter, younger, more muscular, his white hair tinged with gold.

  The city manager was at least thirty years younger than Antoine. But I knew that because I knew it, not because the age difference was obvious. They both had that plastic, ageless appearance, a look I'd managed not to see, until Karin had forced me to notice.

  Growing up in Doyle, everything had seemed normal. Nothing was.

  I wondered what would happen to us all if the unseelie’s spell ever broke, and I worried for my sisters if it didn’t. None of us were pregnant, but I suspected none of us were long for this world. Another good reason not to start something with Brayden.

  “Something wrong?” Wynter asked. “You've got a funny look on your face.”

  “I'm thinking about Matt,” I said.

  Wynter scowled, his ruddy face twisting. “Leave it to Matt to make things as inconvenient as possible for everyone, even in death.”

  “You mentioned he did some work for you,” I said.

  The bartender replaced Wynter's beer and moved a few feet down the bar. He polished its shiny surface, his head cocked.

  “I hired him to re-tile my bathrooms,” Wynter said. “He said the project would take two weeks. It took three months. Matt kept finding better places to be.”

  One corner of my mouth curled upward. “Sounds familiar.” I sipped my drink, the green olives rolling at the bottom of the cocktail glass. “But I can't imagine someone killing Matt because of a delayed project.”

  “No, but...” Wynter's white brows slashed downward. He took another swig of beer.

  Antoine polished the bar more vigorously.

  “But what?” I asked.

  “I swear I caught him snooping,” Wynter said.

  “Snooping?” I asked.

  “
At the time, I was sure of it. Then I started to think I'd imagined things. But now that someone's killed him, I wonder.”

  I set down my glass. “What happened?”

  “It was a weekday. I came home from work early — not to check on him – okay, maybe a part of me was checking on him. But I'd forgotten my lunch, left it in the refrigerator. His truck was in the driveway, but when I went into the house, he wasn't in the bathrooms. I found him in my home office, leaning over my desk. He said he'd just come in from the backyard — which was possible, because there's a door to the yard from my office. But there was no reason for him to be near my desk, and he had this look on his face.”

  “What sort of look?”

  “Half smug, half like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. When I looked at my desk later, it seemed like some of the things had been moved.”

  Uneasy, I shifted in my chair. “What sort of things?”

  “Only work stuff — some zoning docs, that sort of thing. Nothing super private, but I told him to stay the hell out of my office from then on. He didn't mess with any of your things, did he?”

  “There was nothing to mess with in Ground,” I said, thinking hard. If Matt Zana had been a snoop, was that why he and Brayden had argued? He'd worked for Brayden, and Brayden liked his privacy. It wasn't hard to imagine him blowing up if he'd caught the handyman skulking through his things. But if that had happened, the argument would have happened immediately, at Brayden's house. They wouldn’t have fought in public, where others could see and tell the police.

  My heel bounced on the rung of my bar stool. Had something happened between them? “The police called me in for questioning again today,” I said.

  “Did they?” Wynter asked. “But I see they let you go. I'm sure they're questioning everyone.”

  “Have you said anything to the sheriff about Matt's spying?”

  “No, but I guess I should. I will. I don't know why I didn't say anything to her before.” He finished his drink and laid some bills in a neat row on the bar. “I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about, Jayce. Take care of yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  I watched him go.

  Antoine sauntered down the bar and counted the money Wynter had left.