Cold Dawn bf-3

by Carla Neggers

  She headed straight for Rose’s riverside table. “I hate to speak ill of the dead,” Myrtle said, dropping into a chair across from Rose, “but Derek Cutshaw could be one unpleasant human being.”

  Rose didn’t comment. “When did you see him last?”

  “About two weeks ago. I haven’t seen him since. Dom, either. I don’t know about Beth.”

  Beth Harper was the third “sister” who co-owned the café. She was in Beverly Hills visiting Sean and Hannah. Beth, her brother and Scott Thorne had flown back to California with them last Friday. Zack had always planned to stay just through the weekend. Not Scott.

  “What about Hannah?” Rose asked. “Have you or Dom been in touch with her?”

  “Dom said she’d call both Beth and Hannah when she knew more. They’re supposed to be having fun—swimming in Sean’s pool, shopping on Rodeo Drive, watching for Hollywood stars.”

  “Scott Thorne’s back. Did you know that?”

  “I’d heard,” Myrtle said but didn’t elaborate.

  Rose decided not to try to figure out Beth’s love life. Her own was complicated enough, or at least had been. Nowadays it was downright simple: no love life.

  “What about your brothers?” Myrtle asked. “Have you talked to them?”

  “No, not yet.”

  A.J. would be at the lodge. Elijah, her middle brother, a Special Forces soldier, was in Washington, D.C., with Jo Harper, Zack and Beth’s older sister, a Secret Service agent. Sean, the youngest of the three Cameron brothers, was home in Beverly Hills with Hannah, who was still figuring out her life. Rose had no doubt they were as in love as they had been in January. Their feelings weren’t rooted in the adrenaline of their encounter with the Whittakers. They’d been destined for each other since high school.

  They were soul mates, if one believed in such things.

  The yoga group departed, and the café was quiet. Rose stared down at the ice jams on the river, vaguely aware of Dominique setting a plate of quiche and fresh fruit in front of her.

  She thanked Dominique before realizing her friend had already gone.

  She felt Myrtle observing her as she tried a bit of her cinnamon scone. Only recently had she decided that what her family and friends didn’t know about the past twelve months of her life wasn’t anything she was hiding from them so much as letting be. She’d moved on, or had tried to.

  Except now Derek Cutshaw was almost certainly dead, and Nick Martini was in Black Falls.

  And walking into the café, Rose thought with a grimace, watching out of the corner of her eye as he glanced in her direction and headed to the glass case. His jacket was open, and he moved as if he didn’t have anything more momentous on his mind than figuring out what kind of coffee to order.

  Myrtle raised her thin, penciled eyebrows. “You know him?”

  Rose realized her expression must have given her away. She tried to appear more neutral. “That’s Nick Martini. He’s—”

  “The Martini of Cameron & Martini and another smoke jumper,” Myrtle said with interest. “When did he get here?”

  “Last night. He was at the fire this morning.”

  “You’re friends?”

  “I don’t know him that well,” Rose said truthfully.

  Nick came over to their table, and, coffee in hand, pulled out a chair and sat down without waiting to be invited. “Nice spot,” he said, nodding to the frozen river. “Same river we were just on?”

  “Yes,” Rose said, her voice almost inaudible. She picked up her fork and tried the quiche. Spinach, cheese, mushroom. She had no appetite for it, but it was warm and tasted good—and she knew she needed something more substantial than a scone.

  Nick’s dark eyes settled on Myrtle. “You must be Myrtle Smith. I’m Nick Martini. Sean’s told me about you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rose said. “I should have introduced you.”

  “It’s all right,” Myrtle said, obviously already taken in by Nick’s good looks and compelling presence.

  Nick glanced out the window again. “I saw Beth and Hannah at Sean’s pool yesterday before I headed East.” He shifted back to Myrtle. “You’re filling in for Hannah. Who’s filling in for Beth?”

  “Dominique hired a new part-timer,” Myrtle said, “but there’s no way to replace either Hannah or Beth.”

  Nick grinned. “That’s diplomatic.”

  “I’m not staying in Vermont.”

  Myrtle seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. She’d arrived in Black Falls in November, after surviving a suspicious fire at her house that had destroyed her office and all the materials she’d methodically compiled detailing a network of paid assassins. She’d stayed at the lodge at first but two weeks had ago moved into Hannah’s apartment above the café.

  Whenever Rose saw her, Myrtle insisted she’d be back in Washington soon.

  She got to her feet, retying her evergreen canvas apron. “I should get busy. I’ve been showing Dominique the art of making a four-layer fresh coconut cake like my mother used to make.”

  Rose gave her a distracted smile. “Can’t go wrong with coconut cake.”

  “You can if you haven’t made one in twenty years. Vermont seems to have brought out my Southern roots.” Myrtle sighed heavily, obviously distracted herself. “People can’t resist a good coconut cake. It looks like springtime itself.”

  Nick shrugged. “I think it looks like snow.”

  “We don’t get much snow in South Carolina where I’m from. We have a real spring there.”

  “It’s still February,” Rose said, relaxing a little. “Spring’s not for another month.”

  Myrtle grunted. “It won’t be spring here even then. You all can get snow well into April.” She winced, looking stricken. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be cavalier.”

  Nick’s eyes were half-closed, but he said nothing. Rose wondered where he’d been last April when her father had died on Cameron Mountain. Fighting a wildland fire? Making a deal for Cameron & Martini? Flying off somewhere in his private plane with a woman?

  After all, what did she know about Nick Martini?

  She and Ranger had searched for her father after he’d been caught in an fierce April snowstorm on the remote north side of Cameron Mountain, but it was Devin Shay, Hannah’s younger brother, who’d found him.

  The storm hadn’t killed him. Lowell Whittaker’s paid assassins had, on Lowell’s orders.

  “It’s okay,” Rose said quietly. “We’re all ready to make our peace with the past. Pop wouldn’t want us to be miserable. He’d want us to be happy.” She smiled. “Coconut cake is happy.”

  Myrtle glanced out at the bright, snowy landscape, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was there, working in a Vermont café. “It’s made with egg whites. My mother would use the leftover egg yolks for boiled custard.”

  Rose raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner. “Boiled custard, Myrtle?”

  “Best stuff in the world. It’s like a cross between eggnog and pudding.”

  “Sounds wonderful. How much longer can you hang in here?”

  She turned from the window and gave a short laugh. “When you see me digging a pit out back to roast a pig for pulled pork, do an intervention, will you?”

  Rose laughed, surprising herself. Myrtle seemed relieved, which told Rose just how pale she had to be. Definitely a welcome distraction, she thought, to talk about coconut cake and pulled pork instead of Nick Martini and the tragic scene out on the river.

  Of course, Myrtle was no more focused on food than Rose was and fixed her lavender eyes on Nick. “Do the police suspect the fire this morning was deliberate?”

  “Too early to say,” Nick said.

  She shifted to Rose. “What do you think?”

  Rose reminded herself that the woman scrutinizing her was a veteran journalist accustomed to rooting out lies, deception and simple stonewalling. “It looks as if a kerosene lamp or something similar blew
up. Derek—the victim’s upper body was badly burned.”

  Myrtle shuddered, turning ashen, her lips thinning as she swallowed visibly.

  “It could have been an accident,” Rose added.

  “I’ve been in this town for three months. None of the untimely deaths and near-deaths here so far have been accidents.” Myrtle turned back to Nick. “Sean was out here with Hannah last week for a few days. Why didn’t you come with him then?”

  “Work commitments,” Nick said.

  She obviously wasn’t satisfied. “What are you doing here now?”

  “Visiting.”

  Instead of stomping back to the kitchen, Myrtle didn’t seem bothered by Nick’s light sarcasm. “You and Rose know each other through Sean?”

  Nick drank more of his coffee. “That we do.”

  “He told you she’d be out there this morning?”

  “Sean did.” Nick leaned over and helped himself to a chunk of Rose’s scone. “What do you know about Derek Cutshaw?”

  Myrtle’s eyes darkened slightly. “I only met him a couple times when he stopped in on his way to different ski areas. He was well aware he wasn’t a favorite around here. What was he doing out at the Whittaker place, do you know?”

  “No idea,” Nick said.

  “Rose?”

  “No, none,” she said, feeling Nick’s gaze burning into her. She smiled faintly at Myrtle. “Your reporter’s habits die hard.”

  She adjusted her apron. “They’ve been buried in frosting and salad fixings and frozen in the snow. Apparently Derek was sharing a ski house in Killington with some of his friends.”

  “How do you know?” Rose asked, surprised.

  “Dominique. She knows everything. I imagine the police are up there by now.” Myrtle pushed strands of black hair out of her face. “They still don’t have the SOB who set fire to my house. They think it was one of Whittaker’s killers, probably the same one who taught him how to make a pipe bomb. He won’t say. I think he’s more afraid of this guy than he is of anything the FBI can do to him.”

  Nick set his coffee, barely touched, back on the table. “I’m sure if there’s even the remotest possibility of a connection between your fire and the one this morning, the police are all over it.”

  “This pyro, whoever it is, is still out there.” Myrtle moved back from the window and gave Nick an unflinching look. “You’re a firefighter. You must hate arson.”

  “Most people hate arson,” he said.

  “I don’t own a kerosene lamp. My granny did. I remember. What a great woman she was.” Myrtle seemed to give herself a mental shake. “I’ll be in the kitchen. My self-imposed northern New England exile continues. At home in South Carolina,” she said, obviously attempting to lighten her mood as she headed back to the glass case, “I’d be setting out pansies.”

  Once Myrtle was through the swinging door to the kitchen, Rose jumped to her feet. “Dom’s quiche is amazing—help yourself,” she said quickly to Nick. In a few strides, she was in the center hall, fighting tears.

  It would all come out. Her and Derek, her and Nick. There’d be no more secrets. No discretion. Everyone in town would know her private business.

  Ranger was asleep on his back, paws in the air. She didn’t want to wake him, but he rolled over on his own and got stiffly up onto all fours. She grabbed his leash and snapped it back on. For the past eight years, he’d been her constant companion. They’d done so much together. He’d been tireless, solid and reliable, but he was slowing down.

  She couldn’t bear to think about that now and headed outside with him. Across the street on the common, kids and teachers from a local nursery school were building snowmen. Rose could hear their laughter and hoped what she’d seen that morning had been a terrible accident.

  She crossed Elm Street and continued up Main, passing the only flower shop in town, cyclamen and pots of ferns in its window, but her mind was back at the Whittaker estate. She could smell the smoke and see the pieces of glass embedded in what she knew, in her gut, was Derek Cutshaw’s burned body.

  There was no question in her mind. The fire hadn’t been an accident.

  Derek had been murdered, and his killer could still be in Black Falls.

  By the time she and Ranger reached O’Rourke’s, a bar and restaurant whose owner, Liam O’Rourke, was a longtime friend of all three of her brothers, Rose was aware of Nick ambling behind her. He caught up with her as she started up the stone steps to O’Rourke’s front door, a couple of big green shamrocks already stuck on the glass ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.

  “Pretty town,” Nick said as he eased in on her right side. He’d zipped up his coat, his only apparent concession to the cold walk up Main Street. “Did you ever build a snowman on the town common when you were a tot?”

  “Not that I recall, no.” Rose cast him a sideways glance. “I’ve participated in a few snowball fights, though.”

  “My fair warning.” He glanced out at the quiet street. “A lot of questions were raised back at the café.”

  She pulled her hand from the door. Ranger sat quietly, expectantly, next to her.

  “Rose, last March, Derek Cutshaw and two of his ski-bum friends got into a fight here at O’Rourke’s with the owner’s cousin, a local stonemason.

  “Bowie O’Rourke,” Nick said.

  “Sean told you the story?”

  “That’s right. He, A.J. and Elijah were all in town that night. Derek insulted Hannah and wouldn’t leave her alone. His friends joined in, but he was the ringleader. Sean hauled Hannah out of here before she could rip out a few eyeballs. Bowie stayed and ended up getting arrested.”

  “He’s still on probation,” Rose said. “No charges were filed against Derek and his two friends. He hurled most of the insults. He cut close to the bone, even bringing up Hannah’s mother, who used to work here before she died, and implying Hannah—well, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “You weren’t here that night.”

  Her mouth was dry, her heart beating rapidly. “No, I wasn’t.”

  She yanked open the door and bolted inside ahead of Nick. Ranger flopped down in a corner. O’Rourke’s only did a light lunch business, and she knew Liam wouldn’t mind. She climbed onto a high stool at the dark wood bar. Nick stayed on his feet, taking in the scattering of empty tables, the deep red walls and the black-and-white framed photographs of old Black Falls. Tall, broad-shouldered Liam was behind the bar, polishing a glass with a white cloth and regarding Rose with open suspicion, as if she’d brought bad luck.

  She couldn’t pretend not to know Nick, and introduced him. “Liam, this is Nick Martini of Cameron & Martini.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Liam said. “He was with you this morning. I heard. This town’s too small for something like that not to get around fast. The dead man’s Derek Cutshaw, isn’t it?”

  Rose nodded. “I’m almost positive, yes.”

  Liam filled the glass he’d been polishing with water from a small stainless-steel sink, then set it in front of her. “He was in here last night.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t seen much of him this winter but I knew he was back in Vermont. He had coffee and a sandwich and left. No alcohol. He’s a mean bastard when he drinks.” Liam sighed. “Or was, anyway.”

  Rose contained any reaction. “Have you seen Bowie yet today?”

  “He’s working out at the lake. He’ll stop in later.”

  If Nick knew what “out at the lake” meant, he kept it to himself. Bowie O’Rourke and Hannah Shay had grown up together in an isolated hollow a few miles past the Whittaker place. Bowie still lived there.

  Rose drank some of the water Liam had placed in front of her. “Given Bowie’s history with Derek and where he lives—”

  “The police will want to talk to him if they haven’t already,” Liam said heavily. “I’ve had my issues with Bowie, but he had nothing to do with Cutshaw’s death. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” she
said, resisting the temptation to look at Nick for his reaction.

  Liam grabbed his cloth and another glass. “What about you, Rose? Have you had much to do with Cutshaw lately?”

  “I barely knew him.”

  “Then what was he doing out at the Whittaker place?”

  She drank more of her water, just to give herself something to do and repeated what she’d told the police and then Myrtle Smith. “I have no idea.” She slid off the stool and stood up straight, turning to Nick, who hadn’t said a word since entering O’Rourke’s. “I’m sure I’ll see you back at the lodge at some point.”

  Ranger jumped up and followed her outside. Rose grabbed his leash in one hand and broke into a run. He matched her stride, his tongue wagging, as if he thought they were finally playing—finally having the fun he’d anticipated at dawn.

  The wind and cold whipped tears out of her eyes, and when she reached her Jeep, she choked back a sob and got Ranger into the back, patting him, hugging him. He was so damn soft, so warm and reliable.

  “I can tell you anything, can’t I, buddy?” She sniffled and stood up straight, laughing at his eager expression as he panted at her. “Good dog, Ranger. Good dog.”

  She shut him in and climbed into the front seat. She checked her rearview mirror but didn’t see Nick on Main Street. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was having a beer with Liam, getting what he could out of him about her, Derek Cutshaw and life in Black Falls.

  In his place, Rose thought, she’d probably do the same.

  She started the Jeep, picturing the backpack and sleeping bag in the shed. Had Derek planned to camp there, waiting for her? He wouldn’t have come to her house. He’d have known she wouldn’t have let him in. Out at the boarded-up farmhouse on the river, he’d have been able to catch her by surprise, force her to talk to him. But why now? Why after a year?

  Nick.

  Had Derek found out Nick was in town and would come to see her?

  But how would he know, and why would he care?