Cold River

by Carla Neggers

  Sean was out of the truck, heading up the sanded walk. He had on his long black coat, and Hannah remembered the feel of his mouth on hers as if their kiss had happened seconds ago.

  “Drew Cameron was mending fences in his last months,” the old minister said quietly. “Making amends before it was too late.”

  Hannah shifted back to him. “Did Drew have amends to make with Sean?”

  “He wanted Sean to know he was still a part of the family. Drew and Elijah had the most obviously strained relationship, but they were so similar—they understood each other. Sean…” Reverend McBane shrugged his thin shoulders. “His ambitions weren’t easy for a man like Drew Cameron to understand.”

  “I’ve always seen them all as cut from the same cloth. Sean’s as much a Cameron as the rest of them.”

  He was behind her now. He put one foot on the bottom step. Hannah noticed wet snowflakes splatter on the expensive leather of his boots. His eyes, almost navy against the gray, narrowed on her, but just for a moment before he shifted his gaze to Reverend McBane. “I got restless in California and decided to come back. Is everything all right here?”

  Hannah relaxed slightly. Nothing had happened with Devin or Toby.

  “Everything’s fine,” Reverend McBane said. “Gloria and I are just waiting for the rain to turn all the way to snow.”

  “I know the past weeks haven’t been easy on you,” Sean said. “If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to contact me. If you can’t reach me, my brothers and sister will be glad to help.”

  “Hannah’s good to us. So are you, Sean.”

  Sean grinned. “Well, don’t tell her.”

  Reverend McBane looked at Hannah and smiled as he addressed Sean. “She’s very smart, Sean. You wouldn’t want to underestimate her.”

  “Ah. You’re saying she knows.”

  He didn’t seem concerned. Hannah found herself less and less able to contain her emotions. “Welcome back, Sean,” she said, jumping down off the steps. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll see you back in town.”

  But she already had her hands stuffed in her pockets as she rushed down the walk to her car. She didn’t look back to see if the McBanes invited Sean inside. She drove down Cameron Mountain Road, slowing at the lane that led to the crypt and peering into the fog and mix of rain and snow.

  “Hannah, Hannah, Hannah.”

  She shuddered, more convinced than ever someone had called her name. She wished she could say for sure that it hadn’t been Bowie O’Rourke.

  Twenty-Four

  Sean drove out to the Whittaker estate after assuring Reverend McBane he hadn’t done anything wrong. Of course Hannah would drag the truth out of him. Not only had she just graduated law school with top grades, she’d been pulling information out of people since ninth grade and had raised two boys on her own. Criminals didn’t stand a chance with her.

  Bowie’s van wasn’t in the turnaround, but Sean parked there and headed up the slick walk to the stone guesthouse. As he mounted the steps to the porch, he noticed muddy footprints on the painted wood. Someone had just arrived or just left.

  Vivian Whittaker pushed open the storm door and walked out onto the porch. She seemed barely aware of his presence. “Bowie only worked a short time this morning. He says he’s waiting on materials.” She blinked at Sean as if it had just dawned on her who it was standing there. “I thought you were in California. Has something happened?”

  Sean heard the wind whistling in the mountains as the cold front moved in from the northwest, pushing out the fog and rain. “Nothing’s happened. I got back a little while ago.” He smiled, hoping to ease some of her tension. “Elijah thinks I was missing a real winter.”

  “You and your brothers have gone your separate ways, but the bond among you is still so strong. You get along well.” Vivian glanced back toward the entry, the storm door slowly shutting on its own. “Painting isn’t going to help. I just can’t get rid of the memories of those people. Even Nora and her stepfather. I keep picturing Alex at the pond. He found it difficult to relax—” She broke off, staring out at the gloom. “If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have befriended Alex. I imagine Lowell feels the same way. We ended up with Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall under our roof because we did. Is that heartless of me?”

  “Give it some time.”

  She seemed to shudder with the bitter wind and hugged her arms to her chest. “I don’t know where Bowie is now, if that’s why you’re here. I assume he’s at home or on another job.” Her panic seemed to have subsided. “Lowell and I both have ended up liking Bowie very much. People deserve second chances. I walked up the road past his house yesterday—it’s so pretty there with the river and the stone walls. You can feel the history. Your father was interested in local history, I remember.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not well at all. He stopped by once when I was raking leaves down by the road after we first bought this place. Now that I think about it, he must have been building his cabin then. I imagine he was on his way to the north side of Cameron Mountain.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “He just said hello and welcomed us to Black Falls.”

  Lowell Whittaker came up the walk from the turnaround, in boots, not on snowshoes or skis. Sean assumed he’d taken the road down from the farmhouse. He was bundled up against the elements. He peeled a scarf off his lower face. “I do believe it’s going to snow tonight,” he said cheerfully. “Not a major storm, but even a dusting would freshen up the landscape. How are you, Sean? I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

  “He’s asking about Bowie,” his wife said.

  Sean didn’t correct her. Her husband said, “I saw his van at Four Corners on my way to your sister’s house after I’d run an errand in the village. I think he must have been cleaning up the mess at the crypt. Everything seemed perfectly normal.”

  “Why did you go to Rose’s?” Sean asked.

  “She’s been educating me on dogs. Hannah came by not long after I arrived. She and Rose talked, but I was busy with Ranger. What a remarkable animal.”

  “I wouldn’t want a golden retriever,” Vivian said. “Too much hair, and they even look friendly.”

  Lowell ignored her. “What else can we do for you, Sean? Anything?”

  “No, nothing,” Sean said, and got out of there, the wind fierce now.

  On his way back along the river, he ran into a blinding snow squall that dissipated by the time he arrived in the village. The café was closed, but all the lights were on in the dining room. He pulled into the driveway next to Hannah’s car and went in through the mudroom, its door unlocked. He knocked on the kitchen door before entering.

  Dominique was alone, standing by the stove. She looked up at him from the giant pot she was stirring. “You’re back,” she said, visibly pale. “I hope that’s a good thing. Hannah’s in the cellar. She was checking on Bowie’s work on the leak. Scott Thorne just left.”

  Sean eased her spoon out of her slender hand, set it on the counter and took her by the shoulders. “Dominique,” he said. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  “Hannah found the café’s petty-cash jar. It was tucked in among the old canning jars in the cellar. Sean…” She blinked rapidly and took a breath, calming herself. “I don’t know how much more I can take. How much more any of us can take.”

  “The jar?”

  “There was no money in it. It’s just…a jar.” She smiled halfheartedly. “And here I am in shock over a stupid empty jar.”

  “You’re experiencing a sense of violation. Someone came into your kitchen and took the jar and the money in order to frame an eighteen-year-old kid.”

  “What if it wasn’t one of those killers? Sean, what if—” She pulled away from him, grabbed her spoon and stuck it back in her chili pot. “I don’t even want to think what I’m thinking.”

  Sean could guess what it was—that Devin had stolen the money from the lodge, t
he café and Nora Asher’s apartment, after all, and Kyle Rigby had only capitalized on what was already going on in Black Falls.

  He left her and headed down the steep, dimly lit cellar stairs. He found Hannah crouched down by the shelves of old canning jars. Bowie had pulled out the old stones where water was getting in and had neatly piled them on the floor for later repointing. He’d obviously discovered more rot in a section of wall above the foundation and had cleaned it out, heaping that mess onto a sheet of plastic.

  Start one repair in an old house, find more repairs to do.

  “Hello again,” Hannah said, her voice distant, the shock of her discovery evident. She got onto her knees, opening up the old trunk she’d moved to make room for Bowie. “Since I don’t own the building or hang out in the cellar, I’ve never bothered checking to see what’s inside—just as I never dug through all the canning jars down here.”

  “I talked to Dominique,” Sean said. “Are you sure the jar you found is the petty-cash jar from the café kitchen?”

  She nodded. “It’s a slightly cracked old blue willow jar. It’s pretty distinctive. Beth, Dominique and I found it in a cabinet we moved out when we were fixing up the place for the café. The mouth was narrow—it was easier to fit money in than get it out.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  She stood up and pointed behind her at the shelves of canning jars. “Third shelf from the bottom. I started pulling out jars to check the wall behind the shelves for rot. I didn’t want any more surprises, and it was something to do to help me think.”

  She raised the lid of the trunk and smiled, as if she had nothing else on her mind but a stash of what appeared to be old fabric. “Look, Sean. It must be swatches someone collected for a quilt. Or several quilts, maybe. It looks like men’s shirts, mostly, that were cut up and stored in here.”

  “Are they moth-eaten?” Sean asked, reining in his impatience. He didn’t care about the contents of the trunk. He wanted to know about the cash jar.

  “The ones I can see look to be in good shape. Of course, I might find a mouse nest in here any second.” Hannah shut the lid and latched it, her face flushed as she glanced around at the dark, dusty cellar. “Imagine what all’s gone on in this house since 1835.”

  He didn’t want to imagine anything of the sort. “Hannah, do you have any idea how the money jar got down here?”

  “Yes, yes, I do.” She focused now, her hands clenched at her sides. “Kyle Rigby or Melanie Kendall, or some unnamed associate, walked into the café kitchen, grabbed it, ducked down here—possibly when I had the bulkhead open—and dumped out the money and hid the jar.”

  “Whoever was responsible could explain having the cash but not the jar.”

  “As I said, it’s not that easy to dip your hand into the jar. Dominique can, and I can with some effort—but Beth can’t. A man or a woman with a larger hand would have had to break the jar or dump it out to get the cash. I can imagine standing in the kitchen, thinking I was just going to snatch a handful of twenties and run and discovering the damn jar was too small—” She gulped in a breath. “Or hearing someone coming. Toby or Devin or me. Dominique. Beth. Any of us.”

  “Hannah.”

  She raised her gaze to him. The bruise on her cheek was faint now, just a trace of yellow against her pale skin. “We called the police. Scott Thorne came. The town police. Wes Harper showed up. It was all very fast.”

  “I’m sure they were thorough.”

  “With all the activity—with you and Bowie and Devin and me all down here in recent days, not to mention the furnace man and the plumber just since the money turned up missing in November, and the work and the dust and commotion…” She raked a hand through her hair. “There’s really no hope of learning much of anything.”

  Sean took her hand and saw that the bruising on her wrist hadn’t yet faded entirely. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  “The thought of one of those killers hiding down here makes me sick to my stomach.” She pulled away and sucked in a breath, or maybe it was a sob. “Bastards,” she said, and ran up the stairs.

  Twenty-Five

  Hannah burst into O’Rourke’s and pushed her way down the rough-wood bar to the stool where Bowie sat nursing a soda. She stayed on her feet. He didn’t so much as glance at her. “It’s Diet Coke. No booze for me until I’m off probation, and even then…” He sighed. “What are you all cranked up about, Hannah?”

  She grabbed him by one shoulder, her fingers digging into his hard muscle as she tried to turn him to her. “Look at me.”

  He turned to her, voluntarily, his dark eyes narrowed into slits. “Say what you have to say.”

  “Did you do it? Did you steal the petty-cash jar out of the café kitchen?”

  Bowie didn’t respond.

  “Did you grab the jar because you couldn’t just grab the money?”

  “Keep going,” he said.

  “You grabbed the jar and ducked out the back with it, thinking you could get to your van in time, but you saw someone coming. It was November. You’d have been wearing your sweatshirt or your sweatshirt and your vest. The jar wouldn’t fit easily under either one. The cellar bulkhead was open. So you ran down there, dumped out the money and hid the jar.”

  He sipped his Coke. “How long did I stay in the cellar?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “How long, Bowie?”

  “I guess that would depend on whether I was obsessed with you and wanted to hear your footsteps upstairs, or if I was just enjoying being down there without you knowing it. I wouldn’t want to push it too far if my van was out on the street and I couldn’t explain myself if I got caught. Or if you closed the bulkhead on me. Then what?”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Bowie. Maybe you didn’t run into the bulkhead.” Hannah dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Maybe you’ve had the jar in your van or someplace and decided to plant it among the old canning jars while you were working on the cellar.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To upset me,” she said.

  “Why would I want to upset you?”

  “Payback for your arrest.” Hannah was calmer now. “Did you do it on your own, or on behalf of someone else?”

  Bowie swiveled on his stool and faced the bar. Liam O’Rourke had eased in closer. “You might want to take a couple sips and head on home,” Liam said, setting a glass of ice water in front of Hannah. “Bowie, you, too.”

  Sean materialized behind her. Liam seemed relieved. Hannah remained on her feet, focused on Bowie. “The police are going to want to talk to you,” she said.

  “They already did,” Bowie said. “As you can see, I’m not under arrest.”

  “Did you see the jar when you were working down there?”

  “It’s blue willow, right? That’s what I heard in town.” At her tight nod, he looked at her again and smiled. “I don’t even know what blue willow is.”

  Hannah felt her shoulders slump. “You’re an easy target for everyone, Bowie,” she said softly. “The police, the Camerons. Me, even. Maybe you are for these killers, too.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Whoever stole the jar in the first place wanted to frame Devin. Hiding the jar—”

  “I think a part of you thinks it could have been Devin after all,” Bowie said, “and you’re wondering if those killers focused on him because they knew.”

  “No. Part of me doesn’t think that at all. I opened up the bulkhead to air out the cellar. It could have happened then. Maybe whoever did it could explain his or her presence in the cellar.”

  “Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall couldn’t.”

  “Melanie could have said she thought Nora was in the cellar and went down to check on her.”

  “Talk about the wicked stepmother,” Bowie said.

  Sean sat sideways on the stool, one elbow on the rough-wood bar. “The police don’t believe Melanie was in Black Falls when the money was stolen.”

  Hannah kept he
r gaze on Bowie. “It wasn’t Devin. I know my brother. He didn’t steal that money.”

  “Until you hired me to fix that leak,” Bowie said, “I hadn’t been in that cellar since I was fifteen and helped your father on his service call.”

  “If you had gone down there in November and I’d seen you, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

  “A tourist interested in old houses could have sneaked down there and you wouldn’t have thought twice about it. That’s how you all are at the café.” Bowie stood up at the bar and placed a few dollars under his glass. “You keep forgetting that not everyone has your best interests in mind.”

  “You learned at a young age that no one’s going to step in for you.”

  He looked at her with his dark eyes. “You’ve always been smart. I’m thirty-four years old. I was away from Black Falls for a long time. I’m not the kid you grew up with, Hannah. You don’t know me. Don’t think that you do.”

  She didn’t back down. “Are you afraid you said the wrong thing and that’s how Kyle Rigby and Melanie Kendall found Drew’s cabin?”

  “I talked stonework with Drew. I walked him through how to rebuild and preserve an old rubble foundation. It was theoretical. I didn’t know he was actually doing it.”

  “But you had an idea he was,” Hannah said.

  “I thought it was none of my business.” He looked at Sean. “I wish I’d asked him more questions or followed him up the mountain. I’d see him pass by my place. I knew he was headed up that way.”

  “When was that?” Sean asked.

  “The fall before he was killed. The last time I saw him go up there was late November, I’d say. I don’t think he went up much over the winter. I wasn’t there in April.” He shrugged. “You know where I was.”

  “Bowie, were you used by these killers?”

  “We all were, Hannah,” he said.

  Bowie rose stiffly, nodded goodbye and left. Hannah spun around to Sean. “Give me a minute before you follow me.”