Jeremy just hardened his mouth to a tight line.
“I guess I have to replace the wall anyway. . . .” She closed her eyes, doing the math.
“I’ll loan you the money to get started,” Jeremy said.
“Since when do you have money?”
He smiled, something darkly cryptic inside it. “I don’t sit around all day waiting for lost people to fall into my lap, Sugar.”
She opened her mouth, closed it. “I’ll find Bix. I will.”
“I know.” Jeremy slipped a hand into hers, squeezing just a little. He turned to Max. “You can get started on it when we get back.”
“Get back from where?” Max closed the toolbox and stood. He’d removed his stocking cap, and in full-out revolt, his hair couldn’t make up its mind which way it wanted to go.
“We found a lead on the night you went over the bridge. A speeder got picked up right around the time you were found on the beach. We think he might have a connection to you. He’s gone missing, but we do have a last known address. We’re going to go talk to his landlord. Tag along, and let’s see if anyone recognizes you.”
PJ glanced at Jeremy, at the dark expression on his face as he spoke. He hadn’t removed his hand from her shoulder.
Max grabbed his flannel shirt and nodded. “I’ll get Dog.”
The smell of fall gripped the air—the fragrance of old leaves, apples, and pumpkins—as PJ, Jeremy, Max, and Dog climbed into her VW Bug.
“Okay, I take it back; I already miss the Vic,” Jeremy said. “I feel like a pretzel.”
“You’re the one who told me to give it to Boris. You should have heard him on the phone—he’s probably sprinting over here.”
Behind them, Max was trying to wrestle Dog onto his lap. “We should have taken my car.”
Jeremy flicked him a look, which PJ didn’t require translation to read. He had no intention of trusting the guy, even enough to drive.
The town of Hopkins always charmed PJ. The tiny bungalows with their quaint attic rooms, wide sidewalks edging groomed yards filled with rows of hosta, cedar bushes, clipped hedges.
However, the charm had died at Lyle Fisher’s last known residence. The duplex, a converted Cape Cod covered in stucco, bore the stamp of afterthought architecture. A dormer addition ran the length of the back, and another smaller one capped the front, with long, narrow windows like two hooded eyes peeking up from the roof. Leaves peppered the yard and stuffed the edges of a cracked paved driveway. A snarled rosebush grew between the two sets of cement steps leading to the separate residences. Only a white impression, outlined with grime, remained of the former metal numbers signifying Lyle’s address.
The place betrayed all the earmarks of desertion.
“I hadn’t held out too much hope, I guess,” Max said quietly from the backseat.
PJ opened her car door. “There’s still someone living here, maybe next door.”
“How do you know?”
“The garbage is out.” She pointed to the rubber can at the end of the driveway.
Jeremy pried himself out of the car, followed by Max, who shoved Dog back into the car while PJ cracked the window. “We’ll be right back . . . Jake.”
Dog looked at her with what seemed disgust and flopped down on the seat.
“Please don’t eat my vinyl. I just got it fixed.”
PJ kicked a few leaves along the cracked sidewalk, letting them catch in the air. She stopped to peer inside the duplex window. Vacant, with shiny oak floors and a floral wallpaper border in the orange kitchen. She’d lived in too many places like it over the past ten years.
From a duplex to a mansion. It seemed as if her résumé had a few logical gaps.
Jeremy mounted the steps of the next unit, already ringing the bell when PJ stepped up beside him, in front of Max, and smiled widely for whomever might be peering from behind the wispy curtain at the window.
An elderly woman eased the oak door open. Her tidy, graying hair was short and curly around her timid blue eyes, and she shoved her face into the crack between the door and the frame. “I’m already a Christian woman; I don’t want to hear about the end times or why I need the Book of Mormon.”
PJ hid a smile. “We’re actually looking for someone. A former tenant in the other unit. Have you lived here long?”
The woman glanced at Jeremy, then back to PJ. “I own the place. Who are you looking for?” Before PJ could answer, the older woman’s gaze drifted to Max. Her face screwed up. “Do I know you?”
Max’s entire body stiffened. “I don’t know; do you?”
The woman’s mouth tightened into a tiny knot as she peered at him. Then she reached into her housecoat and pulled out a pair of round, bottle lenses. Propped them on her nose. “No. Sorry. It’s hard to tell without the hair. I guess you all look alike.”
“Are you talking about Lyle Fisher?” PJ glanced at Max. He looked like he should sit down.
“That’s right. Fisher. He up and disappeared four years ago—taking his rent for the month with him, thank you very much, I haven’t seen him since. But I do have a box of his stuff.” She slipped her gaze over to Max again. “Something about you seems familiar, though. Are you sure you don’t know Lyle?”
“I don’t—,” Max started.
“He’s his cousin,” Jeremy said. “Lyle sent him to get his stuff.”
“Well, then maybe he can pay me the last month’s rent, too.”
Oh, good one, Jeremy.
“How about part of it?” Max reached into his pocket. “I have about a hundred here.”
There went the little knot in the old woman’s mouth again as she considered Max’s offer. “Fine.” She swiped the bills from his hand and disappeared.
“You’d better hope she’s coming back,” Jeremy said quietly.
PJ shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and glanced at Max. He was using his X-ray vision to stare through the door.
The woman returned with a printer box, the top secured with packing tape. She opened the storm door with her hip and held out the box. “It’s all yours. The rest I donated to Goodwill.”
On the side, the name Lyle Fisher was written in black block letters.
She gave Max a last look. “Next time you see him, you tell your cousin I want the rest of my rent. Two years of putting up with his odd disappearances and strange friends, and this is the thanks I get.”
Max nodded, as if yes, indeed, he’d do that very thing.
She closed the door on them.
Max carried his treasure out to the Bug and balanced the box on the hood, then stepped away from it, considering the box as though it might contain national secrets. Or perhaps a bomb.
Jeremy produced a pocketknife. Max took it from him without a glance.
PJ watched Jeremy’s face, his eyes scrutinizing Max as he ran the knife under the tape and loosened the top. He tried to hide it, but she sensed his relief when Max closed the knife and handed it back.
Inside the car, Dog woke up and began to bark, shoving his nose out the window. Leaves, swept up by the wind, became a whirling dervish, caught in her hair.
Max stared at the box. “Okay.” He took a breath. Wiggled the top open.
A manila envelope full of mail lay on top. Max picked it up, riffled through it. “Junk mail, all of it. All addressed to Lyle Fisher.”
PJ picked up a dusty black calculator. “It’s dead.”
Under the envelope lay a belt, a Maglite without the batteries, a plastic canteen, a pair of warped aviator sunglasses, and finally, a watch.
Max took the watch out, ran his thumb over the black band, the raised dial face.
“That’s a military watch. The kind special ops uses,” Jeremy said.
“You can buy these off the Internet, can’t you?” PJ asked as Max handed her the watch.
“They’re pretty pricey, but yeah.” Jeremy leaned over her and took the watch from her hands. He worked the dials. “It’s the waterproof kind that SEALs wear.”
And he would know. She saw Jeremy pause as if scrolling through memory. Then he shook himself out of it. Handed the watch back to Max. “Why would Lyle leave this behind?”
“Or these.” Max riffled through the envelopes. “Hey, look at this. It’s a picture.” He tugged out a four-by-six snapshot, staring at it. His chest rose and fell with heavy breaths.
“Max?”
He flipped it over, shook his head, then handed the picture to her without a word.
A picture of a threesome. Two men sat on a bench, with a woman in the middle. One man had long blond hair, tied back, bronzed and muscled in a sleeveless shirt. The other, his brown hair also long, sat bare-chested, his arm curled around the back of the woman. Her eyes twinkled as she laughed into the camera; the wind had caught her hair and dragged it across her face. Both men grinned, but only one had a dimple pressing into his cheek. From this vantage point, PJ couldn’t make out a tattoo. Yet, despite the hippie hair, PJ easily recognized her new plumber, although in this picture, his eyes appeared brighter, his smile without the tinge of sadness.
More importantly, she also recognized the woman in the middle. She’d seen her in grainy black-and-white next to a news article about a fire at her complex.
“This is the woman who died in the fire the night Max went missing.”
* * *
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Calm down, Max. We don’t know for sure that you had anything to do with that fire or that woman’s death.”
Max paced another tight circle in PJ’s empty living room as PJ sat on the floor, searching for clues in the picture.
Telling him about the fire—and Bekka Layton’s death—might not have been the smartest move. He’d braced his arm on the car, breathing in hard a few times—something she’d seen Jeremy do on occasion. Like when he’d discovered that she’d nearly been killed by an assassin or by a rogue FBI agent.
Or discovered one more connection to the idea that her new client could be a murderer. Jeremy stood just a few feet away, watching Max pace, stop, stare out the window, pace again.
“What if I did do those things? What if I was the guy that broke into that woman’s house and . . . and killed her? Am I the kind of person who could murder someone?” He wore such a stricken look that PJ couldn’t find words.
“I just . . . I can’t bear that idea. I don’t want to be that guy. Maybe we should stop looking.” He held up his hand as if pushing away the news. “I have a good life and a dog . . .”
“You started this because you wanted to know if you have family or friends,” PJ said.
“I obviously killed them!”
“Calm down, Max.” This from Jeremy, who walked over to join PJ. Or hover over her, depending on the point of view. “You’re making giant leaps here. You don’t know what connection you have to this woman.”
Max seemed nonplussed by Jeremy’s tone. “Something about her seems familiar. I can’t place it. What if she was my girlfriend?” He picked up the picture. “What if this Lyle guy is my cousin? or my brother?” He held up his scarred hands. “Is that fire how I got these?”
“Maybe you were trying to save her,” PJ offered. “Maybe you were walking by and saw the fire—”
“Now you’re just reaching because you don’t want to face the truth.”
“Which is?”
“I’m a criminal. A murderer. Maybe an arsonist. I think we need to just stop the investigation right now.”
“But what about justice?” Jeremy said in a clipped tone. “Maybe you need to find out so you can own up to what you did.”
PJ shot him an are-you-crazy? look that he rebounded with one of his own.
Maybe. She found her feet, turned to Jeremy, and pitched her voice low. “Listen, maybe Max is right. Without more evidence, he could be arrested and dragged through the court system. He’s probably innocent, and we’ll be tearing his life apart. I have a little experience about how this feels, and trust me—we need to tread carefully before we start handing information over to the cops.”
Jeremy attempted his best lethal-silence glare.
She ignored him. “Don’t you think people deserve a chance to prove themselves innocent?”
That got him. “I do believe in letting people prove themselves. I’m even a wholehearted believer in second chances,” he said tightly. “You know that. But some people can’t change.”
She matched his tone. “Are you saying that once someone is trouble they’re always trouble?”
“Sometimes. I think for some people, it’s in their blood. Or it gets in there after seeing so much horror.”
“What do you mean?”
He hooked her around the arm and drew her closer to himself, then bent over so it was just his breath in her ear, hot and urgent. “There’s something about him. He carries himself like he isn’t afraid. Like he’s been trained in self-defense. And the POW tattoo—where’d he get that? The only POWs I know are in Iraq. Was he in the war?”
“Maybe,” she hissed. “What if he came home to start over and something went wrong?”
“Or maybe he came home to find his girlfriend sleeping with his best buddy and tried to kill them both. And something went wrong, and he’s the one who got dumped in the drink.” He raised his voice. “Where he should have stayed.”
“Jeremy.”
“Wake up from happily-ever-after land, PJ. Everything points to him being someone dangerous.” He took a breath, scrubbing one hand down his face.
Max’s mouth tightened. He’d probably heard every word—their voices echoed like they stood in the Sistine Chapel.
PJ walked over to him. “Max, listen. I have instincts. And mine are telling me that you didn’t do this. You aren’t a murderer.”
Max’s expression suggested he was trying on that idea for size. Or maybe grasping like a dying man.
“Maybe Jeremy is right. People don’t change . . . which means that the guy who crawled around in my creepy basement and dug gunk out of my drain, the guy who adopted the homeless dog and won’t call him anything but his real name, that guy didn’t murder anyone. Because he’s not a criminal and never has been.”
“Your instincts tell you that?”
“My PI instincts.” She gave him a slow smile.
Max’s gaze tracked past her to Jeremy and back. He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to know who you are? how you ended up here?”
“What if it’s ugly?”
“I think we all have a little bit of ugly in our past. But I do believe in fresh starts. Even if some people in the room don’t.”
“That’s not what I said,” Jeremy growled.
She held up her hand to silence him. “Listen, Jeremy and I are going to see what we can learn about this woman. Maybe dig up something on you. We’ll take the picture, flash it around—”
“I want to go too.”
“You’re staying here,” Jeremy said in his boss voice. “Sorry, but if you suddenly show up in the flesh, especially if PJ is wrong and you were involved in this murder, your showing up back from the dead might make everyone clam up. Let’s see what we can find, and we’ll bring it back here and take a good look-see before we decide what to do.”
His words seemed more a line in the sand, daring Max to protest. Or worse, a suggestion to leave now, while he still had the chance.
But Max simply gave them both a small nod.
Jeremy cupped his hand around PJ’s elbow as he escorted her out, as if he might be her bodyguard.
“Max is innocent, Jeremy, and I’m going to prove it to you, no matter what it takes.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Chapter Twelve
“I do believe in fresh starts,” Jeremy said quietly as they walked down the sidewalk in the neighborhood where Bekka Layton had died. Not a hit so far from the neighbors surrounding the now-rebuilt town house. So far, of the three tenants who agreed to talk to them, no one rememb
ered Bekka, and none showed even a glimmer of recognition of Lyle Fisher or Max.
Overhead the sky had turned crabby, as if a storm might be rolling in. PJ stuck her hands in her pockets, trying not to step on any cracks.
“In fact, I’m the recipient of my own fresh start.”
PJ waited for more, leaning into his words, hoping.
He must have seen her expression. “I just . . . When I came home from Iraq, I was tired. Mentally and physically.”
“Being in combat could do that, I’d bet.”
“I never thought I’d leave the teams. But things changed.” He hooked her arm, stopping her. “I have no problem with someone wanting to erase their past and begin again. But the truth is, a person has to live with their choices; there’s no getting around that.”
PJ looked at the picture of the couple, the smiling, deceased Bekka Layton. “What about grace? waking up to a new day, another chance? How do you balance living with our choices with the fact that God forgives us over and over?”
He sighed. “Okay, I give you that. Both are true.”
“I just don’t want to believe that there’s no escape from the past. You have no idea what it’s like to be labeled trouble, to have to haul it around with you everywhere you go, branded into your skin.”
She saw Jeremy’s gaze travel to her shoulder.
“Yes, that brand, too. Boone is a part of that trouble label. It’s one reason why I kept moving for ten years. Everywhere I went, I became a new person. No baggage. No labels. Just a clean slate. But not in Kellogg. There, I’m a troublemaker, and it’s not only the country club. Now that I’m a PI—”
“Almost a PI.”
“Going to be a PI . . . it’s like I specialize in trouble. I’m a professional troublemaker.”
“You’re not a troublemaker.”
“I want to believe that, but how do you leave your past behind when it’s all you’ve ever been? How do you start over? And what do I call myself now?”
“Oh, PJ.” Jeremy caught her hand and his eyes met hers, held them. “You’ve come so far since the day I found you impersonating a lawn girl. But you keep dragging your past around with you, calling yourself trouble.”
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