Tar Heart (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 3)

by Mira Gibson

  Her worktable was likely the worst offender. Plastic bottles of abrasives and tubes of adhesives were scattered about. God forbid he got his mouth around one of them, but Christ, would a four-year old do something like that? Or was that type of behavior reserved for infants?

  Satisfied he wasn’t in immediate danger on the cement floor, she crossed the room to a shelving unit that homed dozens of spools of chain. Perusing the shelves in search of a snake chain, trailing her finger past all the options—wheat chain and hesche, rolo chain and ball, herringbone and popcorn and figure-8, each style in silver and brass and gold—she realized the studio was filthy, every inch of it covered in a thin film of dust that made the room look gray and hazy.

  Or maybe that was the coke in her veins. She had done a bump before they left the house, the only thing she could think to motivate her after the long, sleepless night she’d suffered—Rose could get through this.

  She found a spool of snake chain in silver and plucked it off the shelf. Returning to the worktable, she slapped it down harder than she'd meant to, but was already turning for the middle workbench where a Crock Pot, filled to the brim with diluted Sparex, sat on a hot plate. She cranked the burner to high and tried not to panic that her heart had just punched out of rhythm.

  A giant window partitioned her studio workspace from the actual store. Bunched at the left side of the glass was a black curtain, which she neared. So she wouldn’t be tempted to stare into the store that so reminded her of her twin, she began slowly drawing the curtain closed, but couldn’t stop herself from eyeing the area, her heart sinking with loss.

  It was lined with display counters—glass tops and red satin shelves on which necklaces and rings, bracelets and pendants rested. Velvet pedestals stood artfully positioned throughout the store, intuitive to the meandering flow of her customers, of which there were none.

  She hadn’t yet flipped the Open sign hanging on the entryway door. Neither had she ventured to that side of the window.

  She had come in through the rear entrance, unwilling to set foot in the polished half of her property, which didn’t at all represent who she was, but rather Rose.

  It was her sister, not Holly, who had decorated the store, chosen the particular shade of satin under the glass countertops, and placed each pedestal. She had even hung the paintings, having found them at various flee markets around town many summers ago. Rose had used a curator’s eye, deciding which piece should go where. Shopping isn’t a chore, it’s an experience, she had explained, twirling on her heel and shooting a knowing smile at Holly, who had been sulking, arms folded in the corner, not quite getting on board with how fancy the place was turning out. It’s called Shackles for a reason, it’s for the everyman not the elite. Her sister had sashayed towards the final painting in need of a home, an abstract cluster of tulips that to Holly looked overtly sexual, and countered, You want money and the elite of this town have it.

  The statement had summed up Rose and the difference between them—when Rose looked at a person, she calculated their value; when Holly did, she got lost in the story behind their eyes. When Rose encountered a customer in a tailored dress, she quickly ushered her towards the diamond-encrusted items. Holly didn’t even notice what her customers were wearing. She tried to match her jewelry with the person’s vibe. Both had made a hefty amount of sales in the few months Rose had worked at Shackles before meeting Benjamin, hoarding drugs, having Tucker, getting herself killed. But during that period only Holly had seen Rose’s strategy for what it was—hungry.

  Agitated, Holly finally closed the curtain and rounded her worktable, but clipped her toe on one of the legs, hissing, “Damn.” It hadn’t hurt, she was just annoyed with herself for being clumsy even though she knew the cause. She wasn’t built for drugs.

  No sooner than she sat, a clatter came faintly from the front of the store.

  She pulled the black curtain aside when she reached it, peering out at the store. Beyond the glass entrance door was Lucas York, cupping his hands against the pane and straining to see through the glare.

  Breathing the word, “Shit,” she let go of the curtain, her mind racing for how she might get away with pretending she wasn’t here. She had parked out back, but he could easily stalk around the corner, cut through the alley, and discover her vehicle. Again she peered through the curtain and spied him planting his fists on his hips and examining the awning overhead. He checked his wristwatch, yanking his thick winter coat up his forearm, and then gave the glass door another firm pound.

  “Go away,” she said under her breath.

  Behind her the Crock Pot began bubbling over and she rushed to it, lowered the burner and fanned the rising steam.

  When she had seen Lucas York stepping into her sister’s living room last night, Holly hadn’t believed her eyes. Her heart had begun galloping, which kicked up the drug in her veins. The unexpected surge had made her vision acute, locking on the man from her past, while the room distorted, shifting all around him, around her with unnerving surrealism. She had clenched her teeth in hopes he wouldn’t recognize her. The shock that her long-ago one night stand would be investigating her sister’s murder had pitched her into a state of white-hot dread.

  The closeness they had shared, the intimacy—not just of their nude bodies merging in a dingy motel room, but also their undeniable connection, the way in which they had related to one another—had felt like destiny.

  She had spent years trying to forget.

  But as soon as Holly had met his gaze in her sister’s house, she saw the faintest ripple of recognition behind his blue eyes. Not only had he remembered. The glint in his eyes told her that he had never forgotten.

  As Lucas had slept the morning after their tryst, she had snuck out and doing so—having been given his deepest, darkest secret—had been akin to theft. She had known it then and it had been confirmed in the house last night. She had taken something from him and he wanted it back.

  Pinching her eyes shut and gritting her teeth in preparation, she drew the curtain aside for the third time and said a silent prayer that this dance wouldn’t continue.

  He wasn’t there.

  She let out a shuttering breath of relief and started for the Crock Pot, but startled at the sound of someone pounding on the back door.

  Tucker called out, “Hello?” And Holly shushed him, while Lucas shouted his response.

  “It’s Detective York. Lucas.” He knocked, gently this time, knuckles softly rapping. “Holly, are you in there?”

  Quickly, she scooped Tucker off the ground. The effort came with a groan, but she helped him to straddle her hip. If she could play the burdened aunt, the mourning sister, the fledgling jeweler wallowing at rock bottom, maybe she wouldn’t have to answer any of his questions.

  “Hang on,” she shouted, not that she needed much time. She shuffled to the door and made slow work of turning the deadbolt.

  When she yanked the door inward, a sharp flurry of snow fluttered over him, accumulation from the storm gutter no doubt. He let out a breathy laugh, scraped the woolen hat off his head, and slapped it free of snow.

  “Do you have a few minutes?”

  She frowned, debating, and then indicated she might. Hovering in the doorway, she was unsure where to look, though certain staring at him wouldn’t be her best move.

  When she didn’t invite him inside, he added, “I don’t want the little guy catching cold.”

  Holly noticed his eyes flaring at the sight of Tucker’s dust-stained fingers. “I’ve got him for a few days,” she said, finally widening the door for him.

  “Nice of you,” he said casually as he had a look around the studio, gradually edging around the worktable. “Benjamin hasn’t returned our calls.” His eyes sprung from the spool of chain on the table and locked with hers. “But you talked to him?”

  “What?”

  “You said you’ve got Tucker for a few days, so Benjamin told you to take him?”

  “No,” she said qu
ickly. “A few days is what I figure. I haven’t talked to him. Is that what you wanted to ask me about?”

  He frowned and resumed his survey of the studio. “Reminds me of my uncle’s garage.” Lucas worked his woolen hat into his coat pocket, but it didn’t want to fit. “He’s a car guy. Cars and motorcycles.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say so she smirked with an intentionally awkward air in hopes it would hurry him along.

  He sniffed then sniffed again. “Smells like pickles.”

  “That’s the pickler,” she supplied, indicating the simmering Crock Pot. When he narrowed his eyes at the burner, confusedly, she explained, “After I solder metal, the surface is usually marred with firescale.” She was deliberately using terms he wouldn’t understand so that he would learn his lesson. “I like Sparex, but any alum will do.”

  “Ah,” he said, keen to her ploy. “Just like making pickles.”

  “Hence the name...” She shot him an unfriendly smile.

  Weathering the chill rolling off of her, he said, “You must have been pretty surprised to see me at the house.”

  “I was.”

  Tucker was getting heavy so she used the excuse to break eye contact, setting him down, taking his little hand, and walking him over to the space heater where he instinctively plopped on his butt and began wrestling his shoes off.

  “I was shocked to see you,” he said, his tone arching honestly. “I knew you lived here and everything. I only started at the police department a month back and you crossed my mind.” He let that hang then stuffed in a qualifier. “I didn’t know a soul in Center Harbor, which is why-”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t expect to see you, certainly not under these circumstances.”

  It occurred to her that he might not have come to her studio because of the investigation and she wasn’t sure if that made her feel less uneasy or more.

  “Considering I’m working this case,” he went on, trying to sound reasonable, which alerted her to the possibility that what he was about to say might not be. “I thought, maybe, well, that I ought to come down here and assure you I won’t let the past cloud my judgment.”

  She furrowed her brow. “How could it?”

  “I just wanted to set your mind at ease.”

  Holding his gaze, she couldn’t keep up a standoffish act. He seemed like a genuine guy who was staving off a bout of guilt over their long-ago night together and she didn’t want him suffering on her account.

  “I wasn’t worried about it,” she told him with an affirmative nod.

  “I’m glad.”

  He took a moment to fish around the front pocket of his slacks and when she saw a thin, silver chain coming out, she immediately recognized the necklace. She rushed to him and he offered it with a smirk. She hadn’t seen it in years—the cable link chain, the silver heart pendant, the jagged opal at its center. She turned it over in her hands and it wasn’t until she pinched the clasp open and fastened it behind her neck, the chain spilling over shoulders, the pendant tapping her collarbone, that she realized how close they were standing.

  Taking a few steps back, she thanked him and Tucker piped up about being hungry.

  “Can I have a pickle?” he asked when he had her attention.

  “There are no pickles, Tuck.”

  He screwed his face up, her statement clashing so badly with the scent in the air that he couldn’t accept it.

  “We’ll get lunch in a bit,” she told him.

  His response was a groan.

  “So I wanted to ask you about something,” said Lucas, stealing her focus from Tucker. “We ran a ten panel on Rose.”

  She stilled and her breathing turned shallow, knowing exactly which drugs a ten panel screened.

  “We’re just looking for leads at this point,” he explained. “Anything that might start us off in the right direction.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to do an autopsy?”

  “An autopsy’s different. Rose got arrested some years back-”

  “Eight,” she said, sharply correcting him. “It was eight, a lifetime ago.”

  “And it was drug related,” he pointed out.

  “It was a spec of cocaine in her purse. It was nothing. She was twenty-five, a kid. It was a mistake.”

  “I get that you feel the need to defend her, but the ten panel tested positive for benzos.”

  Holly kept her mouth shut.

  “Now,” he went on. “We’re still working on tracking down Benjamin and I know you haven’t seen much of your sister in the past few years, but if you could tell me anything at all about her dealer or the people she might have-”

  “I don’t know about any of that.”

  “She had a cocaine...” Holly could tell he was hunting for a word other than problem. “She was arrested for cocaine, as you said. And we found cocaine in her system.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “Look, I’ll level with you. Nine times out of ten, the husband did it. Benjamin didn’t come home last night, we haven’t been able to get in touch with him. He’s looking pretty good for this. But I want to come at this from every angle in case he didn’t do it. So I’m not waiting.” He waited for a response. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  It amazed her how easily he could flip from the softy who had brought her Rose’s necklace to a hard-boiled cop with an almost inhuman ability to pressure her, but she honestly didn’t know the finer details of Rose’s drug addiction. And that’s what she told him, folding her arms, twisting her mouth to the side, and biting the inside of her cheek.

  He stared at her. The space heater whirred on the floor. The Crock Pot bubbled on the workbench. Tucker was rattling a tail of chain across the cement. She felt a sharp burst of tinnitus flare in her right ear and she knew it would ease off if only he wasn’t studying her.

  Lucas extracted his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and found his business card, which he set on the worktable. “If you think of anything. My cell is on there as well.” When she didn’t acknowledge his suggestion other than scrape her teeth over her lower lip, he walked to the door, mentioning, “It looks like Benjamin’s at the Wythe Resort, go figure.” After yanking the door open and stepping out into the chilly afternoon, he added, “You didn’t think to mention his parents own a hotel?”

  “I don’t know Benjamin at all. We really aren’t close and last I heard he wasn’t speaking with them.” She hated that she sounded like she was pleading. “I didn’t think he’d go there.”

  He scrutinized her for a beat.

  “There not very nice people,” she went on as if for his benefit and not to prevent him from setting foot into Room 112. “I doubt he’s there. You would only be wasting your time.”

  “Is that so?”

  She shrugged. “Or not.”

  His tone softened as he said, “Nice seeing you,” and strode off through the slush.

  When she closed the door, the image of Benjamin swarmed her—his flexing face as he’d screamed, the vein in his neck throbbing, the rage and anguish competing behind his eyes—she had never seen him like that. She had never stood over another human being, angling down, turning wild, barreling head first into something she knew she would regret.

  But she didn’t regret it.

  All she needed was to forget.

  She was going to need a hell of a lot more cocaine.

  Chapter Five

  Settling behind the steering wheel of his Ford Focus, Lucas angled the rearview mirror so that Shackles reflected on the glass. As he studied the storefront, straining to see past the glare of sunlight bouncing off the windows for the woman inside, he blindly fit the key into the ignition and turned the engine. A harsh blast of icy air poured through the vents and the muffler began rattling. Slapping the grates closed and adjusting the dial in the interim that it would take his car to warm—idling for five-minutes was standard—Lucas considered Holly’s responses, the restra
int she had used, her tight-lipped demeanor, the way her eyes had shifted uncomfortably before each answer. She had seemed more invested in guarding the truth than helping him find it.

  She had also been high.

  The maroon awning above the entrance cracked taut in the wind then floated into place.

  He was familiar with the signs—the dilated pupils, the fidgeting she probably hadn’t realized, her barbed temperament, all painting a distinct portrait he was familiar with thanks to years on the job. He had to hand it to her, though. She had curbed the impulse to ramble aimlessly and had navigated his questions with an impressive degree of self-control, not once swerving into a frenzy of deflecting explanations.

  Exhaust seeped into the car, stinging his brain and nudging him to get going. He wedged his fingers between the vent sliders, checking for heat, and cranked the temperature dial to High. After a lingering glance at Shackles in the rearview, he repositioned the mirror, put his car in gear, and eased into the street where traffic was flowing at a steady pace.

  As he drove, he pondered Holly’s motive for attempting to convince him not to bother with the Wythe Resort.

  He had assumed giving her the necklace would earn him full disclosure or at the very least an indication from her that she was picking up what he was putting down—that he had bent a little rule for her, that to him following police procedure wasn’t as interesting as sneaking a favor, that if she wanted he could position her above the law. His gesture had screamed, I can make this right if you tell me everything, but it hadn’t even reached her ears. Obviously, he had handed the necklace over too soon.

  Between her cocaine high—whether a habit or innocent experimentation, he had yet to figure out—her muted responses, and her sense of urgency that he not waste his time at the hotel, Lucas couldn’t brush over the possibility she might have been covering up Rose’s murder, though he would like to think it was for no greater reason than protecting Benjamin Wythe. Either way, she was clearly hiding something.