Tar Heart (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 3)

by Mira Gibson

  “Um,” she mumbled to fill the silence as she wracked her brain. She had to say something, be decisive, answer confidently, but she couldn’t lift out of the rising panic that was petrifying her, her mind going blank. “Not since Rose,” she said finally and added, “Two years or so?” She couldn’t tell if they were disappointed or suspicious. Cody’s expression was a stiff wince and Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “Were you able to watch the security footage?”

  Flicking his eyes at his partner before returning his gaze to her, Cody said, “I don’t think we’re dealing with a crime of passion here or anything in the ballpark of impulsive.”

  She felt the gravity of his statement, but hadn’t a clue as to what it meant and her expression must have alluded as much, because Lucas explained, “There’s about an hour missing from all the footage.”

  There came a knock and Cody apologized, jumping up and cracking the door. He spoke softly behind her, while Lucas kept his eyes on her. Restlessly, she began picking at a hangnail, but felt his gaze lower to the pendant hanging just beneath her clavicle.

  Quietly, he asked, “How’s Tucker taking all of this?”

  Dumbfounded that he would care and also stunned at herself—it hadn’t even occurred to her to explain to Tucker what had happened to his mother—Holly realized she had stopped breathing. She also realized Rose and Benjamin had appointed her legal guardian of her nephew should both of them ever die, a fact Benjamin had brushed over less than a week ago during one of their argumentative phone calls.

  “Holly?”

  “Yeah? Sorry, I...”

  Behind her, Cody slipped through the doorway and into the hall, drawing Lucas’s attention, and she used the opportunity to pull herself together.

  “I’m not sure he’s old enough to understand any of this,” she stated in a controlled tone. “Legally, I’m Tucker’s guardian now so I probably have a ton of paperwork I should get to.”

  Leaning forward, Lucas locked eyes with her then diverted his gaze only when fishing his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. As he pulled his hand out again, Holly saw a bullet between his thumb and index finger and once again the wind was knocked right out of her. “Do you recognize this?”

  She swallowed, making certain her throat would be clear. “It’s a bullet.”

  Scrambling, but only in her mind, she tried to recall how many bullets she had collected off the floor of Benjamin’s hotel room. She hadn’t counted, but must have left one behind.

  “It’s a .32 caliber,” he stated, rolling the short bullet between his fingers. “I found it in Room 112 at the resort.”

  “Oh?” she offered after he had set his eyes on her.

  “It wasn’t the caliber that killed Benjamin. He was shot in the head with a .48 same as your sister.”

  Bravely, she managed to ask, “Why are you telling me this?”

  He tucked the bullet into his inner pocket, glancing past her to intuit whether they were about to be interrupted. “It’s a highly unusual caliber.”

  “I don’t know anything about calibers or bullets and I don’t know why you’re telling me any of this.”

  “You don’t?” he challenged, lacing his fingers as he leaned in even further.

  He was trying to rattle her and it was working, though she prayed it didn’t show.

  “You own a gun, several, I thought.” When she said nothing, focusing on her breathing and willing the air to do more than flow thinly up and down her throat, he mentioned, “The list is pretty long and it includes a revolver of the same caliber as that bullet.” After a beat, he asked, “When were you there?”

  Inside, Holly was screaming at herself to tell him about the teenager who had been there, the girl who Benjamin was having an affair with, the last person who had seen him alive. But there would be no way to convince him that the young woman was a worthy suspect without also placing herself in Benjamin’s hotel room that night. And she refused to admit as much.

  “Holly,” he said quietly. “Were you there that night?”

  Whispering, because it was all the strength she had, she said, “You can’t possibly think I was there.”

  He held her gaze, saying, “I do think you were there, which is why Cody doesn’t know about the bullet.”

  His disclosure blindsided her. It was almost too much to process. Lucas thought she had killed her brother-in-law and because of it he was withholding evidence from his partner, from his precinct?

  Words wouldn’t come, not for a long moment, and when they did, she didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice. “I didn’t kill Benjamin and I definitely didn’t kill my sister.”

  “Then tell me what happened,” he prodded.

  “I can’t. I don’t know what happened.” She suddenly felt like her eyes weren’t working. She squinted, but her gaze wouldn’t settle. Rubbing her forehead, she begged herself to keep it together long enough to get out of this room, but she knew she was coming undone. “Why would you cover that up?” she whispered.

  “Same reason I brought you the necklace. History, or something like that.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Benjamin wasn’t killed with a .32,” he repeated.

  “But you think I did it?”

  “I think you need help. I think you were high the night Rose was killed and I think you were hovering at the same altitude when I stopped by your studio the other day.”

  She groaned, though softly, and couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “I think you’re neck deep in something you’re not going to be able to handle, not while caring for a four-year old.”

  She tried to get mad, but it wouldn’t come. He wasn’t threatening her with all this. He was looking out for her, yet she couldn’t wrap her head around his reason.

  “I can’t help if I don’t know everything you know.”

  Ordering herself to maintain her story, that she hadn’t been in Benjamin’s room that night, she drew in a deep breath, but just as she was about to assert as much, Cody returned, whipping the door open and closing it fast and firm before getting situated beside his partner.

  “Again, sorry about that,” he offered easily, as Lucas cocked his head interested to know what had transpired out in the hallway. In response, Cody brushed over it, saying, “Paperwork,” then opened the manila folder to a form and pressed his pen against the first blank field. “I’m going to apologize in advance for these questions. I hope they don’t rub you the wrong way.”

  Like your partner? She thought, feigning a smirk of agreement that felt strained.

  “The night Rose died,” he began, avoiding the words killed and murdered, which she had already gotten used to, “when did she call you?”

  “Around one,” she stated.

  “Do you happen to have the time stamp on your cell?” he asked as if he’d just thought of it.

  Holly riffled through her coat pocket for her phone and after unlocking the screen, opened the call log and showed him. “Right there,” she said, pointing to Rose’s name and number.

  Cody mumbled, “One twelve,” as he jotted down the time on his form.

  Glancing at her cell, she offered, “It was a four minute call.”

  “Thank you,” he said, noting the duration. “And where were you when she called?”

  The lie flew out of her mouth faster than she could stop it, answering “McCoy’s.”

  “Great bar,” Cody commented, his mouth curling with a crooked smile as though a fond memory was taking hold.

  Why had she lied? So she could place herself in a public setting, have an ironclad alibi? They could easily check into it and surely would. She felt her eyes widening at her error so she made herself blink, thankful only that both of them were looking at the form as Cody filled in her answer.

  “About when did you get to McCoy’s?” he asked, trilling his pen between his fingers.

  She was loath to elaborate, but decided on a time when McCoy’s would’ve been crowded. “Eleven. It was supposed to be a
nightcap.”

  “No judgment,” he said, shooting her an understanding smile.

  Lucas on the other hand was probing her with his eyes.

  “And when you left your sister’s after we spoke with you, where did you go?”

  Though she didn’t look at him, she sensed Lucas stiffening in his chair. “Ah, well, I had Tucker so I went home.”

  As Cody made his note, Tucker surged to the forefront of her mind. The receptionist was watching him. What if she asked him about last night? Would Tucker remember it? Would he tell her about the drive to the resort, how Holly had brought him into Benjamin’s room? About the fact that Holly had left him in the car afterwards?

  She tried not to panic, but it was dawning on her what these questions amounted to and the realization brought on terrible paranoia. Had they mastered the least recognizable good cop - bad cop routine? Lucas had attempted to level with her as though he were on her side and would get her out of this and now Cody was asking for her timeline and whereabouts last night, which couldn’t possibly be in the ballpark of anything a detective would angle to know if they believed they were speaking with an innocent person. And yet there was something off about Lucas. She sensed it. His interest in helping her seemed to run deep and personal. And Cody’s good-natured remarks about McCoy’s and his thoroughly apologetic attitude was just that—harmless, or seemingly so.

  “Okay,” said Cody, flipping the folder shut and concluding the interview with a smile. “We’re good.”

  She got to her feet only after they did.

  Cody held the door open for her, but instead of passing through, she asked, “Are you guys still at my sister’s house?” Before they could answer, she explained, “I have Tucker now and I’d rather not uproot him.”

  Lucas clarified for Cody’s benefit. “Holly has custody.”

  “For the next week or so at least I was thinking it’d be easier to move my stuff into the house rather than take Tucker out of his home?”

  “We did everything we could there,” said Cody, encouragingly. “So by all means. We’ll give you a ring if we need to get back in.”

  She smirked nervously and stepped into the hallway, the detectives trailing after her. As she rounded into the bullpen, Cody sidled her.

  “So you’ve got the little guy now.”

  “I do,” she said, feeling the pressure of the interview dissipate now that she was walking towards the exit.

  “If you ever need a night off or just some help around the house with him, my girlfriend's sister is quite the babysitter. I could give you her number.”

  It was the best news she’d had all morning. She accepted eagerly and when he jotted a cell number on the back of his business card and handed it to her, the smile on her face was one of genuine relief.

  “Her name is Mary,” he added, though he had clearly printed it above the number. “And she’s a hell of a cook.”

  Chapter Eight

  It was one in the afternoon by the time Holly thrust her shoulder against the front door of her sister’s house, having scraped the key into the lock, her hand a frozen claw, fingers numb. Flexing her cheeks to help thaw her face and holding Tucker’s hand, she helped him into the foyer where he plopped on his butt and began wrestling his boot off in a wobbly effort to free his foot.

  She eased the door closed behind her so the heat wouldn’t escape and blew on her hands. Her ring and pinky fingers on her left hand were sallow, but the rest were flushed and tingling, circulation having failed her in both directions.

  Reasoning not to get too comfortable, she still had to load in her duffel bag and the case of jewelry supplies she had grabbed quickly from the studio—abandoning her deadlines would be bad for business and she had already been struggling to make rent—she wriggled Tucker’s boot off, placed it with the other under the entryway table, and wasted no time parking her nephew in front of the TV.

  The remote control was resting on the coffee table, but it wasn’t until she pressed the power button that she remembered the hollow compartment where Rose had often swapped batteries for drugs. Tossing the useless device onto the couch where of course it bounced, landing on the rug and interesting Tucker, she grumbled then pressed the power button on the entertainment set and began manually flipping through the channels until Dora the Explorer filled the screen.

  “You like this show?”

  Tucker lifted his eyes from the remote’s rewind button, which he had been scratching and became instantly mesmerized by the plucky cartoon girl and her frenetic monkey sidekick as they investigated a lone flower sprouting up in a desert.

  Holly adjusted the volume and crouched beside him, unzipping his coat, which she hung in the foyer closet as soon as she padded back.

  Rose’s winter hat on the shelf caught her eye. The wool cloche, gray and bell-shaped with a plume of feathers springing from its bow, was situated between two stacks of shoeboxes. Taking it down and glimpsing her own coat, Rose’s singsong criticism filled her thoughts—You can’t wear a cloche with a parka, silly.

  Holly fit the hat squarely on her head and began rummaging through a few boxes, the scent of potpourri sweetening the air as she opened each one. She found a pair of slim, leather gloves and slipped them on only after returning the boxes.

  Outside, she squinted through the glare—sunlight bouncing off the snowy driveway, blindingly bright—as she stomped over drift towards her Saab.

  A sheet of ice slid off the rear windshield when she lifted the hatchback. She slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and grabbed her jewelry case by the handle.

  She didn’t bother locking her car after slamming the trunk, but simply started for the house, vaguely unnerved.

  As she rounded through the foyer, heading towards the stairs, she glimpsed Tucker rocking on the floor—fists balling the knees of his corduroys, legs jutting in a fight for balance, his bare feet touching the carpet before he pitched himself backwards, seeing how fast he could get his head to tap down, all the while engrossed in the plot of his show.

  Perhaps feeling eyes on him, he glanced at Holly and grinned as if impressed with his game. “Mom, can you do this?”

  “Not as well as you, I’m sure,” she said, smiling through the sting of his confusion.

  Did she really look exactly like her sister?

  The answer came when she reached the top of the stairs, stepping onto the landing where a silver-framed mirror reflected Rose’s face—fawn-brown eyes arching at the outer corners and rimmed with translucent lashes, the Grecian nose, broad at the bridge yet pulling downward into a dainty snub, lips as narrow as they were full. The face of Lady Liberty they had decided as little girls, combing through their father’s encyclopedia, determined to see their future in its pages.

  Wearing Rose’s hat only accentuated their likeness and though her sister had dyed her rosy-blonde hair auburn to mask the strawberry hue, it hadn’t distracted from the similarities—the light smattering of freckles across their noses, the glint of kept secrets behind their eyes.

  How’s Tucker taking all of this?

  He didn’t even know his mother was gone.

  Holly pulled off her sister’s hat and felt her hair spark, levitating with static, but she smoothed her palm over her head, grounding the charge, as she trekked down the hallway and into the master bedroom.

  It was the same mess it had been before the police had arrived, which meant they hadn’t turned the place upside down and searched as intrusively as she would’ve thought.

  Avoiding the bunched comforter spilling over the edge of the bed at the disheveled end, she set down her duffle bag and the jewelry case next to it, tossed the hat, and pulled her revolver from where it was tucked at the small of her back. The drawer on the nightstand would do, but before she deposited it there, she slapped the cylinder free and confirmed all six rounds were present as they had been that morning when she'd loaded the weapon, then clicked it into place, her eyes widening at the thought she had left a bullet behind.<
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  She couldn’t believe what Lucas had done, risked his standing to cover up the possibility that she had been there. His reason for doing so was as disturbing as it was flattering, and both made her skin prick with dread.

  Why had she lied about McCoy’s?

  Shrugging out of her winter coat and sitting on the edge of the bed as she unzipped the breast pocket, Holly tried not to think about Rose. But when she extracted a plastic bag of cocaine from her coat, it seemed there was nothing else in the world on her mind. She stared at it in her gloved hand.

  What was this life she was suddenly living?

  She threw the baggie in the drawer with her gun, pushed it closed, and hoped Tucker wasn’t inquisitive enough to discover either.

  Next she found her cell phone and the business card Cody had given her, and began dialing Mary Cole’s number. While pulling her gloves off with her teeth, cell clamped in the crook of her shoulder, she realized the girl was probably in school at this hour, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to leave a message.

  “Hello?” she asked when the line opened up to hushed whispering in the background.

  The girl’s voice was feathery. “Who is this?”

  “Hi, your step-dad gave me your-”

  “Cody? Yeah, he’s not my step-dad. Is this Holly Danes?”

  It sounded like she was slapping at a friend to be quiet, yet Holly didn’t hear the telltale sound effects of kids in a hallway between classes. She detected lazy jazz playing on the other end.

  “It is,” she said quickly. “I heard you’re a qualified babysitter? I’m looking for someone to watch my nephew.”

  “Now?” she sounded alarmed.

  “No, in general.”

  “What’s the pay?”

  Holly hadn’t even thought about it. “Ah, well, he’s four. What would you charge?”

  “Like...” she trailed off and Holly imagined the girl calculating the highest possible figure she could get away with. “Maybe ten an hour?”