“Yes, sir.”
Thirty seconds later, another call came in. A private number. Grit figured it was Charlie Neal and answered.
“I don’t have much time,” Charlie said without preamble. “I’ll go fast. Don’t interrupt. I talked to my sister. Her ex-boyfriend likes to immerse himself in research, whether it’s for a part or a screenplay he’s working on. He’s also good at disguising himself, going into character. I’m looking at all the parts he’s played, and my sister’s trying to remember what his screenplays are about. Maybe there’s something there. She doesn’t remember if they were ever at any events with Sean Cameron or Nick Martini.”
“What about Jasper Vanderhorn?”
“I asked her about him back in November when his name first surfaced in my investigation—the investigation. She’d read about the fire. That’s it. I’m doing all the cross-referencing I can.”
“Just on the internet, right? Nothing top secret.”
“I can’t access top secret sites. Well, I probably could, but—”
“Don’t.”
“Right. I won’t. How’s Beverly Hills?”
“Beverly Hills is fine,” Grit said. “This morning was difficult.”
He watched Hannah pop out of the pool and adjust her swimsuit, her skin still pale after months of winter in Vermont. She smiled at Sean. She wasn’t demonstrative but she wasn’t shy, either, about being totally in love. They both sat at a table by Beth’s lounge chair.
“My sister met Portia once,” Charlie said. “She told the Secret Service. It’s sad, what happened to her. I wish I could have figured this out before she died. I hope I can before anyone else dies.”
“Charlie, it’s not your job to figure out anything. If someone’s killing people, that’s the person responsible for any deaths. No one else.”
“What about you?”
“I went out to where Jasper Vanderhorn died.”
“What’s it like?”
“The land’s being reborn.”
Charlie was silent a moment. “Don’t think because I’m smart that I have no feelings.”
“I don’t think that. I think you want to matter, and I think you’re afraid this firebug is coming after your family.”
“What if he’s a Secret Service agent?”
Grit gripped the phone tighter. “Charlie.”
“I can speculate all I want. It’s not Robert Feehan, unless he’s operating under an alias.”
“How do you know about Feehan?”
Charlie didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s on the run but he’s innocent. He didn’t kill Derek Cutshaw.”
“Charlie.”
“Internet. That’s how I found out.”
“I can’t stop you from theorizing, but don’t do more than that.”
“I’m not. How could I? The Secret Service is all over me. You’d think I was vice president, not my dad. I ran for class president in ninth grade. You know how many votes I got?”
Grit wanted to throw his phone in the pool. “No, Charlie, how many?”
“Two. My cousin Conor and me. Nobody likes me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Two votes, Grit. Two. That’s why.”
“What would happen if you ran now?”
“I doubt even Conor would vote for me.”
“That’s because you’ve gotten him in trouble with the Secret Service.”
“And the school,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, just because your classmates didn’t want you as their president doesn’t mean they don’t like you.”
“Yeah, whatever. Think about it, Grit. Portia Martinez was murdered in Beverly Hills probably the day before Derek Cutshaw was murdered in Vermont.”
“Maybe Robert Feehan is the firebug, using an alias.”
“I can’t find any connection between him and Marissa,” Charlie said, loosening up on using names. “Trent isn’t a bad guy. He’s just a self-absorbed prick.”
“Language.”
“Jackass? Son of a bitch? Lout?”
Grit gave up. “Any idea where Trent could be now?”
“No. On your end?”
“No. Is he immersing himself in Vermont for some screenplay or acting role? Never mind. I’m starting to think like you. If you make any connections using that 180 IQ of yours, call me. Don’t do anything else. Got that?”
“Got it. There’s something here, isn’t there?”
“I don’t know. I just know I found a dead woman today.”
“Marissa…Grit, she’d fall for you if she got to know you.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I’m serious,” Charlie said.
“Hell, so am I. Hang in there, kid. You can’t have everything. You have to live in the world as it is, not as you want it to be.”
“Are we talking about your leg?”
Grit gripped the phone. “No, we’re talking about you.”
“Oh.” Charlie seemed oblivious. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
He was gone. Grit sighed. In some ways, Charlie Neal was thirty. In other ways, he was twelve. Rarely was he a regular sixteen-year-old. He had a good family, tight-knit and strong, but they were in the limelight, which was difficult enough without adding a genius IQ and four older sisters to the mix. Marissa was attractive and intelligent, but she wasn’t getting involved with a disabled SEAL from the Florida Panhandle.
Grit looked over at Beth Harper, still under her towels. “Getting back in the pool?”
“Not right away.”
“Have you talked to Special Agent Harper?”
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me what she said?”
Beth pulled the towels off her upper body and her long, strong legs. “She said you’re trouble.”
“Ah.”
“I came out here to relax. Everything was supposed to be over. Then you show up.”
“That woman was dead before my flight was even in the air.”
“But we found her, not the neighbors, not her family, not her friends.”
“Just as well, don’t you think? Someone had to find her, and we’ve both seen dead bodies before. You’re just out of your element and you’re here to swim and buy shoes.”
“I’m not buying shoes.” She sighed at the slowly darkening sky. “I’m taking my emotions out on you. I’m scared, Grit. If one of these killers slipped through the cracks or some other killer’s attracted to Black Falls because of Lowell Whittaker and what he’s done…”
“Don’t do that to yourself. We have to deal with the facts as they are.”
She shivered as a breeze hit her wet swimsuit. Grit figured she thought of him as a brother. He wasn’t sure he liked that. It was one thing to think of her as a sister, another for her not to even consider that he might be checking her out.
It was Thorne, Grit decided. Beth was preoccupied with their romantic issues, on top of the murder scene they’d walked into and the goings-on in her hometown.
“Have you always been a one-thing-at-a-time, let’s-not-jump-ahead type?” she asked. “Or did your injury force you to take things a day at a time?”
“I move forward. I don’t dwell on what I can’t control. It gets me nowhere. You’re the same, or you couldn’t do the work you do.”
“I’m resentful because I don’t want any more violence,” Beth said.
“Trooper Thorne resentful, too?”
“I wouldn’t know. Are you trying to counsel me, Grit? Because you don’t have to. I’m fine. If Scott wants to check in with me, he knows how to reach me.”
“Think you’ll quit as a paramedic?”
“And do what?”
“Help Myrtle Smith open a dinner service at the café.”
Beth’s laughter seemed to catch her by surprise as much as it did Grit. “We’d kill each other within two weeks,” she said. “Myrtle’s not staying in Black Falls no matter what she’s telling herself right now, and I’m not cut out to run a restaurant. I like
the mix of what I do at the café and as a medic. I often know the people I respond to, but I’m not burned out.”
“If you’d been in Black Falls, you could have ended up checking out Derek Cutshaw.”
“Possibly. Anyway, this isn’t about me.” She directed her attention to Sean at the table next to her. “Do you trust Nick Martini with your sister?”
“Nick’s solid.”
“Rose has—”
“Rose is solid, too,” Sean said. “Whatever they have to work out between them is none of my business.”
“Ha,” Beth said.
“Do you think Martini told you the whole story about why he picked now to go to Vermont?” Grit asked, not for the first time.
Sean leaned back, his gaze on the clear, heated water of his pool. “There was no precipitating incident that I knew of, not a recent one, anyway.”
“It’s Jasper Vanderhorn, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lot of things.” Sean got up abruptly. “Let’s have dinner and give what happened today a chance to simmer.”
Hannah paced at the side of the pool. She was reserved but visibly shaken by recent events. Beth was surly, but their emotions felt the same. Grit wished he hadn’t come to see them. He had to be on Coronado tomorrow morning. He could leave now, but Sean had offered him the small guest room for the night. He probably wanted Grit and Beth both to clear out so that he and Hannah could have time together.
But they would, Grit thought. They’d have a lifetime together.
“I’m not hungry,” Beth said. “I’m going for another swim.”
Sean grimaced but made no comment. Grit saw a little of Elijah in him. From what he’d observed over the past few months, Rose was the same—which boded well for her. The Camerons were pure granite.
But they’d bleed if cut, Grit thought. Everyone did.
Beth swam until she thought she’d drown if she took another stroke, then bundled up in a dry towel and headed for a long, hot shower in her private bathroom.
She wanted to be back in Vermont, cleaning the café with her friends on a dark, cold winter night. She’d checked the weather. It was snowing in Black Falls.
“Damn you, Scott,” she muttered, slipping into a soft, fluffy robe and pacing in her spacious room. “Why don’t you call?”
She finally dialed Jo’s cell phone. “There’s no emergency,” Beth said as her sister picked up.
“Good. I can’t talk right now,” Jo said. “Give me an hour, okay?”
Beth disconnected, feeling agitated, ready to put on a dry swimsuit and go back outside for more laps. The temperature was dropping, but she didn’t care. She just couldn’t stand being still, obsessing, waiting.
She hit Scott’s number on her cell phone but didn’t let it dial. Where would he be now? What would he be doing? What did he know about Portia Martinez?
She could call her father, the Black Falls retired police chief. The Harpers were solid, predictable types. Wasn’t that what Scott wanted?
It was what he was. Was it what she wanted?
Finally she let Scott’s number ring. She realized her hand was shaking and her eyes were filling up with tears. There’d go her reputation with Grit Taylor as a rock-ribbed New Englander, an experienced paramedic who’d seen it all.
The call went right to Scott’s voice mail.
Beth didn’t leave a message.
Eighteen
Black Falls, Vermont
Rose ducked into the woods on the edge of the meadow behind the lodge, moving well on her snowshoes, avoiding the cross-country ski trails. Ranger, accustomed to searching out ahead of her, was up by a large boulder. He, too, steered clear of the groomed tracks.
Nick was a few yards behind her. He was smooth and strong on snowshoes he’d borrowed from A.J. Several inches of snow had fallen late last night and into the morning. The sky was beginning to clear, a few streaks of blue breaking through the white, the late-morning sun beaming through in a thin ray of light. There’d been a brief alert overnight for a pair of hikers lost on state land, but they’d turned up unharmed.
Ranger paused just past the boulder, his golden coat standing out against the white landscape. Rose caught up with him, then looped behind a hemlock, its branches laden with snow, onto a shortcut to the sugar shack.
Nick eased in next to her. She smiled at him. “It’s a beautiful day. I’d love to head down to the lake after we’re done at the sugar shack. The trail’s steep. It’s a little tricky even on snowshoes.”
“You can manage?” he asked her.
“Of course, but I’ve done the trail practically since I could walk.”
“No worries, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
She grinned. “All right, we’ll do it.”
Rose took the lead again in the soft, undisturbed snow. She had strapped her ready pack to her back, standard whenever she was out in the woods. If either of them fell, she had basic supplies for repairs and first aid, as well as food and water.
Last night after dinner, Nick had gone straight up to his room at the lodge. Rose had stopped in the bar for a drink with a few friends. She hadn’t wanted to go to her room too early. She’d needed time to put their kiss out of her mind, to cool her reaction to him and to convince herself they’d had to get that out of their system and it wouldn’t happen again.
Nick hadn’t surfaced again until after she’d had breakfast and met with Lauren to work on winter fest. Rose had struggled to focus. She’d slept badly, preoccupied with Nick and whether Derek’s death and Robert’s whereabouts could be connected to the murder of the woman in Beverly Hills.
She glanced back at him gliding through the snow and felt the sparks between them all over again. Nothing had cooled. He was strong, athletic and very sexy. She could still feel his kiss and her response to him.
Utter madness, and she wasn’t the mad type.
Everything about Nick Martin was wrong for her.
The path curved along the edge of a finger ridge. Rose noticed prints in the snow a few yards down through the trees. Boots, she decided. Not skis or snowshoes. Given the fresh snow, the prints had to be relatively recent.
Ranger paused, his head in the air. He’d obviously picked up a scent and looked back at her, expectantly. She motioned for him to stay.
Nick came up beside her. She pointed out the tracks. “For all we know,” she said, “they’re from a guest on the trail of an owl.”
“Stay close to me.”
He adjusted his ski poles and pushed through the snow. Ranger stayed at Rose’s side on her command. This wasn’t a search, at least not yet. Nick moved deliberately, his strides controlled, neither aggressive nor tentative as the prints led into the woods toward the lake. The ground was uneven under the deep snow, the going difficult, requiring concentration and skill.
Finally they picked up a trail with enough switchbacks to keep the trek from getting too steep. Ranger grew excited, agitated and barked, looking up at Rose, eager for the command to track. “Ranger, heel,” she reminded him.
Rose spotted an orange dome tent, designed for winter conditions, pitched on a level spot amid white pines, just above a stream encased in snow and thick, opaque white ice.
A black scarf lay in the trampled snow in front of the tent.
Nick put a hand on her hip. “Hold on,” he said.
She noticed now. The air smelled of gasoline.
A small canister of what appeared to be Coleman fuel was turned over, its contents spilled out into the snow.
Nick dropped his hand from Rose’s side and checked the tent, its flaps up, its opening unzipped. He peered inside, then looked at Rose as she eased her pack off her shoulders. “Is anyone in there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “It’s empty.”
“It’s Robert Feehan’s tent, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a radio? I imagine there’s no cell service out here.”
She nodded and dug her handheld radio out of
her pack. She contacted the lodge and alerted A.J. to the presence of the campsite and described its location.
“You’re with Nick?” her brother asked.
“Yes. It’s just the two of us. No one else is here.”
“All right. I’ll get there as soon as I can—”
“No, A.J., you need to stay there. You know you do. Call the police. I’ll radio you the second I know more.” Even as she spoke, the smell of smoke mixed with the gas in the still, cold air. “A.J.—” She caught her breath. “A.J., there’s a fire.”
Nick pointed through the trees, past the stream. “There.”
“It’s at the lake,” Rose told her brother, then gave him what information she could and switched off the radio. Thick, gray smoke was drifting up above the trees now. Nick clearly was anxious to get moving. “How far to the lake?”
“Five minutes if we move fast.”
“Let’s go.” He shifted his gaze to her as a slight breeze stirred in the evergreens. “Stay close to me.”
“I’ve been on this trail a million times, and someone could need our help.”
“Rose—”
“It’s okay, Nick. This is what I do.”
He nodded. “All right. Lead the way.”
Rose returned to the trail, heading down a sharp curve in the deep snow. Ranger bounded just ahead of her. She was less aware of Nick behind her but wasn’t concerned he couldn’t manage the conditions.
Smoke became more noticeable, thicker in the air as it rose in the trees on the hill above the lake. Rose reminded herself that the cabins were unoccupied and Jo and Elijah were out of town.
Bowie.
She almost stumbled. Was he working at the lake?
Someone else could have seen the smoke by now and called 911. Fire trucks could already be en route.
Nick moved next to her as they reached one of the most run-down of Jo Harper’s dozen cabins on the edge of the lake.
Ranger barked, on full alert. Rose saw what had him upset. The small cabin that Grit Taylor had occupied before his return to Washington was on fire, fully engulfed in flames.
No one inside could have survived.
Rose told Ranger to sit. She couldn’t let him plunge into a dangerous situation. “We need to make sure no one’s in any of the cabins,” she said to Nick, forcing herself to remain calm, professional.
Cold Dawn Page 20