The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  Peter nodded. “Yes. Only problem is we can’t seem to find them. It’s like they disappeared into thin air. But we know they exist because the bartender at Lefty’s corroborated what Ben told us.”

  Mike’s brow was furrowed, like he was thinking hard. “I’ve followed this Zinn thing in the news and that woman’s not somebody to mess with. Her client list, it’s assumed by the press anyway, has everyone from men in the mob to elected public officials, all with deep motivation to keep their names out of the paper.”

  “Any of them could’ve hired someone to kill Tiffany if they thought she was blackmailing them,” said Tommy. “Don’t you think, Peter?”

  “Absolutely. If she was blackmailing them, which I’m not totally convinced of. From what her sister says and what we know of her personality it seems unlikely,” said Peter.

  Ellen raised her hand again.

  “Ellen, you don’t have to raise your hand,” teased Tommy. “This isn’t your classroom.”

  Ellen slapped him on the knee. “Good thing for you it isn’t. I’d have you in detention so fast it’d make your head swim.”

  “Detention?” Tommy’s eyes went wide. “I’ve never been in detention or anything close to it in my life.”

  “Goodie-two-shoes,” said Bella. “That’s totally obvious.”

  Drake, from where he and Annie sat on a loveseat near the fireplace, laughed. “Let’s tell them how many times you’ve been in detention, Bella.”

  She blushed and shot him a dirty look. “Keep quiet, smart boy. Shouldn’t you be in the front row with the other nerds?”

  “Front row’s where all the best students sit,” said Drake. “Right, Lee?”

  Lee, with a prim smile, pushed a strand of her strawberry-blond hair behind her ear. “It’s where I always was, yes.”

  Linus pointed at Tommy with his half-eaten croissant. “Tommy wasn’t in detention, he was wherever the ladies were, probably reciting poetry to them and telling them where to meet him after school.”

  Tommy laughed. “Well, I did have a way with the ladies.”

  “Still do,” said Annie.

  “I only have eyes for my wife now. Right, honey?” Tommy looked over at Lee. She was writing something in her notebook. “Um, hello, Lee, they’re talking about my charming ways.”

  She glanced up with a blank expression. “What’s that?”

  Tommy, with his characteristic grin, shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Never mind. The honeymoon’s over.”

  “Of course it is, sweetheart. Don’t be silly.” Lee went back to her notebook.

  “Oh, that hurt,” said Tommy. “I’m not writing any more love songs about you.”

  “I doubt that,” said Lee, smacking his knee. “Now focus on what we’re doing here.”

  “You can’t distract the best student in class by flirting with her,” said Drake.

  Annie kissed Drake on the cheek and put her finger through one of the curls by his ear. “You sure about that?”

  “No, I’m not, now you put it that way.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Oh my God, get a room, you two,” said Linus. “You breeders are so inappropriate.”

  Ellen waved her pen in the air. “Laser-like focus, people. We have a murder to solve here. If any of you were in my class you’d all get a D minus for effort.” She turned her gaze to Peter. “I have something I want to propose, Peter, as a possible angle to this case.”

  Peter’s eyes were amused but he kept his face straight. “Do tell.”

  “I think the cops on this case are crooked.”

  “I agree but what makes you think so?” he asked, all amusement gone from his eyes.

  Ellen tapped her pencil on the palm of her hand. “Because I had that red-headed cop in class years ago and he was nothing short of a liar. His brother was a big athlete and good student—went off to Yale or Harvard, can’t remember which now—and now he’s a big shot in the Los Angeles attorney’s office. Gale and Rawley Hough.”

  “Gale’s the local cop, right?” asked Peter.

  “Right. Gale was always trying to prove he was as smart as Rawley but he wasn’t even close. And then there was the problem of his name. Gale? A name that’s also a girl’s name plus red hair, the kid was doomed. Anyway, let’s just say this Gale has an agenda. He wants to solve this case and look like a big shot. But he’s lazy. Plagiarized a paper in my American Literature class when he was a junior. Cried like a baby when I confronted him, begged me to give him another chance, which I did and probably shouldn’t have because he needed to learn his lesson. Anyhow, this shows his character. Once a cheater and a liar, always a cheater and a liar. And, no offence, Peter, but there’s a fine line between those who choose the criminal life and those who choose the life in law enforcement.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s true,” said Peter. “Ellen, do their parents still live here in town?”

  She shook her head no. “There was no father that I can remember and their mother’s dead. Died ten years ago in a house fire.”

  Lee raised her hand, seemingly without realizing she was doing it. Just like her grandmother, thought Bella, smiling behind her hand.

  “What’re you thinking, Lee?” asked Peter.

  “I remember both of the brothers from school. I’d forgotten about them, honestly, like I have so much of my childhood until Momo just brought them up. Gale was in my grade and not the brightest kid, for sure, and was constantly picked on. I remember thinking to myself, just fly under the radar like I did, despite my red hair.”

  Tommy interrupted. “Your hair is beautiful. Poor Gale’s is the color of carrots.”

  She smiled at Tommy before continuing. “I didn’t know Gale that well but he always seemed shifty to me. But the older one, Rawley, who was the smart one—there were rumors about him, you know, stuff I overheard from the lunch room and all, since I didn’t really have any friends.”

  “Like what kind of things?” asked Tommy. His voice was soft, almost coaxing: He was in the habit of getting his shy wife to speak, thought Bella.

  “That he was somewhat of a sexual deviant.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” asked Tommy.

  Lee’s alabaster skin was flushed. “Like he forced himself on several girls. I mean, I don’t really know exactly.” She looked down at the notebook in her lap. “And now I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. It has no relevance to his brother or the case. It just popped into my mind, that’s all. I didn’t know he was a big time attorney.” She looked over at Mike. “Do you remember them? Were they friends with your son?”

  “No, and I can’t say I remember the brothers much except when the older one got into Yale.” He glanced at Ellen. “I believe it was Yale, not Harvard. Made the front page of our newspaper that spring. They weren’t friends with Zac that I know of but I was busy those days running the sawmill so didn’t keep up on things like I do now.”

  “Well, anyway, it’s not relevant,” said Lee. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “No, it’s good, Lee,” said Peter. “Any information that helps us understand that there might have been some strange stuff going on in their house could explain a crooked cop. I’ll look into him, ask around a little and see if I can get a better read on him.” He glanced down at his notebook. “I think that’s it, folks. Next step is for me and Bella to take a little trip south tomorrow and meet Miss Zinn in person.”

  Later, Bella chewed on one of the cold pancakes and stared out the kitchen window. The clouds had lifted and sun glittered on the wet grass in the backyard. Alder was right, she thought. People went to jail for crimes they didn’t commit all the time. She’d seen it on Oprah. Something moved near the rose garden. It was the doe. The creature pranced closer, with the grace of a ballerina, and stopped at the edge of the deck. Perfectly still, she seemed to be listening for something, her ears twitching, before bounding into the thicket of trees on the edge of the yard.

  Bella turned from the wi
ndow. There was Ben, standing at the stove, watching her.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi.” Suddenly she didn’t know what to do with her hands. The actors she worked with often told her stories of their early training and they all agreed the hardest thing to figure out was what to do with your hands. She stuffed hers into her pants pockets, looking at the floor, unable to think of anything to say. The hurt was in her throat. Even if she could speak, she shouldn’t. She couldn’t trust herself. The ridiculous tears might come again.

  “Bella, I’m sorry.”

  What had he said? She raised her head, meeting his eyes. His green eyes. So beautiful. They appeared soft, not laughing like they sometimes were, but without the accusatory and jealous glare they’d had last night.

  “You heard me.” He paused. “I’m an idiot.”

  She smiled, but her lips trembled. “Yeah. Kinda.”

  He approached her, almost cautiously, she thought, as if not to spook her, like the deer in the yard. “I’m a jealous fool.”

  She sighed and shook her head slightly. “You have no reason to be.”

  “Take a walk with me?”

  “It’s freezing out there.” She glanced out the window. A large rain cloud had moved over the sun.

  “Come over to my place, then?” He indicated the front room with a shake of his head. “Drake and Annie are in there and I want to talk alone.”

  The way he was looking at her it seemed he had more on his mind than talking. She held out her hand. “Fine, but you have a lot of apologizing to do.”

  He ignored her hand and instead pulled her into his chest and spoke into her hair, holding her tight. “I know I do. I’m an idiot.”

  “You really are.”

  They walked up the stairs to his bedroom without speaking. Once inside the room, he sank onto the bed and brought her onto his lap. She buried her face in his neck. How good he smelled. She felt his heart beating against her breasts. He kissed her, gently. “I’m a complete crazy person, I realize this,” he whispered against her mouth. “But when it comes to you I’m not rational.”

  “I know the feeling,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, thinking of how desperate and helpless she’d felt the night before. “You have the ability to hurt me like no one ever has, which makes no sense considering how long we’ve been together.”

  “Bella, can you give me another chance?”

  “Yes, but you can’t do this jealous thing about Graham. He’s nothing to me. He never should’ve been. Last night when I was with him all I could think was why and how.” She paused, kissing his neck and the sides of his face and then his mouth. “And getting back to my family. And you. Mostly you. I can’t deal with you doing that to me again. You just have to trust me. I know it might not seem like it but I am a girl who just wants a nice man to love me, to hold me when I’m sad, to be by my side through all the shit life flings at us.”

  “You have such a potty mouth.” He kissed her, exploring her mouth with his tongue until she ached for more.

  “You’re going to pay for making me cry.” She kicked off her shoes and panties and straddled him, pushing her small hands into his muscular chest until he fell back on the bed. “I’m going to make you suffer a little.”

  “Don’t hurt me,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She flicked her tongue along his neck until she found his mouth again. Then, still straddling him, she unbuttoned his shirt. He tried to help but she batted his hands away. “No, we’ll do it slow so you have to wait for it.”

  He let his head fall back onto the bed, grinning. “Fine, but payback’s a bitch.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  The last button was undone. She pulled him up slightly so he could shrug out of his shirt. Then she knelt on the floor, tugging his jeans and boxer shorts off. She stood, looking at him, taking in every inch of him, before running her hands up his thighs. They twitched under her touch. She straddled him again, guiding him inside her. He sat up, suddenly, pulling her closer to him, looking her in the eye, before kissing her. “Nice and easy,” he whispered.

  But her goal to make him suffer was gone. She felt herself losing control, as she always did with this crazy man. She whispered his name and wrapped her legs tighter around him. He had his hands on her hips, was almost all the way inside her, just a small movement in and out. And then she felt it coming and it took over as she moaned. The shudders came one after the other. Without moving from inside her, he moved so she was on her back and he thrust deep into her several times before he gasped and exploded inside her.

  Afterward he held her against his chest, stroking her hair. “I know it’s no excuse,” he said. “But when you’ve been left at the proverbial altar it’s hard to trust again. I question every woman’s motives I’ve dated since then. I find I’m suspicious about everything and I’m just always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The betrayal, Bella, was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I trusted her with everything I had. I would never have thought in a million years she would betray me.” He stopped, tightening his grip around her waist. “Anyway, never mind. We’ve talked about this enough.”

  She pulled away and turned on her side so she could see his face. “Why is it so hard for you to talk to me about this?”

  He smiled; his face crinkled in the way so dear to her now. “I’m a guy. We don’t like to talk about this kind of thing.”

  “But then you do stupid things that make us cry.”

  His face went soft. He stroked the side of her face and ran his finger along her lip. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “You’re going to have to talk to me, Ben, or this isn’t going to work. It can’t just be all hot sex with us.”

  “It can’t?”

  “No.” Let yourself be vulnerable, she thought. Like Annie. “Not if you’re really serious about me.”

  He played with one of her curls. His eyes were the color of the fir trees swaying outside the window. “I am. You know that.”

  “I was thinking about my mom yesterday.” She let the old sadness come inside her, feeling it, like Valerie had encouraged her to do, looking into his sympathetic eyes. “When she died, I changed. I loved her so much and I was a lost little girl for years afterward. I’ve made decisions from that hurt place for too long. No matter how we try, we can’t escape the pain. It gets into everything. Like something sticky that creeps into every crack and crevice.”

  “It’s been two years since Sheri called off the wedding. It hurt every day for all that time until I met you. My brother told me the only way to get over someone is to fall for someone new.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “I do. With one caveat. The baggage that comes with betrayal doesn’t leave. It’s the same as what you say about your mother’s death. It messes with you. It’s made me so distrustful and I was never like that. I would’ve sworn on a stack of bibles I didn’t have a jealous bone in my body, but, well, we know that isn’t the case, now don’t we?” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I hate that I hurt you yesterday. I’m sorry.”

  She kissed him. “I know you are. I forgive you. How did you find out about Sheri?”

  “It was a week before the wedding and I came home in the middle of the day because I forgot something I needed for a meeting that afternoon.”

  Bella shut her eyes, knowing what was coming next.

  “And yeah, there they were. In bed together. In our bed we’d shared for three years.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “You know what’s weird about it? They were just in bed talking, albeit without their clothes on, but there was an intimacy between them that hurt worse than if I’d seen them in the actual act. The way they were looking at one another—she’d– she’d never looked at me that way.”

  The shadow of the pain in his eyes made its way into her body as if osmosis of emotion was physically possible. “I want to look at you that way.”

  “You
are. Right now. You are.” He pulled her under him, kissing her. And then talking was over once again.

  They woke to pounding on the door of the guesthouse. Bella sat straight up, filling with sudden and swift unease and dread. Ben rolled to his back and put his arm over his eyes. “Bella, I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Heart pounding, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and went to the window. More clouds had come in while they were inside and it was raining hard. Below, in the driveway parked next to Ben’s red Porsche, was a cop car. Her knees felt weak. She turned, reaching for the back of one of the easy chairs.

  “It’s the cops, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She couldn’t speak and merely nodded.

  He got out of bed, reaching for his clothes strewn about the floor, hastily discarded just an hour ago when the possibility of what was happening now was only a worry. “Sweetie, get dressed,” he said to her. He was oddly calm, she thought. Resigned to his fate.

  She nodded and found her panties and bra, shaking so hard she could barely fasten the clasp. Once they were both dressed, he reached for her. “Listen to me. It’s going to be all right. Drake has an attorney lined up for me. Peter will figure out who did this for real and we’ll be back here in no time, together again. Knowing you love me gives me strength to go through anything.” The pounding on the door started again.

  Fighting tears, her voice shaking, she pressed against him. “Drake will post bail, whatever the cost. I’ll be waiting until then.”

  “When this is over I’ll take you someplace tropical and buy you drinks on the beach. Hold onto that. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Nothing they do to me can touch this place inside me that loves you. Nothing will break me, knowing you’re here waiting.”

  “I am. For however long it takes.”

  He kissed her trembling mouth as the pounding continued. Finally, they parted. “You stay here,” he said. “I don’t want you to see this.”

  “Absolutely not,” she said. “I want to look that son of a bitch Carrot Cop in the eye so he knows I know he’s a liar.”