Family Secrets

by Shawn McGuire

  “My work history isn’t relevant to this discussion. I’d prefer to not talk about it.”

  The sheriff was wrestling with something; I could see it on his face. Finally, he said, “You want me to investigate the break-in of your family home, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’d prefer that I track down the vandals, not just file a report. Correct?”

  “That would be preferable.”

  “You’re also aware that I now have the death of Miss Yasmine Long to investigate. And our tourist season is about to begin?”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff Brighton, but is there a point here?”

  He stared at me for another long moment, wrestling again with whatever was swirling in his head, then he switched off the voice recorder and stood to close the interview room door. I tensed, my pulse rate increasing as I prepared for whatever was about to happen. Or so I thought.

  “Deputy Reed out there,” the sheriff began in a low voice, “is my nephew. I deputized him because he needs something to do. I dress him up in a uniform and have him walk around the village. He feels like he’s doing something important, which he is. As you know, sometimes the simple presence of a uniform is all it takes to keep trouble under control.”

  That rubbed me the wrong way. Deputizing him because he needed something to do?

  “He knows the law and can handle doing minor enforcement. He keeps an eye on the drunks we throw in the cells to dry out. He can handle most of the administrative tasks.” The sheriff paced the width of the room, working that bum leg. “But the boy isn’t capable of investigating his way out of this building without a map. I’m basically a department of one and quite honestly, dealing with tourist issues this time of year takes all my efforts. Add a murder and a home break-in investigation to the mix . . .”

  I tilted my chin up and stared him in the eye, sure he was about to tell me one of those things would have to wait. Logically, that would be investigating the break-in.

  “What are you saying, Sheriff?”

  He paused, wrestling one last time, then let out a resigned exhale. “I’m saying I need help around here, Ms. O’Shea. The hotels and cottages are reporting solid bookings for the next three months. I was going to put out an advertisement today, but as long as you weren’t fired due to breaking a law or misconduct, I’d like to offer the job to you.”

  Chapter 7

  I had a list of things I’d been looking forward to doing while in Whispering Pines: Enjoying the peace and quiet of spending a week in a village barely big enough to be represented by a spot on the map. Spending a little time by or on the lake with my dog. I brought books—a sci-fi a friend recommended and a women’s fiction in case life in space didn’t do it for me—and my watercolors so I could finally try painting like I’d wanted to forever. There was also that ‘focus on being mindful’ thing. Of course, taking care of my grandparents’ home was first on the list. That was it; that was my list. A job with the sheriff was nowhere on it.

  “Before we go any further,” Sheriff Brighton said, “tell me why you aren’t a cop anymore.”

  I drained the now-cold coffee from my cup then walked to the water cooler in the corner. While I filled the cup, I debated if I wanted to talk about this, if I was even capable of talking about it. I didn’t have to; it was my right to simply refuse.

  Fine. He wasn’t going to let this go. I dropped back into the chair. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you quit or were you terminated?” Sheriff Brighton asked without missing a beat.

  “I quit.”

  He sat there, silent, waiting for me to continue.

  “About a year ago—” I paused to calculate. Wow, yes, it had been that long already. “Almost a year ago exactly, I was named detective.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six. Twenty-five at the time.”

  His eyebrows raised in surprise. “That’s impressive.”

  I nodded. “Something I’m very proud of.”

  “Go on. What happened to make you step away from that?”

  “In a nutshell, my partner was having some personal issues. I tried to help him, encouraged him to get counseling, but for reasons I’d rather not explain, he wouldn’t go. I should have reported him so he could get help, but instead I tried to help him myself.” I shook my head. “Things got worse and worse until one day he lost control.”

  I paused to clear the memories trying to worm their way in.

  Finally, Sheriff Brighton cleared his throat. “What happened, Detective?”

  The use of my title brought me back. I scrubbed my hands over my face. I could do this. Maybe telling someone other than my therapist would even help.

  “One of our CIs was a woman named Fr—” My voice broke. “Frisky. She called herself Frisky Fox. She was an older woman, late-forties but looked well into her sixties.” I laughed, remembering the vibrant woman with the big laugh and ready hug. “Life had worked Frisky over good. Anyway, after getting busted on some minor charges, she became an informant. What that meant, in Frisky’s case, was doing all she could to keep the kids in her neighborhood out of trouble. One day we saw her car and, since we hadn’t heard from her in a while, pulled her over just to chat.”

  Sheriff Brighton sat quietly, folded hands resting on the table.

  “This particular day was a bad one for Frisky. It was the one-year anniversary of her brother’s death. The next day was the second anniversary of her nephew’s death.” I was about to explain further but it wasn’t my story to tell. “Frisky self-medicated that day, high or drunk . . . or both, and was belligerent as hell. When we pulled her over, she got out of her vehicle.”

  “Weapon?”

  “Unarmed. She just wanted to be left alone, and us getting in her face upset an already strained situation. I’d never seen her like that. She’d always been calm to the point of pacifism, but that day she was ranting and raging. Randy kept yelling at her to get back in her vehicle. The more he yelled, the more upset she became.”

  The scene started to play out in my head. The panic on both Frisky’s and Randy’s faces. My inability to calm either down. The million regrets that raced through my mind in the second it took Randy to aim his weapon at her.

  “Randy shot her.”

  “You feel responsible,” Sheriff Brighton said.

  I nodded. My role in the event and resulting feelings of guilt had been the topic of most of my sessions with Dr. Maddox.

  “She wouldn’t have hurt us. I’m positive of that,” I said. “Not sure which I agonize over more, Frisky’s death or the fact that I didn’t report my partner sooner.”

  The sheriff closed his eyes, as though afraid to ask his next question. “You reported him?”

  “I had to.” I slouched back in the chair and traced a scratch on the table with my finger. “For a couple of weeks, I didn’t say a word and it ate me up. The other officers and detectives knew as well as I did that Randy had been self-destructing. Finally, after weeks of staying awake all night gorging on sweets, I told my captain everything.”

  Sheriff Brighton winced.

  “It was the right thing to do,” I insisted, “for Randy and the public. But the other officers, the other detectives in particular, turned on me.”

  The sheriff nodded his understanding. Loyalty among the brethren. I’d crossed that line.

  “The worst thing for me,” I said, “isn’t being supposedly disloyal to my partner, it’s knowing that I could have prevented a woman’s death.”

  “A no-win situation.” The sheriff shifted uncomfortably in his chair, massaging his right hip.

  “Sir, are you okay?” I nodded at his leg.

  He waved it off. “Lifelong problem. I’ll be fine. How long ago did you quit?”

  “I stuck it out for about a month after Frisky died, seeing a shrink three days a week. Six months ago, I couldn’t face one more day of going in and getting harassed, so I emailed my resignation.” I smiled.
“Last night was the first decent night’s sleep I’ve gotten since.”

  Considering I found a body on my property, I had prepared for nightmares. Maybe the whispering trees kept them away.

  “Do you suppose staying busy would help?” Sheriff Brighton asked.

  “Look, I didn’t come here with the intention of staying. It was only going to be a week. Considering the condition of the house, it’s going to be longer now but still not permanent.”

  “What about a part-time temporary job?”

  This made me cautiously curious. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Dealing with those tourist issues I mentioned earlier.” He waved a hand in Deputy Reed’s direction. “He can handle the office work. I need someone with experience who I can trust to handle law and order among the tourists. Wander around the village, walk along the beach, cruise around the rental cottages and the campground. Talk to people and let them know we’re around and available should they need us.”

  I shifted in my chair. “That would sort of be a demotion for me, wouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t know that you can do detective work part-time.”

  Couldn’t argue with that. I had to admit, being with the public was my favorite part of the job. Accepting his offer would also get me back into the profession I loved.

  “So, what, drunk and disorderly calls? Babysit the rabble-rousers?”

  “Both of those,” the sheriff said. “Then there’s tracking down the occasional kid who wanders off. Vandalism is a problem at times, but not like what you say happened at your house. Spoiled rich kids come up with their parents and get bored because of the cell phone reception issue. And when kids get bored, they tend to get into trouble. Your house probably got hit because it’s isolated.”

  I picked at the hem of my T-shirt. Was this really how I wanted to spend my time here? My plan was to read and paint when not packing. Maybe take out the boat or a kayak. What if I wasn’t ready to get back to work? I’d made a lot of progress learning to trust myself again, especially over the last few weeks. It would really suck to backslide.

  “Thanks for the offer, Sheriff, but I don’t think so.”

  “At least take the day to consider it,” he pleaded. “Let me know tomorrow.”

  “Fine. Anything else you need from me regarding Yasmine Long?”

  Sheriff Brighton looked over his notes. “Not right now. I’ll stop by to investigate your house later today. Did you call your insurance people yet?”

  “No cell service, no landline.” I frowned. “Any chance I could use the phone here? I need to call my mother, too, and let her know what happened to the house.”

  “Sure. Use that one.” Sheriff Brighton gave a nod at the phone in the corner by the water cooler as he gathered his papers. “I’m serious about the job. We really could use you.”

  Chapter 8

  After retrieving Meeka’s collapsible dish from my bag and filling it with water from the cooler, I called my mother.

  “Do you know how many times I tried calling?” she demanded in lieu of a polite greeting. “Did you get my messages? Why didn’t you call me?”

  For a moment, I felt guilty about not answering that call yesterday. But it likely would have dropped within a minute or two anyway.

  “There’s no cellular service here, Mom, and there’s a problem with the house line. I’m calling from the sheriff’s station.”

  “Sheriff? Good lord, what happened?”

  I explained the vandalism, which led her on a ten-minute rant about not only how big a nuisance the house was, but how we should have taken Gran out of it and put her in a nursing home long ago. Not that my grandmother in any way needed a nursing home. Then Mom went on about how my selfish father needed to “. . . get back to this country and take care of this fiasco himself. I told him, multiple times, she’s his mother. Why should I—?”

  She cut herself off mid-rant and a humming sound came through the receiver. I could picture her—eyes closed, chin up, jaw clenched as she shook her head back and forth in a sharp, crisp motion. Her version of meditation always made me think she was having a seizure.

  While she pulled herself together, I started a good points/bad points list of reasons for accepting or rejecting Sheriff Brighton’s job offer. Even though I didn’t really want it.

  “Jayne!” Mom demanded.

  “What?”

  “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”

  When had she started speaking again? I scrambled for a response. “Of course. You’re not at all happy about this.”

  She sighed heavily. “You’re sure you can deal with this? It won’t be too stressful?”

  I held back my own tired sigh. She sent me here. She insisted. “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “If taking on this much responsibility will be too much for you, I’m sure your sister or I can find the time to deal with it.”

  Dr. Maddox had helped me realize that my problem was a lack of confidence. This was why I couldn’t stand up and do things like reporting Randy; I didn’t trust that I was making the right decision. Not a good trait for a cop. Unfortunately, this inability to stand up carried through the rest of my life, too. I desperately wanted to tell my mother that I didn’t need help running my life. The problem there was that she didn’t trust me anymore than I trusted myself.

  “I want to do this,” I said. “Packing up the house is a good assignment for me. Do you think there’s anything in particular Dad will want?”

  “He hasn’t mentioned anything. It’s been years since he’s seen any of it. Box up the contents of his bedroom. He can decide what’s worth hanging on to and what can be sent to the landfill.”

  Lovely. No sense bringing up any warm-n-fuzzy memories. She’d just start humming again.

  “You’re sure you can take care of this?”

  It was part plea—“Please, darling, take care of this for your poor, ultra-busy mother.”—part insult—“Seriously, Jayne, are you capable of doing even this one thing for me?”

  She got like that when control started slipping through her fingers. Vandalism, or any kind of setback, hadn’t been planned for on the packing-up-the-house schedule. If Dad was around, she’d take all of this out on him. Which was why he hid in the desert for most of the year.

  “I’m on it, Mom. I’m looking forward to being busy again. I haven’t seen all of the house, so I don’t know the extent of the damage. Regardless of the break-in, the house needs a lot of attention if we want to get top dollar for it.”

  My businesslike tone took her by surprise.

  “Well, yes. Of course. We’d be renovating anyway, I guess. Is that something you’re willing to take on? We could hire a general contractor.” She paused, her nails tap, tap, tapping. “Even if we do that, someone will need to be there to keep an eye on things and make sure they’re actually doing what they say they’re doing. You can’t trust those people, you know. They’ll steal you blind.”

  Suddenly, being five hours from Madison for a month or more, perhaps the whole summer if I stretched things properly, seemed like an unexpected gift.

  “I’m fine taking this on,” I said. “I’ll get references from the locals and take bids. And I’ll consult you every step of the way.”

  “Maybe not every step,” she said. “I trust you. Of course I trust you.”

  No, she didn’t. Still, she was going to let me handle the sale of the house. Maybe she was busier at the spa than I realized. Or she cared less about the house than I wanted to believe. Either way, this was big because a substantial amount of money was involved. She gave me all the insurance information and promised to transfer funds into a bank account I could draw from until the settlement came through.

  “One other thing you should probably know about,” I began and told her about Yasmine.

  “Will that affect the sale, do you think?”

  “Really, Mom? A woman died and you’re worried about resale value?”

  “Of course not,” she ob
jected a little too strenuously. “You make me sound like a coldhearted beast. The poor girl.”

  In the background, someone was asking a question about an inventory order. When she returned to me Mom said, “You only brought enough clothing and whatnot for a week.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll send a box. Would you like me to send some of your clothes, too, or will you go shopping there?”

  By ‘box’ she meant a supply of the best of the best hair and skin supplies from her uber-popular Melt Your Cares Day Spa. I had to admit, my hair was super-silky and my pores were exactly the right size. The thought of me going even one day without the proper beauty regimen was probably making her eye twitch. The thought of my mother going through my clothes, and deciding what would be proper for me to wear in Whispering Pines, set both of my eyes off like a couple of good ol’ boys playing Dueling Banjos.

  “Just the box will do, I’ll go shopping. Supporting local businesses is always a good idea.” Mom was all about connections. “I buy from them, and they’ll help make sure I get quality help for the house.”

  “Good plan. Okay, then.” The change in her tone signaled she was ready to sign off. “I’ll get that box ready and on its way this afternoon. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Next, I called the insurance company who promised to have an adjuster to the house tomorrow. Then I called the phone company to get service restored and a line run to the boathouse. Finally, I scheduled internet hook-up in the boathouse. After waiting on hold for fifteen minutes, I had a guarantee that someone would be there in the next twenty-four to seventy-two hours. Was a range that big really a guarantee? Seemed like more of a promise to get around to it.

  “Get your business taken care of?” Deputy Reed asked when Meeka and I left the interview room.

  By the challenging look on his face, it was obvious he had a problem with me. The sheriff, his uncle, must have told him I might be coming on board. Or maybe he just had one of those resting bitch faces.