Better Late Than Never

by Jenn McKinlay

“I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” she said.

  “I find it alarmingly charming,” he assured her.

  “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she teased.

  He laughed. “I’m going to have to work on my material, then.”

  As if by unspoken mutual agreement, they didn’t discuss Candice Whitley or the book during dinner. Lindsey was relieved. She felt as if the cold case had consumed her for most of the day and it was such a tragic story that it felt draining to keep thinking about it.

  After the dishes were done, they decided to take a walk along the beach and let Heathcliff run himself to exhaustion. They held hands while they walked, laughing at Heathcliff as he tried to chase the waves that chased him back, making him bark at the water in a playful way.

  Lindsey inhaled the salty sea air and let the cool ocean breeze swirl around her. Maybe it was because her day had been consumed with tragedy, but she realized that this was one of those perfect life moments.

  She knew how lucky she was to have both Sully and Heathcliff in her life. To share dinner and companionship with her two men was a gift beyond measure. The urge to let Sully know how much she cared for him bubbled to the surface but she held her tongue. They were taking it slow; they hadn’t even gone public yet, and she didn’t want to bust out the “L” word before he was ready to hear it.

  She supposed it was cowardly to hold it in, but she was aware that today had been an emotional roller coaster and she didn’t want to be swept up in the moment and ruin the new relationship she and Sully were making by rushing things.

  “What are you thinking?” Sully asked as he pulled her close and let go of her hand to put his arm around her waist, securing her to his side.

  “I’m trying to decide if Heathcliff is going to need a bath tonight,” she said.

  Sully kissed her head. His voice was low when he whispered in her ear, “I’m happy to help, you know, if you two want to stay over.”

  Lindsey pulled away and looked up at him. “I don’t know. Nancy and Charlie might notice if I don’t come home tonight.”

  Sully didn’t say anything. He simply watched her, waiting for her to work through it.

  “I mean, we’re still taking it slow, right?” she asked.

  He nodded as he pulled her close so there was no space in between them. Lindsey was pretty sure she went cross-eyed at the body-to-body contact, but she pressed on.

  “I mean, we don’t want people to get the wrong idea,” she said. “If we’re just friends, then I probably shouldn’t be spending the night.”

  “We’re not just friends,” Sully said. “And we haven’t been for a while.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

  “If you spend the night tonight, we could actually just sleep,” he said. “Although, I will try to convince you otherwise.”

  He kissed her right there in the middle of the beach with Heathcliff racing around their feet, barking his fool head off. When he pulled away, Lindsey had made her decision.

  “Well, all right, then,” she said. “A sleepover it is.”

  The smile Sully sent her was blinding and again she was tempted to tell him what she was feeling, but she kissed him instead, driving all thought of big emotional confessions right out of her head for the moment.

  Lindsey stood on the Daniels’ doorstep, knowing she was overstepping her boundaries and pushing the doorbell anyway. She supposed if she wanted to justify her reason for being here then she could claim that she was just following up on the overdue book, but really, that sort of defeated the whole point of an amnesty day, when people were allowed to return their long-overdue items without fear of retribution.

  She heard the bell ring somewhere in the house. She waited, wondering what she was going to say when the door opened. Should she get right to it, make small talk, what?

  The door clicked as it was unlocked from the inside, and for a nanosecond, she thought about fleeing the scene—because that was so mature. Before she could bolt, the door was pulled open and Chief Daniels stood there looking ten years younger than when he’d retired. She’d heard retirement did that for people, like turning back the clock, drinking out of the fountain of youth or finally just getting enough carefree sleep.

  He looked slimmer than she remembered. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a black apron over it that looked like a flak jacket from a SWAT team. Very clever.

  “Lindsey Norris,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “Murder,” she said.

  Daniels’s eyebrows rose up on his forehead. From somewhere in the house a beeping sound started and he glanced over his shoulder and then back at her.

  “That’s my sauce,” he said. “Come on in and you can explain while I cook.”

  Lindsey followed him into the raised ranch. They went up the stairs and through the living room to the kitchen. It was a big wide-open space full of granite and copper with double everything: ovens, sinks and dishwashers.

  “You’re like a regular Rachael Ray,” she said.

  Daniels laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I’ve been working on my barbecue recipes. I’m going to publish a cookbook one day.”

  Lindsey paused to sniff the air. “Is that what smells so good? I’ll put in my order for a copy of the book now.”

  “I’m working on a honey pecan barbecue sauce,” Daniels said as he hurried over to the stove to stir something in the pot.

  Lindsey checked her chin for drool. Seriously, if it tasted as good as it smelled, he was definitely cooking up a winner.

  He stirred the sauce with a large wooden spoon and adjusted the temperature of the stove by turning the dial. He then moved to the oven and opened the door. He grabbed two pot holders and pulled out a large baking dish, shutting the oven door with his foot.

  “Do you mind getting the door?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Lindsey said.

  She moved across the kitchen and opened the door that led outside to the deck. Daniels hustled the heavy dish out the door and Lindsey slid it closed behind her as she followed him. He set the glass dish down on the table and then opened the lid to one of three grills that filled the raised deck. He used big metal tongs to plop the ribs on the hot grill.

  Lindsey opened her mouth to speak, but he gestured her to wait.

  “One more second,” he said.

  He hurried back inside and grabbed the pot off of the stove. Then he dashed back outside and used a brush to coat the ribs with the amazing-smelling sauce. Lindsey wondered if she could make her questions last until lunchtime and wrangle an invitation to eat. Yes, it smelled that good.

  Once the ribs were coated, Daniels closed the lid and turned back to Lindsey.

  “Okay, what’s this about murder, and why are you talking to me instead of Chief Plewicki?”

  He gestured for her to take one of the two Adirondack chairs that sat on the far side of the deck away from the grills, and Lindsey sat in one while he took the other.

  “Because you were there and Emma wasn’t,” Lindsey said.

  Daniels frowned. “Are you talking about what happened to the book author a couple of years ago? I thought that case was dusted and done.”

  “No, this goes further back to when you were a uniformed officer,” she said.

  “Candice Whitley,” he said. He turned away from her and stared out into the trees at the end of his yard. They were leafy and green and full of the promise of the new life of spring.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I heard that a library book that had been loaned to her was returned,” he said with a shrug. “Small town.”

  “Not only was it checked out to her,” Lindsey said, “it was checked out to her on the day she died.”

  Daniels tried to suppress a shudder and failed. Lindsey knew he was feeling
the exact same thing everyone else felt when they heard. Chilled to the bone, and not from the cool spring temperatures either.

  “So, you’re thinking it was returned by her murderer,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Lindsey said. “Sully told me you were on the force during the original investigation, and I was wondering if you remembered anything that might seem significant in hindsight.”

  “Like whether she had a library book with her or not?” Daniels asked. Lindsey nodded.

  Daniels glanced back at the woods while he thought about it. His eyes narrowed as if he were trying to look through the trees of the present and into the past. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. His voice sounded gruff when he spoke, as if traveling through his memories was a rough ride.

  “It—rather, Candice—was my first dead body, not only professionally but in life,” he said. “I’d never seen death before. To see it up close and personal like that on someone about the same age as myself, who by all accounts didn’t have any enemies and was well liked, well, it was tough. I had nightmares for weeks.”

  Lindsey knew exactly how he felt. She’d brushed up against death more than she’d liked over the past few years. She nodded at him in understanding, encouraging him to continue.

  “I was the new guy on the force, the rookie, so I was the one on evening patrol when the call came in,” he said. “An older couple was walking their dog around the high school when they found her.”

  Daniels released a long, slow breath as if steeling himself for the memory to come.

  “Candice was under the high school football stadium bleachers. She was just lying there, with her arms crossed over her chest and her feet crossed at the ankles, looking perfectly peaceful—almost as if she was taking a nap.”

  “Oh,” Lindsey said for lack of anything else to say. Since it was a murder she had just assumed it was grisly, but what Daniels described was even more unsettling, almost as if her killer felt the need to make her comfortable after snuffing the life out of her.

  “It was odd. Her hair looked as if it had been carefully arranged about her shoulders, her bright blue sweater was buttoned all the way to her throat with tiny white pearl buttons, no visible snags or tears, her skirt was smoothed over her knees and her shoes weren’t even scuffed.”

  Daniels glanced at Lindsey and his face looked uneasy.

  “It was almost worse, finding her like that. Because she looked so peaceful, I actually thought she was napping for a moment. And then when I got close, I saw the ligature marks around her throat. They were red and raw and cut into her skin. When I realized she was dead, I had to go throw up in the bushes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsey said. She wasn’t sure if she was sorry for the young officer who had thrown up in the bushes or for the man she was asking to relive such a horrible experience or for both. Probably, it was both.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Her purse was sitting right beside her as if someone had put it there just like they arranged everything else, but there was nothing else. We canvassed the area, looking for the murder weapon, but we never found what was used to strangle her and we never found a book. Sorry.”

  “No, don’t be,” Lindsey said. “I’m sorry I asked you to relive it. It must have been just awful.”

  “No, it’s all right,” he said. “I expect when she opens the case file Emma is going to do the same, so this was a good practice run for me.”

  “I heard that Benji Gunderson was a suspect,” she said. “He was Candice’s boyfriend at the time.”

  “He was a person of interest—the partners of the victim always are—but he had an airtight alibi. He was out of town at a conference, which was confirmed, when she was murdered,” Daniels said. “Though that never stopped people from suspecting him. I felt bad for the guy, but statistically it usually is the boyfriend or husband who is the guilty party, and this was such a shocking murder case, the townspeople needed someone to blame.”

  Lindsey nodded. She had seen that fearful reaction from people a number of times.

  “What was Candice Whitley like?” she asked. “Did you know her?”

  “Not until I was investigating her murder,” he said. “From what I learned she was a great teacher, very well liked by her students and colleagues. She worked hard, was passionate about teaching, loved books and reading and dabbled in writing a bit. As you know, she was dating Benji Gunderson and her best friend was her fellow teacher Judy Elrich.”

  Lindsey glanced at him in surprise and he nodded. “Yes, the same Judy Elrich that teaches at the high school now. If I remember right, she left town a few weeks after Candice’s murder. She said it was too hard to be here, but her mother, Nora Elrich, stayed in town. Sadly, Nora became ill about a year ago and Judy came back to take care of her. She resumed her old teaching position at the high school, which must have been difficult.”

  “Judy comes into the library all the time to get audio books for her mother,” Lindsey said. She knew Judy was a big science fiction and fantasy reader and always had her name down first for the latest Kevin Hearne novel.

  “You could talk to her about what happened all those years ago,” Daniels said. “But she took it extremely hard back then so you’d want to tread lightly.”

  “Understood,” Lindsey said.

  They were both silent for a while and then Daniels rose to check on his ribs and Lindsey figured she’d better go.

  “Thanks for talking to me, Chief,” Lindsey said.

  “It’s just Tim now,” he said with a smile. “It was no trouble, but I have to ask: Why does a twenty-year-old murder interest you so much?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I just feel like if I can find out who returned that library book, I can figure out who murdered Candice Whitley,” she said. “And I feel like she deserves that.”

  “And that matters to you why?” he asked. “You didn’t know her. You didn’t even live here back then.”

  “I guess because I’m a librarian and I have a deep-seated need for answers to questions,” Lindsey said. “All questions.”

  Daniels nodded as if he understood, but Lindsey knew he didn’t get it. How could she explain? It was as if it was stamped somewhere in her DNA that she must be able to find the answers to questions.

  Being a librarian meant finding the solution—no matter the problem—by using the information and knowledge that the library housed to solve everything from how to build a microhouse to how to speak Tatar, or, in this case, to discover who wanted Candice Whitley dead and why. She would not rest, could not rest, until she got the answer.

  “There you are. I had almost given up hope,” Robbie said as Lindsey strode past him into the library. “So, what were you about on your lunch hour? Snogging buoy boy?”

  Lindsey paused to look at him. He was sprawled in one of the comfy reading chairs just inside the front door. He had a stack of gossip magazines beside him.

  “Looking for articles about yourself?” she asked.

  “Always,” he said. “I particularly love it when they have me in a torrid relationship with an alien, you know, an outer-space alien. I have to read that rag to find out what’s up with my extraterrestrial offspring. Apparently, one of them is an intergalactic superstar.” He put a hand on his heart and looked choked up and said, “I’m so proud.”

  Lindsey laughed and shook her head. Only Robbie could find it funny to be so stalked and derided by the paparazzi. She continued walking toward her office and he followed as she suspected he would.

  She did a visual scan of the library as she walked. The Internet computers were full. The reading area beside the magazines was cleared out as Mr. Tewkes and Mr. Johansen had their daily squabble over the sections of the New York Times. Lindsey knew them well enough to know that they could mediate the situation themselves so long as they were left alone.

  In the far corner, the children’s
section had a line of strollers parked against one of the interior walls as Beth was doing her weekly baby time for the nursing, drooling and newly sitting-up crowd.

  The circulation desk, while still buried in book trucks, now at least had a path carved through the carts, so that was progress.

  Lindsey stored her purse in her office and was about to go out to the floor for a more thorough sweep when Robbie thrust a paper bag at her.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “A gift for you,” he said.

  “I can’t,” she said. She gave him a somber look. “We’ve been over this. We’re just friends.”

  “And friends give each other stuff all the time,” he argued. “You should see the list I have started for my birthday. It will bankrupt you, seriously. Now don’t be a spoilsport. Open it.”

  He sounded as excited and bossy as an eight-year-old at a birthday party. Curiosity won out and Lindsey opened the bag. A pattern of houndstooth wool stared back at her.

  “What the . . . ?” She reached into the bag and pulled out a deerstalker cap just like the iconic one Sherlock Holmes always wore.

  “Try it on!” Robbie insisted.

  Lindsey put the bag down and put the hat on her head. It was a tiny bit too big and the brim hung over her face. She had to tip her head back to see him.

  “Is it me?” she asked. She tried not to grin but she felt so ridiculous that she failed miserably.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “If we cram your hair up in there, I’m sure it’ll fit better.”

  Without waiting for her consent, Robbie lifted the hat off of her head. Then he gathered her long blond curls and wound them into a bulky sort of bun that he jabbed two short pencils into to hold it in place. He placed the hat back on her head and, sure enough, it fit much better.

  “Okay, Sherlock,” he said. “Now you’re ready to do some sleuthing, and naturally I will be assisting you as I am playing the part of your dear Dr. Watson.”

  “My who?” Lindsey asked. She glanced at her reflection in the window of her office. She looked like a pointy mushroom. She went to take the hat off but he grabbed her hand and held it.