Cold Case Affair

by Loreth Anne White

  Mrs. Wilkie glanced up. “No, why?”

  Muirinn frowned, wondering what had happened to the bodyguard Jett had sent over. Perhaps he was laying low, or maybe he’d left when the sun came up. Which was odd.

  “Is everything all right, Muirinn, love?” Mrs. Wilkie asked, concern creasing her brow.

  “I’m fine. Will you stay and join me for breakfast? I wouldn’t mind the company.”

  “Of course I will, dear.” Mrs. Wilkie reached for another china cup. “But no chamomile for me—” she grinned. “I need caffeine in my tea.” She spooned a different herb mix into another small teapot, poured in boiling water and set both pots on the table with a little mat.

  The tea was good, different from the way Muirinn remembered, but that might be because her mouth was so dry and fuzzy from adrenaline the night before. She sipped from her cup as she watched Mrs. Wilkie buttering scones, her bright gypsy skirt swirling around her ankles as she moved, her long gray hair caught back in a colorful scarf. It was comforting to watch her. Equally comforting was the soft, warm sensation that was beginning to flow outward through her chest, her body. With mild surprise, Muirinn realized that this tea was working fast—too fast. A faint dawning of fear whispered in her brain, but she couldn’t quite harness the thought. Her mind was growing foggy. Then she heard voices outside the door—a man and woman.

  She glanced at Mrs. Wilkie, her vision suddenly blurry.

  Mrs. Wilkie was watching her intently, smile gone.

  “Did…did you hear…that…” Oh God, she couldn’t talk, her tongue was thick and slow in her mouth. Muirinn tried to lift her arm. It was heavy, as if she were trying to move through syrup.

  Panic struck her heart, but she couldn’t seem to react to it, to think straight.

  “Mrs…. Wilkie…”

  The woman said nothing.

  Muirinn’s brain swirled as she squinted at Mrs. Wilkie, the colors of her gypsy skirt morphing into a chromatic blur. The purple foxgloves lay on the counter behind her. So pretty. Pretty…as poison. It struck Muirinn suddenly—foxglove contained digitalis. The same medicine Gus had been taking.

  Years ago Gus had told Muirinn that dried foxglove leaves could easily be confused with comfrey. He’d liked to drink comfrey for his health. But foxglove would stop your heart, he’d said.

  Muirinn tried to look up into Mrs. Wilkie’s eyes, to read what was going on. But her vision was too hazy, a halo seeming to shimmer around the woman’s body. Mrs. Wilkie knew about herbs. She’d made Gus’s tea blends.

  She could have given him foxglove.

  Mrs. Wilkie had also just mentioned her sister Margaret’s pregnancy. Margaret was married to Old Man Henry Moran. And Margaret’s child—Mrs. Wilkie’s godchild—was Chalky Moran.

  Jett’s voice rumbled into Muirinn’s fading consciousness. Moran blood runs thick in this town…

  Mrs. Wilkie was protecting her godchild, her flesh and blood—and she’d put something into Muirinn’s tea!

  My baby…Muirin had get out of here, get help.

  She tried to stand, bracing her weight on the table. But she slid slowly down to the floor as her legs buckled out from under her.

  Mrs. Wilkie moved forward quickly.

  Muirinn reached out her hand, trying to mouth the word help. But nothing came out.

  Lydia Wilkie crouched down, stroking Muirinn’s long, soft, red hair. “Sleep, child,” she whispered softly. “You’ll be with Gus soon. This town needs peace now. The past must sleep.” Wilkie’s eyes closed, tears spilling down her cheeks.

  “Go in peace, my child,” she whispered as Muirinn’s world faded to black.

  Chapter 16

  Adam Rutledge had long dreaded the day his son might discover the truth about the Tolkin massacre.

  But after twenty long, tortuous years of guilt and nightmares, Adam had dared hope that Jett might just be spared knowing what his father had done. But it wasn’t to be. His nightmare had come true.

  Not only that, but from what Jett had just told him, the toxic secrets from the mine were oozing up to rip lives apart all over again, and Adam could not—would not—let that happen.

  He wheeled his Jeep into Chalky Moran and Kate Lonsdale’s driveway, slamming on the brakes. Hobbling quickly up to the door, he banged loudly with the base of his fist.

  No answer.

  Adam went around back and saw that Chalky’s big white van was gone. Peering in through the windows, he could see their gun cabinet hanging open. This felt wrong—way wrong.

  As far as Adam knew, the only other people who knew what had really gone down on that cold spring morning twenty years ago were the Moran brothers, and now maybe Chalky’s wife, Kate Lonsdale.

  When the bomb had ended up killing those men, Chalky had turned in desperation to his brothers, and Don and Bill Moran had instantly rallied around their own, closing ranks to protect Chalky. Because of that, Adam had been spared, too.

  Adam knew just how deep Moran blood ran, and just how much they all stood to lose if this got out, especially now that Kate was mayor. But just how far would they go to keep the old secret buried?

  Could they have killed Gus?

  He shuffled painfully back to his Jeep, the arthritis in his hip and knees acting up the more he moved. He called Jett on his cell phone, but the call went straight to voice mail.

  Adam cursed. His son had disowned him, cut him off. He couldn’t blame him, but he really needed to talk to him now.

  Adam started his ignition and raced over to Mermaid’s Cove. But Jett’s driveway was empty, his truck gone.

  Tension squeezing across his chest, Adam rushed over to the O’Donnell house, thinking maybe he’d find Jett there. But his son’s vehicle was not in the O’Donnell driveway. Neither was Gus’s red Dodge. The front door of the house, however, hung wide open.

  Adam dragged his disabled leg up the stairs, pain worsening, making him break out in a sweat. He raised his fist to rap on the open door. But as he did, he caught sight of Lydia Wilkie hurriedly clearing dishes off the table. She glanced up, and at the sight of him in the doorway, a look of sheer horror—then panic—crossed her lined features. Her eyes were puffy, as if she’d been crying.

  “Lydia?” he said, stepping into the hallway. “Is everything all right? Where’s Muirinn?”

  She seemed unable to speak for a moment, rooted to the spot, looking as though she’d flee if Adam weren’t blocking her exit.

  A chill trickled down Adam’s spine.

  His gaze tracked the room quickly. He saw two teacups and a half-finished breakfast on the table. An overturned chair lay across the room. A shotgun rested near a bent-willow rocking chair facing the window, and a woman’s sneaker lay upturned in an odd position near the door.

  The chill deepened.

  “Where is she, Lydia?”

  She swallowed, eyes flicking round the room. “I…don’t know. She had a fight with Jett, just packed up all her bags and left in the truck,” Lydia said quietly. “I came in to clean up.”

  She was lying. He could see it in her eyes.

  Raw fear raked down Adam’s throat as the horror of what might be happening dawned on him. He bent down and picked up the shoe. “Is this Muirinn’s?”

  “It must have fallen out of her bags. She left in a real hurry.”

  Adam limped over to the rocking chair, picked up the shotgun and checked it. It was loaded, a round chambered. He glanced at Lydia who remained frozen in place. “Did Chalky come get her?”

  She said nothing.

  “Where, Lydia! Where did they take her?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Adam cursed, gesturing at her with the gun. “If she dies, Lydia, you go down for murder!”

  “And if you go after Chalky, we all go down. I know what happened in the mine, Adam,” she said hoarsely. “You’re in the same boat if this gets out.”

  “No,” he said coldly. “I am not in the same boat. Because the differenc
e, Lydia, is that I don’t care if I go down now. I never intended to kill anyone twenty years ago, and I sure as hell have no intention of letting anyone else die now. This has to stop, even if it means turning myself in to the FBI.”

  He stormed out of the house, taking the gun with him. He tried again to call Jett from his Jeep. No answer. Lydia came rushing out the door after him, but Adam slammed the gearshift into reverse, hit the gas and shot like a wild man down the driveway, spinning backwards onto the dirt road in a spray of dirt and stones.

  He raced for the airstrip.

  If Jett was unaware of what had just happened to Muirinn, and he was not at home, there was one place he would be. His plane.

  Sweat soaked his shirt as Adam drove faster, pain burning into his knees and hip. He hit Redial, steering with one hand, willing his son to pick up. Because there was no one else he could call. If Chalky had taken Muirinn, the Morans would be circling the wagons again.

  That meant the police were the enemy.

  The mayor was the enemy.

  And there was no time to get FBI or state troopers in. He wasn’t even sure there was still time to save Muirinn’s life.

  But he sure as hell was going to try.

  Preparing for takeoff, Jett caught sight of his father, a pitiful figure hobbling fast over the tarmac, waving his hand high in the air. Jett started the engine, the prop of his Beaver turning over a few times then whizzing to a choppy blur. He opened the throttle and began to taxi out onto the runway.

  But his father angled sharply across the field ahead, trying to cut him off. And as he neared, Jett saw the determination and grit on his father’s face. And he a chill touched the base of his spine as he realized that Adam was carrying a shotgun.

  He braked the plane and pushed back the sliding window.

  “Muirinn’s gone, Jett!” Adam yelled as he approached the plane. “They took her!”

  He removed his earphones, hoping to God he’d heard wrong. “Where is Hamilton Brock? He was supposed to be guarding the house!”

  Puzzled, his dad looked up. “No one else was there, except Lydia Wilkie. There were signs of a struggle inside the house, Jett. I think Chalky took her in his van—it wasn’t at his house. If we can get up in the air fast, we might still see it.”

  Jett’s stomach flipped over in dread. He quickly leaned over the passenger seat to swing open the door. “Get in!”

  His father struggled to climb up, and Jett grasped his hand and helped haul Adam up. Their eyes locked for a second, tension simmering between them.

  “Put the headset on,” Jett snapped, as he turned to rev the de Havilland’s engines. They took off into a brisk early morning headwind, and Jett noted that the distant bank of clouds to the west was closing in as he listened to his father relate how he’d rushed over to Chalky and Kate’s place, found the van missing, saw the gun cabinet open and then raced to Mermaid’s Cove.

  “Lydia might even have given Muirinn some sedative or something because there were cups on the table, and she was trying to put everything away in a real hurry.”

  An image sifted suddenly into his mind—purple foxglove petals falling onto the back of Muirinn’s hand as she left a note for Lydia Wilkie under the vase.

  Gus could have been poisoned, Jett, a heart attack induced.

  Had Lydia helped them with Gus, too?

  Had she given Gus something—like digitalis tea made from foxglove—that had stopped his already damaged heart?

  Jett’s stomach lurched at the thought.

  Could it have been Chalky who shot at Muirinn that day at the mine?

  Jett recalled the ATV tracks that had headed up the mountain toward the eastern drainage. “Kate Lonsdale’s family has always had land up north, up the eastern valley,” Jett said coolly. “There’s an old cabin on the property. They could be taking her there.”

  Reaching elevation, Jett dipped the de Havilland’s wings sharply to the right, taking his craft out of the headwind and circling back. The dark bank of clouds to the west loomed closer, stray drops of rain beginning to fleck the windshield. The storm was moving in faster than had been forecast.

  Jett flew up over the ridge and dropped low into the adjacent eastern valley, flying in a northerly direction as his father scanned the dirt road below with binoculars for signs of a vehicle.

  Suddenly, through the trees, Adam caught the dust plumes of two vehicles racing north along the twisting track. He tapped Jett’s arm and pointed.

  Jett buzzed lower over the trees.

  “Chalky’s van!” his father said, scopes fixed on the column below. “And Gus’s truck in front.”

  Panic whipped over Jett’s chest and his hand tightened on the controls. He told himself he couldn’t afford to panic. He had to stay focused if he was going to get Muirinn and her baby out of this alive.

  He inhaled slowly, forcing his breath out in a slow, controlled fashion as his mind raced. The police were out of the question. He couldn’t even call for SAR help—many of the SAR volunteers were tight with the Safe Harbor cops, and any radio chatter could be picked up. Jett didn’t know who he could trust. He wasn’t even sure now if he should have trusted Brock.

  They had no choice—he and his father had to handle this on their own. And they had to be damn creative about it.

  He shot his dad a glance. Adam’s eyes met his, and a current of understanding passed between them. “We’ll get her, son. I swear, we will get her.” And Jett knew from the look in his dad’s eyes, that despite everything in their past, they remained united on this one thing.

  Jett nodded, and his father quickly went back to tracking the vehicles.

  The dirt road below began to climb along the edge of a talus-filled canyon, and the trees thinned. Jett swooped down lower behind the vehicles, wings almost brushing the tips of the conifers.

  But as he did, dust suddenly boiled out from behind the vehicles as the drivers sped up, realizing that they were being pursued by air. The van at the rear, without four-wheel drive, began to sway wildly on the steep dirt road, veering closer and closer to the cliff edge.

  Jett’s heart leapt to his throat.

  Then the back doors of the van were flung open, and a body came tumbling out the back. It bounded hard on the dirt, all arms and legs as it rolled over the edge of the cliff and plunged down into the ravine, bouncing over rocks as it plummeted all the way down into the narrow crevice hundreds of feet below, until it disappeared into choking brush.

  Jett’s stomach lurched. “It’s Brock,” he whispered, praying that Muirinn was still alive inside the van.

  Tilting the nose of his Beaver, he suddenly veered sharply up and over the next mountain.

  “What are you doing?”

  “They’re going to have an accident and hurt Muirinn if we stay on them like that.” Jett’s face felt tight. “We have to assume that they’re heading for the Lonsdale cabin. We can get there ahead of them.”

  “What if they second-guess us and turn back?”

  Jett reached forward, switching radio channels. “There’s only one road that leads north up the eastern drainage area, which means there is only one way out,” he told his father. “We’ll block the exit.”

  “How?”

  “Like this.” Jett radioed into the SAR dispatch. He said nothing about Muirinn or the Morans, only that he was in the air and had witnessed a man go down the mountainside. “He’s hurt pretty bad, if he’s even alive.”

  Grimly, he relayed the GPS coordinates indicating where Brock had fallen into the canyon. “You’ll need to set the chopper down on the road. It’s the only place to land,” he said. “Get some guys to climb down, you’ll find where he broke through brush and rolled over the edge. You’re going to need ropes carabineers—full gear. I’ll try to get out there as soon as I can get my bird landed,” he lied.

  By the time he signed off, the emergency chopper’s rotors were spinning back at the helipad. The helo would be airborne and squatting smack in the middle o
f that exit road within minutes, followed hot quickly by ground ambulance and EMT personnel.

  “If the Morans turn back now,” he told his dad, “The road will be blocked.” With people who can help Muirinn.

  He flew low, following the course of the slow, meandering river in the eastern drainage, until his father pointed. “There! That’s the cabin. Down there in that grove of alders.”

  Jett began scanning farther along the river for a place to set his craft down.

  Crouching in the dense alder and willow brush that surrounded the log cabin, Jett and his father waited for the vehicles to arrive. Between them they had a rifle, shotgun, two hunting knives, a can of bear spray, and several bear bangers—explosive cartridges that screwed onto pencil flares.

  The minutes ticked by slowly. Rain began to come down heavily, and the sky grew dark and low with thunderclouds. The air felt hot, electric, in spite of the wind that rustled the tops of the conifers in the surrounding forest.

  Suddenly, a plume of dust rose above the bush in the distance, and Gus’s truck appeared. It pulled up in front the cabin and Kate Lonsdale jumped out. Face flushed, she rushed to the cabin door, hurriedly fumbling with keys to open it. She had a rifle slung over her shoulder.

  Jett’s pulse quickened. He placed his hand on his dad’s arm, cautioning him to hold their position until the van arrived. “Wait until the driver gets out,” Jett whispered. “Or we might risk them bolting. We’ll never make it back to the plane in time, and we could lose her.” His dad nodded, eyes fixed on Mayor Lonsdale opening the door.

  Jett scanned the layout of the clearing, unsure of his plan. He wanted to get Muirinn away from them before they could get her inside the cabin, where they would be able to hole up with weapons.

  A second plume of dust rose above the bush, blowing like spindrift in the increasing wind as the van approached.

  Treetops were now beginning to sway with a soft hiss and warm rain made his shirt cling to his body. Jett could sense the air pressure changing, too, a feeling of electricity in the air. They needed to hurry, or they might not be able to get the plane out again if the storm brought lightning.