Carrie Alexander - Count on a Cop

by Nobody’s Hero

  Practice skills of observation. If I get good enough I could even be a supersecret spy. I will remember everything. Everything.

  Practice using my senses.

  1. Sight. I hate my stupid glasses. I wonder if Mom will let me get contacts? Do they do that operation for seeing on little kids?

  2. Taste. I guess I’m pretty good at that, but I don’t want to taste anything yucky for sure. I don’t think detectives go around tasting stuff at crime scenes. LOL!!

  3. Touch. I don’t touch people exsept my Mom because she is huggy and kissy. I like to pet animals but I will never, ever touch the worms in our garden. They are gross.

  4. Smell. This house smells like mothballs and pine trees and wet things. My house at home smells good like warm cookies and that spicy stuff Mom puts in bowls. My dad’s TV room smelled like him and books and the Skittles he hid from Mom so she didn’t yell at me for getting decays. I remember all of that.

  5. Hearing. My mom is singing to herself downstairs. The window is open but I only hear birds and things in the trees. But I think I see some of the lights from the big house through the branches. It’s getting dark so if I use my binockulars maybe I could see a cigaret or a lit match like Mr. R. said.

  “YOU DON’T HAVE TO read it all.” Sean looked down at Connie, sitting on Pippa’s bed with the creased notebook in her lap. She was hesitating to even open the cover.

  “It’s like a diary. Would you read your—Okay, you don’t have a child, but if you did, you’d understand.”

  “I do,” he said. “I have a son.”

  Her head snapped back. “You do?”

  “Joshua. He’s thirteen. Lives in California with his mother and her new family.”

  “I didn’t—Well, of course I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.” Connie blinked. “So. Wow. I guess you were married, too.”

  “Yes. And divorced.”

  She was getting that sympathetic look again.

  “Go on, read the notebook,” he said gruffly. “Just the last entry, in case it gives us a clue where she went.” Pippa had likely been gone for no more than twenty minutes. When he’d arrived after a quick run through the woods with a flashlight, Connie had called him upstairs to the bedroom.

  “Yes,” she said, opening the book. She flipped through pages filled with notes and doodles to the last entry. “Hmm. There’s something about you, and learning Morse code.”

  “Then she wrote it later than this afternoon.”

  Connie scanned. “Observation skills. She lists…” She stopped, biting her lip. “Oh, Pippa.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just something about her father.” Connie cleared her throat. “Okay. What about this? She mentions seeing the lights up at Peregrine House. Matches and cigarettes? Does that make any sense?”

  “That’s something we talked about, yeah. You said you already called the Sheffields?”

  “I spoke to the housekeeper. She knows Pippa and she hasn’t seen her.”

  “But she’d be outdoors, don’t you think?”

  Connie slapped the book shut and stood, so agitated her hair seemed to be made of live wires. She ran a hand through it, and he was surprised it didn’t crackle. “Maybe. I know she didn’t go to the water.”

  She’d spoken as if she was trying to convince herself. Sean wished she could convince him, too. “Let me see exactly what she wrote.” He took the notebook and read the last few sentences. “We should go up to the house.”

  Connie had opened a bureau drawer and was rifling through her daughter’s things. Sean glanced through a pile of books, all with a sassy blond girl on the cover.

  “The binoculars aren’t here.” Connie frowned. “If she managed to sneak past me, she’d have taken the binoculars. But would she go out at all, in the dark?” Connie appealed to Sean. “She used to be terribly scared of the dark when she was small, and the old fear came back after Phil.”

  Sean tapped the open notebook. “It was only starting to get dark when she wrote this entry.”

  “Right. And if she saw something intriguing through the binoculars, she might have tried to get closer. We need to go and look for her.”

  They headed for the stairs.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find her.” Outside, Sean clicked on his flashlight. “Take this. You go up the driveway and I’ll use the shortcut through the woods. We’ll meet at the house.”

  She pushed the light back at him. “You need it more than I do. There are lights along the drive.”

  He swung it in an arc, flashing the trees. “Pippa! Pippa Bradford!”

  “I called for her,” Connie said.

  He gave her a gentle push. “Go. I’ll bet we find Pippa somewhere between here and the main house, too scared to go on and too afraid of a scolding to return.”

  “Yes,” Connie said, still trying to convince herself.

  He hurried off through the woods, adding his voice to Connie’s as they shouted for her daughter. In minutes, they reunited at the edge of the circular portion of the driveway.

  Connie panted. Her cheeks and lips were ruddy in the cold ocean air. “Any sign of her?”

  He surveyed the grounds. “What’s that?”

  “Where?”

  “The light near the maze.”

  She strained to see farther in the dark. The half-moon was out and that helped, but the lamps placed throughout the garden still left too many pockets of deep shadow. “I don’t see a light.”

  “Something flickered. Maybe a flashlight.”

  Connie opened her mouth to shout, but Sean put a hand on her arm. “We should get closer first.” And listen. A certain uneasiness had crept over him.

  They walked silently through the cool grass. “Was the light in the maze?” she whispered.

  “I couldn’t tell.” He indicated the tall hedge. “Let’s circle.”

  They came to the far side, where it was darker. Connie made a small sound. “I want to call for her.”

  “Go ahead.” There was nothing to hear except the susurration of the wind and sea. “Softly.”

  “Pippa?” Connie’s voice wobbled in vibrato. “Pippa.”

  Silence.

  Connie whispered, “I hate this maze.”

  Not far away, past the next angle of hedge, a weak light near the ground blinked on and off. On and off.

  SOS.

  “That’s her,” Sean said, and Connie let out a joyful yelp that split the silence. She took off, and he was left standing flat-footed. He marveled at how completely she’d trusted him.

  “Here she is!” Connie cried.

  Pippa’s voice rose above the hedge. “Jeez, Mom. You’re spoiling my surveillance.”

  “I SAW THE LIGHT from a cigarette,” Pippa said ten minutes later. She was tucked into bed with extra covers.

  Connie sat beside her daughter. Sean stood at the footboard, his head grazing the slanted ceiling striped with strange shadows cast from the lone bedside lamp. The moment felt odd to her. Like a tableau from Norman Rockwell, except that Sean shouldn’t have belonged quite so well.

  “Huh.” Connie weighed the binoculars and flashlight she’d confiscated, then laid the light on the bedside table, atop her daughter’s Book of Curious Observations.

  Sean bent to peer out the window toward Peregrine House. “Not from here, you didn’t.”

  Pippa made her guilty face. “Well, no. I went outside first.”

  “You put on clothes,” Connie said. A jacket, jeans over her pajama bottoms, running shoes. “You sneaked past me.”

  “That wasn’t hard. You were all hunched over your garden drawings.”

  Connie pushed that aside for now. “All the same. You sneaked past me because you knew I wouldn’t allow you to go out. And then…” She stared Pippa in the eye. “What happened then?”

  Pippa’s chin puckered. “There were lights at Peregrine House. I wanted to look through my binoculars to see if I could identify what kind of lights, so I took the trail through the wood
s to get closer. It wasn’t too dark yet, Mom.”

  “Dark enough. But go on.”

  “Well, that’s when I saw the match and the cigarette burning.” Pippa glanced at Sean. “Just like you said.”

  “A guest went outside for a smoke,” Connie replied, exasperated. “Why would that rouse your curiosity?”

  “I heard voices, too.”

  “Voices? That’s nothing.”

  “It’s my fault,” Sean offered. “I was telling her about using all of your senses in surveillance work, and I mentioned how far voices carry, and the distance that—”

  Connie cut him off. “Fine. But it was my darling daughter who chose to go skulking around the garden in the dark without telling me.” She tucked the covers in even tighter. “Pippa, I’ve had enough of your spying and inventing wild scenarios. Did you ever consider what I would think when I found you gone?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I just wanted to see if I could hear the men talking.” Pippa’s small voice gained volume. “And it wasn’t my imagination. They were plotting.”

  “I doubt they were plotting,” said Connie.

  Sean wasn’t as dismissive. “What did they say?”

  “Don’t encourage her.” Connie blushed, realizing that she’d previously told him the exact opposite.

  “I didn’t hear much,” Pippa admitted, looking vastly disappointed. “They were both whispering, and then they walked into the maze before I got there. So that’s why I was being superquiet and going around it, to get closer, y’know? But all I heard was something about a rock. I think they said they were going to meet there and split the money.”

  Sean thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Hmm.”

  “Pip, you misunderstood.” Connie kept a firm voice. She did feel leery of the overheard conversation, but she wasn’t dealing with this now. Pippa shouldn’t be any more involved than she already was.

  “What did they sound like?” Sean asked, and Connie shot him a glare. “Did you recognize either of them?”

  He lifted his shoulders, made big puppy-dog eyes at her. Couldn’t help himself.

  She wished she had a rolled-up newspaper.

  Pippa was thinking so hard she’d squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know for sure. One of them was real quiet. The other guy had a husky kind of voice and an accent. Like the man in the general store who says ‘ayuh.’”

  “At least one of them might have been a local, then,” Sean said.

  “Never mind,” Connie said. “We’re not thinking about this right now. It’s time for bed for you, Miss Snoop, and Mr. Snoop is going home. Tomorrow is the garden party and we all need a good night’s sleep. At least I do.”

  She stood and gestured Sean out of the room, putting her hands on his back and prodding him along to keep him moving. All she needed was for her daughter to have a coconspirator in her obsession.

  “Good night, Pippa,” he called.

  “G’night.” Pippa sniffed. “What about my binoculars, Mom?”

  “I’m keeping them.” Connie’s stern expression softened. “Lights out, Pippa. Sweet dreams.”

  No nightmares, my little one.

  She sighed when they reached the bottom of the stairs. “There was no sign of anyone in the maze. Or the garden.”

  “If they hadn’t already gone before we got there,” Sean said, “after the noise you made, they were probably smart enough to keep quiet and wait for us to go.”

  Connie was uneasy about the whole thing, even though Pippa hadn’t seemed particularly frightened. She’d barely seemed to notice how dark the sky had grown.

  “Assuming they were up to no good in the first place,” Sean added. A shiver prickled Connie’s skin.

  With her finger on her lips, she nodded up the staircase. “Outside,” she mouthed.

  “Sorry,” he said as soon as the door was shut behind them. “This was my fault. And maybe I shouldn’t have asked questions, either, but you have to admit the conversation that she overheard seems suspicious.”

  “If she heard what she says she heard. I told you about the so-called stolen goods in my neighbor’s shed, right?”

  “Right.”

  Connie scraped her hair off her face, feeling jittery. She’d tried to stay calm with Pippa, but thank God for Sean’s solid presence.

  “Okay,” she said. “Maybe Pippa’s not so wrong this time. Maybe there was something odd going on up there. But I don’t care. I want to finish my work here and not get into any unnecessary complications. I definitely don’t want my daughter involved. For a timid girl, she’s gotten awfully adventurous since we came to the island.”

  Sean was doing his taciturn thing again. She looked up at the sky, at the sharp glitter of stars that seemed so much closer on Osprey Island. Everything did. Her emotions, old dreams and new longings—all rising to the surface and demanding to be satisfied.

  She’d called Sean for help. And it had seemed natural, when she’d felt so alone since losing Philip. Proud, independent, stubborn…but alone.

  And lonely.

  Sean stamped his feet and rubbed his arms, which were bare. He’d come running in just a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, she realized. Her heart filled with a warmth that she wished she could give to him by the handful.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted—Pippa being more, uh, outgoing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But preferably not demonstrating that by creeping around in the dark or drowning in the ocean.”

  “Of course.” He nodded. “If I told you about the scrapes I got into as a kid…”

  She smiled, a little. “And me.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her.”

  “I don’t want to be. It’s just that I’m at the end of my rope, trying to deal with her and the party. I’m already worrying about what on earth she’ll get into tomorrow, because I won’t be able to keep an eye on her every single moment.”

  “I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain about inappropriate risks.”

  “Thank you.”

  They had walked to the edge of the clearing around the guesthouse. The house had no yard to speak of, only a skirting thick with rust-colored pine needles. A border at the front of the house was sadly choked with weeds. Connie would have filled it with shade-loving plants—coleus and hosta and great clouds of impatiens.

  Sean folded his arms. “I’ll keep an eye on her tomorrow, too.”

  “You will? That would be such a relief. Except I thought you weren’t attending the party.”

  “I hadn’t planned to, but now I’m curious.”

  “Not another one!” Connie’s laugh was a bit too loud. There was a sudden flapping in one of the trees. One dark shape winged away, then two more. “Don’t turn my daughter into your junior detective, please.”

  “’Course not. But I will keep my eyes open.” Sean turned his head, following the birds’ flight. “She would have recognized Sheffield’s voice, don’t you think?”

  “Stop,” Connie commanded. “I can’t go there right now.”

  He nodded. “I’ll come by early,” he said, “so you can get up to the house before the party.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” She laid her hands on his crossed forearms and gave him a squeeze. “For racing over. For rescuing us again. For everything.” His arms felt like cold marble. “Go home. Get warmed up.”

  His expression was already warm, hinting at a desire that neither of them would voice—not yet.

  Suddenly Connie’s heart was in her throat, beating wildly.

  A long time had passed since she’d been with a man, or even wanted to be. It had been even longer since she hadn’t felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. The allure of casting everything aside and losing herself in Sean’s kisses and a long night of loving was a temptation almost impossible to resist.

  “Good night, Mr. Snoop.”

  His smile transformed his face. “Not the nickname I’d hoped for, but I like it better than Mr. Limpet.”

&n
bsp; CHAPTER NINE

  THE CELL PHONE was chirping again when Sean let himself into the cottage. He grabbed it and went to stand by the fire, which had almost gone out. Better that than burning down the place.

  He opened the phone and said, “Hello,” distractedly moving aside the fireplace screen. Beneath the white ash, the coals of the fire glowed red. He tossed on one of the remaining logs.

  “Finally!” His former wife was the last caller he’d expected. They e-mailed logistics of their son’s life, he mailed child-support checks, but they rarely talked unless there was trouble.

  “I’ve been calling all day,” she said.

  Uh-oh.

  “Hello, Jen. I’ve been out. I’m on vacation.”

  “Oh, you’re calling it vacation now? I thought it was exile.”

  “It’s vacation.”

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Healing.”

  “Must not be too bad if you’re going out. Don’t you ever check your messages?”

  “Not often.”

  “Same guy I married. Why communicate verbally when smoke signals will do?” Jen chuckled, but there was no humor in it. She’d once liked his self-control, but later had called him passionless. Just as she’d first thought that his job was impressive, but had soon grown disillusioned by the long hours and stagnant paychecks.

  Sean waved at the acrid wisps rising from the sputtering coals. He replaced the screen and sat down right there, on the brick hearth. His arms were covered in goose bumps. “Is it Josh?”

  “Of course it’s Josh.”

  “Trouble?”

  “That’s his middle name.” Jen had never been easy to get along with. She was a bossy, brassy Bostonian, accustomed to shooting off her mouth. They’d shared an attraction but no real foundation for a lasting relationship, and would have broken up before marriage if it hadn’t been for the unplanned pregnancy. Even aside from giving them Josh, Sean still couldn’t say their years together had been a waste. He’d learned a lot about himself and what he did and did not want.

  Yes to spirit and ambition like Connie’s. No to Jen’s upwardly mobile demands.