However, given the professor’s reaction, I knew it had to be a man who was known to him. The corpse had been a middle-aged man with gray streaked through his hair and a firm physique. What you would expect from a coach.
Land pulled out his phone. “We have to report this immediately.”
I nodded.
Land went back out to the main area to make the call. Reception was sketchy so far from the city, so he paced around the room, trying to find the best hotspot as he reported the death of a man and giving the address. He asked that Detective Danvers be notified, and I winced at the thought of his arrival.
I decided to go through the room quickly to see if there were any clues. I found a highlighter, some coins, and a cellphone. I couldn’t look at the contents of the phone without getting my fingerprints on it, so I left that for the police to learn.
After that, I restrained myself from touching anything or investigating. First, the police were due in a few minutes, and I didn’t want to be caught doing something that I shouldn’t do. Secondly, Williams’ death would be an active, open police matter.
I heard the crunch of gravel as the police arrived. Professor Wallace took charge, per Land’s suggestion, and showed the two officers where the body was. They radioed the cars outside and within seconds, Detective Jax Danvers was standing inside the cabin. The space felt much smaller than it had a few minutes ago.
He smacked his palm against his forehead. “How exactly did you beat us here? We got the call,” he asked consulting his watch, “ten minutes ago.”
Land cleared his throat. “The professor is a friend of the family, and he called us for moral support.”
Danvers rolled his eyes. “And you live 20 minutes away, which means he called you first.” He shot a look over to the professor, who I suspected would be given a rough way to go regarding the timing of the calls.
“So let’s hear it. You might as well just tell me who it is, how he died, and who the killer is.”
I thought about it, but decided not to for the minute. “He’s called Coach Williams, but I have every reason to believe that he’s also the long-missing Ronnie Fisher too.”
Danvers’ mouth dropped open. “What? Based on what evidence are you making that assumption?”
I went through the whole story again, starting with the disappearance, the discussions about the highlighted messages in the textbook, the things that Williams said about the disappearance, and his decision to disappear again now that Professor Wallace had asked someone to look into the cold case.
Danvers took notes as I spoke, and I knew that he would be taking credit for the deductions. That was fine with me, given that I was the one who had received the analysis.
He gave me a long look. “You know who did this, don’t you?”
Land shot a glance at me. I hadn’t had a chance to share anything with him before the police had arrived, but while I thought I knew the who, I wasn’t sure I knew the why. That part did not make sense to me.
I knew that the crime had been one of passion and had not been premeditated, so I strongly suspected that the killer would be brought to justice in a matter of days. I didn’t have to get any more involved than I was to see justice served.
I just gave Danvers a small smile. “I think I do, but I don’t have any proof, and I don’t wish to interfere with an open investigation or commit slander against anyone.”
Danvers snorted, but didn’t reply.
It took another three hours for us to be released from the cabin. Danvers came back to us three times to ask questions, but I didn’t share my suspicions with him. I did text Sabine to tell her that I’d be in late She demanded to know all the details when she saw me, and I agreed.
Chapter 9
“What do you mean you know who did it?” Land asked when we got back into the car around midnight.
“Just that. I know who killed Williams.” I yawned, thinking of the long day I’d had and the much longer night still to come. I could see that Land was not going to let this go quickly.
“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell Danvers about it?”
I explained my reasons. I didn’t want to be mixed up in the process of apprehending and trying the killer. I suspected that the police would find the evidence they needed within a few days, and at the moment, I’d rather let them deal with the rest of the case.
I’d found the answers I’d been tasked with looking for, and I had the analysis, which meant a few tweaks in the schedule for the trucks. I hadn’t even been allowed to finish reading the analysis before the case had reared its ugly head again, and I wanted to focus more on business and family in the near future.
We pulled into the apartment complex parking lot before I’d explained my reasoning for wanting to stay out of the situation. I had other reasons that I wasn’t quite ready to share with Land. I had to determine the best way to tell him the rest.
We went back to the apartment. I was far too wound up to go to sleep, so I started reading through the rest of the analysis. I would have to reread parts of the binder to ensure that the assumptions made were correct, but for the moment, it seemed sound.
I looked up to see Land watching me. It was unnerving. “What’s up?” I asked, knowing full well what he wanted.
“Maeve, I’ve never seen you like this. Normally you’re all about the big reveal, and in this case, you’re holding back. Why?”
I took a deep breath. “It was Mrs. Fisher, the mother. I am betting that she didn’t know who she was killing. I suspected her of being responsible for the death of the security guard in the dorm. She was the only one who seemed to doubt the story he gave to the police. I looked into the history of the man, and being involved in the disappearance seemed to be his claim to fame, which meant that it was likely the reason why he got knifed.”
“Why would she kill her own son though? That makes no sense.” Land seemed slightly perturbed. For all the ugliness he had seen in the military and working for the police while living in Navarro, he could still be naïve about the hate that festered inside a family. I had not experienced that in my own family, which only consisted of me and my parents, but I had friends who had shared horrendous stories of violence within their own families. Sometimes the ones who knew you best could hurt you the most.
“Land, he was a grown man. She hadn’t seen him in over 30 years. I honestly think that she doesn’t know that she killed her own flesh and blood.”
His face looked horrified. “I can’t imagine being the one to tell her that she’s killed the son she’d been looking for over the past three decades. That will be a scene that I don’t want to experience.”
I nodded. The grief would be monumental. I did not want to be a part of that experience in any manner. Let Danvers deal with it. He got paid to handle situations like that.
“Is that why you let the police take the credit for the case?” Land asked finally.
“It’s part of the reason. I don’t want to think that mothers could be so wrong. I didn’t want to experience that type of grief. I could only think that I played a small part in that drama.” I tilted my head back and tried not to think about the outcome of the case.
“It’s not your fault, Maeve. None of this was. It started before you were even born, and the decisions of several people led to the final outcome.” He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me tight. I put my head on his shoulder and fell asleep.
Chapter 10
I made it into work the next morning at around 10:00 a.m. My body craved the sleep, and even when I arose at 8:30, I could easily have slept two more hours.
I stopped to buy a small present for Land, and then headed off to the food truck. Sabine had everything under control, and was working fine without me. As the hours passed at work, I took careful note of the money earned from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Professor Wallace had been right. I had been using that time to start the clean-up processes, but in reality, any food items ordered during that period only served to prolon
g the afternoon. We had to start over once the customer was gone. So in essence, we were doing twice as much work on many days as we needed to.
As we were working the final few minutes, I noticed that Basque in the Sun had pulled up. I would have to go over to visit Land in a few minutes. However, before doing that, I spoke to Sabine.
“We’re thinking of closing Dogs on the Roll an hour earlier,” I said, explaining in detail what the analysis had said and the reduction in hours without much impact on the bottom line.
“And you’re asking me if it’s okay to work an hour less for the same pay?” she said with a grin. Land and I had switched to a salaried based model last year, since weeks with ice and snow did not require any hours, and the impact on insurance and benefits on part-time pay were cumbersome.
“Something like that, yes,” I replied.
She looked like I had handed her a Christmas present months early. “That’s great. I’ve been wanting to do some work on the wedding, but all the boutiques close before I can go home and change and come back. Now we’ll be able to do that.”
I inwardly cringed as she said that. I had a feeling that my time would be taken even though I had reduced my hours.
She gave me a huge hug and then pulled back. Her smile grew, and I mentally cursed the Mendozas who could be just as cunning as I was when it came to investigations. “I guess I better push the wedding up, eh?”
Before she could say anything else, Detective Danvers appeared, and for once, I was glad to see him.
“You knew, didn’t you? Last night. You knew how horrible it would be, and you chose not to get involved.” His face was grim and he sported dark crescents under his eyes. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had not slept well the night before.
“I suspected as much,” I replied honestly.
“What evidence did you have to go on?” he asked, seeming some incredulous. “There was nothing in the cabin for you to see.”
I shook my head. “He’d called his parents’ house. I saw that when I found his phone. That meant that his mother had come to the cabin. She’s the one who still lives in the family home.”
“That’s a long stretch from phone call to putting a knife in his gut,” Danvers retorted. Despite wanting to know what I did, he carried that same antagonistic attitude.
“My suspicion is that he wasn’t explicit when he called her. I don’t think that he told her that he was Ronnie. I am guessing that she went to the cabin armed with some form of protection, like a knife, in case it was a trap. Before Coach Williams could reveal himself to his mother, she took his comments in the wrong way and assumed that he was her son’s kidnapper or killer. She wanted revenge.”
Danvers’ eyes rolled back so far into his head that practically only the whites still showed. “Do you have any proof for that?”
I nodded. “I strongly suspect her of the attack on the man from the security desk in Ronnie’s dorm. He was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant years ago. I’m sure you can pull the file and look at it,” I said, not mentioning that I’d read it before.
“So you think that she killed the security guard too?”
I nodded again. Despite Land’s words, I felt bad for how this had turned out. “She was the only one who openly refuted what the man had to say. People said that he made her upset, saying that he’d seen Ronnie leave of his own accord. In her mind, Ronnie had been taken, stolen, because she didn’t want to live in a world where her child had started over rather than coming back to live with her. Besides, you must have found something if you’re here asking me if I knew it was her.”
It was Danvers’ turn to nod. “Yeah, as soon as we told her that Williams was her son— his fingerprints matched some from when he was an RA at your school. They took his prints and they had Williams’ prints, but no one ever bothered to compare them until we asked.”
I grimaced. “I’m sure it was bad.”
He looked earnestly at me, catching my eyes and keep that contact. “There won’t be a trial. She had a breakdown last night. She’ll be institutionalized as soon as we can get the case ready.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t thought of a reaction like that, though I should have. So many ramifications from a single act.
On that note, Danvers excused himself to talk to Sabine. I assumed that just as Land comforted me, she would be his shoulder to cry on in the coming years.
I ignored their intimate comments as I grabbed the gift bag from the food truck and scurried over to Basque in the Sun. Land smiled and gave me a long kiss when he saw me. It was the antidote that I needed.
When we broke apart, he looked down at the bag and pointed. “What’s this? You brought me a gift?” Despite his taciturn demeanor, Land could be a big kid at times, especially when it came to unexpected presents
I proffered the gift and he opened the bag. He pulled out a toy food truck of approximately the same size as the Tonka trucks. He looked at it from one angle and then another.
“I’m not sure I understand the meaning of this gift,” he said. “Are you saying that you want to open another truck? I thought that the professor said that we should stop at one more truck.” He looked at the truck again, turning it over in his hand.
I moved closer to him and put my hand on his. I moved it so the truck was at eye-level. “I thought that maybe we should start early at trying to ensure the next generation wants to work in the food truck industry too.”
He paused for a second, puzzling out my message. Then he suddenly understood and whooped so loudly that it scared me and made a few potential customers look in our direction. “Seriously? When?”
“In about seven months,” I told him with a grin.
He pulled me tight and then released his arms so that I was being pressed so close to him.
“I won’t break,” I said. “Things will be just the same for now.”
He looked across Government Square to Dogs on the Roll. “I want to go tell Sabine,” he said with a huge grin.
I looked at him. “She already knows. She figured it out when she hugged me earlier. You Mendozas are sneaky.”
“Just imagine how much trouble our offspring will get into,” Land said before pulling me into another long kiss.
SLAY BELLS RING
Chapter 1
I sat at the window, watching the snow come down. A cup of cocoa rested on my ever-growing stomach as I put down my book and stretched. Honestly, I wasn’t very good at sitting around. I’d always had an internal motor that kept me moving, and just because I was five months pregnant did not mean that it had slowed down for a second.
Land had been the one to suggest a short vacation before the birth of the baby. We’d grown somewhat accustomed to our childless lifestyle, doing the things we wanted, and it was an odd sensation to realize that those days were rapidly coming to an end.
While Land wouldn’t admit it, I thought he wanted to escape the traditional Basque Christmas that his grandmother had been planning. With the impending birth of her first grandchild, she had taken up a full-court press to ensure that the baby was fully aware of his/her heritage. While we were both in favor of the baby knowing his or her Basque heritage, both of us agreed that it should probably start after the birth—and not before.
So, Land had booked a room at a charming ski resort for the week before Christmas. There was only one problem with our getaway. Land’s sister, Sabine, had decided to come along as well, and had brought her fiancé, Detective Jax Danvers, my sometimes nemesis in solving crimes.
Sabine was afraid that, without us at the festivities, all the pressure for grandchildren would be foisted on to her. Danvers and I got along fine in social situations, but it was sometimes hard to put all of the investigations behind us and play nice.
Yesterday the four of us had gone for a long hike through the snow. The white landscape had been invigorating, and reminded me of our time in Europe when Land and I took a daytrip to the Pyrenees to climb. Except, then the weather had been
beautiful. Now I was watching what looked like the seventh inch of snow falling.
That unofficial weather forecast meant that I would be reading for a while longer. The two men had gone out to clean off the cars in case the weather got worse. Sabine had yet to put in an appearance, and I was alone, reading a mystery novel. Before the men left, Danvers had snorted when he saw my choice of literature.
“Really? You can’t read something else?” he asked, smirking.
“Like a book on wedding planning?” I replied, knowing that he had been dragging his feet on setting a date. Danvers wanted to make a name for himself in his chosen profession before settling down, but even with his recent successes, which were really my triumphs, he wanted more before marriage. He left me to my book after that.
Land came in and shook the snow off his head and coat like an oversized Labrador. “It’s really coming down out there.” He slid off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair. “You can’t even tell that we cleaned off the cars.”
“Figure out whodunit yet?” Danvers said, fussing with his hair for a moment.
I put the book down, sliding a napkin between the pages. “Not yet, but I will. I think Sabine is still in bed.”
Land snorted. “Think we should rouse her for lunch?”
***
Our “cabin” in the woods was actually a part of the small ski resort. The main hall had the living room where I was currently reading, along with a dining room/café, a gym, and several long hallways off to the north side of the building. Each of the eight hallways had two cabins attached to it, so sixteen rooms made up the complex. They were legitimate one-room cabins, which were connected by a door to the hallways, so that we didn’t have to brave the elements to eat and relax.
In this manner, we had our own space and privacy with all the comforts of someone else doing the cooking. I definitely wasn’t used to meals that didn’t come out of a food truck or which weren’t cooked by my chef husband. Sitting down for a meal seemed almost decadent. Being served by another person was practically unheard of.
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