Hot

by Julia Harper

  Squeaky sat and swept the beige carpet with his whip-thin tail.

  “Sorry,” Turner said from the bed. “Do you have a clothesline?”

  He looked at her. “A clothesline?”

  “Okay. How about a belt?”

  “That I do have.” He got out a worn leather belt and looped it through Squeaky’s collar. It left him only about a two-foot lead, but it’d have to do. He pointed at Turner. “Stay there.”

  She smiled as Squeaky hauled him away. But ten minutes later, when he got back to the apartment, he found her in the kitchen. She was already dressed in one of his T-shirts and the baggy jeans dress from yesterday and looking in his fridge.

  He muttered to Squeaky as he unhooked him, “You’re cramping my style, pal.”

  The dog ran over and stuck his head in the fridge to take a look. Turner pushed him away absently. “Do you have any anchovies?”

  “Uh, no.” John went to the sink to fill a cooking pot with water. Mental note: stock up on fish of all kinds. He put the pot on the floor, and Squeaky began to drink from it in big slurping gulps that splashed water everywhere.

  Turner gave a little sigh. “How about an omelet?”

  An omelet? John tamped down panic. Seventeen years with the agency and he had no idea how to cook an omelet. He cleared his throat. “I can do scrambled eggs.”

  It was her turn to give him a look. “No. I meant I could cook an omelet. Do you want one?”

  He grinned. “If you’re making it, sure.”

  She flickered a smile at him and took out his carton of eggs. Briefly, he tried to calculate how old the carton was but then decided that life was too short. If the eggs were bad, he’d know soon enough. He got out coffee beans and ground them, watching her from the corner of his eye as he prepared the coffee. She looked better this morning. Yesterday afternoon in the car there had been a fragile edge to her that had scared him. She’d seemed ready to fracture at the slightest touch. This morning her face still had a drawn look about it, but she was more serene. He’d like to think the improvement was from his lovemaking the night before, but it was probably the long hours of sleep that had done the most good. That and the catharsis of crying in the shower. He had the feeling she didn’t often allow herself the luxury of crying.

  Turner opened a cupboard, found a skillet, and frowned at it. The pan looked fine to him, but it probably had something wrong about it that only a female could identify. He added new skillet—Turner’s pick—to his mental list of things to buy. She evidently decided to use the pan anyway. She set it on his stove and switched the appliance on. John turned to the sink to fill the coffeemaker carafe and nearly tripped over Squeaky, who’d opted to lie down smack in the middle of his galley kitchen.

  He toed the dog. “Move.”

  Squeaky shot him a mournful look, got to his feet slowly, and slunk into the breakfast nook, where he could still keep an eye on them. The dog slumped into a heap and groaned. Turner, fortunately, was ignoring the animal. She’d found a bowl and was scrambling the eggs with a fork. On the corner of the counter next to her was his phone and answering-machine setup. John noticed the light was blinking on his answering machine. He hit the button before it occurred to him that it might not be a good idea.

  A series of hang-ups made him relax until the fourth message. There was audible breathing, then a sigh. “John, I need to talk to you. Please call me.” A hesitation, then, “This is your daughter.” Click.

  The answering machine informed them that the call was from Monday afternoon. Rachel must’ve called here first and, when he hadn’t returned her message, tried his cell. The only other message was from the Madison police department, letting him know that Victoria Weidner was out of surgery and expected to recover without any problem.

  “That’s good to know.” John got out a loaf of bread from the fridge and started lobbing slices at Squeaky.

  “Yes.” Turner didn’t look up, but her back had stiffened during the message. “I thought you didn’t talk to Rachel?”

  He noticed that she’d remembered his daughter’s name. That pleased him, but he still fought to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “Yeah, well, she called me a couple of times in the last few days.” He really, really didn’t want to talk about his dysfunctional relationship with his daughter right now.

  “Does she usually refer to you as John?” she asked in a neutral voice.

  “Yup. I think she’s doing it to irritate me.” The coffee was half-dripped. To hell with it. He needed caffeine for this conversation. He pulled the carafe out and poured himself a cup while the machine hissed at him. “It’s working. I’m irritated.”

  “Ah.” She’d poured the eggs into the hot pan, and now she hovered over it, holding a spatula. As far as he could see, an omelet was scrambled eggs cooked like a pancake. “What does she say when she calls you?”

  Christ. If it were anyone else, he’d blow them off for getting too personal. But this was Turner—he wanted her to get personal. Even if he didn’t like the results.

  He sighed. “She wants to know why her mother and I broke up.”

  “Doesn’t she know?”

  “She knows the official version.”

  “Which is?”

  “I was busy, spent too much time away from home, we grew apart. Yada yada yada.” He took the milk out of his fridge, sniffed it, and decided to take his coffee black. Better add half-and-half to his list.

  “And the unofficial reason?”

  “She was fucking another guy.”

  She looked at him, eyebrows raised.

  “Sorry.” He took a sip of his coffee. It tasted better with milk, but at least it was hot. And caffeinated. “It really wasn’t as one-sided as that. We had grown apart. We hardly talked, in fact. When I came back from an assignment and saw this guy’s razor on my sink, I kind of figured she’d made her choice. And she had. She’d decided to find somebody that was around more, listened better. She ended up marrying the guy. His name is Dennis, and he adopted Rachel.” John shrugged. “I was a rotten husband.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She folded the omelet in thirds and slid it onto a plate.

  “Do you? It’s true. I was a lot younger then. I think . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’d do better now, both as a husband and a father.”

  Her hand paused for a second, but she didn’t comment. He’d take that as a good sign, at least for now. Turner smoothly divided the omelet in half and slid the second half onto another plate. John snagged the loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, and they went into the breakfast nook. Squeaky immediately perked up at the sight of food, even though he’d just been fed.

  “So,” Turner said as she sat down. “Why can’t you tell Rachel what you’ve told me? Leaving out the profanity, of course.”

  “I don’t think it’s any of her business.”

  She frowned. “Why not?”

  “Her mother’s sex life? Do you really think that’s an appropriate thing to talk about with a sixteen-year-old girl?”

  “She’s asking, isn’t she? She obviously feels that there’s more to the story than what she’s been told. Besides, as the story stands, you’re the villain of the piece. That isn’t right.”

  “It’s a small price to pay to keep her happy.”

  “But is she happy?”

  John forked up some of the omelet while he thought about that. The omelet was pretty good. He could get used to this.

  “She isn’t, is she?” Turner must’ve figured that he wasn’t going to answer. “Or she wouldn’t be calling you.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how crushing her illusions about her mom is going to solve anything.”

  “But—”

  “I’m a big guy. I can take being the scapegoat for the marriage falling apart.”

  She frowned and opened her mouth again. He could tell she wasn’t going to let it go. He interjected a change of topic before she could start again. “How’re you doing after
yesterday?”

  Turner’s mouth closed, and she looked at him out of narrowed cat eyes, clearly debating whether or not to let him change the conversational flow.

  Finally, she sighed and looked down at her plate. “Okay, I guess. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel.”

  He nodded and flipped a bite of omelet at Squeaky. The dog had been watching. He caught the piece deftly and returned his gaze to John’s plate.

  “It can take a while to assimilate a shooting,” John said. “That’s why a lot of police departments have in-house therapists to talk to cops who’ve been involved with a shooting.”

  “That makes sense.” She hesitated, pushing at the egg on her plate with a fork.

  “But?”

  She sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. I feel awful about Victoria . . .”

  He looked at her, but she was staring at her plate.

  “It’s the other stuff,” she whispered.

  He ate some more omelet while he waited for her to gather her thoughts.

  She suddenly pushed away from the table and walked to the window, looking out. His apartment backed up on another building. He had a nice view of an industrial-sized air conditioner.

  She stared at the air conditioner. “It’s just that I’ve spent so long on Calvin and the bank embezzling. It’s taken up all my life for years and now it’s just . . . gone. I feel kind of set adrift.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But it’s also almost a relief.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She threw up her arms. “There’s no evidence. I’ve looked and looked, but there just isn’t any. And now Victoria’s out of the picture. I’ve lost. Honorably.” She lowered her arms slowly and repeated the phrase. “I’ve lost.”

  John finished his omelet and sat back with the coffee mug in his hand while he debated. She needed to get over this revenge thing, and as she’d said, this was an honorable out. She’d done her best, truly tried every route. Maybe he should be grateful she was willing to let it go. Finally. But would the whole thing come back to haunt her in a few months or years? Right now, she was still in shock. Even the most hardened warrior found it difficult to rejoin the battle after a defeat. And Turner was a warrior of her own sort. Would she regret not bringing Hyman down? Was her loss Hyman’s victory?

  She came back to sit at the table. “I don’t know what to do next. Maybe there isn’t anything to do. I just don’t know.”

  He stared into his mug. The black coffee had a sheen of oil on the top.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I was so sure that there must be some evidence. I just never really considered the possibility that there wasn’t any for me to find.”

  “It’s a logical assumption that there’d be something.”

  “I’ve wasted four years of my life.” She bit her lip, blinking her eyes as if holding back tears. “Is that stupid or what?”

  “It wasn’t a waste,” John said softly. “You wanted justice for an uncle you loved.”

  She grimaced ruefully. “A lot of good it did me.” She swiped the heel of her hand across her eyes.

  John sat forward. “Tell me where you’ve looked.”

  She glanced up at him as if surprised. “You already know. The safe deposit box. His house. The cabin. Everywhere.”

  “You didn’t have a lot of time at the cabin, though.”

  “You searched it, too.”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “There must be somewhere else.”

  “John—”

  He looked at her.

  “I don’t know if I want to get on that train again.” She sat forward, as well, and rested her elbows on the table. “Spend another four years of my life searching for something that’s not there.”

  “What if it is there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you just give up?” He looked in her cat eyes, so sorrowful and confused. “What if there’s still some place you haven’t searched?”

  She was silent a minute. He placed his hand over hers and held it. Her hand felt small and delicate beneath his, but he knew her strength.

  “I wondered once if he kept discs in his car,” she finally said slowly. “That big Cadillac he drives around.”

  John shook his head. “Then why send a hit man after you?”

  She smiled for the first time that day. “Maybe he’s pissed at me?”

  “Definitely.” He grinned back. “But it’s more than that. The evidence—whether discs or a computer—must be somewhere he hasn’t been able to get to easily.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s been trying to keep you from finding it.” John tapped the back of her hand with his forefinger. “If he had it in his car or house, he’d simply destroy it. Problem solved.”

  “So, maybe it’s at the cabin?”

  “Or somewhere else we haven’t thought of yet.”

  She compressed her lips. “You’re assuming he kept evidence at all.”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  Her brows knit in thought. Squeaky came and laid his head on her lap, eyeing the remains of her cold omelet still on her plate. She absently fed him a piece.

  “Does Calvin have family?” John asked.

  “There’s Shannon, his wife, and he has three sons, all in their thirties.”

  “Where are the sons?”

  “The eldest is in Washington state, and the younger two somewhere on the East Coast. Do you think he’d send them the discs?”

  John grimaced. “Too far away. He needs to get to the books easily. Who else is there? Does he have friends?”

  Turner snorted. “He had a photo on his desk of him with the last governor of Wisconsin and a bunch of other guys. They were standing in the snow, holding frozen fish.”

  “Frozen fish?”

  “You know. Ice fishing.”

  “Huh.” John frowned. Ice fishing meant—

  “What?”

  He looked up at her. “He must have an ice fishing house.”

  “I thought ice fishermen just went out on the lake and sat on a bucket, hunched over a hole in the ice.”

  John grinned tightly. “Can you see Calvin hunched over a hole in the ice exposed to the cold?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No.”

  “Then he’s got an ice fishing shack. And I’m betting it’s a nice one.”

  She stared at him, her eyes widening with hope.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  T urner glanced around as John pulled his enormous pickup truck into the drive of Calvin’s cabin. It was just after two in the afternoon, despite the fact that he’d driven like a demon all the way up.

  Part of the delay was because she’d insisted they stop by a discount store so she could run in and get a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that fit her. Wearing the denim jumper was like walking around in a giant bag. After that, John’d had to swing by his office, write out a warrant that included every potential possibility, and then find a judge friend in Milwaukee. He’d roused the poor man from bed—it was his vacation—and then bullied the judge until he’d signed the warrant to search Calvin’s cabin and grounds.

  Turner just hoped that the theorized ice fishing shack was at Calvin’s cabin. John seemed pretty confident. All the way up to Rhinelander, he’d been intent and focused, a wolf who’d caught the scent of running bunny rabbit. But she’d been stalking Calvin for many years now, gotten her hopes up too many times before. She couldn’t help feeling like this was going to be just another dead end.

  John got out of the truck. Squeaky nearly broke a limb scrambling over the seat and bounding out after him. Turner shut the door to her side just in time to see his irritable look at the dog.

  “Howl,” she reminded him.

  They’d initially thought to leave Squeaky behind in the apartment, but he’d started singing as soon as they shut the door. It was kind of flattering, in a way. Turner thought he must not have done the howling thing with Calvin and Shannon. Calv
in would’ve just gotten rid of the dog if he’d been that much of a nuisance. But all the same, she’d have to look into doggy therapy when this was over.

  John narrowed his eyes at her comment, but he seemed resigned.

  “Where would Calvin keep an ice fishing house?” Turner asked.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t see an ice fishing house in the garage when I searched it before. He must have it down by the lake somewhere.”

  He whistled, and Squeaky came galloping up to accompany them down the grassy slope to the lake. It seemed as if the trees had turned more yellow since the last time she’d seen them, although that could be her imagination. She’d been here only a few days ago.

  By the lake there was a fiberglass dock and a ramp for backing a boat into the water. A kind of shed was off to the side. As they neared, she could see the shed was a larger building than she had thought—about fifteen feet square. Bigger than most utility sheds, but smaller than a car garage. It was painted dark green and had a single door, no windows. They came up beside it and stopped. Squeaky ran to the building and lifted a leg against the corner.

  “Bingo.” John gestured to what looked like runners on the bottom of the shed. He caught her confused look. “He must haul it out on the ice in winter on those.”

  “Ah.” The light dawned along with excitement. “Gotcha. So this is it?” Surely it couldn’t be this easy. She’d expected armed guards, secret codes, and locks at the very least. Instead, they’d just walked right up to the thing. It wasn’t even hidden.

  At least the lock was there. “Looks like it.” John was examining the heavy padlock on the door. “I’m going back to the car for the bolt cutter. Stay here.”

  “Okay.”

  Turner walked out on the dock to watch the lake. A slight breeze rippled the water, and the sunshine reflected prettily off the liquid surface. Although, judging by the yard of dried mud on the bank, rain would have been better for the area than the sun. It was a nice lake. The trees crowded close to the shore, reflecting in the water like a tourist postcard. Sometimes she forgot how beautiful northern Wisconsin was—you got kind of used to it. Then she’d see something like this lake and it would just take her breath away.