Rachel wanted to believe Lindsay’s rudeness hadn’t been deliberate. Make allowances, she told herself. She’s had a terrible shock. She held out a hand to Lindsay. “I wish we didn’t have to meet under these circumstances. I’m so sorry about your parents.”
Lindsay gave Rachel’s hand a quick touch that barely qualified as a shake. “Thank you,” she said, her voice falling to a near-whisper.
Lindsay’s huge blue eyes swam with unshed tears, but Rachel thought she detected a glint of malice, the kind of look some dogs had when waiting for a victim to come within biting range. Okay, Rachel told herself, I can’t expect her to like me.
“I have to be going. It was nice to meet you.”
Tom reached around Rachel and held the door open for her. “Before you go, I meant to ask you—I won’t be able to take Simon out to Joanna’s place tomorrow for our ride, and I hate to make him miss it. Would you mind picking him up?”
“I’d love to,” Rachel said. “I’ll give Darla a call when I get home.” Simon was Tom’s seven-year-old nephew, who’d lived with his maternal grandparents since Tom’s brother and sister-in-law had died in an auto accident. He was a great kid and Rachel enjoyed spending time with him.
“Thanks a lot.” Tom dropped his voice. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
Lindsay’s gaze had never left her, but Rachel refused to betray the uneasiness the woman’s stare churned up inside her. She couldn’t wait to get out of there. “Lindsay,” she said with careful courtesy, “I hope we’ll see each other again.”
“Oh, I’m sure we will.”
***
When the door swung shut after Rachel, Lindsay said, “She’s pretty. Hell, she’s beautiful. And she’s here. That’s what I get for being geographically undesirable.”
“Lindsay—” Tom shook his head. At a time like this, he couldn’t very well say, Where you live has nothing to do with it. “Never mind. Let’s talk in my office.”
He led her down the hall. Inside his office, he shut the door while she dropped into a chair. It didn’t seem right to put his desk between them, so he took the other visitor’s chair next to her.
“Rachel was the one who found your dad’s car sitting empty on the road,” he said. “That’s what led us to him.”
“Really?” Lindsay twisted in her chair to lean closer. “Did she see the shooter?”
“No, she didn’t see anything except your father’s car.”
“Oh.” Lindsay slumped back in her chair. “So you don’t know any more than you did when you called me?”
“Not really. But I’ve got crime scene people from the state police out there taking a look, and a couple more at the house, along with a fire investigator. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it.”
Tears welled in Lindsay’s eyes. “I forget for a minute,” she said, “then it hits me all over again.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her jeans and mopped her eyes.
Her distress made Tom want to comfort her, but if he touched her she might take it as an invitation to another embrace.
She stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocket. “Where are Mom and Dad? I want to see them.”
“They’re on their way to Roanoke for autopsy. I signed off on the ID myself. I wanted to get moving as fast as possible.” Reaching across his desk, he grabbed the evidence bag that held Meredith’s ring. “This is your mother’s. I can’t let you keep it yet, but I wanted you to see it, for…well, for closure, I guess.”
Lindsay fingered the ring through the plastic. “I passed a hearse from Maguire’s on my way here. That was them, right? I should’ve realized.” She dropped the bag on his desk and gave him an ironic little smile. “So here we are, Tommy, a couple of orphans.”
“I’m sorry, Lin. This is a hell of a thing, both of them at the same time.” Tom’s parents had died at the same time, along with his brother and sister-in-law. But his family hadn’t been murdered. They’d died in a stupid accident that Tom still blamed himself for.
Tears puddled in Lindsay’s eyes again. “Holy crap, Tommy, who would do something like this?” She sniffled, blinked away her tears, and tried to smile, but didn’t quite bring it off. Laying a hand along his cheek, she said, “I can always depend on you.”
That wasn’t true, and hearing her say it made him uncomfortable enough to stand up and break contact. “Have you thought about where you’ll stay while you’re here?”
“I called Joanna from the road, and she said I can stay with her.” Lindsay glanced up, met Tom’s eyes briefly.
Aw, Christ. Lindsay must have known Rachel was living on Joanna’s horse farm. Did she have the presence of mind, after receiving the worst news of her life, to plan a way to put herself in Rachel’s path? He didn’t have to think about the answer: Of course she did.
“Okay,” he said. Maybe Lindsay and Rachel wouldn’t run into each other. He might enlist Joanna’s help to keep them apart. “I need to ask you some questions, but we can do it later if you don’t feel up to it now.”
Lindsay shook her head, strands of bright hair brushing her cheeks. Her fair skin seemed paler than usual, and with no makeup except a trace of lipstick she looked young and vulnerable. “Ask your questions,” she said. “I know you have to get moving on this. Could I have a cup of coffee, though?”
“Sure.” Tom ran a cup from the coffee-maker on a corner table. Black, the way she liked it. When he delivered it to her, she brushed his hand with her fingers. Back behind his desk, he opened his notebook to a blank page and held his pen at the ready. He intended to maintain a professional perspective, treat her like any other relative of murder victims, regardless of how often she tried to cross the line. “Have your parents been having trouble with anybody in particular the last few weeks? Or months? Did they tell you about any unusual incidents?”
“I don’t—didn’t talk to them on the phone all that much.” Lindsay gripped her coffee mug and stared into it. “Actually, I never talked to Dad. It was always Mom. And she’d been so down since her father died that I got depressed every time I talked to her, so…Now I wish I’d tried harder to help her.”
“Your grandfather died almost a year ago,” Tom said. “She never got over it?”
“It wasn’t just that he died—she wasn’t exactly devoted to him. I think she’d been trying all her life to impress him and make him proud of her. She wanted to write the great American novel, you know? Get it published, get on the bestseller list, have everybody raving about it. It was never going to happen, but she couldn’t let go of the dream.” Lindsay shook her head. “Then the old bastard died.”
“And suddenly there was no chance she would ever get his approval.”
“Right,” Lindsay said. “Then her Aunt Julia died last winter, and that threw her for a loop too. Julia was the only one in the Abbott family who gave a damn about Mom.”
“She was the one who lived on a commune when she was young, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, right. She was a hippie before anybody knew what hippies were, but she ended up married to a New York investment broker. Well, anyway, Mom was dragging bottom, with her father and Aunt Julia both dying in the same year, and I just couldn’t deal with her depression. I never knew what to say or do. The last time I talked to her was about a month ago.”
“When you did talk to her, did she say anything about problems with other people? Do you know of anybody who was mad at your father?”
Lindsay shrugged. “Somebody usually was. You know he’s never been afraid of controversy. But the paper’s practically dead now, and I don’t think he had any other project in the works. You might have to go back awhile to find the last person he ticked off.”
Tom only had to go back as far as that morning and Taylor’s confrontation with Hern. But he left that aside for the moment. “What about personal grievances? Anything recent you can think of?”
“Well, Mom made a joke about Lloyd Wilson’s latest gripe
—the goats getting out of their pen and going in his yard and scaring his chickens. It just sounded like more of the same. What’s happened to Mom’s goats, anyway? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine. Still in their pen, and they’ve got plenty of water and food. Joanna said if you want her to, she’ll send a couple of her guys out there in the morning to take them over to the horse farm.”
Lindsay nodded, started to sip her coffee, then looked at him in sudden alarm. “What about Cricket? Mom’s dog. Was she in the house with Mom when it burned down?”
“We’re not sure, but it looks that way. We looked for her, but no luck. It’s possible she just got scared and ran off, and she’ll turn up okay.”
“Poor Cricket,” Lindsay murmured.
“So,” Tom said, “the situation with Wilson was about the same as always?”
“I was worried it might escalate. That old man’s got a mean temper, and I was afraid he’d fly into a rage over some tiny little thing and—I don’t know. Do something.” She frowned. “Is he capable of killing them?”
“I don’t know. I’ll take a close look at him. Can you think of anything else I ought to check out?”
Lindsay chewed her bottom lip, an old habit when she was concentrating. Tom remembered high school classes when he’d sneaked looks at her, watched her perfect teeth nipping that full lip and felt a jolt of desire that kept him stirred up for the rest of the day.
He dropped his gaze to his notebook.
“Mom told me Dad had an argument with Ben Hern about three months ago, right after he moved here,” Lindsay said. “You know, the comic strip guy? His mother was in VISTA with Mom and Dad.”
Tom nodded.
“Hern got mad because Dad ran a story about him moving to Mason County. I’m sure you saw it. The antipoverty worker’s son moves here and buys a mansion, that kind of thing.”
“I remember. What did your mother tell you about it?”
“Hern claimed the story was an invasion of his privacy. Mom said he showed up at the newspaper office the day it ran and shouted at Dad for fifteen minutes. But it’s a matter of public record that Hern bought that place, and how much he paid. Mom said Dad apologized anyway.” Lindsay added with a wry grin, “You can guess how sincere that was.”
“Did you know your father was trying to borrow money from Hern and his mother to keep the paper going?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No. It’s true. I’m wondering, if Hern was already mad at him, why would your father expect him to help out?”
“Mom said they were running out of options. Now I see what she meant. He must have really been desperate. But you say he asked Hern’s mother for money too?”
“That’s what I hear. Did they stay friendly with her over the years?”
“I don’t think so. I never heard her name until her son moved here. Mom was upset about Ben Hern living in Mason County because his mother might visit him.”
And so she had, just before Cam and Meredith both turned up dead. “What was that all about?”
“I don’t know, I just know Mom didn’t like her and it went way back to when they were all in VISTA.”
“Then it makes even less sense that your dad would ask her or her son for money. Cam was at Hern’s house this morning, and they had a pretty heated argument.”
“What?” Lindsay sat forward. “Do you think Ben Hern—”
“I don’t know anything yet, and I don’t have any answers for you. Just hang in there and try not to jump to conclusions,” Tom said, but at the same time he was scribbling a note about looking into Karen Hernandez’s background.
“Okay, okay, but it’s not easy.” Lindsay sighed. “Oh, by the way, Mom had a safe deposit box and she made me co-owner of it in case anything ever…happened to her. I’ll let you into it without a warrant if you want to take a look at what’s there. Probably nothing of any use, but I thought of it when I was about five miles out of Roanoke, and I went back and got my key.”
“Good. Yeah, I want to see the contents. I’ll let you know when.” Tom stood, tucked the notebook and pen into his shirt pocket. “Why don’t you go on out to Joanna’s?”
“I’d rather stick around here and follow developments. I won’t get underfoot, I promise. I’m a professional too, remember.”
Tom shook his head. “There’s no way you could be professional in these circumstances. Nobody could. I’m lucky the sheriff hasn’t taken me off the case because of the personal connection. I can’t let you get too close to the investigation. Go out to Joanna’s place and get settled in.”
Lindsay didn’t argue. She set her mug on the desk and stood, brushing her hair back behind her ears. “Tommy—” As he moved past her toward the door, she caught his hand, making him stop and look down at her. “I wouldn’t want anyone else in charge of this case. There’s nobody in the world I trust more than you.”
Her hand felt cool and fragile in his, and the beseeching look in her eyes strummed a chord of sympathy in his heart. They’d known each other half their lives, been lovers off and on since their teens. He knew she was tough, but she’d lost both her parents today, in horrifying circumstances, and that was enough to break anybody. It had nearly broken him when he’d lost most of his own family. Yet all he could say was, “We’ll find out who did this.”
Lindsay drew a deep breath and put on her best game face. “I’ll let you get on with it. Call me later, okay?”
At the door, she paused. Looking back, she gave him a startling impish grin. “I’m going to enjoy getting to know Rachel. We have so much in common.”
Chapter Seven
Rachel stretched plastic wrap over the plate of chicken, rice, and green beans Holly had left untouched. She was sliding the plate into the fridge when a knock sounded on the front door.
“Oh, go away,” she muttered. Company was the last thing she wanted.
Another knock, this one louder.
Sighing, Rachel headed for the door.
Ben stood on her front porch, hands jammed into his pockets, his whole body thrumming with tension. “I have to talk to you,” he said.
Tom had specifically asked her not to discuss the day’s events with Ben. What was she supposed to do? Tell her friend to go away and leave her alone? “I’ve talked about the Taylors more than enough for one day,” she said. “I don’t want to rehash it all now.”
“Please, Rachel. You’re the only friend I’ve got in this place.”
She hesitated, weighing Tom’s disapproval against Ben’s obvious distress. Tom would never know she’d talked to him. She swung the screen door open and let Ben in.
Cicero squawked, “Help! Help! Save me, save me!” from the top of his cage, but he didn’t fly to Ben the way he always flew to Tom.
Ben was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he didn’t seem to notice the bird’s cries. Instead of taking a seat, he began pacing aimlessly. “Did you know Taylor’s wife died today too, and they think she was murdered?”
“Yes, I heard. It’s awful.”
“I’m going crazy worrying about—” Ben halted and asked in a lowered voice, “Where is Holly? Are we alone?”
“She’s upstairs. Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous.” What did he have to say that he didn’t want Holly to overhear? Rachel took a chair and motioned Ben toward the sofa, where Frank already occupied one cushion.
Ben dropped onto the couch and rubbed the cat’s head with his knuckles, but he didn’t relax. He seemed to be straining for a light tone when he said, “You’re a lucky guy, Frank, getting rescued by this lady.” He shot a glance at Rachel. “Remember when we stole Mary right off those people’s front steps?”
Displacement activity, Rachel thought. Grabbing at any available diversion to ease his stress. She would play along if it helped him settle down emotionally. “I prefer to think we saved her. You did, anyway. I was too terrified of what my mother would do to me
if I got caught stealing somebody’s kitten.”
“I still carry Mary’s picture.” Ben shifted to pull his wallet from his back pocket. He slid out a photo and passed it to Rachel.
Humoring him, she looked at the beautiful white cat in the picture, then had to smile at the memory. The first time Rachel and Ben had seen her, they were both fourteen years old—and outraged that someone had left the little kitten in a basket on the front steps all day in chilly November. They’d returned after dark to make sure the cat had been taken in out of the cold. But there she was, huddled in the basket while her owners moved about in the warm house. A food dish next to the basket provided proof enough that she was left out all the time. Ben hadn’t hesitated for a second. He marched onto the property, swiped the cat, stuck her inside his coat, and took her home with him.
“You gave her a long, happy life.” Rachel handed back the picture. She waited until he’d put it away before she said, “Ben, you didn’t come over here to talk about our youthful adventure as cat thieves.”
He leaned forward, gripping his head with both hands. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. You and Holly both. That scene this morning, then finding Taylor’s car—“
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “And Holly’s going to be fine too.”
“Well, thank god for that, anyway.” His face knotted with anxiety, he met her eyes and blurted, “There was a witness. They’ve probably found her by now. Christ, I’m screwed. I’ve got a lawyer coming down from New York, but she can’t get here until tomorrow. I’ll be lucky if I’m not arrested before then.”
Rachel felt as if she’d stepped off solid ground into quicksand. She pushed out her words. “A witness to what?”
Ben’s eyes widened when he saw her face. “Aw, shit. What the hell are you thinking? I thought you were the one person I could count on.”
“A witness to what, Ben?”
He rose, pivoted away and began pacing again, his fists shoved into his jeans pockets. “Taylor stopped on the road and got out and wouldn’t let me pass. We got into an argument, and a woman drove up while we were shouting at each other. She probably heard some of it. I can imagine what your friend Captain Bridger will make of that.” He stopped and looked at Rachel. “Can you find out if he’s talked to her? Can you get me her name?”
Broken Places Page 6