Remaking Morgan

by Terry Odell

“Randy Detweiler recognized me, which means other people might, too.”

  Cole raised each of her hands in turn and kissed the scars. “I understand. But this is who you are now. This is the woman I want to spend time with.”

  He forced a smile. “Frankly, I wouldn’t care if I never heard a piece of classical music again.”

  Chapter 29

  MORGAN LAY BESIDE COLE, her mind awhirl. They’d made good use of his other housewarming presents, but she couldn’t keep from wondering if he was too good to be true. He seemed to care about her, put her first—and not just in bed—and was going out of his way to help her.

  She wondered if his claim that he accepted her for who she was would survive with time. He was a cop. A man who’d been brought up in a contractor’s household. She’d been a celebrity, traveled the world. Had money. Would that come between them? Love conquers all might work in fiction, but this was real life.

  Who says you’re in love with him, or he’s in love with you? This was all about friendship. Take what he’s offering, give him what you have. But keep a padlock around your heart for now.

  He stirred, caressed her arm. “What’s bothering you?”

  How could he know her so well already? He’d been asleep, hadn’t he? While they’d made love, she’d existed in the microcosm of her bed, herself, and Cole. Or so she thought. Was there a part of her still thinking about Austin, a part Cole picked up on? He couldn’t have read her mind, sensed her doubts, could he?

  “Thinking about Austin,” she said. A half-truth, but a truth nonetheless.

  “It’ll work out.”

  Easy enough for him to say. A feeble attempt to make her feel better. Maybe, coming from Cole, it did.

  She pulled aside the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll scrounge something for dinner.”

  “Scrounge is my go-to meal. I’ll let Bailey out.”

  Morgan wrapped herself in her robe and opened the bedroom door. Bailey, bless his doggie heart, lay curled up in the hall, seeming to accept there were times he wasn’t allowed in certain places. He tilted his head and thumped his tail, as if asking What’s next?

  “Cole’s going to take you outside.” She bent down and rubbed him behind his ears.

  After a repeat of the previous night’s dinner, Morgan asked Cole more about the judge he’d mentioned. “Can I call or email her, or does communication have to go through a lawyer?”

  Which would be yet another expense.

  “Before you do anything, you should document everything you’ve done to help Austin. From what you’ve said, you have a strong case, but I’m not a lawyer. I go to court to testify, but dealing with traffic citations or drunk and disorderly cases is nothing like custody battles. I’ve never been involved in any of those.”

  “I have credit card statements, but they don’t itemize what was purchased the way a grocery store receipt does. When I bought him food, it was along with my own stuff.” She did a mental rundown through what she’d spent on Austin, places she’d taken him. Movies, concerts. The zoo. Parks. “It never occurred to me to save receipts. I paid for his music lessons. Mr. Nakamura, his teacher, would vouch for me there.”

  “You paid him by check?” Cole asked.

  “Sometimes, or by bank transfer.”

  “There are records of those,” Cole said. “Is there a chance Austin’s mom would have mentioned she thought you should have him to anyone else? Even in passing? It might help your case.”

  “The only person I know is her neighbor, who’s being very helpful. I’ll ask her”

  Her beanstalk had shot another ten feet into the air. As her belly twisted with tension, Bailey trotted over and dropped a tennis ball at her feet.

  “Trying to cheer me up, are you?” She picked it up and rolled it across the room. He scampered after the ball, scrambling to keep his footing as he turned to bring it back.

  She tossed it again. “Hard to stay upset around such cuteness.”

  “Fur therapy.” Cole tossed the ball. “Any progress on the ledgers?”

  Morgan told him what she’d done. “You know what? We’ve been trying to connect those pages of numbers to something that would have upset the housekeeper. What if it was a one-time thing that set her off?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. People get upset about things that don’t make sense to anyone else.”

  “You’re telling me,” Cole muttered.

  She got the sense he had plenty of stories from his work as a cop. She went on. “What if Uncle Bob did something that rubbed her the wrong way, and she blew it out of proportion and has been holding a personal grudge all these years? Maybe he grabbed the last package of cookies at the store. Cut her off in traffic. Didn’t give her his seat on a crowded bus. Nobody else we’ve run across seems to have anything bad to say about him.”

  “Good point. I guess short of dragging her into an interrogation room and turning on the bright lights, we’ll never know.”

  Morgan smiled at Cole’s teasing. “What? No rubber hoses?”

  “We prefer to save those for more hardened criminals.”

  She chuckled. “Cop humor is almost as good as fur therapy. What made you decide to become a cop?”

  His face shuttered. He hurled Bailey’s ball into the kitchen.

  COLE KNEW HE HAD TO tell Morgan about his past. About Jazz. About what happened. He wasn’t ready to do it now, though. He stood. “I’ve got to be at work early. I’ll come back after shift tomorrow for the final sanding, and then the wall will be ready to go.”

  Morgan stood, toe to toe, staring him down, fire in her eyes. “That’s it? I’ve opened up my past—bared my soul—and you say you have to be up early for work when I ask you one simple question? You leave now, you don’t need to come back. I’m sure Tom would be happy to sand the drywall.”

  He sat. Pushed his hands through his hair. “It’s not a simple question.”

  “That’s no excuse for not answering. Unless you’re a serial killer, and you thought being a cop would be a good way to hide your secret? Who’d ever suspect a cop?”

  He glanced up into her expectant smile.

  She was right, dammit. “I had a girlfriend once. A serious one. At least we thought so.” He kept his voice to a whisper so she wouldn’t hear it crack. He told her about Jazz, their plans, their love.

  “What happened?” Morgan’s whisper matched his. Her hand rested on his thigh.

  “I did what was right for my future. Went to school, took my exam. She went to breakfast with a bunch of other seniors. Some crazy, hopped up kid comes in brandishing an automatic weapon, sprays the restaurant because they were out of cherry pie. Killed six people.”

  “Your girlfriend—Jazz—was one of them.”

  He nodded. “It took too long for the cops to get there. There was a major traffic accident across town involving an officer, and a good portion of the force had been deployed to deal with it. In retrospect, unless cops had been inside the restaurant when the kid came in, they wouldn’t have gotten there in time no matter where they were. It wasn’t a hostage situation, the kid hadn’t made any demands. He just went in, started screaming and shooting.”

  Even though Cole hadn’t been there, he’d replayed what must have happened over and over in his head. Had the nightmares.

  Sweat trickled down his back. “I gave up college—couldn’t face it without Jazz. Worked for my dad instead. Eventually, I made up my mind the world needed more cops so there were always enough available. Maybe I could save people. Like Jazz.”

  “Which is why you keep trying to protect me from myself,” she said. “It’s not because you’re a control freak.”

  Cole half-smiled. “Control freak? No way. Sure, when I’m working, I need to have the upper hand with people breaking the law. Because of my job, I see a lot of bad stuff and don’t want it to happen again, especially not to people I care about.”

  She ran a finger down his jaw. “You care
about me?”

  He wasn’t ready to tell her how much. He’d bared his soul the way she had, but he wasn’t ready to bare his heart. Too soon. Too much risk that she’d break it.

  He took her finger and kissed it. “Damn straight, I do.”

  “Still want to go home?” she asked.

  “Want to? No. Need to? Yes. I’ve got paperwork to go over.”

  “Paperwork? As in you get homework?”

  He laughed. “No, this is about Kirk Webster. I want to look into his past. I still have his journals, and I want to correlate them with some newspaper articles and old arrest reports.”

  “To explain the graffiti?”

  “That’s my hope.”

  “You can’t tell me about it? Is it confidential cop stuff?”

  “Not all of it. The arrest reports would be. The newspaper articles are public.”

  She tilted her head. “Will you share your ideas?”

  Stay awhile longer? A no-brainer. If he didn’t mention Randall Ebersold’s case, she’d have no reason to connect the two. After all, the cases weren’t connected per se.

  “When you were reading the journals, what kind of a person did you think Kirk was?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never kept a journal. To me, it was another word for diary, which I put in the those are for girls category when I was younger. It seems that Kirk didn’t have those reservations. Did you keep a diary?”

  She shook her head. “The closest I came was a calendar of appearances. What are you getting at?”

  “Did he mention his friends? People he wanted to be friends with?”

  Her brow furrowed. “You mean like secret crushes? Wondering if he should ask a girl out? That kind of stuff?”

  “Did you read anything where he mentioned any girls?”

  She was quiet for a moment. Her eyes widened. “You’re saying he was gay?”

  “I think so. I tried reading the journals based on that assumption, and it fit.” Maybe Miss Oberg’s lessons had merit after all.

  Cole could almost hear the wheels grinding in Morgan’s head.

  She gave a tiny head shake. “There was nothing in the journal entries I read that mentioned any persecution. Nothing about him being beat up, or ridiculed, or any of the other things he might have had to put up with.”

  “True. From what I read, he wasn’t specific. Maybe he was afraid his parents would read his journals and he wasn’t ready to talk to them. Gays are much more accepted now, along with all the other sexual identifications, but not everyone’s on board with being anything other than straight.”

  Morgan flashed a wry grin. “The circles I inhabited, I met a good number of alternative sexual identities. My parents never made anything of it. They said people were different, and some girls liked boys, and some liked girls, and the same for boys. I guess being exposed to those lifestyles from a very young age meant I accepted people for who they were.”

  “Too bad Kirk Webster’s parents weren’t that enlightened.”

  Or Randall Ebersold’s.

  Morgan went on. “So, you think Kirk wrote the graffiti because he’d retaliated. Which would mean he killed someone. If you found him, would you arrest him?”

  “There’s another angle,” Cole said. “Someone killed Kirk and wrote the message on the wall.”

  “That’s so sad,” Morgan said. “I think I liked the prank theory better. I’d hate to think this house could have ties to a murder.”

  Not the way a cop thought. Cole liked to know the truth, see justice done. “I’ll take Bailey for a quick walk, and then I need to get home. You have a busy day tomorrow, too.”

  He left, wondering if either of the detectives would still be working.

  Chapter 30

  WAY TOO EARLY THE NEXT morning, Morgan ran searches for the best practices for becoming a child’s guardian, then started working on the Why Austin Should Live With Me list Cole had suggested. Documentation was still an issue. She went through credit card statements, taking screenshots of transactions she could tie to Austin.

  Using the small keyboard and its touchpad was already aggravating her carpal tunnel. She put her wrist braces on and went through the box where she’d packed her office supplies and connected her ergonomic keyboard to her laptop. The floor was more comfortable than the couch, so she leaned against the wall and went to work.

  School. If Austin stayed here, would she need to enroll him in the Pine Hills school? The semester was almost over. Another to-do list branch. Call Austin’s school in Dublin, see what they suggested.

  Her mind veered to what Cole had said. Having a job rather than a trust fund would carry more weight with the courts. The income she was making from renting her condo when she’d decided to move to Pine Hills wasn’t much. She added check the want ads to her beanstalk.

  She’d have to go to Thriftway, get some kid-friendly food. Take Bailey for a nice, long walk so he’d sleep while she was gone. Fill her gas tank.

  A text from Cole interrupted her list-making.

  Morning

  Same to you, she texted back. Finish your homework?

  Talked 2 dets when finish wall

  Morgan read the message three times before she deciphered it. She wondered if Cole’s phone had a voice system so he could text in complete words, maybe even complete sentences. She wouldn’t be back from the airport when he got off work. She didn’t have a spare key—another item for her to-do list—so he couldn’t come while she was gone.

  Let you know once we’re home. Or tomorrow? Did it matter if the sanding waited another day?

  His thumbs up response said apparently it didn’t.

  IT WAS AFTER SIX BY the time Morgan and Austin arrived at the house on Elm Street. The boy had been quiet on the drive, and Morgan hadn’t pressed. His entire world had been yanked out from under him. He hadn’t said a word about his mother. Would the school have a counselor, or somebody they could recommend?

  “You live here?” he asked. “It looks like a haunted house.”

  “I warned you, didn’t I? It’ll be rugged for a few days, but we’ll manage.”

  She helped him with his borrowed luggage. Mrs. Slauson had provided a large bag and a carry-on. Plus, Austin had his backpack.

  “Watch the second step,” she warned. Her wrists protested as she tried to lift the large bag, so she climbed one stair above the bag and dragged it up each step. “Did you bring everything you own?”

  Austin shrugged. “Just about. Mrs. Slauson said to pack as much as possible in case I had to stay a long time.”

  “Would you like that?” Morgan asked.

  He shrugged. “Suppose so.”

  Morgan slipped her key into the lock. “Here we go. I’m sure Bailey will be glad to have a new friend.”

  Austin stepped aside. When she’d told him she had a dog, his eyes had gone dinner-plate wide. “Really?”

  Maybe Bailey could provide fur therapy for Austin, too.

  While Austin and Bailey were getting acquainted, Morgan called to let Cole know they were home, that he could finish the drywall. “From here on, everything between us has to be platonic. I’ve been reading up on what case workers will be looking for, and if it’s a single guardian situation, they look at possible hints of impropriety.”

  “Can we still see each other? Like for dinner? In public?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Burger Hut? Austin’s pretty wiped out, but they have tables and chairs there.”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “More like twenty to thirty. We need to take Bailey for a walk. He’s been in his crate for hours.”

  Morgan showed Austin the rest of the house, explaining their temporary sleeping arrangements, saying there was damage to the wall in what would be her bedroom. “Once your bed gets here, you can decide if you want this room or the one across the hall.”

  Another shrug. “Okay.”

  She knew how traumatized Austin must be, yet she’d hoped he’
d have shown signs of being glad to be here.

  What do you expect? He’s been pulled from everything he knows. Give him time.

  The question was, how much time did she have?

  AT BURGER HUT, COLE parked just as Morgan’s car pulled into the lot. He stood on the walkway, waiting for her to find a slot. He held back. Tonight, Cole knew, would be about Austin. He didn’t need to overwhelm the kid by doing what he wanted to do, which was rush up and put his arms around Morgan and give the kid an effusive welcome.

  When Austin appeared, Cole took a moment to school his features. Morgan hadn’t mentioned he was black. Skin a few shades darker than Morgan’s. Why should it have come up? Ethnicity, political affiliations, and religion weren’t things Cole asked about when he met people. Or their sexual orientations. Things like that shouldn’t matter, but, as he also knew, too often they did. Pine Hills had its share of all varieties. Would Austin’s being black impact her chances of becoming his guardian?

  Austin was small for twelve, on the skinny side. His gaze was focused on the sidewalk, his shoulders hunched. Feet clad in worn sneakers scuffed along the concrete.

  Morgan approached, Austin hanging a pace behind. Cole waited for Morgan to make the introductions. Let her take the lead.

  “Austin, this is my friend, Mr. Patton. He’s a police officer, and he’s also helping me fix up the house.”

  Austin’s eyes grew wary.

  Cole extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Austin. Welcome to Pine Hills.” Should he tell the kid to call him Cole? No, he’d wait and ask Morgan how she felt about it, since she hadn’t mentioned his first name. She might prefer the more formal arrangement. No hints of impropriety.

  Austin took the proffered hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sir.” The words were polite, the tone was even, but the wariness in his eyes flowed through his hands.

  Cole noticed the long, slender fingers, much like Morgan’s.

  “Let’s go inside,” Morgan said. “Austin’s been on an airplane most of the day, and they don’t give you much food these days.”