The sound of fabric moving against skin preceded Kenneth’s hand sliding beneath the covers to find hers.
The contact startled her but she didn’t move away.
Instead, she listened to the warm rumble of his voice.
“I’ve never told you about the day Ally died, have I?”
That question was more unexpected than the impromptu hand-hold. Willa shook her head. He must have heard the movement because he continued without a verbal answer.
“Most know the gist of how she was found, in Becker’s field with two bullets in her, but no one knows why she was there in the first place.” He shifted a little but kept Willa’s hand. His voice stayed even and warm despite the topic. “See, Ally was one of those crazy people who loved to run. I’d say it’s all just exercise and she’d fuss at me and say running wasn’t just a way to try to stay in shape, it was a lifestyle. A way to get and keep control of your life while also giving you freedom.”
He laughed. It sounded old and worn.
A laugh recalled from a memory he’d no doubt had with his wife.
“But for me? Well, it was just a fast way to make you sweaty and hungry.” Willa felt through the mattress’s rising and falling that he’d taken a deep breath. When he’d let the breath out, the warmth in his voice had gone with it. “The last time I saw her alive, she wanted to break in her new running shoes and go on a trail at the park to shake things up. She asked me to go with her. I didn’t.”
There was unmistakable pain in his voice.
Willa wished she could make it better. She knew she couldn’t. At least, not entirely.
“No one knows where she was actually killed, just knew that she wasn’t shot there in Becker’s,” he continued. “And to this day, I have no idea what would have happened had I gone with her instead of staying home. So, I blamed myself then for her death just as I still blame myself now sometimes for it, too.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong,” Willa piped in. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
As she said the words, Willa realized why Kenneth was telling her about Ally now instead of all the times they’d been together in the last week.
He gave her hand a squeeze of pressure.
“Unless you came up with the plan, carried it out, and pulled the trigger, it isn’t your fault.” He sighed again. It sounded lighter somehow. “But I know it’s a hard truth to accept. What-if scenarios put bumps in the road to acceptance.”
Willa started at that.
“Well, if that isn’t a poetic way to put it, Mr. Gray. I’m impressed.”
The mattress moved as his laugh rumbled through it.
“You have my mom to thank for that,” he said when he was done. “She more or less said that same thing about a hundred times after I left the department the first time. I guess it stuck.”
“You’re just taking the long way ’round to healing if you keep tormenting yourself with what could have been and how things would have turned out had you chosen differently. It’s a good sentiment.”
Kenneth laughed again and this time he rolled over onto his side, sliding one arm beneath the pillow and letting her hand go with the other. Willa mimicked the move. She was on her side, facing him, hands in a prayer stance between her cheek on the pillowcase. Suddenly it felt like two friends at a sleepover, shooting the breeze about life, love, and also trivial things.
Never mind that they were in their thirties, had both survived attacks meant to kill in the last few days, and were a single man and a single woman.
“You know, I was born in Kelby Creek and grew up here, and I’ve heard a lot of Southernisms, but ‘long way ’round’ is new even to me. When we met, it was the first time I’d heard it.”
Willa snorted.
“I have a theory on that,” she said. “See, there are tiers of being Southern and only us top-tier families use phrases like that. ‘Like a hair in a biscuit,’ ‘madder than a wet hen,’ ‘full as a tick,’ ‘worn slap out,’ and so on. ‘Long way ’round’ is just something I grew up hearing from my family. Though it can be a pain in the backside to use when you’re trying to give someone directions on where not to go, especially since the long way ’round isn’t just a measurement of distance.”
“It isn’t?”
She shook her head. Willa had washed her hair but had quickly braided it to her scalp. It would be a mess in the morning when she unleashed it, but she was trying to save the man’s pillow from being soaked through. She’d gone through his bathroom cabinets and there wasn’t a hair dryer to be found. There was nothing, in fact, aimed for use by a woman. It had split her emotions down the middle.
On the one hand, she imagined Kenneth cleaning out Ally’s things after her death, maybe slowly or maybe through the years. On the other hand, she was pleased to see that no other woman seemed to have been entertained by the man in recent years. Or, if they had been, they’d brought their toiletries in and then taken them out.
Willa’s braids smelled like spice and something woodsy as she shifted her head to look up at him a little more easily. It wasn’t an unpleasant thing.
“Sometimes it just means you took the challenging way. The road less traveled.”
“I suppose that makes sense. Though my favorite Southernism hands down will always be ‘bless your heart.’” He grinned. “I’ve never heard nastier fighting words than those.”
“Ugh. I hate that phrase,” Willa said, honest as a nun in church. “Your contractor’s—Landon Mitchell—mother used to say it to me all the time. She disapproved of my job, my hair, and my disinterest in learning to knit. I mean...don’t get me wrong, I don’t judge those who do knit, but after she told me I needed to do it to be a good mom, I made a promise to myself to never touch a knitting needle out of pure pettiness.” She shook her head. “That woman blessed my heart so many times it’ll probably get to heaven before the rest of me ever follows.”
That really got Kenneth going. He was laughing so much that it turned her growing grumpiness at the memories into following his contagious laughter with her own. It was nice to hear the man happy. It was nice to be the reason why he was smiling, too.
“I never would have guessed someone could dislike you at all,” Kenneth said after he’d composed himself. “You remind me of sunshine, and who dislikes sunshine?”
Willa didn’t know how he’d meant the compliment to land but it was a powerful hit. She was glad he couldn’t see her cheeks that were, no doubt, flaming to life.
“People have called me bubbly and bouncy, but I’m not sure anyone has ever said I was like sunshine.”
He hesitated. The first time he’d done so all night.
“Not even Landon?”
Willa shook her head again. She wondered if he could read the change in emotion moving through her chest.
“No.”
It was a simple response. A true one.
And Kenneth responded with only three simple words before the house around them became quiet.
“Bless his heart.”
* * *
ON SATURDAY MORNING answers started to come in.
Much like the rain.
Willa emerged from his room around eight, dressed and with her hair still in braids. She held up her phone to show a social media post from their local news station.
“The weatherman promised no more rain for a week after today.”
Kenneth didn’t rightly believe him.
By the time noon rolled around, he was sure it had been raining for years.
An annoyance that normally wouldn’t have affected him, not being able to go outside felt limiting. Plus, the man who’d entered the hospital hadn’t been found. Neither by the all-points-bulletin nor from their working sketch thanks to witnesses at the hospital. Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the department’s system and he hadn’t made a sce
ne outside the hospital. That only made the rain more frustrating.
It limited their search and it improved his chances of staying hidden.
Willa brought Delilah in from a quick bathroom break in the yard, shucking rain off the umbrella, and in an increasingly foul mood. Earlier that morning she had been doing her own investigation into the developer who had bought the lot where the box had been buried and was still waiting for a call-back from someone.
“I know I didn’t tell them about the urgency of the matter but, still, it’s only polite that when you say you’re going to call back in a few minutes you actually call back within a few minutes. Not make the person you promised wait.”
She grabbed for the towel Kenneth had put next to the side door to the yard and absently began to pat dry Delilah, who sat still, used to the process.
“I swear, Dee, you’ve got better manners than most humans,” Willa muttered.
Kenneth had overtaken his dining room table despite having an office to utilize. He blamed the paperwork that was starting to pile up across its surface but, the truth was, the night before had changed something between him and Willa.
At least, in his mind.
Kenneth had already believed Willa to be a beautiful woman, but the sight of her sleeping in his bed, wet braids dampening his pillow, hands folded against her cheek, face slack and at peace, had utterly bewitched him.
She was a light in the darkness.
Not just sunshine. She was the moon in the night sky, too.
It was another poetic statement—though, this one he kept inside his head—that he hadn’t known he believed.
But he did.
That’s why he decided to work at the dining room table. It gave them both room to work together. Even if it was in silence, it was a companionable one.
The kind he enjoyed just as much as watching her do the simplest of things like wiping the rain off Delilah or asking him if he wanted anything while she was up.
Kenneth knew that part of that might be the fact that he had been lonely over the last few years, shying away from true connection, but the other part?
That was all Willa.
The woman let Delilah run wild while she tucked back into the kitchen. She offered him a fresh cup of coffee, which he said he’d gladly accept.
It was still brewing when his phone starting ringing.
The Caller ID read Foster Lovett.
Kenneth answered on the second ring. “Gray here.”
There was a rustling on Lovett’s side of the phone. He asked Kenneth to give him a second.
Willa came in with an empty coffee mug, curious. She watched him as Lovett found a better position to talk.
“Sorry, this rain is a kink in the kitchen sink, I tell you.” He didn’t wait for a response. “Gray, we found a few things that we don’t have context for yet but...well, it’s a heck of a few things.”
Kenneth got that feeling in his gut. That everything is about to change feeling.
But, like life, there was no other way through it than to go through it, so he said, “Okay, hit me.”
Lovett took a breath. The noise behind him had quieted considerably. He must be inside now.
“We ran down who the ring belonged to, or did years ago.”
“Who?” Kenneth grabbed his pen.
“A Joshua Kepler from out of town bought it eight years ago, and the only reason why the owner of the jeweler’s remembered his name and the ring is that Joshua used to have a different last name when he lived in Kelby Creek. Linderman.”
“Linderman?”
Willa’s eyes widened as Kenneth wrote down the name.
“Josiah Linderman’s son.”
Kenneth couldn’t believe it. He said as much but then that feeling came back when Lovett said that wasn’t all. Not by a mile.
“You’re at home now, right?” Lovett asked before explaining. “Willa is still there with you, too?”
“I am,” Kenneth said slowly. “She is.”
Willa mouthed “what,” but Kenneth’s attention had been pooling around the phone call until there was nothing but Lovett’s voice.
He sounded reluctant and sorry all at the same time.
“The bullet casing inside the box... Well, after looking into old unsolved cases, we actually found the bullet it matched.”
Kenneth knew then. He wrote down the name but waited for the detective to finish before dropping his pen.
“Gray, the casing matched one of the bullets that killed your wife.”
Chapter Eighteen
Willa was in the kitchen while the sheriff and a deputy she didn’t recognize spoke with Kenneth in his home office. It wasn’t at his behest that they get more privacy, but Willa could tell that the news had knocked Kenneth off whatever balance they’d become comfortable with since they’d met.
Willa wasn’t surprised.
Though she wished she knew the full extent of what was going on, and not just what Kenneth, as if in a daze, had repeated to her after the phone call had ended.
It was while she was feeling sad for Kenneth and trying to foresee what the news of the potentially connected cases would do to their investigation that the phone call she’d been waiting for came in.
A man named Ronaldo said hello and all the nice things you said to a stranger on the phone before asking what he could do for her.
“I’m the office manager with Clanton Construction here in Kelby Creek. I was updating some files and realized the file on the town houses on lot 427 in town had been misplaced. I was hoping to fix that, if I could, by next week so my boss doesn’t think I’m lousy with a computer.”
Willa hurried to grab the notebook that Kenneth had let her borrow and searched out a pen. “I’ve managed to find most of the information, like your company, Red Tree Development, is the one that purchased the lot and hired us to do the work. But there’s a spot here for the person who was in charge of accepting our bid. Mrs. Reynolds from your office said that that information was with you, which is why I left the message with her to pass on.”
Willa had learned at an early age that if you talked long enough, made the words sweet enough, and gave the person you were talking to the chance to be a hero, most people were mighty inclined to help.
Ronaldo was definitely one of those people.
“Ah, I certainly can get that information for you, Miss Tate,” he exclaimed. “You’re in luck because I often work from home and all of my information is here. Give me a second to get my computer booted up.”
They talked non-talk for a little bit—professional chitchat, as she liked to call it—until he’d brought up the Clanton Construction account.
“Ah, Lot 427. The town houses...” he said. “Let’s see... Well, won’t you know it. There are three people listed here with Red Tree who helped facilitate the bid and buy. I’m afraid I don’t have more details other than their names, but their contact information would be on the company web site.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I just need to put down the names. If we need more, I can reach out later.”
Ronaldo gave her all three names and wished her luck with her computer skills, something that made Willa blush considering she’d lied.
And then she was left staring at three names she didn’t recognize.
Maria Clements, Nadja Loren, and Terry Page.
Willa was about to Google them when the men came out of Kenneth’s office.
Not a one of them looked happy.
Willa put her notebook back on the dining table and smiled at the group. The sheriff took his tried-and-true cowboy hat off, gave her a nod, and said he had to get going. The deputy followed.
Kenneth shut the door behind them.
He locked it.
Willa took a tentative step forward. She didn’t know what to say, let alone ask.
Thankfully, Kenneth had become more forthright with her. Instead of leading her to the table or the office, he took a heavy seat on the couch. Willa was much more delicate as she perched on the cushion next to him, angling her body to face him.
“They were looking through cold cases with the same kind of caliber bullet that matched the casing found in the box,” he started, no segue. “They found only two unsolved in the last thirty years with the same kind—Ally’s and an older man who’d been killed in a robbery gone wrong. Ally’s was the only case where a bullet and one casing were missing. The one in the box was a perfect match with the one that was...was in her.”
Willa took his hand. At this point, it was something they’d both done several times. It didn’t faze either of them.
“So what does that mean?” she asked, hoping some of her warmth would seep through her skin and right into his heart. She hated how tense he’d become since the call.
Kenneth let out a long breath.
“It means that, somehow, Josiah Linderman and Ally are connected. Whether it’s by a killer or something else, I don’t know.”
Willa again couldn’t believe that one box could cause such confusion and devastation.
She also couldn’t believe what he repeated from Detective Lovett to her next. Not only had Joshua Linderman come back to town, the engagement ring he’d bought had been found in the box too.
It was a lot to process.
“What about Joshua Linderman? Or is it Joshua Kepler? Maybe he can tell us something?”
“That’s what Detective Lovett is deep-diving on now. Our best guess for his name change is that, after he went into the foster care system, he was adopted by a family and changed his last name to theirs. Foster is trying to find Joshua through his new name but so far he can’t locate him.”
“What about their uncle? I could reach out to him again. Maybe he knows more about the children than he let on about the first time around. Why else would Joshua be back in town?”
Kenneth nodded. It was like he’d aged ten years within half an hour. “That would be nice.”
Had this been at their first meeting, Willa would have gone about her task without another word. But now she could tell there was something that Kenneth was holding back.
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