Twisted Page 6

  “Yup. Maybe even by someone in Dobbs Hollow, though you haven’t let on what makes you so sure of that. But whatever she may have been, or may have done, it doesn’t explain the level of animosity directed your way almost twenty years later. Face it, however important Cecile Sadler was to her kids, she didn’t have enough of an impact on anyone else to turn this whole place against you.

  “So, maybe I’m keeping secrets, sweetheart, but I’m not the only one. And mine aren’t the kind that get people killed.” Maybe if he said it often enough, he might begin to believe it.

  Chapter Five

  Two days a week that year, Timmy had preschool in the morning. The other three, he went to a sitter and I picked him up when I was through with my classes. I couldn’t carry him on my shoulders that afternoon, could barely manage the walk myself. So by the time we got home, Timmy was crying and I was furious with both him and Momma. What little of my childhood she hadn’t destroyed, he’d stolen with his neediness.

  from A Bad Day To Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]

  YOU’RE TOO HUNG up on your mother to see what’s right in front of you. Ethan’s words pricked at Lucy all night. Again, she couldn’t sleep. Again, a car had passed by, its lights gliding across the room, pausing for a moment each time. The first time, Lucy’s muscles tensed. The second, realization struck: Ethan had set the night shift to keep an eye on her. Because he worried, or because he didn’t trust her?

  She tossed and turned all night, finally dozing lightly, only to awaken as dawn spread its first fingers over the sky. Coffee. Today called for lots and lots of coffee. As the machine hissed and dripped, she picked up the card Ethan had given her when he dropped her off and flipped it over and over between her fingers. Could he be right? Could she be too wrapped up in the past to consider the present? Why did people want her to leave? Didn’t she have more reason to hold a grudge against them than the reverse?

  She settled herself in front of the computer and put Ethan’s name into a search engine. The first link was to an article in the Houston Chronicle: Hero Cops Gunned Down in Street. And Ethan was a hero. He was also a survivor. Unconsciously, Lucy brought her knees up beneath her chin and wrapped her arms around them as she read.

  Three years earlier, Ethan and his partner had been arresting a killer when the man’s girlfriend arrived. She’d shot both detectives before the uniformed backup officers had even managed to draw their weapons. Ethan’s knee had been shattered. His partner had been killed. The half-handcuffed murderer had managed to grab a gun, and the patrol cops had been occupied trying to bring him down, so Ethan had been forced to fire on the girlfriend. She’d died on the way to the hospital.

  Had killing the woman bothered him? Was that why he’d decided to move to a small town? Did he think he’d have less crime in Dobbs Hollow than in Houston? And if so, did he resent her for bringing death back into his life?

  She turned back to her research. Nothing in the Chronicle or anywhere else suggested any dirty laundry in Ethan’s past. He had degrees in both criminal justice and psychology. A true do-gooder, he’d even served a stint as an EMT between college and the police academy.

  He’d been thirty-three at the time of the shooting, divorced—to be expected, as law enforcement personnel had a much higher divorce rate than the general population—with an outstanding service record. The knee had been his second injury in as many years; many men would have quit after the extensive shoulder surgery he’d endured the year before when a knife had sliced through one of his tendons.

  She rubbed her breast where a scar marked her own knife wound. It had hurt like hell. From the article’s description, Ethan’s had been devastating. How did a person go back to work knowing such a thing could happen again at any time?

  The photograph of Detective Ethan Donovan in the Chronicle article, clearly taken long before the shooting, showed a man whose features were softer, less worn than the man she’d met, but no less attractive. The poor quality and color of the old photo did nothing to diminish his sex appeal. She remembered his loose-limbed stride, only slightly uneven, his long fingers and rough, heavy hands, and shivered. Sex hadn’t ever been a priority for her, but neither of the men she’d chosen to sleep with had affected her the way Ethan Donovan did.

  Which brought her right back to the present and the puzzle of a man who seemed too good to be true. The only ripple on the otherwise perfect surface was the lack of information about him after the shooting. She’d learned from the Hollow’s website that he’d been hired in October, which left two years unaccounted for, two years in which to get into whatever trouble had left him vulnerable to Andrew Dobbs’s blackmail.

  Still, she wanted to trust him. He’d given her Cecile’s file, and he had even pulled her from the past and forced her to reevaluate the Hollow residents’ present reactions to her.

  The rumble of truck wheels drew her to the window; the movers had arrived right on schedule. Lucy had arranged for them to bring only the most basic items, leaving the remainder in Dallas, where three of Tim’s college buddies were staying at the house for the summer.

  By one o’clock, the movers were gone. Lucy and Tim had finished unpacking and were sitting at the kitchen table working out a shopping list when the doorbell rang. She handed Tim the Glock 19—on which she’d had a custom three-and-a-half pound trigger pull installed, making it easy for him to handle even on bad days—and waited for him to give her a ready nod before putting her eye to the peephole. It was a routine they’d practiced many times while living with Todd.

  As she peered through the fisheye, fire ran along Lucy’s nerves. Alert to her moods, Tim shifted into a firing stance as she unbolted the door.

  “Well, well,” she said, opening the door wide and stepping aside to give Tim a clear view of—and shot at—their visitor, “if it isn’t little Andy Dobbs. What brings you out this way?”

  “It’s Drew these days, Lucy.”

  “Drew? Drew Dobbs?” She tried a laugh. “Do you mind if I call you DiDi?”

  He sighed, the long inhalation accentuating his broad shoulders. If Lucy hadn’t had firsthand experience with the fetid ooze beneath his fashionable exterior, she might have found him attractive. Khaki pants showed off long legs and short sleeves revealed muscular forearms, while tousled, sandy hair added an air of boyish innocence and hid the water moccasin slithering silently behind his pale blue eyes. He’d succeeded so far in politics, where style trumped integrity. Lucy wondered whether there was any way to stop his ascent.

  His eyes shifted over her shoulder to take in Tim’s pose.

  “That’s hardly necessary. I didn’t come here to cause a problem.”

  “Of course not.” But she nodded at Tim, who lowered the pistol, slipping his finger out of the trigger guard to automatically reactivate its safeties. Todd had recommended the Glock for exactly that reason: unlike most semiautomatics, its hammerless construction was quick to use and easy to de-cock.

  “So,” she leaned an elbow against the doorjamb, blocking the door. This man would never enter her house. “Why are you here?”

  “Actually, I wanted to apologize.” He flashed a politician’s smile, teeth professionally straightened and bleached. Too bad he hadn’t spent as much time working on his inside as he had on his outside. “I know we were . . .awful to you in school.”

  Brass balls. The man had brass bloody balls coming to her house and making a statement like that. Lucy straightened from her casual pose as her muscles tensed, and she struggled to cap her anger. She didn’t dare respond.

  “I can only speak for myself when I say how sorry I am for my behavior in those days.” And yet there was no humility in his stance, no apology in his tone.

  She found her voice. “Get. Off. My. Property.” Eyes never leaving his face, she reached behind the door for the shotgun. “Now.”

  “Jesus! You fucking crazy bitch!” Drew backed away,
and Lucy would have relished the sight of his blanched face if she’d been capable of seeing it beyond the black rage and sick fear clouding her vision. She slammed the door and slid down it. Tim settled beside her.

  “That went well,” he teased.

  “Hell. I’m not sure I can do this, Timmy.”

  “Then don’t. Let me call the movers and have them come back.” For the first time since Todd’s death, she debated backing down, putting an end to the crusade. But the reasons for which she’d set out to uncover her mother’s killer were too important. Justice—and, if she were honest, vengeance—took precedence. And if she could topple a few upstanding figures like Drew Dobbs at the same time, so much the better. Too bad he hadn’t been the one to murder Cecile; she’d have loved to watch him fry. Preferably right alongside his best buddy, Billy.

  “I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute. It’s been a long couple of days.”

  “Sure. You stay here and I’ll get us some tea.” He loped to the kitchen. Over the swish of the refrigerator opening and the clink of ice in glasses, Lucy heard his voice.

  “What did you say? I can’t hear you!”

  “Nothing,” he called. “Be there in a second.” And he was. He laid the iced tea on the coffee table and gave her a hand up. “Now, let’s get back to the important work. We need to make a shopping list.”

  The doorbell rang again while they were debating Heinz versus Hunt’s.

  “Cripes, Luce, I doubt a murderer would ring the doorbell,” Tim grumbled when she gestured for him to once again take the Glock.

  “It’s about appearances. Remember what Todd said: if word gets out you’re prepared for everything, no one will try anything.”

  “Fine. Then you get the shotgun. I’ll get the door.” Instead, Lucy reached for the pistol he’d returned to the kitchen counter.

  With a cursory glance through the peephole, Tim flipped the deadbolt, then flung the door open wide.

  • • •

  “HELL OF A welcome mat you’ve got there,” Ethan said, nodding to the weapon pointed at his head. “Glad you don’t have an itchy trigger finger.”

  Lucy relaxed her stance. “What are you doing here?”

  “Didn’t you know? I’m a celebrity stalker. I heard our esteemed state senator was here, and I wanted to get a picture.” He grinned. The expression had often been called disarming, at least Before, but it had no appreciable effect on the woman in front of him. Maybe he was out of practice.

  Lucy rounded on her brother. “Kitchen. Now.” Ethan noted that, even in anger, she handled the Glock with respect, laying it softly on a table in the far corner of the room that seemed to function as a desk.

  She wasn’t so gentle with him. “Sit,” she commanded, pointing to the couch.

  “Yes, ma’am. I should probably stay, right? How about lie down? Fetch? Play dead?” Her shoulders lowered infinitesimally as she rolled her eyes at him. Better. Tim had been right; Drew’s visit had unnerved her. Ethan’s desire to make him pay for doing so surprised him. Lucy was a mess, and he’d given up on messes when he left Houston. These days, he liked things simple. And going after State Senator Dobbs would be anything but simple.

  He could hear her and Tim in the next room, her tone agitated, his reasonable. The conversation was apt to take a while. Absently humming “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” from Guys and Dolls, Ethan wandered over to the desk to have a look at the pages on top of which the Glock lay, a lethal paperweight.

  He flipped through the papers, hoping to find personal data on Cecile Sadler. There’d been nothing in the case file to suggest she was anything more than an anonymous victim, no indication she’d been an active member of the community. Although, come to think of it, maybe she hadn’t been a member of the community. Certainly, no one had welcomed her daughter home with open arms.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Damn. “Looking into a cold case.” He went for a friendly smile. “There’s been renewed interest in a seventeen-year-old murder.”

  Before she could respond, Tim swung out of the kitchen. “I called a cab. I’ll have them drop me at the car, then I’ll drive it to the store. Be back in couple hours.” He turned to Ethan. “Hey, come for dinner. I’m going to buy a grill today and throw on a couple steaks. I’ll get extra.”

  Lucy’s eyes narrowed and fired poison-tipped arrows at her brother. Ethan bit the inside of his lip to suppress a laugh. Was the kid just making sure his sister had a bodyguard, or was he playing matchmaker? On the phone, Tim had seemed really shaken up by whatever had happened with Drew Dobbs. Whatever history Lucy and Drew shared, Tim didn’t know about it, and he’d never seen his sister so close to meltdown. Ethan had no idea how he’d earned the right to get the call, but he but he had questions of his own, and he’d take Tim’s help getting answers.

  “Can’t turn down an offer like that. Name the time.”

  “Eight.” Tim escaped through the front door before Lucy could prevent him.

  Glaring at the door, Lucy ran her fingers through her hair. Ethan imagined his own hands doing the job and gritted his teeth against a surge of frustrated desire. Lucy stalked toward him, eyeing the stack of papers he’d been examining.

  “You can go. I have no idea why Tim called you.” She’d come so near he could taste her scent. Something light and citrusy, cool on the hot, close air.

  “Really? He was pretty straightforward with me about his reasons. You get too caught up with your work and wouldn’t hear an army in full battle mode approaching, let alone one individual bent on doing you harm.” And Drew Dobbs scared you. But she wouldn’t appreciate being forced to admit that.

  “I’m careful!”

  “I’m sure you are. But what could an extra pair of eyes hurt? If you’re serious about solving your mother’s murder, you should be glad of the help.”

  “I suppose.” He’d hoped for a more enthusiastic response, but he’d take what he could get. His rusted instincts were slowly creaking to life, and they told him TJ hadn’t exaggerated the problems Lucy Sadler would bring home. He’d enjoyed nine months of relative calm as chief of police; he was ready for some action. And the duty wouldn’t be a hardship. Despite her wariness, or perhaps because of it,

  Lucy Sadler Caldwell tugged at him.

  “Another thing your brother told me?” She arched a brow. “When you’re working, you forget to eat.”

  “I do not!”

  “No?” He stepped closer, waiting for her to back away. When she didn’t, he let his eyes wander over her body. Some men might find her too thin, but he’d lay odds if he could get her out of those ratty jeans and loose T-shirt, he’d find solid muscle. His blood heated and his whole body tightened at the image. Damn. The woman had done nothing, nothing to encourage him. She’d probably be thrilled never to see him again. Besides, he reminded himself, he’d sworn off complications.

  He was having a purely hormonal reaction. Had to be. After the shooting, he hadn’t wanted company. Then he’d been off his game for a couple of years. So, yeah, it had been a while.

  “You look a little on the skinny side to me.” The flash of hurt in her expression surprised him. Didn’t she recognize teasing when she heard it? Who’d have thought a woman who answered the door holding a 9mm would be so sensitive? He gentled his tone. “I apologize. I get cranky when I’m hungry. So even if you don’t want to eat much, why not let me take you to lunch? We can go over your research together.”

  “Why would you care what I find out? Planning to tell Mayor Dobbs?” Her chin had popped up again. Always ready for a fight, this one.

  “Nope. I care because I spent six years as a detective before moving here, and cold cases fascinate me. Your mother’s death didn’t get the attention it deserved the first time around.”

  Her jaw set. “She was a prostitute. The crime was NHI.�
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  No humans involved. “You don’t believe that and neither do I. Let me prove it.”

  She studied him a long time before nodding. “All right, then. Take me somewhere my mother would have gone.”

  “I didn’t know her. And I didn’t live here in those days.”

  Lucy walked over to the table and pulled out the file he’d brought over the first day. She sorted through the papers inside, and shoved one of them at him.

  “The list of men Al Pike interviewed about Cecile’s murder. I want to talk to them, or at least meet them. Where can I do that while you eat?”

  “This list is meaningless, Lucy, you know that. Anyone whose name came up for any reason is on it. Hell, even Buddy’s here.”

  “What?”

  “Robert Barnwell. That’s Buddy’s real name.”

  A muscle spasmed in Lucy’s jaw, and Ethan wondered what she was thinking. She’d hit it off with Maxie right away. The fact that Maxie hadn’t mentioned Buddy being questioned, well, he didn’t figure that would do much to improve Lucy’s ability to trust.

  “Look, you know how it works. Anyone they talk to has to go in the file, no matter what. It’s just procedure. Chances are, Chief Pike didn’t have a good reason to suspect any of these men. Their names came up for one reason or another, and he had to clear them. He didn’t arrest them, didn’t even make extensive notes on any one over the others.”

  “I’m not wasting my time; either we go somewhere useful, or we stay here. Or, actually, I stay here and you leave.”

  He should leave, he told himself. Get away from everything about Lucy Sadler Caldwell and go back to a life uncomplicated by visits from the mayor and the sheriff. “Rosalita’s,” he heard himself say against his better judgment.

  “Good thought. I’d planned a visit there anyway. It was the only real bar in town when we lived here, so I know my mother spent time there.”

  “And the owner, Ron Hess, is on the list. More than likely, Al Pike only interviewed him because Cecile hung out at the bar, but it’s a place to start. Plus, they do fairly decent chicken wings there.”