Isabella Moon (37 page)

When she reached the courthouse building, and the Sheriff’s Department beside it, she almost passed by, anxious as she was to get home and off her feet. But concern for Francie propelled her through the Department’s front door.

Today there were several people sitting in the waiting area who stared at her as she came in. A man in coveralls leaned to whisper something to the woman beside him. As Kate walked by, did she hear the words
cemetery
and
dead girl
? Maybe. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid.

When she saw that the young man from the newspaper was at the desk talking to the same female deputy who’d been there on her first visit, she knew that nothing those other people had said mattered. It was the reporter who was the problem. How he’d found out that she was even involved, she could only guess—he and the deputy looked pretty cozy to her eyes. She turned to hurry back out the door.

“Miss Russell!” the young man called out. He hustled away from the desk. “This is great,” he said. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Please,” Kate said as she stepped outside. “I just came in to talk to the sheriff.”

“He’s not here, ma’am. In fact, I’m waiting for him myself,” he said, walking alongside her. “Did something else happen? Did you get any more messages from the little girl? I’m sure her mother would want to know. You should tell me the whole story. Help folks understand. Even if you want to talk to me off the record, I can help you.”

“Leave me alone,” Kate said. “There’s nothing to understand. They found her, and that’s all that matters.”

“That’s a good quote,” the young man said. “See? We can work together. You can trust me.”

When they reached Carystown’s small bakery, Kate was momentarily slowed by the wonderful smells coming from its open door. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten last, and the smell of cinnamon made her feel faint with hunger. Without warning, she stopped and turned to face the reporter. Out of the corner of her eye she could see people watching them from inside.

“Here’s a quote for you,” she said.

When she leaned toward him as though she would speak confidentially, he stepped forward eagerly.

“Go fuck yourself!”

The crowd inside the bakery broke up in laughter, and Kate hurried away, her ankle screaming with pain. How dare the guy confront her on the street? She was no criminal, but he was making her look like one.

Astonishingly, he kept after her.

“What about Lillian Cayley?” he called, rushing to catch up. “I understand that you’re part of that investigation as well.”

Kate walked faster, pretending not to hear him.

“You deserve to tell your side of it,” he said, bearing down on her.

Even though the afternoon was cool, Kate was perspiring as she passed the Bridge Street storefronts. Janet’s office, her former workplace, wasn’t far away. Everywhere she turned, she was faced with failure, with certain disaster. How she wished that she had been brave enough to leave town the week before! But the sight of Isabella Moon walking beside her mother—
had the child become such a normal sight to her?
—had paralyzed her, as though the dead girl had some sort of power over her. Worse, she had no energy left to run away.

Somewhere behind her a police siren stuttered on and off. Kate looked over her shoulder to see a sheriff’s cruiser creeping along the other side of the road. Bill Delaney put down the cruiser’s window. She could have wept with relief at the sight of him.

“Mr. Klein,” he called. “You so hard up for stories that you’re chasing people on the public streets now?”

“Just doing my job, Sheriff,” he called back, not slowing.

“I suggest you cease and desist, Mr. Klein,” he said. “Looks to me like you’re bothering the lady.”

“It
is
a public street, Sheriff,” the young man said. “Nothing wrong here.”

Kate slowed, wanting to know what the sheriff would do. When she glanced back, he waved her over to the car.

“Get on in,” he called to her.

Kate didn’t hesitate. She didn’t care if he thought she was a murderer. Then again, would he be stopping for her if he didn’t want to help her?

“Catch you later,” the young man said as she brushed in front of him to step off the sidewalk. There was a note of malice in his voice that belied his saccharine smile.

The sheriff leaned across the cruiser’s front seat and pushed open the passenger door for Kate, who slid inside, grateful.

“That guy’s been a pain in my ass ever since he joined that rag of a newspaper,” he said. “If you’ll pardon my French.”

“That’s okay,” Kate said. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know that you’ll want to thank me when I put some questions to you.”

Kate put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
So tired. Tired of running, tired of being pursued, tired of it all.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

Gatchel’s, on the outskirts of town, was more of a lunch counter than a place where people bothered to come for dinner. Kate had eaten there only a couple of times, and always with Caleb. Its peeling, concrete exterior and narrow windows gave it a closed-in, unwelcoming look. The sheriff held the fingerprint-smudged door for her and followed her inside.

“Hey, Bill.” A suntanned woman in shorts that were three months ahead of the weather and a T-shirt that read
BODACIOUS
in glittering letters looked up from a magazine spread out on the counter. “Early dinner?”

She took in Kate with a look of blank curiosity. She smiled.

“Just coffee, Shelley,” Bill said.

“Decaf for me, if you have it,” Kate said.

“That’ll take a minute,” the woman said, getting off her stool. “I made some of those krispy rice thingies this afternoon. I’ll get you all one of those, too.”

Before Kate could demur, the sheriff told the woman that would be great.

The sheriff got his coffee first. Kate toyed with the napkin-wrapped fork and knife on the speckled tabletop.

“Maybe you want to tell me what’s on your mind before I start flappin’ my gums,” the sheriff said.

“Am I really a suspect in Lillian’s death?” she asked.

“I won’t say you haven’t been on the list,” he said. “But you were never at the top of it.”

“What if I told you I know who did kill Lillian?” she said.

She searched for corresponding interest in his eyes, but found nothing more than mild curiosity. She had hoped to shock him into trusting her more. She asked herself why it was so important that he trust her. He was nothing to her. Just a man with kind eyes.

“I wouldn’t want to think you’d been withholding information,” he said. “But I took a big flier on you a few days back and it paid off. I’m willing to be flexible.”

The waitress served Kate’s decaf and put a chipped plate containing two sticky squares of rice cereal and marshmallow cream on the table.

“My kids can’t get enough of these,” the waitress said.

Kate gave her a small smile of thanks and watched her go back to her magazine at the other end of the restaurant.

“Shelley’s okay,” the sheriff said. “Her husband took one in Afghanistan and never made it home, but she keeps the chip off her shoulder. Loves those kids to death.”

Kate nodded. There were so many people in town that she hadn’t bothered to get to know. Soon they would all know who she was, if they didn’t already.

“So, who’s the winner?” the sheriff said.

Kate saw no reason to hesitate. Francie’s life might be at stake.

“Paxton Birkenshaw,” she said.

“You don’t say?”

The man was hard to read. But at least he hadn’t laughed at her.

“You saw the way he was at the cemetery today,” Kate said.

“People get emotional at funerals,” the sheriff said,

“He came by Francie’s earlier while I was there and it was pretty clear that they’re together. At least I think they’ve been seeing each other.”

“Free country,” the sheriff said. “You got racial problems with that?”

Kate felt herself flush with irritation. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Francie is my best friend.”

He took a sip of coffee and put the cup down. “My wife, Margaret, she had a best friend back in Louisville who she still talks to almost every day. That woman knows everything about me from what kind of toothpaste I use to what brand of underwear Margaret buys me. And if that woman were on the other side of the world and some guy looked at her sideways, she’d have Margaret on the phone in two minutes flat.”

“Don’t believe me, then,” Kate said. “When he kills Francie, too, you can console yourself with the fact that your wife has a better best friend than I do. Unsolved murders seem to be your specialty anyway.”

That stung him, and Kate was glad for a moment. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but he’d put her on the defensive. The notion that Francie had hidden her relationship to Paxton from her had hurt
her
feelings badly.

The sheriff recovered quickly.

“Who are you?” he said, keeping his voice low. “And I don’t mean, ‘Who in the hell do you think you are?’ Although that could certainly apply here. I mean that a woman named Katherine Russell with your Social Security number died down in Beaufort, South Carolina, a few years back, and you seem to have just appeared on the face of the earth just about two years ago. Add to that your recent association with two murder victims, and now an alleged murderer—not to mention the fact that someone was so desperate to run you down the other day that they broke through a fence and did a couple thousand dollars’ damage to someone’s land—and I’d say you’ve either got the damnedest luck of any human being on the planet or you’re living a big fat lie.”

This was the moment she’d been dreading since she fled the island. So many times she’d wondered how she would be exposed. She’d lived in fear of someone—Caleb, Francie, Janet—finding out, perhaps turning her in. But the anticipation had apparently been the worst of it. Now she just felt more tired than ever before, as though she’d come to the end of a long, long journey.

“Is someone looking for me?” she asked. “The police?”

“Should they be?”

“Not if there’s any justice in the world,” Kate said. They were silent for a moment. As she stared down into her coffee, she could feel him watching her. “What are you going to do?”

“Right now, I’m trying to decide if you might be a danger to the community,” he said.

Nothing. He was going to do nothing. But what was it going to cost her?
She thought of Kyle Richardson. Would she do something so base to keep the world from finding out about what she’d done to Miles?
She knew she would. As many times as she had to.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

As though he’d read her mind, a brief, guilty shadow crossed the sheriff’s face and he glanced away from her.

Yes, there was something between them. He had wanted her at some point, she knew. She also knew she’d be lying to herself if she said that she didn’t find him attractive. Not so much physically, though he was in pretty good shape and had a rugged look that had been softened some by his fifty-some years. It was his solidity, his trustworthiness, that she found appealing, his way of commanding attention in every situation. He seemed safe, the kind of man who could wrap her in his arms and protect her from every bad thing in the world. Attraction had nothing to do with it.

“Does what you’re running from have anything to do with anyone in this town?” he said, falling back into his professional, rather stern manner.

“No,” Kate said. “No one here at all.”
Just a guy a few states away that I pray to God is dead.

“Frankly, I don’t have time to deal with whatever you’re hiding right now,” he said. “As you so astutely observed, I’ve got more than one unsolved murder on my hands. You’re more valuable to me here than you are locked up or in your car on your way out of town.”

Kate was silent.

“Now. Did Birkenshaw say anything helpful? Did he implicate himself in any way?” he said. “Or did Lillian Cayley hint at anything before she died? Think. This is important.”

Kate told him about Lillian’s coolness toward Paxton, her concern that Francie needed looking after. She left out the part about seeing Lillian’s spirit in Francie’s apartment, that Lillian had appeared through Francie herself. She didn’t want to push him any further than she already had.

“Nothing concrete? Did she say if he ever threatened her?”

“She never talked about Paxton specifically,” Kate said.

“Not enough.”

“When I accused him of killing Lillian, he got angry, violent—you saw how he was at the funeral. At Francie’s, he acted like he wanted to kill
me
.”

“That’s it?”

“I’m sorry. I wish it were more,” Kate said. “Francie needs to get away from him. I just wish I could help her.”

“Maybe you have,” he said. “It’s a start anyway.”

40

WHEN BILL DELANEY
drove her home, the first thing Kate noticed was that Caleb’s truck was gone from the driveway, her convertible parked in its place. The cottage was dark.