Sound of Secrets (12 page)

Christ, he made an aggressively bad pot of coffee. He took another swig anyway. It was the caffeine he was after, not the taste.

He felt bleary and out of sorts, and he didn’t think it was because he’d met Curtis Rhett for fishing at six-thirty that morning. No, it probably had a lot more to do with the way he’d sat up until nearly dawn. He’d chain-smoked a stale pack of cigarettes he’d managed not to open for six months while he wondered what to do about Cara Donnelly.

He hoped like hell she didn’t have a contrary streak, because he’d done everything but told her he didn’t want her to discover what had happened to Skippy Rhett all those years ago.

Hell, he didn’t want to find out either.

Just as some things were better left unsaid, some secrets should never be exposed. Gray didn’t have any desire to turn over a rock and examine the slimy things crawling underneath. The rock, he figured, served a better purpose in its place.

He took another, bigger swallow of coffee. His thoughts directly contradicted everything he’d learned at the police academy. The instructors there had taught him to probe, to uncover, to solve.

But it wasn’t as though he knew anything, he reasoned with himself. He
suspected
, which was an entirely different matter.

He picked up his pen and threw it down again. He was driving himself nuts, and it could all be for nothing. Cara Donnelly’s angry reaction when he’d doubted her reasons for being in Secret Sound could mean she actually was who she said she was: a reporter working on a story.

The information he’d gathered since coming into his office that morning didn’t prove differently. He’d run her license plate number and found out she wasn’t lying about her identity, then followed up with a call to the Sumter Police Department.

The officer who answered the phone hadn’t known Cara personally. He’d promised Gray to find out what he could and call him back. The call had come less than an hour ago, although the other cop hadn’t been brimming with information.

Cara didn’t have a criminal record, and her only dealing with the police department was a rarely issued ticket that branded her as anything but a troublemaker. She’d been ticketed for traveling
under
the minimum speed limit.

She was thirty-five and single, the only child of Maude and Henry Donnelly, who had died within a week of each other a couple months back. She’d lived with her parents in a house that no longer had a mortgage, and her credit history was first-rate.

The only other pertinent fact was that Cara worked in the circulation department of a tabloid-type magazine called the Sumter Scene. The helpful cop said the magazine acted as a guide to happenings around town and the state.

Gray tapped the end of his pen on the desk while he thought. He doubted the magazine the Sumter cop had described would be interested in an article about small-town newspapers. However, Cara could be working on the story for another publication.

If Gray accepted that line of reasoning, he supposed her interest in Skippy Rhett’s death could be innocent, sparked by her research of the Rhett family. What other reason would she have to pry into a mystery that was thirty years old?

After their confrontation last night, it was even possible Cara had given up on the story and left town.

 
Instead of comforting him, the idea of never seeing her again was strangely troubling.

He’d meant to kiss her last night as a way of making a point. He’d never intended desire to slam into him so hard that it had taken a Herculean effort to let her go. He’d wanted, instead, to drag her down to the sand and bury himself inside her.

He rubbed a hand against his brow. She’d wanted him last night, too. Her mouth had gone soft and pliant underneath his while she moaned her pleasure. He wanted that to happen again. He didn’t want her opening that mouth to ask questions better left unasked.

"Chief, I got somebody out here wants to talk to you." Earl Young, a deputy he had hired straight out of the academy the year before, appeared in the doorway. His look was pained. "I told her it wasn’t procedure to file a criminal complaint after a one-car accident, but she won’t listen. She got into my squad car and said she wasn’t budging until I drove her here."

"Show her in, Earl," Gray said, cutting off the deputy’s spate of words. Hell, he sympathized with the boy. He’d handled his share of automobile accidents, complete with unreasonable victims. Besides, he welcomed the interruption from thinking about Cara Donnelly.

The woman herself walked through the door, long-legged, lovely and unquestionably upset. She was trembling, the same way she had been at the gas station when he’d found her screaming at nothing. Again, the urge to haul her into his arms and comfort her was so strong it was almost primal.

"I want to file a complaint," she said. At direct odds with her appearance, her voice was so forceful that she didn’t sound as though she needed comforting.
 

He shifted in his seat, trying not to show that her sudden appearance had any effect on him. "What kind of complaint?"

"A criminal complaint. Somebody rigged the power steering of my car."

His eyebrows rose, and she rushed to explain.

"When I tried to turn the wheel, it stuck. I lost control and drove into the path of an oncoming car. If the other driver hadn’t had quick reflexes, I wouldn’t be standing here."

"Are you okay?" Gray sprang out of his chair and was across his desk in a flash. His eyes ran over her, reassuring himself that she was in one piece. He reached out and gingerly touched her left cheek. "You have a bruise here."

Huge dark eyes gazed back at him, and he noticed that her chest was heaving and her color was high. She backed up, breaking off the contact. "The side of my face must have hit the window when I stopped."

Gray frowned and advanced a step, erasing the distance she’d put between them. The bruise was barely noticeable. If she had one injury, though, there could be others that weren’t visible. "I’ll run you down to the hospital."

"No." Cara backed up again and put her hand out, as though she meant to shove against his chest if he came any closer. "You are the pushiest man. Why are you always wanting to take me to a hospital? I’m fine, and a police station is exactly where I should be. Didn’t you hear me? I want to file a complaint."

Despite her strong statements, her voice wavered. She was such a mass of contradictions that Gray didn’t know what to make of her. He didn’t know what to make of her complaint, either.

 
"I did hear you," Gray said slowly, "but I can't figure out why you think having your automatic power steering fail has some ulterior meaning."

Before Cara could answer, Gray's secretary June, a matronly woman in her fifties who favored bubblegum-pink clothing, popped her head around the door frame.

"Sorry to interrupt, chief,” she said. “I thought you’d want to hear this. I just got off the phone with Sam, and he said a preliminary inspection shows the rubber coupling connecting the steering gear box to the steering column failed. He says that was probably the problem."

"Sam Peckenbush?" Cara's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. "Are you actually saying that your deputy let Sam Peckenbush tow my car?"

"Thanks, June. That’ll be all," Gray said mildly before turning back to Cara. "Sam has a contract with the town to tow any accident vehicles on town property."

"I don’t want him working on my car,” she said, passion emanating from her. “I want it towed somewhere else immediately."

"That’s your prerogative, even though I’d advise against it. Sam’s the best mechanic in Secret Sound."

"You’re not listening to a word I say,” she cried. “Sam Peckenbush is the one who rigged my steering! Since he towed my car, it’s already too late to prove that. That doesn’t mean I’ll let him work on my car and do something even worse to it."

Gray lifted his eyebrows. She’d finally succeeded in refocusing his attention from her to her complaint. Still, it didn’t make sense. Sam was gruff and uncommunicative but nobody, as far as he knew, had ever accused him of anything like this. "I suppose you have some basis for your accusation?"

"Of course I do." She sounded exasperated. "He told me flat out to leave town after he sent his pit bull after me."

"Wait a minute." Gray stuck out his hand, palm up. "Back up. Are you saying that Sam ordered his pit bull to attack you?"

"No. I’m saying that he turned the animal loose in his office when I was in there." She put her hands on her hips. "I don’t know if he intended for the animal to rip me apart or if he only wanted to scare me.”

"I take it the pit bull didn’t rip you apart?"

"Only because his son happened along before the dog could attack!"

Gray sat on the edge of his desk and rubbed his chin. "Humor me. Let’s say Sam did turn his pit bull loose on you, and let’s say he did rig your car so you’d have an accident. You’re saying he’s doing these things to get you to leave town, right?"

She nodded, so he continued. "What I’m wondering is exactly why you think he wants you to go?"

Her mouth thinned. "I’ve been asking questions he doesn’t want to answer."

"Questions about this story you’re writing on small-town newspapers?"

"Yes."

"And what does Sam have to do with newspapers?" Gray asked.

"As if you didn’t know. He was driving the car that killed Skippy Rhett!"

"Yes, he was," Gray said slowly. "But considering that he was never charged with anything, did it occur to you that maybe you’re the one harassing him?"

"Me? Harassing him?” She shook her head. “Come off it, Chief. You might not want to believe it, but Sam Peckenbush tried to hurt me."

"That’ll awful hard to prove without evidence," he said and saw that she was getting ready to argue with him again, "but I suppose I could talk to him."

"Chief," June said, appearing at his office door once again, "we’ve got a complaint over on Fifth and Vine. Seems like Grady O’Malley caught some kids stealing the CD player out of his car. He’s holding them until you get there."

Gray swore under his breath. Of all the complaints he handled, the ones dealing with juveniles bothered him the most.

"Sorry." He slanted an apologetic look at Cara and rose. "We’ll have to finish this another time."

"What about talking to Sam Peckenbush?" she asked. "You can’t let him get away with this."

"I’ll do it tomorrow morning," he said as he headed to the door. "By the time I finish with this, Sam’ll be shut down for the night."

"I want to come with you."

Her words stopped him. Gray turned, considering. It was an unusual request, one he usually wouldn’t honor. But since he seriously doubted Sam was trying to drive her out of town, it wouldn’t hurt for her to hear what he had to say.

"I’ll pick you up at your hotel at nine o’clock." He mentally discounted that he had an ulterior motive for agreeing, such as seeing her again. "Tell June I said she should give you a ride wherever you want to go."

 
That said, he headed out the door, thinking about the puzzling things she’d said.

He didn’t believe for a moment that somebody in Secret Sound had deliberately disconnected the rubber coupling to her steering column. Her car was at least four or five years old, the time when parts started to wear out and cause problems. It was far more likely that her accident had been because of mechanical failure than malice.

In the unlikely event that somebody was trying to scare her into leaving town, though, his guess about who it was wouldn’t be Sam Peckenbush.

Tyler Shaw stood bent at the waist, his hands on his lean hips while he made a show of catching his breath. Sweat glistened on his bare upper body, and a drop of it trickled from the hairline of his perspiration-darkened hair down his face before plopping onto the uneven, pitted pavement of the basketball court.

A well-muscled boy of about fifteen with a dangling sword hanging from one of his pierced ears stood out of bounds under the rusted basket, preparing to inbound the ball. Tyler’s other teammate, who had shaved his chest hair into an inverted triangle, clapped his hands, indicating he wanted the ball.

The opposing team members, which included Gray DeBerg, Danny Peckenbush and a teenager who looked mean enough to be featured on an FBI list of most wanted fugitives, were poised to defend the basket. That is, what they could see of it. Only the weak reflected shine of a nearby streetlight illuminated the court.

"Whatsa matter, Tyler?" asked the boy guarding him, the one who looked like one of America's most wanted. "We wearing you out?"

"Don’t let him fool you, Bubba," Gray cut in. "He spends his days hacking bushes and chopping down trees, for God’s sake. He’s trying to con you into believing he’s beat."

Tyler put annoyance he didn’t feel into his voice but couldn’t hide his grin. "Jeez, Gray, do you have to tell the guys all my secrets?"

"That’s what friends are for, old pal." Gray positioned himself on the shoulder of the boy with the chest-hair artwork.
"Besides, what about you?" Tyler continued. "You just got through telling me how beat
you
are."

"I did get up at the crack of dawn."

"You got up at the crack of dawn to go fishing. Like I’m supposed to feel for you when I know for a fact that you hate fishing."

"I like Curtis."

"What you like as much as I do is trying to get an edge," Tyler said while Gray jostled for position with his teammate. A second too late, Tyler saw what he was about to do.

"Watch out for the steal!" he yelled to his teammate with the ball. It was already too late. As soon as the boy passed the ball in bounds, Gray cut in front of the intended recipient. Grabbing the ball with one hand, he took off for the other end of the darkened court with the bull-headedness he brought to everything he did.

With a burst of adrenaline, Tyler gave chase. He’d always been the faster of the two, but Gray had a substantial head start. They both saw that Gray could end the game with an easy lay-up. Tyler didn’t intend to make anything easy.