Stonebrook Cottage (26 page)

That low, deep drawl and the way he said
always
made her stomach churn with possibilities, her head spin, but she pushed that all aside for another time. Right now she had to deal with the crude tree house from where her godchildren said they inadvertently saw a man die. "Sam, I wanted you to know about the tree house because it seemed only fair. But now I'd appreciate it if you'd let me handle—"

"You'll talk to Henry and Lillian?"

She nodded and tried to smile. "I'll tell them a big, mean Texas Ranger is on their case."

"I would be if we were in Texas. I'd be all over those two. And you." He let go of the branch above his head, and it sprang back hard into position, leaves whooshing, indicating how much tension he had in it. "I'd get a prosecutor to subpoena you and challenge your attor-ney-client privilege."

"You'd lose."

"Just be glad we're not in Texas."

"You, too, Ranger Temple, or you'd be in quite the mess after what you just did."

He smiled without regret. "There's that."

But she regarded him thoughtfully, then looked up at the tree house. They'd done a good job building it, her clever, rich godchildren. They just could never have anticipated witnessing a man's death. A friend. "Do I need to go up there?"

"No. They could see the deep end of the pool through their binoculars."

"Did you leave the binoculars?"

He nodded. "Looks as if they've been up there a while. What did they do after they saw the governor? Run down there to help?"

"Sam—"

"They didn't call the police or there'd be a record, and the police would have talked to them by now." His eyes were half-closed on her, and she could feel his edgy intensity return. "If they'd gone all the way to Pa-risi's house, by the time they got there his security people would have been at the pool, pulling him out. They turned back, didn't they? They ran up here?"

"You're speculating."

"You know what happened," he said.

She didn't answer. She looked down the wooded hill and pictured Henry and Lillian scrambling to Big Mike's aid, knowing they wouldn't get there in time. And Lillian, dropping her binoculars. She was more than indignant that they hadn't turned up. She was scared. She thought someone had stolen them.

Had someone seen the two kids charging down the hill?

Jesus,
had
someone murdered Big Mike?

Kara kicked at the green undergrowth and the layers of brown, dead leaves. The second pair of binoculars could be anywhere. Lillian was so traumatized, it was entirely reasonable to assume she couldn't remember where she'd dropped them, even what route she'd taken down to Big Mike's pool.

Without a word, Sam left her and started back down the hill. Kara felt a stab of rejection, but she'd made her choice—she had to keep her promise to Henry and Lillian. She was tempted to trace the kids' route to Big Mike's rented house, but she heard the ambulance pulling out with Pete Jericho.

She glanced once more at the tree house, then called for Sam to wait up. He didn't. She had to run to catch up with him, and when she did, it was her idea to take his hand. He didn't tell her to go to hell or drag her into the bushes and make love to her. He just gave her hand a gentle squeeze and walked with her back down to the gravel pit.

Sixteen

Z
oe West was not what Sam expected for a small-town Connecticut detective. She had short, curly blond hair, blue-flecked gray eyes and a runner's body, about five and a half feet tall. She wore a black sundress with black sandals and an ankle bracelet. Her toes were painted fuchsia. She carried a limp unlit cigarette that looked as if it would unravel any second and spill tobacco over her. She wasn't carrying a weapon.

Apparently he was exactly what she expected, because she told him. "What are you, the poster boy for the Texas Rangers?"

Sam didn't respond, which only seemed to confirm her point. She had come out to the gravel pit in time to watch the paramedics load Pete Jericho into the back of the ambulance. Sam asked her if she'd mind if he took a look at the pool where Mike Parisi drowned. She frowned at him. "Just can't resist, huh? Okay, but you ride with me."

Charlie Jericho was following the ambulance in Pete's truck. Kara had jumped in with him. She promised to meet Sam at the hospital and said she assumed Allyson wouldn't just dump the kids back at the cottage until someone was there.

Zoe West drove a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle and grinned at him when he squeezed into the passenger seat. "I guess no self-respecting Texas Ranger would have one of these."

"Probably not, ma'am."

She sighed at him. "You're making me feel like I'm a hundred years old with this ‘ma'am' stuff."

Sam said nothing.

Parisi's summer house had a gated driveway, but its five-acre mostly wooded lot wasn't fenced. West parked in front of the garage and led Sam around back to the pool. The yard was pleasantly landscaped, nothing too elaborate.

"Governor Parisi liked it in Bluefield," West said, "but he never bought here. He owned a triple-decker in New Britain."

There was nothing working-class about this place. Sam noticed the woods came right up to the deck around the deep end of the pool, a five-foot lattice fence cutting into the trees. He pictured Henry and Lillian shooting down the hill, coming to the fence, watching the troopers pull Michael Parisi's body out of the water.

The pool was clear and inviting now, sparkling in the sun. No dying governors, no dying bluebirds.

"I know a man died here, but I wouldn't mind taking a quick dip," West said. "Wouldn't you?"

"Not hot enough."

"You Texans." She narrowed her eyes up at him.

"You're not thinking of sticking your nose in my case,

are you?"

"Is it your case?" He knew it wasn't.

"
The
case, then. Jesus."

He shrugged. "I'm just getting the lay of the land."

"Yeah, I guess we wouldn't want you being bored up here. You and Kara Galway found Pete?"

"Yes, ma'am." He smiled, and amended himself, "Detective."

"Zoe'll be okay. Did Pete say what happened? They were running IVs in him when I got there—"

"He couldn't remember."

"That sucks. You see anything?"

He gave her his story and what he knew of Kara's story, leaving out the tree house for now. He had no idea why. Kara deserved to have every law enforcement officer in Texas and Connecticut on her case.

Detective West pressed her thumb against the filter end of her ragged cigarette. "Going out there was part of your ‘getting the lay of the land'? Or don't they have gravel pits in Texas?"

He didn't answer.

She squatted by the pool and swept her free hand into the water. "Nice." She looked up at him. "You know Kara and Pete don't get along, don't you? He's still ticked off at her for that plea bargain he took. But," she said, dropping onto her butt on the pool deck, her legs stretched out in front of her, "I guess that's neither here nor there."

"Kara represented Pete Jericho?"

"Bar fight. He took six months in the county jail over a sure felony assault conviction and serious time in a state prison." West nodded at the woods. "Don't you think it's a dumb idea to have a swimming pool this close to the woods? I can just imagine the mosquitoes. I guess somebody thought it made for a better ambience." She spoke with no detectable sarcasm and leaned back against her outstretched elbows. "How're the Stockwell kids?"

Sam decided it might be smart not to underestimate Bluefield's sole detective. "They're with their mother right now."

"They must be in an emotional mess to run off from camp like that. Do they call dude ranches camp? I don't know. I've never been to Texas. I'm surprised you didn't arrest them, Ranger Temple." She grinned up at him. "Thought about it, didn't you?"

"On what charge?"

"I don't know, I'll bet you could think of something. They tell you what they had on their minds when they ran off?"

"No." He wondered what had possessed him to come out here with her. "Detective West, you don't buy this theory that Governor Parisi fell trying to save a bluebird, do you?"

"It's got holes."

"He was interested in bluebirds," Sam said.

"Smitten. Ethel Smith at the library's been on my case because she insists there are no bluebird nests out here. I don't know how she knows, but she says she does."

"The state police haven't investigated?"

"Bluebird nests? Come on, Sergeant." She got up, a lot of leg showing, and dusted off her rear end and regarded her bent, limp cigarette with a sigh. "I miss cigarettes. I really do. It's been seventeen days." She fastened her gray eyes on him. "I'm not as grouchy about it as I was."

"That's good," Sam said, not knowing what to make of Zoe West.

"Governor Parisi and Ethel were working to get a bluebird trail started out here. I mean, a town with the name of Bluefield ought to have a bluebird trail, don't you think? That's where you set out bluebird boxes every three hundred feet or so, the idea being the bluebirds will nest, have babies, and come back year to year, thus restoring the population."

"Why every three hundred feet?"

"Because any closer and they'll drive each other away. They don't like their fellow bluebirds swooping around their nest. They're territorial and kind of fussy—you can't stick up any old birdhouse and expect it to work. If it's not just right, the baby birds can freeze to death or bake to death, or other, more aggressive non-native birds that are also cavity nesters will take over. Starlings and English sparrows, I think, are the worst offenders. Between them and the loss of habitat, the bluebird population declined sharply over the last century."

Sam smiled at her. "You've been working this bluebird angle, haven't you, Detective West?"

"I sure as hell have. Ethel bent my ear two mornings in a row. I haven't told you half of what she rattled on to me about bluebirds."

"They're beautiful birds," Sam said.

"They are. Ethel gave me a bluebird box that I'm going to put up, under her close supervision, of course." West glanced around the pretty, quiet property, the silence a reminder no one lived here now. "They also prefer a stretch of cleared land and a high place to perch, like a phone line. All the wires are buried here." She sighed up at the sky. "Well, I guess there are worse ways to go than trying to save a bluebird. I'm probably spinning my wheels and it was just a freak accident. For all we know, Big Mike had rescued the damn bird himself and was trying to rehabilitate it when it got away on him."

Sam acknowledged that was possible. At this point, anything was.

"Unfortunately, I'm good at stirring up my own dust." She was matter-of-fact, her tone not the least bit self-pitying. "I see a reprimand coming my way for taking a Texas Ranger out here."

"Why did you?"

"Kara Galway knew Governor Parisi couldn't swim. Henry and Lillian Stockwell ran to her not two weeks after their mother became governor. You came up here with her." West nodded to the .45. "And you're armed."

"I'm counting on professional courtesy," Sam said.

"Just don't fire the damn thing in my town. If I showed up in Texas carrying a weapon, you'd extend me the same courtesy?"

"Under similar circumstances, yes."

She grinned. "I doubt that. Where can I drop you off, Sergeant?"

"The hospital where they took Pete Jericho."

"Yeah, I should probably go over there myself." She unlatched the gate to the pool and glanced back at Sam, her gray eyes difficult to read. "You believe he just slipped and fell?"

"No."

"Neither do I."

Through the fog of pain and medication, Pete was aware of the doctors and nurses running him through X rays, an MRI and a CT scan, taking blood, setting his wrist, cleaning and bandaging his cuts. A doctor told him he had a broken collarbone and two broken ribs, but his lungs were fine and there was no internal bleeding.

Eventually they sent him up to a private room, where plump, gray-haired Bea Jericho came in sobbing and yelling at him for not listening to her and staying away from that damn gravel pit, it was a death trap. Now look at him.

Charlie griped because the nurses wouldn't let him smoke. "It's not like you're on oxygen and I'm going to blow up the place."

Pete loved his parents but just wished they would leave. He couldn't make sense of anything. How did he fall? What happened?

His mother seemed to sense his irritability and confusion. She took one of the tissues from his nightstand and wiped her tears. "You just rest, Pete. They want to keep you overnight at least. What were you doing up on that bank, anyway?"

The tree house. He remembered now. Had he gone up there to dismantle it? The details wouldn't come, and he wondered if his father had told anyone about it and if so, would they all be in trouble now, him and Charlie and the kids.

They had him hooked up to two IVs, one for fluids, one for pain medication. A doctor had told him he might not remember how he fell, it was okay, a normal short-circuiting of the short-term memory process. A chemical reaction while the body was under assault and pouring everything into staying alive.