Stranger in Cold Creek (11 page)

“What happened?”

“Hal died before it ever got to court.”

“Is that the only thing?” John asked.

“The only thing I've found,” Quinn replied. “But if he blackmailed one person...”

“He might have blackmailed several,” John added. “But I'm not sure how that relates to his daughter's death.”

“Maybe the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Ask around. Stay in touch.” Quinn ended the call.

Pocketing his phone, John pondered his boss's suggestion as he carried his basket of groceries to the checkout stand. The teenage boy at the cash register rang up the purchase with amusing enthusiasm, keeping up a stream of friendly chatter until John paid the bill. “You have a nice evening,” he said with a grin, displaying a mouth full of metal.

He let himself in at Miranda's with the house key, expecting to find her waiting for him in the living room, where he'd left her.

But the living room was empty.

He started to call her name but stopped himself, standing still and listening instead. He heard a soft hitching sound coming from somewhere in the back of the house.

The sound went silent as he moved through the house, his footsteps on the hardwood floor seeming loud to his own ears.

The bedroom door was open, the room empty. The bathroom was empty, as well. He found no one in the kitchen, either, but he could almost feel a presence nearby. Waiting.

He set the bag of groceries on the kitchen table and eased over to the door to the unfinished room. It was only halfway open, obscuring his view of all but a sliver of the room. Reaching behind his back, he grabbed the butt of the Ruger hidden in a holster clipped to his jeans and drew it.

Slowly, he pushed open the door. It creaked, the loud sound jangling his taut nerves.

“Don't move.” Miranda's voice sounded thick and hoarse, but there was no mistaking the tone of command.

He went very still. “Are you alone?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Come in.”

He found her sitting under one of the windows, her knees tucked up near her chest and her head leaning back against the wall. She still held her M&P 40, but the barrel was pointed toward the ground.

She'd been crying.

As he walked slowly into the room, she set it on the floor beside her. “Sorry about that.”

“No worries.” He nodded his head back toward the kitchen. “I brought the groceries. You still hungry?”

“I will be. Just give me a few minutes.” She spoke as if she wanted him to go. But when she lifted her damp eyes to his again, he could see she really didn't want to be left alone.

He reholstered his own pistol and crossed to where she sat, easing himself into a sitting position next to her.

“What did you buy?” she asked, sniffling a little.

“Two nice sirloin steaks, two enormous baking potatoes—plus sour cream and butter, because this is no time for watching our weight. And I wasn't sure what kind of salad stuff you liked, so I might have bought out half the produce section at the grocery store. Didn't know what kind of salad dressing you'd want, so I bought small bottles of several to choose from.”

She managed a watery laugh. “I'm sure I'll find exactly what I want.”

“Listen, before we start supper—I need to ask you something about Hal McGraw. Did you know he was arrested for extortion shortly before his death?”

She looked up at him. “Of course. But how do you know?”

“My boss told me.”

One of her eyebrows lifted. “And why would he know anything about Hal McGraw?”

“I asked him to do some research on Delta.”

“Without asking me?”

He shrugged. “Do you want to know what else he said or not?”

She was quiet for a moment, then gave a brief nod.

“Well, he asked a really good question. I was wondering if you might know the answer. Do you think Hal McGraw might have been blackmailing anyone else?”

“We always figured he must have been. But once he died, it wasn't likely anybody was going to come forward to tell us about it. We figured most of the offenses were probably personal problems, not legal ones, and none of our business.”

He didn't like asking the next question, considering the tear tracks still staining Miranda's cheeks. But it had to be asked. “What about Delta? Do you think she knew about her father's extortion plots?”

Her brow furrowed as she gave the question some thought. “I don't know,” she admitted finally. “I guess she might have.”

“Then that brings up another question, doesn't it? Did Delta pick up where her father left off?”

She turned her gaze to him again, her expression troubled. “And is that why she ended up dead?”

Chapter Eleven

“If she was blackmailing anyone, I never heard about it.” Miranda poked at the remains of her baked potato, scooping out one last buttery morsel. She popped it in her mouth.

“Well, you wouldn't, would you? The whole idea of extortion is to pay for the blackmailer's silence. You done?” John reached across the kitchen table for her plate.

She pushed it toward him and sat back, feeling comfortably full. “You're not a bad cook, John Blake.”

“A man's gotta know how to grill.” He flashed her a smile that made her heart give a little flip. She was beginning to wonder how she'd ever thought of him as average or ordinary.

“The only wine I had in the house went down the drain,” she said as she pushed to her feet and joined him at the dishwasher. “But I saw you picked up a bag of coffee. I could brew a pot if you like.”

He shook his head. “I'm fine. Why don't I go start another fire while you get the dishes going, and we can just try to relax for a while? You've had a stressful day.”

Stressful and upsetting, she thought, adding the word he was kind enough not to say. She'd felt a little embarrassed when he'd found her crying in the back room, but he hadn't made things worse by trying to comfort her with awkward words of sympathy. He couldn't know how she was feeling, and he knew it.

To be honest, she wasn't sure herself how she was feeling. Grief of a sort, she supposed, but Delta had never really let her get close enough for her to think of the other woman as a true friend. Still, the sight of her lying dead in the bottom of a shallow arroyo had been deeply disturbing on a number of levels, some of them personal.

She finished loading the dishwasher and set it to run, then joined John in the living room. The fire had reached a crackling blaze, helping to fend off the gathering chill of the evening, and John had moved the sofa so that it faced the fireplace.

“Hope you don't mind.” As she approached the sofa, he smiled up at her, sliding one arm over the back of the sofa. “Didn't want to waste a nice fire by sitting halfway across the room.”

She hesitated.

“I don't bite,” he murmured in a tone that made the words sound like a lie. There was a challenge in his expression, as tempting and dangerous as the firelight reflected in his eyes.

Come on, Mandy. You're not a sixteen-year-old virgin faced with your first bad boy. He's a tax accountant. You've dated bull riders before.

She sat beside him
, daringly close, her hip snugged against his. For a few moments, they sat in silence broken only by the crackle of the fire and the distant hum of the dishwasher at work.

“Tell me about Delta,” he murmured a few moments later. She felt his fingers play in her hair. Lightly. Undemanding.

“She was a couple of years younger than I am. Three years behind in school because she failed a year early on, thanks to her dad dragging her all over Texas for a while. She couldn't keep up with her schoolwork as she went from town to town, so she had to start over fresh the next year, somewhere down near Abilene, I think.” Delta had told the story so matter-of-factly, without a hint of how she'd felt about her rambling lifestyle with her father. “I think that wasn't long after her mother left them.”

“So they weren't from here originally.”

She shook her head. “You're probably wondering why they settled in a little place like this.”

“The question did cross my mind.”

“Mine, too. Delta never really said what made them stay, but if I had to guess? I think she told her daddy to settle down or she'd call the cops on him.”

“Really. How old was she then?”

“Twelve.”

“Tough little girl.” John's voice held a touch of admiration.

“She was. It's so hard to think she's gone now. She endured so much. Overcame so much.” Grief tangled around her heart, squeezing hard. She took a deep breath, attempting to relieve the sudden sharp stab of pain.

“I was hoping for a better ending,” he murmured, his fingers warm against her cheek. He pressed his lips to her temple, a brief, uncomplicated caress.

Except her reaction to his touch was anything but uncomplicated. Her heart skipped a beat before shifting into a higher gear, and her skin prickled hot beneath his fingers.

“I wanted to believe we'd find her alive, but—”

“But you didn't really think you would?”

She let herself relax, resting her head against his jaw. “She kept a lot of things to herself, but she'd have told me if she was leaving for this long.”

With a soft
prrrup
sound, Ruthie jumped up on the sofa next to her, her tail forming a question mark. She wasn't hungry, Miranda knew, because she'd fed the cats before John had returned from the grocery store.

“Hey there, Ruthie,” John said in a soft voice.

The cat's ears twitched, and slowly, she turned her green eyes to look at him with a quizzical expression.

“I had a cat when I was in Johnson City,” John said. “Well, sort of. He was a stray who took up with me. He'd been someone's cat before—he was tame and had already been neutered. The vet said someone might have accidentally let him out of the car on a trip or something—he was too well behaved to have lived his life outdoors for long. He wasn't microchipped, though, and my ‘lost cat' ads didn't bring his real owners around, so I took him in. Let him live with me until he died.”

All the while John had been speaking, Ruthie had been watching him, her ears perked as if listening. When he stopped, the tortoiseshell cat walked over Miranda's lap and reached up, claws sheathed, to touch his mouth.

“Well, then. Ruthie must like the sound of your voice.”

“Or maybe she's trying to make sure I stop talking.”

Miranda watched with amusement as Ruthie settled in his lap, a low purr rumbling from her throat. “That's the Ruthie seal of approval.”

“She must have low standards.” He scratched behind her ears, then under her chin, each stroke earning him a blissful stretch from Ruthie.

“Not at all. But if you can get Rex to sit in your lap like that, you're a miracle worker.”

John stroked the fingers of his other hand lightly over the skin behind Miranda's ear, sending a ripple of pure pleasure darting down her spine. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up purring like a kitten herself.

“Miranda?”

“Hmm?” She turned her head and found his face inches from hers, his eyes gleaming with desire and intent. But he remained perfectly still, giving her the chance to make the final move.

Toward him or away from him? It was her choice.

And then, suddenly, it wasn't her choice any longer.

He leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, his lips somehow both firm and soft. With soft, nipping movements, his kiss deepened, urging her lips apart until his tongue brushed lightly against hers. Lightly at first, then with dark seduction, making her head swirl until she found herself clinging to him just to remain upright.

His fingers threaded through her hair, holding her in place while he slowly, thoroughly kissed her until she couldn't find her breath.

Suddenly, his breath caught and he drew back, hissing with pain. A flash of fur darted from between their bodies.

John looked down at the three scratches turning red down his wrist. “I don't think Ruthie approved.”

“I'm so sorry.” Miranda winced as the scratch marks started to ooze blood. “She likes you, I swear.”

“Yeah, I know.” John stood up and started toward the hallway. Miranda followed quickly, wondering what he was going to do to poor Ruthie.

“She was just scared,” she said quickly.

In the hallway, he turned to look at her, his expression quizzical. “I know that. What do you think I'm going to do, go wring her neck?”

“I didn't know. Some people freak out when they're scratched, and—”

“I had a cat. Scratches happen.” He went into the bathroom and looked around. “Where do you keep your first-aid supplies?”

“There's a kit in the cabinet under the sink.”

John found the kit, a small metal box full of adhesive bandages, individual packets of antiseptic pads, antibiotic ointments and pain reliever tablets. He selected the antiseptic, ripping the packet open and dabbing the antiseptic on the three scratches. “All better now.”

She was relieved that he'd handled Ruthie's reaction with such levelheadedness. She'd dated a tough cowboy once who'd nearly cried when Rex had reacted to his relentless teasing with a claws-extended swipe, despite Miranda's warnings to stop. She'd had to restrain the idiot from going after her cat, and that had been the end of that relationship.

Of course, she and John weren't really dating, were they? They were just temporarily sharing a house. With kissing benefits included, apparently.

“I'd better go apologize to Ruthie,” he said after he'd finished treating the scratch. “Don't want to get on her bad side.”

She watched him head down the hall in search of her miffed cat, trying to ignore the melty feeling in the center of her chest.

* * *

“C
AN
YOU
TELL
if anything looks any different?” Tim Robertson had remained in the doorway while Miranda took a slow circuit of Delta McGraw's tiny trailer. She'd been there a few times over the past few months since the tornado had wiped out Delta's previous home.

“Someone's been here,” she said, taking in the disturbed places in the dust that lay in a thin layer over everything in the trailer. “They took their time, though. Nothing like the search at my place.”

“Wonder why they didn't just toss this place like they tossed yours?”

“Maybe because they had more time,” she suggested. “There was a narrow window of time at my place to do any sort of search. Even if I'd died in the wreck, someone would have been there within a few hours to check on the cats.”

Tim nodded. “You have any idea what they were looking for at your place?”

She thought about what she and John had agreed to earlier that morning over a breakfast of instant oatmeal and the fresh strawberries he'd bought at the market the night before.

“I'm not going to tell the others at the cop shop about our suspicions that Delta's death and the attack on me might be connected,” she'd told him. “Because the last thing I want is to be put on leave for my own safety. I need access to the department's resources.”

“Don't you think they might figure it out on their own?” John had asked.

Miranda looked at Tim, who remained near the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. He was a good deputy, she knew. Smart and resourceful.

Would he figure it out on his own?

Maybe. But she wasn't going to help him put her own investigation in cold storage, which would surely happen if the sheriff thought her life might be in danger.

“I don't know what they were looking for,” she told Tim. That much, at least, was true. She might have a pretty good idea why they'd been searching her house, but she had no idea, yet, what they'd been looking for.

On closer inspection, she found plenty of signs that the place had been carefully searched, but if they'd taken anything, she had no way of knowing what it was. Even if she'd been Delta's closest friend, she couldn't pretend she knew that much about Delta's life outside their limited interactions. The handful of times she'd been in this trailer had been brief, usually when she stopped by to say hello after too many days, even weeks, of not hearing from Delta.

The woman had been a loner at heart. Probably the result of the kind of life she'd had with her pariah of a father.

In the end, she found the money by accident. As she walked into the kitchen one last time to make sure she hadn't missed anything, her foot caught on the edge of the linoleum in the door, sending her sprawling forward. She caught herself on the edge of the narrow counter inside the tiny kitchenette and felt it give.

Regaining her footing, she gave the counter an upward tug, and that small section of the counter lifted up on a hinge.

Underneath, a shallow square space was empty except for a thick manila envelope bound shut by a couple of rubber bands. She opened the envelope and sucked in a sharp breath.

Inside the envelope were several fat stacks of plastic-wrapped one-hundred-dollar bills.

* * *

T
HE
FLOOR
OF
the unfinished room had been framed atop the existing concrete foundation, sheathed in plywood awaiting the installation of final flooring. Miranda and her father had framed the floor and the walls, she'd told John earlier that morning when they'd been discussing the next part of the building project, but they'd had professional builders handle the roofing, siding and insulation. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning ductwork had also been added by the pros, but the rest of the work Miranda intended to do herself, with help from her father and now from John, as well.

Next job up—installing the drywall. Sheets of the plasterboard stood against one of the walls, ready to go. Miranda had already measured and cut the boards to fit the walls, helpfully marking each one with a corresponding framing board in the wall. She'd left him with her power screwdriver, a bucket of drywall screws and the smiling admonition to avoid screwing any body parts to the wall.

He started installing the drywall top to bottom, working up a nice sweat despite the mild day. Within an hour, he'd managed to screw up an entire wall and had started the next when something in the fiberglass insulation near the floor caught his eye.

Was that a split in the fiberglass batting?

He found a pair of work gloves in the toolbox in the corner. They were snug but covered his hands, protecting them from the scratchy fibers of the insulation batting as he pushed his fingers inside the split.