The Homecoming (10 page)

“Well, if the leg bone and skull turn out to be as old as they appear, this person didn’t exactly die yesterday.”

She took a sip of the coffee, which was smooth and dark as black silk. The woman might be a trial from time to time, but along with being as efficient as a Swiss clock, she also made one great cup of coffee.

“Your father had begun working some cold-case files before he died,” Maude said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“No reason why you should. Since you weren’t working here at the time.”

“I didn’t even know he
had
any cold cases.”

“You solve all your cases down there in California?” It wasn’t the first time she’d made the name of the state south of the Oregon border sound like Gomorrah. Kara suspected it wouldn’t be the last.

“No. But it’s a different environment. People aren’t as connected as they are here.”

“Folks still go missing. End up dead on occasion. Like your father.”

“He was shot in a hunting accident.”

“Still haven’t found the shooter, though, have you?”

No. And it wasn’t for a lack of trying. God knew she and John O’Roarke had worked overtime to find the person who’d killed her father. But, not wanting to get offtrack by even trying to explain and defend her criminal investigation techniques, she asked, “Dad had missing-persons cases?”

Maude shrugged. “A few.”

“Did he keep them separate from his other files?”

“Sure.” Her expression, along with her tone, suggested she was talking to the village idiot. “In a cold-case file.”

“I’ve gone all through his files. I didn’t see anything labeled ‘cold case.’ ”

“Maybe he took it home. Used to do a lot of work there.”

That was true. Some of Kara’s fondest memories growing up were of playing in his study while he worked at his desk. Sometimes he’d be writing up reports. Other times he’d be sitting in his worn-out La-Z-Boy, reading up on the latest in crime-fighting methods. Shelter Bay might not be a crime hot spot, but if bad guys ever did come to his town, Sheriff Ben Blanchard would be ready.

After locking the box in the walk-in closet laughingly referred to as an “evidence room,” Kara went into her office and placed a call to her mother.

“You know your father,” Faith said over the phone. “He never tossed away anything. We’d worked out a deal that he’d keep his study door closed and I’d ignore the fact that his dust bunnies had undoubtedly banded together and created entire armies.”

“But everything’s gone from his study.” Her mother had wasted no time in tackling those dust bunnies immediately after the funeral. By the time Kara had packed up her rented California town house and returned to the coast, Ben Blanchard’s study could’ve appeared in the pages of
Better Homes and Gardens.
“Did you throw all his things out?”

“Of course not. Oh, I was admittedly tempted to. But although we might not have much crime here, I found logbooks dating all the way back to his days in Portland. You never know when some criminal’s going to get an appeal accepted and details of the case might be needed in court, so I felt obliged to keep them.”

Her mother was not only the tidiest, most organized person Kara had ever known—she was also the most practical. And far-thinking. Which made Kara wonder if her father had ever discussed cases with her. Jared hadn’t talked about his work, but that was different—he’d been a Marine deployed in some of the deadliest places in the world, which didn’t exactly make for scintillating dinner conversation.

But even back in high school the boy who would become her husband had been one of those strong, silent types, keeping things inside him. Although she’d never doubted for a moment that he loved her and Trey, Jared had never been comfortable expressing feelings.

Which made him the flip side of Sax Douchett, who’d never been reticent about sharing his thoughts.

Which, in turn, had her thinking of him when she should be focused on this case—not on a man whose electric blue eyes could draw and hold hers like a magnet. Despite what she’d told her mother, Sax had always been trouble.

Yet another thing about Shelter Bay that hadn’t changed.

Shaking off thoughts she shouldn’t be indulging in, she dragged her mind back to the conversation. “So I guess you must have rented a storage locker?”

“No. I didn’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“Because before I could even get everything boxed up, John came over and offered to take them off my hands.”

“John O’Roarke?”

“Of course. He was, after all, Ben’s chief deputy. Do you think I’d just hand over a lifetime of your father’s work to any stranger who walked in off the street?”

“No.” Her earlier headache had returned with a vengeance. After telling her mother she might be late to dinner, Kara hung up.

The shift was changing. Maude was shrugging into the yellow county sheriff department slicker that made her look like an oversize lemon just as Ashley Melson came running in the door, tottering on the high- heeled boots she insisted on wearing instead of proper cop shoes. Because, as the Malibu Barbie look-alike insisted, it wasn’t as if her job was to chase criminals down herself.

“Did John log out?” Kara asked Maude.

“Right before you came back from Douchett’s,” the day dispatcher said, sending the beehive tilting as she vigorously nodded her head. “Said he was going to pick up take-out fried clams at The Fish House, then go home and watch himself a baseball game on that new big-screen TV he overpaid for.”

“Thanks.”

Kara decided to drop by John’s house on her way home. Fortunately, she couldn’t see her mother just dumping the files into boxes without first sorting them into proper date order. Which meant, she hoped, that she’d be able to locate the cold-case files before the next decade.

And if there just happened to be some missing persons included in them, knowing her father’s penchant for detail—which was one of the things he and her mother had in common—there’d undoubtedly be dental records. Which might at least help her put a name to the skull.

“I told Ashley here about the head.” There was a wicked glint in the older women’s raven bright eyes. “Not sure as she’s gonna be much good tonight, given that she near had herself an attack of the vapors.”

“I did not.” The young blond dispatcher tossed up a chin that made a perfect point to her heart-shaped face.

“You turned white as bleached driftwood and were on the verge of keeling over.”

Kara could count on one hand the times she’d seen Maude enjoying herself. This was one of them.

“I may have gotten a little light- headed for a minute. But that’s just from the allergy medicine I’m taking,” Ashley insisted. “The pollen out there is just awful this time of year.”

All three of women knew the excuse was a lie. But at least it was a small, white one.

Kara would never forget the first time, as a green, wet-behind-the-ears patrol cop, that she’d seen her first body. Coincidentally, it had been a young woman decapitated in a drunk-driving accident.

Kara had grown up with cop stories, but had discovered her first week on the job how many gory details her father had kept from her. It had taken every ounce of willpower she’d possessed not to hurl the Egg McMuffin she’d eaten twenty minutes earlier all over the crime scene.

“It’s not what you’re probably thinking,” Kara said again. “It’s just a skull. No hanging flesh, no bloodshot eyes. In fact, it looks a lot like those plastic ones people buy to decorate for Halloween.”

“Not me,” Maude and Ashley said together. Apparently, the two disparate people had finally found something they agreed on.

“Well, just leave it in the evidence closet and you won’t have to worry about it,” Kara suggested, slipping into her own slicker. Not that Ashley could get in there anyway, since there was only one key, which, as her father had, she kept on her own key ring.

The driving rain had settled down to a mist, which hopefully meant that her sole night-shift deputy wouldn’t be called out to an accident. Last time it’d poured like it had earlier, Marvin Miller had driven off the narrow, twisting cliff road on his way home from his job washing dishes at The Fish House.

Since Marvin lived alone, had a drinking problem, which made him unreliable about showing up for work, and, except for a few barflys down at The Cracked Crab, hadn’t been all sociable to begin with, he and his truck hadn’t been found until a fisherman had gotten his line tangled up on the radio antenna the next day. Amazingly, while crashing down the cliff the pickup had become wedged between a boulder and a wind-bent cypress tree. When Kara’s father had arrived with the fire department rescue squad, Marvin had still been alive. Hungover as hell. But alive.

“Want me to call John and tell him you’re on your way out there before I leave?” Maude asked, apparently not trusting such details to her night replacement.

“No. That’s okay.”

“You want to surprise him? Makes it sound like you think he’s got something to hide.”

“Of course I don’t. I just know you want to get home in time to watch
Wheel of Fortune
.”

“I do like to see what that Vanna White girl’s gonna be wearing,” Maude agreed. “I read in the
Star
that she’s worn five thousand dresses since she started, with nary a single repeat. Can you imagine the size closet that would take? And do you figure she picks out her own clothes for every show? Or does she have some assistant do it for her?”

“All the TV stars have professional stylists,” Ashley piped up. “All they have to do is show up and their clothes are right there in their dressing room waiting for them to put on.”

“Must be nice,” the woman whose entire wardrobe seemed to consist of her uniform, several pairs of elastic-waist jeans, and boxy bowling shirts said as she left the office.

After making sure Ashley was feeling steady enough to handle whatever calls might come in, Kara left the office as well.

Fog was rising up from the water, creating a white wall that her headlights bounced off of as she drove out to John O’Roarke’s house at the edge of town.

She thought about Maude’s accusation and decided against the possibility that her chief deputy had purposely hidden police business from her. He had, after all, been her father’s best friend. And had been invaluable helping her settle into her new job.

Still, another thing, along with an addiction to coffee, that most cops had in common was that they didn’t trust easily. Which made sense, given that it didn’t take them long to learn that everyone lied.

But although suspicion ran in her veins, Kara wasn’t the least bit suspicious of John.

Yet, as she turned down the gravel driveway, she couldn’t help wondering why he’d never mentioned that her father had started digging around in a cold-case file.

And why that file now seemed to be, not in the sheriff’s office, where it rightfully belonged, but in the home of Deputy O’Roarke.

Who, dammit, hadn’t mentioned its existence.

“Well,” Sax asked his brother, “what do you think?”

“I think you’d better drop by St. Andrews and light a bunch of candles asking for a miracle,” Cole said. “Because that’s what you’re going to need to get this place back to the way it was.”

Sax shoved his hands in his back pockets as they both stood in the rain in the pitted parking lot of the dance hall and studied the building, which was definitely the worse for wear.

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s a wreck. Which is too bad, because although Kelli’s willing to settle on the VFW hall, she told me she’d always dreamed of having her reception here.”

“The wedding’s what? A month away?”

“Three weeks. And two days.”

“I’m still having trouble imagining you hitched with a bunch of rugrats.”

“You, of all people, should understand how, once a guy’s had his life on the line enough times, he tends to think about what’s really important. Which would be relationships.”

“You can have all the relationships you want without getting married,
cher
.”

“Been there, done that. Enough to know it’s not the same.”

“ ‘Forever and ever, amen,’ ” Sax quoted the country song lyrics, “is a really long time.”

“Which is why it’s important to find the right person to spend that forever-and-ever time with.”

“And Kelli’s the right one?”

“You bet.”

His brother put so much emotion into those two words, for a moment Sax found himself oddly envious.

“Three weeks would be a push,” he said.

“No. Like I said, three weeks would be a frigging miracle.”

“It’s not like I’m doing a whole lot else at the moment.”

The roof had lost some shingles, but fortunately the plywood and tarpaper had stayed on, which had kept the inside from getting totally flooded by coastal rains. The Sheetrock would have to be replaced, Sax decided as they entered the abandoned building. But that would allow him to reconfigure the place anyway.

After seeing Ireland from the air on a refueling stop at Shannon Airport on the way to the Middle East, Sax had decided to return to his mother’s ancestral country on his own. Which he had, several times, vastly enjoying his visits to local pubs, where he always ended up joining in a
seisiún
, playing the Martin backpacker guitar he’d dragged with him all over the world.

The pubs he’d played in weren’t dark and dreary bars designed for customers to get quietly and seriously drunk. They were gathering places for the entire community, including the children, to come together for a spicy gumbo of music, dancing, and
craic
, which was Irish for having a bunch of fun. The same sort of thing Cajuns had always called a
fais do-do.

One thing he’d brought back from those pub visits was the idea of snugs, small rooms off the main one that seated a few customers and allowed for private parties. And, he’d thought when he’d first seen one, places to put kids to sleep while the adults kept partying, something he remembered happening a lot during the parties held at Bon Temps.