The Homecoming (14 page)

“Lots of folks die in accidents,” he said. “Lot of blue-on-blue friendly-fire fatalities in war taught me that better than most. And hey, maybe I’m overly paranoid after spending so many years focused on bad guys. But you’ve got to admit, it is a coincidence.”

She put her mug down on her desk, sat down, and rubbed her temples. “If someone did murder my father, odds are it’s an entirely different case from the one concerning our skull and bone.”

He thought it telling that she’d put ownership on both of them. As if they were kind of an unofficial team. He liked the idea of their being partners. Gave him more opportunity to be with her. Not that he was going to have all that much free time, what with getting Bon Temps ready for Cole and Kelli’s reception. But Kara Conway was definitely worth juggling some stuff around for.

“It was probably an accident,” he said.

“That’s more likely.”

He could tell she wanted it to be. And he didn’t blame her. He dreaded the day he might pick up the phone to hear that his dad had died. But murder? He wouldn’t stop until he had the killer’s balls nailed to Shelter Bay’s jailhouse door.

“But any chance of a connection between Dad’s looking through cold cases and those body parts is still worth pursuing,” she said. Her jaw firmed. That cleft in the middle of her chin deepened.

“It’s going to take Cait’s guy some time to reconstruct that skull. Might as well dig around. See what turns up.”

“That’s what I’m going to do. While checking all the missing-persons records for the last ten years or so to see if I can find a dental records match.”

“I might be able to give you a hand.”

“What?”

“You know. Maybe help you sort through the files. It’s not as if you have a lot of spare deputies,” he pointed out, looking around her office, which was about the size of a broom closet. If she wanted to have a meeting with four other people, one of them would have to sit out in the hallway.

She took a long drink of coffee, then shot him a sharp “don’t mess with me” cop look over the chipped rim of the white mug. “I realize it takes a while for the military mind-set to fade, but in case you haven’t noticed, you’re a civilian these days.”

“You could always deputize me.”

“I could also poke my eye out with a sharp and flaming stick. Yet, oddly, neither one is high on my must-do list.”

She lowered the cup and folded her hands in front of her. He recognized the look. It was the same one her father had given him after he’d wrecked his Camaro drag racing one long, hot summer.

“Besides, you haven’t been home for years. Any names in those files probably wouldn’t mean a thing to you.”

“Names around here never change. Most people stay. Or if they do leave, they generally come back. Like us.” Another thing they had in common. If he was keeping score. “Plus,” he pointed out, “we didn’t exactly run in the same circles back then. I probably know a lot of people your mama wouldn’t have wanted you associating with.”

“Such as Shelter Bay’s purveyor of porn,” she muttered.

He flashed her his best grin. “Exactly.”

“I heard you’re planning to restore Bon Temps. Which, given the condition it’s in, is going to take up a lot of your time.”

“You heard right,” he said. “Cole’s fiancée has her heart set on having her reception there, and we’re going to do our best to make sure that happens. But SEALs are born to multitask.” Since she’d shown up at his house, Sax had also found himself making additional plans. Plans that involved the sexy cop who was looking at him like she might study a police mug shot.

“I’ll think about it.” She glanced down at her watch. “Meanwhile, I have to get to work. Providing security and traffic control for your parade.”

“There’s a total of three stoplights in this entire town,” he said. “Which doesn’t make for a lot of traffic to control. So why don’t you ride along?”

“Me? Ride in the parade marshal’s car? With you?”

“Well, you could run alongside, like those Secret Service agents do. But you’d probably be more comfortable inside the car.”

“I’d also feel like a damn fool.” Her eyes widened. “That’s it, isn’t it? You may have fought terrorism all over the world, you may have battled bad guys, but you’re afraid of a simple parade.”

Bull’s-eye
. “No.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not.”

“Then why do you suddenly have that Bambi- in-the-headlights look in your eyes?”

“I’m
not
afraid. I just don’t like being the center of attention. If you were in the car, you’d be taking some of the focus away from me.”

“The way you look in those Navy whites, Brad Pitt wouldn’t stand a chance of getting attention away from you.” She stood up. “Don’t worry. The entire street’s only six blocks. It’ll be over before you know it.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Realizing there was truly no way out of this gig, Sax reluctantly pushed to his feet as well. “Oh, I know. That’s what my SEAL battle buddy Zach Tremayne always used to say about firing squads.”

Damned if it didn’t appear that everyone in Shelter Bay had broken away from work and their usual schedules for what had, to Sax’s horror, escalated into a daylong celebration.

Although it wasn’t yet noon, a festival mood was definitely evident as partygoers, many wearing red, white, and blue, crowded up to tables groaning with local specialties: crab cakes, clam chowder, salmon burgers, scallops, oysters, and hand-cranked marionberry ice cream. There were also dishes displaying the multiculturalism of the community—Thai, Italian, Chinese, and, of course, representing the Cajuns, his parents’ shrimp-and-crab gumbo.

If all that weren’t enough, over by the yacht club dock, people waited, paper plates in hand, for the cornmealbattered prawns and chips Jack Parrish, owner of The Fish House, was deep-frying in two fifty-five-gallon barrels over an open fire.

Booths draped in patriotic banners offered local arts and crafts made in the area—the common themes, he noted, being whales, dolphins, and puffins—and a brass band from the Shelter Bay High School livened things up from the bandstand, where Sax’s parents had informed him they’d be performing this evening.

Although he’d been pleased for his mom and dad, he’d damn well not been psyched about having to stick around here until nightfall.

“A firing squad would probably be easier,” he muttered to Kara. “And a lot quicker way to go.” Since the parade was going to circle the town, beginning and ending at the town square, they’d walked across together from the sheriff’s department.

“Sorry. It’s such a nice day, I just can’t get into the mood to shoot anyone.” Kara frowned as they viewed the couple coming toward them. “On the other hand, I could be convinced otherwise.”

Sherry Archer apparently was one of those women who, once they found a style that worked for them, stuck with it. Her bleached and teased Linda Evans
Dynasty
do appeared to have been sprayed to a helmet hardness, since it didn’t so much as bounce an iota as she sashayed her way toward them on a pair of spindly skyscraper stilettos.

She’d poured her buffed, toned, and spray- tanned body into a stoplight red sundress that hit midthigh. Although he’d never claim to be an expert on women’s fashions, especially having spent so many years in a part of the world where females were covered head to toe in body-concealing burkas, Sax suspected rhinestone straps were overkill for the daytime. Despite being made of some sort of stretchy material that clung like a surgical glove, it was so tight he wondered how she could possibly sit down in it. Her lips were the color of a cherry snow cone, her sunglasses as red as her impractical high heels and studded with more rhinestones.

“Well, don’t you just look delicious enough to eat up with a spoon,” she gushed as she threw her arms around Sax and enveloped him in a cloud of gardenia perfume. Remembering a time when he’d welcomed such displays of affection from the former cheerleader, although his mind wasn’t engaged, Sax waited for his body to respond.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

He glanced over Sherry’s bare shoulder in time to see Kara roll her eyes. Winking back, he put his hands on the blonde’s waist and, careful not to tip her over, moved her a bit away from him.

“Want some ice cream, little girl?”

She laughed, a bit too long and too loud, then playfully slapped his shoulder. “You are still
such
a bad boy. It’s a good thing that Gerald’s going to be in that car with us, or I wouldn’t trust you not to make untoward advances.” Her lacquered hair didn’t budge as she tossed her head. “Or myself, either.”

The gilded feminine invitation hung in the hot, humid air between them. Once again, Sax wasn’t the least bit tempted. Which either had something to do with the fact that Kara was standing there watching him, or maybe Cole was right about its having been too long since he’d gotten laid.

Damn
. What if that old “use it or lose it” bromide was true? Sax had always figured sex was like riding a bike: that you never really lost the ability, no matter how long it had been since you’d climbed on.

Deciding to think about that later, he focused on what she’d just said.

“You two are going to be in the car?”

“I’m mayor,” Gerald Gardner said. He puffed out his chest, clad in what Sax figured was his official blue mayor suit.

“And I just happen to be Shelter Bay’s Miss Hospitality.” Sherry flashed him a huge white beauty- queen smile that didn’t cause a single wrinkle.

It occurred to him that, since she’d been married, it should technically be
Mrs
. Hospitality, but Sax didn’t quibble the point.

“You’ve always been real hospitable,” he said instead.

“Why, thank you, darlin’. I do try.”

She patted his cheek and simpered like some heroine out of one of those costume movies he’d watched at Troy’s Place, a rec center run by volunteers in Baghdad. Normally a romance wouldn’t be his usual choice of entertainment, but back then he’d been passing a good time with a sexy brunette soldier who’d been into Jane Austen, and hell, even Chuck Norris blowing bad guys away got old after a while.

“Well.” Kara entered the conversation. “I guess I’ll get to work.”

While he might not have felt anything when Sherry had smashed her paid- for breasts against his chest, Sax did find himself wishing that Sheriff Conway would be the one sitting in that parade vehicle with him.

She’d just turned to leave when a towheaded boy who—
damn
—was a dead ringer for Jared Conway at that age came racing across the lawn toward them. “Hey, Mom,” he shouted. “Look what I won pitching a football through a tire.”

He was waving a plush gray whale over his head.

Back in the city, Kara probably would’ve been expected to remain professional at all times while in uniform. Proving yet again that small-town life was different, she crouched down and hugged him.

“Great job,” she said.

“Your dad was one the best quarterbacks who ever played at Shelter Bay High,” Sax volunteered. “Guess you got your arm from him.”

The boy looked up at Sax. Seemingly unimpressed by the snazzy dress white uniform, he said, “My dad was a hero.”

“Absolutely,” Sax agreed.

The small chin, which, now that he studied the kid more closely, Sax could see was dented just like his mother’s, came up. “If he was here, they’d be having this parade for
him
.” Jared’s son didn’t tack on
and not you
, but it came through loud and clear all the same.

“You’ve no idea how I wish that were true,” Sax said. “Both that he were here and that the parade were for him.” And wasn’t that the absolute truth? He held out a hand. “I’m Sax Douchett. I was friends with your dad back in high school.”

One small hand continued to clutch the toy whale. The other remained at his side. “He never talked about you.”

Tough case. Sax decided that if
his
father had been killed when he was Trey Conway’s age, he’d probably have grown up with an even bigger chip on his own shoulder than the one he’d already had.

“Guess he had more important things to talk about,” he said easily. “And it was my brother Cole he was best friends with.”

“Cole was a Marine. Like my dad.”

“And like
our
dad.” He winked at Kara. “All the men in my family were Marines, going back to Arcenaux Douchett, who fought with Andy Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans. I turned out to be the black sheep of the family by going into the Navy.”

The kid remained unimpressed. Sax reminded himself that he’d been telling people for weeks that he was no hero. Apparently Kara’s son was in full agreement.

“We need to get going, Douchett.” Gerald shot an impatient glance at the snazzy gold Rolex that, like his hurry-up attitude, was definitely was more suited to some big-city mogul than a guy who’d inherited a small-town bank and car dealership on the Oregon coast.

“Folks seem to be having a good enough time,” Sax countered. “I doubt if they’d mind waiting a bit longer.” He glanced down at Kara’s son. “How would you like to ride along?”

The small freckled brow furrowed. Kara had had freckles when she’d been Trey Conway’s age. Sax wondered what had happened to them. Where they’d gone. When he considered checking the rest of her out, his hormones spiked. Which was reassuring. Apparently he wasn’t dead yet.

“With you? Like, in the parade?”

“Sure. You can stand in for your father. Seems to me Jared Conway’s the one due some serious recognition.”

“Soldiers shot guns into the air at his funeral. He was a policeman when he got killed, but the guy from the Marines who came to our house said he’d still earned a military salute.”

“Absolutely, it was well deserved. I wish I could’ve been there, but I was off fighting bad guys at the time.”

“My dad fought bad guys in the war, too.” The chip on that small, narrow shoulder was still there. But it was starting to splinter. Just a bit.