Guilt & Galaxy Cake

by Nancy McGovern

  "I'm so sorry!" Rachel was dismayed.

  "No issue. I need a new mop anyway." Scott grabbed his t-shirt by the back of the neck with one arm, and in an easy movement, had it off. He batted it at Scooter, who grabbed it tight, and the two were soon involved in a tug of war. Rachel felt a pit open up to the left of her lungs, and slowly fill with molten lava at the sight of him. Scott grabbed Scooter and wrestled him a bit, still laughing as happily and easily as a young boy. He looked up suddenly, and his eyes locked with hers. For a moment, the two just stared at each other, and in that moment, Rachel knew he'd taken his shirt off deliberately—or at least known the effect he'd have on her when he did.

  "What? Never seen a man and a beast wrestle together before?" He teased.

  "Man and beast? I see a pup and a four-year-old wrestling together," Rachel retorted.

  "Rubbish, this right here is a growling tiger." Scott planted a kiss upon Scooter's forehead. "Anyway, come inside. I'll take a quick shower and then you and I can go to the beach. Emily and Jay are there already. We'll be in time to catch the sunset."

  He came back ten minutes later, dressed in a v-necked black t-shirt and floral Hawaiian shorts, his hair still damp from the shower. They drove down to the beach, a fifteen minute ride from his house, with Scooter on Rachel's lap.

  "How's the investigation going?" Rachel asked, as he flipped the radio on to a Creedence Clearwater Revival song.

  Scott snapped his fingers and bobbed his head to the song for a second before replying. "Well enough. Not enough data to make an arrest just yet, but we'll get there."

  "Any suspects?"

  "You know I can't divulge that information." Scott smiled.

  "Brandon has an airtight alibi anyway," Rachel added casually. "Tricia said so."

  "Hmm." Scott had his best poker face on, but Rachel felt tempted to keep pushing him. "Do you think Stan's ex-wife Dorothy had a hand in it?"

  Scott sighed. He had one hand on the steering wheel, and the other perched casually on the open window of his car. "You know when I first joined the force, my senior handed me an interesting case. It was a cold case, five years old, and it was the first murder I'd ever handled. A woman found in Lake Mulligatawny, with a cord wrapped around her neck." Scott's eyes hardened as he gazed into the distance, and she could see a slight throb around his jaw. "I worked weekends and nights on that case, but no matter how many leads I chased down, I couldn't quite pin the guy I suspected. Something was missing, and I didn't know what." He paused, two fingers tapping the wheel in a rhythm that matched "Have You Ever Seen The Rain."

  "So what happened?" Rachel asked.

  "I burned out," Scott said. "My dad was really ill around this time, so in between hospital visits and working this case and managing my regular duties as a deputy and trying to maintain the house, I just didn't take out any time for myself."

  Rachel placed a hand on his forearm. There was a hint of vulnerability in his voice, and beyond that, the earnest, serious look of a man who had worked long and hard to get where he was.

  "I was in my dad's hospital room one time, and trying to doze off on the chair while he played solitaire," Scott said. "That's when Dad told me, 'You can't set yourself on fire to keep others warm.'"

  "What's that mean?"

  "It's just one of those sayings Dad had," Scott said. "He believed you have to take care of yourself and make sure you're leading a balanced, healthy life. In the long term, that's the only way you can contribute to the world. Working overtime works for six months, maybe a year. After a while, if you don't build up your reserves of energy, it's going to drain you out, and then everything you do will suffer, be bad quality."

  Rachel remembered how hard she'd worked at her start-up and for how long. She'd had no choice back then. There were weeks when all she and Brandon could afford to eat was ramen. Brandon had never complained about it, in fact he'd almost acted like it was an adventure. But Rachel had always felt like a heavy iron ball were pressing down on her head. She'd been unable to relax even when she was doing nothing. She'd begun to suffer from insomnia. All in a quest to make the company successful, and all of that had been snatched out of her hands when Brandon decided to sell the company without telling her.

  "What if you don't have the luxury of taking time to build your energy reserves?" Rachel asked Scott.

  "You always do," Scott said. "Even if it's just fifteen minutes a day listening to songs you love. There has to be space for silence in a life."

  "Did it work for you?"

  "Not for a long time," Scott said. "I was pigheaded, see. Eventually, though, my dad's words won out. So now, I try and take weekends off, and I try and get a good night's sleep, and I try and eat my vegetables, and take a run whenever possible. Most of all, when I'm not at work, I try and leave it behind. I don't bring it back home with me."

  Rachel smiled. "Does that help?"

  "Maybe." Scott shrugged. "Last year, all these years later, I finally cracked the cold case. I'd kept reviewing it all these years, off and on, but never found a solution. Then one Saturday I was tinkering in the garage and humming to AC/DC when two very different facts suddenly clicked together. I figured out that the woman's husband didn't have an airtight alibi like he claimed all along. I found the hole in his story. I dug in deeper, and in one week we'd made the arrest. You should have seen the man's face when we knocked on his door. All the smugness just melted and dripped right off onto the floor. Happiest day of my career when the judge sentenced him to life. I felt a weight I didn't know I was carrying, leave me. The woman we found, Dora Daniels, I'm not sure, but I do hope she's finally found peace."

  There were tears in Rachel's eyes as she looked at him. Scott still had that hard look in his eyes, but a soft smile was playing on the edges of his lips too. He turned to her a little, and cocked his head. "I rambled a little, but my roundabout point is- as sheriff I can't talk about my cases with civilians, and I don't talk about my cases with my friends and family. Not ever."

  "I can respect that," Rachel said quietly. "I'm sorry I pushed."

  "Not an issue. Emily still does, and I'm increasingly rude to her each time." Scott's smile grew crooked and charming as he thought of his sister. "Want to bet she'll try tonight?"

  "No bet." Rachel smiled as they arrived at the beach and parked.

  *****

  Chapter 12

  Splash

  Inkborn Beach was a small stretch of pure golden sand, hidden away behind a cliff. Beautiful as it was, it had escaped detection by the tourists who regularly drove down Highway 1, and stayed mercifully clean and private. Rachel and Scott walked a short path between grazing cows and climbed down a rough staircase carved into the side of the beach, before reaching their destination. The sun hadn't quite set yet, but was planning to. The sky had turned a dark pink, and shades of purple, and orange tinged the clouds that surrounded the sun.

  "Uncle Scott!" Ollie came running toward them, his body crusted with sand, his face sticky with some sort of bright red syrup. With no hesitation, he launched himself upon Scott, who caught him in midair and swung him around twice. Ollie spread his arms wide and screamed in delight, while Scooter let off a volley of barks.

  "You'll make him sick, Scott," Emily called out. She and Jay were lying on a blanket with an umbrella stuck in the sand next to them. Both were tanned gold. Emily had an old copy of Gone With The Wind open next to her, while Jay was fiddling with a large telescope.

  "Hello you lazy bums." Scott placed Ollie on his shoulders and smiled broadly at his sister. "Have you been lying here all day?"

  "Any sensible person would," Emily said. "Weather like today's isn't meant to be wasted on garages and bakeries."

  "Oh, I guess you don't want this, then." Rachel held out a box in one hand, and Emily licked her lips.

  "Is that what I think it is?" Scott asked eagerly.

  "Pineapple upside-down cake." Rachel smiled. "You mentioned it was your favorite some time ago."

  "Th
at I did! I'll take that, thanks. Too bad she didn't bring you anything, Emily."

  "We're all sharing, you dog," Emily scolded. "And as for you, Rachel, my favorite cake is strawberry jam cake. Just for your information."

  "You'd have to be one foot taller and a different gender before she bakes you a cake," Jay drawled, winking at Emily.

  "Way to be subtle, Jay." Emily sighed, and gave him a friendly whack on the shoulder. Jay leaned over and kissed her upturned wrist lightly.

  "Ok, I'll be right back," Scott said. "Gonna go drown myself before you drown me in embarrassment."

  "Nooo, let me down. I don't wanna drown," Ollie protested.

  "Oh, no . . . what's this . . . the tide is calling me. It's magnetic." Scott stretched his hands out and pretended he was being dragged forward. "The water's pulling me, Ollie. We're doomed!"

  "Nooo!" Ollie's shout was part-laugh, part scream.

  Rachel clicked a leash on Scooter before he got any ideas about swimming in the water. He was too tiny and the waves were a little too wild for her taste.

  "Glad you came." Emily smiled at her warmly as Rachel plopped down on the blanket. "Scott told me you had- er- a guest over?"

  "Brandon, Stan's assistant," Rachel said. "He stayed over at my place because he didn't want to be at Stan's house that night."

  Jay had one eye on the focuser, and was adjusting the telescope mount. "Who, your ex-fiancé?"

  "Scott didn't leave out much, I see," Rachel said, feeling a little irritated.

  "Scott? Oh no. Stan was the one who told me you and Brandon were once engaged," Jay said, his eye still on the rubber spout extending from the telescope. "This thing is so useless," he muttered. "Shouldn't have bought it online."

  "Stan?" Rachel stared at Jay. "Stan Stickman knew who I was?"

  "Of course. Brandon told him he was here to win you back," Jay said, unaware of the look of horror spreading across Rachel and Emily's face.

  "Jay. You complete rag. You never told me any of this!" Emily exclaimed.

  Jay turned around, and ran a hand through his floppy hair, dislodging several grains of sand. The look of confusion on his face was almost endearing. "What? Did I say something? He won her back, didn't he, if he's staying the night and stuff?"

  Emily rolled her eyes to the heavens. "How you became a successful lawyer is beyond me sometimes." She buried her nose in her book again.

  "Just to clarify—there's nothing going on between me and Brandon," Rachel said, her voice a little heated.

  "Speaking of Brandon, could you get back my shirt from him?" Jay asked Emily.

  "What shirt?" Emily asked.

  "When you spilled coffee on him the other day, he borrowed my shirt, remember?"

  "Oh, that, yes. I'll get it back soon." Emily nodded. "I think Tricia has it."

  "Wait, you spilled something on Brandon the day Stan was murdered?" Rachel asked.

  "Yep." Emily shrugged. "I could have sworn somebody tripped me. I'm not normally clumsy. In this case it went right on him and thankfully it wasn't hot."

  "When was this? What time, I mean?"

  "Nine thirty, nine forty-five." Emily shrugged. "Before the clock struck ten, anyway. I remember because Brandon took ages changing his shirt in the bathroom."

  "Brandon was in the bathroom for fifteen minutes?" Rachel asked. "Between nine forty-five and ten a.m. the day Stan died?"

  "Yep. He came back out five minutes after ten with his own shirt in a plastic bag, and Jay's shirt was way too loose for him."

  Rachel didn't say anything, but her mind was racing. What if Brandon had tripped Emily? What if he'd then slipped out through the bathroom window, murdered Stan, and then came back and pretended that he'd just been changing? He had a seemingly perfect alibi, until you looked at it closely.

  "Did Tricia leave the café between nine thirty and ten-fifteen that day?" Rachel asked.

  "Nope," Emily said. "I mean, I didn't have my eye on her every second, but she has pretty distinctive hair even if I'm only looking out of the corner of my eye. I'm reasonably sure she stayed put."

  Fear bloomed anxious petals inside Rachel. Could it be Brandon? Had he really hated Stan that much? She tried to picture Brandon's face twisted in rage, a knife in his hand, stabbing Stan. And before that? Had he plotted it meticulously? Had he decided to kill on the spur of the moment? Whichever it was, even thinking about it made her sad, as though the man she had spent so many years with had truly stopped existing.

  Twilight had set in, and the orange and purple hues were slowly darkening into ink blue. The moon had come up already, three quarters full and a little bloated as it tried to hoist itself higher into the sky. Ollie and Scott had come out of the ocean and wrapped themselves in thick, striped towels. Ollie looking like a miniature version of Scott with his dark, wild hair, wide eyes, and broad smile. Emily had brought out a picnic dinner, and was plating ham and cheese sandwiches with a slice of Rachel's upside-down pineapple cake on the side. Jay had finally set up the telescope to his satisfaction, and was now lugging rocks onto the sides of the blanket, making sure the wind didn't blow it off.

  "Good news is, it's not very cloudy," Jay said. "Bad news is, we still have a couple hours to kill before the meteor shower begins."

  "As long as time's the only thing getting killed I have no problem." Scott toweled his head vigorously and accepted a plate from Emily. He ate a bite of the cake first, and as always, with the first bite, he closed his eyes and nodded his head as if he were listening to a symphony. "Fantastic," he told Rachel.

  The hour she'd spent baking it seemed suddenly very worth it. Rachel smiled and had a bite of her own slice. They spent quite some time talking and laughing. Jay, Emily, and Scott had a rhythm of their own when they spoke, and three parallel conversations would often take place at once, converging and diverging suddenly.

  "So I come out of the bath and there's crayon marks all over our freshly painted hallway, and—"

  "Well, this crazy guy decides after two drinks that jumping from the roof into the swimming pool is a brilliant idea, and—“

  "And so she tells my client that the cottage belongs to her but the land underneath it doesn't, and—"

  Rachel lay back with Scooter on her stomach, smiling pleasantly and drifting away slowly into her own dreams. Ollie had his legs sprawled over hers, while he bent over a handheld video game of some sort. She could hear squeaks and beeps along with tinny electronic music coming out of the bright-blue plastic rectangle.

  The relaxed scene was broken by the sound of a sudden crash, like a gigantic wave breaking in the water. All four adults looked up suddenly in the direction of the noise, but in the darkness, it was impossible to tell what had happened. There was a faint scream, and then more splashing noises. Before Rachel's mind could wrap itself around what was happening, Scott had already stood up and begun racing toward the noises. Emily was right at his heels. Jay hung back, confused, one hand holding Ollie's.

  "What's going on?" he asked Rachel. "I thought we were alone, but it sounded like someone fell into the water."

  "It can't be," Rachel said. "There was no one else on the beach, right?"

  "I'll wait here with Scooter and the beast," Jay said, giving Ollie a light tap on the shoulder. "You better check out what the brother and sister duo are up to now."

  Rachel nodded, and ran to catch up with Emily. Emily was standing knee deep in the water, her hands on her hips and a very worried look upon her face. In the distance, Rachel could see a dark cap of hair appearing and disappearing in the water. Farther away still, her heart stilled for a moment, she thought she saw a hand rising from the water, clutching at air.

  "Someone's drowning," Emily said. "Scott dove in to save him."

  "Where did the drowning man come from?" Rachel looked around. Inkborn Beach was surrounded by cliffs, and large boulders blocked the small stretch of sand comprising the beach on either side. As far as the eye could see, the ocean lay flat and heavy with no boats or yachts
in sight.

  "The cliff," Emily said. "He fell from the cliff. Rachel, I'm scared."

  Rachel put a hand around Emily's stiff body and rubbed her shoulder. "Scott's here, isn't he?" she said. "He'll take care of it. Don't you worry."

  "Yeah, I know. Scott's a reliable guy. It's him I'm scared for." Emily bit her lip so hard it drew blood. She absently wiped it with the back of her hand. "Please let him get back to shore without anything going wrong. Please."

  Rachel waded in farther, letting her jeans get completely soaked as the water rose to her waist. "He's coming back!" she exclaimed. She could see Scott's lean, muscular arms as he did a backstroke. He was holding the drowning man close to his chest. Rachel couldn't tell if the second man was breathing or not. Tension gripped her as she waited the interminable minutes for Scott to make it back to shore. The tide's pull was getting more insistent now, and it took considerable effort for him to finally come back. Scott crawled the final few meters on his knees, with Rachel and Emily helping drag-carry the man to shore.

  Emily flipped the man over immediately, and Rachel gave a little cry of shock. It was Brandon. Blood matted his blond hair, and his lips were slowly turning blue.

  *****

  Chapter 13

  Consciousness

  Brandon fully regained consciousness two hours later, in a hospital bed, with a bandage wrapped around his head and an IV in his arm. Rachel was sitting on a plastic chair next to him and gave him a watery smile as his eyes opened.

  "What happened?" Brandon groaned, making a weak attempt to raise his hand and giving up halfway.

  "You were in the water," Rachel said. "Scott saved you, and Emily gave you CPR. We were all so scared. Don't you remember anything? You coughed out so much water . . ."