Cooper Vengeance

by Paula Graves

  She wasn’t his girlfriend. They weren’t going to live happily ever after, no matter how many hot, sweet kisses they shared. Sooner or later, he’d have to go back home. She would stay here. It was just how things were.

  “Let’s go back to the motel, okay?” he suggested. “I need to get you back to your grandparents’ house, and I’m sure Natalie has other things she’d like to do with her day.”

  Mike eyed Natalie as he climbed into the truck, as if he were trying to read her mood. Apparently, he wasn’t having any more luck than J.D. was.

  Natalie climbed wordlessly onto the bench seat at the back of the truck’s cab, leaving the front passenger seat for Mike. Wary, J.D.’s son took his place in front of her. The minute J.D. started the truck’s engine, Mike began fiddling with the radio dial, finally settling on a rock station out of Mobile.

  The short drive back to the motel was uncomfortable but uneventful. Both Mike and Natalie piled out of the truck at the motel as if eager to be shed of J.D. altogether.

  “I’ll call you later?” J.D. ventured as Natalie started toward her car without bothering with any formal goodbye.

  “I’ll call you,” she tossed over her shoulder without looking back. The “when hell freezes over” part of her sentence was clearly implied in the angry energy that took her across the parking lot in a few economical strides.

  “She’s not going to call you,” Mike murmured.

  He looked at his son. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Did I mess things up for you?”

  “I think I managed that on my own,” he answered, unnerved at the sight of Natalie driving out of his life, probably for good. How had he let the relationship between them become so important to him so quickly?

  He looked away from her disappearing taillights and turned to his son. “You want to grab some lunch in town?”

  Mike shook his head. “I promised Aunt Judy I’d be back for lunch. Uncle Clay’s grilling steaks. You want to come? Uncle Clay’s always saying how he never sees you when you come to town.”

  The last thing J.D. could handle at the moment was an afternoon with Brenda’s brother. “I’ll drop by to see everybody later. Maybe tomorrow.” He hustled Mike back into the truck.

  As he buckled up, Mike released a deep sigh. “I’m not mad at you for kissing her, you know. I mean, I was, ’cause—ugh.” He grimaced. “But I know Mom’s gone and she’s not coming back. Cissy knows it, too. She’s been saying for years that we should be glad if you meet someone who makes you happy.”

  J.D.’s aching heart dropped a beat. “She said that, huh?”

  Mike nodded. “So it’s okay, you know? If you really like her, then it’s okay to kiss her and stuff.”

  J.D. couldn’t decide whether to smile at his son’s awkward blessing or kick himself for already rendering it pointless. “Duly noted.” He gave his son’s dark hair a quick ruffle.

  Mike grimaced again and ducked out from under J.D.’s hand. “Dad, do you have to do that?”

  This time, J.D. managed a grin, ruffling Mike’s hair again. “Yeah, I do. Just to hear you squawk.” He started the truck engine and turned down the radio.

  Mike protested, and J.D. let him turn it back up, filling the cab with the driving beat of an old Aerosmith song. The loud music and his son’s air drums routine precluded any further conversation, but J.D. was okay with that. He and Mike were okay, and that’s what mattered.

  He just wished the same were true of himself and Natalie.

  “YOU GOING TO EAT YOUR fries?”

  Natalie looked up from her barely touched lunch plate to find Travis Rayburn standing next to her table. He was smiling at her, though the humor didn’t quite reach his watchful eyes.

  She pushed the plate toward him. “Knock yourself out.”

  Travis pulled out the chair opposite her and sat, picking up one of the fries. “How long do you reckon you’re going to be on administrative leave?”

  “Tatum hasn’t said yet.”

  He grimaced. “Tatum needs to have his head examined. Bill Donovan’s still out from his bypass surgery, and Toby Ellison broke his ankle on an animal nuisance call yesterday. We’re three men down now. The least Tatum should do is let you come back on desk duty. Free up someone else to get out in the field.”

  Natalie gave him a speculative look. “Things are that busy?”

  “We’re having a big meth problem in the western part of the county. Tatum’s created a task force with the DEA to try to figure out who’s supplying the pseudoephedrine to the meth chefs. DEA thinks it might be a reputable drug source with something going on the side. We’re not so sure. Tatum thinks some of the local dealers are hiring teams of teenagers to lift the stuff from drug stores.” Travis shoved the fry into his mouth.

  “Don’t you have to get that stuff from behind the pharmacy counter these days?”

  Travis shrugged. “Send a cute girl in a crop top into any store in the county and I bet you could distract the pharmacist long enough for someone to sneak in the back and lift what they need.” He picked up another fry. “Sure you’re done with these?”

  She nodded. “So Tatum’s really shorthanded, then?”

  “Everybody’s working extra shifts to get things done. Weekends, too.” Travis cocked his head. “It’s a good time to hit Tatum up for your shield back. If you really want it back.”

  “Oh, I want it back,” she assured him.

  Anything to get her mind off J. D. Cooper.

  “Well, go talk to Tatum. He was in the office last I saw.” Travis reached across the table for the bottle of ketchup by the napkin holder.

  “On a Saturday?” she asked, surprised. The sheriff usually had weekends off unless there was an emergency.

  “Shorthanded, remember?” Travis finished drowning the fries in ketchup and set the bottle back where it came from. “By the way, where are you on your investigation of your sister’s murder?”

  “What investigation?” she asked innocently.

  He grinned at her. “Right. You’re following Tatum’s rules to the letter, I bet.”

  “You know me,” she murmured, smiling. “I’m a to-the-letter kind of girl.”

  His grin broadened. “Devlin said he saw you with some guy at your folks’ party.”

  “Devlin was there?” Dusty Devlin was one of the newer recruits at the Sheriff’s Department. About as green as early corn and the last person she’d have expected to see at her parents’ ritzy fundraiser.

  “He picks up security jobs now and then for extra money,” Travis said. “Got a kid with some medical issues and the bills are hard to deal with.”

  “I didn’t know that.” She was beginning to wonder just how many things she didn’t know about her fellow deputies—and whose fault that really was.

  “Anyway, he said he saw you leave after the party with one of the waiters or something?”

  “Right. He’s a friend.”

  Travis’s dark eyebrow arched. “A Becker dating the help? Bet that went over great with your dad.”

  “I didn’t say we were dating,” she protested, though the memory of J.D.’s hot, sweet kisses didn’t exactly add the right level of conviction to her denial.

  Travis picked up on that fact. “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s only in town a short time. There’s nothing going on.” Not after today, anyway. J.D. had made that much painfully clear.

  “Well, good. So you won’t mind taking time away from him to put in some hours at the station.” He waved toward the door. “Get a move on, while Tatum’s stuck at the office trying to keep all the balls he’s juggling in the air.”

  Natalie pulled a twenty from her purse and laid it on the table. “Make sure Margo gets that. And buy yourself a Coke before you choke on the fries.”

  Travis was right; Roy Tatum was still at his desk, eating a cold ham sandwich and working his way through a stack of paperwork so high that he could barely see over it when Natalie entered his office. He looked harried and angry.
“What do you want, Becker?”

  “I hear you’re shorthanded.”

  “And you want me to put you back on active duty?”

  She knew she had to tread lightly here. Tatum was generally a fair man, but he didn’t like to be pushed. “I thought maybe I could trade administrative leave for desk duty.”

  Tatum slanted her a considering look. “You been staying away from your sister’s case?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  The look he shot her way left her with little doubt he saw right through her. But when his eyes dropped back to the stack of papers in front of him, he released a frustrated sigh. “Okay. Desk duty. And you’ll be pulling six days a week until we find a temporary replacement for Ellison. He’ll be back later next week on desk duty, too, so maybe the two of you can work your way through some of the quarterly expense reports we have to turn into the county treasurer by the end of the month.”

  She managed not to grimace. Expense reports weren’t high on her list of interesting duties. But at least she’d have her shield and weapon back. It was a start.

  And she’d also have access to all the Ridley County Sheriff’s Department case files dating back to the middle of the last century. Now that she’d seen J.D.’s files and knew what she was looking for, she could scour the cold-case files every chance she got to see if there were any more murders that matched the signature and M.O. of her sister’s death.

  “Thank you,” she said aloud. “I can start now if you want.”

  He gave her an exasperated look but unlocked his desk and brought out her badge and Smith & Wesson service pistol, still in its holster. “I knew you’d be back here hounding me sooner rather than later,” he muttered gruffly.

  She smiled. “You won’t regret this.” She clipped the badge and holster to the waistband of her jeans, hurrying out of the sheriff’s office before he had a chance to change his mind.

  She ran into Doyle Massey in the bullpen. He didn’t look surprised to see her. “Let me guess. You heard about Ellison’s broken ankle and figured it was your chance to worm your way back on the force?”

  She took a seat at her desk, which was across from Massey’s. “I’m a team player, Massey. You know that.”

  Massey grinned at her. “Y’know, Becker, I think you just might be after all.”

  His open show of friendliness was a surprise, but it also went a long way toward taking the edge off her black mood. It couldn’t fix the mess her personal life had become ever since she’d spotted J. D. Cooper at the cemetery a few days earlier, but at least things were looking up professionally.

  She’d take whatever good news she could get.

  NATALIE ENDED UP working all day Sunday as well, helping the team catch up on all the paperwork that had started falling behind and getting the preliminary expense report ready to give to the sheriff on Monday for his feedback. But the pace wasn’t so hectic that she didn’t get a chance on Monday morning to snoop through the old cold-case files stored in the Sheriff’s Department annex.

  She pulled three files that looked interesting—one murder there in Terrebonne, one over in Otter Bluff and a third in Surrey near the county line, all taking place within the last twelve years. On Monday morning, with the preliminary expense report safely on the sheriff’s desk, she finally got a chance to study the files more carefully.

  The oldest case, from the town of Surrey, she eliminated outright once she read between the lines and realized the killing seemed to be drug related. A second she moved aside once it became clear that the woman had been merely passing through Otter Bluff and had been killed in a blitz attack; that was the wrong M.O. and nothing like the alpha killer’s signature.

  That left the Terrebonne case. It had happened just a few weeks after Brenda Cooper’s November murder. Three days after Christmas, twenty-six-year-old Carol Freemont had been house sitting for a friend on Hoke Island when someone killed her.

  The crime-scene photo showed her lying on the floor of the detached garage, near her dark blue Chevrolet sedan. The car’s alternator had been tampered with, ensuring the car wouldn’t start if she tried. The lead investigator, Danny Chisholm, had noted in the file that he had contacted every garage and shade tree mechanic in town to see if Carol had called in a request for service. He’d also checked area towing companies to see if she’d called for a tow. None of the inquiries had panned out. But Chisholm hadn’t known to look for a connection to Victor Logan.

  Natalie reached for the telephone to call J.D. If anyone knew whether or not Victor Logan had been in this neck of the woods at the time of Carol Freemont’s murder, J.D. would.

  But she stopped herself, replacing the phone on the hook. Not once in the past three days had J.D. contacted her, not even to make sure no one had taken another shot at mowing her down in a parking lot somewhere. So what if she’d told him she’d call him instead? Why did men have to take everything so literally?

  She looked around the bullpen, frustrated to find the place empty. A glance at the clock told her why—it was past time to take a break for lunch. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she’d been deskbound for hours, so she shrugged on her lightweight blazer and started for the door.

  Travis Rayburn headed into the bullpen just as she reached the door, almost crashing right into her. He was carrying a large black vase full of enormous yellow sunflowers.

  Natalie sidestepped him to avoid a collision. “Got a secret admirer, Rayburn?”

  Travis grinned at her over the bright yellow flowers. “I was going to ask the same thing—they’re for you.”

  Her smile faded. “From whom?”

  Rayburn shrugged. “The card didn’t say.”

  “Who delivered them?”

  “They were left outside the back door of the station. I saw them as I was coming in.”

  That was odd, Natalie thought. She followed Travis back to her desk, waiting for him to set the vase on her blotter before she checked the note.

  He was right. It was just a plain white card, tied to the flowers with an equally white ribbon. No illustration, no florist’s logo. Her first and last names were digitally printed onto the card in a simple font.

  Her stomach began to ache, driving away any thought of hunger. “Sunflowers were my sister’s, Carrie’s, favorites,” she murmured, brushing her fingertip over the bright golden petals of the nearest bloom.

  “What are you saying?” Travis asked.

  She looked up at him. “I think these flowers are from her killer.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Two days, and she still hadn’t called.

  J.D. had known she wouldn’t. No woman with a shred of self-respect would ruin her parting shot that way. And he’d be damned if he’d call her when she told him not to. Only a pathetic loser or a psychopathic stalker would do something like that.

  Still, as he pushed his half-eaten burger around the plate, he couldn’t help wondering what she was doing right now.

  “Didn’t like the way I cooked it?”

  He looked up to find Margo looking at his unfinished lunch. “No. It’s great. I guess I just wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”

  Margo cocked her head. “Did you ever find what you were looking for?”

  He met her gaze, wondering just how much she knew about what he’d come to Terrebonne to find. He wouldn’t be surprised if she knew everything, up to and including what had happened between him and Natalie on Saturday at Annabelle’s. Margo was the kind of person who could coax state secrets out of a spy. “I’m not sure I’ll ever find what I’m looking for,” he answered, hoping it was cryptic enough to cover whatever she knew.

  “I heard you worked a party up at the Becker’s.”

  “I helped out.”

  “Odd, doing something like that when you’re just here in town for a few days.”

  “Seemed like the party was for a good cause.”

  “Natalie Becker tell you about it?”

  And we reach the point of this interrogation,
J.D. thought. “She did, but working the party was my idea.”

  “I imagine it was quite the fancy do.”

  “It was very fancy,” he said carefully, considering what he could tell her to appease her curiosity without revealing anything the Beckers wouldn’t want spread far and wide. “The party was raided by pirates.”

  Her eyes widened with interest. “Pirates?”

  He told her about the bit of playacting to make donation request more entertaining for the partygoers. “They were dressed to the hilt. Cutlasses and eye patches and good-looking women dressed like bar wenches. There was even a pirate with a real parrot. I had to clean up after the damned thing all night.”

  “The pirate or the parrot?” Margo asked through delighted laughter.

  “Both,” J.D. answered with a grin.

  “I guess it must have raised quite a bundle of cash for poor Carrie’s charity,” Margo said, her laughter fading.

  “That’s what I heard.”

  Margo slanted a knowing look at him. “Did you hear it straight from Natalie Becker herself?”

  Before he could figure out how to answer without starting more tongues in town wagging, the bell over the diner door tinkled, heralding a new customer.

  “Speak of the devil,” Margo murmured, her gaze moving to the doorway.

  J.D. turned and found Natalie standing just inside the door, looking his way with wary eyes.

  He tried a smile. She didn’t return it, but she did start walking toward him, her pace unhurried.

  He stood to greet her. “Hi.”

  He saw her gaze dart behind him. Margo, no doubt, watching with her usual hawk-like interest. He didn’t care.

  “Hi,” she answered after a moment.

  “Can I buy you lunch?” he asked.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “No, I can buy my own. Margo—my usual please?” Her tone softened as she looked back at J.D. “But if you want to join me, that would be fine.”