by Sam Cheever
He wasn’t worth any pain he might cause her.
Hal stepped through the door. “Let’s go, Agent Cox. I’ll show you out.”
Cox threw me one last, angry glance before leaving. I hadn’t seen the last of him. As soon as he left the kitchen my knees buckled and I slumped to the ground, my legs splayed out in front of me and my back against the cabinet beneath the sink. Caphy dropped down next to me and laid her head on my thigh, whimpering softly.
I scratched her ears and stared straight ahead, my hands shaking with emotion.
When Hal returned, he slid down to sit on the floor across from me, his broad back resting against the island. He waited until I scraped the tears from my cheeks and pulled air into my lungs. “I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. I need time to come to grips with it myself.”
He nodded. “No problem. What can I do to help?”
I thought about it for a long moment and then sniffed, shoving to my feet. “Come on.”
He grabbed Caphy’s leash from me when he saw how badly my hands were shaking. “Where are we going?”
“To visit a friend I haven’t seen in a while.” It wasn’t strictly a lie. Devon Little had been a family friend for as long as I could remember. The fact that he’d worked for my parents didn’t change that. I’d called him Uncle Dev for much of my life. But I’d seen him only once since my parents’ funeral. I’d run into him by accident in town and he’d gotten away from me as quickly as he could.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to see me again. Though I couldn’t explain why that would be. I’d assumed he didn’t like the reminder of my father, his lifelong best friend, that I gave him. But it was time for him to get past the pain.
Just like it was time for me to face the ghosts of my past. And finally put my parents’ sins to rest. Whatever they might be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Uncle Dev lived in a ramshackle cabin deep in the woods. His property adjoined ours on the south side, a long, barbed wire fence severing one plot from the other. Though our properties were geographically close, separated by only a mile of road, they were miles apart in levels of habitability.
Where my parents had built an imposing home, an enormous fixture anchoring the center of a hundred acres of parklike grass and trees with a small pond nearby, Devon Little had left his heavily treed property wild and untamed, like his own nature. Uncle Dev had been a child of nature for as long as I could remember.
In fact, one of his favorite hobbies had been sitting outside and summoning the coyotes by mimicking their calls. I’d once asked him why he did it and he’d told me it gave him a feeling of being at one with nature when those beautiful, deadly and wild creatures emerged from the woods, one by one, and stood looking at him.
I secretly suspected he fed them and that was why they came. But he vehemently denied it.
The access road to Dev’s home at the very back of the property was narrow, rutted and less gravel than roots and weeds. Enormous trees crowded the narrow road, their limbs brushing the top and sides of Hal’s car as we lumbered slowly along.
The road stopped a couple of miles in without any warning. The trees barring our way looked as if they’d been there for years, though I remembered the road reaching all the way to his cabin when I was a child.
Hal hit the ignition button and sat staring at the trees. “I guess we’re on foot the rest of the way.”
I climbed out, secretly relieved to put off the meeting with my errant “uncle” for a while longer. It had been too long and his sad face brought back too many distressing memories.
A shock of realization hit me as I let Caphy out of the back seat. Apparently, Dev wasn’t the only one who was afraid to face the pain of those memories.
Hal gave me the gift of silence as we walked more deeply into Devon Little’s property. His presence beside me comforted but didn’t intrude. I really liked that about him. I’d never met a man quite like Hal Amity.
By contrast, my dog was an occasional blur in the near distance, her wide body bounding lightly over weeds and through scrub trees with happy exhilaration. She ran with her nose down mostly, only lifting it to observe a bird chirping high above her head or the panicked scramble of a squirrel bounding from tree to tree.
Not for the first time, I wished I could see life through her eyes. Though Caphy had been a badly mistreated puppy when I got her, abandoned, starving, and covered in mange alongside the road, she’d accepted my love with a sweet nature that seemed impossible given her early life.
I’d had Caphy only a couple of years before my parents had died. And when I lost them, she was the only thing tethering me to life. I’d wanted to curl up beneath my covers and go to sleep after the crash. I had no desire to eat or move or talk to anyone.
Caphy had laid beside me for two days, only leaving when a friend or relative came to drag her out for food, or a potty break. But then she apparently decided I’d given in enough to my grief and she’d pestered me incessantly to leave the bed.
Only her bright, happy insistence to celebrate life had dragged me from my bed. Nothing, or no one else could have done it. To this day I felt like she’d saved my life and my love for her was as fierce as any emotion I held dear.
Even my memories of my parents.
I shook off the memory of those horrible days and turned to Hal. “He’ll be armed and he’ll probably threaten to shoot us.”
Hal blinked but quickly schooled his expression. “I thought you said he was your uncle.”
I’d given him a brief explanation of my relationship with Dev on the ride over.
“He’s my godfather and a family friend. But he was more my father’s friend than mine, of course. And he’s become little more than a hermit since my parents’ death.”
Hal nodded, frowning in thought. A moment later he slowed to a stop and put out an arm to hold me back. He listened carefully for a moment and then slid me a look. “Call Caphy back.”
Something much bigger than a rabbit rustled the underbrush about twenty yards away and my pulse picked up.
Fear razored through me but I did as he asked, giving a quick, high-pitched whistle. Silence followed my summons so I whistled again.
I was just starting to panic when I saw her blonde form bounding toward us through the woods. She burst from the underbrush with a happy smile, which was broken in the middle by a slash of grayish white.
Dread cut a path through my belly. “Is that what it looks like?”
Hal glanced quickly around before crouching down and eyeing the bone in Caphy’s mouth.
I didn’t breathe for a long moment and then he put out his hand and my dog obediently dropped the offensive object into it. He examined it quickly and then stood, flinging it high and long into the brush.
Caphy turned and ran after it, her entire back end wagging blissfully. “Um, do you think that was a good idea?” I asked Hal.
He grinned. “It wasn’t human. It was deer, if I’m not mistaken. Does Uncle Devin hunt?”
I nodded, filled with relief. “He does. And there are a lot of coyotes around here.”
“Good to know. I won’t throw the bone so far next time.”
Three moderate flings of the deer bone later, we came upon a clearing and I stopped as memory swamped me. I couldn’t believe how much the place had changed. While his home had never been fancy or even pretty, Devon had always kept the little cabin tidy and in good repair.
No longer.
The glass in the front door was broken, repaired with duct tape and so filthy it looked opaque. The window was cracked, the frame rotting away from the wall, and birds had created nests under the eaves and on top of the crooked gutters.
The roof had been patched, badly, and several of the shingles were obviously buckling. An ugly wash of black mildew covered the once light-brown surface.
The still I remembered squatted at the edge of the woods. I almost smiled as I remembered him telling me when I was eight years old that it was a lemonade
cooker. That particular fairytale came to an abrupt end one day when I took a big swig of his home-made “lemonade” and puked it out all over the floor of his cabin.
That was the first time I could remember Dev and my father fighting.
“It doesn’t look like he’s here,” Hal said.
Caphy whined at the front door, scratching the weathered wood and sniffling around the cracks in the glass when her summons wasn’t immediately answered.
“You could be right. If he was here he’d have drawn down on us by now.”
“That’s not healthy,” Hal offered unhelpfully.
“Right? I used to tell my dad that all the time.”
“Did he know why your uncle was so nervous?”
I shrugged. “He said Devon had always been that way. That he was just a really private person.”
Hal tried looking in the window but a stained and ratty curtain covered most of the glass. I went to the door and knocked, peering through the crack in another curtain to see if he was there. Hal joined me at the door and I shook my head. “No lights. Nothing moving inside.”
Hal reached for the door and twisted the handle. It turned easily and the door came open. It wasn’t locked.
He glanced at me. “A nervous, really private person who doesn’t lock his door?”
My eyes went wide and my pulse picked up. “Something’s wrong.”
“Stay here,” Hal whispered harshly. He reached down and grabbed Caphy’s collar, pulling her away from the door. “Keep her with you, just in case.”
I clipped Caphy’s leash on and whispered a command for her to sit. She did as commanded, though her tail smacked against my leg as she watched Hal disappear into the darkened cabin.
I chewed my lip as silence beat around me. Caphy whined softly.
A moment later, Hal reappeared. “He’s not here. But the place is a mess.”
I followed him back inside, keeping Caphy close as I stepped into the main room. “Somebody tore the place up,” I breathed.
Furniture was slashed and smashed into slivers. Pillows had been reduced to puffs of stuffing and strips of fabric, and every drawer in the place had been yanked out and turned upside down on the floor. “What would they have been looking for?”
Hal crouched down near the closet and reached to tug a couple of coats off the floor. He glanced up as I moved near, his eyebrows lifting. “Wherever your uncle is, he’s not armed.”
Devon’s shotgun lay across the floor of the closet.
“He kept it propped up behind the door,” I told Hal. “What was it doing in here?”
Hal stood, shrugging his shoulders as if trying to slough off a burden. “He might have been hiding in here when whoever did this arrived.”
We turned and looked around and that’s when I saw the trail of blood across the floor. It led to the front door.
Hal pulled out his phone. “He might have shot the intruder.”
I bit my lip as he punched the numbers 9-1-1 into his cell and told the dispatcher where we were. I couldn’t shake the fear that Devin might not have shot the intruder. He might have gotten shot himself.
Hal disconnected and clasped my arm, drawing me gently toward the door. “We need to wait outside. This is a crime scene now.”
I’D ALWAYS THOUGHT Arno was tall. If I hadn’t seen him standing next to Hal Amity, his head a couple of inches below the other man’s, I’d probably still think he was tall.
Everybody looks tall when you’re only five feet three inches high.
Caphy and I sat on a filthy wood bench near the still, watching as Arno’s guys swarmed all over the tiny cabin. Caphy had given up trying to go to Hal and lay in the shade, her body flat against the ground but her eyes locked on my PI.
A moment later, Hal said something to Arno and they headed my way. Caphy leapt up and gave them a welcoming smile, tongue lolling and tail snapping against the bench.
One of these days she was gonna break that poor tail smacking it against everything.
Arno inclined his head, giving my dog a quick scratch between her ears. “Joey.”
“Any idea where Dev is?” I asked him as I stood.
“No. He hasn’t been into town in weeks according to Max.”
Dev generally went into the diner a couple of times a week, always the same days and time. It was where he and I had accidently met a few months earlier.
“What about Junior? Has he seen Dev?” Junior Milliard ran the small, local grocery in Deer Hollow. Dev visited Junior’s Market the first Monday of every month, arriving as the store opened at six o’clock in the morning so as to avoid running into anybody while he stocked up for the month.
“He showed up on schedule this month,” Arno said, turning back to the cabin with a frown. “I don’t like the looks of this, Joey.”
Despair twisted painfully in my belly. I didn’t like it either, but I’d been holding onto hope that it was all just a big misunderstanding. Arno’s impressions all but ripped that hope away.
“It’s still possible he hurt himself and he’s at a hospital somewhere,” Hal offered. He gave me a gentle look and I wanted to hug him. Clearly, he was trying to give me a lifeline. I just wasn’t sure I could grasp it.
Arno nodded. “I’ll check the hospitals within a thirty-mile radius.”
Hal looked at me and lifted his brows. He wanted me to tell Arno about Cox. Frowning, I gave my head a small shake. I definitely wasn’t ready to go there. So, I went someplace almost as bad. “Arno...is there any chance Devon’s...”
“The body in the chipper?” He frowned. “I just don’t know yet. But we’ll grab some DNA samples from the cabin and of course the blood and compare it. That will tell us if it’s a match.”
“Are his fingerprints on file,” Hal asked Arno.
“They are, but unfortunately the victim didn’t have any to compare it to.”
“No identifying marks at all?” Hal asked.
Sighing, Arno looked around to make sure we were alone before responding. “This was done by someone who knew what they were doing. The body was fed into the chipper arms first and then the head. Fingerprints, teeth and all facial features were obliterated. Most of the body was destroyed. From what was left, there was nothing. No surgery sites, no ink, nothing except some pretty serious nail fungus on one big toe.”
I grimaced, trying to recall if Devon ever complained about nail fungus. I couldn’t remember it if he had.
“Do you need us anymore?” Hal asked Arno.
“No. But if you have a card...”
Hal pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card, handing it to Arno. “If you need me, I’ll be staying at Joey’s house.”
Arno’s eyebrows shot skyward.
Hal didn’t bother to explain or justify his decision to stay with me. I liked that about him. As we walked away, I could feel Arno’s gaze burning a trail over my back. I almost smiled.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hal waited until we’d gotten home and settled in with cold beers before he rocked my world.
Sitting on the other end of the couch I was curled up on, with a snoring pibl stretched out on her back between us, he looked me in the eye and just let fly.
“Tell me everything you know about Devon Little and his relationship to your parents.”
I swallowed hard. I hadn’t seen his question coming. He’d been so solicitous and gentle with me to that point, I guess I just figured he’d follow my lead and pretend there wasn’t a giant pink elephant in the room.
I shook my head, opening my mouth to tell him it wasn’t something I wanted to discuss.
He didn’t even let me get the words out. “If you want my help on this, you need to be open with me about what’s going on.”
I frowned, anger rising as quickly as fear. Suddenly I found it hard to breathe. I shook my head again, pulling air into my lungs in a long, desperate inhalation. “Hal, I can’t...”
“Yes. You can. I’ve only known you for a day but I already
know that you’re a strong woman, Joey. Much stronger than you give yourself credit for. I understand that you’re in mourning. I get that. Believe me, I do. And if all of this...” he swung a hand towards the woods to indicate the murder and everything... “—wasn’t happening right now you could indulge yourself in the luxury of continuing to mourn your parents. But I’m afraid something’s happened to make that, not only inadvisable, but dangerous.” He leaned forward, his sexy gaze locked on mine and filled with intensity that made me swallow hard again. “I won’t stay here and watch you drown in the intrigue swirling around you, Joey. If you won’t let me help...”
He let the thought trail away, his handsome face taut with unhappiness. I didn’t need to hear him speak the words. I understood what he was telling me. And as much as I hated it, he was right.
It was no longer possible to pretend everything I was experiencing was separate from my parents. It all seemed to be coming together under a single theme.
Something they’d done was coming back to bite me in the butt.
I sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Protecting myself from the memories has become a habit...” I thought about that for a moment, rolling the word around on my tongue. “Scratch that, it’s become a lifeline. I’d always told myself that the things which were whispered about them were lies. I’d had to believe that or my life would have been turned inside out.” I looked away, unwilling to see pity or disgust in his gaze. “I’m terrified I’ll find out that they were nothing more than common criminals.” And that knowledge would take me under...yanking every smidgeon of self-confidence I possess away.
“Things are rarely black and white, Joey. There’s a good chance that we’ll discover your parents were involved in something illegal. But that doesn’t mean it was something horrible. Jaywalking is illegal. Speeding. Yet those are things we all do.”
I dragged air into lungs that were tight and uncooperative. My chest hurt from the tears I wouldn’t release. “And what if it is horrible? What do I do then?”
