I Think I Love You

by Stephanie Bond

  He made a rueful noise. “Nah, Hilton’s dead. Cancer took him a couple of years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. Thank you, Mr. Bradley, for your time.” They stood and he shook their hands. She was halfway across the barren yard when something the man said clicked. She turned back.

  “Mr. Bradley, you said that everything was quiet when you walked up to the car.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The radio wasn’t playing?”

  He thought a minute, then shook his head. “No. It was dead quiet, except for our dog barking. I remember thinking it was spooky.”

  “Thank you.”

  As they settled back into the van, Mitchell looked over. “The radio was playing when you left the scene?”

  “Not just playing—blaring. The guy kicked the volume as he jumped over the side of the car. I’m thinking whoever took the murder weapon also turned off the radio.”

  “The battery might have run down.”

  “In an hour’s time?”

  He backed out of the Bradley driveway and pulled onto the road. “Does the report say anything about the running condition of the car?”

  She checked. “It says the car was towed to the jail parking lot, but that could have been because they didn’t want to disturb fingerprints.”

  “I remember reading, though, that the car was wiped clean of fingerprints. They only picked up a couple of partials that matched Bracken’s, but he admitted to having been in the car on other occasions, so that didn’t prove anything.”

  Excitement flowered in her chest. “That’s why the murderer came back, to wipe away his fingerprints!”

  He stared at her. “Uh-huh.”

  “But don’t you see? That means if we find the letter opener, we find the killer.”

  “Or at least a trail to the killer.”

  “Right.” She sobered. “Do you think the fact that Dean’s car was also wiped clean of fingerprints means anything?”

  “You mean like a similar MO? Maybe, but not necessarily.” He pointed to a tiny roadside grocery store. “How about something to drink before we continue our sleuthing?”

  Sleuthing? She was sleuthing, wasn’t she?

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “No. Something to drink sounds good.” They let Sam out to run around while they purchased water and juice from the sweet-faced clerk inside. The girl blushed and stammered under Mitchell’s smile, and Regina was struck by how winsome he was, how helpful he’d been despite her resistance, how easy it would be to….

  No. She would not fall for him, not when her life was already on full tilt.

  Of course, being on full tilt would explain why inappropriate emotions were flitting through her mind in the first place.

  “You okay?” he asked, oblivious to the revelations exploding in her head.

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  So they hit the road again, this time in the direction of Macken. Mowers had recently cut the grass alongside the narrow paved road. It lay long and seedy in random sheaths on the shoulders of the road, emitting the most perfect, sweet scent imaginable. On either side, fields of hay and tobacco and cattle spoke of the scenic but laborious way of life for dozens of small-farm families.

  “This is God’s country,” he observed.

  She nodded, wondering how her life would have been different if she’d grown up elsewhere. Better? Worse? Did a person’s innate character develop along a preset pattern regardless of the surroundings? Possibly. Even if they’d grown up in a city, she would still have been the middle child, caught between the strong personalities of her sisters. And if not Dean Haviland, Justine and Mica would have found someone or something else to compete for.

  “How do you like Boston?” he asked.

  “Very much. I like the energy level and the excitement of the city.”

  “Which part of the city do you live in?”

  “Near Roxbury, and my office overlooks the Charles River. You’re familiar with Boston?”

  “In my previous life.”

  “Your life as an attorney?”

  “Yeah. I went to law school at Boston College.”

  She blinked. “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. I still follow the Red Sox.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He shrugged. “After I passed the bar exam, I got a job offer from the DA’s office in Raleigh. It was close to family and seemed as good a place as any to practice criminal law.”

  “You were a prosecutor.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  He pursed his mouth. “Some days. Some days not.” He pointed. “Which way do I turn here?”

  He didn’t want to talk about it. “Left, and the pool hall is about a mile up on the right, next to the gas station. It’s as good a place as any to ask about Stanley Kirby.”

  Tick’s Pool Hall was a greasy little dive where underage kids could get free beer as long as they played pool all evening at three bucks each a game and where adults could purchase pot out back by the Dumpster. Predictably, the regulars weren’t the cream of the small-town crop, but as long as Tick kept a lid on serious trouble, the sheriff turned a blind eye.

  When they walked in, every eye in the place turned their way. “Act natural,” she murmured.

  “We stick out just a tad,” he returned.

  Indeed, she’d never seen so many tight jeans, tall boots, and ponytails—and that was just the men. The women clinging to the men looked like they’d been ridden hard and put up wet. Tattoos abounded, as did snuff, cigarettes, and perspiration. Toby Keith boomed over the speakers.

  Regina nodded and smiled at people they passed, then bellied up to the bar. “Hello,” she said to the barrel-chested bartender, who was wolfing down a cheeseburger. “That looks good—I’ll have one of those.”

  “Make that three,” Mitchell said, sliding onto the stool next to her. Sam settled at their feet. “With two beers and a bowl of water. Is my dog okay in here?”

  “I won’t tell the health department if you won’t.” The man served up two glasses of draught and filled a leftover butter bowl with water. “Gimme three cheeseburgers!” he bellowed through the sliding glass window behind him, then took another bite out of his own.

  Mitchell set the water down for Sam and dived into his beer. She waited for the head to dissolve a bit before taking a sip of hers. Cold, wet, good.

  “Can I buy a pack of cigarettes?” Mitchell asked the bartender.

  She lifted an eyebrow, but he ignored her.

  The man reached under the bar and tossed a half-empty pack on the counter. “On the house.”

  Mitchell nodded his thanks, then lit a smoke with a match torn from a book with the pool hall’s name on it.

  “Don’t get many tourists in here,” the bartender said with a cheek full of burger.

  “I grew up around here,” she said, nodding casually. “Regina Metcalf.”

  He frowned. “Metcalf… John’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I only know about the hot one—the one who does commercials.”

  “My sister Mica,” she said, still nodding.

  “Yeah. And wasn’t there a redhead?”

  “My sister Justine.”

  “Yeah. Which one are you?”

  She pushed up her glasses. “The other one.”

  “Ah. Hey—” He shook his fat finger. “Dean Haviland was found shot the other night at your place.”

  “Uh, yes. Unfortunately.”

  “Your old man do it?”

  “We don’t believe so,” Mitchell cut in. “Did you know Dean?”

  “Yeah, sure. He hung out in here when he lived here—maybe ten, twelve years ago. Came in here Tuesday. I probably served him his last meal—ain’t that some shit?”

  She opened her mouth to ask a dozen questions, but Mitchell squeezed her knee under the bar and left his hand there. Then he took a drag from the cigarette and turned his head to exhale.
“About what time was that?”

  The bartender squinted. “You some kind of cop?”

  “Nope. I have some unfinished business with Dean, and I need to know who he talked to that day.”

  The bartender rolled his tongue around his teeth with some impressive sucking sounds. “I don’t rightly remember.”

  Mitchell pulled out his wallet, removed a hundred, and palmed it to Hefty. “What time did you say?”

  The money disappeared. “About eleven.”

  “Did he come in alone?”

  “Yeah, but he met Stan Kirby and Gary Covey in a booth over there.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  Mitchell palmed him another hundred. “Guess.”

  The bartender looked all around, then leaned in close and pretended to wipe the bar. “I heard Dean tell them that he’d hit the jackpot, but he needed help to pull off a job.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Stan’s a small-time drug dealer—pot, Valium, Viagra.”

  “Viagra?”

  Hefty nodded. “Housewives around here slip it in their old man’s coffee. Anyway, Stan gave Dean a bottle of pills; I don’t know what it was.”

  The pills that Dean had tried to get Justine to take? Regina had to force herself not to look at Mitchell. His hand snaked down and he squeezed her knee again. She couldn’t tell if he was signaling her to be quiet or simply trying to cop a feel.

  “Who’s the other guy—Covey?”

  The bartender scoffed. “Petty thief, all-around thug. Real lowlife. I didn’t hear nothin’ he said.”

  “How long were they here?”

  “About an hour, long enough to have a burger and a couple of beers.”

  “Have you seen the other two men since Tuesday?”

  “Nah.”

  A knot of customers came in and claimed the vacant bar stools around them, effectively ending the conversation.

  “Burgers up!” someone yelled, and three plates appeared in the window.

  The bartender passed the food-laden plates to them, and Mitchell passed one down to Sam. Steamy burgers and salty fries and a limp dill pickle spear. Regina’s stomach howled with gratitude.

  They ate their burgers and watched the sports news channel over the bar to avoid the temptation of discussing their new information.

  “Your Red Sox aren’t doing so well this year,” he observed.

  “At least my city has a baseball team,” she observed back, still feeling the impression of his hand on her knee.

  They left, heavy with comfort food. Sam dropped to the carpet and was asleep before Regina buckled in. “What do you think Dean meant by ‘hitting the jackpot’?”

  “I don’t know, but it must have something to do with those pills. Maybe he was going to drug Mica to take her back with him, and maybe Justine’s room was the only way he could get into the house.”

  “But what did that have to do with a jackpot? Mica said she’s broke. Dean had no life insurance.”

  “On himself. Wonder if he had any on Mica?”

  A horrific thought, but the fact that she could process the information at all spoke volumes about the current state of affairs.

  “If he were going to blackmail the three of you with the information that Mica gave him, he wouldn’t have called in the tip.”

  “Unless, like Justine said, he thought he’d be able to collect a reward.” She looked at him carefully. “Could he have collected for providing information to support Bracken’s hearing?”

  “No, there was no kind of reward being offered. Plus the fact that he left an anonymous tip seems to negate that motivation.” He pulled on his chin. “No, my guess is that he made that call either to make the three of you look bad, maybe to set up Mica’s murder and try to pass it off as suicide and collect on life insurance, or to scare someone who might be connected to your aunt’s murder.”

  “Blackmail?”

  “Maybe. Maybe he told the person that you all could identify them, but he would handle the situation for a fee.”

  “You mean kill us?” She swallowed. “But if Dean knew the person was connected to Lyla’s murder, he wouldn’t need us for blackmail.”

  “Maybe he suspected but didn’t put it all together until Mica told him what you saw. Or maybe he couldn’t have come forward before without implicating himself.”

  Her head was starting to pound.

  “At least we have a couple of new leads to pass to the sheriff,” he said. “Dean might have been onto something else, something illegal—a big drug sale, for instance—that he needed his buddies’ help with. The deal could have gone wrong and he was shot. Or maybe his buddies got greedy and decided they could handle the deal without Dean.”

  “But how would that explain Justine’s missing gun?”

  “Maybe Dean came back and took it. Mica had his gun. The front door was unlocked, and we were preoccupied—he could’ve easily come back and stolen it from the table.”

  “Do you remember if the gun was there when you and Dad left?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t notice.”

  Regina didn’t like the look of the sudden pinch between his eyebrows. “What?”

  “Well, if your aunt’s murderer is still out there, you and your sisters could be in danger.”

  She hadn’t thought of that.

  He turned in his seat to face her. “Tell me more about that day you all were shot at in the woods.”

  She waved off his concern. “That was just a lost hunter, happens all the time to people who live near the creek. Pete said—”

  “Pete was there?”

  “He got a report about a trespasser and thought it might be Justine’s stalker. He saw the guy, but he didn’t chase him, so he could check on us.”

  “Did you see Pete before or after the shot?”

  She frowned. “After. And it was two shots, actually. We hit the dirt because our first thought, too, was of the Crane woman. Justine yelled that she had a gun; then Pete called to us that it was just a hunter.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Did you see the hunter?”

  “No. What are you implying?”

  “That Pete might be involved somehow. He was involved with your aunt.”

  She shook her head. “Pete might have slept with her, but he didn’t kill her. He and his girlfriend were parked at Lovers’ Lane and left about twenty minutes before Lyla got there. We saw them.”

  “So maybe Pete was covering for someone else, didn’t want his father’s reputation called into question.”

  She gave a little laugh. “There’s no way Pete would try to kill us.”

  “Maybe he was just trying to scare you.”

  “But that was before our story even came out.”

  “So Dean called ahead.”

  She considered his theory for a few seconds, then smiled and fanned herself, suddenly aware of their surroundings again. “I think we’re getting carried away.”

  Mitchell frowned as he started the engine. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt for you and your sisters to be on your guard.”

  He was overreacting, she knew, but the fact that he was making a fuss put a warm little wiggle in her stomach.

  Macken Hollow was only a couple of miles away. A farmhand walking along the road with a hoe over his shoulder gave them directions to Mr. Calvin’s place. It was a meager little house but neat, with a pretty yard. The garage sitting adjacent to the house was twice as nice and twice as large. She remembered that Pete had mentioned that Mr. Calvin also sold cars on the side.

  They parked in front of the garage and left the van doors open so Sam would have plenty of air, then walked to the front door. There was no porch, just a concrete stoop jutting out and a clump of leggy yellow mums on either side.

  “Looks like he’s not home,” Mitchell said.

  “Maybe he’s around back.”

  They followed brick stepping-stones along the side of the house, past a couple of apple tree
s, to the backyard. A molded plastic table and one matching chair sat on a little concrete pad next to a gas grill. Her heart went out to the old man who had lived by himself for so many years.

  “Nice view,” Mitchell remarked.

  Indeed, Mr. Calvin’s view was a study in depth—rolling hill behind rolling hill, crisscrossed with barbed-wire fences and countless rows of deep green tobacco plants. She inhaled and exhaled with pure appreciation.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the right.

  In the distance a big oak tree kept watch over two headstones.

  She was drawn to the makeshift family graveyard, and Mitchell followed her down a well-worn path in the tough field grass. The shade of the sprawling tree offered a few degrees of coolness, but a chill had settled over her anyway. Flanking the neat plots and shining gray headstones was a little limestone bench. She could imagine Mr. Calvin sitting on the bench, communing with his dead daughter and wife. Catherine E. Calvin, age thirty-seven when she died, and Rebecca E. Calvin, age fifteen. Their likenesses had been captured in stone ovals that graced the fronts of the headstones, both red-haired and fair, both smiling.

  Fresh-cut flowers lay on each grave, but Rebecca’s grave had one additional adornment—a picture of Dean Haviland cut out of the newspaper, impaled with a knife driven into the earth.

  Chapter 27

  If you cry after he’s gone, DO wear waterproof mascara.

  Regina glanced up and down the row of folding chairs at the pitiful collection of mourners for Dean Haviland.

  On her right sat Justine, impassive and dressed in go-to-hell red, muttering about no-smoking laws in funeral homes. On her left, Mica, teary and shrouded in black, her shorn hair covered with a dramatic hat—she’d sworn them all to secrecy until she and her agent could figure out what to do. Next to Justine was Pete Shadowen, scratching and sporting full deputy regalia. Next to Mica sat a local news reporter in a jumper who now looked as if she desperately wished she hadn’t come, especially since they had all declined to speak to her. And on the other side of Jumper sat an elderly woman wearing huge spectacles and a silvery suit who, she’d told Regina, had come on the wrong night for a distant relative and decided that sitting in on a memorial for a cremated person was better than going home to watch The Price Is Right.