by Nora Roberts
I, we don’t have a chance if I have a part in that.”
Thinking, he drummed his fingers on the table. “I searched Willy’s motel room. Didn’t see any dog figure.” He brought the room back into his head, tried to see it section by section. “Don’t remember anything like that, but it’s possible I passed over it, thinking it was just part of the room’s decor. ‘Decor’ being used in the loosest possible sense.”
“That’s why it works.”
“All right. Can you talk Vince into letting you see Willy’s effects?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I can.”
“Let’s start there. Then we’ll go to Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“Whatever comes next.”
It was a little distressing how easy it all came back. Maybe it was easier, Laine thought, since she didn’t have to talk to Vince. But she was, essentially, still deceiving a friend and lying to a cop.
She knew Sergeant McCoy casually, and when she realized she’d be dealing with him, quickly lined up all the facts she knew about him in her head. Married, Gap native, two children. She was nearly sure it was two, and that they were both grown. She thought there was a grandchild in the picture.
She added to those with observation and instinct.
Carrying an extra twenty pounds, so he liked to eat. Since there was a bakery Danish on a napkin on his desk, his wife was probably trying to get him to diet, and he had to sneak his fixes with store-bought.
He wore a wedding ring, his only jewelry, and his nails were clipped short. His hand was rough with calluses when it shook hers. He’d gotten to his feet to greet her and had done what he could to suck in his gut. She sent him a warm smile and noted the color that crept into his cheeks.
He’d be a pushover.
“Sergeant McCoy, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Miz Tavish.”
“Laine, please. How’s your wife?”
“She’s fine. Just fine.”
“And that grandbaby of yours?”
His teeth showed in a doting smile. “Not such a baby anymore. Boy’s two now and running my daughter ragged.”
“Such a fun age, isn’t it? Taking him fishing yet?”
“Had him out to the river last weekend. Can’t sit still long enough yet, but he’ll learn.”
“That’ll be great fun. My granddaddy took me fishing a couple of times, but we had a serious difference of opinion when it came to worms.”
McCoy let out an appreciative guffaw. “Tad, he loves the worms.”
“That’s a boy for you. Oh, I’m sorry. Sergeant, this is my friend Max Gannon.”
“Yeah.” McCoy studied the bruised temple. “Had you a little run-in the other night.”
“It was all a misunderstanding,” Laine said quickly. “Max came in with me this morning for a little moral support.”
“Uh-huh.” McCoy shook hands, because Max extended one, then glanced back at Laine. “Moral support?”
“I’ve never done this sort of thing before.” She lifted her hands, looked fragile and frustrated. “Vince might have mentioned that I realized I knew William Young. The man who was killed in that awful accident outside my shop?”
“He didn’t mention it.”
“I just told him, and I guess it doesn’t make any difference in the—in the procedure. It wasn’t until after . . . until after that I remembered. He knew my father, when I was a child. I haven’t seen him—William—since I was, oh, ten, I guess. I was so busy when he came into the shop.”
Her eyes went shiny with distress. “I didn’t recognize him, and I just didn’t pay that much attention. He left me his card and asked me to call him when I had the chance. Then nearly as soon as he walked out . . . I feel terrible that I didn’t remember, that I brushed him off.”
“That’s all right now.” McCoy dug a box of tissues out of a drawer and offered it.
“Thanks. Thank you. I want to do what I can for him now. I want to be able to tell my father I did what I could.” Those things were true. It helped to work in truth. “He didn’t have any family that I know of, so I’d like to make whatever arrangements need to be made for burial.”
“The chief has his file, but I can check about that for you.”
“I’d appreciate that very much. I wonder if, while I’m here, I could see his things. Is that possible?”
“I don’t see why not. Why don’t you have a seat?” He took her arm, gently, and led her to a chair. “Just sit down, and I’ll go get them for you. Can’t let you take anything.”
“No, no, I understand.”
As McCoy left the room, Max sat beside her. “Smooth as butter. How well you know this cop?”
“McCoy. I’ve met him a couple of times.”
“Fishing?”
“Oh, that. He has a fishing magazine tucked under his case files on the desk, so it was a reasonable guess. I’m going to arrange for Uncle Willy’s burial,” she added. “Here, I think, in Angel’s Gap, unless I can find out if there’s somewhere else he’d rather . . .”
“I bet here would suit him fine.”
He rose, as did she, when McCoy returned with a large carton. “He didn’t have much. Looks like he was traveling light. Clothes, wallet, watch, five keys, key ring—”
“Oh, I think I gave him that key ring for Christmas one year.” She reached out, sniffling, then closed it into her fist. “Can you imagine? He used it all these years. Oh, and I didn’t even recognize him.”
Clutching the keys, she sat, wept.
“Don’t cry, Laine.”
Max sent McCoy a look of pure male helplessness and patted Laine on the head.
“Sometimes they gotta.” McCoy went back for the tissues. When he stepped back up, Laine reached out, took three, mopped at her face.
“I’m sorry. This is just silly. It’s just that I’m remembering how sweet he was to me. Then we lost contact, you know how it is? My family moved away, and that was that.”
Composing herself, she got to her feet again. “I’m fine. I’m sorry, I’ll be fine.” She took the manila envelope, dropped the keys back into it and slipped it back into the carton herself. “Can you just tell me the rest? I promise, that won’t happen again.”
“Don’t you worry about it. You sure you want to deal with this now?”
“I do. Yes, thank you.”
“There’s a toiletry kit—razor, toothbrush, the usual. He was carrying four hundred twenty-six dollars and twelve cents. Had a rental car—a Taurus from Avis out of New York, road maps.”
She was looking through the items as McCoy detailed them from his list.
“Cell phone—nothing programmed in the phone book for us to contact. Looks like there’s a couple of voice messages. We’ll see if we can track those.”
They’d be from her father, she imagined, but only nodded.
“Watch is engraved,” he added when Laine turned it over in her hand. “ ‘One for every minute.’ I don’t get it.”
She gave McCoy a baffled smile. “Neither do I. Maybe it was something romantic, from a woman he loved once. That would be nice. I’d like to think that. This was all?”
“Well, he was traveling.” He took the watch from her. “Man doesn’t take a lot of personal items with him when he’s traveling. Vince’ll be tracking down his home address. Don’t worry about that. We haven’t found any next of kin so far, and if we don’t, seems like they’ll release him to you. It’s nice of you to want to bury an old friend of your father’s.”
“It’s the least I can do. Thank you very much, Sergeant. You’ve been very kind and patient. If you or Vince would let me know if and when I can make the funeral arrangements, I’d appreciate it.”
“We’ll be in touch.”
She took Max’s hand as they walked out, and he felt the key press his palm. “That was slick,” he commented. “I barely caught it.”
“If I wasn’t a little rusty, you wouldn’t have caught it. It l
ooks like a locker key. One of those rental lockers. You can’t rent lockers at airports or train stations, bus stations, that sort of thing anymore, can you?”
“No. Too small for one of those garage-type storage lockers, and most of those are combination locks or key cards anyway. It might be from one of those mailbox places.”
“We should be able to track it down. No dog though.”
“No, no dog. We’ll check the motel room, but I don’t think it’s there, either.”
She stepped outside with him, took a fond look at the town she’d made her own. From this vantage point, high on the sloped street, she could see a slice of the river, and the houses carved into the rising hill on the other bank. The mountains climbed up behind, ringing their way around the sprawl of streets and buildings, the parks and bridges. They formed a scenic wall covered with the green haze of trees beginning to leaf, and the white flash of blooming wild dogwoods.
The everydayers, as her father had dubbed normal people with normal lives, were about their business. Selling cars, buying groceries, vacuuming the rug, teaching history.
Gardens were planted, or being prepared for planting. She could see a couple of houses where the Easter decorations had yet to be dispatched, though it was nearly three weeks past. Colorful plastic eggs danced in low tree limbs, and inflatable rabbits squatted on spring-green grass.
She had rugs to vacuum and groceries to buy, a garden to tend. Despite the key in her hand, she supposed that made her an everydayer, too.
“I’m not going to pretend some of that didn’t stir the juices. But when this is over, I’ll be happy to retire again. Willy never could, my father never will.”
She smiled as they walked to Max’s car. “My father gave him that watch. The key ring was just a ploy, but my dad gave Willy that watch for his birthday one year. I think he might have actually bought it, but I can’t be sure. But I was with him when he had it engraved. ‘One for every minute.’ ”
“Meaning?”
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” she said, and slipped into the car.
CHAPTER 11
It was the same clerk at the desk of the Red Roof, but Max could see the lack of recognition in his eyes. The simplest, quickest way into Willy’s last room was to pay the standard freight.
“We want one-fifteen,” Max told him.
The clerk studied the display of his computer, checked availability and shrugged. “No problem.”
“We’re sentimental.” Laine added a sappy smile and snuggled next to Max.
Max handed over cash. “I need a receipt. We’re not that sentimental.”
With the key in hand, they drove around to Willy’s section.
“He must’ve known where I live. My father did, so Willy did. I wish he’d just come to see me there. I can only think he knew somebody was right behind him—or was afraid someone was—and figured the shop was safer.”
“He was only here one night. Hadn’t unpacked.” Max led the way to the door. “Looked like enough clothes for about a week. Suitcase was open, but he hadn’t taken anything out but his bathroom kit. Could be he wanted to be ready to move again, fast.”
“We were always ready to move again, fast. My mother could pack up our lives in twenty minutes flat, and lay it out again in a new place just as quick.”
“She must be an interesting woman. Takes mine longer than that to decide what shoes to wear in the morning.”
“Shoes aren’t a decision to be made lightly.” Understanding, she laid a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to give me time to prepare myself, Max. I’m okay.”
He opened the door. She stepped into a standard motel double. She knew such rooms made some people sad, but she’d always found them one of life’s small adventures for their very anonymity.
In such rooms you could pretend you were anywhere. Going anywhere. That you were anyone.
“As a kid we’d stop off in places like this, going from one point to another. I loved it. I’d pretend I was a spy chasing down some nefarious Dr. Doom, or a princess traveling incognito. My father always made it such a wonderful game.
“He’d always get me candy and soft drinks from the vending machines, and my mother would pretend to disapprove. I guess, after a while, she wasn’t pretending anymore.”
She fingered the inexpensive bedspread. “Well, that’s a long enough walk down Memory Lane. I don’t see any dog in here.”
Though he’d already done a search, and knew the police had been through the room, followed by housekeeping, Max went through the procedure again.
“Don’t miss much, do you?” she said when he’d finished.
“Try not to. That key might be the best lead we’ve got. I’ll check out the local storage facilities.”
“And what you’re not saying is he could’ve stashed it in a million of those kind of places from here to New York.”
“I’ll track it back. I’ll find it.”
“Yes, I believe you will. While you’re doing that, I’ll go back to work. I don’t like leaving Jenny there alone very long, under the circumstances.”
He tossed the room key on the bed. “I’ll drop you off.”
Once they were back in the car, she smoothed a hand over her pants. “You’d have disapproved, too. Of the motel rooms, the game. The life.”
“I can see why it appealed to you when you were ten. And I can see why your mother got you out of it. She did what was right for you. One thing about your father . . .”
She braced herself for the criticism and promised herself not to take offense. “Yes?”
“A lot of men in . . . let’s say, his line, they shake off wives and kids or anything that resembles responsibility. He didn’t.”
Her shoulders loosened, her stomach unknotted, and she turned to send Max a luminous smile. “No, he didn’t.”
“And not just because you were a really cute little redheaded beard with light fingers.”
“That didn’t hurt, but no, not just because of that. He loved us, in his unique Jack O’Hara way. Thanks.”
“No problem. When we have kids, I’ll buy them candy out of the vending machine, but we’ll keep it to special occasions.”
Her throat closed down so that she had to clear it in order to speak. “You do jump ahead,” she stated.
“No point in dragging your feet once you’ve got your direction.”
“Seems to me there’s a lot of road between here and there. And a lot of curves and angles in it.”
“So, we’ll enjoy the ride. Let’s round one of those curves now. I don’t need to live in New York if that’s something you’re chewing on. I think this area’s just fine for raising those three kids.”
She didn’t choke, but it was close. “Three?”
“Lucky number.”
She turned her head to stare out the side window. “Well, you sailed right around that curve. Have you considered slowing down until we’ve known each other, oh, I don’t know, a full week?”
“People get to know each other faster in certain situations. This would be one of them.”
“Favorite childhood memory before the age of ten.”
“Tough one.” He considered a moment. “Learning to ride a two-wheeler. My father running alongside—with this big grin, and a lot of fear in his eyes I didn’t recognize as such at the time. How it felt, this windy, stomach-dropping rush when I realized I was pedaling on my own. Yours?”
“Sitting on this big bed in the Ritz-Carlton in Seattle. It was a suite because we were really flush. Dad ordered this ridiculous room-service meal of shrimp cocktail and fried chicken because I
