by Rickie Blair
Ryker had to know I was outside—there was no mistaking my Pepto-Bismol-pink pickup. Good. I was tired of beating around the bush. And I meant that literally, given our stakeout of the previous night.
As I walked up the path to Ryker’s front door, my running shoes trod over weeds sprouting between the paving stones. Apparently, Shelby’s newfound filial devotion did not extend to actual work around the house.
Not that it took long for weeds to sprout at this time of year. Everything grew like blazes in May and June, reaching for sunlight in crowded borders. Race of the ground covers, I called it. In Ryker’s garden so far, ivy was the clear front runner. Although ajuga was coming on strong.
The weeds gave me pause, though. Ryker was meticulous about his lawn and garden, considering it a showcase for his landscaping services. I’d never known him to ignore it. But then, I’d never known him to neglect his clients, either.
I didn’t really know Ryker, though. Sure, we were friendly. But our relationship never progressed much further than a shared meal, a friendly beer at the Tipsy Jay, or a debate about the best organic weed-suppressing practices.
I’d only been in the village a little over a year. Maybe Ryker suffered from episodic depression, and this was the latest bout. But Emy had known him since high school, and she’d never mentioned anything like that. Other than a stint in juvie as a teenager—and that was no secret; everyone in the village knew about it—Ryker had never been in trouble with the law. Even then, Emy insisted he was covering for a girlfriend when he copped to the juvie charges.
Being a murder suspect was depressing—as I well knew—but it couldn’t have sparked his current gloom, which started well before the discovery of the two bodies in Strathcona.
However, those women had been dead for some time. If he did have something to do with it…
No. Ryker Fields could never kill anybody. The whole thing was ridiculous.
I marched up to his door. I hammered on it, then leaned on the buzzer for good measure.
“Come on, Ryker,” I yelled. “I’m not leaving. If you don’t answer this door, I’ll make some real noise.” I kicked the door several times, scuffing the panels with the toe of my running shoe. “Ryker?”
No answer.
“Ryker!”
The door cracked open. Ryker peered out, squinting into the sunlight with a hand over his eyes like a vampire unwillingly roused from his coffin. Matted blond hair fell into his eyes, and several days’ worth of stubble covered his chin. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“No.” He gave the door a half-hearted push, but I had my shoulder against it.
“Stop being ridiculous,” I said. “Everyone’s worried about you.” I shoved the door hard.
Caught by surprise, he stumbled back a couple of paces. I stepped over the threshold, then closed the door behind me. “We need to talk.”
Ryker turned on bare feet to walk up the three steps that led into the living room of his split-level. A too-small T-shirt stretched over his muscular chest and arms, and wrinkled track pants hung from his hips. I recognized the clothing of someone who hadn’t done laundry in a while.
I followed after pausing to glance around. A stack of Fields Landscaping baseball caps had fallen off a shelf and lay scattered across the entryway. Several bore dirty shoe prints. Other, equally dirty, prints led up the carpeted stairs to the living room. It looked as if Ryker wasn’t letting his cleaning service into the house, either.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I found him flopped on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table. Empty beer bottles clustered on the table, their labels peeled away in strips.
I veered off into the kitchen, where I switched on the electric kettle. “Tea?” I called over my shoulder as I rummaged through the cupboards for tea bags and sugar.
Ryker merely grunted.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said cheerily.
Empty takeout containers were stacked on the kitchen counter. Obviously, Shelby wasn’t doing any cooking, either. I would have thrown them away, but the trash bin was overflowing.
Once the water had boiled, I carried two mugs of sweet, hot tea into the living room and placed one in front of him. “Drink that.”
He regarded the mug forlornly before picking it up to take a sip.
I watched, sipping my own tea, until he drained the mug and placed it on the coffee table.
“Now,” I said. “Start at the beginning and tell me what’s wrong.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Are you going to tell Jeff?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“The lawyer said not to talk to anybody.”
“I’m not anybody, Ryker. You know you can trust me.” When he didn’t reply, I added, “Your clients have been calling me. They’re concerned. As are your friends.”
“Thanks for…” He cleared his throat before resuming. “Taking on my clients.”
“No problem. I hope you can take them back soon. But tell me—” I leaned forward. “What’s wrong?”
Ryker heaved a sigh, then leaned back, stretching his hands behind his head. The maneuver exposed several inches of well-defined abs. He seemed oblivious.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a monotone. “I’m a murder suspect, for one thing.” He lowered his arms then clasped them across his chest.
“Have you been charged?”
“No.”
“Then you’re simply assisting the police with their enquiries.”
Ryker shook his head. “You have no idea—”
“Hang on.” I held up a finger. “I have a good idea what it feels like to be a murder suspect.”
Sadly, that was true, I thought. On more than one occasion, in fact.
“I don’t know why the police pick on me,” I continued. “Maybe I just have one of those faces.”
A brief grin flashed across his features. “You do get into trouble from time to time, don’t you, Verity?”
I smiled back. “Remember the mess I made of Yvonne Skalding’s wisteria?”
“She was furious.” His lips twitched. “Of course, she’s not in a position to care anymore.” He chuckled.
Mrs. Skalding had not been a favorite client for either of us. It seemed unkind to make fun of a woman who wasn’t alive to defend herself, but if it brought a smile to Ryker’s face, I could live with it.
“Whatever’s bothering you started before you heard from the police. You’re upset about something else. Tell me.”
He sighed again. “It’ll take some time.”
“I’m not in a hurry.” I cast a glance over my shoulder at the stairs to the front door. There was no telling how long Emy could delay Shelby. She might return at any moment. But I didn’t want to rush Ryker’s confession—if that’s what it was. “Go ahead. Start at the beginning.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Verity, when you first arrived in the village, I had a…bit of a thing for you.”
“I noticed, and I was flattered. But—”
“Jeff happened. I get it. No hard feelings.”
“I never thought you were the settling-down type, Ryker.”
He shrugged. “Time takes its toll on all of us.”
I suppressed a smirk at the thought of the handsome, buff, and charming Ryker Fields being affected by the passage of time. He’d still be attracting women in a nursing home.
“Anyway, a while back I met Dakota Wynne. We really hit it off. It was almost as if—as if we’d always known each other. Our relationship was intense.” He lifted his eyebrows. “If you know what I mean.”
“I get the idea, thanks.”
“I thought maybe she was…the one. I was even thinking about—”
“Marriage?” I blurted without thinking.
He looked taken aback. “You look surprised.”
“Not at all,” I improvised.
“But then—” His face clouded. “She ghosted me. I called. I
texted. No reply. Until about two weeks ago.”
“What happened about two weeks ago?” Given that Dakota Wynne had been bludgeoned to death in her home around that time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. I steeled myself. “Go on.”
“Dakota phoned me. She said we had to talk. I met her, in Strathcona, at a restaurant. She didn’t want to meet at her house. Didn’t explain why. The minute I got to the restaurant and saw her, I could tell something was wrong. She wouldn’t even order dinner. She had a drink in front of her, and I could tell it wasn’t her first.” He burbled air through his lips, with his gaze fixed on the far wall, over my head.
“Did she tell you what the problem was?”
Ryker rose to his feet and paced the length of the room. I followed him with my eyes.
“She said she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because…” He hesitated, and his face darkened. “She was my sister.”
Chapter Eighteen
My mouth dropped open as I stared at Ryker. Had I heard him correctly?
“Your—sister? How is that possible?”
“My father had more than one family, apparently. Nobody knew.”
My mind raced. “She was a half-sister, then. Wait a minute—this is another sister?”
“Technically, yes. Which doesn’t change the fact that I…” He looked away.
My voice dropped to a whisper, even though we were the only people in the room. “You slept with your sister.”
Ryker collapsed onto the sofa with his head in his hands. “Right,” he mumbled.
I’m rarely struck speechless. This was one of those times.
My mind churned through possibilities so quickly I felt as if I was on a tilt-a-whirl. My first thought—what were the chances?—was almost immediately replaced by a second, more pragmatic, view. Given the sheer number of Ryker’s romantic conquests over the years, the odds that he’d accidentally hooked up with his unknown half-sister were actually pretty good.
I decided not to point that out.
But Ryker looked so miserable, I had to think of something. Something else, I meant.
“Look. You didn’t know you were related, obviously, and anyway, now she’s dead, so—”
At the word dead, he groaned and buried his face even further into his hands.
I winced. “Sorry. Sorry.” Regarding Ryker hesitantly, I tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t dredge up visions of blood-drenched gardening tools.
“Let’s not focus on Dakota’s tragic death. I only meant that—no one needs to know about…” I raised my eyebrows. “You know.”
He peeked out from between splayed fingers, his expression anguished, and groaned again. Then he jerked his head upright. “Wait. You’re not going to tell anybody, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Including Jeff?”
“Cross my heart.”
“When this comes out, the entire village will ridicule me. Point fingers.” He shuddered. “And worse.”
“Forget about that for now. Tell me how you learned Dakota was your sister.”
“When I met her at the restaurant that day, she said she had been contacted by a woman who claimed to be her half-sister. This woman had been researching her family DNA when she came across the connection.”
“Wait—was this Shelby?”
“That’s right.”
“Did they meet in person?”
“No. In fact, Dakota told her she wasn’t interested, and to leave her alone. Shelby agreed, but mentioned that she’d found other family members as well—a cousin and a half-brother who both lived in Leafy Hollow.”
“Dakota must have freaked out when she realized who the half-brother was.”
He nodded miserably. “That’s putting it mildly. When we met at the restaurant, she was…upset.”
Vaguely, I wondered if Dakota insisted on a public meeting because she feared Ryker might become violent. I put that out of my mind as absurd.
“Did she show you the DNA report?”
“Yes. Shelby had emailed it to her.” He looked vaguely around. “I have a copy of it here somewhere.”
“And then Shelby contacted you?”
He nodded. “Dakota warned me she might, so I wasn’t surprised.”
“Does Shelby know the real nature of your relationship with Dakota?”
“No,” he blurted. “God—don’t tell her.”
“I won’t.” I hesitated. “But who could have killed Dakota? And that other woman? It’s all so unbelievable.”
“I know,” he said in an anguished tone. “I know.”
“What did the police suggest as your possible motive for killing two women in cold blood?”
“They seemed to think I was…jealous. That I flew into a rage, was how they put it. They thought Dakota dumped me and that set me off.”
“But she did dump you.”
He slumped back with a sigh. “Yeah. But they don’t know that.”
“Sounds like they were fishing, then. The boyfriend is always the first suspect. You shouldn’t take it personally.” I tried for an optimistic tone, but Ryker didn’t seem convinced.
“Maybe. But what if they find out about…the other?”
“You didn’t tell them you were related?”
“Of course not.”
“Why?”
Ryker scraped his hands through his hair. “Because of the damned painting,” he blurted.
“Spirit of the North?”
He nodded. “It’s worth a lot of money.”
“But Perry left it to you. Why would Dakota be involved?”
“Turns out Perry left it to my father’s children. I was an only child, so the lawyer assumed that meant me.”
“Then Dakota had a legitimate claim?”
He nodded again.
“Why would Perry write his will like that?”
“It was written a long time ago, when there was a possibility my parents might have more kids.” Ryker gave a snort of disgust. “Damn that inheritance. I never wanted it. I don’t know why Perry left it to me. What am I going to do with a bunch of paintings?”
“Did Nigel Hemsworth contact you about them?”
“Who?”
“The art dealer in the village. He was a friend of Perry’s. I think he wanted Perry to give you the paintings so he could sell them on your behalf and make a killing.” Again, I winced. “Sorry. Nigel hasn’t contacted you?”
Ryker shook his head. “Not that I remember. I suppose he could have.”
“Did Shelby mention him?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“Did the police ask you about Nigel?”
“Honestly, Verity, I don’t remember a lot of what the police asked me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dakota.” He took a deep breath. “They showed me pictures, you know. Of her…body. They said the viciousness of her injuries meant the attack was personal.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He leaned forward, his nod barely perceptible.
“But wait—didn’t Shelby tell them you were related?”
“I made her promise not to tell anybody in the village about Dakota being our sister. For now, anyway.”
I studied his face. “You’ve been giving Shelby money, haven’t you?”
He looked miserable. “Well…she is my sister.”
What could I say to that? I rose to gather our empty tea mugs and take them into the kitchen. Ryker’s miserable gaze followed me, but he remained slumped on the sofa. I put the mugs into the cluttered sink, since there was no room in the dishwasher. After refilling the tea kettle and turning it on, I walked back to the living room.
“Ryker, this is a mess. You have to tell the police. They’ll find out anyway. And then Shelby could be in trouble, too, for withholding evidence.”
“I can’t. It will make everything worse. You know how the police are.”
I didn’t think his cyni
cism was warranted, but given Ryker’s juvenile record, I suspected he had reason to distrust the authorities.
“Just tell them where you were on the day Dakota was killed. You have to give them a reasonable alibi, even if you were only at home watching TV.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t at home watching TV.”
Given how stubborn he looked, I took a wild leap. “Ryker, if you were with Julia Vachon that day, you have to tell the police. They can be discreet, you know. When necessary.”
“Julia?” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen Julia in months. No. I wasn’t home that day because I was in Strathcona.” He flopped back against the sofa, nervously patting his stomach. “At Dakota’s.”
I let out a long breath. This was bad. I watched his fingers flick up and down.
Pat-pat-pat.
“But you had already split up. Why did you go to see her that day?”
Pat-pat-pat.
“Ryker?”
He lifted his hand to tug it through his hair, almost as if he was trying to pull it out by the roots. “Dakota sent me a text. Asking for money. She said if I didn’t give it to her…she’d make our relationship public.” He heaved a sigh. “I couldn’t understand why she changed her mind. We agreed we wouldn’t tell anybody. So I went to see her.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No. She didn’t answer the door.”
“Was she at home?”
“I don’t know. A neighbor told me she hadn’t seen her. I slipped a note through the mail slot and left.”
“Do the police have this note?”
“They didn’t mention it.”
I thought this over. “But that’s good,” I said. “Because that neighbor can confirm you didn’t go inside the house.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
Leaning forward with a grunt, he shuffled through a pile of newspapers on the coffee table, then pushed one toward me.
I bent over to read it. The story of the double murder spanned the front page.
Residents in the city’s east end made a grisly discovery yesterday when a neighbor believed to be on a cruise was found bludgeoned to death…
