Peering at herself in the mirror, she decided she could afford two minutes or so to slap on some makeup to disguise the dark circles under her eyes. Mascara, too, because, well, she might see Grant today.
Not until she finished did she notice the quiet. Dad was usually up before her. She’d decided he made sure he was to thwart any offer of help. Might as well put him in the ground right now, he liked to say, if he couldn’t even dress himself. Maybe he’d managed to get the coffeemaker going and was waiting patiently – hah! – or was sleeping in for once.
His bedroom door was closed, which didn’t tell her a thing. Cocking her head, she listened for any sound from the kitchen. Nada. For some reason, she was almost tiptoeing as she went the short distance down the hall.
She tapped lightly on his door. “Dad?” When he didn’t respond, she opened it. With the heavy curtains drawn, the room was so dark, she had to wait for her eyes to adjust. “Dad?”
There was a shape beneath the covers. He must have been extra tired. But apprehension prickled her skin as she approached the bed. “Dad?” Too loud. He didn’t move.
He’d be mad if he knew what she was thinking. Or when he woke up with light shining in his eyes and his daughter hovering over him like a damn vulture, as he put it.
That was okay. She wouldn’t mind if he was mad. Really.
Cassie groped for the switch on the bedside lamp. In the burst of light, she still couldn’t see much, since she was looking at the back of his head. Something cramped in her chest as she saw how thin his hair was getting.
He still didn’t move. Swallowing, she reached for his shoulder. So bony, nothing like the more solid man he’d been. She shook him. “Daddy?”
He felt stiff. Her breath shuddered out as she raced back to turn on the overhead light, then to the other side of the bed where she could see his face.
He was wan, blue, his eyes open and glazed over. Cassie let out a cry. Her teeth chattered. He was dead. Her father was dead. She backed away from the bed, making a little sound that might have been a whimper. Not until that instant did she understand how alone she would be, with no family at all.
A safe distance from the bed, she made herself take slow, deep breaths. Now what?
Call his doctor. Or 911.
She didn’t even want to think about what lay beyond that small, first step.
*****
Grant was shaving when his phone rang. Following night after night with inadequate sleep, he felt like crap and looked haggard. Scraping off twenty-four hours’ worth of whiskers might or might not help.
Foam on his jaw, he picked up his phone from the toilet lid where he’d set it as he showered. His momentary irritation faded.
“Cassie?”
“I probably shouldn’t have called.” She sounded shaken. “But, um, I just found my father dead. He wasn’t up like he usually is, so I went in and… I guess he died during the night.”
“Oh, damn. I’m so sorry.” Beneath her tough exterior, Cassie was already so fragile. “Ah…have you called anyone else?”
“I only have the office number for Dr. Wilson, and they’re not open yet, so I called 911.”
“Good. The police need to respond to any death at home. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Of course I do,” he said. Then his cop caution kicked in, and he added, “Don’t let anyone in unless you’re sure who it is.”
“Okay. Thank you, Grant. I’m glad—”
She didn’t finish, but he had a lump in his throat while he finished shaving.
On the way out the door, he grabbed a sack of bagels he’d bought at the bakery yesterday. Cassie would have coffee, and he could toast one of these there as well as here. Maybe seeing him eat would persuade her to do the same.
She opened the door to him, but didn’t throw herself into his arms although she looked as if she wanted to. “Grant. Um, Deputy Numsen is here.”
He was glad to hear who’d answered her call. Numsen was in his fifties, set in his ways, lacking ambition and in lousy physical condition, but reliable and kind. He was ideal for situations like this.
Hearing voices, the uniformed deputy appeared from the bedroom wing. Seeing Grant, he nodded. “Sheriff.”
Grant kept a hand on Cassie’s lower back as they all went to the kitchen. She already had coffee on, and poured three cups, her hand completely steady. Cassie was tough; she’d hate knowing he’d used the word ‘fragile’ when thinking about her.
Numsen had spoken to the doctor, and expected him in the next half hour. When Grant rang the doorbell, he’d interrupted Cassie’s search in the yellow pages for funeral homes. Grant could have told her there was only one in town. When he asked if she knew what her father wanted in the way of services or burial, she shook her head.
“I wish he’d told me.” All the distress she was hiding appeared in her eyes. “I should have asked. I mean, he had a stroke. Of course he was at increased risk for dying! I just never… Except for a few symptoms left from the stroke, he seemed so strong.” She squeezed her hands together until her knuckles showed white. “Now I have to guess,” she finished, softly.
“Have you seen his will? He may have set out his wishes there.”
“No. Oh, I hope so.”
Telling Numsen he’d stay, Grant let the deputy go. Holding Cassie’s hand wasn’t what he should be doing this morning…but leaving her alone or with a near stranger wasn’t even a possibility.
While they waited, she insisted on scrambling some eggs to go with the toasted bagels. Knowing that staying busy would be good for her, he didn’t object. As she nibbled at the food on her plate and he came close to gobbling in case he didn’t have a chance to eat lunch, Grant encouraged her to talk about her father. Where he’d grown up, why he’d become a journalist and eventually decided to launch a newspaper.
“If he ever dreamed about writing a Pulitzer Prize winning story, he didn’t tell me. Years ago, he foresaw the decline of newspapers. Not like he was alone in that, but he was convinced a paper like the Courier served as, I don’t know, a sort of glue that binds the community together. He thought it would be strong enough to survive.”
“He might be right,” Grant said. It wasn’t as if locals weren’t on social media as often as anyone else, but the Courier subscription rates remained high, he understood, partly because people liked seeing their names and pictures in the paper. It listed births and deaths, celebrated anniversaries and the achievements of local athletes and scholars. Cassie had extended that with the type of article she’d written about the murder victims. Those articles said, This is who we are.
Damn, Grant thought. Had it occurred to her that the Courier would go under now if she couldn’t find a buyer for it? Unless, of course, Cassie decided to stay and keep the paper going herself, but he feared that was wishful thinking.
Dr. Wilson arrived, said a few words to Cassie that had her teary-eyed, then disappeared into her father’s bedroom. When he emerged, he asked what she’d decided to do with the body and then called the funeral home himself, arranging for them to pick it up.
Grant stayed even after the doctor left, listening as she made a few phone calls. Apparently, she’d already let the weekend caretaker know not to come. Now she called Susan and then the long-timers at the newspaper to inform them of his death.
After one of those calls, she scrunched up her face. “He passed. Did you hear me? I can’t believe I said that. I hate euphemisms like that!”
Grant smiled and took one of her hands in his. “You were talking to Helen. You know she’s more comfortable with that kind of language.”
“I suppose.”
Except for that one outbreak, the animation that made her face so fascinating was absent. She rarely sat completely still like this, either. Grant didn’t like seeing her robbed of the riot of ideas and emotions that had intrigued him from the beginning, but she’d taken a tough hit. He wanted to be able to protect her
from anything that might hurt her, but this time he couldn’t. He kept relating the lost expression on her face to how he’d feel if his mother called out of the blue and said, Your father died today. His devastation wouldn’t be the same as Cassie’s, because he loved and respected the man who’d been his role model, while she was having to mourn what her father hadn’t given her as much as what he had. Either way, it wouldn’t be good.
When Jed called, Grant stepped out of the room.
“I’m at Cassie’s,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Her father died this morning.”
“That’s lousy. Tell her I’m sorry.”
“I need to stay at least until the body is picked up. Then I think I’ll try again to pin down Scott Mathison. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find him at the station house and not out on a call.”
“I’ll try Fullerton again. He should be back in town. Might go better than you doing it.”
“It might,” Grant agreed. Rob Fullerton had been making a trucking run to Denver last time Jed tried to make contact. “Sure. Have you learned anything new?”
“I’ve nailed down where a few more people on our list live, but it’ll take a lot of phone calls to be sure they’re where they’re supposed to be and not lurking in Hayes County.”
“It will.” He rubbed his forehead, where an ache had begun. “Damn. I won’t be long.”
Ending the call, he went to the front window and looked out to see the hearse approaching slowly down the driveway. Grant returned to the kitchen, to find Cassie sitting right where he’d left her, gazing straight ahead but seeing some other time or place, he felt sure.
“The people from the funeral home are here.”
She started, blinked at him a couple of times, and then said, “Oh. Good. I’ll let them in.”
“I can do that,” he said. “Why don’t you stay put?”
She stared at him with those big, haunted eyes, finally nodding. “Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure she even noticed when he left the kitchen.
Eventually, she did have to sign some paperwork for the two men from the mortuary, but never left the kitchen. Grant blocked her view into the hall when they rolled her father’s body out.
After seeing her mother kill herself, had somebody thought to sweep her away? he wondered. Or had she, forgotten, remained on the sidelines? Did she watch as investigators scrutinized the body? See it be zipped into a body bag? Someday, if he had the chance, he’d ask her. Keeping so much stuffed down deep must hurt.
Grant walked the two workers out and waited as they loaded the body and slammed the back door of the hearse. He’d seen entirely too many dead people this past few weeks. Too many body bags. Suddenly his skin felt too tight as memories he did his best to keep tamped down surfaced anyway. On a heavy sigh, he returned to find Cassie had risen to her feet.
“I’ll strip his bed.”
Instinct had him shaking his head. “That’s not something you should have to do, honey. Let me.”
She studied him gravely, her forehead crinkled. “If you don’t mind,” she conceded after a minute. “I’ll go see if I can find a copy of Dad’s will. Otherwise…otherwise, I think I’ll have him cremated. He wasn’t much of a churchgoer, you know. And just this morning, before I found him, I was imagining how trapped he must feel in a dysfunctional body. The idea of him in a coffin—” A shudder rattled her.
“Yeah,” he said thickly. “I agree. Hey, come here.”
She came. They stood wrapped around each other for a long time, her leaning against him as if she couldn’t stand on her own, him drawing comfort from the soft press of her breasts on his chest, the elusive scent that said Cassie to him, the silk of her hair beneath his cheek and a glimpse of that purple stripe. For the first time, he noticed that the color was both fading and growing out, and felt a sharp twinge of regret.
Damn, he was in love with this woman. Somehow, he didn’t feel a lot of surprise.
*****
Cassie pulled herself together enough to send Grant on his way as soon as he’d stripped the bed and started a load of wash. She hated knowing how close she’d come to falling apart. He had to have noticed, or why would he seem so reluctant to leave her alone?
At least she hadn’t cried in front of him or anyone else. Probably, she never would. She couldn’t remember the last time she had. After her mother died, maybe, except she remembered huddling dry-eyed in bed, clutching the pillow to herself, the picture playing in her head over and over again. Maybe that’s when she’d quit crying.
No point in starting up again. What good did tears do anyone?
She’d been using her father’s office regularly since she came home, and knew how well organized it was. Poking in drawers or the closet would have violated his privacy, though, and she’d had no reason to do so. Now, she sat in his big leather chair and eased open the file drawer that was part of the desk. No brightly colored file folders for Dad – these were all the dull shade of green that made her think army uniform. They were neatly tagged, and as far as she could see without opening each and every one, they all had to do with newspaper business.
The other, smaller drawers held office supplies of various kinds. That left the two-drawer oak file cabinet, and a stack of banker boxes in the closet.
She rolled the chair over to the oak cabinet. In the top drawer, the very first file was labeled, Will, etc. Weirdly shaken, she stared at it for a minute before lifting it out, laying it on top of the cabinet, and opening it.
His last will and testament was brief. He had left everything to his only child, his daughter Cassandra Marie Ward. Home and land, newspaper business, investments. Until now, she hadn’t even know what attorney he used. There were no instructions telling Cassie whether he’d prefer to be cremated or buried. If he’d bought a cemetery plot in advance, she’d expect that information to be in this same file. It wasn’t. All she found was a health directive, which his doctor also presumably had, a copy of his social security card and health insurance card. Turned out he’d had nursing home insurance, too, that didn’t cover the home health care he’d ended up needing.
She made a mental note: Call attorney.
Placing the file back where it had been, she looked at the one just behind it. This label, printed by hand like the others, said, C – Oregonian. How odd. It was a fat one, she saw. Heart pounding, she took it out and opened it, to see at the front the very first article of hers printed in The Oregonian. Her father had cut it out neatly and highlighted her byline in yellow marker. She turned that one over, then the next, and the next. Every single article of hers that had ever appeared in The Oregonian seemed to be in this file, her name highlighted. On one, the fifth or sixth, he’d scrawled in dark ink, “Impressive!”
He’d never congratulated her, never said he was proud of her…but he had to have been. On her first sob, Cassie learned that she hadn’t forgotten how to cry after all.
*****
Grant hadn’t left Cassie’s driveway when his phone rang. He braked where he was and answered. “Hey, Jed.”
“A call just came in from a Don Finch. Says you were friends in high school.”
Surprised, Grant said, “We were. Haven’t see him since the graduation party, though. He went off to college, I enlisted. We lost touch.”
“Well, he says he’s here to see his parents, and heard about the killings. He said he didn’t like to accuse anybody, but he’d remembered some incident that might tie in. He wouldn’t tell me, but said he didn’t have any plans, he’d be at his parents’ place for the next few hours. He was sure you’d remember where it is.”
“Yeah, I spent enough time there.” He’d run into Mrs. Finch a few times this past year at the grocery store and heard updates about Don’s children and career as a stock broker.
“I’ll text his number to you,” Jed said.
“All right. I’ve just left Cassie’s, so I can go by now. Maybe instead of Mathison, I should try Rick Oberg again after that.” Yesterday, h
e’d stopped first by the Oberg house, then by the business, and not found Rick. The guy answering the phone at the plumbing business said there’d been a nibble by someone who might be interested in buying it. Rick had told them he was going to Bend to meet the man. As tough as it could be to sell a small business in a town like Fort Halleck, Rick probably would have been willing to fly to Houston to meet with an interested party.
“I’m on my way to drop in on Juan Estrada. I could go by Oberg’s after that if you want.”
“Let’s keep each other informed.” Grant ended the call, but didn’t immediately put the truck into Drive again. Don Finch Junior. Seeing him would be something. They’d been close in elementary school and, to a lesser extent, in middle school, then begun drifting apart in high school. Don had a steady girlfriend all the way through school. According to Grant’s mother, he’d married her the minute he graduated from Reed College. The girlfriend consumed a lot of his free time. Grant’s friendship with him had revived when they worked together over two summers with the city parks department, though.
His phone vibrated, and he called the number Jed had sent. He’d like to hear Don’s voice himself. The uneasy feeling he’d had the night before last when he walked around the Saunders’ house in the dark had stayed with him. Even now, he was getting twitchy, wondering if he could be in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. He shouldn’t just sit here, exposed.
In fact, he turned onto the country road that ran by the Wards’ acreage while he listened to the rings. Six in all, before a message came on. A cheerful woman’s voice said, You’ve reached Don and Bettina Finch. Leave your name and number, and we’ll call back!
That was Bettina Finch’s voice, all right. Why had Don Junior left his parents’ home number instead of his cell?
There were plenty of reasons his phone could be giving him trouble, or missing. Grant took a turn, and then another. No, he hadn’t forgotten how to find Don’s house. His mom made the best Italian food Grant had ever had.
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