Dead Set (Aspen Falls Novel)

by Melissa Pearl

  But as soon as she said it, Alaina realized that wasn’t entirely true. Luck had played a small role. She’d had the cash on hand to buy it when it came up for sale, and she’d made the decision that she was going to embark on this adventure, to see if she could make a go of it, right before the house was listed. Luck had probably played a part in the timing of things, but not in the finished result. That had all been hard work.

  She stood up and marched over to a small credenza pushed against the interior wall of the living room. The wall was painted a buttery yellow, and even after all these years, it still made her feel warm inside, made her feel as though the sun was inside her home. There were a few framed photographs displayed on the credenza and she grabbed one of them, a small 4x6, and brought it over to Lucas. She handed it to him.

  “What’s this?” he asked with a frown.

  “This house,” she said.

  The picture was one of hundreds she’d taken after she’d bought the bungalow. She’d documented every inch of the exterior and interior. This particular photo was the “before” documentation of the room they were sitting in. Every room in the house—the living room, the kitchen, the two bedrooms and the bathroom—had a framed “before” photo somewhere in their respective rooms. A reminder of what had once been, a visual history of how far the house had come. How far Alaina had come.

  “Holy shit,” Lucas breathed. “This is the same room we’re sitting in right now?”

  He glanced around, and she knew what he was doing: looking for the features of this room, trying to find evidence of them in the photo in his hands.

  He wouldn’t find much. The windows were in the same location, but everything else was different. Alaina’s own eyes focused on the picture, too, but she didn’t need to look at it to remember what had been here; she’d committed it to memory years ago. Wallpaper-covered walls, dingy rust-colored carpet, a wall that separated the living area from the kitchen, making the space feel even smaller—claustrophobic, even. Dark wood trim around the windows with matching baseboards that made the room dark and dreary.

  Lucas looked from the photo to the room he was in. The differences were stark. Buttery walls, shiny wood floors the color of maple syrup, white wood trim on the walls and windows.

  “What happened to the wall?” he asked.

  “I knocked it out.”

  His eyebrows lifted, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t because he doubted her statement but because he was impressed. “Really?”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a load-bearing wall, so that helped.”

  He chuckled. “If you say so.” He handed the picture back to her. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed.”

  “Thanks,” she told him, accepting the frame and setting it on the coffee table. “And I would know.”

  His smile widened and he just shook his head in response.

  She picked up her coffee and took a sip, but it had already grown lukewarm.

  “So you did all the work yourself? Getting the house to look like this?”

  “Not all by myself,” Alaina admitted. “I hired a few contractors for the work I didn’t know how to do. Electrical and plumbing, mostly. But everything else I pretty much did on my own.”

  “Wow.” Lucas’s eyes were huge. “And you’ve lived here ever since.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Alaina shook her head. “I sold it.”

  His brow wrinkled. “I’m not following.”

  “I bought the house eight years ago, pretty much right after I graduated high school. It was a foreclosure and I got it for peanuts. Took me six months to fix it up, and then I sold it for triple what I paid.”

  “Triple?”

  She nodded. “Used those proceeds to buy another foreclosure. Fixed it up and sold that one. And so on and so on.”

  “You flip houses.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

  Alaina nodded. “Eight years now.”

  He let out a low whistle. “And you make good money doing that?”

  She smiled. “Better than good.”

  His brow furrowed again, and he said, “If this was your first house, how did you end up back here?”

  “It was about a year ago,” she said. “The owners had to sell. Job transfer. I saw it pop up on the property listings and I immediately put in an offer.”

  “Why?” Lucas asked. “I mean, if you make good money, you could probably afford something bigger, right?”

  Alaina shrugged. “Sure. But I don’t need bigger. It’s just me.”

  There was another reason, too. Another reason she’d paid the full asking price for the little bungalow she now called home. It was the first house she’d flipped. It had been a huge, monumental risk, buying this house and sinking her entire savings into fixing it up. Her parents had practically disowned her for doing so. Her father had called her foolish and immature, told her she was chasing a pipe dream and she’d live to regret it. Told her not to come running back to them when she ran out of money and found herself without an education and without a place to live.

  She’d proved them wrong. And she wanted to be in the house that had started it all, wanted a constant reminder that she’d succeeded despite the odds and despite the fact that not a single person had believed she could pull it off.

  She swallowed.

  That wasn’t entirely true.

  There had been one person who had trusted her instincts, who knew she would do what she’d set out to accomplish.

  Noah.

  Alaina cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but we should probably get back to the topic at hand.”

  Lucas nodded, his expression sobering a little.

  “You went to the house, spoke to my mother,” Alaina prompted.

  Her gut tightened as she waited for Lucas to begin. He’d called her an hour ago, asked if he could come by to chat with her about his visit to her parents’ house, and she’d immediately agreed. But she’d wondered why he’d wanted to do it in person, why he couldn’t have shared over the phone. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, had buried herself in work instead—as evidenced by the sheer volume of paperwork now stacked on the coffee table—and it had worked.

  But now he was there, and she had to steel herself for what he was about to tell her.

  Lucas sat forward on the couch, cradling his hands. “She wasn’t very forthcoming.”

  This wasn’t a surprise to Alaina.

  “I asked her a couple of questions about Noah. His mood, if she’d noticed any signs of depression.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  Lucas was frank, which she appreciated. As hard as things might be to hear, Alaina preferred honesty to beating around the bush.

  “She’s in denial, which is to be expected at this stage of the grief process,” he said.

  Alaina could only nod. “So it was a bust, then.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her disappointment.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that.” His eyes were on hers, unwavering. “I asked if I could see his room.”

  Alaina stiffened, waiting for him to continue. An image of Noah’s room popped into her head and she tried to squelch it. She didn’t want to see it, because she knew what else she would visualize. Her brother, his neck tethered to a rope secured to his closet door, his feet within an inch of the floor. Safety—life—literally an inch away. She hadn’t found him, but she’d read the police file and the autopsy report. She knew where he’d been found; how he’d been found. And every time she thought of that house, that room, it was the only thing she pictured.

  “You look a lot alike.” Lucas’s voice was soft. “You and Noah.”

  She nodded. Her eyes were moist. “Except he was almost a foot taller.”

  “Sure.” Lucas offered a gentle smile. “But your hair color, your eyes.” His expression was startlingly tender. “The shape of your lips, your face.”

  His
words washed over her. He’d noticed the shape of her lips? Without even thinking about it, she touched her finger to her mouth. His eyes followed her movement and his own lips seemed to part in response.

  Her heart was galloping now. She might’ve sat there forever, her eyes locked on his, if he hadn’t broken the spell.

  “The resemblance really is amazing.” His voice was a husky whisper.

  Alaina nodded, as much to acknowledge his words as to clear her head. She knew this. Their baby photos were eerily similar; in fact, photos of the two of them in gender-neutral clothes were often the source of good-natured debate in their house as to what child was in the photograph.

  Lucas cleared his throat. “I was only downstairs for a few minutes,” he said. “I told your mom I wouldn’t disturb anything.”

  He hesitated.

  “But?” She sensed there was something more.

  Lucas reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. It looked as though it had been balled up previously, but it was now folded into a square.

  Lucas unfolded the sheet and handed it to her.

  “There were a couple more,” he said quietly. “All related.”

  Alaina’s hand shook as she read the five words written on the paper.

  Five words written in her dead brother’s handwriting.

  I know what you did.

  10

  Wednesday, March 21st

  12:40pm

  Lucas watched as the color drained from Alaina’s face.

  His first instinct was concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Where did you get this?” she whispered.

  “The trash can in Noah’s room.” He grimaced. “I know I said I wouldn’t touch anything, but—”

  Alaina cut him off. “You said there were more. Where are they?”

  “I have them,” he said quietly. He pulled out the other two sheets of paper.

  She snatched them out of his hands and quickly smoothed them out.

  Her eyes were wide when she looked back at him, her mouth tight. “What does this all mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Lucas admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “Me?”

  “He was your brother,” he reminded her, purposely keeping his tone gentle. “I was hoping this might trigger some memory. Something he told you or something you might’ve known about.”

  Alaina cast her eyes downward, swallowing a few times. He knew she was doing her best to keep her composure, and he felt a small tug of sympathy. Part of him wanted to reach out and touch her. Hug her. Offer her some small measure of comfort. But as much as he felt the tug to do so, he knew it wasn’t his place. And he had no idea how she might react.

  It couldn’t be easy for her to discuss details that might’ve contributed to her brother’s death. But he reminded himself that she had been the one to contact him. She’d come to him for help, and that was what he was trying to do. Help.

  “I don’t,” she finally said.

  “How close were you and your brother?” Lucas asked. He remembered their initial conversation, the fact that she hadn’t been able to answer the questions he’d had about her brother.

  She didn’t respond right away.

  “Not very,” she murmured.

  “Was it the age difference?” Lucas asked. “You’re what, eight years apart?” He had done the mental math when she talked about buying the house, which would put her in her mid-twenties. He’d initially thought she was younger, closer to twenty, and he didn’t want to think about the rush of relief he’d felt when he realized she was older.

  She nodded. “Roughly. I’ll be twenty-seven this summer. Noah was eighteen.”

  Twenty-seven. Lucas was thirty-three.

  “And you moved out when you graduated? He was ten or so?”

  She nodded again.

  “What was your contact like with him after you left?”

  Alaina was quiet for a minute. “At first? We were still fairly close,” she said. “Mom and Dad were pissed at me but Noah didn’t know. Or if he did, he didn’t care. He was always asking me to come to his soccer games, and he was forever calling and then texting when he got his own cell.”

  “He played soccer?”

  “Yeah, for a couple of years. He stopped well before high school. Seventh grade, I think.”

  “Any reason why?”

  Alaina shrugged. “He played because Mom and Dad signed him up for it. And I guess he finally realized he could say no to them.”

  Lucas bit back a smile. It wasn’t so much the words as the delivery that caused his reaction. It was that window into Alaina’s mind that he’d had fleeting glances into, the haughtiness, the sass that made her who she was. Despite the somberness of their conversation, he’d be the first to admit that he noticed it…and liked it.

  He liked it a lot.

  “You said that at first you were still close. After you moved out, I mean,” Lucas said. “And recently? What was your relationship like?”

  Alaina swallowed hard and looked at him. With her wide blue eyes and the color mostly gone from her face, she looked like a fragile porcelain doll. He clasped his hands tight, trying to resist the urge to reach out and touch her. He was a seasoned former police officer, for Pete’s sake, a hardened private eye who pretty much didn’t give a shit about people’s feelings. This conversation should have been a piece of cake.

  “We’d drifted apart,” she admitted. She sucked in a breath, then expelled it. “He tried to stay in touch but I…” Her voice cracked and she drew in another shaky breath. “I wasn’t great about communicating.”

  “No?”

  She gave a slight head shake.

  “Did you guys have a falling out or something?”

  “No, nothing like that,” she said quickly. “We just…”

  He waited.

  She was as still and as silent as a statue.

  “I can’t help if you don’t tell me,” Lucas said, his voice almost a whisper.

  To hell with it, he thought when she still didn’t respond.

  Tentatively, he reached out a hand and touched her elbow. The sweater she was wearing, a black fuzzy thing, was soft and warm under his fingers. He pressed down lightly on her arm, just to make sure she knew he was there, a soft, reassuring touch. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what her skin would feel like under his fingertips. Soft. Warm. Smooth.

  “I wasn’t a good sister.” Her voice was clear and firm, which took Lucas by surprise. “I spent more time on my job than I did talking to my brother. He texted and called. A lot. And I was always too busy.”

  He could hear it in her voice. The guilt. The belief that she was responsible for her brother’s death. That if she’d just been more available, had reached out and connected, she could’ve somehow prevented this.

  Except the reason she’d hired him was because she thought it wasn’t a suicide but murder.

  Lucas tried not to sigh. Maybe her hiring him had as much to do with exonerating herself as it did finding the true assailant. Because then she could rid herself of the guilt she felt. Or at least try to.

  The problem was, Lucas still wasn’t on board that there was anything amiss. Sure, he’d found a couple of crumpled notes, but those didn’t prove foul play. If anything, it was a sign that Noah had been struggling with something…something that had weighed heavily on him. And maybe that something was enough to cause him to act irrationally, to see death as his only option, his only out.

  Alaina reached for her coffee, breaking their physical connection. Lucas felt a stab of disappointment. Her hand stilled and he watched as her gaze drifted to her brother’s note still spread out next to her. She left her coffee mug where it was.

  “This could be proof,” she said. “Proof that someone killed him. That this wasn’t a suicide.”

  “It could be,” Lucas acknowledged.

  “So what’s next? Do we take this to the police?”

  “No,” he said. W
hen her expression darkened, he added, “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is a single piece,” he told her. “Think of this as a hundred-piece puzzle we’re putting together. We have one piece, Alaina. The rest are still out there. We literally don’t even have them on the table to start putting anything together.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she sagged against the couch.

  Her response surprised him. She was a fighter; he’d come to that conclusion within five minutes of their initial conversation, and everything she’d said or done since that time had just confirmed this. But right now, her head thrown back against the cushions, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth pinched tight?

  She looked defeated.

  And he had this insane urge to fix things for her.

  To make everything better.

  “We need more,” he said, watching her as her eyes slowly opened. “More pieces.”

  “Did you find anything else?” she asked. “In his room?”

  He shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

  She straightened a little. “What do you mean?”

  “I need you to go home,” he told her.

  She cringed but then nodded. “Okay. And do what?”

  “You need to find his yearbooks,” he said. “Comb through them. See what people wrote. We’re looking for friends, for enemies, for everything in between, over the last four years.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I want a class schedule, too,” Lucas said. “Can you get that?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He stood up.

  Alaina looked up at him. Her eyes were still moist, but the color had returned to her face. She looked fierce, determined. And so damn beautiful.

  His heart caught in his throat.

  He had to stop thinking about her like that.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  He fished his car keys out of his pocket. “To talk to someone who might have some answers.”

  11

  Wednesday, March 21st

  1:15pm

  “You don’t have to knock, you know.”