“Because it’s over.” She wanted to forget, and she knew how selfish that was, but she didn’t know how else to keep herself going. Her hands twisted in her lap. Maybe keeping herself going was the crux of the problem. As it stood now, she was surviving, but she wasn’t really living.
“I owe it to Edmond—I owe it to you, to see justice served,” Danny said.
“According to the mayor and your commanding officer, justice has been served. Jack Spurlock is dead.” The coarse fibers of her woolen pants scratched her palms as she wiped moisture from them. “Nothing you can say or do will bring Edmond back to me.”
The look on Danny’s face made her wish she could take back those last words. Obviously he’d been torturing himself with that very thought, and she’d just handed him a fresh batch of bamboo shoots to stick under his fingernails. Her remorse overtook her discomfort. “I appreciate your efforts though, so if you’re determined to ask your questions, you may as well fire away.”
Leaning back in his chair, he pulled out a notebook. “Let’s start with the basics. Did you know Jack Spurlock? Ever see or hear of him before?”
Danny’s initial question hit her wrong. Way wrong. Her face flushed, and her empathy for the anguished detective evaporated. “What kind of asinine question is that? If I knew anything about Jack Spurlock don’t you think I would’ve screamed it from the diner’s tabletops? How dare you accuse me of hiding the truth from the police?”
Danny put up his hand. “Take it easy. I’m not accusing you of anything. You and me, we’re on the same side. Maybe you should try and remember that.”
“You try and remember that.”
His eyes squared with hers. “I’ll ask you again. And this time, don’t knee-jerk your answer. I want you to really think about it. Have you ever heard the name Spurlock before? Could he have been a patient at the clinic?”
“The police checked that already. Spurlock wasn’t a patient.” Closing her eyes, she searched her memory, but her brain began to fog, her chest to burn, as if she were breathing in poison gas instead of the aroma of potpie. The bell on the microwave sounded. She opened her eyes. “I haven’t heard the name Jack Spurlock before. Ever.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
Danny rose and cranked up the heat on the kitchen thermostat. Took the pie out of the oven. “Dig in.”
“Next question please. I’d like to get this over with.”
“All right. You were the person closest to Edmond. Did he have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who might want to see him dead?”
She jammed her fork into the center of the pie and left it standing at attention. “This is pointless. A man robbed a diner. A greedy, heartless criminal who cared nothing for the lives of others, or for that matter, for his own life. I didn’t know him. Edmond didn’t know him.”
Danny’s eyes narrowed. “I asked you if Edmond had any enemies.”
Her nails dug into her palms. “Edmond was a good man. A family doctor, beloved in this community. Why would anyone want to hurt him?”
“That’s what I’m asking you, Sky. No one is perfect. Maybe he had gambling debts—owed money to bad people. Maybe he wronged someone in his past.”
“Are you suggesting Edmond had a dark side?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a human side.”
Her back straightened. “I’ve never known a more human, more humane man than Edmond Guerretin. I don’t believe he had any enemies, and I don’t know where you’re going with these questions. It was a robbery, plain and simple, and the culprit is dead.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Maybe you should take that up with your captain.”
“I already have. The mayor wants this wrapped up yesterday, and the captain refuses to reopen the case unless I come up with something concrete. I know it seems open and shut. But, Sky, think about what happened in that café.”
“I wish I could stop thinking about it. But you refuse to let me. If you had any care for my well being—”
“Suppose you decided to knock over a diner. Would you plan the heist first thing in the morning?”
There was no stopping Danny. He’d keep hounding her until he got his way. She blew out a resigned breath. “Well, there wouldn’t be many people that time of day. But then again, there wouldn’t be much money either. No. I guess I wouldn’t. I’d wait for the end of the day, when the customers were all gone, and the cash register was full.” She frowned.
“That’s right. A rookie thief, a kid, might do something stupid like that. But a career criminal like Jack Spurlock would know better. A career criminal after cash would wait until the coffers were full.”
The smell of chicken was filling the room, and Sky’s stomach was roiling.
Danny didn’t let up. “And once you had the money, would you hang around and grab a hostage even though there were no police surrounding the building? Why take a hostage with no cops around? What would you do, Sky? Grab a hostage or high-tail it out of there with the loot?”
Choking back the bile in her throat, she whispered, “High-tail it.”
“You see my point. The violence was atypical…and unnecessary.”
“I don’t know…”
“Well, I do. I’ve sniffed enough cheese to know the difference between gouda and gorgonzola and this robbery flat-out stinks.” His eyes locked with hers. “What if Jack Spurlock wasn’t there to unload a cash register? What if Jack Spurlock was there to unload his Colt on Edmond…or someone else?”
Sky didn’t know how much longer she could keep down her stomach contents. She scanned the hallway beyond the kitchen, looking for a bathroom, just in case. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I think the robbery wasn’t a robbery at all. I mean I think the robbery was staged to cover up a murder. The most likely targets are those who were shot. Edmond and Nevaeh. I’d rule Cookie out, though. If he’d wanted him dead, Spurlock wouldn’t have aimed for the foot. But that’s not to say he couldn’t have been after someone else.”
“Someone else?” Clutching her gut, Sky managed to get to her feet. When all hell broke loose, Spurlock’s plan might’ve spun out of control. If Danny was right, and it wasn’t about money, then Spurlock could’ve been after anyone… If Danny was right.
She took a deep breath and felt her heart rate slow. “You’re wrong. I may not have administered an IQ test to Jack Spurlock, but I was there in that diner. I watched his reactions. I observed his behavior under pressure. And I simply don’t believe he was smart enough to plan a robbery as a cover up for murder.”
As if waiting for her to see the implications of her own words, Danny just looked at her.
Oh, God.
Her throat closed, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Danny didn’t believe Spurlock was smart enough to plan it either. And if it wasn’t Spurlock who planned the robbery… On boneless legs, she managed to find her way out of the kitchen and back to the front room. Gathering her things, she fumbled in her purse for her car keys.
Following on her heels, Danny said, “Don’t go. At least have something to eat first. You’re upset, and I don’t think in any condition to drive.”
“I can’t stay for dinner.” She opened the door.
“I believe someone hired Jack Spurlock as a hit-man. Someone bad. And that someone is still out there. And if Edmond wasn’t the real target, if Edmond was collateral damage…”
Collateral damage.
A cover up for murder.
Her head was spinning. “If Edmond wasn’t the intended victim then who? My brother?”
“Maybe.”
She barely heard his response above the thundering pulses in her ears. The case was open and shut. Everyone said so. She wanted to slap Danny for making her doubt that. She couldn’t keep the biting sarcasm out of her voice—or the tremor. “I’ll speak to Garth and warn him about your murder-for-hire theory, even though I don’t believe it�
��s true. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” She turned her back and marched out the door.
Danny tailed her outside. “You should warn Garth. If I’m right, and the bad guy’s still out there, he could be after anyone who was in the diner that morning.”
“I can make it to my car without an escort, thank you.”
“Be careful out there.”
She jumped into her car and leaned away from Danny.
Before she could close the door, Danny lowered his head, ducked it inside the car and whispered in her ear, “Sky, he could be after you.”
Chapter Five
“Dear God.” Garth’s voice was strangely hushed, almost worshipful.
Being fully ensconced in her novel, and having always had a flair for the dramatic, Sky’s imagination conjured the image of a sinner offering confession to a priest. She turned the corner of her page down to mark her place, tucked her legs beneath her under the quilt and motioned for her brother to join her on her front-porch swing.
“For a heartbeat, I thought you were Isabella,” he said.
With the full moon side-lighting Garth’s face, she could make out vestiges of disappointment creasing the corners of his eyes. But she took no offense. On more than one occasion, she’d caught her own reflection in a distant mirror and for an instant believed she’d seen her mother staring back at her from across the room. That ephemeral moment of joy was inevitably followed by a gut-wrenching sense of loss. “I miss her too,” she said.
As Garth climbed the steps leading up to her wrap-around porch, they groaned beneath his weight. He was dressed in a double-breasted trench coat, and she spied Calfskin oxfords peeking out below the cuffs of his pleated trousers. Trousers so expensive the material gleamed in the moonlight. “You’ve come straight from work then.”
“I have.”
“At this hour.”
“Your point, please.”
“I was hoping once Bella was approved and in use, you’d cut back on your hours.” Older than Sky by a half-decade, Garth had no wife, no children, not even a girlfriend. Whenever she tried to encourage him to build a personal life, he’d just shake his head and say there were only two things in this world he cared for: Bella and her.
“My work is important, Sky. I don’t mind a bit of personal sacrifice for the sake of it, besides which, you, of all people, are in no position to lecture me. At least not according to my spies.”
By spies, of course, he meant Soyla. He’d had the woman charmed from the get go. As usual, Garth was turning the tables on Sky. He had a knack for that, and she knew when she was beaten, or at least when she was about to be. Waving her hands in front of her face, she said, “Uncle. I’ll drop the subject if you will.”
“Excellent call.” Folding down beside her, Garth set the swing in motion, and the world rocked beneath them. He’d brought with him a zip-lock bag containing an icepack, and from the bag, he pulled a syringe. A small space heater she’d placed near the spindly rails of the porch suffused the amber liquid in the syringe, imparting it with a fiery glow.
Garth rolled the syringe between his palms. Then he stretched one arm around her. “You said you had an urgent matter to discuss with me. I hope that means you’ve come to your senses about Bella.”
He always called his vaccine by its name, as if Bella were human; as if Bella were the woman for whom it was named, not some mere chemical compound with risks and benefits to weigh.
Drawing the quilt tighter about her shoulders, she shook her head. “I’m afraid not. You know I can’t take your vaccine. Not now, anyway.”
“You mean you won’t.” Across her back his arm stiffened, and then he pulled it away. “Why in God’s name are you being so stubborn?”
“You know why.”
“Explain it to me again. And this time, try not to make it sound like a load of horseshit.”
Ridiculous. They’d had this argument so many times. Garth simply refused to accept her decision. “I understand your side of things, but I don’t see why you won’t at least try to understand mine. You know as well as I do that there’s a shortage of Bella, that the pharmaceutical companies haven’t been able to gear up production fast enough to meet demand. I’m young—”
“You’re a ticking time bomb with a broken gene. Bella can repair that gene. You need this vaccine, and you need it now.”
“So do a lot of other women. Older women are far more likely to develop breast cancer over the next few years than I am. But they’re not going to get Bella if supplies run out.” She set her jaw. “Try to understand. I can’t take a vaccine that someone else deserves more than me. How could I look my patients in the eye, knowing I was protected and they weren’t?”
“We’re not talking about your patients. We’re talking about you.” He jumped up with such force the swing slammed against the front of the house, jolting her spine and clacking her teeth together. Reaching out, Garth grabbed hold of the lip of the swing and knelt before her.
“I created this vaccine. I created it to honor Isabella, our mother. I created it so you wouldn’t have to suffer the way she did. And if I want to give it to you, you should take it and be grateful. To hell with your social conscience, Sky. If you cared a whit for me you’d roll up your sleeve right now.”
The vein bisecting Garth’s forehead began to swell and pulse, and soon her heart was throbbing with the same rhythm. She shifted her legs, and his hand came to rest on her knee. Avoiding his eyes, she remained silent.
“Sky, do you remember what Isabella told us before she died? Do you remember what she said to you about the choice she made to defer chemo when she first learned her cancer had spread to a lymph node?”
Beneath his hand, her knee began to shake. Her throat contracted in a dry swallow. “She said… She said, ‘I wish had that chance again.’”
Garth brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and lifted her chin. “Look at me, Sky. This is your chance. I’m giving you that chance for Isabella’s sake, and if you refuse to take it, you’re not only betraying me, you’re dishonoring the memory of our mother.”
“Mother would understand. She’s the one who taught us that everyone deserves the same care, the same kindness.”
He shot her a furious glare. “Don’t presume to tell me what Isabella would understand. I believe she’d want you to do everything in your power to save your own life. How is it that you don’t want that for yourself? Sometimes I wonder if you want to go on living at all.”
His words knocked the wind out of her. She concentrated on getting her breath back, so she could speak, but Garth didn’t give her the opportunity.
“You believe someone else deserves to live more than you do? You hardly eat. You work yourself to the bone in that damn clinic. I swear, you act as if you’d rather be six-feet under than walking around on the planet. I think you wish you’d died that night beside our father. I think that’s the real reason you refuse to take a vaccine I made for you.”
Her body went still and stiff, and the quilt slid off her shoulders and pooled around her forearms. Closing her eyes, she blocked out her brother’s words, and the memories they called up, focused her energy on pulling in oxygen. She gulped down a generous breath and opened her eyes. Garth scalded her with a fiery glare, but she could read the anguish behind his fury.
She took his hand. “I’m incredibly proud of you, Garth, and I’m grateful for Bella. But I’m young. Statistically speaking, I’m at a lower risk for developing cancer than an older woman who has the same gene. I’ll take your vaccine when there’s enough to go around.” As her hand tightened around his, she said, “I’m going to wait my turn.”
Looking away, he bent his head, and she heard a muffled, choking sound. After what seemed like a lifetime, his hand squeezed hers. “I didn’t come here to fight with you. This discussion isn’t over, but I suppose we can table it for now. In case you come to your senses, I’ll leave Bella in the fridge.”
She was tired of arguing too, and if he insisted
on leaving a dose of Bella in her refrigerator, well, she had a patient on the waiting list. Garth need never know that she’d given his vaccine to Mrs. Porter.
“I guess I knew you didn’t call me here for Bella. But I did hope…” He released her hand and slipped the syringe back in its baggy. “Maybe you better tell me the real reason you wanted to see me.”
Nodding her assent, she spread her quilt-covered arms, inviting him to sit beside her again. Garth rose from his knees and shoved his hands beneath his armpits. “Too damn cold. What the hell are you doing out here anyway? Your nose is blue.”
A gentle breeze poured over her like a soothing balm. Her muscles relaxed. Lifting a steady hand, she pointed at the moon. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The Indians call it a wolf moon, because in winter, packs of starving wolves would surround their villages, howling, stalking and generally terrifying the children…and I bet a few braves as well.”
On cue, the wind picked up, raged through the branches of the ponderosa pines, showered them with a minty fragrance, and provided a fine imitation of a pack of howling wolves.
“Fascinating, Sis. You’re a regular Farmer’s Almanac. But it’s too cold for me out here with the wolves. Come inside.” Garth tried to pull her to her feet, but she resisted. Giving up on the use of force, he beckoned her with his finger and offered a bribe. “I’ll make you a cup of my famous hot chocolate.”
She wiggled her toes. Numb. On the flip side, the soles of her feet, which rested directly in front of the heater, were scorched. “With marshmallows?”
“Depends. You got any?”
“Probably, but they may be petrified.”
For the first time that night, Garth’s face relaxed, and his lips curved into a smile. “I love nothing better than a marshmallow that’s been aged to splendid perfection. Let’s do it. Then after we de-ice your eyebrows, you can tell me the reason for your urgent summons.”
While she dialed off the power on the heater, Garth pushed at the door, but as usual it jammed. Heaving his shoulder against the carved oak, he grumbled, “Damn door.”
First Do No Evil: Blood Secrets, Book 1 Page 6
