CHAPTER 20
Tracy sensed a car slowing as it approached and instinctively reached for the Glock in her purse. The car pulled up beside her and came to a stop. Roy Calloway sat with his elbow bent out the window. “Tracy.”
She took her hand off the gun. “Are you following me, Sheriff?”
“I understood you were leaving town.”
Tracy looked about the motel parking lot. “I did leave town. I’m in Silver Spurs. What are you doing here?”
Calloway threw the car into park and slid out, leaving the engine running and the door open. Chatter spilled from the radio mounted to his dash. “A little bird tells me you’ve been talking to people around town.”
“Seems like the polite thing to do after being away so long. What business is it of yours?”
“I’d like to know what you’ve been talking to them about.”
Part of her wanted to stand up to Calloway and let him know she wasn’t the little girl buying his line of bullshit anymore. But that would likely cause a prolonged confrontation and she was mentally and physically drained. She just wanted to get inside her room for the night. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, unless you’re going to tell me it’s a crime in Cedar Grove to talk to people.” She started up the staircase. “I’m tired and I’d like to take a hot shower.”
“What did you and Dan O’Leary have to talk about?”
“Old times. It was a regular stroll down memory lane.”
“Is that it?”
“It’s all you’re going to get.”
“Goddamn it, Tracy. Don’t be so damned stubborn.”
The adamancy with which he spoke caused her to stop and face him. Calloway had grown red in the face, which was unlike the man she remembered, but maybe that was because the man she remembered had always gotten his way. Seemingly regaining his composure, Calloway said, “Do you think you’re the only one who’s suffered? Look at all the people who came out to the service to pay their respects yesterday.”
She stepped down. “Did you have something to do with that, Roy?”
“People are looking for closure. They need this to be over.”
“They need it, or you need it?”
He pointed a finger at her. “I did my job. You of all people should understand that. I followed the evidence, Tracy.”
“Not to the grave.”
“We didn’t have a grave.”
“Now we do.”
“Exactly. We found Sarah. So let the dead bury the dead.”
“You said that to me once before. Do you remember? But here’s the thing I’ve learned, Roy. The dead don’t bury the dead. Only the living can do that.”
“And now you’ve buried Sarah and put her to rest. She’s at peace. She’s with your parents. Let it go, Tracy. Just let it go.”
“Are you giving me an order, Chief?”
“Let me make this clear to you. You may be a big-time homicide detective in Seattle, but here you have no jurisdiction. Here, you’re just a citizen. I’m the law. I suggest you remember that and don’t go running around chasing ghosts.”
Tracy tempered her anger with the knowledge that there was nothing Calloway could do to her. It was bluster. Calloway was fishing for information, trying to make her angry enough to slip and say something about what she’d been doing and why.
“I have no intention of chasing ghosts,” she said.
He seemed to study her. “So I can assume you’ll be going back to Seattle?”
“Yeah, I’ll be going back to Seattle.”
“Good.” He gave her a nod, slid back into the Suburban, and shut the door. “Then you have a safe drive home.”
She watched the SUV drive off, the taillights illuminate as Calloway slowed to make the turn, and the car disappear around the corner. “Not ghosts, Roy. Not chasing ghosts. I’m chasing a killer,” she said.
As she made her way up the outdoor stairs another thought struck her, and she fumbled in her purse, retrieving her cell phone and Dan’s business card. She hurried into her room and called his number. Dan answered on the third ring.
“Dan? It’s Tracy.”
“You’re not going to be one of those clients who calls all the time, are you? Because if you are, it’s okay. I was just about to call you.”
“Do you still have my file?”
“Right here on my kitchen table. We spent the afternoon together. Why, what’s wrong?”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Roy Calloway’s been following me. He knows I came to talk to you and wanted to know what about.”
“What do you mean he’s been following you?”
“I mean he just accosted me outside my hotel room in Silver Spurs and wanted to know why I went to see you. Has he tried to talk to you?”
“No, but I left the office early. He hasn’t been here. Why are you staying in Silver Spurs?”
“I just didn’t want to stay in Cedar Grove. After the service, it was just too much.”
“No, I mean, why didn’t you go back to Seattle?” When she didn’t immediately answer, Dan said. “You knew I’d call, didn’t you. You knew I’d call about the file.”
“I suspected you might.”
“Where are you staying in Silver Spurs?”
She checked her key ring, the old-fashioned kind that was actually a key and not an activation card. “The Evergreen Inn.”
“Check out. You can stay here. I have an extra room.”
“It’s fine, Dan.”
“It probably is, but I’ve been through the materials you gave me, Tracy. Not in detail, but enough to have a lot of questions.”
She felt a familiar rush of adrenaline. “What kind of questions?”
“I’m going to need to review whatever else you have.”
“I can get it to you.”
“That’s for another time. For tonight, check out of wherever you’re staying and come here. There’s no reason for you to stay in a motel.”
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of his invitation. Was he worried about her because of Calloway, or because of something he’d discovered in her file? Was it just a childhood friend being hospitable, or was there something else motivating him, like the attraction Tracy had felt when Dan had first stepped to her side during Sarah’s service and kissed her cheek? She pulled back the drapes and peeked out the window at the dirt-and-gravel parking lot and to the grove of trees on its far side. The shadows had begun to creep around the trunks.
“Besides, you owe me a dinner,” Dan said.
“Where should I meet you?”
“Do you remember how to get to my parents’ house?”
“Like the back of my hand.”
“Meet me here. I have the best alarm system in town.”
CHAPTER 21
Tracy heard that alarm system going off as she drove up the driveway of what had been Dan O’Leary’s childhood home. She did not recognize the Cape Cod house on the large lot, recalling a one-story yellow clapboard rambler. Set back on a manicured lawn, the house was now two stories tall, with dormer windows, a large front porch, and white Adirondack sitting chairs. The clapboard had been replaced with pale blue shingles and gray trim that had a definite East Coast feel to them.
Dan opened the front door and stepped out into the light of a full moon. Two very big dogs flanked him. They looked like bulldogs on steroids, with stunted black muzzles and short hair that exposed muscular, broad chests. With them sitting at his sides, Dan looked like an Egyptian pharaoh.
Tracy stepped away from the car, shouldering her overnight bag. “Is it safe?”
“It will be, once you’re properly introduced.” Dan looked comfortable in faded jeans with a hole in one knee, a black V-neck sweater over a white T-shirt, and bare feet.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said, approaching on a stone path in a rich-green lawn that looked and smelled like it had been freshly mowed.
“Just hold out the back of your hand and let them smell yo
u.”
“I really don’t like the sound of that.”
“Don’t be a ninny.”
Tracy held out her hand. The smaller of the two dogs stretched his neck and brushed his cold nose across the back of her hand. As he did, Dan said, “This is Sherlock.”
“You’re kidding?” No shit, Sherlock had been one of Dan’s favorite expressions.
Dan turned his attention to the other dog. “And this—”
“Let me guess. Ex-Lax,” she said. Dan’s other favorite boyhood expression had been smooth move, Ex-Lax.
“Now that would just be gross. No, this big boy is Rex, as in T. rex.” T. rex didn’t bother to sniff her hand. “He’s a bit more reserved than Sherlock.”
“What breed are they?”
“Rhodesian and Mastiff mix. They weigh in at a combined two hundred eighty-six pounds and their food bill is twice the size of mine. Go ahead and take them inside. I’ll put your car in the garage in case anyone is nosy.” She’d noticed a freestanding garage at the back of the property.
Tracy stepped into a den with an L-shaped couch facing a brick fireplace, over which hung a large flat-screen television. The den flowed into a kitchen with a table and chairs, granite counters, barstools, and incandescent lighting. Tile samples rested against the kitchen splash behind the sink. Dan closed the door behind her and handed her back her keys.
“You’re remodeling,” she said.
“That’s an understatement. After forty years, it needed a makeover.”
He walked into the kitchen, but the dogs kept their attention on Tracy. She dropped her bag on one of the barstools. “You’re planning on staying?”
“After all the work I just put in, I better get some enjoyment out of it.”
“You did this?”
“You don’t have to sound that surprised.” He opened the refrigerator.
“I just don’t remember you being that handy.”
Dan spoke from behind the door. “You’d be amazed what you can learn when you’re bored, motivated, and have access to the Internet. Are you hungry?”
“Don’t go to any bother, Dan.”
“No bother. I did tell you I know a great restaurant.” He returned with a plate containing four large hamburger patties. “I was just about to make my famous bacon cheeseburgers.”
She laughed. “I can feel my arteries hardening already.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve become one of those grain-eating vegan types.”
“With my schedule? I’m lucky to see a vegetable unless it’s a tomato on a Whopper bun.”
“Technically, a tomato is a fruit.”
“Whatever. What, are you also a horticulturist now?”
“If you’re nice, after dinner I’ll show you my vegetable garden.”
“You must have been really bored.” She stepped to his side of the counter. “What can I do to help?” Side by side, Dan was a good four inches taller. The sweater accentuated his broad shoulders and a trim chest. She elbowed him playfully and hit a solid torso. “I seem to recall a guy with a lot more baby fat. I know it isn’t the diet.”
“Yeah, well some of us weren’t blessed with the Crosswhite long legs and muscle-tone gene.”
“I’ll have you know I work out four days a week,” she said.
“I’ll have you know it shows.”
“Oh God, I sounded like one of those middle-age women fishing for a compliment, didn’t I?”
“If you were, I was hooked. Come on, why don’t I show you to your room? You can take a hot shower and relax while I get dinner started.”
“I think that sounds even better.” She grabbed her bag and followed him to the stairs.
“Should I have a glass of red wine waiting, or are you going to tell me you’ve given up alcohol?”
“Only the kind that’s good for you.”
She followed him into a room at the top of the stairs and was again surprised by the furnishings, a wrought-iron bed and early American antiques, with a bushy broom in one corner and a bed warmer in another. Over the bed hung a painting of a woman lighting a fire in a darkened pioneer home. Tracy dropped her bag on the bed. “Okay, I’ll buy the remodel, but no way you decorated on your own.” She guessed a girlfriend.
“Sunset Magazine.” Dan shrugged. “Like I said, I was bored.” He closed the door and left her to settle in.
Tracy sat on the edge of the bed, considering their banter, which in some respects felt like old times, though Dan was definitely now more adept at his comebacks than she remembered. She found herself smiling. Was Dan flirting with her, or were his comments just an adult version of the ribbing they used to give one another when they were kids? It had been a long time since anyone had flirted with her.
“I’ll have you know it shows?” she said, groaning at the sound of it. “Way to look needy.”
When Tracy stepped out of the shower, her limited choice of clothing became even more frustrating. She left her blouse out instead of tucking it into her jeans to create a different look and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her crow’s-feet be damned. She applied mascara and eye shadow, added a touch of perfume to her wrists and neck, and headed downstairs to the smell of bacon and hamburgers wafting from the grill, announcers providing the play-by-play of a college football game on the flat-screen.
Dan stood at the counter beating the contents of a glass bowl with a whisk. A pie crust with lemon filling sat on the counter.
“Are you making a lemon meringue pie?”
He muted the volume on the TV. “Don’t make fun. It was my mother’s recipe and it happens to be my favorite. And if I can ever get the damn egg whites to fluff, you’ll know why.”
“You’re using the wrong bowl.”
Dan gave her a skeptical look. “How could there be a wrong bowl?”
She stepped to his side of the counter. “Where do you keep your bowls?”
He pointed to a lower cabinet. Tracy found a copper bowl, transferred the egg whites into it, and took the whisk. In no time at all, she whisked the egg whites into foam. “Mrs. Allen would be appalled. Don’t you remember anything from chemistry class?”
“Isn’t that the class I cheated off of you in?”
“You cheated off me in every class.”
“And look how well it’s done for me. I can’t even beat egg whites.”
“It has to do with one of the proteins in the egg whites reacting with the copper of the bowl’s surface. A silver-plated bowl will do the same thing.” She poured in the sugar Dan had in a measuring cup to finish the meringue, spooned it on top of the filling, and slid the pie into the oven, setting the timer. “Didn’t you promise me a glass of wine?”
He poured two glasses, handed her one, and raised his. “To old friends.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“We’re the same age,” he said.
“Haven’t you heard? Forty is the new twenty.”
“The memo hasn’t reached my back and knees. Fine.” He raised his glass again. “To good friends.”
“That’s more like it.”
She moved to the other side of the counter and sat beneath an incandescent light, watching as he turned the onions he’d added to the grill. She smelled their sweet scent. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’m an open book.”
“It’s just you here.”
“Just me and the boys,” he said. The two dogs sat at the edge of the tile between the rooms, watching as Dan walked to the fridge.
“So why did you go to the trouble?”
He opened the fridge. “You mean the remodel?”
“Everything. The remodel, the furnishings, two dogs. It must have been a lot of effort.”
He grabbed a jar of pickles and a tomato and set them on a plastic cutting board. “It was. That’s why I did it. I went through the ‘woe is me’ period, Tracy. Finding out your wife is cheating on you isn’t exactly confidence building. I felt sorry for myself for a while. Then I got angry wi
th the world, with her, with my ex-partner for sleeping with her.” He fished out a pickle and sliced it as he continued talking. “When Mom died that put me into an even deeper funk. One morning I woke up and decided I was tired of looking at the same damn walls. I went into the toolshed, got Dad’s sledgehammer, and started knocking them down. The more I knocked down, the better I felt. Once the walls were down, the only thing I could do was rebuild.”
“So this was your diversion.”
He washed the tomato at the sink and began to cut it with precise strokes. “All I know is, the more I rebuilt, the more I realized that just because things hadn’t worked out as I’d planned didn’t mean things couldn’t work out at all. I wanted a home. I wanted a family. Getting another wife was not on the horizon, and frankly, I wasn’t looking. So I went and got Rex and Sherlock and we created a home.” The two dogs whined at the mention of their names.
“How’d you start?”
“One swing of the hammer at a time.”
“Do you ever talk to your ex?”
“Every once in a while she’ll call. Things with my partner didn’t work out.”
“She wants you back.”
He used a spatula to transfer the burgers to a plate. “I think she was fishing about the possibility at first. What she probably really misses is the country-club lifestyle. She figured out pretty quick that the guy she married didn’t exist anymore.”
Tracy smiled. “I think the finished product looks pretty good, Dan.”
He stopped transferring the sliced tomatoes and pickles from the cutting board to a plate. “Oh no.”
“What?”
“Did that sound like a middle-aged man fishing for a compliment?”
She threw a crumpled napkin at him.
Dan had set the table while she was in the shower. He placed the plate of hamburgers on it beside a tossed green salad. “This okay?” he asked.
“Fishing for another compliment?”
“You know it.”
“It’s perfect.”
As Tracy made up her burger with condiments, Dan said, “Okay, my turn. Do you still compete in those shooting tournaments?”
“I don’t really have a lot of free time.”
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