by LENA DIAZ,
“Yes. It was one of those blue ones. I don’t remember the label.”
“What did you do with the bottle?”
She frowned again. “Other than hit him? Nothing. I already told you what happened.”
“Humor me. Please. Did you take the wine bottle?”
“No. I didn’t take anything but the buttons from my shirt, the ones I found anyway. The note that was in my pocket was gone. All I can figure is when Bobby was...pawing me, that he yanked it out. Probably to make sure I couldn’t show it to anyone to prove that he’d lured me there. I didn’t think to look for it when I left, because I didn’t know it was gone at the time.”
“Did you clean the cabin?”
She gave him an incredulous look. “I just told you I didn’t take anything or even stop to see if I still had the note.”
“Bex. It’s important. Did you clean the cabin?”
“No. No, I didn’t clean the cabin. I was too messed up to even think about something like that. I grabbed the buttons that I saw, grabbed my clothes and just...ran, back through the trees to where I’d hidden my mom’s car.”
“Are you sure about these details? You’ve told me everything?”
“I’ve been seeing that same night play out in my nightmares for ten years. I’m sure.”
“Bex, if you’re telling me the truth—”
“I am. I swear.”
“If you’re sure you’ve told me everything, then I’m sure of something else. You absolutely did not kill Bobby Caldwell.”
Chapter Seventeen
Bex stared at Max in disbelief. “Don’t give me the usual cop platitudes of self-defense and yada yada yada. I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. No one would believe me any more today than they would have back then. They’re going to put me in prison, so I might as well get used to the idea.”
“I’m not giving you platitudes. You didn’t kill Bobby.”
She frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“When you left the cabin, I promise you, Caldwell was very much alive.”
“But...the police found his body a couple of hours later, when his father and brother went looking for him.”
“Yes. But the most you did was knock him out for a few minutes. That wasn’t what killed him. Bobby died from internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen.”
“I don’t...understand. How is that possible? When I hit him, he fell so hard that his spleen ruptured?”
He shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t have done it. Someone beat him. They took a baseball bat or something like that and hit him across the lower back and abdomen. The coroner counted at least a dozen blows. They beat him, left him there to die. And then they took his ring. His father reported it as missing in the police report, said Bobby never went anywhere without it. That means that after you left, someone else went inside that cabin and killed him. There’s no other explanation.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said, in wonder.
“No. You didn’t.” His smile faded. “But right now all we have is your word. And, unfortunately, if you tell anyone else what you just told me, it only corroborates that you were at the murder scene.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “No telling what physical evidence your boss has that ties me to that cabin. I imagine he found my missing button. There had to be hair, too, and fibers from my clothes that he tore.”
“No. There isn’t. That’s one of the reasons that Thornton never could get a judge to sign a search warrant for your home. That cabin was pristine. Like someone had scrubbed it down top to bottom that night. There was no blue wine bottle. No button, no hair or fibers. And no note, either.”
“Why? Why would someone do that? Do you think they saw me go into the cabin and wanted to...what, protect me from being blamed?”
“Possible. More likely whoever killed him just wanted to clean every inch of the place in case any trace evidence could be used against them. I think they took advantage of the fact that you’d knocked Bobby woozy and they decided to finish him off. Then cleaned up afterward so no one would know they were the one who’d killed him.”
Her earlier elation faded. “So I did kill him after all. I left him there, semiconscious, unable to defend himself.”
“Don’t start feeling guilty over his death now. You said it yourself earlier. Bobby Caldwell was a bad person. He was the worst kind of scum, someone who preyed on women. The only person Bobby can blame for what happened is Bobby.”
His words made sense. She’d accepted long ago that she’d killed him, and didn’t feel guilty for that. But now, knowing that she’d left him injured, easy pickings for someone else to kill him, she did feel guilty. It was an odd feeling, to finally have compassion for a man she’d hated all of her adult life.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We go over your story again, from beginning to end.”
“What? Why?”
“I need to know every single detail that you can remember. Someone out there, whether it’s Bobby’s father or someone else, believes you killed him. And they’re determined to get you to confess. If there’s anything else that you can remember about that night that I can use to help your case, and put the true murderer away, then going over and over your story will be worth the pain.”
He grilled her about every single detail that day. He even made her recount as much as she could remember about the week leading up to Bobby’s death, looking for anything that might give them a clue about who else might want Bobby dead. He took mercy on her well past the lunch hour when her stomach started rumbling. But after they wolfed down ham and cheese sandwiches and potato chips, he was back at it.
“What about after Thornton released you from jail?”
Bex was lying on the couch now, her head propped on a throw pillow and one arm thrown over her face. Mad Max, as she was beginning to label him in her thoughts, was currently perched on the edge of the coffee table beside her, pen scribbling after every question he asked her.
She wanted to grab that pen and snap it in two.
“What about when I got out of jail?” she asked wearily without moving her arm.
“You were in town for two weeks, rumors swirling around, people saying terrible things. And all the while, Bobby’s family was making things really difficult for you, demanding the chief arrest you.”
“No, not his whole family,” she said. “Just his parents.” She lowered her arm and rolled her head on the pillow to look at him. “I never did hear how the father ended up in a wheelchair. And I haven’t seen Mrs. Caldwell in town since I got here. Were they in a car accident or something?”
“Worse. She died of breast cancer earlier this year. A few months later, he was diagnosed with late-stage bone cancer. His bones are so brittle he was walking down the sidewalk one day and his hip just snapped. That’s why he’s in the wheelchair. They say he doesn’t have long to live, maybe a few months, best case.” He straightened and frowned off into the distance.
“Max? Something wrong?”
He slowly shook his head. “No. I need to make a phone call. Hang on a sec.” He grabbed his phone and punched in a number. A few moments later he said, “Hey, Colby, yeah, it’s me. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. I figured he’d be ticked. That’s why I ignored his earlier calls. Nothing I can do about that right now, but I’m still working the case. I need to ask you something. Remember when Mrs. Caldwell was being treated for cancer, where did she go for that? Uh-huh. And Mr. Caldwell, he’s been going through chemo at the hospital. But I never asked which one. I just assumed Maryville. But where...” His gaze shot to Bex as he nodded. “Right. Got it. That’s what I was thinking. Did Blake make any headway with his contacts? What about your interviews?”
Several minutes later, he hung up the phone.
“Well,” she asked
, “do I have to beg you to tell me what that was all about?”
He smiled. “That was Colby, one of the other SWAT guys who’s also a detective like me.”
“I know who Colby is.”
“Right. Well, he reinterviewed two of the gunmen at the hospital. One of them, a guy named Lenny, finally admitted that he’d seen the guy who hired them to go after you. He worked with an artist to do a rendering of the guy.”
“It can’t be Robert Caldwell if he’s in a wheelchair. He couldn’t drive.”
“It wasn’t. But close.”
“Deacon? He’s such a nice guy.”
“No, it wasn’t Deacon. The picture is the spitting image of one of the security guys Caldwell senior keeps at his farm. Even more importantly, the new guy on our team, Blake, was able to link that car to that security guy. It sure looks like he was the one in Knoxville who hired those thugs to go after you. And it’s not like he had that kind of money, or a motive. Only his employer had that. Even better, Mr. Caldwell—the father, not Deacon—was quite familiar with Knoxville, since he and his wife were both there most of this year for cancer treatments.”
“Okay, sounds like he’s probably the one behind going after me. At least now we know who it is.”
His confidence seemed to take a tumble. “Well, I’m not sure about that. Yes, he’s the one who hired the gunmen, through his personal security guy. We should be able to prove that after we get a warrant for his bank records and follow the money. But what’s his motive? He believes you killed his son and he wants you to confess. He wants you to go to prison because he thinks you’re a murderer. That’s problematic.”
“I really hate that I see where you’re going with this,” she grumbled. “Your point is that the current bad business between Mr. Caldwell and me makes it seem highly unlikely that he’s also the one who killed his son. Because if he’d done that, he wouldn’t dredge all of this back up right now and shine light onto it.”
“Exactly. Now you’re thinking like a cop.”
“Lord help us all.”
He laughed, but quickly sobered. “Who does that leave us, suspectwise? I’m thinking we’re back to Marcia Knolls.”
“Marcia? But she was in love with Bobby. She wouldn’t want to kill him.”
“He wasn’t in love with her. He treated her like an insect he wanted to brush off his shoe. You said yourself that you saw her in the store that night with Bobby. Maybe she followed you and you didn’t know it. And after you ran out of the cabin, holding your clothes, she thought you’d actually been his lover and were running home, maybe to make curfew. I can see her justifying it that way, and being angry and hurt and going into the cabin to confront Bobby. When she found him lying there, unconscious, assuming he was naked—”
“He was.” Her voice was so tight she could barely speak.
“Okay. He was naked, and she thought he was cheating on her, at least in her mind. So she grabs whatever is handy. Cabin like that, on the edge of the woods, there’s bound to be stuff in there, maybe in a closet. A bat or something like it. She could have hit him with it while he was still unconscious, so that even if he woke up while she was hitting him, he’d already be too hurt to put up much of a fight.” He pulled out his phone. “The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced she’s the only one who makes sense for Bobby’s murder. I’ll get Colby to bring her in for questioning.”
A few minutes later, he hung up the call and pitched his phone onto the coffee table. “Okay, I put everything into motion that I could. Hopefully the guys will come through for us and get proof and wrap it all up.”
She eyed him with dread as he picked up the legal pad and pen again. “I thought we just solved the case. Marcia killed Bobby. And Caldwell senior had one of his men hire the thugs to get me to confess. Why are you getting your torture devices out again?”
He rolled his eyes. “Because I still want to review the two weeks you were in town after Thornton let you go. I want to know who all you spoke to, and what they said. Who you might have seen skulking around. Until Colby tells me that he has Marcia’s confession, I’m not letting down my guard. We need to see if anyone else around town did anything odd those two weeks that might make them rise to the top of my suspect list for having killed Bobby.”
She groaned and collapsed back onto the pillow.
Chapter Eighteen
Max rubbed the back of his neck and looked out the wall of glass to his deck and the angry, broiling sky over the lake beyond. The sun had set long ago, but the frequent cracks of lightning illuminated the heavy clouds that had been threatening rain most of the day. He figured the storm would finally let loose its full fury and drench them with rain soon. But until then, it was doing its best to whip the last of the dry leaves from the trees, making winter look even closer than it was.
A snuffling sigh sounded behind him and he turned around to see that Bex had fallen asleep on the couch while he’d taken a few minutes to stretch his legs. He was tempted to smile at the adorable picture she presented. But he didn’t really feel like smiling. It was hard to when the woman he’d loved had rejected him so soundly all those years ago, and then put him out of her thoughts for ten years. He sure as hell hadn’t put her out of his.
In the beginning, he’d been pathetic, begging her mother to tell him where Bex had gone. Later, once he’d become a cop and knew how to find her, he’d tracked her down. He’d driven to Knoxville and planned on confronting her. By then, he was well past the blubbering love-struck fool phase. He’d lived in the anger phase for a good year or two. And he wanted to demand an explanation. But when he’d seen her, he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t go up to her and debase himself to ask her why she’d left. Ask her why she’d never called. He was too angry to even form a coherent sentence.
After that, he’d never gone to Knoxville again. And he’d almost convinced himself that he’d forgotten her until she’d shown up at that deli counter. And just like that, all his old feelings of anger, grief, resentment had risen to the surface and formed a crack in the heart he’d thought he no longer had. And in just a matter of days he’d brought her to his home and begged her to tell him why she’d never tried to see him, talk to him, after she left.
He was such a fool.
He strode to the couch and looked down at her. But the anger and resentment faded away, replaced by a pathetic longing that went deep in his soul. Bex. His Bex. She would always be his in his battered and bruised heart, even if not in reality. No matter how much he wished he didn’t care about her.
Her exhaustion was evident in the dark circles under her eyes. She needed to sleep. But he still had some questions. And he imagined his boss would be parked at his doorstep early in the morning, demanding that he get his butt back to work and bring Bex with him.
On the outside, Thornton was a grumpy pit bull. But when it came to his team, he was often full of bluster. He considered the SWAT team his family, and because of that he’d forgive Max the sin of ignoring his orders and walking out of the station with Bex. But Max knew better than to push it a second day. That would cross the line. He’d be suspended at best, fired at worst. Being a cop was something he’d wanted for as long as he could remember.
But what he’d really wanted, more than anything else, was lying on his couch, a thin line of drool drying at the corner of her mouth.
God, she was beautiful. Maybe not in the classic way most men thought of beauty. She had short legs, her mouth was wide, her cheeks round—something that had always bothered her, especially in middle school when other kids had called her chipmunk cheeks. She’d practically starved herself in eighth grade trying to get the narrow, thin face she thought she should have until she’d made herself sick. She’d finally had to realize that no matter how thin she was, her face never would be. Max liked to think that maybe he’d helped her with that, by telling her how be
autiful she was, over and over, until she started to believe it.
He hadn’t been lying. He really did see the beauty others missed. It came from inside and shined through her bright, curious, intelligent eyes. The silky hair she despaired of never holding a curl was a wonder to him, soft as a rabbit. Those legs she thought were too short were perfectly proportioned to her body. She looked like one of those Disney fairies. All that was missing was a set of wings and a wand. She already possessed the magic, because she had utterly enchanted him.
She snuffled again, grumbling something in her sleep as she scrubbed at her mouth. Then she rolled over toward him. And opened her eyes.
He crouched down, almost at eye level. And his heart ached. “Hello, beautiful.”
Her eyes blinked. “Don’t call me that. I must look terrible.” She covered her face with her hands.
He gently pulled them down and, despising his inability to resist her lure, pressed a soft kiss against her lips.
Instead of kissing him back, she shoved at his chest and hurriedly sat up, covering her mouth and mumbling something behind her hand.
She was so cute when she was half-asleep and still confused.
“Betghrm,” she mumbled behind her hand again.
He tilted his head. “Hard to be sure, but I think you might be asking about the bathroom?”
She nodded enthusiastically.
He held out his hand. “Come on. I was going to question you some more, but I think I’ll give you a reprieve. You’re too far gone to make sense anyway. I’ll show you the guest room.”
She hesitated, then put her hand in his and let him pull her to standing. She let his hand go and stepped back, running her hands through her hair as if worried about her appearance.
“I’ll just freshen up and then you can drive me home.”
“I’d rather you stayed the night.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“You mean other than the fact that the wind is whipping and dry lightning is cracking outside?”
