Too Hot to Handle

by Jennifer Bernard

  “Look, she’s here, and that’s a start. Maybe she’ll stick around. She wants to find Dad’s killer as much as any of us do.”

  Kevin froze, his hand on the doorknob. The words he’d overheard at Barstow’s came back to him. Murder. Off the deep end.

  The Knight family sure had a lot going on. Cassie especially, by the sound of it.

  Well, it wasn’t any of his business. He shrugged and knocked on the door to warn them he was entering.

  “Come on in,” called Ben.

  He pushed open the door and stepped into the little reception office. Ben stood up from behind a simple desk and held out a clipboard and pen. “As our first full-time, non-family-member employee, welcome aboard. Ready to become an honorary Knight brother?”

  For the time being, Cassie and Mom were staying at the farmhouse where Tobias and his new wife Carolyn lived, along with Carolyn’s much younger half-sister, Sarah. The house was a kind of central meeting place for the Knight family. Aiden stayed there when he was visiting from college. All the family barbecues were held at the farmhouse. It had plenty of extra space, including the attic room where Cassie was staying.

  Mom had the best guest room, with its own bathroom and a little back porch that looked out on the rear of the property, where a scrubby lawn gave way to birch woods, and the foothills of Jupiter Point rose in the distance. She claimed to love it, but Cassie could tell that being surrounded by family made her anxious.

  After all this time, she was very attuned to her mother’s danger signs. When she started speaking in a manic, fast-paced tone, or when she lost track of her train of thought in mid-conversation, or when she decided to obsessively clean every doorknob in the place over and over again—Cassie knew something was up. Over the years, she’d convinced Mom to see therapists, coaxed her to take medication, and even checked her into the emergency room for twenty-four-hour holds several times.

  She’d gotten so much better the last few years. Otherwise they wouldn’t even be here in Jupiter Point. Mom wouldn’t be sitting at the kitchen table with Will while he questioned her ever so gently. She wouldn’t be planning dinners and looking for her own place to live.

  Cassie poured herself a glass of ice tea from the pitcher Carolyn kept in the refrigerator and sat down to offer moral support. Mom sent her a grateful smile.

  “Cassie knows how hard it is remembering that time,” she told Will. “For years I had huge blank spots in my memory.”

  “It was a traumatic event.” Will had a notebook in front of him, filled with scribbles. “I understand completely.”

  “There was that, of course. But also the guilt that came afterward, because I left you all. You were in law school, for goodness’ sake. You left because of me.”

  “Hey, hey.” Will shook his head. “I would have made a godawful lawyer. But I’m a damn good private investigator. We’ve already made more progress on Dad’s case than the entire police department did during their half-assed investigation. We actually have a suspect. Now we just have to find him.”

  Cassie’s jaw dropped at that information. “You know who he is? For sure?”

  “No one told you? We got a firm ID on him the other day, thanks to Julie and Felix. And Mom.”

  “I didn’t want to think it was him,” Janine said soberly, twisting her hands together. “It’s still hard to believe.”

  “Who?” How come everyone knew the suspect’s name except her? Typical, with her brothers.

  “Matthew Dearborn,” Will said. He slid a photo from between two pages of his notebook. It showed a stocky, middle-aged man in a black leather jacket, hair greased into a duckbill. “This was from one of the rehearsals for Grease. Once Julie joined the cast, he dropped out of the show. She might have recognized his voice earlier if he hadn’t. He probably looks a little different out of costume.”

  “You think?” Cassie stared at the photo, repulsed. Had this man killed Dad? She hated him on sight. “So what more do you know about him?”

  “He owns an accounting firm here in town. Volunteer dispatcher for the police department. It all fits. He sang in the chorale with Mom and Julie, before Dad was killed.”

  “We were rehearsing ‘Messiah,’” Janine said wistfully. “We never got to perform it. Well, I suppose someone did. But not me. He had a lovely baritone singing voice. I knew he had a crush on me, but I never imagined the extent.”

  “You’re saying that’s why he killed Dad? Because he had a crush on you?”

  Will snapped his notebook shut. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re sure Dearborn is the man Julie saw outside our house, the man who tried to scare her away from Jupiter Point twice, but we have no real evidence linking him to the murder. He said something to Julie that made her think he’d done it, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “Then we have to find him and make him confess.”

  “That’s the general idea,” Will said dryly. “Unfortunately, he’s disappeared. He lives alone, but his neighbors haven’t seen him lately. Neither have his employees. I pulled some strings with the FBI and they’ve promised to alert me if he surfaces on their radar for any reason. If he’s on the run, he might slip up. In the meantime, I’m trying to figure out where he could be hiding.”

  “So how are we supposed to help?” Cassie got up and paced the kitchen restlessly. The reason they were here, the reason Janine was willing to resurrect such painful memories, was for this purpose—to find Dad’s killer. But surely the police were better suited to that than they were.

  “Well, I want to start with you, Mom.” Will turned to their mother. “I want to know everything you remember about your interactions with Dearborn.”

  “There really isn’t much to say. He used to hang around me after rehearsals, try to talk to me. I made it clear I was married, but it didn’t seem to make a difference to him. He knew a lot about Robert. I thought they were friends from the Army.”

  “I don’t believe they were.” Will flipped through his notebook. “I can’t find any connection there, and we’ve looked into that pretty extensively.”

  “Did you figure out anything about the hutch that used to be in our kitchen?” Cassie asked. “Ben was asking about it when he first came to see us. It seemed like that might be a clue.”

  Will shot another careful glance at Janine. “We thought it might be significant because Dad was gesturing toward it, more or less. At first we thought it was because he stored his medals there, but that went nowhere. We’re not sure if it means anything.”

  “But Mom remembered that it came from the Reinhards’ house. They got rid of it when they first moved in. Is that a clue?”

  Janine brightened. “Yes, I remember that so clearly. Isn’t it funny that everything around the time of Robert’s death is a blur, but I remember details about furniture? The Reinhards posted a notice in the newspaper about an estate sale. I bought the hutch and a few other pieces.”

  Will and Cassie waited for more, but she shrugged. “That’s all I know.” She nervously tapped her fingers on the table. “I do have one idea. I can meet with Priscilla Reinhard and ask her about the hutch. She loves antiques as much as I do. Maybe she knows something about where it came from.”

  Cassie shared a glance with Will. The hutch seemed like a red herring, but if Mom wanted to meet with Priscilla, what harm could that do? “Good idea, Mom.” She drank down her iced tea. “Well, anyway, I’ll leave you two to it. If I can be of any help, let me know. In the meantime, I’m working on my Cassie’s Chassis webpage.”

  Will groaned, looking horrified. “Please don’t tell me you’re calling it that.”

  She gave him a cheeky wink. “That big brother thing dies hard, doesn’t it? Of course I’m not calling it that. It sounds like a porno, for Pete’s sake. It might completely confuse everyone.”

  “So what name have you chosen, chickadee?” Janine asked. “Did you follow my suggestion?”

  “Fly by Knight Auto Repair? Hmmm.” Cassie pursed her lips. �
�It’s cute, but I’m not sure it conveys the right message. Although actually it might, since I suppose I am a bit fly-by-night, aren’t I?”

  Will’s eyebrows drew together in a stern frown. “I don’t like it when you say that. Would we have invested in that lift if we thought you were the fly-by-night kind?”

  Cassie refrained from pointing out that she hadn’t asked them to buy the lift. It was such a sweet gesture, and it meant so much to her. And yes, she admitted, it did make it harder to contemplate leaving.

  But leave she would; she had no doubt about that. The habit was so ingrained by now. After a certain amount of time, the restless itch to keep moving always set in.

  “I was thinking I’d stick with something really basic. Knight Auto Repair. I’ll leave my first name off, in case anyone thinks girls can’t fix cars.”

  Janine scowled furiously and shook a finger at her. “Don’t you dare. You worked hard for that certificate. I admit I thought it was odd at first, but you got top scores on those exams. You should be proud! Put it right there in the title. Call it, Girls Can Fix Cars Just as Well as Men Auto Repair!”

  Cassie laughed and rubbed her cheek on top of her mother’s head. She loved it when her mother showed that kind of spunk. She never did so on her own behalf, but when it came to Cassie, she could cheerlead just like other mothers. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. What about Knights and Ladies Auto Repair?”

  Everyone laughed at that one, though Cassie kind of liked it.

  “By the way, my Tacoma’s making a bad sound. Mind if I bring it in?” Will asked.

  “You want to be my first customer? Sure. Family rate,” she added. “No charge except you have to promise to hand out my business card in a totally obnoxious and biased manner.”

  “Done.”

  “See you two later.” Cassie dropped another kiss on her mother’s head and dashed for the stairs. She took them two at a time, bounding up to her little attic room. Being able to leave her mother in good hands, to not be dogged with worry about her, felt like such a luxury. For twelve years, she’d lived with the constant undercurrent of anxiety regarding Janine Knight.

  It was probably like being a parent, come to think of it. That hyper-awareness, that springing to attention at the first hint of trouble. The weight of responsibility.

  She didn’t know how actual parents handled the stress. At this rate, she’d never find out, either. And maybe that was for the best.

  As soon as Will located Matthew Dearborn, she and Mom would probably hit the road again. Leaving her brothers would be tough. Not to mention Cassie’s Chassis, or whatever name she ended up with. But they had their pattern, and why would it change now?

  5

  In the attic, she ignored the old four-poster bed with its handmade plaid quilt, and crouched next to the boxes that Will had hauled out of storage for her. For days, she’d been delaying this moment. All of her former possessions were in these boxes—most of her clothes, her cross-country trophies, her old posters and drawings and, most importantly, her journals. She’d always kept journals, and she’d always locked them away from her nosy brothers. When she’d left with Mom, Will had packed them all into a lockbox in a storage unit, along with everything else they’d left behind.

  It was the kind of thoughtful thing Will would do. He knew how much her privacy meant to her, and how painful it would be if someone unauthorized read her journals.

  Taking a deep breath, she dug out the lockbox of journals and inserted the key. Running into Deirdre at Barstow’s had gotten her thinking. Maybe it would be better to re-read her own account of what had happened back then. Deirdre didn’t seem to think there was any big reason for her to carry a grudge. Maybe her imagination had exaggerated the situation over the years.

  Her heart skipped a few beats as the stack of old notebooks came into view. She’d chosen a different style each time, deliberately, to represent her mood at that point in time. Sunshine yellow when she’d first gotten into cross-country running. Red when she’d developed her first crush. A Hello Kitty cover when she’d adopted a cat. Deep purple when she was going through an especially meditative time. The last journal in the batch had a black cover.

  And that was before the murder of her father and complete shattering of her life.

  Gingerly, she pulled it from the box and flipped it open to a random page. She scanned her younger self’s handwriting.

  T blew me off again. We were supposed to train together after school but he never showed up. I don’t want to keep bugging him all the time, but come on. That’s not how a friend should act, or a training partner. Let alone a boyfriend. So is he my boyfriend or isn’t he? I wish he’d just tell me the truth. He says he likes me, but then he says other things too, like I get too upset about things like this. Isn’t it normal to not want to be stood up? I don’t think that’s too much to ask. But when I bring up things like that, he looks at me like I’m crazy, like some kind of bitchy mental patient. I wish I could talk to someone about all this, someone I can trust. Not Mom, of course. She’d go bonkers. She can’t handle “problems.” She’d get that look on her face, that deer-in-the-headlights panic. I’d have to find a paper bag for her to breathe into.

  My brothers are completely useless, of course. Maybe Julie? Julie’s a little older, and she’s pretty nice. The only problem with Julie is that I don’t think she knows what it feels like to get your heart broken. She has Ben, who acts like she’s the queen of the world. I don’t think she’s ever had to wonder if her “boyfriend” likes her. Ben makes it completely obvious, even to me, almost too much, to be honest. It’s kind of sickening. I don’t want that from T. I just want him to be nice to me. Not blow me off all the time.

  Oh. My. God. Cassie cringed as she read her sixteen-year-old angst. She’d forgotten all about the feeling she’d lived with back then—that constant worry about Travis.

  Travis Drake! So gorgeous, with his shaggy blond hair and bedroom eyes. So heartless. That last text, in which he’d dumped her…

  Sorry babe gotta move on. U kno how it is. C U at school.

  Her younger self had no idea what was coming. It almost hurt to read this. She leafed to a later page.

  D is such a raving b-****.

  And there she was. Deirdre Sullivan.

  I don’t know why she hates me so much. I’ve tried to be nice to her, well mostly. There was that time in Chem when I screwed up her lab results. Aka sabotaged. *Evil grin.* But I apologized afterward. That’s what we’re supposed to do in our family. Come clean and apologize, then take your consequences like a Knight. It would be “like a man” except for the inconvenient fact that I’m a girl.

  But D didn’t care about my apology. She just glared at me like I was a literal piece of shit. If my life was a fairy tale, she would definitely be the evil queen. She’s in half my classes, and she has a million friends, and I feel like they’re all judging me all the time. D’s latest thing is telling people I might be gay. If she tells Travis that I’ll die. I know D likes T. Of course. He’s such a babe.

  * * *

  T says I’m no fun because I won’t smoke weed with him. He doesn’t get it. Dad would ground me for the rest of high school if I did. I have to prove to him that I’m fun. Am I really boring? Ben says I’m funny, that I have a great sense of humor and making people laugh is one of my talents.

  I don’t think T cares about my jokes. He wants something else. He says I can prove I’m not gay by giving him a BJ. I’m not sure what to do. Should I do it? I’m afraid he’ll dump me if I don’t.

  * * *

  What a disaster! I finally told Travis I’d meet him after shop today for the BJ. I mean, I’ve never done it before but how hard could it be? Guess who walked in? D!!!!!

  * * *

  Deirdre told everyone. Along with some lies too. I’m so mortified. T hasn’t said anything about what happened yet. I don’t even want to go to school tomorrow. I’m trying to do what Julie says—she says focus on doing the thin
gs I like and don’t react to bullies or rumors. So I’m running a lot, working on a Trans Am with Dad, and writing in this journal. While crying. In case you hadn’t noticed. Hi, journal. You might be my only friend. I seriously don’t know what I’d do without you, which is pretty ridiculous considering you’re an inanimate object. I guess I’m just that pathetic.

  * * *

  Cassie put down the journal and realized that her cheeks were wet. She wiped away the tears with her fingers. Nope, she hadn’t exaggerated. That time had been a nightmare.

  She shoved aside the box of journals and grabbed her iPad instead. She pulled up a map of the United States and studied it. Montana? Wyoming? Maybe it was time to explore Canada. Or maybe the other direction was the way to go. Baja. Beaches. Total strangers. Sounded good to her.

  6

  Kevin balanced on a ladder next to the newest Cessna the Knight brothers had just purchased. They’d bought it slightly used, so his first job as the Knight and Day mechanic was to give the new acquisition a complete and thorough run-through. He’d already had to replace a few bearings, and had located a problem in the steering that had him worried. He whistled under his breath as he worked, since that always helped him concentrate.

  “How’s it looking?” Ben strolled into his line of sight. Ben had always been a fun-loving guy, great to party with, but he’d never seen his old friend looking this happy.

  “Overall, not bad. It can’t go up yet, not until I correct the steering issue.”

  “What’s your estimate? We’re actually turning down customers.”

  “I ordered a couple of parts, so we have to wait on those. Maybe tomorrow, if we’re lucky and the delivery trucks can find this place.” He grinned. “Couldn’t you have picked a more remote location? Like, say, Siberia or Easter Island?”

  “Whatever, city boy. You said you were looking for a small town, so no complaints.” He took a card from his pocket. “Official invitation. Me and Julie’s engagement party.”