Sinister Summer

by Colleen Gleason

  He really wanted to heat her up.

  “Maybe I will,” was all she said, punctuating it with a little sniff.

  They heard a car pull up the gravel driveway.

  “That must be the police.” She paused, then looked at Ethan. “I think it’s best if we don’t tell them about what just happened. With the blue thing.”

  Though secretly relieved at her suggestion, he shrugged. “Your call.”

  While Diana was showing Joe Cap the mess inside, Ethan did a circuit of the exterior of the house. This time, the intruder had forced the metal cellar doors open, cutting the padlock with a tool—which he’d left in his haste to get away from the ghost of Jean Fickler. Though the metal cutter looked like one anyone could buy at the average hardware store, there could be fingerprints, or some other way to trace its ownership.

  He looked around some more. The ground was soft from a light rain last night, but the grass was thick and didn’t show any detail of the footprints around the door.

  But as he came around to the front of the house where the door had been left wide open, a red glint caught his eye in the middle of the green.

  Well, now…It was an inkpen. And it had definitely not been there when he mowed the lawn on Monday—wow. Had it only been three days ago?

  It probably had just been dropped, oh, about an hour ago when the intruder bolted from the house as if the hounds of hell—or Jean Fickler—were after him. Ethan grinned darkly. Served the bastard right.

  He picked it up and was even more juiced when he saw the engraving on it: Tenth Annual Merman-Steele Golf Outing. The date was in April—only two months ago. And the location: The Wicks Farm Golf Course.

  Finally—a real clue.

  When he didn’t care about ambience but wanted good, solid bar food like a burger and fries or atomic-hot buffalo wings, Ethan went to The Owl’s Roost. The place was a Dive—with a capital D—but the burgers were massive and the buns were soft, and it was a matter of course that a burger always wore three slices of cheese and a slab of onion a quarter-inch thick.

  Only half a block from Trib’s, the Roost was almost as much of a tourist draw as the other, far more trendy and, well, clean place. At the Roost, decades of peanut shells had been ground into cracks in the floor from countless shoes. The place smelled like stale beer and sweat, and though smoking in bars had been outlawed years ago, there still hung that essence of cigarette residue.

  It was part of the charm.

  Movie posters in cheap plastic frames decorated the bar—all were from flicks in the seventies or eighties. They were hung about midway up the wall in a stripe around the whole room. Nothing got in the way of the movie poster decor—not even an air conditioning unit that had obviously been installed after the posters were hung. When the hole was cut in the wall for the unit, the installers cut right through a St. Elmo’s Fire poster—and its frame—taking out the top right chunk of Demi Moore’s face for the bottom left part of the air conditioner.

  That laissez-faire attitude about artwork was Ethan’s favorite part of the Roost—that and its extensive, ever-changing beer list written on a large chalkboard above the bar.

  It was Friday night, which meant an acoustic musician would be trying to make him- or herself heard from the far corner of the place, but that was usually a losing proposition. Three large televisions were screening a Tigers game, a White Sox game, and an eighties movie that starred a young Matthew Broderick and an actress from The Breakfast Club.

  The place was packed and there was standing-room only at the bar counter, but Ethan didn’t have to search for a table. All he had to do was stroll past the huge square booth in the back corner and…wait for it…

  “Ethan!” Juanita was the first one to see him, but Maxine crowed in her wake, “We have room here!”

  He caught a glimpse of Baxter James, stuffed in the back corner between Orbra and Iva, and the desperate look on his face made Ethan want to laugh. Still, this had been his plan all along, so he had no qualms about joining the Tuesday Ladies and their hostage.

  “Slide over, Cherry,” Juanita said, and they made room for Ethan.

  “Where’s Diana tonight?” Maxine demanded as soon as Ethan’s ass hit the wooden bench. “We’re tasting Baxter’s new beer. It’s not his best, but it’s drinkable.”

  “I have no idea where Diana is,” Ethan replied.

  “I thought you two were—”

  “Of course they aren’t,” Cherry interrupted Maxine. “You met Diana’s fiancé the other night at the Grille, remember?”

  “She wasn’t wearing a ring,” Maxine argued, her dark eyes flashing. “Are you sure they’re engaged? And he’s not just after her money? She’s got a lot of it now.”

  Ethan nearly choked on the beer Bax had shoved in front of him and decided it would be prudent not to weigh in on that question for a number of reasons.

  “Is it that bad?” Baxter asked, lifting his brows.

  “The beer? No,” Ethan said right away. “No, it’s actually pretty good for a brown ale.”

  “It’s an oatmeal stout.”

  “Oh. It’s not bad for an oatmeal stout,” Ethan said with a grin. Baxter rolled his eyes and mumbled something about high maintenance pains in the ass.

  “Dec liked it,” he muttered.

  “Dec’s just trying to get on your good side. Free beer,” Ethan joshed back.

  Maxine was still carrying on. “That boy looked like he’d be a real cold fish in bed, if you ask me. Diana could do much better than him.”

  “I can’t disagree with you there, Max,” Cherry purred as her eyes narrowed speculatively, and, to Ethan’s mortification, lingered on him. “You can always tell when a man’s not going to meet expectations in the sack. And when he is.”

  “That is true. My Miguel…I could tell right away. It was in the eyes. It’s always in the eyes.” Juanita sighed and fanned herself with bloodred-tipped fingers. “Ay-yi-yi.”

  Ethan met Baxter’s gaze and read in it the same desperation he felt to be anywhere but there at the moment. Someone change the subject, quick.

  “So where is Diana?” asked Iva, leaning on her elbows and fixing her bright blue eyes on him.

  Everyone looked over, and Ethan suddenly felt as if he were a slab of meat being judged by a pack of very hungry wolves. “I don’t know. It’s not my turn to keep track of her,” he said with a grin that softened any annoyance that might have filtered into his voice.

  Which, maybe there was a little bit of irritation there. After all, he didn’t know where she was on this Friday night. The problem was, he didn’t have the right to be annoyed about it—but he was.

  “Well, why not? Isn’t her house being broken into on a regular basis? Aren’t you living practically next door to her? Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on things?” Orbra said. “On her?”

  After the break-in yesterday, and Longbow’s examination of the house, he and Diana had amicably parted ways for the evening—even though he’d tried to convince her to sleep at his house. But she’d declined, replying that she was certain Aunt Jean had scared off the intruder once and for all.

  But she hadn’t mentioned anything bout her plans for tonight, and he’d gotten caught up in work around the house and jotting down notes for his book proposal. The next thing he knew, it was dinner time.

  “Uh…” Ethan was saved when the waitress flitted by and he flagged her down. “I’ll have a tall Guinness. Tall,” he emphasized, ignoring Baxter’s frown. “You put me in the mood for a stout,” Ethan told him.

  “Meaning my stout didn’t fit the bill,” muttered Baxter.

  “Incidentally,” Ethan said as soon as the waitress scooted off, “I was hoping you’d all be here tonight because I figure if anyone can help find out who’s breaking in, you ladies can. That includes you, Bax,” he said with a grin, and his friend casually flipped him off.

  Ethan dug out the pen he’d found at Diana’s house and held it out. “The culprit dropped this.”
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  Maxine’s greedy fingers snatched it from him. “The Merman-Steele Golf Outing—that was in April.” She looked up at Iva, eyes clear and sharp. “That was when you met Hollis.”

  “It was. A whole group of them came in here the night before the golf outing, and that’s how Hollis and I met. He almost skipped out on the seven o’clock tee-off the next morning, but I convinced him his group needed him. He hits from the senior tee,” she said, showing a sweet dimple. “And since it was a scramble, they needed all the help they could get.”

  “Scrambled golf? What do you mean—”

  “Oh, hush, Maxine,” Juanita snapped, jostling Bruce Banner, who gave an annoyed squeak. “Who cares about what kind of golf? Scrambled, fried, Dios mío—whatever. Whoever has been breaking into Diana’s house was at that golf outing.” She petted her dog’s head absently, and he calmed.

  “Or worked during it,” Cherry said thoughtfully. “Could be someone at the golf course.”

  “Or someone could have taken the pen and lost it somewhere,” Orbra put in. “And the burglar picked it up.”

  “I know it’s a little bit of a long shot, but whoever got into Jean’s house probably has some connection to Merman-Steele’s golf outing. So my question is, Maxine—and all of you—have you noticed anyone in town who was here in April around that time, and has also been here recently—especially yesterday? A stranger?”

  As he asked the question, Ethan felt a sudden sinking in his gut. Because he knew at least one answer. And, thankfully, before he or anyone else said it, Iva spoke up.

  “Well, Hollis has been here.” Her voice was very careful and her dimple had disappeared. “But I can’t imagine any reason he’d want to break into Jean’s house. He only met her that night. And besides…he’d never do anything like that.”

  “Of course not, dear,” Juanita said, patting her hand. “He’s such a lovely man.”

  “Wasn’t there another man who was talking to Jean that night too?” Cherry said quickly. “They seemed to be getting along really well.”

  “The Abe Vigoda man,” Iva said. “He had eyebrows thick and dark, almost one straight one across his forehead, like Abe Vigoda,” she explained to Ethan.

  “That’s right. I was sitting next to them,” Orbra said. “He and Jean were talking about how it was such a small world because Trace had done some work for his company in Chicago back in the…Sixties I think it was. And how they were both here in Wicks Hollow that night.”

  “Yes, I remember now,” said Iva. “He made the connection because of Jean’s last name. ‘Fickler,’ he said. ‘Not a very common name—wonder if it’s any relation to the man who handled some of our business.’ That’s how they figured out the connection. Tracer did commercial real estate,” she said to Ethan. “That’s where he and Jean made a lot of their money—real estate investments.”

  “Did anyone catch his name?” he asked. “And can you tell me anything about him at all? What he looked like—besides the unibrow?”

  “A yoo-na-brown?” Maxine demanded. “What the hell is that? Some sort of—”

  “He was probably seventy—about Hollis’s age. He teed off from the senior spot too,” Iva said, speaking firmly over her friend. “Not as tall as Hollis—definitely not as good-looking. I noticed Hollis right away, of course—all that gorgeous silver hair. The Abe Vigoda guy was shorter and kind of skinny.”

  “He looked like Yodi—or Yogi. Who’s the green guy with the big ears who talks funny?” Maxine said.

  “That’s Yoda,” Ethan replied, then buried his smile in the cold Guinness that had just appeared in front of him. Little flecks of ice from the chilled glass slid down the sides.

  Then he sobered. The man who’d knocked Diana around when she caught him sneaking in her house was taller and bigger than she was—or at least, that was how she remembered it. Of course, in the moment of shock and fear, she might have misjudged.

  “Did anyone get any more information about the Abe Vigoda man?” Ethan wasn’t even certain who Abe Vigoda was, but he was going to Google him as soon as he had the chance. He knew better than to pull out his smartphone in front of the Tuesday Ladies. “His name? Company he worked for? Anything?”

  “It was an auto company I think,” Orbra said. “Something about Auto…Technicians…”

  “AutoXTech?” said Baxter.

  “That could be it.”

  “They’re in that big lawsuit with LavertPiper. I’ve been following the case because I’m reporting on it for the Grand Rapids Press.” Bax’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. What was the name of the law firm Diana works for?”

  “McMillan something,” said Maxine. Her tone and eyes were back to eagle-eye sharp and contained. Almost frightening, Ethan thought, looking at her. When she was like that, Maxine reminded him of a crow: very smart, very loud and caustic, and very predatory.

  She must have been a real badass back in the day when she worked as a chemical engineer. She had to have been: a black woman in the late Sixties/early Seventies, working alongside a slew of white men in a male-dominated industry. No wonder she didn’t take any crap from anyone.

  “McNillan, Busher, Percy, and Stone,” said Bax, who was slyly looking at his smartphone under the table. “That’s Diana’s law firm, and they’re also the firm handling the suit.”

  Ethan felt a sharp tingle of interest. Hmm. Diana worked for the firm that was handling a high-profile case, and a man who worked for the company being sued had been in Wicks Hollow back in mid-April, talking to Jean Fickler. Jean hadn’t been one to hold back bragging about her niece—or chatting with anyone, for that matter—so she’d surely mentioned the connection between Diana Iverson, her law firm, and the Abe Vigoda man’s company AutoXTech.

  And then barely a month later, Jean was murdered—there was no question in Ethan’s mind that it had been murder; they were just waiting for the confirmation from the exhumation and autopsy—and a few weeks later, when Diana came to Wicks Hollow, Jean’s house was broken into. Multiple times.

  There was no way that was all coincidental.

  But how it all fit together he wasn’t certain yet.

  Later that night, Ethan scrolled through all the options on his streaming services for the third time in fifteen minutes. He yawned, muttering aloud, “Can’t believe there’s nothing good on any of these.”

  The truth was, there probably was something good on one of them, but nothing seemed to catch his interest. Not even the Tigers baseball game, which was late as they were playing on the West Coast.

  After their dinner at the Roost, Bax had come back to the cabin to hang out and shoot the shit, but he left around ten-thirty as he had to be in Grand Rapids early the next morning.

  And now Ethan was just plain restless.

  And, dammit, he knew the reason.

  No matter what he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about Diana. Despite having been burned by not one but two women, here he was, slipping into the sweet lure of another. And this one was a lawyer—by all accounts a major ballbuster and used to manipulating information and facts in order to do her job. God, he’d be putty in her hands if he actually fell for her and she put her mind to it.

  He wasn’t even certain what it was that attracted him so strongly—besides her looks. And he well knew there was more to a woman than the dressing.

  Diana could be frosty, emotionless, and condescending…but he’d uncovered her softer, more relaxed side with its quirky sense of humor. And he couldn’t deny she was sharp and intelligent. But most of all, when she’d looked at him with those blue eyes, so shocked and grateful that he believed her about Jean’s murder and her haunting the place…he couldn’t help but feel protective about her—and a whole lot of other less innocent feelings as well.

  But she was still tied up with that tool Wertinger. And much as his hormones despised him for it, Ethan actually didn’t want her to give in to the raging attraction that kept flaring between him and Diana.

  Because if she
did, that would make her no better than Jenny—or Wertinger himself, for that matter.

  That was one thing Ethan couldn’t tolerate, wouldn’t be party to: infidelity.

  Cady whined for the millionth time in the last half hour, smearing her nose against one of the windows. Her hackles stood on end and she growled faintly, then turned and charged toward Ethan. She whined again, bumping her damp nose under his arm, trying to lift it off the armrest of the chair in which he’d reclined.

  “Oh, all right.” He folded up the recliner and hauled himself upright. “You see a squirrel out there or something? Hope it’s not another skunk.” He opened the door for the lab to shoot out into the shadows.

  Ethan stepped out too, taking a deep breath of pleasantly cool air. Then, he sniffed again. “Smells like something’s burning,” he said aloud. “Cady!”

  The dog came rushing back to the clearing, barking sharply. Ethan could smell the acrid odor of burning wood coming in on the breeze. He frowned and stepped off the porch as his lab barked again. “What is it? You see something out there? No one would be burning leaves at this time of night,” he said. “And it’s pretty late for a fire…”

  He looked up at the circle of black, star-studded sky through the openings of the pine trees and saw a faint mist of smoke hovering over them, dulling the brightness of those celestial bodies. The wind was coming from the southwest. He looked in that direction and, through the trees, saw a faint, oh so faint, glow.

  A fire.

  Diana.

  Chapter Twelve

  Fear slammed Ethan, and before he had a chance to think, he was running into the house to grab his keys. He shoved his feet into the closest pair of shoes—boots—and Cady, as if she’d been waiting for him to catch on, jumped into the jeep without waiting for an invitation, barking her head off the whole time. He followed, jamming the key into the ignition and grinding the gears as he tore out of the narrow trail and toward the triple fork in the road.

  Before he even reached the clearing where Jean’s house was, he saw the orange blaze shooting into the sky from the back of the structure. The gold Lexus stood in the drive and Ethan felt his heart leaping into his throat.