Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel)

by Johnson, Janice Kay

  “Okay.” He nodded at the artist. “Burton.”

  “Chief.”

  By the time she got in Daniel’s Honda and glanced back at the house, Elias Burton had disappeared inside and the door was shut. She shivered without even knowing why.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Daniel rubbed a circle clear on his steam-clouded bathroom mirror and grunted at the sight of his face. He hadn’t slept well last night, and it showed. A day’s growth of beard didn’t help. He looked like someone he ought to be arresting.

  He tossed the damp towel in the hamper and went out into the bedroom to get dressed before he shaved. He’d gotten pants on when his phone rang. He had to circle the bed to grab it.

  “Yeah?”

  “Chief?” It was another of his young officers, Tony Diaz, and he sounded excited. “I walked around back of Ms. Stedmann’s house, the way you asked us to. I think someone’s broken in.”

  “You think?”

  “You know how the back door has glass in it? A pane is broken.”

  “All right. I’ll be there in ten.”

  Well, shit. He’d expected this, and wished there was more he could have done more to prevent it. Sophie had followed his suggestion and paid a locksmith to add a couple of decent deadbolts. He’d been having frequent patrols go by Doreen’s house, and asked officers to regularly do a walk-around. But all someone who wanted to break in would have had to do was wait until a patrol came and went, knowing he’d have an undisturbed hour or more. And, damn it, the best deadbolt in the world didn’t prevent someone from breaking a window.

  He finished dressing, poured coffee into a travel cup, and reached for his phone again, dialing Sophie’s.

  He was disconcerted by how eager he was to hear her voice.

  “Daniel?”

  “Someone broke into your aunt’s place last night. I’m on my way over there right now.”

  “Oh, no.” Pause. “Do you want me to come, too?”

  He hesitated. Yeah, he wanted to see her. But what if the intruder hadn’t just been looking for something? What if he’d expressed his rage in destruction? Daniel had seen plenty of scenes that would make any normal human being sick. It would be worse for Sophie, damaged by her mother’s death, and now having lost someone else she loved.

  Given that she was now the owner of her aunt’s house, though, how could he protect her from whatever had been done to it?

  “All right,” he said finally, unhappy but resigned. “I’ll check it out first. Get there when you can.”

  She agreed and they signed off, Daniel going out the door.

  Diaz, a stocky kid who was yet a year younger than Ron Slawinski, was sitting in his parked patrol car in front of Doreen’s bungalow. At least he didn’t blush when he had to deal with attractive women the way Ron did.

  He got out to meet his chief, bluster in his walk. “You think someone could still be in there?”

  “No. Who was on last night?” Damn it, he should know— Oh, yeah. “Kreiger. I’ll check with him later, find out when he last came by.” Assuming he’d gotten his ass out of his car and walked around the house checking windows and doors the way he’d been told to.

  Although he had the keys with him, Daniel made the decision to follow in the intruder’s footsteps and, after telling his officer to wait out front for Ms. Thomsen’s arrival, went around back. Sure enough, a single pane had been knocked out. The back yard was surrounded with a six-foot, solid board fence, which had probably helped contain the sound of breaking glass. Daniel snapped on a pair of latex gloves and tried the knob, finding it unlocked.

  Glass crunched beneath his feet when he stepped in. He ignored it, his first reaction relief. The laundry room and then kitchen looked untouched. Somebody might have looked in cupboards and drawers, but hadn’t dumped out canisters or done any damage.

  Probably hadn’t bothered with even a cursory search in here, he suspected. Doreen was unlikely to have stowed auction items in a cupboard with her pots and pans.

  Heck, she hadn’t even stowed all the pots and pans in cupboards. The countertops were cluttered with groceries that had never been put away, a scattering of pan lids beside the stove, an open box of recipes with several taken out as if she hadn’t made up her mind which to cook, post-its and scraps of paper with names and phone numbers or indecipherable notes to herself in a chicken scratch, and a few things that looked like she might have set them down and quit noticing they were still there, like… Well, it was a plastic dolphin. Maybe a child’s toy, he wasn’t sure.

  He’d already jotted down all those names and phone numbers. It looked to him as if every scrap of paper was in the same place as when he’d last seen them. Not touching anything, he walked on through to the living room, where the search finally became apparent. He’d left some of the blinds and drapes drawn, but not all. Now they were, which had allowed the intruder to use a flashlight unseen. This room, too, had been messy, but in a comfortable way. Doreen didn’t leave food out to rot or dirty dishes to attract ants, nothing like that. She just hadn’t seen any necessity for reshelving books or putting coats or shoes in a closet. DVDs were stacked precariously atop the player, a remote control lay on the sofa cushion atop a scattering of newspapers, and a matronly white bra hung off the edge of the coffee table. She’d maybe stripped it off when she got in the door and tossed it aside. Doreen had been buxom.

  Or the mysterious lover had stripped it off her and tossed it aside, it occurred to Daniel, except if that were the case he’d expect some panties and other clothes to be similarly discarded.

  What he could see was that drawers had been dumped and everything pulled out of an antique buffet. China and glass was shattered on the hardwood floor.

  He heard a car pull up right then, and went to open the front door. Sophie had leapt out and was hurrying up the walkway, Diaz trotting behind her saying, “Ms. Thomsen! You can’t go in until the Chief says—”

  Daniel held up a hand. “It’s okay. Hey,” he said, looking at Sophie. “It’s not that bad.”

  Her face was almost as tense as it had been that first day, when she’d greeted him after finding Doreen dead. “It makes me sick to think of someone touching her stuff.”

  “I understand.” He stepped aside to let her enter, indulging himself by just looking at her as she stared around in dismay.

  She wore jeans again, but this time they were a bright royal blue with a skinny cut that reminded him what gorgeous long legs she had and did a nice job of outlining the curve of her ass, too. She wore a sweatshirt over a thin T-shirt, the hem of which he could see. She’d be ready if the day got warmer.

  Her hair, the color of old gold, was bundled carelessly at the back of her head. Yesterday, the breeze off the ocean had pulled tendrils loose until she’d finally stuffed the elastic that held it up in her pocket and let the mass fall over her shoulders. The texture had surprised him when he drove his fingers into it. Blondes so often had fine hair, but hers was strong and thick.

  And, damn it, his body was hardening just because he was looking at her. Yeah, and remembering how it felt to kiss her, to feel her softening against him. Her hands kneading, her tongue meeting his.

  She hadn’t seemed to want to talk about that kiss any more than he had. Then he’d been grateful. Now, he found himself feeling irritated. Maybe it had been casual to her, nothing that deserved a second thought.

  He wanted her, and, deep reservations or no, he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to resist starting something with her if she was willing.

  He pulled his thoughts from below his belt when he saw how stricken she suddenly appeared, staring at that bra. After an instant, her hand snaked out and she bundled it up, clutching it to her as if to hide it. No, what she was doing was shielding her aunt from what must seem unbearable nakedness.

  “Whoever it was must have been looking for auction items,” she said, swinging around suddenly to pin him with those big, green-gold eyes. “But that doesn’t make sense.�
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  Hoping she didn’t notice the fit of his chinos, he raised his eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”

  “We’re agreed that half the town had a key to the unit.”

  That was a slight exaggeration, but he nodded provisional agreement.

  “Borrowing one, with permission or not, wouldn’t have been that hard.”

  Again, he couldn’t argue. It could have happened that way, Doreen surprising him – only he’d brought a replacement lock, which suggested he’d cut off the original.

  “If somebody wanted something back he’d given,” she continued, “all he had to do was ask.”

  So that thought had crossed her mind, too. “But that would have drawn attention to whatever it was.”

  She frowned. “Well, that’s true, but…what could it possibly be that’s so important? And what would it matter if she said something?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “You must have ideas.”

  All he could do was speculate, but sometimes throwing out ideas clarified his own thinking – or he might get her thinking. This break-in suggested the killer hadn’t found what he was looking for that day at the storage unit. That meant Sophie would come across it sooner or later.

  The more thought they’d given to it, the more likely she was to have an ah-ha moment when she saw whatever it was.

  “It could still be that simple theft is the goal.” He threw that out, because you never knew. He’d seen murders committed for the most trivial of reasons. “Somebody really wants that Dale Chihuly glass piece, or some of the more valuable jewelry you told me about.”

  Which, as far as he knew, she had yet to find.

  “Whoever he is killed to get it,” he continued, “and by God he’s determined not to have done it for nothing.”

  She didn’t look any more satisfied than he felt by that explanation.

  “He or she needs something back that wasn’t meant to be given.” This struck him as a hell of a lot more likely. “You’re right, Doreen probably – no, undoubtedly - would have returned it, and graciously, but, like I said, she might also have mentioned that she had to other people. It could be something he isn’t supposed to have. Maybe the fact he ever had it in his possession threatens his marriage or his job. Or it belonged to someone else who is demanding it back. Could be he stole it in the first place, and doesn’t dare let word get out he ever had it. Maybe somebody else donated it, our guy heard about it and he’s angry.”

  “It has to be something with real meaning to Aunt Doreen’s killer.” Sophie looked around the living room again, as if expecting to see whatever it was. “Not just, I don’t know, something he covets.”

  “That’s what I think.” He followed her gaze. “It’s got to be fairly small, given the places he searched.”

  “That gives us something to go on.”

  “Yeah, but it makes me even more uneasy about you bringing the small stuff back to the cottage with you at night.” Seeing her startled expression, he realized he’d damn near growled. To divert her, he said, “I haven’t been upstairs yet. You want me to take a look first?”

  He let her follow him, even though he was still a little uneasy at what they’d find. If there’d been the kind of vicious destruction he’d originally feared, though, it likely would have started downstairs.

  Unless this all had to do with Doreen Stedmann’s mystery lover – assuming he existed at all – and he’d channeled his rage at her bedroom.

  Tucked up under the roof and dormers were only two rooms and a bathroom. One of the two was a combination guest room and home office. In both it and the bedroom, closet doors stood open and contents had been rifled. The kind of big plastic drawers that slid under a bed had been pulled out and dumped. Ditto the drawers on the dresser and bedside stand.

  Daniel left Sophie exclaiming over the mess in her aunt’s bedroom and went back to the office to take a closer look at the desk and computer. He gave mouse a nudge and the monitor slowly lit. The surge protector, he saw, was turned on, which suggested the computer had been left on. By Doreen, or the intruder? He’d like to see what files had been opened, but he wanted the mouse and maybe keyboard to be fingerprinted first.

  “What are you thinking?” Sophie asked from behind him.

  He told her.

  “Well, whoever he is, he wouldn’t have found anything interesting on Aunt Doreen’s computer,” she said with certainty. “I showed you her list of donations.”

  Incomplete and with items in seemingly random order. He remembered.

  “So far as I know, nobody kept any better records. Certainly nothing that offered convenient information on what was stored where. The software I use actually has some provision for that, probably because smaller organizations may keep stuff at various volunteers’ houses, but Doreen just plunked everything into that same unit.”

  “Or let everyone and her sister have a key so they could plunk things in there,” he grumbled.

  “Right. Um…why are you still staring at the computer?”

  “Just wondering what she does have on there.”

  “She bragged about how she’d started paying bills online, so there’d be some financial information. She’d gotten really addicted to a couple of computer games, too. And she used it to write letters since she started developing some arthritis in her hands.” Sadness infused her voice, and he turned to look at her, guessing this was one of the moments when the reality of Doreen’s death was hitting her.

  In fact, she turned pain-filled eyes on him. “Can I start cleaning up?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to get someone in to fingerprint first. I’m sorry. It’ll make a bigger mess.”

  Despite a slight flinch, she said, “That’s okay. It’s just… Doesn’t everybody know to wear gloves these days?”

  Daniel grimaced. “Unfortunately. But people do get careless. If he was wearing something heavier than these—” he lifted a hand in the thin latex, “he might have had to take them off to use the computer.”

  She looked at it again. “I see.”

  “Did you bring stuff home with you again yesterday?” He knew that came out abruptly.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the trunk of my car.”

  Safe enough right now, then, with Diaz still lurking out front.

  “I want you to quit,” he said, “or else I’ll start spending evenings hanging around your cottage until you’re done with whatever you have to do, and then I can take it all home with me.”

  Or spend the night with her. The thought crossed his mind, but he didn’t say it aloud. The way her brow crinkled, he doubted that’s what she was thinking.

  “It will slow me down if I can’t work evenings.” She hesitated. “I suppose I could take a dinner break and go back out to the storage facility. With it staying light so late—”

  “It would be too damn deserted out there, and my officers are spread too thin for me to assign someone to you the additional hours. No. You don’t do it at all, or you get me.”

  Something she saw on his face made her gaze slide shyly away. “People will talk if you spend too much time with me.”

  “This is the twenty-first century.”

  She looked skeptical. “In Cape Trouble?”

  After a moment, his mouth tilted up in reluctant amusement. “You’re right. A town like this is lagging by a few decades. That doesn’t mean I give a damn what people say.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “Okay. We’ll see.”

  “I’ll walk you down,” he said. “I’ve assigned Slawinski to you again today, if he worked out okay.”

  She passed him and started toward the head of the stairs. “He was great,” she said over her shoulder. “I just wish I didn’t scare him.”

  You scare me.

  Damn. That was a stupid thing to think.

  But true, he admitted to himself.

  He saw her off, his eyes narrowing when he saw Diaz scoping her
out, but he didn’t say anything. Diaz might not blush, but he’d probably panic if she smiled at him. He wondered how many broken hearts she’d strewed behind her.

  And why she didn’t have a guy showing up every weekend to get his Sophie fix during this month she’d committed to her aunt’s cause.

  Hanging around tonight while she worked, that was one of the questions he’d have to ask. As he pulled out his phone to call Alex Mackay and ask to borrow a fingerprint tech from the county yet again, Daniel ignored the apprehension he felt at the possibility that Sophie would tell him she was already involved with someone.

  Damn. What had happened to his resolve to stay away from her?

  *****

  Sophie wasn’t sure she could concentrate enough to be productive with Daniel sharing the small living space in the cottage. She felt warm every time he looked at her, and if he wasn’t, she would be tempted to look at him. She pictured him relaxed in an easy chair reading, those long legs stretched out, or making himself a cup of coffee in the tiny kitchen, or even sharing the table while he used his own laptop.

  Wonderful. She wanted to think he was getting to her only because she was already so raw emotionally, but she had a bad feeling it was him. That she would have responded the same to him no matter when or where they’d met.

  Either way, she was afraid she’d end up hurt.

  She was also afraid she wasn’t going to be smart and say no when – if – he suggested he might as well spend the night since he was already there.

  Remembering the way he’d pulled back after kissing her, she knew it was possible he wouldn’t. He wanted her, she couldn’t be mistaken about that, but she might have freaked him out with all she’d told him. God. She’d practically been having flashbacks, right in front of him. She cringed, remembering the way her voice had become higher and childlike as she heard herself reliving that awful morning.

  Only Mommy was talking to a man and I didn’t know who that could be.

  Daniel had been unbelievably kind, but how could he help seeing her as pathetic and needy, even if he didn’t suspect she was unstable?