The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge

by Stewart, Mariah

  “A half a mil … half a mil …” She cleared her throat and tried again. “A half a million dollars in the bookcase?”

  “Inside a bunch of those fake books, you know, the hollow ones? I found them when I started packing things to do some remodeling. The whole house needed repainting … you can probably imagine what the place looked like and smelled like. Before I could do any real work, I had to clean it out, so I started easy, packing up the small stuff.”

  “What did you do next? After you realized what was in the fake books?”

  “I sat on the floor and counted it. And I did exaggerate a little,” he confessed. “It was more like four hundred and seventy thousand.”

  “Close enough to half a mil in my book,” she said. “Melissa never told you she had all this money?”

  “After she moved, she told me that someone had paid her to quit the Bureau, but that she didn’t know who it was, and while she said it was a lot of money, she never told me how much. I later found out that she hadn’t quite told the truth.”

  Vanessa digested this for a moment. “Why would someone pay her to leave her job?”

  “I suppose sooner or later, I need to tell you about Brendan.” His arm rested along the back of the bench, his fingers absently toying with the ends of her hair, which lay loose around her shoulders and partway down her back. He appeared to be deep in thought.

  “You don’t have to feel that you have to tell me. If it bothers you to talk about it, you don’t have to.”

  “Remember earlier, I said if you can’t share something about yourself with the person you sleep with, that maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping with them?”

  Vanessa nodded.

  “Well, I guess it’s my turn to walk the walk.” He turned to her slightly. “I guess the easiest place to start is the night my cousin Dylan—Connor’s brother—was killed. The short version is there was a sting operation in the works, a couple of drug dealers. Connor was supposed to be undercover to meet these guys and make the deal. At the last minute, Connor got pulled off the op and Dylan was sent in his place.” Grady paused and took a deep breath. It was obvious that it still bothered him deeply.

  “The official version was that Dylan was killed by one of the drug dealers being set up that night. But the truth was the shots were fired before the targets were even out of their cars. Melissa was part of the backup team; she was there. She saw someone slipping out of the building where the shots had come from carrying a high-powered rifle. Later, she realized this person was not on the roster for the operation. She didn’t realize at the time that he wasn’t supposed to be there because she’d yet to see the final list of agents who were assigned that night.”

  “Who had she seen coming out of the building?”

  “My brother Brendan.”

  “No one else saw him?”

  “Apparently not. Anyway, a week or so after that, out of the blue, Melissa told me she was quitting the Bureau—that she was burned out—and she was going to move to Montana. She and I had been dating for quite a while, and we started talking about me putting in for a transfer out west. She said she’d wait for me there, that she couldn’t wait to get away. I’ve known other agents who just got fried from the stress, so it didn’t strike me as particularly odd. But that wasn’t the real reason why she was quitting.”

  “What was the reason?”

  “The threat against her and her family, and the money she was offered to walk away and forget what she saw that night, came from Brendan.”

  “She told you this?”

  “No. She never discussed this with me. If she had, Brendan would be in prison right now, instead of in hell, where he belongs. I was able to put it all together after Brendan died.”

  “Why did your brother want Connor dead?”

  “Brendan was involved in some very nasty business in Central America, and he thought that Connor was onto him. So he planned to use this op as a means to get Connor out of the way.”

  “Except at the last minute, Dylan went in Connor’s place.”

  Grady nodded. “Brendan was afraid that Melissa had caught on to the fact that he’d fired the killing shot. His way of dealing with her was to make her disappear. Unfortunately, Brendan’s partner—Luther Blue, another agent—wasn’t convinced that Melissa would keep her mouth shut, so he killed her.”

  “But there was still Connor …”

  “By then, Luther had figured out that Brendan had lost all interest in killing close to home, so he was a liability. Luther set up Brendan, then killed him.”

  “And then he would have killed Connor, too?”

  “There would have been no need for that. Connor had seen Brendan, not Luther. He had no reason to connect Luther to Brendan’s dealings in Santa Estela.”

  “Where’s this Luther guy now?”

  “He’s in a maximum-security federal prison serving several life sentences. He offered to name names—give up all his international contacts, from the very top of the trafficking organization to the bottom, in exchange for life in prison and the guarantee that he would not be turned over to any foreign government for prosecution.”

  “Trafficking? You mean, as in, people …?”

  “Kidnapping and selling kids from Central America on the international black market.”

  “That’s just …” She shook her head. There were no words.

  “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  “But if Melissa didn’t tell you all this, who did?”

  “It came out in Luther’s confession.”

  “And it bothers you that you had to hear the truth from him.”

  “The consequences of her lies bother me. If she’d told me the truth, she’d still be alive. Brendan would have been brought to justice along with everyone else in that organization. The operation would have been shut down sooner.”

  “I understand all that. But didn’t it hurt you on a personal level that she hadn’t been truthful with you?”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted. “That, and the fact that after I realized that she’d known that Brendan was the one who’d bought her silence, I couldn’t help but wonder if she thought that marrying his brother might not have been a form of cheap insurance in case he got the idea later on to shut her up permanently.”

  “Oh, Grady, you don’t really think …”

  “It’s crossed my mind. The whole let’s-run-off-and-get-married thing was her idea, and while at the time it seemed spontaneous, now I have to ask myself if maybe she hadn’t seen it more as a survival tack than anything else. But …” He slapped his hands on his thighs, then stood. “I guess I’ll never know for certain.”

  “Your story makes mine sound like a soap opera.”

  “We’re not comparing. I hope you don’t think I was trivializing what happened to you.”

  “I didn’t for a second think you were. I thought you were sharing things that mattered with the person you sleep with.”

  “That’s exactly what it was.”

  “Then maybe you should finish it.”

  “I did finish it. I told you everything that happened.”

  “But you didn’t talk about what didn’t happen.” She tugged on his hand to pull him back down to the bench. “You didn’t get to confront Brendan and ask him why he did what he did. You didn’t get to ask Melissa all the questions you think you have answers to but want to hear her say that you’re right. You are so angry that they both died before they could fess up.”

  He sighed and leaned against the back of the bench, his hands in her lap since she held both of them.

  “You may not want to hear this, but it’s something that I have to say. And remember that you opened the door for it with what you just told me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sometimes people do things that hurt us so deeply, we’re certain that we’re never going to be right inside again. We want justice for the wrong that’s been done to us, but we can’t always make that happen. So then we have a choice. We can hold on to
those questions that can never be answered and those feelings that hurt us so much, and we can make them a part of our lives forever. Of course, if we do that, we’ll always hurt, and we’ll always be looking for answers that we’ll never get.”

  “Or …?”

  “Or we can put them aside, and make them not matter anymore.”

  “Excuse me, but are you the same woman who wanted to do a happy dance when I told her that her ex-husband was dead?”

  “That would be me. But here’s the thing. I started to put him behind me the day I put him in prison. Yes, I still have scars, inside and out, but they remind me to never let anyone else take charge of my life ever again. And yes, I have issues, but I don’t let them define me. I’ve made a life for myself, and I’m very happy here. I could make having been abused the most important thing in my life, but I’ve chosen to put it aside and focus on what I’ve done to take control of my life.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, that you might want to think about what it’s costing you to hold on to the anger you feel toward your brother and your wife. You can’t change what happened in either of those relationships. You will never know what motivated either of them. Do you know that you can’t seem to mention your brother without your jaw going tight?” Before he could respond, she added, “And why do you stay in that house, Grady? Your wife was murdered there. Why would you want to stay?”

  The bells from the church two blocks away began to chime.

  “It’s seven,” he told her after all the bells had rung. “We’re supposed to meet Hal and Maggie now.” He stood and took her hand.

  “All right,” she told him. “I’m sorry if I went too far.”

  He held up a hand as if to stop her from saying anything further. “No need to apologize.”

  They walked hand in hand to Walt’s at the end of the pier. When they were almost to the door, Grady said, “So I’m guessing this whole leave-the-anger-behind thing doesn’t apply to Maggie?”

  “Well, of course not. That only applies to old stuff that you have no chance of resolving.” She swung the restaurant door open. “Maggie’s going to be a thorn in my butt for a long, long time …”

  “There they are.” Maggie elbowed Hal. “They’re just coming in the door now.”

  “I see them.” Hal patted her arm. “I want you to calm down, now. Take a deep breath.”

  Maggie inhaled deeply several times.

  “One more for good measure,” Hal whispered as Vanessa and Grady approached the table.

  “Are you all right, Maggie?” Vanessa asked as she hung her bag over the back of the chair next to Hal’s.

  “I just …” Maggie paused. “I just had the hiccups.”

  “Oh, I hate it when I get those.” Vanessa turned to Hal. “So what happened to your cruise around the Bay?”

  “Aborted.” Hal smiled. “Old Carter was having trouble docking that whaler of his, so I had to give him a hand. Then we started talking, one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, we were seated out there at the bar having a cold one.”

  “How is Carter?” Vanessa took a sip of water from the glass the attentive waiter poured for her.

  “He’s doing better. Misses the wife, of course, but he’s keeping it together.”

  “Glad to hear it. I always liked him.”

  The waiter handed Grady and Vanessa menus.

  “Did you two already order?” Vanessa asked.

  “We were waiting for you,” Hal replied. “The specials are on the board there by the door. They have one of your favorites, Ness.”

  Vanessa turned and looked over her shoulder.

  “Yum. We know what I’m having.” She closed her menu.

  “I’ll join you there,” Hal said, and closed his as well. “No one does a better grilled tuna than the man Walt has working in his kitchen.”

  “That sounds great. I’ll have that as well.” Maggie added her menu to the pile.

  “Grady?” Hal asked.

  “I’m going with the swordfish.”

  Hal signaled for the waiter and gave the orders.

  “So how did you two spend the rest of the afternoon?” Hal asked.

  “We just walked around a bit, then sat and watched the sun float down onto the Bay,” Vanessa told him. “That’s how we knew you never made it out of your slip.”

  “Well, now, you know how old men are once they get talking about their boats.” Hal turned to Maggie. “I guess we bored you to death.”

  “Not at all,” Maggie assured him. She took a deep breath and asked Grady, “Are you planning on staying in St. Dennis for a while?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “I’m playing it by ear.”

  Hal took that to mean Grady would hang around until they figured out who was targeting Vanessa and why. He liked that about the young man, that he’d been concerned enough about Ness not to be so quick to leave when no one was really sure how serious the threat was. A man would be a fool not to know when two young people were circling around each other the way these two were over the past four days. Hal had been hoping the circling hadn’t been all on Vanessa’s part. Knowing that Grady was willing to change his plans to keep an eye on her … well, Hal couldn’t help but approve of that.

  “Hal tells me you live in Montana,” Maggie said.

  Grady nodded. “Not too far from Great Falls, if you know where that is.”

  “I do.” She nodded. “I was in that airport once, when my flight to Fargo got redirected due to bad weather.”

  “How do you like North Dakota?” Grady asked.

  “I like some things—I like all the space, and the scenery is beautiful. But it’s so cold, and the summer’s so short. But of course, you could say the same thing. We probably have similar seasons.”

  “Yeah. Winter and July.”

  Maggie laughed. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”

  “What part of the state do you live in, Mrs. Turner?”

  “Oh, call me Maggie. Everyone does. Even my children.” Maggie slanted a look at Vanessa. “I live a little southwest of Fargo.”

  “Did Vanessa tell me you raised sheep?”

  “Oh, no, no.” Maggie laughed again. “No, that was my late husband’s deal. He raised Cotswold sheep. They produce a very nice, long wool fleece. They tell me that people who spin their own wool like it, but since I don’t spin and I don’t knit, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Who’s minding the ranch while you’re here, Maggie?” Vanessa asked.

  “Oh, my late husband’s sons have been working the ranch for the past several years, since he—Carl Senior, that is—got sick. Wayne and the Carls have—”

  “The Carls?” Vanessa raised an eyebrow.

  “Carl Junior, and his son, Carl the third.” Maggie turned to Grady. “Yes, I know, the Turners were in a bit of a rut when it came to naming their children. Anyway, Carl’s boys have been taking care of the ranch and they say they’re staying on. This year they started raising turkeys as well, so I guess they’re determined to keep it going.”

  “Is that awkward for you?” Vanessa asked. Hal glanced at her over the top of his glasses, and she rephrased the question. “What I meant was, since your husband died—”

  “I understand exactly what you meant, and yes, of course, it’s awkward. Neither one of them would throw me a line if I fell in the middle of that Bay out there.” Maggie pointed out the window. “I understand why, of course—their father was an older man of some means when we married, he’d been widowed for about twenty years, and he’d neglected to tell the boys that he wanted to remarry. So I had three strikes against me going in.

  “But it wasn’t what either of the boys thought. I didn’t want the property, and they are welcome to the house and the money their dad left behind.” She smiled somewhat wryly. “I’m just as happy to be someplace where it’s warm at this time of the year.”

  “So, are you planning on going back there?” Vanessa asked.

  Hal
was pretty sure he could tell by the look on Vanessa’s face that she was afraid of what Maggie’s answer was going to be.

  “I will.” Maggie nodded. “But mostly just to pick up my things. These past few years, I spent most of my time taking care of Carl. Now that he’s gone, there’s no place for me there.”

  “So where will you go?” Vanessa’s eyes narrowed as they focused on her mother.

  “I have no idea, and right now, I have no plans.” Maggie flashed her best smile. “Why, dear, were you thinking of asking me to stay with you for a while?”

  “I was just curious,” Vanessa replied, ignoring Maggie’s obvious plea for an invitation.

  “So, Grady”—Maggie turned her attention back to him—“what do you do in Montana? Do you ranch?”

  “No. I only have a few acres, not enough to raise much of anything,” he told her.

  “What do you do for a job? I understand you’re no longer with the FBI.”

  He nodded. “I left the Bureau a few years ago. Since then, I’ve qualified as a wilderness guide. I take groups or individuals camping, hiking, backpacking; that sort of thing.”

  “Can you make a living that way?” Maggie asked.

  “Maggie,” Vanessa admonished. “Why would you ask him that?”

  “Well, sweetie, you’ve been spending a lot of time with this young man this weekend.”

  “He’s … sort of … a bodyguard.” To Hal, Vanessa sounded defensive.

  “Well, then, let’s just say it’s maternal prerogative.”

  Vanessa set her glass on the table. “Where was your motherly concern when your just-turned-eighteen daughter wanted to marry a man who was twelve years older than she was?”

  “Vanessa, I told you at the time that I did not think that marrying Craig was a good idea.” Maggie’s glass hit the table as well.

  “You didn’t try to stop me.”

  “I could never stop you from doing a damned thing you wanted to do. You said you wanted to marry him and—”

  “No, no. I said he wanted to marry me. You were supposed to stop me. You were supposed to say he was too old and you weren’t going to let me do it.” Vanessa’s eyes flashed anger, and for a moment, Hal thought she was going to get up and walk out. “What did I know? I was only eighteen years old.”