by B. J Daniels
“No,” Laci said beside her. “She didn’t.”
Arlene had caught Laney in the middle of saying something. It was the least flattering photograph Laney had ever seen of herself. But to make matters worse, Arlene had “coupled” Laney with Deputy Sheriff Nick Rogers as a “match.” His photo was at least better than hers.
“I can’t believe this,” Laney said. “She put me up on her Web site without my knowledge?” And surely Nick hadn’t signed up on Meet-a-Mate, had he?
Laci reached over and advanced to the next photograph. “At least she got one of me that isn’t too bad, and look—you can see some of the desserts I made in the background.”
“Wait a minute,” Laney said as she stared at the photograph of her sister. “Arlene didn’t take this one.” The photograph had been shot down the table so even though Arlene had cropped out the people at the dessert table, she hadn’t been able to get them completely out of the photograph.
“You’re right,” Laci said. “That’s Arlene’s hand there. I recognize her ring and that must be her daughter Charlotte’s hand complete with fake fingernails.”
“But whose hand is that?” Laney shivered. “That must be Geraldine’s reaching for the last macaroon.” She looked over at her sister. “I’ve got to tell Nick about this. If there’s more of these photographs, there could be one of the killer putting the poison macaroon on the plate.”
* * *
NICK FOUND MADDIE OUT behind her mother’s house working in the flower garden. She seemed lost in a world of her own, oblivious to everything but the dark soil she was digging in.
“Hello, Maddie.”
She started, surprise and instant fear in her eyes. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”
He’d purposely parked down the road and walked. The times he’d called, her mother had always told him her daughter wasn’t home. Maddie had taken to parking her car behind the house or in the garage, so even the times he’d stopped by, Sarah Cavanaugh had covered for Maddie.
Nick had known he was getting a runaround. He could have pushed it, but he hadn’t. As worried as he’d been about Maddie, he hadn’t had an official reason to force a conversation. Until now.
“Did you used to help Geraldine with her gardening?” he asked as he took a seat on a small bench beside a bed of petunias.
“Sometimes,” Maddie said looking nervous.
“I’ve never raised anything in a garden, but I’d like to try sometime.”
She looked up at him. “Don’t people have gardens in Houston?”
“Sure, the ones who live outside the city. I was a city kid though, all concrete and asphalt. My mother used to have this pot with cherry tomatoes in it that she kept in the window. That’s about the closest I ever got to real dirt.”
“That’s sad,” she said as she turned a clump of earth with her spade, loosening it, before digging up what must have been a weed because she tossed it into a pile she’d made behind her on the grass.
“What did Geraldine grow?” he asked.
“Why do you keep asking me about her?”
“I still have to find out who killed her,” he said.
“But what she grew doesn’t have anything to do with her being dead,” Maddie said.
“Doesn’t it?” he asked.
She stared down at her spade. “I don’t know anything about it. I already told you that.”
“Tell me this. A year ago this month, did you help her put in a new flower bed beside her house?”
She looked up in shock, her eyes wide.
“Who helped her with the body?” Nick asked.
“What?”
“Her husband’s body. Geraldine wouldn’t have been able to move the body by herself. I asked around. Ollie was a big man. She would have needed help. Your help since you were her friend. Her only close friend.”
Maddie was shaking her head, her eyes full of tears. “He had a heart attack. She couldn’t afford to have him buried.”
“You know better than that. You helped her cover up what she’d done. Why?”
Maddie was crying now, sobbing as if a dam had broken. “She was nice to me. She was teaching me to crochet and cook and to grow flowers. She said I was like a daughter to her. She let me make messes. She never yelled at me if I didn’t get it right.”
He stared at the girl. “Didn’t your own mother do that?”
“Mother hated it when I made a mess. She would shoo me outside. I would go to Geraldine’s and she would...” She cried as if there was no end to her tears, no longer able to speak.
“Who did you tell about Ollie?” Nick asked when she’d caught her breath.
She glanced toward the house and made a swipe at her tears.
“It’s just you and me,” Nick said. He’d been relieved to see that Sarah’s car was gone when he’d driven by the house before he’d parked down the road. “Maddie, whoever you told about what happened was blackmailing Geraldine. Was it Bo you told?”
She shook her head frantically.
“Geraldine was running out of money. I think she told her blackmailer that she wasn’t going to pay him anymore. Maybe she even threatened to turn herself in—and him with her—so he killed her.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I swear it.” She glanced toward the house again.
“But someone figured it out, figured out that Geraldine killed Ollie?” he asked.
She was crying again, stabbing the spade into the ground as she spoke. “Ollie was sick. He didn’t know what he was doing. She didn’t mean to kill him, just stop him from hurting me.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God, Maddie.” He reached for her, drawing her to him as she sobbed in his arms. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” he kept saying. But it was far from all right.
Everything was starting to make sense. The change Laney said she’d seen in her cousin after last summer. The way Maddie had let Bo and his family mistreat her. It all made a sick kind of sense. Anyone familiar with sexual-abuse victims would have recognized the symptoms sooner.
Maddie’s sobs finally slowed, then shuddered to a stop.
“Geraldine killed him because he was hurting you,” Nick said softly. “That’s why you helped her bury his body.” He pulled back to look in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, Maddie. You have to know that.”
She nodded, but he could see that she didn’t really believe it.
“Who figured it out, Maddie? Who was blackmailing Geraldine?” Who had taken advantage of what had happened to this young woman and used it to extort money from the one person Maddie had loved and trusted?
Maddie looked toward the house again.
He felt her shudder and turned slowly, already knowing what he would see—Sarah Cavanaugh’s face in the window.
“Your mother?”
* * *
LANEY WAS EXCITED WHEN SHE heard Nick’s voice on the phone. She’d even been thinking about calling him. Maybe inviting him to dinner. Getting Laci to cook something special and disappear for the evening.
“Laney, I need your help,” Nick said.
“Of course you do,” she joked, then belatedly registered that he didn’t sound like himself. She dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Maddie. Can we come right over?”
“Of course,” she said. “But, Nick, what—” She realized he’d hung up. She stood holding the receiver, her heart pounding so hard her chest hurt. Maddie. A thousand thoughts chased around in her head. But he’d said we. Can we come over? He had to mean him and Maddie. So it couldn’t be that bad, right?
Unfortunately, as she went to wait on the porch, Laney kept hearing the tone of Nick’s voice. Something was terribly wrong. She stood at the railing watching the road as she’d done her fi
rst day here this summer, only this time, she knew it would be bad news.
Maddie looked a mess when she got out of the patrol car. Laney could see that she’d been crying. Her face was puffy and red, her eyes downcast.
Laney ran to her and threw her arms around her cousin. Bo Evans. That was what it had to be about. What had that man done now? It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, they would deal with it. She would deal with it. As she held her cousin, she watched Nick get out of the car. He looked devastated.
“I’m getting you dirty. I was planting flowers,” Maddie said as she pulled back to look down at her dirty gardening clothes and the soil on her hands. Tears welled in her eyes. “Can I get a shower?”
“Just a minute,” Nick said. He went into the house, leaving them alone.
“What’s wrong, Maddie?” Laney asked.
But her cousin only shook her head. “I just need a shower. And some clothes. I need some clothes.”
“Of course.” The monotone of her cousin’s voice was enough to scare Laney. Something horrible had happened. But what?
Nick came out of the house and nodded to Maddie. She went inside, her movements like those of a sleepwalker as her shoes scuffed across the porch.
“What happened?” Laney demanded in a whisper the moment Maddie was out of earshot.
He raised a finger, stepped in the house and returned a few moments later. “I can hear the water running. I think she’s in the shower. I removed anything she could hurt herself with from the bathrooms.”
Laney felt her eyes widen, then tear as she swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Why would she hurt herself?”
“I think you’d better sit down.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. She dropped into the chair on the porch, the day’s heat making waves across the dark soil of the road, a faint breeze carrying the scent of hay and dust and inevitably the end of summer. The end of a lot of things.
Laney would never forget that moment or the way Nick drew his chair up next to hers and cupped her hands in his and softly said the words that shattered her heart.
* * *
NICK HELD LANEY IN HIS ARMS. He could feel her pain, her anger. He was having trouble dealing with his own. Sometimes he hated being a cop. He’d thought he’d escaped it up here in Montana. But human nature could be ugly and geography didn’t change that.
At the sound of water shutting off inside the house, Laney hurriedly dried her eyes and pulled back from him.
“I need to see to my cousin,” she said. “What about Aunt Sarah?”
“She’s agreed to turn herself in.”
“Does Uncle Roy know?” Laney asked.
Nick nodded. “He didn’t take it well.”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t. Thank you. I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea.”
“None of us did,” Nick said. “She needs counseling.”
Laney nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll see that she gets whatever she needs.”
“I knew you would.” He rose. “I’ll call you.”
Laney nodded as she opened the screen door and stepped inside the house.
Nick moved through the afternoon heat to his car. He rolled down the windows as he drove slowly back toward Whitehorse. He felt sick to his stomach. He was just thankful that Maddie had Laney and Laci in her life.
Not far down the road, he saw Chaz coming down the road pulling his wagon along the edge of the barren pit. Prince trotted beside the boy, his tongue lolling. The day had gotten fierce and even now with the sun dipping toward the western horizon, the heat still beared down oppressively.
Nick slowed the car as he came alongside the boy. “How did it go?” he asked, glancing toward the wagon.
“No one claimed the bat,” Chaz said, sounding apologetic. “I asked everyone. I don’t know where Prince got it.”
Possibly not from anyone’s house. Someone could have thrown the bat away. The dog could have gotten it from anywhere.
“Did you make that list for me?” Nick asked.
“Yes, sir.” He dug a stubby piece of pencil from his pocket, then a wadded-up scrap of paper. “Sorry, it’s kind of messy. But I printed real neat so you could read it.”
Nick smiled. “You did a great job.” He glanced at the list, then put it on the seat next to him. “Would you mind if I took the bat to see if I can find its owner?”
Chaz shook his head, clearly relieved since everything else had been accounted for, and handed Nick the baseball bat.
“In the meantime—”
“I’m going to keep Prince at home,” the boy said with a grin.
“Good thinking,” Nick said. “You might stay close to home as well.” He told himself that the dog had probably found the baseball bat in a ditch or a trash can. If, as Nick suspected, the stain on the bat was blood, then the owner wouldn’t have kept the weapon in his house, he would have disposed of it.
But as Nick drove back to Whitehorse, he couldn’t help worrying as he glanced back to see the silhouette of the boy and his dog before both disappeared from view.
Chapter Eleven
“Maddie has agreed to get counseling,” Laney said when Nick answered the phone Saturday. She couldn’t believe how good it was to hear his voice. She hadn’t seen him since he’d brought her the horrible news about Maddie. “Laci went with her to Billings.”
“I’m glad. And Bo?”
“The deal Laci made with Maddie was that Bo wouldn’t know where she was.”
“Good,” he said.
“So, you’re staying for a while longer? Your grandfather told me you usually only stay a couple of weeks in the summer.”
He sounded worried. Did he think she was staying because of him?
“Don’t worry, I have to get back to work soon. But I can’t leave until I’m sure that Maddie is all right.” And until Geraldine’s murderer was caught. Unless she already had been, Laney thought, thinking of her aunt Sarah.
Laney couldn’t stand to think of what her aunt had done. “I can’t believe Aunt Sarah didn’t get Maddie help. And to use what she knew to bleed Geraldine dry...” She shook her head.
“Sarah was like everyone else. She apparently believed Geraldine was rich and wouldn’t miss the money. At least that’s her story,” Nick said.
Laney sighed in disgust. “Do you think Geraldine knew that the person blackmailing her was Maddie’s own mother?”
“I don’t think she had any idea.”
Laney braced herself and asked, “Did Aunt Sarah kill Geraldine?”
“She swears she didn’t.”
“You believe her?”
“There’s no proof that she did. It will be up to the county attorney to decide what to charge her with. Sarah was smart enough not to put the money in her account, but she has admitted to blackmailing Geraldine.”
“My uncle Roy is divorcing her,” Laney said. “I’ve heard he’s putting the place up for sale. He can’t forgive Aunt Sarah and he’s just so ashamed. I know how he feels, but a part of me is sorry for her. I think she thought marrying a Cavanaugh was a bigger deal than it was. Maddie told me that her mother felt she wasn’t good enough for the rest of the family, that they looked down on her.”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I’m very familiar with that feeling in my own family,” Nick quipped.
This was more like the Nick Rogers she’d come to know. Not the one who’d sounded so businesslike on the phone just moments before. She chewed at her lip for a moment. “I’ve missed you.”
Silence.
Then a sigh. “I’ve missed you, too. Laney—”
“I was thinking you might come out for dinner tonight. I’m not as good a cook as my sister, but I try.”
More silence. She could hear her pulse pound
ing in her ears, her heart a drum inside her chest. What was it about this man? Why did it matter so much? She didn’t know. She just knew it did matter.
“I can’t tonight, but thanks for the offer.”
“Okay, how about tomorrow night then?” she asked, shocked by her own boldness.
She heard him shuffle his feet, move something on his desk, and grimaced. “Are you sure about this, Laney?”
Yes. No. “I’ll be going back to Arizona Monday.” She almost added that she had stumbled across something that might help solve Geraldine’s murder, but she hated that she’d resorted to even telling him she was leaving to get him to come over for dinner. And she wasn’t sure Arlene even had the photos in her camera anymore.
“What time?” he said, sounding resigned.
“How does seven sound?” she asked, more excited than she’d been in too long to remember.
“Seven. Fine. What can I bring?”
“Just your appetite,” she said and wanted to bite her tongue.
A beat of silence when she knew they were both thinking about a completely different kind of appetite that had nothing to do with food.
“I’ll see you at seven.”
She hung up before he would change his mind. She’d heard his fear. Had he been hurt in a relationship? Was that why he was so afraid of where this was going between the two of them?
Or was he just afraid of being alone with her?
Well, tomorrow night he wouldn’t have a choice. It would just be the two of them, alone on a warm summer night. For the last time.
* * *
NICK MENTALLY KICKED HIMSELF for accepting Laney’s invitation. He’d promised himself he’d keep his distance. Especially since he’d be leaving as well. Right after dinner. Right after he said goodbye to Laney.
It had felt like a death sentence. Hell, it could very well be one if Keller got word he’d returned to the state of California.
He was glad Laney was going back to Arizona. Mesa wasn’t that far from L.A. Depending on how things went, maybe... He shoved that thought away. He couldn’t let himself go down that road. Even if things went well in California, he wasn’t sure she’d want to see him once she knew who he really was.
