Denise left them, her good-natured booming laugh growing softer the farther removed from them she got.
“I take it you two know each other,” Alex remarked as she slowly lowered herself into her rocking chair.
“Oh, yeah.” Ben remained standing, leaning against the wrought-iron porch railing. “We go way back.”
“All the way back to Friday.” Sierra took a seat next to Alex. “Has he told you yet why he’s here?”
“We were just about to get ’round to that when you showed up.” Alex gazed into the backyard, cursed, then picked up a rectangular object from beside her chair. She vigorously twirled it, emitting a racket.
He heard rustling, then caught a glimpse of the white tails of a family of deer disappearing into the woods.
“Darn deer keep eating up my flowers. I can keep ’em away with this thing when I’m out here.” She held up the object in her hand, a New Year’s Eve noise-maker. “But they come back when I’m asleep.”
“That’s because you used to buy extra apples at the orchard and leave them under the tree for the deer to eat,” Denise called through the screen door.
“I thought you were making me food, girl,” Alex called back. “Get cooking!”
Denise guffawed, and Ben felt himself smile. Mother and daughter had such an easy camaraderie he could see why Denise had welcomed Alex into her house. He liked to think he would have had that kind of relationship with his own mother if she’d lived. The familiar pain stabbed at him.
“Does the name Allison Blaine mean anything to you?” He was surprised his voice didn’t crack when he uttered it.
“Sure does,” Alex said with alacrity. “She’s the tourist who fell from the overlook.”
Sierra slanted him a pointed look at the police chief’s wording, one of the few times she’d met his eyes since arriving.
“Mind if I ask why you remembered the incident so quickly?” Ben asked.
“In the almost two years I was police chief, only two people died. Allison Blaine and Junior Brozek, who fell off his dirt bike. Heartbreaking story, that was. Junior might have lived if he’d been wearing a helmet.”
A clear-cut accident, Ben thought.
“Was there ever any thought that Allison Blaine’s death wasn’t an accident?” he asked.
“’Course there was,” Alex answered. “Good cops don’t assume anything’s the way it seems. Except this was.”
“How do you know?”
“We investigated. Talked to anybody who had contact with her. Found out her car had been spotted weaving near the overlook. Had her blood tested. It came back clean. Not even a drop of alcohol.”
Ben wasn’t surprised at the finding. He’d never known his mother to drink, not even a glass of wine at dinner. “Didn’t you find it suspicious that she was up at the overlook alone when it was almost dark?”
“Not after I talked to her parents, I didn’t,” Alex said. “They said she liked going up there. To think, if I remember right.”
It was a plausible explanation, but Ben wasn’t about to swallow it whole, especially because it was possible Alex Rawlings’s memory was faulty. He tried to think how to bring the conversation around to Dr. Whitmore without violating the deal he’d made with Sierra.
“Do you remember who’d been in contact with her?” he asked.
“It was a long time ago.” Alex scratched her gray head and squinted in thought. “Her parents, naturally. And those people who used to own Jimmy’s Diner. Elderly couple. They sold the place a couple years after I left town.”
She was talking about Gladys and Andy Stack, both of whom had passed away years ago. They’d been close friends of Ben’s maternal grandparents, who’d moved to Indigo Springs in part to help out at the restaurant.
“I met her once, too,” Alex announced.
Ben straightened from the railing, his news sense on alert.
“It was at the restaurant. She had a couple of kids with her. I only remember the littlest because he was a hellion. She was chasing him all over the place. Made me tired watching her.”
Connor Nash, Ben’s youngest brother, had been four at the time. He’d gone on to become one of the speediest high school running backs in the Philadelphia area, playing with a reckless style that made him hard to tackle.
“Did my father know her?” Sierra asked the question in a firm, steady voice.
“Not that I remember,” Alex said.
To Sierra’s credit, she didn’t give Ben another knowing look.
“Wouldn’t have been any reason for them to cross paths unless she got sick when she was in town,” Alex added.
“She didn’t,” Sierra said. “We already checked Dad’s records.”
“That’s right. You and your brother took over his practice, didn’t you?” Alex’s expression grew wistful. “Shame he’s gone. He was a fine doctor, but even a finer man. Did you know he was the reason I was police chief at all?”
“What do you mean?” Sierra asked.
“Like I was telling Ben here before you showed up, people weren’t real accepting of a female police chief twenty years ago. When word got out I was up for the job, some of the town bigwigs tried to stop it. Probably would have if Dr. Whitmore hadn’t stood up for me.”
“I didn’t know that,” Sierra said quietly.
“Dr. Whitmore didn’t go around singing his own praises,” Alex said. “That’s one of the reasons I loved that man.”
“Thank you for telling me, Alex,” Sierra said softly.
Ben bit back the question that sprang to mind, knowing it would incense Sierra and probably insult Alex.
He couldn’t help hearing it shouted in his brain, though.
If Alex felt that way about Dr. Whitmore, how likely was she to suspect him of any wrongdoing?
CHAPTER SEVEN
LATER THAT NIGHT Sierra felt herself tottering and hooked the heel of her shoe on the bottom of her bar stool to steady herself.
“The people in here falling out of their chairs usually have more than one drink.” Chuck Dudza, the sixtyish owner of the Blue Haven Pub, paused in the act of wiping down the bar. He nodded to the glass of mineral water she was nursing. “And they’re always drinking something stronger than that.”
She squirmed on the stool while she breathed in air that smelled of beer and peanuts. The darn thing really should have a back rest. “I didn’t think it was that noticeable.”
“What? That you’re uncomfortable being in here all by your lonesome? Yeah, it is.” He resumed his vigorous wiping while her gaze swept the bar, checking to see who else had noticed her uneasiness. Ben Nash, sitting at a table with the father and son who ran Pollock Construction, raised his glass to her. She quickly looked away.
“What brings you here tonight anyway, Doc?” Chuck asked. “I’ve only seen you in here before with that pharmacist.”
So Chuck hadn’t been in the bar Friday night when she’d sauntered in with her tight clothes and high heels and would have made a fool of herself if Ben hadn’t been so sweet.
She shoved the favorable thought of Ben from her mind, aware it was the second time her subconscious tried to give the infernal man points for being a decent human being. The verdict on that was still out.
“I need to talk to Jill about the festival.” It wasn’t the primary reason for her visit, but neither was it a lie. She and Jill were collaborating on the volunteer schedule. “Is she working tonight?”
“She’s on break.” Chuck glanced up at the red numbers on the neon clock above the rows of hanging glasses. “She should have been back fifteen minutes ago. That’s unlike her.”
Three young men who looked like they’d spent the day in the sun, probably hiking or rafting, approached the bar from one side. A couple closed in from the other direction.
“I’d check on her if I wasn’t the only one tending bar,” Chuck said.
“I’ll do it,” Sierra offered. It beat watching Ben Nash chat up Nick and Johnny Pollock. “Any id
ea where I should look?”
“Maybe at the park,” Chuck said. “She likes to go there when the weather’s good. You can take the exit by the restrooms. It’s shorter.”
Being careful not to lose her balance, Sierra got down from the tall stool. Ben was listening to something Nick Pollock said, nodding intently, his attention focused on the older man.
Was it possible Nick Pollock would remember her father had not been at the Jersey shore when Allison Blaine died?
He was about the age her father would have been had he lived. Yet Sierra had no idea if he’d known her father well enough to remember a detail like that.
Temporarily putting the problem out of her mind, she went in search of Jill, taking the path Chuck indicated.
The bar was only about a third full, but that was more of a crowd than Sierra had expected for a Monday night. The clientele seemed to be made up mostly of tourists. One of them, a woman in her early twenties wearing a very short, tight dress, pressed some buttons on the jukebox. Beyoncé started to sing and the woman lifted her arms overhead and gyrated suggestively to the music.
Every man in the bar would probably risk whiplash to ogle her. Sierra looked around to test her theory. Ben Nash wasn’t watching the woman. His eyes were on her.
Trying not to show that his gaze disconcerted her, she kept her chin high and walked deliberately toward the abbreviated hallway. When an interior wall was between her and Ben Nash’s sight line, she felt her shoulders sag. She hurried the rest of the way to the exit, then let herself out through the alleyway. A short walk later and she was in the park.
At first she thought she was alone, but then she spied a lone figure sitting on the edge of the amphitheater stage. Her head was bowed, her dark hair forming a curtain over her face. It was Jill.
Fallen leaves and small twigs crunched underneath Sierra’s feet, but Jill didn’t seem to hear her approach.
“Jill?” Sierra ventured.
The other woman’s head jerked up. Her face was almost entirely in darkness, but Sierra picked up on the bleakness of her expression. In a flash, the desolation was gone.
“Hey there, Sierra. What are you doing out here?” Jill greeted her like an old friend, even though they’d never exchanged more than a few words at a time. “Oh, wait a minute. I forgot to send you an e-mail with the names of the festival volunteers so you could do the schedule.”
“You can send me the e-mail tomorrow,” Sierra said. “That’ll be plenty of time.”
“Better yet, I’ll do the schedule. It’s the least I can do after messing up.” Jill cocked her head, as though a thought had just occurred to her. “How did you know to look for me in the park?”
“Chuck suggested it when I offered to check on you,” she said. “Your break ended fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, my goodness. Is it really that late? The time really got away from me.” Jill lengthened her vowels, the drawl in her voice marking her as a Southerner.
There was something else in her voice, too. A thickness that wasn’t normally present. Sierra looked closer and thought she saw traces of tears on Jill’s face.
It’s none of your business, a familiar voice inside her head advised. You have enough problems of your own without getting involved in someone else’s.
“It sure was good of you to hunt me down.” The trembling at the corners of Jill’s mouth dimmed her smile. “I need to be getting back or Chuck’ll think I died.”
“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you first?” Sierra asked gently.
Jill blinked a few times. “What makes you think something’s bothering me?”
Sierra glanced down at her blue outfit, which was such a light shade it would easily soil, and shrugged. That was what dry cleaners were for. She climbed the few short steps to the amphitheater stage and lowered herself next to Jill. “You don’t strike me as a woman who sits alone in the dark.”
Jill’s entire body seemed to sag. “I yelled at my brother.”
“Is that all?” Sierra asked. “I’ve yelled at my brother lots of times. Why, I let Ryan have it just this afternoon.”
Jill shook her head. “You don’t understand. Your brother’s about your age. Mine’s only ten. He lives with me.”
Sierra wondered why the boy resided with Jill, but asking her to explain would be getting off a topic the other woman obviously needed to discuss. “What did he do?”
“He was playing with his remote control car in front of the house.” She took a deep breath. The smell of damp grass was in the air. “It got stuck on a curb and he ran across the street, directly in front of a truck. When those brakes squealed, I must’ve lost a year of my life.”
“Sounds like your brother had a talking-to coming.” Sierra didn’t have to be an expert on raising children to realize how important it was to stress safety.
“Except I went way beyond a talking-to.” Jill looked miserable. “My brother’s been through a rough time. I know he’s not the kind of kid you should yell at and I still lost my temper.”
Again, Sierra suppressed her curiosity about her friend’s young brother and focused on how to help her. “So you’re usually perfect?”
Jill emitted a surprised sound. “Of course not. I mess up all the time.”
“Me, too.” Sierra thought about her propensity to let down her guard around Ben Nash when she knew his main reason for being around her was to extract information. “This is just a guess, but I bet you’ve never yelled at your brother before.”
“Not that I can remember,” Jill said.
“Then apologize,” Sierra advised.
“I already did, and he’s still not talking to me.”
“Did you tell him how scared you were when you thought that truck might hit him?” Sierra asked.
Jill didn’t respond for a moment. “Not in so many words.”
“Then do.” Sierra took Jill’s hand and squeezed it. “I think you’ll find people can forgive a great many things when they’re done in the name of love.”
WELL, THAT WAS ANOTHER dead end in a town that was full of them.
Ben had arranged to meet Nick Pollock over dinner at the pub, having heard from a number of town residents he’d been actively involved in the community for thirty years.
Nick’s son Johnny had joined them. Although the younger Pollock was a child at the time of his mother’s death, Ben had viewed the meeting as doubling the odds of discovering new information.
The odds hadn’t played out.
He picked up the bill on the table. He’d told his dinner companions the newspaper would reimburse him for his cost. In truth he had no intention of turning in an expense report, not when the story was personal and his boss wanted him to drop it.
“If you haven’t found anything by now, there’s nothing to find,” Joe Geraldi had said earlier that afternoon when he’d called to check on Ben’s progress. “I need you back here working on that group home story.”
Ben had bought himself more time by saying he had a few more people to talk to. He’d paid Quincy Coleman a visit, confirming what Sierra and Ryan had already told him. Then he’d set out to ferret out what the Pollocks knew, which was a big fat nothing.
He started to sign his name on the credit card slip when the day and the month on the filmy white paper registered. It wasn’t today’s date that was significant, but tomorrow’s.
On a subliminal level, he must have known the date was approaching. Along with his lack of progress on the story that meant so much to him, it explained why he’d grown more melancholy as the night wore on.
He tapped his fingers on the tabletop, trying to figure out why his usual methods weren’t working.
He couldn’t accept it was because there was nothing to discover. There had to be a reason “mountaindweller” had sent the e-mail, an explanation for why his gut had always rejected the tale of how his mother died.
Feeling a headache coming on, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. For one of the first times i
n his career, he wasn’t sure what his next step should be.
Some reporter he was. He’d even lost track of Sierra.
One minute she’d been trying not to counterbalance on that bar stool, and the next she was disappearing down the hall that led to the restrooms.
When the minutes lengthened without her returning, it finally dawned on him there must be a rear exit. So tonight of all nights, he didn’t even have Sierra as a distraction.
And then Sierra emerged from the hall with the curly-haired bartender. Jill, he believed her name was.
Their heads were close together, their bodies angled toward each other as though deep in conversation. Just shy of the bar, Jill gave Sierra a warm hug before getting back to work.
Odd. He hadn’t realized the two women were friends.
He was at Sierra’s side before she could reclaim the stool from where she’d been watching him earlier in the evening. “You’re not real good at keeping tabs on me.”
She tossed her brown hair, which was now hanging long and loose the way he liked it. She perched her hands on her hips before saying airily, “Is that so?”
Incredibly, he felt a smile coming on. “It is so. I could have left the bar and you wouldn’t know where I went.”
“You didn’t leave,” she pointed out.
“Ah, but you would be in a far better keeping-tabs position if you’d accepted my dinner invitation. Then you’d know everything the Pollocks told me.”
Her gaze narrowed. “What did they tell you?”
Nick Pollock had informed him Dr. Whitmore had been integral in lobbying the city to erect a guard rail at the site where Ben’s mother died. Pollock then proceeded to call Dr. Whitmore a good man, adding his voice to the multitudes.
“Nothing of note,” Ben said.
“Good. Then maybe you’ll give it a rest.”
Not likely.
“I am kind of tired,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding. He yawned for effect. “I’m calling it a night. Want to keep tabs on me when I walk to the hotel?”
She hesitated, and he felt a no coming his way.
“You never know who I might run into or what they might tell me,” he added.
An Honorable Man Page 10
