Carrie Alexander - Count on a Cop

by Nobody’s Hero

  “I’m sure I would be if I saw it.”

  “I can wangle you an invitation to the garden party.”

  “Thanks, but I didn’t come to the island to mingle,” he said, ignoring the fact that he was doing just that.

  “Why did you come?” She moved out of his line of sight to put the beer bottles on the table, returning with the front of her ribbed white cotton tank sporting three damp splotches that revealed the outline of a lace-edged bra. He looked away. Then back again. Her neck and bare shoulders were slender but strong, cinnamon freckled.

  “Just a vacation,” he said with a shrug. “I’m on leave from my job.”

  Connie’s eyes were fixed on him, as bright and inquisitive as her daughter’s. “Which is?”

  “Which is what?”

  Her mouth puckered. She knew he was stalling. “What do you do for a living?” she asked distinctly.

  He gave in, knowing where this would lead. “I’m a Massachusetts state trooper.”

  Pippa’s book dropped to her lap. Connie said, “Oh, boy.”

  “What?”

  “My daughter’s been a crime hound ever since she started reading the Trixie Belden books.”

  “Trixie who?

  “She’s like Nancy Drew.”

  Pippa scoffed. “But better.”

  “Nancy Drew, huh?” Harmless. “Isn’t that sort of…”

  “Old-fashioned?” Connie shrugged. “I suppose so, but my husband and I were always a little retro, not to mention poor. We haunted a lot of yard sales when Pippa was young. One day Phil brought home a set of Trixie Beldens.”

  “It’s not my fault she won’t let me watch CSI,” Pippa said morosely from the corner.

  “That’s much too gruesome for a ten-year-old.” Connie nudged Sean’s arm as she brushed by. “You tell her. I’ll get dinner on the table.”

  He said nothing. He wasn’t thinking about Pippa and her mysteries but about Connie’s missing husband. Phil.

  I miss Daddy, she’d said, and he’d first thought that meant during their island stay. But the vibe was wrong. Probably not a case of divorce, either. Her tone had been mournful, not bitter.

  He looked at Pippa, considering her lonely neediness.

  Was Mr. Bradford dead?

  Oh, shit.

  Pippa pushed her glasses up her nose. She narrowed her eyes. “Do you solve crimes?”

  “Not so much. I patrol. It’s more a situation where I’m arresting suspects in the act, or right after the act.” He refused to let his mind stray to that last, fatal traffic stop. “But once in a while I land in the middle of an interesting case and I get to do some investigating.”

  He’d tried to sound acceptable to a ten-year-old. Still, she sank back into the depths of the chair.

  “I, uh, wear a uniform. The blue shirt and tie, the blue striped pants, the flat trooper hat. You know, the whole deal.”

  Pippa squinted. “Then you must not be a detective. Aren’t they plainclothes?”

  She was a smart one. He was a lieutenant. The next promotion would have been to detective lieutenant, but that was now derailed, perhaps permanently. A hard pill to swallow, given that his father had retired from the MSP with honors and that both of his older brothers and one sister were thriving in their law-enforcement careers, as well. His father wouldn’t express shame, wouldn’t express disappointment, over the way things had turned out for Sean.

  But he’d felt it all the same because, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how necessary the shooting had been, there was no denying that Sean had failed. Yes, he’d gone by the book. The other man had fired first. There’d been no recourse but to defend himself and the mother and child. Still, in the back of his mind would always be the what if.

  What if he’d done something, anything, differently—and prevented the fatality? What if another load of guilt hadn’t landed on his shoulders?

  Pippa was waiting for an answer. “A detective?” he repeated. “No, I’m not a detective.”

  “Too bad. Detectives are cool. I might want to be one.”

  “Then you’d better brush up on your surveillance skills. The object is to observe without being seen.”

  Pippa’s face flamed. “I wasn’t seen every time.”

  He gave her a point. “And it’s hard to blend in on an island. Not enough cover.”

  “Do you do surveillance?”

  “I have.”

  She leaned forward. “Would you teach me?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Connie said from the doorway. Behind her, the table was set with a steaming soup tureen, a large green salad and a basket of rolls. “Absolutely not, Pippa. You’re in enough trouble as it is. Mr. Rafferty won’t be encouraging your nonsense.” She gave him a walleyed look. “Will he?”

  “I…”

  Pippa slid out of the chair. “Don’t call it nonsense, Mom. That’s not nice.”

  “Right you are.” Connie set her hands on her hips. “Then Mr. Rafferty will not be encouraging your preoccupation. How’s that? Better?”

  “You’re s’posed to support my interests.” The girl sidled past Sean, her book—a vintage edition with a blond female on the cover—clutched to her chest. “Dad wouldn’t be so mean.”

  Sean caught Connie’s expression, a wince followed by relief. Maybe her husband wasn’t dead, then.

  “No, your dad would have been right there with you, making up stories about what Mr. Rozenkranz kept in his locked garden shed.” Connie shared a fond smile with her daughter before glancing back to Sean. “Sorry. We’ve got issues. I’m afraid your being a cop is only going to stir the pot.”

  He held up his hands. “Don’t worry. It’s not something I’m looking to talk about.”

  She furrowed her brow before smiling. “Okay, then! We’ll have a nice New England chowder dinner without law and order as a side dish. How does that sound?”

  “Relaxing,” he said, and meant it.

  Pippa dropped into a chair with such force she rattled the utensils. “Boring.”

  Connie’s smile was determined. “Excellent. Just the way I like it.”

  Sean didn’t believe her for a minute. The woman couldn’t be boring no matter how hard she tried.

  “I CAN’T HELP NOTICING your limp.” Connie brushed away a tree branch that threatened to spring back at her face. Sean’s hand flashed out to catch it. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Were you injured in the line of duty?”

  He gave a reluctant nod. “Gunfire.”

  Her eyes widened. “How horrible.”

  “Yeah. Horrible.” A touch of his hand to the small of her back got her moving again. He didn’t want her watching him, especially with such a compassionate expression. “I’d stopped a car driving erratically, and the driver came out shooting.”

  He paused, uncertain how much he wanted to say. “Turned out he was an ex-con with a history of drug and spouse abuse. I took a round in the thigh before he went down.”

  Connie clenched her teeth. “Was anyone else hurt?”

  Sean couldn’t respond. Physically, the man’s family had survived. But emotionally…? The loss of a father, even one who wasn’t the best at the job, was not something a kid recovered from easily.

  Connie glanced at his face and shuddered, obviously assuming the worst.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said softly as they stepped out of the woods onto the manicured grounds of the Sheffield estate. Up ahead, Pippa trudged across a sloping lawn striated with shadows, heading toward the tall hedges of the maze. It looked ominous in the darkness, a gothic bulwark. Ornate cast-iron lampposts flanked dual entrances, on opposite sides of the maze.

  “I’m trying not to dwell on the incident.” He managed to swallow what felt like a stone in his throat. The dwelling was debatable, but certainly incident was too nice a word for the horror of seeing a man dead on the pavement—killed by Sean’s gun—the wife streaked in her husband’s blood as she wailed over his lifeless body.
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br />   Luckily, Connie was no longer watching his face. Her concern was with her daughter, who turned and waved at them to hurry. “Please don’t mention the shooting to Pippa. Her imagination is already overdeveloped.”

  He wouldn’t have, of course, but…

  “It might do her good to realize that real police work isn’t like a schoolgirl mystery.”

  “Maybe so.” Connie frowned as Pippa disappeared into the maze. “Except that she’s only ten years old and has already been through enough.”

  “I understand.”

  Connie started across the lawn. “Actually, no, you don’t.” She stopped suddenly and he had to pull up, his palm once more landing on her back, between her shoulder blades. He would have removed it, but she turned toward him with such a look of stark vulnerability that it was all he could do not to pull her into a comforting embrace.

  A moment passed before she gathered herself to speak. Her shoulders squared. “I should have explained that my husband passed away. Leukemia. Two years and ten months ago, but Pippa hasn’t been the same since his death. Probably never will be.”

  Connie’s voice was low and swift; Sean inclined his head to catch every word.

  “Her sleuthing is all tangled up with Phil’s memory. He was the one who read her the Trixie books. And so this preoccupation with you…” Connie shook her head. “At first you were one of her ‘suspects.’ Now, well, I’m not sure what’s going on in her head, considering your job. But I wanted you to have some idea—a warning, I guess—of why she’s attached herself to you.”

  “I see.”

  “Has she said anything to you about—” Connie cut herself off. “I don’t know why I’m asking a stranger for help.”

  “Am I still a stranger?”

  Moonlight illuminated her face as she tilted it up toward his. Her eyes were dark green beneath her lashes, which drew spiked shadows across the curves of her cheeks. “No, I suppose not.”

  He brushed his fingers over her narrow back, feeling the warmth of her beneath the thin layer of fabric. They’d had a nice conversation over dinner, speaking only of normal things, like the weather and the island, the baseball season, where they’d been raised and gone to school, how much Pippa would enjoy the fifth grade if she gave it a chance. The girl hadn’t been persuaded.

  “You’ve been very nice about us intruding on your vacation,” Connie said, “but Pippa may become an annoyance, especially now that she knows your profession. I’ll do my best to keep her from invading your privacy. If she does, send her on her way. But be a little gentle about how you do it, okay?”

  He looked at Connie’s solemn face with the traces of sorrow that she couldn’t hide, and he nodded.

  “I’ll watch out for your girl,” he said. Then silently added and you, although if asked he’d have sworn that he didn’t want the responsibility. And that he might never want the responsibility again, even if that meant quitting his job. He’d already let down enough people to fill a lifetime of regret.

  “I’d be grateful. I suppose I worry too much, but considering what happened this morning, I feel justified. Unfortunately, my work’s kept me from home too often. The trip to the island was supposed to bring us closer, but instead…” Connie sent Sean a rueful glance. “She’s latched on to you. And is still carrying that damn notebook everywhere.”

  “What’s with the notebook?”

  “She writes down her observations. I don’t read them.”

  Sean grinned, a little. He’d been a curious child, too. Not even his mother’s threatening to snip off his nose with her sewing scissors had stopped him from poking into business that was none of his. “She’s a smart girl.”

  “Too smart for her own good.” Connie stepped away and called out to Pippa, telling her not to go deeply into the maze. She glanced from the hedges to the Sheffields’ large shingle-style house and back to Sean. “Pippa’s studied the plans at home and been through the maze a hundred times since we arrived, but never at night.”

  They had arrived at the entrance. The outer wall of boxwood hedges was seven feet tall, forming a solid bank in the dark. “It’s impressive.”

  Sean could see Connie’s pride in her work as she surveyed the formal gardens and maze. “I don’t want to disturb the Sheffields, so we shouldn’t stay long enough to walk it. But I wanted you to have a look.”

  He stepped inside the entrance and glanced down the corridors stretching away in three directions, crisscrossed by deep shadows. The openings onto the various courses appeared black. He flinched when Pippa appeared out of one of them, waved, and then was gone again, the soft crunch of her footsteps on the gravel path rapidly diminishing.

  “How did you do this? I expected it to look newer. Shorter, I guess. Don’t mazes take years to grow?”

  “The Sheffields didn’t want to wait that long. I worked with what was already here, clipping and replanting, and we shipped over mature hedges to complete the new sections.”

  He whistled. “Must have cost a pretty penny.”

  “They can afford it. He’s in finance.” Connie lifted her chin toward the house, where music and laughter drifted from the terrace. The guests were having cocktails by the sea. “We should go.”

  “Yes,” Sean said, but he’d become intrigued in spite of his penchant for straight lines from A to B. He took the left-hand path and walked a short distance. “Is this a labyrinth or a maze?”

  Connie followed. “You know the difference?”

  “I remember solving maze puzzles as a kid. Labyrinths have only one entrance/exit.”

  “We have two. It’s a maze, not a labyrinth, which are unicursal, meaning they have only one path to follow. They’re walked more for contemplation and insight, while mazes are a puzzle to solve. There are wrong turns, dead ends and always a goal to reach.”

  They had walked farther into the maze as she spoke, with her following his lead without prompting him toward the correct turns to take. He led them to a dead end, where a statue of a garden nymph stood on a plinth, winking naughtily at them.

  “Ah,” Sean said. “I thought that taking only left turns was the way to solve a maze.”

  Connie smiled. “Not this one. I had to work within the parameters of the old design, and I didn’t have as much acreage as I would’ve liked, but I still managed to design the maze to be as difficult as possible.” Her eyes glinted with challenge. “All the more rewarding when you reach the center.”

  He looked at her, and around them the night seemed to swell and throb, as deep and mysterious as the sea. The sounds of the party and the relentless surf carried on at a distance, but he and Connie seemed enclosed in a bubble of silence and privacy and welling awareness.

  He would have kissed her if she hadn’t suddenly turned sharply away. She lifted her head, apparently hearing a sound his blood-filled ears had blocked out. “Pippa?” she called. “Are you near?”

  The response was faint. “I’m here. At the center.”

  “Stay there.” Sean caught the underlying thread of fear in her voice. “We’re coming to get you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHAT DID YOU HEAR?” Sean asked under his breath as they sped through the maze.

  Connie knew the pattern inside and out, and yet her heart raced as she cut a turn short, stopped, looked to the left, then to the right. The maze was laid out in an octagonal pattern. The paths were straight, but the turns were sharp, not a ninety-degree angle among them. Until now, she hadn’t realized how menacing the arrow-like edges of green could seem, especially at night.

  “I don’t know,” she said, moving on quickly. “Probably nothing.” Her stomach revolted. “Maybe a footfall.”

  Sean squeezed her shoulder before saying in a raised voice, “Pippa, are you there? Gosh, I hope we’re not lost.” His tone was light, and Connie was grateful.

  Pippa made no response. Was she gone? Playing a game?

  “What’s that?” Sean asked, trying to see over the top of the hedges. The sp
lashing sound was maddeningly near, but unreachable, an effect Connie had engineered to frustrate the maze walkers.

  She directed him to a turn that seemingly took them in the opposite direction. “It’s the fountain at the center. We’re almost there.” His expression was dubious. “Trust me.”

  “Of course,” he blurted after an awkward silence. “You know the way.”

  “Pippa?” she called. “Answer me.”

  Silence.

  Connie rushed along the remaining path, and there was Pippa, standing beside the fountain with her eyes dancing and her hands clamped over her mouth. Her red hair fluffed out around her head, lit by the moon into an aureole. She giggled as if their run through the maze had been a good joke.

  Connie patted her pounding chest. “Pippa. Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “I couldn’t! I didn’t want to ruin it for Mr. Rafferty.”

  “Well, you gave me a scare.” Connie took a seat on one of stone benches interspersed with the topiaries and floral border that rimmed the center octagon. “I told you not to go so far.” She wiped sweat away from the neckline of her tank. She didn’t know why she’d become so frightened. Where had her motherly instinct gone when she’d been practicing meditation while her daughter was almost drowning at Whitlock’s Arrow?

  She stared at the two center entrances. “There’s no one else in the maze, is there? Did you see anyone?”

  Pippa flicked her fingers in the pool in the base of the fountain. “No, Mom.”

  Connie summoned a smile that felt as if it had been strained through a sieve. “I thought maybe one of the guests had snuck in for an advance tour.”

  Sean was watching her curiously. She closed her eyes for a moment, taking deep yoga breaths to calm herself. Don’t be silly. There was no one, and even if there had been, what was the harm? You’ve let Pippa’s wild imaginings get to you.

  Connie stood and gestured briskly to round up the others. “Let’s go. I really don’t want to explain to the Sheffields why we’re running the maze at midnight.”

  Sean checked the glowing dial of his watch. “It’s only a few minutes past nine.”