Anchored by Death (A Jo Oliver Thriller Book 3)

by Catherine Finger

  I arched an eyebrow and turned to stare at him. “What’s going on, Quinn?”

  “I’m hoping there’s no connection …” His voice was low and slow. “And you’ve clearly established this is not the time to get into history, ancient or otherwise. Josie, there’s something I’ve got to tell—” A red-hot flash of … anger? Desire? Something sparked in his eyes, vanishing almost before it registered. Almost. “There’ll be time for that later.”

  But, the flush spreading across my face and my dancing belly verified what I’d just seen. My eyes searched his grizzled face, locking onto his liquid chocolate browns. I tried to pull my gaze away but found myself drawn to him. I steadied myself, found the tiny white speck in his left eye and drank him in.

  He stepped nearer, standing so close that if I bent my knees, they would brush up against his. I locked my legs in place, willed my arms to relax at my sides and drew in a deep breath. My mind swirled at his scent. He brought back memories of wild midnight horseback rides under snow-dipped pines, Wisconsin River sandbars, and long moments kissing under a perfect harvest moon, knee deep in the autumn splendor of Devil’s Lake.

  He locked eyes with me, and for a moment, I fell back in time. I took two steps back, my only defense against the solid comfort he evoked. We stood looking at each other. He’s trying to tell me something.

  “Look, but don’t touch. Is that it?” He grinned.

  “Something like that.” I snorted.

  “You’re still in love with Nick, aren’t you?” His grin faded.

  “Something like that,” I admitted as much to myself as to Quinn. I could see he had something else on his mind, but I couldn’t get past the dance.

  Quinn appraised me, ardor that had threatened to swallow me whole seconds ago nowhere to be found. “Figures.”

  Talk about your sudden gust of cold air.

  “Yup.” I had no idea why I was yupping.

  “Got something, boss. And it looks way too familiar.” A chipper squeak from one of his newbies drew Quinn’s attention from me.

  I shot a glance upward, breathing a quick prayer. Thank You.

  Quinn waited for me to join him. We strode over to the crime-scene tech. Her heart-shaped face glanced up at us from her perch on the ground in front of the victim. She was lovely, dark, and petite. The polar opposite of me. I turned to Quinn. What’s a girl like that doing in a place like this? He shrugged.

  “We’re not completely backward around here, you know. We still take our girls seriously,” he whispered, nudging past me to join her.

  “Check it out, Sheriff. Tell me you haven’t seen this type of thing before.” She squatted back on her heels, making room for Quinn. Her name tag read Lisa Bhatt. I focused my attention on her more intently. Her skin glowed with olive and brown tones, a splash of cream thrown in. Her eyes were almond shaped, with the kind of lashes most women have to buy. She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup, making her all the more extraordinary.

  She looked up at me, patient with my scrutiny. “Chief Oliver. I’ve waited for my entire career to meet you.” She unfolded, gracefully rising to meet me.

  My knees cracked just watching her. Time to get back into the yoga studio.

  “Lisa Bhatt.” Her accent was slight, musical. She stuck out a slim brown hand, delicate fingers clenching my own with sufficient force.

  Color me impressed. “Where are you from, Officer Bhatt?”

  “Lisa. Please call me Lisa. I’m from Ohio. Cleveland area.” Amusement wrinkled the corners of her eyes.

  Of course she is. Good one, Josie. You’re making a heckuva fool of yourself without even trying. “Well, I’m from here. Nice to meet you.” Not my cleverest response. “What have you got?”

  She was too well-bred to acknowledge my discomfort. “This doesn’t seem to fit here, does it?” She pointed with her field knife to a small white object on the ground. The knife marks around it confirmed she’d scratched it up out of the earth. “We just started to explore the soil around the DB, thinking of how best to excavate. I felt something against my blade.”

  “You felt that?” I nodded my head at the white square. “With that?” I pointed to her knife, admiration dripping from my every word.

  She blushed. “Yeah. I guess.” A shy smile blossomed.

  “Good work. Great attention to detail.” I pursed my lips. “But what is it? Looks almost like a fat Scrabble tile. Is that an H printed on it?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. That’s what I thought too. Until I saw this.” She picked up the tiny square block with a gloved hand. “It’s a hole. All the way through. It’s a bead.”

  “As in from a necklace?” I tried to picture a necklace made of square block letters.

  “Or a bracelet.” Quinn was still in the game. He exchanged glances with Bhatt, a team of two.

  “I was thinking more like ankle bracelet, but yes, it’s definitely a bead of some sort.” She gave a slight shrug as if she found clues that her colleagues missed at crime scenes every day.

  “Doesn’t strike me as a Scrabble-jewelry kind of guy.” I had a wearying knack for stating the obvious.

  “And yet, here it is. Just like the last vic—” Bhatt inhaled sharply, eyes fixed on Quinn.

  I caught a slight shake of his head as he shot a look from Bhatt to the ground and back to me.

  “Fine, keep your secrets.” I closed my eyes, kneading the soft flesh over my temples in a desperate attempt to stop a migraine before it got started. Relax. Another reason I needed this vacation.

  At this rate, I was going to need a little time off from my vacation.

  “We can take it from here, Josie. You want me to take you home?” Quinn’s eyes twinkled.

  Officer Bhatt shook her head, smiled and threw him a wry glance. “Alrighty then. You kids have fun. Call if you’re going to be out all night, ’kay, boss?”

  Quinn scowled at her. “I’ll be back in half an hour. Any other clues come up while I’m gone, give me a shout, got it?” He waited for her quick nod before turning to me.

  “C’mon, Josie. I’ll drive.” Nodding toward my abandoned golf cart, he winked at me and started walking toward the driver’s side.

  I waved at Lisa Bhatt and scrambled after him. “Hey, boss. Give me a sec while I put away my not-so-lucky seven iron and cover up my clubs. Since you’re clearly not up to the job.”

  Bhatt’s laughter jingled on the wind behind me. “He’s not much of a golfer, Chief. And he definitely likes to be in the driver’s seat. But, I’ll place my money on you.”

  Quinn’s coded language with Bhatt told me they wanted their privacy. Something else was going on related to this case—something they wanted to keep to themselves for now. Whatever it was, I’d leave them to it awhile longer. “Smart girl you’ve got there, pal. Where’d you find her?” I jumped into the cart.

  He pushed the accelerator and wheeled the cart around, steering us toward a line of trees behind the longer wing of the earthen thunderbird. “I didn’t. She found us. Don’t ask me why she wanted to work with the original hickstone cops, ’cause I have no idea. She’s a good CSI with excellent instincts. And she’s about to become an even better detective.” We wove between the trees and headed up a steep incline.

  “She must have a pretty thick skin to make it through training with the redneck knuckleheads she no doubt encountered.” I thought back to my own training days in Chicago and shivered.

  “You paved the way for her.” Quinn’s quiet reverence endeared him to me.

  “Aw, thank you.” I squeezed his shoulder, then grabbed the hand bar as the cart rocked over the uneven hillside terrain. We ducked in unison as the cart top swooshed under a low-hanging branch, laughing at the sound of leaves scratching across the black plastic top.

  We broke out of the trees onto the neatly mowed turf leading from the golf course to
the edge of the property I’d inherited from my aunt years ago.

  “Whoa. Nice work, Josie.” He seemed to be staring at the circular expanse of brick pavers I’d had installed around my fire pit last fall. The pavers narrowed to a path for about ten feet before gradually dwindling down to nothing. Another ten feet of earth led to a green electrical box jutting out of the ground. The rest of the lot was thick with trees.

  Quinn maneuvered around the trees, up over the hill, spied my car parked in the street and headed toward it. “I take it you still haven’t decided whether to build or sell?”

  Forgot how small towns work. He knows my every move around here. “Pretty much. And you know how it is. Might as well make a few improvements while you’re trying to decide, right?” I’d inherited this lot nearly twenty years ago, long before I was married. It was one of the few things in my life that had survived the deaths of both my marriage and my husband. His and his mistress’s brutal murders seemed a lifetime past now, but they were really only a few months ago. I’d lost so much more than my marriage in that whole grisly affair. By the end of the investigation, I’d nearly lost my own life … twice. But hey, who’s counting? Worst of all, I’d lost Nick.

  Quinn’s voice mercifully ended my ruminating. “And your aunt Gerry would be rolling in her grave if she knew you’d built a fire pit like some poor relation, instead of the luxury home this lot requires.” He pulled the cart up to the trunk of my car.

  “I like to think she’d be smiling down on me for my eccentricities.” We rolled to a stop. I popped my trunk, unstrapped my clubs and stood aside while Quinn placed them in the back.

  He turned around to face me as I slammed the trunk shut. We stood looking at each other in the street, awkward teenagers alone in the science lab after school. He ran a hand through his hair.

  I stepped in and lightly kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Quinn.” I turned and stepped into my car, leaving him looking at me from the side of the road. He didn’t move as I started my car, winked at him in the side mirror and slowly drove away.

  Chapter Five

  The car’s console lit up a second before the cell phone’s signature chirp filled my car. I smiled when I read the name. “Hey, Georgi.” Breathing out my old friend’s name loosened my neck muscles.

  “I just heard. Where are you?” Georgi and I had been friends since meeting in the ninth grade. She married her high school sweetheart and never left the little town we’d all grown up in. Her connections were legendary. “You still on the course with Quinn?”

  I rolled my eyes and smiled into the console. “No, just leaving. Quinn’s got ’er under control. You hear about the vic? Buried up to his neck in a mound?” A sudden need to talk it out gripped me.

  “Yeah, and about the wooden block with the letter H printed on it. What the heck could that mean?” If Georgi knew this much, this soon, the entire town would be in on the murder by now.

  “Whoa, hold on. You wanna brainstorm? I’m happy to drop by.” I didn’t know what exactly she’d heard, but I wasn’t comfortable spilling it over the unprotected airwaves for any amateur hack’s amusement.

  “I’ll do you one better. Why don’t you swing by and pick me up, and we can head out to your place? Go for a walk and then invite the boys to join us for dinner and a fire.” She was rustling around and zippering a bag as she spoke.

  “That’ll work. I’ll be there in five. Maybe three.” Small town driving was just like flying. “Wait a minute. What do you mean ‘invite the boys’? What boys?”

  “I’m on the porch. And by the way, you’re cooking. We’re building the fire.” She must’ve put her hand over the phone. Dodging my question? Her husband’s garbled voice mixed with hers in the background as they negotiated details of the evening.

  When I pulled up to her house a minute later, she and Cliff were sitting on the porch steps, her phone still in her hand, Cliff’s arms around her waist. I ended the call and got out of the car.

  Cliff whisked Georgi down the porch steps and wrapped me in his signature bear hug. “Good to see you, Chief. Sorry about that mess on the golf course. You girls have fun at the lake, and we’ll be by in a few hours.” He looked at me, hope swimming in his eyes.

  “Don’t go getting your hopes up. I’m thinking a simple meal of pasta and salad and all the beer you can drink. And I might have a few other items hanging around the cabin to round out our meal.” I wasn’t about to ask who we referred to. As far as Cliff was concerned, when it came to my love life, hope sprang eternally. He’d probably invited Quinn to dinner before I pulled up to the house.

  “It wouldn’t exactly be against the law for you to whip up your triple-chocolate cake, now would it?” Happiness sparked off him at the idea. “I’m pretty sure you-know-who would be putty in your hands after a bite or two of that cake. You could put him to work on those loose shingles and have him tack that gutter back in place once we leave.” He held both hands palm up as if to show me he had nothing to hide.

  “Hey, how’s our little Samantha, and when will we see her again? Are you bringing her back up for the weekend?” Georgi must’ve remembered how much Sam also loved my triple-chocolate cake.

  “She’s amazing, and yes, that’s exactly my plan. Or, I guess I should say it was my plan before encountering a DB today. And I think it’s still the plan unless Quinn needs my help with our golfer.”

  “Good,” Cliff said. “I can’t wait to hug that little squirt. And take her fishing.” He was a dear man with a soft heart. I nodded at him and looked over at Georgi. “You about ready to go?”

  Georgi elbowed him in the ribs and gave him a quick kiss. “We’ll call when we’re ready. Probably around five or six.” She grabbed my arm. “Ignore him. He wants everyone to be happy. Whatever that means.”

  “Yeah. Me too.” We walked to my car in unison and got in without another word.

  While I had a few guesses as to which of our lifelong friends Cliff might have in mind to bring tonight, I knew who wouldn’t be coming to dinner.

  Nick Vitarello stood like a Roman statue in the center of my mind and within a hair’s breadth of my heart, but I had locked and bolted the door.

  He’d stood by me as we tracked a vicious killer, fending off repeated attempts on my life and my constant rejection of his romantic overtures. The last time I saw him, I was in a hospital bed, loaded with painkillers. He was at my side when I woke up. Moments later, he declared his love for me. But he knew I was afraid, and rather than subject himself to more of my see-sawing heart, he took a giant step back. He’d pledged to wait for me to sort out my feelings and to come to him on my own terms.

  But he hadn’t said how long he’d wait. Or how I was supposed to signal him when I was ready. Was I ready? I wasn’t sure. Still. So, I just stayed stuck, silent, and stoic on the outside, roiling with indecision and regret on the inside. I sighed. Nick was destined to remain a very present force in my heart and mind, but not in my life.

  At least not yet. But things could change, right?

  “Must’ve been pretty bad, huh?” Giorgi’s whisper filled the car.

  I nodded. “Never seen anything like it. And the funny thing is, I saw it without realizing what it was. I walked right past, registering it, wondering how I would’ve missed a stump on that hole before now.” I rolled through the scene in my mind again, picturing the beret floating on the spring wind.

  “What kind of freak would bury a guy in a sacred resting place? And what do you make of the letter H? That’s gotta be a clue, right?” Her voice rose several octaves. She was all in.

  I scrunched my nose and turned to stare at her. “The H almost has to be a clue. Though of what, I couldn’t hazard a guess.” I grunted. “I mean, what do we know? The vic was an insurance salesman from Illinois. Franklin Park.”

  “Or it could’ve been placed there as a clue.” Her purse buzzed. She rummaged through it,
found her phone and answered.

  I recognized her mother’s tinny voice on the other end. Their conversation kept Georgi engaged long enough for me to drive the rest of the way to my small cabin, deep in thought about what that single letter could mean.

  I wondered if there was a connection between the wayward letter H and the victim’s hometown. While I wasn’t aware of any killers leaving clues of their victims’ home address at a crime scene, I really wouldn’t be shocked.

  Could it be one of the killer’s initials? A band of tension wrapped itself around my head. Or maybe it was the killer’s calling card. The band snapped against my temples. Nick would know if there were other cases involving tiles, beads, or letters left at the crime scene. Too bad we were completely out of touch.

  I knew from experience understanding the mind of a psychopath was impossible, let alone that of a random murderer. One of my first murder investigations involved a fourteen-year-old boy who had killed his cousin over an Atari game stick. Guy like that could eventually kill over bigger sticks if he didn’t get caught. Could this whole thing be over a golf game?

  “So, we have a guy from Illinois dead and buried on a patch of land in Wisconsin. Do you think this could have anything to do with the old Wisconsin-Illinois rivalry?” she asked, matter-of-factly, as if a rivalry murder happened every day.

  I glanced at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, you know stuff like that happens. And you know lots of guys around here can’t stand guys from Illinois. Just sayin’.” She twisted to face me on the seat.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little over the top, Georgi?”

  “Maybe, but it’s pretty odd to have a guy from Illinois murdered on a golf course in Wisconsin. There’s got to be a reason. What if it’s that simple—what if it’s just some crazed local who’s got it out for anyone from the flatlands?”