by Elle Rush
Aaron nodded once.
“I think I’ll stay here,” Jordan said. “You’ll fill me in, right?”
“All the necessary details,” Brooke promised. She raced down the stairs and outside.
“You were right. Somebody was hiding in there,” Aaron told her when she arrived.
“Did you see who it was?”
“I didn’t see his face. I’m sure it was a male, but between the gloves and the hoodie, I don’t have a description except for approximate height and weight.”
She followed him to the basement. The door to the storage unit was ajar. A sleeping bag lay on the concrete floor. Aside from that, it was empty. “Was he living here?”
“He was fixing to, by the looks of it,” Aaron said.
“There’s no bathroom.”
“There’s a utility sink in the laundry room, and Lucy says it’s not locked.”
“Ew.” That was a hard way to live. The basement was dry and heated, but nobody would choose that if they had the slightest opportunity at anything better. Brooke cocked her head and took another look. The storage unit was completely empty. There wasn’t even any garbage: not a candy bar wrapper, not a drink can, nothing. “He was very careful. Very clean. Very respectful of the property. If he’d managed to get out with his sleeping bag, we would never have known he was here.” Which was a worrying thought in itself. What if he had been in here before?
Aaron caught her eyes and held them. “Don’t go there. You’ll freak yourself out. Like you said, he hadn’t had time to make a mess. He hasn’t been in there long. You noticed him on your second trip to the laundry room. There are, what, ten families in this building who are in and out all the time? Somebody else would have discovered him long before now.”
“Sheriff Gillespie, are you still here?” Lucy called.
“Yes, with Brooke.”
The sandy-haired woman appeared at the end the corridor. “Sorry for the delay. I’m still working on contacts in the area. There is a twenty-four-hour locksmith, but he charges triple for calls after eleven o’clock. I can either switch five locks now or fifteen after eight o’clock tomorrow morning. The fire door is locked from the outside. I’ll drag a chair into the lobby and wait till morning.”
“Lucy, you’ll be exhausted.”
“I’m also my own boss, so I can give myself tomorrow afternoon off for a nap after the locks are changed. All twelve storage room locks, the front door, fire door, and a new lock for the laundry room door. Just in case.”
“I can have whoever is on duty swing by a couple times during the night,” Aaron offered.
“I’d appreciate it. In the meantime, I’m going to change into comfy clothes and bring enough snacks and books to make it through my stakeout.” She grinned. “Technically it’s guard duty, but I’m going to treat it like a stakeout. I’ll bring mysteries to make it feel like I’m doing research. Then I can add night watchman to my resumé.”
That was one of the reasons she and Lucy were friends, Brooke thought. Only a fellow goofball would find something positive about being forced to stay up all night until a locksmith could show up. At least Lucy’s boyfriend—or her soon-to-be fiancé if Brooke was reading things right—would also be working for most of the night. Roy would be at the Escape Room, but she would have someone to talk to until the wee hours of the morning when he shut the bar down. He might even join her. Lucy was pretty lucky, like her nickname.
Brooke wanted that. Then again, she had something pretty close. To call a man in a panic and have him drop everything and come over to make sure she was okay—that was something special. And she knew Aaron would have done it even if he didn’t have a badge.
She wasn’t doing bad on the luck scale herself.
Chapter 25
It wasn’t often that their schedules aligned so well. Trevor was at his mother’s house for the weekend, while Jordan was with her father. Brooke had all of Sunday off. Aaron had invited her to his place for a meal that didn’t require her to be the one doing the home cooking, so she’d jumped on the offer.
Brooke was glad she brought a sweater. Aaron flicked the gas fireplace to life when she arrived, but it wasn’t doing much. Not when he was constantly opening and closing the French door to the deck as he checked on the pork chops and vegetable basket he had on the grill. Fortunately, dancing along to the sixties music channel playing on the television helped keep her warm.
She’d contributed the flowers in the vase on the counter. The rest of the festive table setup was all Aaron. Placemats and matching napkins were at each setting. The bottle of wine was already open, and Aaron had poured her a glass while she waited for dinner to be ready. A small plastic jack-o’-lantern pail was in the middle, piled high with Halloween treats.
“No candy before dinner,” he teased as he raced past to grab the oven mitt sitting on the counter. “I’m almost ready if you’ll pull the salad out of the fridge.”
She found a place to set the stainless steel bowl on the table. Aaron brushed by her again, a tray in one hand and a plate in the other. He returned to pull her chair out for her, and he dropped a kiss on her cheek as she took her seat. “Are you prepared for pork chops, grilled vegetables, and potatoes Gillespie?” he asked.
“I don’t know what potatoes Gillespie are, but I’m ready to try them.”
They turned out to be roughly chopped potatoes, tossed with olive oil, paprika, oregano, and a dash of chili powder. The grilled vegetables were peppers, onions, and whole white button mushrooms. Lastly were thick cut pork chops slathered with barbecue sauce. It was a simple meal but a very tasty one.
When he offered her the last of the potatoes, Brooke had to decline. “I’m too stuffed for one more bite. It was all delicious.”
“You can’t be too full for dessert. Nobody else is going to eat all those Red Vines.”
“Oh, there’s always room for licorice,” she said with a laugh.
Aaron poured her another half glass of wine, and they moved to the living room where they could enjoy the fire from his sofa. For once, they’d had three uneventful days in a row, and they were luxuriating in the lack of urgency. Brooke was even current on her homework, which was probably why her brain was ready with an answer when Aaron asked a very innocuous question.
“We need an encore for the next open mike night at the Escape Room. What do you think we should do?”
They’d missed the last one; the first Monday of October, she’d had her class, and Aaron had been called out to a car crash. Aaron had mentioned it before that they’d lost their karaoke crowns, but she thought he was joking.
Apparently not.
“It can’t be too challenging, because my range isn’t great. Or too sad. I refuse to sing a sad song,” she said.
“And not Journey again. I hate repeating myself.”
“No Beatles,” she insisted.
“No Elvis,” he countered.
“No boy bands. I can’t hit some of those high notes.”
“No Spice Girls.”
“Mamas and Papas?” she threw out as a suggestion.
Aaron made a wiggle-waggle motion with his hand. “They aren’t terrible.”
That’s when inspiration hit. Brooke put a finger to her lips, then touched her ear. When the confused look didn’t leave his face, she pointed at the bar speaker in front of the television. “Listen,” she said.
The unmistakable duet singing about being yours to hold your hand and being yours to understand drifted across the room.
A grin crossed Aaron’s face. “That has possibilities.”
An even bigger grin stretched her cheeks till they hurt. “I have the best idea,” Brooke announced. It was fantastic. “It’s a shame it’ll be after Halloween, but we could still do it.”
“Oh, no.”
“Trust me, it’ll be fun!” The more she thought about it, the more she liked it. “Not only do we do ‘I’ve Got You, Babe,’ but we do it in reverse costume.”
“Reverse
costume? So I’d be…”
“Yes! I’ll wear my bright yellow T-shirt and a set of round sunglasses and be Sonny. You wear your hat and be the Cher-iff. Get it?”
Aaron groaned. “That’s horrible.”
“Horrible and wonderful and memorable. Do you have anything with sequins? They’ll have to give us our crowns back,” she crowed.
“I’m terrified and intrigued at the possibility.”
She pounced on him and kissed him for recognizing her brilliance. “You print out the lyrics. I’ll get a copy of the song. Then we’ll knock ’em dead in November.” She hummed a couple bars, then collapsed into Aaron’s chest in a fit of giggles. “This will be epic.”
“That’ll be one word for it.”
Brooke should have known that they’d never get through an entire date without a crime interrupting the evening. She assumed Aaron would be the one to hear about it.
Aaron was doing dishes and she was supervising when she heard a door creak. Brooke knew that door entered from the garage, but she hadn’t heard the garage door go up. A teenaged voice called, “Dad, I’m home.”
“Okay, son. Brooke and I are in the kitchen.”
“Enjoy the rest of your night. I’m going to my room.”
“I’ll say goodnight later, Trev.”
With the snuggle mood interrupted, Brooke excused herself to take advantage of the powder room off the laundry-slash-mudroom where Trevor was. He was still there, emptying the dryer into a basket. She thought nothing of it until he pulled out a beach towel sporting a familiar orange-and-black striped tiger in a blue speedo.
“Trevor, where did you get that?”
He looked at the towel in his hand, then turned white. “This old thing? We’ve had it forever.”
She heard Aaron whistling as he splashed in the kitchen sink. She stepped closer. “Do you want to try again?”
“Really, it’s our towel.”
“Trevor, I’ve seen that before. I washed it when we took it from Shelley’s Shack after we were stranded there. How did you get it?” she asked quietly.
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Then how did you get it?” She didn’t want to know the answer, but she was the adult in the situation, and she was obliged to ask.
“It’s not mine.”
“Trevor…”
“It’s Caleb’s. He usually does his laundry here when he stays over on Friday night, but I was away this weekend and he really needed it done right away so I added it to mine. I was going to give it back to him tomorrow.”
“Where did Caleb get it? Did he steal it?”
“No!” The firm denial let a little air back into her lungs. “His parents left it for him when they moved to Vegas.”
“Is that what happened?” It explained why neither Lucy nor Aaron couldn’t find any sign of them.
“Yeah, back during the summer. They moved out and left him the apartment and a couple pieces of furniture. They said he was eighteen and on his own now.”
Pieces started to fall into place. “Lucy said that lease expired at the end of September. Where is he staying now?” Please don’t say Shelley’s Shack, please don’t say Shelley’s Shack, she chanted in her head.
“Here and there.” Brooke didn’t have to prompt him again. Trevor looked away when she stared him in the eye. “He stays in his car mostly. Since he got the job at By the Cup, he’s been saving for a new place. I invite him over as many Fridays as I can, but I couldn’t invite him to Mom’s place. At least here he could shower and do his laundry and get a hot supper.”
“What about the rest of the time? Because, like I said, I’ve seen that towel before.”
“When you and Dad broke into the cabin, you said it was okay because it was an emergency. Are you the only ones who are allowed to have emergencies?”
“Trees were crashing down around us and could have killed us. We stayed there a few hours, and then repaired and replaced what we used.”
“This is the same thing,” Trevor insisted. Then the dam broke. “Caleb has fixed that place up. The roof used to leak like crazy, but he’s been repairing it as much as he can. He’s like a caretaker. Besides, it’s not like the Pineys have complained about him being there. They haven’t been out all summer. If they don’t come on Friday for the weekend, he moves back in and does more repairs during the week. There isn’t any power or water so he isn’t not costing them any money. They don’t care. I mean, when those morons threw a party and trashed the place, they still didn’t come out to check on the property. Even Dad says they’re neglectful. What’s the harm?”
“Oh, Trevor.” His intentions were coming from a good place, but it didn’t make his actions right. There was no good answer for the situation Caleb was in. She couldn’t invite the other kid into her apartment; she didn’t know him that well, and she and Jordan didn’t have the space. Aaron did, but again, inviting a virtual stranger to stay under your roof was a huge step.
“Please don’t tell my dad. Caleb hasn’t been back there since the party at Austen Cottage. He’s mostly living in his car. He almost has enough money for a security deposit, and he can afford rent now. He won’t go back, I promise.”
“Living in his car is dangerous. It’s getting so cold at night.” Another thought came to mind. “Was he the person who was in the storage locker the other night? Did he sneak into my apartment building?”
“Just for that one day.”
“That’s not okay, Trevor!” There were a dozen different threads sticking out of this messy ball of problems. Brooke didn’t have the ability to weave them all back together. “There’s a shelter down in Bixby. It operates out of the basement of the First Mission Church. They’re good people. Tell Caleb I expect his butt to be there tomorrow night.”
“If he does, do you promise you won’t tell my dad?” Caleb pressed.
“Do you know what kind of position you’re putting me in?” Brooke demanded. It was hard to keep her voice down. “You had knowledge of a crime, and now I do. I can’t keep this from Aaron, Trevor. Not just because he’s the sheriff, but because he’s your dad. I get that Caleb is your friend and you want to help him, but this isn’t the way. It also isn’t something a teenager should have to worry about. You know that. You bring situations like these to adults and let them deal with it because it’s their job.”
“He won’t do it again, I promise.”
“Tell him to go to the shelter. I can give him a day or two to get his act together, but I have to tell your dad. At the very least, he’ll stop running himself ragged looking for the person who was in our basement.” It was a terrible compromise for everybody, but Brooke couldn’t simply throw Trevor and Caleb under the bus. Despite the fact that it sounded like the boys had been working too hard to solve an unsolvable problem, she couldn’t keep it a secret forever.
“Fine.” The reluctant agreement was loaded with all kinds of attitude, but it was about what she expected. Trevor grabbed the laundry basket. “Night, Dad!” he yelled in the direction of the kitchen.
When Brooke returned to her wineglass, the mood was completely broken. She pasted a smile on her face, but Aaron saw right through it. “What happened? You were only gone for a couple minutes?”
“It’s nothing you did. I got some disturbing news,” she admitted.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ll let you know in a couple days, okay?”
“That’s fine. I’m here whenever you want to talk.”
Brooke walked right into the hug he offered. It felt amazing to have somebody to lean on, who wanted to hear about her problems. She’d gone it alone for a long time. Every day, Aaron seemed to give her more of what she didn’t know she needed.
She hoped that what she had to do wouldn’t change that.
Chapter 26
The house was blessedly quiet. Trevor had left for school in a rush of toaster strudels and guzzled orange juice. Aaron cracked the window over the sink as he rinsed his cof
fee mug. The trees in the backyard only had a couple of green leaves left. Most were yellow or brown, or already on the ground, leaving bare branches waving against the hazy blue sky.
The air was cool, and a light coating of frost covered his windshield. The air also held a touch of wood smoke. It was getting to be that time of year when people with wood burning furnaces would stoke them to keep the chill out of the air overnight. Aaron loved the smell of a good fire.
He was just filling his travel mug when his cell phone rang. Annoyed that they couldn’t wait another fifteen minutes for him to get to the station, he answered with a gruff, “Gillespie, what is your emergency?” Because if they were calling before his second cup of coffee, it had better be an emergency.
“Sheriff, it’s Gary.” Gary Mitchell was the chief of the Holiday Beach Fire Department. He was one of eight paid firefighters, and he oversaw the volunteers that made up the rest of the department. “We’ve got a fire. Looks pretty bad.”
All of a sudden, Aaron didn’t need the coffee to get his heart going. “Where?”
“Shakespeare Drive. The old Shelley’s Shack. Someone spotted it on their drive to work and called it in. We’re here now, and…we’re not going to be able to save it.”
“I understand, Chief.”
“We’re trying to contain it. The grounds aren’t well-kept. There’s a lot of dead underbrush. There isn’t much wind, but it is blowing to the lot to the north.”
“That’s Bob Mackenzie’s place. Mac. He’s been working on it.”
“Can you contact him? We also need somebody out here directing traffic.”
“I’ll be there in twenty. Less,” Aaron promised.
The fire department had erected a temporary barricade a few lots down from the fire, in front of the Dickens Estate, leaving space for any cars to make a U-turn and head back to Lakeside Drive.
Aaron parked his cruiser in the middle of the road in the other direction. Smoke billowed from behind the trees lining the road. From what he could see, flames only danced higher than the treetops in one location—from where the cottage would be.
