Profiling a Killer
Page 20
They ended the call and Millie looked at the clock. She had a few hours before Larissa’s well-meaning check-in.
That was plenty of time to retrace Fallon’s last known stops around town before he disappeared.
Millie grabbed her purse and hurried out to the driveway. Just like the moving truck, she barely noticed the man walking parallel to her along the driveway next door, a box in his arms. On reflex she nodded a hello when their eyes met.
The light from his front porch showed him returning the gesture. Millie noted, the way one notes something when your mind was already filled with other pressing matters, the easy facts.
The man was young, at least younger than Mr. Tomlin, the tenant before him, had been. She guessed he was closer to her twenty-eight than Mr. Tomlin’s sixty-two. Taller too. Built wider and sturdier if the large box he carried with ease was any indication. Millie couldn’t get a good grasp of the color of his hair other than it was lighter than her black, and he had a lot of it. Shoulder length and with a matching beard. It felt hot just looking at it. Then again, it was summer in Kelby Creek. That meant even the night gave little respite from the heat and humidity that plagued South Alabama. Past those quick flashes of detail, Millie didn’t stick around to register any more.
She had a brother to find, Southern hospitality be damned.
* * *
FOSTER LOVETT HADN’T been back in Kelby Creek since he’d run off and married Regina Becker straight out of high school. Not the smartest thing he’d done in his thirty-two years of life but not the dumbest either. He and Regina had a good five years of married bliss before the dam of young insecurities, naive hopes and work had started to crack between them.
When that thing blew, the next five years of marriage had been all about surviving the flood.
They hadn’t.
Now Foster was back in his hometown sweating through his jeans, cursing the mosquitoes and wondering who the woman next door was even though he’d sworn off the opposite sex the moment he’d signed the divorce papers and lost his house, his car and the dog two years ago. Sure, he’d gone on a few dates since that fateful day, but the lesson he’d learned from Regina was still seared into his brain.
Women were trouble.
And the woman who’d all but run and jumped into her car before speeding off? Well, he guessed she might be that with a capital T.
Foster was done with trouble. Or at least the woman kind. Professionally he had run back to Kelby Creek and jumped right into the sack with a damned mess. One he hoped he could help clean up.
He hefted the box of dishes high as he opened the front door to his rental home and jostled inside. The AC had been running since that morning, but the air was still on the stale side. He scrunched up his nose at it and slid the box onto the kitchen counter just as his phone started blaring. He eyed the oven’s clock. It was almost seven at night.
The caller ID of a man whose first name was honest-to-God Brutus popped up on the touch screen.
Foster straightened and answered.
“Yello.”
“Hey there, Love, sorry for calling when you requested some quiet while getting settled,” the weathered and deep voice of interim sheriff Brutus Chamblin answered. “But I heard through the grapevine that you were being a grump at Crisp’s Kitchen no more than half an hour ago, so I figured you were probably still up to no good.”
Foster rolled his eyes and started to open the box he’d just put down.
“I wasn’t grumpy, I just wasn’t chatty. That’s all.”
“That’s the same thing when you live in a town with only eighteen hundred or so people. You should know that already, or has living big in Seattle made you forget the niceties of being Southern?”
The sigh escaped him faster than the packing tape split on top of the box.
“I moved back to help redeem the image of this town and the sheriff’s department. You’d think that would earn me a little leeway when I don’t spend a half hour talking to Quinn Cooper about the fish he caught at the creek two months ago while trying to finish my dinner.”
Brutus laughed.
Sheriff Chamblin laughed.
Foster was going to have to get used to the idea that his father’s old friend was now acting interim sheriff until someone else was elected. That meant giving the man a little more formality than came naturally to him. Especially since Foster was now the lead detective in his department.
“Well, it might not kill you to fake the smiles and interest for a while. At least until things get a little more normal around here.”
Foster started to pull out the plates while making a mental note to go out and buy new silverware. After the divorce he’d moved in with a buddy from the Seattle Police Department before segueing into a studio apartment. Somewhere during the different moves he’d lost more and more furniture, odds and ends, and, weirdly enough, forks. For the life of him he had no idea where they’d all gone to.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he finally said. “Just as long as you remember I’m not here to fake nice. I’m here to solve cases.”
“Speaking of which...” Foster paused, plate in midair. He hadn’t had an active case in almost two months. Just the thought of one got his blood pumping. There was a rustling on the other side of the phone. “I still don’t have anything other than cold cases sitting on your desk. Maybe you can help make sense of at least one of them. Lord knows the people of Kelby Creek could use a win, and with a rock-star detective like you joining our ranks, maybe we can finally get them one.”
Foster resumed his unpacking and nodded to himself. He never liked being called a rock star, but he was proud of his above-average closing rate that had made him somewhat famous within his career in law enforcement.
“I’ll take a look at them first thing in the morning,” he said.
“Good. I’ll stop in to check up on you after my meeting with the interim mayor. He thinks since we’re both temporary that we should be in constant talks about the town.” Brutus sighed this time. “The man could drive a nun to drink, I tell you what.”
Foster laughed and adopted the older man’s earlier tone.
“Now, now, Sheriff. Don’t you go forgetting your Southern niceties.”
Brutus grumbled.
“Yeah, yeah. See you in the morning, Love.”
The call ended, and Foster spent the rest of the night unpacking. The rental house was a two-bedroom but on the smaller side. At least for the town; for his studio in Seattle? Not so much. It wasn’t until he was done that Foster realized the house still looked mostly empty.
It should have bothered him, he thought, but then again, when had he ever been a homebody?
Foster showered and then jumped into bed, mind already on the files that would be sitting on his desk in the morning. It wasn’t until a few hours had passed and he got up for a glass of water that he noticed the woman from next door hadn’t come home yet.
He wondered who she was again.
“You’re wasting your time,” he told himself out loud, empty glass in his hand. “You’re here to work. Not make nice with the neighbors.”
The small reminder was enough. Foster went back to bed. His routine kicked in after that.
He slept. His alarm went off and woke him. He ate. He dressed. He hopped into the used red Tacoma he’d bought a few weeks before and drove to work. His mind took in details around him in quick succession even though his focus was on something he hadn’t even read yet.
He nodded to Libby at the front desk, said a few words to a deputy he hadn’t formally met yet and passed by Brutus’s closed office door before going to the end of the hall and hanging a left.
Detective Lovett was etched on a new nameplate next to one of two doors down the small hallway.
But his door wasn’t closed.
In fact, not only was it open, there
was someone sitting just inside it across from his desk.
Foster didn’t recognize the dark curls, but he did recognize the concerned face as he walked around the stranger to his chair.
It was the woman from the night before. The woman in a hurry.
His neighbor.
“Good morning,” he said, adding a question to his greeting. “May I ask who you are and why you’re in here?”
With better lighting Foster was able to see just how beautiful the stranger was. Hair as dark as night, a mixed complexion that made her amber eyes even more bright as they took him in, and long angles that made him think of the description of royalty before he could stop it from popping into his head. Her long eyelashes brushed against her brown cheeks as she followed him with her eyes.
The woman gave what, he imagined, was a standard polite smile. But then it wiped clear from her lips. In its place worry so acute it made Foster’s spine zip up to attention.
“My name is Millie Dean and I need your help.”
Copyright © 2021 by Tyler Anne Snell
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ISBN-13: 9780369708991
Profiling a Killer
Copyright © 2021 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Nichole Severn for her contribution to the Behavioral Analysis Unit miniseries.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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