Secrets She Knew: A Secrets and Lies Suspense Novel

by D. L. Wood

  Dani knew this answer was the best she was going to get from him at this point, so she left it. “What about the shed? I can take someone over there now, show you where I found it—”

  “Not that we’ll find anything after you traipsed all through there.”

  She tilted her head and felt her face sour. “That’s not fair.”

  He ran a hand over his hair. “No. No, you’re right, it’s not. I get why you did what you did, I just…hope it didn’t taint anything. I’ll send Newton over to the Beecher property with you. He can secure it and see if it’s worth calling forensics in.”

  A prickly heat crept up her neck. “Worth calling in? Seriously?”

  “Dani, it’s a closed case. Thirteen years closed. All his appeals have been exhausted—”

  “Not when there’s new evidence—”

  “If there’s new evidence.”

  “If?”

  “Dani, no one wants this case reopened. This wound has finally healed for everyone. As best as it can, anyway. We’ve got to handle this carefully—quietly—so that no one gets hurt, or hopeful, unnecessarily. So, for now, just keep this to yourself, all right? It stays between you, me and Newton, okay?”

  It was a true request, not a demand, because she wasn’t a member of his department. He couldn’t give her orders. She was a civilian who had found something and was free to talk about it if she chose—to the newspapers and to other potential interested parties. But she expelled a vexed breath and nodded.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “But,” she added quickly, “I’m gonna need a favor from you.”

  He leaned back again, crossing his arms over his bulging middle, as his eyebrows rose dubiously toward the ceiling.

  “Detective Danielle Lake, Boston P.D., meet Detective Chris Newton, Skye P.D.,” Chief Killen said, standing with Dani behind the desk of the dark-haired officer who had watched her so intently when she had arrived. Detective Newton looked up and grinned profusely, revealing a captivating smile of gleaming teeth, and Dani felt a little bubble rise in her chest.

  Pushing back his chair with a screech, Detective Newton rose to a height of somewhere north of six feet, and extended a strong, tanned hand. Dani shook it, finding his grip firm, but gentle, not like some guys on the job who felt the need to prove something by squeezing the fire out of your hand on that first shake.

  “It’s Chris,” he said.

  “Dani,” she replied, and unable to help herself, squeezed his hand a bit harder for good measure. “Nice to meet you.” As before, his gaze locked onto hers, but not so that it was off-putting. Rather, it conveyed an assurance that at that moment she had his complete and sincere attention. There was something almost mesmerizing about it, his eyes so dark brown they were nearly black, drawing her in like ebony pools, inviting her to dive in—

  “I know you,” he said.

  She dropped his hand and stepped back, her head inclining to one side. “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, I saw you. Yesterday. At Green’s? You were at the end of the counter.”

  A rush of recognition flooded her.

  He’s the guy in the T-shirt who came in. How did I not recognize him? She mentally kicked herself over the lapse. Granted, he had cleaned up, shaven, and was dressed professionally and not in workout clothes, but still, all of the excitement over the diary had really put her off her game.

  “Oh, right,” Dani said, then felt her face flush as she realized she had just admitted she had not only noticed him, but remembered him. The corners of Detective Newton’s mouth turned up again, this time stretching nearly to his eyes, confirming he had, in fact, picked up on that embarrassing little revelation. Her stomach turning, she scrambled to recover. “Hazard of the job, you know? Always watching the door.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, his lips now clamping together as if suppressing an even wider grin.

  Well, it’s the truth.

  The Chief, seemingly oblivious to the awkward interaction going down right in front of him, proceeded to run through the details of the situation for Detective Newton. “So, I want you to head over there with Dani now and check it out. I don’t want to draw attention and I don’t want to mess this up, although I doubt it’ll turn into much of anything other than a bit more heartache for Jennifer’s parents. I’ll get a warrant—shouldn’t take long—so just go secure the scene until I call with the go-ahead.”

  “Got it, Chief,” Detective Newton answered. He gathered a few things, tossed them in a duffel and slung it over his shoulder. “Beecher’s house is still empty, right? No one to notify?”

  Chief Killen nodded. “As far as I know, he’s still holding it in trust for his kids.”

  “Actually, that shed belongs, or at least it used to belong, to the caretakers who lived in that house on the back of his property,” Dani said.

  “No one’s there now. Those folks have been gone for ages. Died years ago.”

  “It’s just sitting empty too?” Dani asked.

  Chief Killen shrugged. “Beecher sold it to them when he went to prison. The husband died a few years after the murder—boating accident—and the wife died several after that, I think. If the shed’s part of that lot, we’ll need to get in touch with whoever owns it now. And I’ll need to adjust the warrant. And, um,” he crooked a finger at Detective Newton, “can I have a quick word?”

  Leaving Dani at the detective’s desk, the Chief and Detective Newton stepped back into the Chief’s office. They were gone only a few minutes before the detective popped back out with the Chief in tow.

  “All right,” Detective Newton said, a cheerful light in his eyes. “You ready, Boston?” He extended a hand toward the front of the room, indicating that she should lead the way.

  She snorted good-naturedly. “It’s Dani, and yeah. Let’s go.” She had only advanced a few steps when Chief Killen called after her.

  “And about that favor, Dani? That’s between you and me, okay?”

  Turning back toward him, she gave a two-fingered salute, then walked out, Detective Newton on her heels.

  5

  “So, you go way back with the Chief?” Detective Newton asked as he drove down Main Street, headed for the turnoff onto Dr. Beecher’s gravel drive.

  “All the way back,” Dani answered from the passenger seat. “He and my parents have been—were—friends since high school.”

  “Huh. Must be nice to have those kinds of connections here.”

  “You don’t, Detective?” she asked, glancing over. His black hair was cut short, but with just enough length so that his natural curl slightly flipped the tips up at the base of his neck. The olive cast of his tanned skin had a sort of Mediterranean quality about it, the kind of tone that never burned, just tanned perfectly the first time one stepped into the sun after winter. Not like Dani, who had to slather on SPF 50 for the first two months of summer, or risk a third-degree burn.

  He shook his head and she caught the scent of something peaty, almost like whiskey, and some kind of spice. “Really, call me ‘Chris,’ and no, I’m not from here,” he said. “I’m originally from St. Louis.”

  “I don’t remember seeing you here before—at the station, I mean. I visit the Chief sometimes when I come home.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ve been here for about six years now. But, before making detective I would have been on patrol most of the time, so it’s likely I was never around when you stopped by. Unfortunately.”

  He put a distinct emphasis on the word “unfortunately,” but she ignored it. “So, how’d you get from St. Louis to our little town in the middle of nowhere?”

  He chuckled. “A little town in the middle of nowhere was exactly what I was looking for. You’re in Boston. You know how much crime goes down in a big city like that. I burned out on it in less than a year. I was searching for something smaller and came across a listing for a position in the Skye P.D. The rest is history.”

  Though he wasn’t looking at her—his eyes were firmly fixed
on the road ahead—she could tell from his profile that his grin was threatening to emerge again. She also couldn’t help but notice that the sleeves of his white oxford shirt were rolled up to his biceps, which frankly looked like they were a little choked by the makeshift cuff. The ridiculous thought, I wonder how much he can bench-press, flitted through her brain, when she suddenly realized he was watching her, and snapped her gaze forward as a tingling sensation swept up her neck.

  He chuckled softly. “It’s all right, Boston.”

  “No, I was just wondering if I could out-bench you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was. And it’s ‘Dani,’ I told you,” she said, forcing an edge into her voice.

  “Nope, sorry. It’s ‘Boston’ now. Get used to it.”

  “Fine, then, St. Louis.”

  “Nah. You’re not going to be able to keep that up. And it just sounds silly when you do it.”

  She was trying to decide how it was possible for someone to be equally irritating and charming at the same time when they came to the gravel drive leading to Dr. Beecher’s estate. As he turned onto it, the sound of the grey rocks crunching beneath the tires filled the cabin, and Dani’s thoughts shifted instantly, a vague, hollow sensation blanketing her.

  “You okay?” he asked. The change in her must have been palpable.

  “Yeah, fine. It’s just…not my favorite place.” The empty, three-story antebellum home of Dr. Thomas Beecher was visible through the oak-dotted grounds to their right, scrolling by slowly as they continued down the drive.

  “I get it,” he said. “The Chief gave me a little background info.”

  Dani straightened in her seat, her spine lengthening and her chin rising slightly. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a job to do, right?”

  “That we do,” he agreed.

  By the time they had parked near the shed, Chief Killen had radioed that he had secured the warrant and green-lit the search. Chris pulled latex gloves and plastic shoe covers from his duffel, which they both adorned before heading inside the structure. Now Dani stood off to the side to avoid disturbing anything as she took him through last night’s discovery.

  “…and I just happened to see it when the light from my phone went through the gap in the floorboards.” She pointed to the opening in the floor where the removed board had been. It still lay on the other side of the shed, exactly where it had landed the night before. “I pried it up and the thing practically flew out of my hands. It wasn’t actually nailed down.”

  He looked at the board, then back at her. “Then what?”

  “Once I realized what that diary was, the only thing I was thinking was that I needed to get out of here and get home.” She held up a hand to shush him as he started to speak. “I know it goes against standard procedure. I know it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But I wasn’t thinking like a cop at the time.”

  “You were thinking like the grown-up version of a fifteen-year-old girl who may have just found something to explain why her friend was murdered.”

  A rush of gratitude flooded her. She hadn’t been expecting that kind of understanding from a stranger. “Exactly,” she said.

  “Look, I get it,” he said, pushing himself up from his squatted position on the floor. “I wasn’t here back then, but Jennifer Cartwright’s murder is a well-repeated story in town, and so is your part in it. That had to have been horrible, and I’ll bet finding that diary just brought it all back.”

  “It did.” She had crossed her arms, and was idly rubbing her palms against her skin.

  “It would have thrown me too Boston. At least you had the presence of mind to stick the diary back in the plastic. I’m not sure I would have.” He brushed off his khakis and straightened the shoulder holster that held his service weapon. He sniffed and eyed her intently. “One thing I don’t get is, what were you doing here? I mean, if this place bothers you so much—and believe me, I completely understand why it would—what were you doing out here after dark, or at all for that matter?”

  “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times since last night. I’ve never set foot on this property since the day I found Jennifer’s body. Not once. But with my parents passing recently and the house being empty—I don’t know. That place didn’t feel right either. I just started walking and ended up here.”

  His expression clouded. “By the way, I’m sorry—about your parents. I should have said earlier. The Chief mentioned it to me before we left. He said it was a car accident?”

  She inhaled a heavy breath. “Drunk driver. He survived, they didn’t.”

  After a quiet moment, he continued, the tone of his voice artificially upbeat, as if making a concerted effort to move past the subject. “Well, look, there’s nothing else under the floor. At least not in that spot. We’ll check the rest of the space beneath, of course. I’ll get our crime scene investigator out here—I mean, it won’t be fancy computer techs with all your upstart CSI:Boston doodads, but we’ll get the job done. If there’s something to find, we’ll find it. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope. You know as well as I do, if that diary was put there by Jennifer or someone else back in 1995, it’s unlikely any trace evidence of them will still be here.”

  “But you’ll let me know what you find?”

  He cocked his head and let a wry smile slip. “Now, Boston, you know how that works. You’ll have to talk to the Chief about that.”

  “Right. Talk to the Chief.” She tried to fix her face to look sufficiently chastised about the overreach, but one way or another, she was getting that information, no matter what the Chief or Detective Chris Newton said.

  6

  “You went to that shed alone with Chris Newton?” Sasha’s eyes were wide as she looked at Dani after picking up her two-year-old daughter’s fork off the floor for the third time and putting it back on her high chair tray.

  Sasha and her husband, Willett, Dani, Peter and Peter’s wife, Amy, all sat around Sasha’s farmhouse dining room table, halfway through a dinner that was getting colder by the minute.

  “What do you mean, ‘alone’?” Dani asked, her tone growing increasingly weary. It had been such a long day, and though she had not noticed until now, sitting still in this chair for the last thirty minutes had made it quite clear just how tired she was.

  She hadn’t left the shed until around two thirty, when Chris was finally securing it with “DO NOT CROSS” tape, after watching Skye P.D.’s one-person CSI team take care of business. After that she had let Chris take her back to the station to get her car, then spent three draining hours just beginning the task of sorting through her parents’ belongings. By six o’clock, she had barely made a dent, gave up and headed over to Sasha’s, completely ravenous because with all the activity she had forgotten to eat lunch, a bad habit of hers.

  But, as usual, Peter and Amy were late and they had to wait until nearly seven to start. At that point, all Dani wanted to do was eat, so she made a point of finishing most of her pasta before mentioning a word about anything that had happened the night before or since. Once she did, though, the meal had come to a full stop, and now, after a first pass through the events of the last twenty-four hours, they all hovered over half-finished plates of beef stroganoff, gob-smacked.

  “I can’t believe it,” Peter said.

  “And on top of all that,” Sasha drawled, a knowing grin materializing on her face, “Chris Newton.”

  Dani snorted. “That’s what you want to talk about? Not what I found in Jennifer’s diary?”

  “You told us everything, right?” Sasha replied in her defense. “You said there wasn’t anything in the diary.”

  “No,” Willett corrected, tossing his wife a wry smile, “she said she didn’t find anything in it before she turned it over to the police.”

  “So, hold up,” Peter interrupted, spreading his hands wide. “I still can’t get over that we were sitting here, eating stroganoff and salad and talking about Sasha’s reunion progress for thirty minutes, lik
e everything’s normal, and then you drop this bomb. This is huge, Dani!”

  “I know, but…I was starving,” Dani explained sheepishly. “If I’d started when we sat down, I wouldn’t have been able to eat.”

  “I just can’t believe you didn’t rush right in here and start spilling it. Or, call us earlier, for that matter. I mean, you’ve been obsessed with this for thirteen years—”

  For just a second, Dani thought she caught the tiniest flash of something behind Peter’s eyes.

  “Maybe,” Amy started, laying a hand on Peter’s arm, “Dani just needed a little time to process it.” A licensed counselor, Amy worked with Peter at the Skye Youth Center, and right now she seemed to be using her skills to temper her husband.

  Sasha’s two-year-old, Alana, picked that moment to fling an egg noodle across the table with her spoon, where it landed with a plop in Dani’s water glass.

  “I’m not mad,” Peter said, apparently reading and interpreting his wife’s reaction. “I’m worried. It’s just not normal for someone who’s been this wrapped up in something for this long to keep quiet about it for even a minute. I just worry that maybe she’s not handling it as well as she’s wanting us to believe.”

  “I’m fine. I promise,” Dani said when Peter continued peering at her skeptically. “And besides, there isn’t anything else for me to do. Chris has charge of the investigation and Chief Killen has people looking at the diary. And, anyway, I doubt it’ll come to anything. Not after all this time.”

  “So, Chris took over the investigation…not Officer Newton,” Sasha teased.

  “He is one of Skye’s most eligible bachelors, Dani,” Amy piped in, tossing Dani a conciliatory smile.

  Willett’s face screwed up as he shook his head. “Do not encourage her, Amy.”

  “What?” Sasha asked innocently, fooling no one. “She’s single, he’s single. She’s pretty and he’s—”

  “Gorgeous,” Amy said, and all three women snorted while the men rolled their eyes.