For a long time there had been a divide between him and Dean. Partly it had been the age difference, but partly it was all the secrets between them. For the first time in a long time, Cooper was beginning to feel seen by his brother. He hadn’t anticipated how much different it would feel.
“You could have stayed with your family,” Park said, fiddling with his food without eating it. “I didn’t want to interrupt your time together.” After dropping them off at the marina, Dean and Ed had headed back out on the bay and wouldn’t be back until it was time to set up for the engagement party that evening.
“I more than filled my annual family-bonding quota this morning,” Cooper said. He’d given Park a general overview of his conversation with Dean once they were alone and back on land. Not about his mom, or any details concerning Park himself. Just, “By the way, Dean’s known I’m into dudes for twenty years. Also, I’m supposed to be his best man now for some reason. Hopefully not guilt.”
Park, still recovering from his seasickness with his head between his knees, had just groaned in response. But there had been a supportive sort of inflection to the groan, and Cooper thought the resulting mixed sound summarized his own feelings about the experience pretty accurately.
He took a sip of coffee and scanned the handful of customers, most of them at the counter. “Anyway, the conversation was getting a little morbid for me and not in a helpful way.”
Park grimaced. “I missed the tail end of that.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” Cooper countered.
As they’d turned back around to Bell’s Marina, Ed had yammered on about all the drowning cases he’d caught over the years with uncharacteristic chattiness. Whether he thought that was supposed to make Park feel better or if he was trying to keep the conversation firmly away from the current case wasn’t clear. Either way, he needn’t have bothered. Park was too busy retching over the side of the boat the whole trip back to pay any attention, and after his conversation with Dean, Cooper was too uncomfortable to bring up Mr. Hardwick. Instead he’d kept quiet, half listening to his father and half trying to figure out if there was anything he could do to make this whole mess go away.
He’d really only come up with one possibility: Treat it like any other case. Cooper used to be FBI. He could do this, same as the agents. Plus he had an advantage: he already knew who didn’t do it.
Cooper imagined Alex Hardwick as he was back then. Handsome...friendly...too friendly.
I am a thirty-something-year-old man having an affair with my neighbor. Her husband is a deputy. Somehow I end up dead in their yard. How? Why? The jealous husband of my lover knows. And...
Cooper tuned back into the diner. “I want to go talk to Mrs. Hardwick after this.”
Park choked on his coffee. “Excuse me?”
“I want to look into the case, and I think the best place to start is Mrs. Hardwick. Primelles and Joon told me she’d never even reported him missing. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“What’s strange is they told you that at all.”
“They were just trying to poke the bushes and see what popped up. But it is suspicious, and I think it’s the best place to start. If I’m lucky she’ll admit she killed him with my dad’s hoe, tucked him in a hole, and everything will be settled by the party tonight. What’s with the look?”
“I know I’m a little woozy and dehydrated at the moment, but I could have sworn we were here in Jagger Valley to visit your family and not on official business.” Park shook his head. “Weird.”
“I’m doing this for my family.” Cooper sighed. “Look, what you said last night, about what the agents think, it’s true. And it was more than flirting. My mom and Hardwick, they, uh, did actually have an affair.”
It was not unexpected that Park didn’t react but a relief all the same. One of Cooper’s favorite things about him was his unflappability. Except when he wanted to get a rise out of Park—then it could be his least favorite, too.
Right now, though, he wanted reliable and non-judgmental, and Park didn’t disappoint. He just tilted his head thoughtfully. “Are you okay?”
“Of course,” Cooper said quickly. “I mean, why wouldn’t I be? I used to imagine finding out my real father was someone else and that we’d go live with him instead. Obviously I wasn’t the biggest champion of their relationship.”
He sipped his coffee. “I’m disturbed more than anything. Not disturbed that my mom had a—a sex life, but that I might need to reconsider their relationship. Dad always made it sound like they were perfect together. That before she got sick everything was just easy. But that’s crazy. It’s never easy. Not even when you really care about somebody.” He risked a look at Park. “So why should it bother me if my mom had a thing with hot Mr. Hardwick?”
Park made an amused face. “Hot Mr. Hardwick?”
“Well, you didn’t catch him at his best yesterday. Anyway, when this comes out, you know it’s just going to make their case against him stronger.”
“You don’t trust the FBI to find the right man?”
There was no criticism in Park’s voice, just curiosity, but Cooper struggled for a moment. It was true, after Florence he’d officially lost the last remaining faith he had in the justice system. It was imperfect and far too dependent on human bias and just systemically flawed.
When he spoke again his voice was lowered, not that anyone in the diner would know what they were talking about. “You and I both know that the agency doesn’t always get the right person.” He let that sit. “Besides, you saw how my dad was yesterday. As long as he keeps acting guilty, they’re going to treat him like he’s guilty.”
“And you’re trying to protect him from having to dredge up old hurts,” Park offered.
Cooper scoffed. “Oh, well, protect isn’t how I’d put it.” He pushed his eggs around his plate, then speared a piece of pancake off Park’s instead.
“All right. We’ll talk to Mrs. Hardwick.”
“We?”
Park quirked an eyebrow. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t have my partner’s back on this?”
“As you pointed out, this isn’t our case. We’re off duty.”
“So we’re not partners off duty?”
Cooper froze in the middle of going back for more pancake. “Um, are we?”
Park shook his head with a bemused smile and didn’t respond. Or maybe that was his response. “So, cherchez la femme. Isn’t that a bit cliché?”
“If my dad has a motive to kill Hardwick out of jealousy, surely Mrs. Hardwick does as well.”
“Does Mrs. Hardwick still live next door?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Cooper searched Park’s eyes for a hint as to what he was thinking. Things hadn’t been smooth sailing between them recently, so to speak, and they’d called a cease-fire of sorts last night on any talk like that, but Cooper hadn’t forgotten Park had asked for time off from work. From work with him...
“Are you sure about this? We’d have to do this outside the agency knowing. If they found out we were interfering in another investigation, well, what else can you expect from the BSI’s most hated?” Not to mention he might be out the door soon enough, anyway. “But your reputation doesn’t have to take a hit. It’s practically begging for trouble.”
Park didn’t look worried. He looked drained and his skin still had a slight yellow tinge, but he was smiling, and under the table he nudged the inside of Cooper’s knee with his own. “Lucky for you begging is my best trick.”
* * *
Cooper knocked on the front door of Mrs. Hardwick’s house and waited. They’d walked the long way down the parallel street to get to the front of her house. It seemed inappropriate to knock at her back kitchen door, acting like a neighbor, when he was hoping she’d confess to a murder. Not your usual cup-of-sugar visit.
Plus, he had felt oddly reluctant to
walk through his own backyard. He’d seen plenty of crime scenes before, obviously, most of them a lot worse than this, but it was different when it was your own space. Death changed even the most familiar landscapes.
Beside him Park sniffed the air and murmured, “Here we go,” and then added, “Oooh, and French Roast.” A moment later, the door opened.
Eva Hardwick was a short, generously curvy Puerto Rican woman with an exceptionally beautiful face. She looked younger than Cooper was expecting. Stronger, too, like she used her arms to lift heavy loads frequently. From the scrubs with cartoon characters on them she was wearing, he guessed the heavy loads were probably people. Yeah, Cooper could picture her wielding a hoe twenty-five years ago.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Hardwick? I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Cooper Dayton. I grew up next door. This is my friend Oliver Park.”
Mrs. Hardwick took them both in without a smile. “Okay.”
“I wanted to say my condolences about what happened yesterday. It must have been a terrible shock.” Mrs. Hardwick continued to stare at him, unimpressed. “I know it’s bad timing, but I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“About?”
Cooper hesitated. This was where a badge made everything easier. No one was obligated or even compelled to talk to him as a civilian. He eyed her skeptical face. “I would like to discuss your late husband...and my mom.”
Mrs. Hardwick didn’t even blink, but she did step aside and gesture them into the house toward the kitchen at the back. The room was nice, much nicer than Ed’s. It was sleek and modern, with shining steel pans hanging above an island and a breakfast table under a giant window. Through it, Cooper could see his own bedroom curtains pulled shut, the shed, and the eerily empty skyline where the gazebo had been.
Mrs. Hardwick offered them seats and fresh coffee, which Park took her up on, then cut straight to the chase. “The FBI told you about their affair, Alex and Rachel.”
“Is that how you found out?”
“No. I’m the one who told them.”
Cooper exchanged a look with Park. “So you knew?”
Mrs. Hardwick smiled coolly. “Alex was many things, but he was not a very subtle man and I’m not a stupid woman.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“You mean was it so hard that I snapped and killed him? No. Though I can see why that would be easier for you.”
“I wasn’t trying to say—”
She cut him off impatiently. “Like I said, I’m not stupid. I know it doesn’t make Eddie look good. But I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for. I didn’t murder my husband.”
Eddie? Cooper took a breath. “I just want to know more about that time. I don’t remember anything about it. Please.”
She looked down at her hands as if thinking. “I remember you, you know. The youngest in the neighborhood, so the other kids almost never let you play with them. I remember sitting right here, watching you lie in the field as a little boy, all alone, talking to yourself. Maybe you liked being alone.” She looked up at him, eyes hard. “Maybe your mother just wanted you out of the house for a while.”
Cooper kept his face neutral, and after a moment she sighed. “Alex was friendly, handsome, chévere, and he didn’t like to say no. I knew that when I met him. Many women loved him. And a lot of husbands hated him. It wasn’t the first time he had been unfaithful to me.” She tapped the side of her head. “He’d left me up here a long time ago. I knew that. I stopped being angry about it long before he disappeared.” She shrugged. “Do I look like a woman who stays lonely hoping her husband might come back?”
Cooper didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, if Hardwick did have a long list of ex-lovers and pissed-off husbands, their suspect pool had just gotten a lot bigger. On the other hand, hearing his mom was just one casual fling amongst many felt... He wasn’t sure what he felt. Which would be better as her son, that the affair had meant something or that it hadn’t? Or maybe Dean was right and he should stop thinking about this in terms of himself.
“Is that why you didn’t report him missing? You were glad he was gone?”
Mrs. Hardwick clicked her teeth and shot him a scolding look. “I didn’t need anyone gossiping more than they already were. ‘Oh, that poor, stupid cow, calling the police because her husband ran off with another woman.’”
Park looked around the house. “What about all his stuff? You didn’t think it was strange he left it all behind?”
“All of what behind? He wasn’t a ‘stuff’ sort of man. And you can buy plenty of new clothes with the money saved on alimony. Besides”—she hesitated—“he did take something with him—his case.”
“Case?”
“Alex was a journalist. He kept a briefcase with notebooks and papers for stories he was working on. He had all his paperwork in there, too. It was the only thing that really mattered to Alex. His work was the one thing he was faithful to. He wouldn’t have left without that case.”
“And you still thought he had just left even when you never heard from him again?”
“Why would I hear from him?” She waited, looking back and forth between Cooper and Park, genuinely waiting for an answer. He had to admit it was effective. He couldn’t come up with anything. She flapped her hand at him. “There was nothing left to say. You think I should have waited by the phone wringing my hands? I had my own life to live.”
“And you were sure he’d left of his own free will because of a missing case and a couple meaningless affairs.” Under the table, Cooper felt Park’s knee press against his own. Cool down.
“Meaningless.” She sucked her teeth again. “A couple of days after Alex didn’t come home, your mother came to see me.”
Cooper froze.
“She wanted me to report it. She must have been desperate to come to me.” Mrs. Hardwick hesitated and looked out the window at where the gazebo had been. “Alex had been acting off for a while. He worked longer nights than ever. I almost never saw him. It turned out your mother hadn’t either. He wasn’t with her. When I checked our accounts, I saw he’d been taking out cash withdrawals for months.” She rubbed her fingers in the air. “Big ones. When I called his office, they told me he asked for an unlimited leave weeks ago. It was obvious he’d been planning to leave me for a while. I just didn’t realize until she showed up on my door crying that he’d been planning to leave her, too. I told her if she was so worried, she could report him missing.”
Mrs. Hardwick’s eyes narrowed, but her thick lashes couldn’t quite conceal the sharp look she sent Cooper. “She was married to police, after all. When she didn’t, I figured she’d come to the same conclusion I had, that there was someone else. He’d been two-timing us both. It didn’t surprise me.”
She hesitated. “But now...now maybe I wonder if she didn’t say anything because she’d figured out what had really happened to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“She realized her husband had killed her lover, of course. You want to ask me why I didn’t report him missing? Because I didn’t care. You should ask, why didn’t she? She’s the only one who missed him when he was gone.”
Cooper focused on his breathing and tried to categorize this new information as he would in any other case.
I am a thirty-year-old woman whose lover suddenly disappears. His wife thinks he’s run off. I can’t tell the police because my husband is...
But he couldn’t do it. This was his mother. His family. It felt like a violation to even try and put himself in her head. To even consider that... No.
It also hurt realizing how little of what was going on in her mind he’d actually ever known or could imagine now. Why did she do or not do anything, how the hell should he know? He only knew an eleven-year-old’s memories of her, colored and twisted by the pain of loss
and fairly unconditional love.
Park eventually broke the silence. “You said Alex was a journalist? Do you think something he was working on could have put him in harm’s way?”
Mrs. Hardwick laughed. “You mean do I think he was killed to keep quiet? Honestly, I hope so. I think he would have liked that. Alex always wanted to break a big story. But this is Jagger Valley. There wasn’t any chance of that happening. He did write-ups on charity events and local competitions. The biggest thing he ever worked was some trial, and that was wrapped up over a year before he lef—was killed. Killed,” she repeated as if retraining herself to say it. For just a moment her dark eyes looked sad, almost regretful, before hardening again. “His pen is not the thing that pissed people off.”
“You said he was acting strangely for a while. Do you remember when that started? Had something changed?”
Mrs. Hardwick frowned. “It was over twenty years ago.”
“But you must have thought about it since then. You must have wondered who the other other woman was.”
Mrs. Hardwick stood. “I think you should leave now.”
“Please,” Cooper said, standing, too. “Mrs. Hardwick, I know this is painful. I know it was a long time ago. But anything, anything at all, would be helpful. You said you weren’t angry at Alex anymore—don’t you want to find out who killed him? Because I know, I know it isn’t my dad.”
She hesitated. “A couple of months before Alex disappeared, the Daugherty girl died.”
“Rose Daugherty?” Cooper tried to connect the sudden change in topic. “She OD’d, right?”
“Yes. Of course, everyone suspected she messed around with drugs. With that mother, ay, can you blame her? But her death changed Alex. That’s when he started staying out all night. He became irritable, strange.”
“I didn’t realize they even knew each other. Not more than neighbors do.”
Mrs. Hardwick snorted, but there was little humor in her face. “Haven’t you been listening? Ours is a little more incestuous than your usual neighborhood, don’t you think?”
The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf) Page 13
