On Her Father's Grave (Rogue River Novella Book 1) (2 page)

Stevie couldn’t reply. She’d thought she’d cried out all her tears over her father, but heat prickled at the corners of her eyes at the sympathy in Kenny’s voice. She blinked and bit at her cheek to keep the moisture in check. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kenny glance at her and then tighten his jaw, probably wishing he hadn’t mentioned her father.

She forced her herself to reply, “It’s going to be a long night.”

Stevie took a deep breath, put on her cop face, checked her emotions, and approached the closest teen.

Zane Duncan was functioning on too little sleep. He’d been sitting in his new office for two hours, flipping through the notes Roy had passed to him at five a.m. about Hunter Brandt’s death last night.

He wasn’t sure which had shocked him more. The teenager’s abrupt death or Roy Krueger’s call in the middle of the night stating that he was stepping down immediately as chief of police and by the way, congratulations: an emergency city council meeting had elected Zane as his replacement.

Roy held the position for ten days and last night he suddenly decided to retire?

Zane had missed a lot on vacation.

Chief Bill Taylor had died. His long-absent daughter, Stevie Taylor, had been hired as a Solitude cop. Hunter Brandt’s death. Now Roy Krueger’s leaving.

And all of it had been dumped on Zane’s shoulders at five in the morning.

Welcome back.

The relaxation from two weeks of hiding from civilization while he remodeled his old cabin in the woods had evaporated with a single call.

How had the city council held a meeting in the middle of the night? Zane suspected it’d simply been a series of phone calls among the five members.

Roy quit.

Who should take his place?

Kenny’s too kind.

Carter’s too new.

Zane has half a brain. He could manage.

Make it so.

He hadn’t been asked if he wanted the job; he’d been told he had it. And the city council was correct. None of the other guys would have been able to manage the job. Zane was the logical choice.

He liked this town too much to let it down. It’d had enough recent pain.

The outside door to the police station opened and closed, and Zane listened to determined footsteps stride down the hall to his office. Who else was up this early? All the staff had been up half the night interviewing the entire senior class of Solitude High School.

His door was pushed open and Stevie Taylor slid to a stop, brown eyes blinking in surprise. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, searching for words.

“I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I was expecting Roy.”

Zane nodded. “I would have too. But Roy’s stepped down. The city council placed me in this chair.”

“What? When? I just worked half the night with Roy. He didn’t say a word!” Her forehead wrinkled in concern. “Who are you?”

“Zane Duncan.” He watched comprehension cross her eyes. “I worked with your father for five years. I had a lot of respect for him and will really miss him. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at his funeral.”

Stevie simply looked at him. Her struggle to control her emotions was betrayed by the tightening of her lips.

She had the look of Big Bill Taylor about her. She was tall and long-limbed with a stubborn set to her mouth that she’d inherited from her determined father. Zane had watched her and her three siblings at Bill’s funeral. A solid, close family. A supporting pillar of Solitude that’d lived in the area for four generations.

Her siblings had circled around Bill’s widow, Patsy Taylor, towering over their petite mother. But the mother had been the center of strength in the group. Where the siblings had looked ready to crumble to pieces, Patsy had been the one who held her chin up.

Stevie had caught Zane’s attention. The mystery daughter who’d packed up over a decade ago to leave for college and who returned only on holidays. The daughter who’d embraced the city life in Los Angeles and cut her police teeth with the LAPD. She wasn’t beautiful; she was unique-looking and caused a man to stare too long, struggling to understand why he couldn’t look away. Her long curly hair was pulled back in a soft ponytail and her brown eyes sat wide in her face. Nothing classical or erotic about her looks, just a wholesome country girl. One who looked like she could ski, ride, rope, run, and cook a meal for thirty with ease. Before the funeral, Zane had seen her only in Bill’s proud pictures on his office walls. In fact, now Stevie was standing just to the left of a photograph of Bill, herself, and her younger sister Carly with their arms around each other on a ski slope. Hats, goggles, and scarves had been pushed out of the way so they could flash big happy smiles at the photographer. Carly was divorced . . . or getting divorced. He didn’t know which. Zane had stared at the picture several times in the past, wondering what it was like to be part of such a big, happy family.

Now he was finally meeting the last of Bill’s kids, and Stevie was looking at him like he’d maliciously kicked Roy out of his seat.

“What did Roy say?” she asked, cutting off the topic of her father’s funeral.

Zane shifted in his chair. His conversation with Roy had been stilted and uncomfortable. Zane wasn’t one to pry into someone’s business. He figured that if Roy didn’t want to be police chief that was his right. He’d told Zane that seeing that kid dead by the lake had shone a light on his own mortality. “I’m not the youngest or healthiest guy in the world,” he’d said to Zane. “Doc says I need to exercise and eat better if I’m going to see my grandkids grow up. After sixty years of living the wrong way, why does he think I’ll change? I want to enjoy the time I have and I realized last night that I’d rather be next to the water in Baja than filling out reports. I never realized how much time Big Bill Taylor spent doing paperwork. Ten days of doing it was enough.”

Zane met Stevie’s gaze. “He said he wasn’t getting any younger and wanted to enjoy what he had left of his life. I don’t think he realized what being chief entailed.”

A direct brown gaze weighed his words. “I’ll call him later,” Stevie stated.

Does she think she can get a better answer?

“Why are you here so early? I imagine you didn’t get much sleep,” Zane asked. He studied her face. Apart from some redness around the eyes, she looked ready to run a marathon.

“I slept. I wanted to see where we were at with those interviews from last night. Every time I closed my eyes, I dreamed I was interviewing a soaking-wet teenager. I’m not sure which conversations were real and which were only in my dreams.”

“I’ve read through your notes. Roy handed them off to me before he went home to sleep. I don’t expect to hear from the medical examiner until late this morning.”

Stevie glanced around his cramped office. “Nothing’s changed in here in fifteen years. I assume we don’t have any sort of lab?”

Zane tried not to smile. “Nothing except some simple tests and most of those you’ll find in the trunk of your squad car. We send everything out to the county or the state lab when we need to. But frankly, there isn’t even a lot of that. I’m afraid you’ll find the pace here a little slower than LA.”

Her chin tilted up. “I know how it is here. That’s why I accepted the position. I’m more than happy to exchange the rat race for some drunken redneck beer brawls.”

“You’ll get your share each weekend.” He frowned slightly, studying her build. Would she be able to hold her own with the local drunks?

Her lips twisted as she read his mind. “I can handle it,” she said with calm assurance.

He waited, expecting her to describe some past experiences to prove her strength, but she simply tilted her head to one side, a small expression of bemusement on her face.

If she were a man, would I expect him to describe his feats of strength?

Hell, no.

She’d been LAPD. She’d earned the right to wear a badge in backwoods Solitude.

He shuffled through the reports, looking for one that’d caught his eye earlier. “You talked to Grace Ellis, the girlfriend? She said she and Hunter had an argument?”

Stevie pulled a small notebook out of her pocket, nodding. She flipped through the pages for a few seconds and silently reread her notes. “Grace said he’d been a jerk when she got to the lake. There hadn’t been room for her to ride to the lake with his friends, so she’d had to arrange her own way. Then when she’d arrived, he’d ignored her, so she stuck with her group of girlfriends. She said he’d been hanging around with a few other guys most of the evening, and she hadn’t really watched what he’d been up to.” Stevie paused and looked up at Zane. “Here’s where I don’t quite believe her. If she’s already upset that she’s being ignored, you can bet she’s watching every move of his with an eagle eye to see if he’s flirting with another girl.”

“So she didn’t see anything to make her believe another girl was involved?”

“Right. And we can be pretty certain if anyone saw what Hunter did last night, it was Grace. He might have been in a ‘hanging with the guys’ mood. Which in her mind is a best-case scenario.” She looked back at her notes. “She says she saw him with a Coors Light and some sodas. No cigarettes. She did say he seemed a bit drunk because she saw him stumble and trip a few times later in the evening. And she didn’t see anyone smoking or taking anything illegal.”

“Believe her?” Zane asked. He had no idea of the workings of a teenage girl’s mind.

Stevie shrugged. “Let’s see what the ME comes back with before we ask her more questions. I assume no one else said they saw anything illegal going on?”

“Damn right,” answered Zane, scowling at his stack of paper. “And no one saw Hunter get hit or hit his own head and fall.”

“Of course not.” Stevie sighed. “ ‘I saw nothin’.’ I’ve heard that line more times than I can count.”

Zane nodded. “I see a few of the other interviews say about the same as Grace. That Hunter did seem buzzed and off-balance. But not puking or falling like he was too drunk. Looks like Roy issued a half-dozen minor-in-possession citations last night. That’s going to make the parents happy.”

Stevie smiled. “That definitely hasn’t changed since I grew up here.”

“Did you go out to O’Rourke’s when you were a teen?” Zane asked, trying to picture a younger Stevie with a Silver Bullet in one hand, riding on the lake’s rope swing.

“Every chance I got.” A wide smile crossed her face, a ghost of a wild teen peeking out from her dark eyes. Zane wished he could compare the younger girl with the smartly dressed cop in front of him. She’d put on the navy blue uniform they all wore, but she made it look good. Zane always felt like a stiff piece of cardboard in his.

Her eyes twinkled. “My parents—”

“I’m gonna call my lawyer, you asshole! You got no rights!” shouted a male from the front of the station.

Zane lunged to his feet and followed Stevie, who was already halfway down the hall. More shouts and sounds of scuffling met his ears. He stepped into the main room in time to see Kenny yank up on Ted Warner’s cuffed hands behind his back, forcing the man to bend and lunge forward, banging his head on Sheila’s desk.

“Oops. Watch your head, Ted.” Kenny grinned at Zane and Stevie. “Morning, guys! I’ve got the first drunk and disorderly of the holiday weekend.”

Stevie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Ted looked faintly familiar. No doubt he’d gone to school with her or one of her siblings. He looked about the right age, but he also looked like he’d been sleeping under an old truck with an oil leak. His jeans were torn, and he had a severe case of bedhead that sent his hair pointing in all directions. His unfocused gaze tried to calibrate as he looked in her direction.

“That Stevie?” he slurred. “I heard the boss’s daughter was back in town! Lookin’ good, babe.”

Kenny yanked on his arms again. “Didn’t your mama teach you any manners?”

“I’d like to teach
her
some manners.” Ted leered at Stevie.

Stevie mentally rolled her eyes. Ted had imbibed liquid confidence. “Hey, Ted. We can set up a date later, okay?”

Delight passed over his face and his eyes briefly crossed. “Yeah, baby.”

“What’s your wife gonna say to that, Ted?” Zane asked from behind Stevie.

Ted wilted. “Oh. Forgot.” He shook his head back and forth, staring at the floor, his zest and confidence evaporating as he remembered.

Stevie glanced back at Zane with a grin and his blue eyes crinkled at the corners in response. His grin sent her stomach into a slow spin. His eyes were the exact color of her softest pair of jeans. The ones she knew she could always slip into when craving comfort. The pair her ex had claimed drove him crazy . . . in a good way.

“Ted decided to start the day by taking a baseball bat to his wife’s car windshield,” Kenny said. “She’s the one who called it in. His son tried to stop him, and I swear he was about to use the bat on the kid when I pulled up.”

Stevie’s smile faded. “How old’s the son?”

Kenny gave Ted a shake and asked, “How old’s Russ? Twelve? Thirteen?”