Goody Goody Gunshots (12 page)

“Have you talked to local restaurants, the grocery stores, and gas stations? Somebody must have seen this guy around.”

Jawarski tensed. “I know how to do my job, slick.”

“I never said you didn’t. It just seems to me that you’re giving up without much of a fight.”

Frowning, he pulled his arm away. “Who said I was giving up? I just don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight, is that okay with you?”

I shrugged and pretended not to care. “Sure, that’s fine.”

“But?”

“But what? I said it was fine, and it is.”

Jawarski shook his head and put some distance between us. “Right. Except that you’re still thinking about the dead guy. Call me crazy, but I’d rather have you thinking about us.”

“Then humor me. Answer a few more questions so I can.”

Jawarski tossed a wadded paper towel onto the coffee table and stood. “Okay. Hit me. What do you want to know?”

Half a dozen questions had been building themselves into a list, but the look on his face made them all evaporate. “If you really want me to think about us, maybe you should try being a little less hostile.”

He put his hands on his hips and paced a few steps away. “I’m not hostile, Abby, I’m frustrated. I thought we’d turned a corner in our relationship, but now I’m not so sure.”

There it was, the
R
word we’d been avoiding like the plague for months. It fell into the space between us and rolled around for a while in the silence. “I think we have turned a corner,” I said, still unable to say that word aloud. “But shouldn’t there be some give and take? I know you don’t want to talk about the murder. You’ve been at it for hours, nonstop. But I’m the one who ran into the guy on Tuesday night, I’m the one who saw him vandalizing a car I was later accused of damaging, and I was there when his body was found. I’m still wound up, and I can’t just shut that off because you want to get friendly.”

Jawarski hung his head and shook it slowly. “I
can’t
talk about the case with you, Abby. You’re not a member of the force. I can’t give you classified information, and I’m not going to let you know what the investigators on the case are thinking. That’s not how it works.”

“I’m not asking you for classified information.”

“How do you know?”

I had my mouth open, ready to argue some more, but his question stopped me in my tracks. “Well, I don’t, but—”

“Then don’t take offense where none is intended. I’m not shutting you down, Abby. I’m not that kind of guy. I’d think you would know that by now.”

That shot a hole in my self-righteous sails. Feeling about two inches tall, I stood to face him anyway. “I know you’re not. I’m sorry.”

I have to hand it to Jawarski. He knows how difficult those two words are for me to say, and he accepts them in the spirit they’re intended. Without another word, he closed the distance between us and pulled me into his arms. A heartbeat later, his mouth covered mine, and I knew that we were okay again. At least for now.

It took some effort, but I even managed to shut out the images I didn’t want to see so I could concentrate on the man in front of me, and that made us both happy.

Chapter 15

“I can’t believe you found a dead body,” Liberty
gushed as she stocked the display case with blueberry fudge the next morning. “And right down the street, too.”

She’d been gazing at me for more than an hour while I worked on a candy mosaic background in autumn tones for the shop’s display window. Somehow, finding John Doe dead in the bushes had transported me to rock star status in her eyes. She seemed barely able to focus on the work she was supposed to be doing.

I couldn’t explain why, but her attitude made me faintly uneasy. I glanced around for Karen, thinking she might save me from this conversation, but she’d disappeared into the office to take care of some paperwork. “It happens,” I said with a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “Even in Paradise.”

Liberty straightened from her task, her upper lip curled slightly. “Believe me, I don’t have any delusions about Paradise. This town is no different than anywhere else.”

We might all say it, but Liberty was probably the only other person inside city limits who actually believed it. With its granite mountain peaks, dense forests of aspen and pine, and clear mountain streams nearby, Paradise looks as if it belongs on a postcard. Those of us lucky enough to live here understand just how fortunate we are. I couldn’t say that out loud, though, so I followed the unwritten script my relatives had been using for years. “People are people no matter where you go. There are good and bad everywhere.”

Liberty stopped just short of rolling her eyes. “Right. So who do you think killed him?”

A little surprised, I paused with a shard of candy in one hand, a brush loaded with edible glue in the other. “I don’t even know who
he
is.”

“I know. That’s weird, isn’t it? Around here, I mean.” She seemed to remember that she was supposed to be working and scooped up two squares of fudge with a spatula. “It’s hard to imagine that
nobody
knows the guy.”

“I’m sure someone does.” I pressed the candy shard into place and eyed the effect critically. I was becoming bolder when it came to designing the display windows at Divinity, and this one was the most daring yet. “I’m also sure the police will find the answers to everyone’s questions soon.”

Liberty looked up in surprise. “What? You don’t want to talk about it?”

Again, an uncomfortable feeling slithered up my spine. “A man’s dead,” I said, my voice flat. “I don’t get off on speculating about what happened.”

From somewhere behind me came the sound of Karen snorting in disbelief. “Don’t let her fool you, Liberty. She’s not as immune to gossip as she tries to pretend.”

I glared at the open doorway. Karen should know what I
meant
. I might have talked about murder with family and a few close friends in the past, but I barely knew Liberty. Karen should be able to understand the difference.

Liberty grinned and carried the empty fudge pan into the kitchen. She’d done something to her hair that morning that made her whole head look as if a skunk had nested on top of it. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, I know what made Rutger want to come here, and you and I just came home again. But what brings somebody like this guy to Paradise?”

Terrific. Apparently, Karen had been gabbing about me with our new employee. “I suppose we’d have to know something about him to know the answer.”

Liberty leaned against the counter and studied the mosaic closely. “Maybe finding out what he was doing here would help tell us who he was. Have you thought of it that way?”

“I haven’t really thought about it at all,” I said. And that was mostly true. Okay . . . partially true. I’d been
trying
not to think about it. That had to count for something.

Karen appeared in the office doorway, a scowl on her narrow face. “She has a point. You could have passed the murderer somewhere along the road. Did you see anyone you recognized?”

I shook my head slowly. “I’ve thought about it a hundred times, but I don’t remember anyone in particular, other than Marshall. I was too busy chasing Max.” And trying to breathe, but I saw no reason to mention that.

“The killer must have known where to find him, don’t you think?” Liberty said abruptly. “Unless it was just a random act of violence.”

“I don’t think it was random,” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence that he’d pretend to be killed one day and actually turn up dead a few days later.”

“Then it had to be planned,” Liberty pointed out.

“Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe someone just saw an opportunity and took it.”

Liberty cocked an eyebrow. “Someone who just happened to carry a knife with him in case he came across someone he wanted to get rid of?”

“Obviously the dead guy had some kind of connection to Coach Hendrix,” Karen said, changing tactics. “Maybe he can identify the dead guy.”

I covered another sheet of candy with paper towel and shattered it using a rubber mallet. “I hope you’re not suggesting that I should ask him.”

Liberty picked up a stray sliver of candy and slid it into her mouth. “Are you talking about Kerry Hendrix?”

Intrigued, Karen came further into the room. “Yeah. Why? Do you know him?”

“I used to. We went to high school together, but I haven’t seen him in years.”

My stomach dropped. “You and Kerry were friends?”

Liberty laughed. “I wouldn’t say that. He was in the popular crowd. I spent most of my time in the parking lot or behind the bleachers.”

I hoped she was telling me the truth; otherwise, I was going to have a really tough time letting her stick around.

“Popular crowd? No wonder he’s so cocky,” Karen muttered. She came all the way into the kitchen and sat at the table. “So why did this guy want to destroy Kerry’s truck?”

“Unless Kerry’s changed, it could have been anything,” Liberty said as she joined Karen at the table. “When I knew him, he always got his own way. He pissed a lot of people off.”

“He hasn’t changed a bit,” Karen said with a rueful grin. “People like him never do.”

Liberty
seemed
genuine, at least. I wondered who Kerry’s friends were now that he was older, and if any of them might know what connection he had with the murdered man. Not that I had any intention of asking. The more distance I kept between Kerry Hendrix and myself, the better I’d feel.

 
Coach Hendrix and I didn’t exchange more than a dozen words at Wednesday afternoon’s practice. Apparently, he was still convinced that I’d vandalized his truck. I was still offended that he’d think so and more than a little uncomfortable around him.

With the two of us taking such pains not to interact any more than we had to, practice dragged on until I thought pulling the hair out of my arms with tweezers would have been less painful.

Finally, eight o’clock came around, and I led Brody and Caleb to the Jetta. While we’d been at practice, snow had started to fall, and the parking lot and cars were already blanketed with a thin layer of sparkling white.

Brody and Caleb reacted like boys always do, sliding on the ice that had formed under the surface and trying to pack the dry powder into snowballs. Like generations of adults before me, I walked with my head down, trying to keep my shoes dry and my hair from frizzing.

Brody and Caleb reached the car a few steps ahead of me. Caleb opened the car door and climbed into the backseat, but Brody came to a wobbling stop at the end of an ice slide and pointed toward the other side of the parking lot. “Hey. Lookit that. Isn’t that the car that guy got into the other night?”

I followed his finger and saw a dark-colored SUV idling next to Coach Hendrix’s truck. I could see Coach’s shadow behind the wheel of the truck, and someone else’s behind the wheel of the SUV. “I don’t know. It might be, but I didn’t see it well enough the other night to be certain.”

“It
is
the same car,” Caleb said, practically tumbling out of the Jetta in his excitement. “You wanna know how I know?”

Brody and I turned to look at him at the same time. “How?” I asked.

“Look at the lights in front. The one on this side is broken.”

Sure enough, where the headlights wrapped to the side of the SUV, one of the lights was missing its yellow plastic covering. My heart thumped hard against my rib cage, and my hands grew clammy. “Are you
sure
that’s the same car?”

Caleb’s chin jutted out stubbornly. “I’m not a baby, Aunt Abby.”

“I know you’re not,” I assured him. “I just want to be very sure it’s the same car. Next time I see it, I’ll give the license number to the police. Now get in the car and let’s get out of here.”

Brody reached for the door handle, but he stopped there. “Do you want me to sneak over there and write down the number?”

“Absolutely not. We’re leaving.”

Caleb didn’t seem to mind, but I could tell Brody thought I was being a sissy. “How are you going to get the license plate number if we leave?” he asked.

It was a good question, but I couldn’t take chances with the boys. We weren’t just dealing with a suspected carjacker anymore. A man had been murdered. Whatever these people were doing in Paradise, they meant business.

I herded the boys into the Jetta, swept away a layer of snow so I could see to drive, and got the car running. Leaving the headlights off so we wouldn’t attract attention, I drove around the building so I could leave the lot by the front entrance. We might have been perfectly safe driving past the SUV, bold as brass, but it was a risk I didn’t want to take.

This was the second time that SUV had been here, and it made me wonder what connection it had to Coach Hendrix. Did he know something about John Doe’s death, or was he in danger himself? I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, flipped it open, punched in Jawarski’s number, and hit Send. Nothing happened. I glanced at the screen and realized that once again the weather had blocked the signal. Service was patchy in Paradise in the best of times. In bad weather, it disappeared almost entirely.

Now what?

My tires hit a patch of black ice and we slid a few feet. Tossing the phone into the center console, I fought to steer us out of the skid. After a few seconds the tires found purchase, and I regained control of the car. It hadn’t been a dangerous skid, but it was enough to convince me that it was time to get the boys home.

“Aunt Abby?”

“Yes, Caleb?”

“I think they’re following us.”

I tore my glance away from the road and checked the rearview mirror. I didn’t know if someone was actually following us, but there were headlights behind us. “I see them, kiddo, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

Brody strained against his seat belt to see the car behind us. “Turn around, please,” I said. If someone
was
following us, I didn’t want the boys to make it obvious that we knew.