Remote Consequences (19 page)

"But wasn't the mayor supposed to meet with Caden Brooks the night he disappeared?"

"How did you hear that?" Randall propped his elbows on his desk and surged forward.

"From his son—"

At this revelation, both men fell silent—all eyes were on me.

Ooops.

"Mandy, are you confirming that you are indeed in contact with Colin Brooks?" Ty was sitting forward in his chair now, hands on knees, staring at me with no shortage of concern on his face.

I looked back and forth between him and Randall, who had no less concern on his face.

"Well…I…"

I wasn't sure how much to tell them. Colin had never necessarily come out and told me that I couldn't reveal our connection to anyone, but I'd somehow known from the beginning that it wouldn't be a good idea. Even after I'd found out about him being a secret agent of the government, I guess the truth was that I'd just liked keeping him all to myself. It may not have been smart, but I'd just taken the word "covert" to heart and was kind of keeping him under wraps.

"Mandy, when have you had the occasion to speak with Colin Brooks about this case?" Randall asked.

I cleared my throat and took a moment to pull my hair off my shoulders and twist it up in a makeshift ponytail. Somehow, I felt oddly protective of Colin right now. Maybe it was because of the fact that this case revolved around his father. Maybe it was because I knew what it was like to lose my father and that I wanted so terribly for him to find justice—in a way that I'd never been able to find. I told myself it was for sure
not
because I was starting to care for him in a way that had nothing to do with this case.

I blew my breath out in an upward stream that made my side bangs flutter to and fro.

The men stared at me and waited. Randall was patient. As if he had all day. But Ty…I could feel the impatience radiating off him like the sun radiates off a sandy Gulf Shores beach.

"Look, he approached me a while back, after he overheard that I'd found the body. He showed me a newspaper article about his father's disappearance, and he asked me some questions. That's all."

Mostly.

Ty shook his head. He knew me. He knew I was holding back. And he wasn't happy.

"You can't trust him, Mandy."

"Mandy, I hate to say it, but Ty's right. His mother was Caden Brooks' first wife. She had some sort of mental issues. She left town with Colin when he was very young. Caden had always surmised that Colin had inherited the same problems. He sent a private investigator after them, but they'd just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth."

"So you all just took Caden Brooks' word for it? Everyone just jumped on the political bandwagon and assumed that the kid was bad and the mother was crazy? Because surely a politician has
never
lied about anything before." I couldn't hold back the sarcasm in my voice any longer.

At least they had the courtesy to look a tiny bit contrite about my theory. While my mind swarmed with curiosity. Was there more to my spy than met the eye? And what kind of mental issues had his mother suffered from? Was that why he was so naturally good with Paget?

"Well, he and his mother have been presumed dead for years. In fact, Caden had them declared dead not long after they disappeared," Randall said.

I took this moment of pause to cast a furtive glance at Ty. He was still staring at me, his eyes squinted and his breathing shallow. Something about my revelation of seeing and speaking with Colin Brooks had really sent him into a mood. Was it protectiveness or jealousy? I couldn't tell for sure.

Randall cleared his throat and continued, "He was never seen or heard from again, that is…until…well…when exactly did you meet him and are we really sure this is even Colin Brooks?"

"I guess I have just taken his word for it." My curiosity was extremely peaked now. I'd searched the web left and right and hadn't found out anything about Colin. Randall's story explained why—sort of.

"Can you set up a meeting between us?" Ty's voice was surprisingly steady.

"He doesn't really set up meetings, per se." I tried to imagine setting up a sit-down between Ty and Colin. I couldn't even imagine how that would go over.

"Mandy, this is serious business. We need to get to the bottom of this. For all we know, he could be responsible for his father's death." Ty spoke and Randall and I watched as he stood up and walked to the window, looking out into the woods beyond the office walls.

I couldn't say that the thought hadn't crossed my mind a time or two. But I'd grown to trust Colin. Despite his mysterious past, I believed him and I wanted to help him figure out what really happened to his father.

"I'll ask him." It was all I could offer.

Ty started laughing.

I squinted at him. "Why are you laughing, pray tell?"

"Isn't it obvious what happened to Caden Brooks?  The whole feud between the Brooks and Mills has nothing to do with anything. It is just incidental."

"How do you mean?" Randall leaned back again and propped his feet on the corner of his desk.

"That no-good Colin Brooks killed his own father and tried to blame it on the mayor. He hid the body there, and only when Mandy found it did he miraculously reappear in town. Now he's here to see that the mayor goes down for it, and then he'll disappear again."

I stood there, staring into the eyes of a…well, I wasn't sure what it was…some sort of raccoon mixed with a cat—a cacoon? I shuddered. This taxidermy paradise was giving me hives.

Ty's theory made some sense, but I knew Colin. At least, I felt like I knew him enough to know that he was tormented by the finding of his father's body. He wasn't a part of that. I just knew it deep down. "I don't believe it."

Ty eyed me from across the room and shook his head. "Whatever, Mandy. The whole point is that we need to find him and question him officially."

I understood where he was coming from, but getting Colin to agree to it was a totally different matter altogether. With the way he ghosted in and out of the room, I doubted he made appearances anywhere he didn't want to be.

Randall continued, "That's fine. Look, we won't settle all this today. There's still the question of why the captain has it out for you, Mandy. I think this posturing with the ridiculous charges is all a bunch of hogwash to try and throw the bad press off the mayor. We have a hearing set for Monday and I'll get this whole thing thrown out. Until then, see if you can work with Ty to bring this man who claims to be Colin brought in for questioning."

I grabbed my purse from under the chair and headed toward the door. A now-quiet Ty following along behind me.

I pushed through the office door and into the reception area, but I heard Ty speak to Randall as I departed.

"We need to talk about it later, Randy. But this may be a problem."

You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind. –Irish Proverb

I stared out the window as we rode home in silence. We passed a sign for The Millbrook Players near the elementary school. Huh, since when did we have a live theatre here in town? Maybe I could take Ms. Maimie to see their rendition of
Hello, Golly
as, given her history in "performing arts," she'd be sure to enjoy that. I smiled internally at the thought.

Despite the tension between us, Ty remained surprisingly quiet during the ride. But when he cut the engine in front of my house and turned to face me, my heartbeat tapped a worried rhythm.

"I don't want to talk about it," I pre-empted.

"Well, it looks like we have to, Mandy."

I shook my head and stared down at my white New Balance shoes that had a bit of a rust-colored stain on one toe. Hard to keep new shoes clean.

"Mandy, you don't even know who this man is. How can you trust him? How can you believe him? And, worse yet, even if he really is Colin Brooks, you don't know what this man is capable of. Maybe even murder."

"Okay, Ty. I hear you. I understand."

"I don't think you do." His voice rose an octave.

I sat there. Words failed me. I knew he was right and yet I knew what my gut told me about Colin. I wasn't ready to just turn him in and let the chips fall where they might. I needed to see this through.

Ty spoke again before I could formulate my thoughts further. "Look. I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I'm sorry I chose my future over you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He sighed loudly, frustration evident.

There was the apology I'd waited all these years to hear. But, surprisingly, it didn't really make anything better. It just took me back to yet another painful time in my life.

That night of the graduation party was the night that I'd told Ty I was pregnant. We'd only done it that one time—
on
his car, not
in
his car—and it wasn't exactly the stuff that dreams are made of. But I'd naively thought that our one night together meant that we'd be together forever. When he'd announced, at the party, his decision to play football at Auburn, I'd been overcome with jealousy. I wanted him with me—at the University of Alabama some 160 miles away. I, too, had a scholarship—mine academic, of course. I couldn't wait to get out of this town, and I'd thought he'd come with me. We'd be together and everything would be right. I was wrong.

My mind blurred with images of that night, after the party. Our close-knit group at the football stadium running around in the rain—my tears mixed with the rain. The thoughts were making me feel a little sick to the stomach. So I cleared them from my mind like a hand on a dry-erase board.

"As I've said before, I was jealous, desperate…I loved you. I thought if I said I was pregnant that you'd stay—that you'd go with me instead. So it was a lie, but it didn't matter anyway. You walked away. You left me, not knowing if it was the truth or not. What if it had been true? You'd have been the jerk that walked away. As it turned out, you were just the jerk who took my virginity and walked away."

We sat in silence for a few moments.

"Mandy, I was immature. All these colleges were fighting over me. It was my chance to get out of Millbrook. To not have to follow in the Dempsey family tradition of getting married, having babies, and becoming a cop. It was all I could do to wait until graduation to announce my choice of colleges. Then you drop that news on me behind the stadium…in the rain. You looked so beautiful and so helpless. I knew that if I stayed that I'd give in and marry you. When I got to spring training and blew out my knee—I blamed you. I know it wasn't right, but I had to blame someone, and I thought it was you and the distraction of wondering what you were going to do. Wondering if you were going to raise that baby all by yourself."

"And then you found out there was no baby."

"And then Penny tells me that you revealed our family's dirty little secret about my druggie aunt and Penny's adoption. My mom died, and everything seemed to come back to you. Penny hated you, and I jumped on the bandwagon." He took a deep breath and looked out the window. We both stared at Ms. Lanier, who was in her backyard, hanging out laundry.

"I'm sorry too, Ty. I've said it before, but I really mean it. I was immature too. But you have to stop blaming me for everything. We have to let the past go. Our present is in one heck of a mess right now. Let's just focus on that, shall we?"

He blew out a breath and turned to me. "Okay, Mandy. Okay."

I'd thanked him again for the ride, the bail, and the help with the visit to Randall's office. Now I'd reached Ms. Lanier's front door, and when I looked back over my shoulder, he was still sitting in the truck watching me.

He looked deeply troubled. It was something I hadn't seen in his face for a long time, but I knew it when I saw it. Ty Dempsey was worried about me.

*  *  *

All that reminiscing had worked up my appetite. Ms. Lanier offered up a tasty lunch of pimento cheese sandwiches, homemade cucumber pickles, and her famous sweet iced tea (also known as syrup in a glass). I felt a little better now. Ty and I had reached some sort of stalemate when it came to our relationship, and that was progress for us. If only Penny and I could do the same.

Ms. Lanier spent the entire lunch filling me in on how wonderful Paget was doing in her summer school and how Adam Owens walked her home every day and spent time with her right here at the dining room table and was the perfect gentleman.

I still wasn't sure about the arrangement, but with Paget's full-time school still two weeks away, I needed all the help I could get to keep up with Paget. It was a little irksome that a high school quarterback and an elderly neighbor were doing a better job of caring for my sister than I had been.

"What have you found out about our little mystery?" Ms. Lanier asked in her version of a low voice, but which was still about standard volume to those of us who could still hear out of both ears.

I gave her a quick rundown of the details of my arrest and the recount of Mrs. Mills slapping Officer Trask at the pub.

She smirked at the mention of Myrna Mills. "I knew she was involved in this in some way. I've never trusted that woman since the day she stole my idea about the church's Easter Eggs-travaganza. You simply cannot trust a woman who steals your idea for a charity event."

I cracked up at her line of reasoning. The mayor's wife was definitely starting to look suspicious, and I hadn't crossed the housekeeper—or Allyson, or Trask, or Matson—off my list either.

"So, will you be over for supper, then?" Ms. Lanier said.

I looked up to find my neighbor and friend twirling a dishtowel around in her bony hand.

"Umm…well…no. Uh, I think I should be able to cook dinner for Paget tonight. It will be a good time for us to hang out and get caught up on things."

A whiff of disappointment wafted through the air, but Ms. Lanier covered it up with a soft smile. "All right then, dear. You two girls just let me know if you need anything. I'll send her home after Adam leaves today. That be okay?"