Читать книгу Deadly Reunion - Florence Case - Страница 10

“Relax. I was just holding it up to show you two I had it. I wasn’t going to shoot the thing.” Ida’s wrinkles grew even deeper as she gingerly put the gun down on the counter. “If you two don’t beat all. Saying how dangerous what you’re here to do is, and then spending time making goo-goo eyes at each other so you don’t even notice someone has a gun until they could have shot you.”

“She has a point, Angie,” Boone said, moving his jacket to holster his Glock. “Better stop making goo-goo eyes at me. You’re too distracting.”

Like she needed this? Angie scowled at the other woman. “I did not make goo-goo eyes at Boone.”

Ida just smiled at Boone, who gave her that boyish grin Angie thought he kept reserved for her. So much for thinking she was special. With a fast sigh, Angie reholstered her own weapon at her ankle and checked Ida’s. “It’s loaded.”

“Of course it is. What good would an empty gun be?”

She liked the logic. The woman reminded her a lot of herself, and Angie wasn’t sure if she liked that or not. She returned the weapon to Ida. “Better put it back wherever you keep it.”

“Sure,” Ida said. A few seconds later, the firearm was safely locked inside a steel counter drawer. “I only got it out because you said digging up what you’re after could be dangerous. But I should have figured you’d both be carrying already. I’ll be safe enough, I guess.”

Angie bit her tongue to keep from asking Ida if she had a permit for the weapon, because if the caretaker didn’t, then she would have to do something about it, and she didn’t need further delays. She could also have asked Ida what could go on at a cemetery that would require protection, but truly, she didn’t want to know.

Striding over to the door, she moved her arm in a windmill motion, gesturing for them to follow her. Outside, she took in the surrounding area, suddenly edgy again. What she was looking for, she wasn’t certain. She still didn’t believe Detry was coming after her right now, but Ida’s suddenly brandishing a firearm had made her anxious.

As had Boone’s touching her. She was still vulnerable to him, no matter how much she thought otherwise. But Boone was as much a threat to her sister’s life as Detry was in a way, because Boone refused to believe her. If she fell for him all over again, she might get goo-goo-eyed for real, and let him convince her he was right, and then she would give up her mission. Chloe could end up dead.

She had to remain strong and get this done.

First things first. She needed her metal detector and shovel, but she didn’t want to ask Boone for any favors. So she merely pointed to his trunk.

“Aren’t you being just a bit childish with this ‘no talk’ thing?” Boone asked, getting his keys out.

Probably, but she didn’t care. The less contact she had with him, the less she would think about him. But she wasn’t telling him that. Retrieving her tools, she saw Ida smile from ear to ear, and she lifted her eyebrows at her in question. “Something amusing you?”

“You two. You’re more fun than a soap opera.” Ida waved her hand in a northerly direction and set the pace, telling them Laurie Detry’s grave was a thousand feet or so from the office building.

“So, Ida, what was it like working in a biker bar?” Boone asked.

That was all the encouragement the older woman needed. In the next five minutes, Angie learned more about Ida Zlotsky than she’d ever imagined possible. Years ago, her husband had walked out on her, she’d had two babies to support, and no car, and waitressing at the biker bar was the only work within walking distance.

“I thought I was going to die when he left,” Ida said. “But I got my act together, and I made it.”

“I understand that,” Boone said. “My mom was in about the same situation when I was a kid. When she got married, she thought she would be able to stay home and raise me, but it didn’t happen that way, and she wound up working two jobs. It was rough.”

He asked Ida another question, but Angie stopped listening. Boone had gone through a really bad childhood, just like her? He’d never told her. And this caring side of him where Ida was concerned—she’d never seen it with anyone other than herself. He seemed genuinely interested in the caretaker as a person and not just in passing time till they got to the grave.

Her eyes sweeping the area, Angie listened to Ida talking about how she’d learned to make a mean tequila sunrise at the bar, and also how to swing a baseball bat effectively—at two bikers who just wouldn’t stop fighting. She’d also never gotten held up.

“The bikers watched over me.”

God had watched over her, Angie immediately thought. She knew she ought to tell Ida that, and would have before Cliff’s death. But now, doubt held her tongue captive. If God was watching over believers, He had to have been watching over Cliff. So what had happened? Cliff had told her many times he had great faith in God’s seeing him through his problems. So how did he get to the point of suicide?

No, she couldn’t say a thing to Ida. She still believed in God, but she was no longer so certain of the answers that she wanted to jump into leading people like Ida to Him—if Ida indeed was an unbeliever. What if the cemetery caretaker had questions that she just couldn’t answer—like she herself had about Cliff? Anything she might say, including doubts, might turn the woman away from God. So Angie kept quiet, feeling guilty for doing so.

“When he was young, my son didn’t like his mother working in a bar. He was gonna be somebody, and he didn’t want people thinking he came from the wrong side of the tracks.”

“Boy, do I understand that.”

Boone’s simple, earnest words got to Angie, and her heart went out to him.

“My daughter complained people at school called her trash because I worked there. But I stayed, because it brought in good money and kept a roof over their heads. In the long run, it didn’t matter anyway. My son ended up in jail, and my daughter—she died. I’m all alone.”

Angie’s heart clenched again, this time for Ida. She met the other woman’s eyes. Really looked at her—and saw the same pain she’d seen reflected in her own many times. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is to not have anyone.”

Ida nodded.

“Belonging to a church helped me. It’s like having family around.” The next closest thing, especially when the family you’d been born into hated you. “We’re having a bring-a-dish lunch after services Sunday. Lots of ladies your age to talk to, if you’re interested.”

Ida waved her hand through the air. “I’d never fit in with church people. I’m not that good.”

“Don’t worry, neither am I,” Angie assured her.

“I actually loved church when I was a kid,” Boone said out of the blue.

Angie turned to look at him, frowning. The eccentric caretaker was getting more information out of Boone about his childhood than she’d ever managed to. Had she really been the right person for him, or had she just been fooling herself?

Boone added, “But I’ll never go back.”

“Why not?” Ida asked.

At first, Boone hesitated, but then he shrugged as they followed the access road past a couple of rows of gravesites. “Unfortunately, those nice, friendly church people soured when my dad got falsely accused of a crime and went away, and my mother couldn’t afford to meet her tithe. They asked her if she’d like to be taken off the membership rolls, and she accepted. We never went back.”

“That’s why I don’t go.” Ida sniffed. “Hypocrisy.”

“I agree—except for Angie,” Boone said. “You can trust her totally.”

“Oh, no, Ida, now I’m going to have to like the guy again,” Angie joked to cover up the flood of compassion Boone’s story had started in her. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she sensed his gaze on her again, and she sucked in her breath to stop herself from telling him how sorry she was about his childhood and his father, and the church people. How she wished she could change his life for him. How she wished she could make everything right between them and overlook their differences because she needed to love and be loved.

Just like her sister was overlooking everything scary about Detry because of her needs. The realization brought Angie up short, but before she could explore it further, Ida stopped and pointed down a long row of graves.

“The Detry one is at the end.”

Boone followed Ida down the wide path, his dark blue gaze constantly watching everything around them, and Angie followed him. Ida stopped at a lavish gravestone with the engraving “To My Darling Wife. I never stopped loving you.”

Love as in two holes in his wife’s forehead. Angie’s skin crawled. Detry terrified her. That could be dangerous, because she needed to keep her wits about her. Lord, help me not to be afraid.

This is not about you, she thought.

Lord, please help me save my sister from him.

That was better—she felt a peace about that. Scanning the ground in the front and rear of the stone for signs of recent digging, she ended up disappointed. Nothing but nicely trimmed grass that colored the ground a rich green everywhere. Upkeep charges on the grave must run a fortune. What a man, that Warren Detry.

“At least we know where some of the insurance money went.” A lavish gravesite and romancing her sister, who liked nice, expensive things after growing up poor. Angie’s thoughts went back to her earlier realization about Chloe’s overlooking Detry’s past and that he was almost old enough to be her father. Her sister had always had a passion for money, which apparently Detry had, in spades. Detry could take care of her.

Yeah, like he took care of Laurie Detry.

Not that she was harping on Chloe. Angie rotated the power knob on the metal detector to On and swept it over the ground around the grave. She understood her sister’s need for money. It represented security. Her own passion had been finding love—that was her form of security. Love was something she’d sorely missed growing up and meant everything to her. Used to be, she’d do anything to get love.

But now, her focus was turned to Christ, and she was pursuing a relationship with Him and letting God supply the love and security. Only with Boone so close, her inclination was to forget all that and fall into his arms. It would be so easy.

Trying to forget what she wanted to do, she concentrated on what she needed to do and frowned at the expanse of grass around the gravestone. The gauge hadn’t budged. A wave of disappointment hit her. Maybe Cliff’s words about letting the dead rest in peace hadn’t been a word puzzle, but rather, an instruction to her, and he’d hidden the evidence somewhere else. If only there was some way of knowing for sure that he hadn’t buried it somewhere around the cemetery…

Her eyes darted up, surveyed the area, and she spotted a camera in a nearby oak. She was right. Spycams.

“Ida, do you have access to the surveillance footage?” she asked, pointing toward the tree.

Ida shifted position, as she took in the camera, and she shook her head. “Those are only up for show to scare off the juvenile delinquents.”

Disappointed, Angie turned toward Boone. He had walked from the graves to the chain-link fence that bordered the east side of the cemetery, his dark gaze studying everything but her. She’d have to break her vow of silence to him after all.

“Apparently, I was wrong,” she said in his general direction. He still didn’t look at her.

She carried the metal detector the dozen or so yards to where he was, and repeated, with a spread of her arms to emphasize she was speaking, “Apparently, I was wrong, Boone.”

A light squeal erupted from the detector, and startled, Angie almost dropped it. She stared down at the search coil at the bottom of the rod, and the cluster of marigolds near it.

Boone did likewise. She stepped closer to him. Right over the single cluster of candy-orange marigolds in the line of yellow ones, the squeal became louder and the gauge stick shot up.

“That’s either your evidence, or you’ve found buried treasure,” Ida said from behind them.

“In this case, maybe both,” Angie said.

Boone saw the light in Angie’s eyes. If she’d found the missing murder weapon and by some remote possibility Detry’s prints were on it in a manner that proved murder, that meant he had been wrong and had been directly responsible for a murderer going free. A mistake like that was inexcusable—not to mention what he’d done to Angie in court.

On the other hand, he was not looking forward to what was more likely to happen—someone else’s prints being found on the gun—maybe even Cliff’s. That would take all the light right back out of Angie’s eyes.

Either way, he almost wished the evidence could stay buried. He simply could not be wrong, and he didn’t want Angie hurt all over again.

The squeal was maxed out, so Angie turned off the metal detector. The sudden silence was velvet to her ears.

“Cliff must have picked those flowers specifically so you would notice them,” Boone said. He turned to Ida and explained in a manner that fully invited her sympathizing with him, “She has a car painted the same orange that’s on candy corn.”

For a change, instead of agreeing with Boone, Ida smiled at Angie. “Nice choice. At least other drivers can’t claim they didn’t see you coming.”

“Ida, I’m beginning to like you a lot,” Angie said. Boone shook his head in mock disgust, and she went back to looking at the flowers. The candy-orange flowers were smaller than the others, another tip-off they’d been planted later. Cliff had to have purposely dug up the site and replanted with those to get her attention. It was time to dig.

Pulling a camera from her purse, Angie checked the film and snapped a couple of pictures, then placed everything she carried except the shovel on the ground, making sure the camera was accessible.

With latex gloves ready nearby from the supply she brought with her, just in case she was successful today, she dug, stopping from time to time to document the uncovering of evidence with her camera. The wind that was supposed to bring in forecasted thunderstorms picked up, cooling her off some as she worked her muscles.

After a while, she glanced up at Boone. His eyes were sweeping the perimeter of the cemetery as he continued to protect her from an enemy he still considered unknown. As irritating as it was that he wouldn’t believe her about the danger being nil right then, that Boone cared enough to still be there no matter what kind of fire she set at his feet took just a bit of the hurt in her heart away.

A few minutes later, she unearthed the weapon, a Colt Model 1911, .45 caliber, semi-automatic pistol, a match to the bullets recovered and to the antique gun she’d seen near the body. It was in a sealed evidence bag along with the chain of custody form, which had only one name written on it—Cliff’s.

The murder weapon.

Ida’s whole face was puckered up, reflecting the “eeew” factor of reality murder that never could quite come through in suspense novels. “There’s dried blood on that thing, isn’t there?”

Blood, and Angie didn’t want to think about what else as she put on her gloves.

“Don’t detectives use evidence boxes for weapons now?” Boone asked her.

She started to speculate that maybe the bag was all Cliff had handy when he stole it from the scene, but Ida was right there, watching both of them like she was getting paid to do so, so Angie only shrugged, not wanting to give away too much information. Holding the bag by one corner, she carefully placed it into an empty compartment in her oversized purse, specks of dirt and all, and started to push the soil back into the hole with her shovel.

“Don’t worry about that,” Boone told her, taking a couple of bills out of his wallet. Angie stopped and watched him give the money to Ida. “This should cover replacing the flowers.”

Ida’s eyes went big. “Sure thing,” she said. “You leave me your business card, and I’ll be happy to send you the change.”

“Keep it,” Boone said.

Ida beamed. “You two have been fun, but I gotta get back so I can get a hold of the landscaper before someone sees the mess and has their serenity interrupted. If you need more help, just whistle.” Ida set off ahead of them back to the cottage.

Angie dusted off the knees of her jeans and then peeled off her gloves. With Ida gone, her thoughts cascaded back to Boone. She shouldn’t ask him about the money. She shouldn’t. But in the last half hour or so, she had witnessed a new, vulnerable side of him she hadn’t known existed, giving her a smidgen of hope he had it in him to change from the work-possessed person he was into someone who might really put her first. She had to find out. “What was with the handout?”

“She reminded me of my mother,” he said. “Always struggling, never coming out ahead, and never quite being noticed by anyone. So I noticed her.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“You never told me that much about your childhood.”

Every muscle of his body stiffened. She had to remember she no longer had any right to challenge him on anything he did. They weren’t in love anymore. They weren’t anything anymore, not even good friends.

“Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

His expression said he agreed with her, but then he spoke anyway. “Dad was wrongly accused of murder, got convicted and died in prison before I got my law degree and could help him. It was hard for Mom before I got old enough to work. I don’t like to talk about it.”

Bending, he scooped up the metal detector and the shovel and waited for her to start walking back. She did, stepping ahead, but she sensed him keeping up behind her. So close, she couldn’t avoid thinking about him.

His father’s misfortune explained a lot about Boone. Just like her and her sister, he was driven by a passion—he was freeing his dad with every man he defended. Now she understood why he’d chosen Detry over her. Problem was, understanding only lessened the pain a little; it didn’t take it all away. Didn’t free her up to fall back in love with him.

She walked up the lane, silently, the added weight of having to part from Boone very soon now on her mind. She was no longer as irritated with him as she’d been, and the man had a magnetic pull on her that she couldn’t deny. Eye magnet, as Ida had said, and maybe a heart magnet, too. She wanted him around. She wanted him to make her smile. She was so tired of frowning. Of being alone. Of not having anyone who loved her. Boone had. It was just that his priorities came first, and she came second.

She wanted someone to put her first.

God loves you, a small voice inside her reminded.

True. God would find her a husband who would fit into His will for her. All she had to do was wait. But she’d been waiting all her life to be really loved, and it was getting more and more difficult. Would it be better to accept Boone as he was, to settle for being second in his life? To have some love instead of none at all?

She gave herself a hard mental shake. Boone was dangerous. Being around him made her both ache with regret and wish upon a star. She couldn’t afford to have her emotions swinging her mind around in circles, distracting her from the most important thing in her life—saving her sister.

A wind gust blew her hair up around her cheeks, and she glanced up at the sky. The clouds were thickening. She hoped it wasn’t some sort of a sign.

“What do you say I take us right to the sheriff’s department and let my friend fast-track the print identification to the criminal-investigation bureau?” Boone asked from behind her.

“Sure,” she said, continuing to walk toward his car. Boone’s solution would mean putting up with him awhile longer, but it also took care of her problem with explaining to the bureau herself why she wasn’t filtering the gun through proper channels. She could live with that.

“So what did you have in mind while we wait for the results?” he asked.

Getting away from him. That’s what she had in mind. Wait a second…“While we wait? It could take a couple days, we both know that. You don’t have to stick around me all that time. What about your court cases?”

“I’m putting you first this time, Angel, remember?”

She sucked in a breath. That was eerie, hearing him say the exact words that had been on her mind a minute before. Eerie and sad. Some six months ago, right after the trial, she’d have been overjoyed at his statement—assuming it had been coupled with an apology. But presently, she understood what drove Boone. He was putting her first only because she’d proven him wrong about her negligence and he figured he owed her for ruining her reputation. It was more of a putting her first right now than forever kind of thing.

The big question was if she should make it easy on him to make amends or not and let him come with her to her mother’s. As a Christian, she needed to forgive him. As a woman, though, her hurt was still running so very deep, and she couldn’t pretend all was well between them when it definitely was not.

On the other hand, she didn’t like to whine.

“What I’m going to be doing while I wait,” she said, carefully keeping emotion out of her voice, “is heading to my mother’s house in Newton for the wedding festivities.”

“That’s fine. I’ll get a hotel room so I can stay close and attend all of it with you.”

“There’s no reason to.”

“Until we figure out who threatened you, I want to be there for you. Protect you.”

Make up for what he’d done, he meant. Finally reaching his Mercedes, Angie paused at the passenger’s side and met his gaze over the roof. “You know I can’t let this marriage happen. You’re going to just sit idly by while I make your former client’s life miserable by breaking up my sister and him? I don’t think so.”

Without waiting for his response, she opened his car door and slipped inside onto the soft seat. A few seconds later, the trunk slammed shut and the driver’s side door opened. Boone slid inside minus the shovel and metal detector and started the car. The air conditioner blasted hot air at first, and she took a tissue out of her bag and wiped her forehead.

“You know, you may not have to work that hard at separating them,” Boone said, causing her gaze to shift to him. “If those are Detry’s prints, he could be arrested on suspicion of perjury. He’ll be out of your sister’s life, and the whole problem can be settled before the wedding rehearsal. You don’t want to sit through that, do you?”

All the while thinking it should be her and Boone as the happy couple? You betcha, she didn’t. She frowned.

“Thought not. Meanwhile, I’ll be there watching your back.” He smiled faintly. “Protecting you from Detry.”

“Or from whoever, you mean.”

He lifted his palms in surrender. “As long as nobody hurts you, Angel, I’m happy.”

How could she keep from being hurt while attending the shower, the rehearsal and the dinner with Boone by her side, a constant reminder of what should have been? But she wasn’t going to tell him that.