Dustin felt a coldness in his gut. This old man—this old
observer
—was worried.
“She thinks someone killed Marcus Danby,” Coot said.
“Well, she’s upset. She doesn’t want to believe he went back to his old ways.”
Coot snorted. “You really figure that’s what he did? I didn’t take you for a fool, Special Agent Blake!”
Dustin was careful when he spoke. “So you think someone drugged Marcus Danby and threw him in the ravine?”
Coot narrowed his eyes. “Threw him, or gave him a shove. Yeah. I knew Marcus. A guy like that doesn’t go twenty-odd years, then take a walk in the woods one day and decide he’s gotta have a fix. Think about it, boy. It doesn’t work like that.”
“I’ve seen addicts go in and out of recovery.”
“There was nothing—absolutely nothing—to make Marcus do that. It would be like me waking up and saying to myself, ‘Hey, nice day, think I’ll put a Smith & Wesson in my mouth and pull the trigger.’”
“Everyone else seems to have accepted it.”
“They only see what’s there. They aren’t looking for more. Sometimes people have to look beyond the obvious to get the real picture. Hell, you know that.”
“But who would have killed Marcus—and why?”
“Now, there’s a dilemma,” Coot agreed. “Aaron gets the place, or rather, the management of it and the pay that comes with being boss, even when you’re nonprofit. That means things aren’t going to change much, since Aaron’s been in charge a long time. Marcus never liked being in charge. He liked to be more like a...a shaman walking down from the mountain to impart his words of wisdom and go off on another nature walk. But someone had to be in charge and do the day-to-day work, and that someone was Aaron Bentley. Then, of course, there’s Mama Cheever, as they call her. Sandra Cheever. Why she’s Mama Cheever, I don’t know. Nothing maternal about that woman. More of a drill sergeant type. Schedules are everything to her. She yells at the kids and gets obsessed about upkeep.”
“Why would she want to kill Marcus?”
“He was sloppy? Well, he was. Came in and left his coffee cup wherever, tracked mud into the offices... Ruined her schedules a lot. He’d make an appearance and a whole class might run late.”
“You think that would cause her to kill him?” Dustin asked skeptically.
“No... Just sayin’.”
“What about the students? The clients.”
“The ‘guests,’ you mean?” Coot said dryly. “No. The students come and go. None of ’em that I know of ever had a grudge against the place.”
“Has any kid—or adult, for that matter—ever been kicked out?”
“Nope. Not a one. If there’s problems with a therapist, they just shift people around.”
“How do you know so much about the place?” Dustin asked.
He grinned. “’Cause Marcus was my friend. I’m an old horse-lover from way back. Found a few animals I got him to take. Animals that needed rescuing. There’s a big old Lab-shepherd mix you’ll see around the stables. I found him on the road and Marcus took him in.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Dustin told him.
“Thanks. I can see you mean that.”
“So,” Dustin pursued. “If not a student, who?”
Coot shook his head. Delilah was bringing their food. “You’ve heard that old saying?” he muttered. “‘Tell a woman, tele-gram’? Well, it was written for Delilah.”
Delilah arrived at their table, and Coot smiled up at her. “Thank you, Delilah! Looks wonderful.”
“Enjoy!”
She stood there a minute, but they both made a pretense of being fascinated with their chicken potpie.
“More coffee, gentlemen?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” Dustin told her.
She refilled their coffee. Then the family of four apparently needed some directions, and Delilah was distracted.
“I’d say look at those closest to him,” Coot said in a low voice. “Isn’t that what you law types do in situations like this?”
“Usually, yes.”
Coot nodded. “So at the Horse Farm you’ve got two more therapists. You’ve got Mason Garlano. The guy’s great with animals, but too much of a narcissist to be as good with people. I think he’s waiting to be in the right ice cream parlor at the right time and have some Hollywood type ‘discover’ him. He gets some modeling jobs on the side. Mariah Naughton is nice enough. A bit of an edge to her sometimes, as if she believed there’d be more in the world for her.”
“Doesn’t sound like they’d have anything against Marcus, though.”
“No. Then you’re down to the stable managers. Drew Dicksen and Sydney Roux. They’re both decent types, far as I can tell. They run a tight ship there, not easy with the number of animals Marcus was always bringing in. His door was open to any abandoned creature, and I should know, since I brought him a bunch. He’d try to find homes for the cats and dogs, but most of ’em wound up staying at the farm. That meant lots of animals to feed. Lots of housekeeping. Lots of—literally—shit to shovel.”
“So even if you resented him because of the workload or whatever, don’t you think you’d find another line of work before killing a man?” Dustin asked.
“Yeah. There’s the dilemma. Which one would have an agenda? Damned if I know.”
A few minutes later they finished their meals. Coot was insistent that they split the check; he wasn’t taking taxpayer money by letting Dustin pay, he said, but neither was he going to pay more taxes by buying Dustin’s meal.
They rose to leave, setting their money on the table.
About to walk out, Dustin thanked Delilah, who was busy wiping tables, preparing to close for the night. He could honestly tell her the chicken potpie was excellent.
The house was quiet when they returned. But Coot didn’t have any more to say. He started up the stairs to his own room.
“Nice to talk with you, young fellow,” he told Dustin.
“Nice to talk with you, too, sir,” Dustin said politely.
In his own room, he went on his computer to look into everyone’s backgrounds.
Mariah, Marcus and Sydney Roux were all from the area and had families that had been around these parts for over a hundred years. Mariah had already told him as much, at least where she was concerned.
Aaron Bentley was originally from Arkansas, Andrew Dicksen from Biloxi, Mississippi, Sandra Cheever from White Plains, New York, and Mason Garlano was from Austin, Texas.
He wondered if any of that would be significant. Probably not, he assumed—but you never knew.
* * *
Olivia had actually fallen asleep when the dog suddenly went crazy. She was dimly aware of a little woof by her side, then the patter of his nails as he raced down the stairs. At the front door, he started a frenzy of barking.
Nervously she jumped out of bed. She looked around the room and realized that Dustin Blake was right—she was virtually defenseless. She thought about the knives in her kitchen and decided they wouldn’t do her much good. If there really was an assailant, he’d just turn her own knife on her. She wasn’t a weakling by any means, but neither did she know about combat.
Her heart thudding, she threw on a robe, then snatched her phone off the bedside table.
The screen told her it was 4:31 a.m.
As she started down the stairs, the barking seemed to come from the back of the house.
She reminded herself that the place was completely locked down.
But...if the person at her door had a gun, he could easily shoot out the locks. If so, wouldn’t he already have done that? It wasn’t as though she had neighbors who’d hear. She hesitated for a split second and then, instead of hitting 9-1-1, she called Dustin Blake’s number.
She wasn’t sure what she thought of him yet.
But at least he wouldn’t think she was an alarmist.
He answered on the second ring.
“There’s someone outside,” she whispered. “Sammy’s going crazy.”
“I’m on my way. Stay back from the windows. Don’t let yourself be seen. Don’t open a door until you hear my voice!”
“Okay.”
She hung up, wondering how long it would take him to get there. She stood at the top of the landing and saw the knob on the front door turn. Someone outside was obviously trying it.
Sammy’s barking escalated and he threw himself at the heavy wooden door.
The doorknob stopped moving. Barely daring to breathe, she stared down at her cell and watched painfully as time seemed to stand still. Then she dropped the phone in her pocket and hurried to the kitchen, where she shoved the knives below the counter to make them harder to find and, without turning on a light, scrabbled around until she came up with her weapon of choice.
The waffle maker. The handle was just long enough for her to get a good grip and the body was hard. It would make a great weapon for a surprise attack-and-run should she need it.
5
D
ustin’s phone had rung at exactly 4:32 a.m.
It took him until 4:34 a.m. to throw on some clothes, his holster and gun, jacket and shoes and to sling his backpack over his shoulder. He was out the back door in ten seconds, in his car in another twenty and speeding down the road. Thankfully, walking distance to her place from Willis House was less than fifteen minutes at a brisk pace and driving there—even with the winding Tennessee country road—was about six minutes.
His eyes were on the house as he pulled into her driveway. But there was just one car there and no sign of anyone. Jerking to a halt, he leaped out of the car, still surveying his surroundings, and raced to the front door. He could hear the dog barking inside. “Olivia, it’s Dustin.”
The door flew open. “Sammy, it’s all good. It’s Dustin, a friend.”
She had evidently been waiting for him; she was wrapped in a long velvet robe. Her hair was mussed but she was as striking as a lingerie ad.
Her features were tense; her whole body was tense. She gripped the handle of a good-size waffle maker.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “But someone was here, Dustin. I saw the front door being tried. The knob was moving. And Sammy...well, Sammy knows when someone’s there.”
“But you’re certain no one got in.”
She shook her head. “Sammy would know.”
“Stay here. I’m going to take a look around.”
“Oh, no, no. I’m not staying alone,” she said. “Sammy and I are coming with you.”
She might be frightened, but there was determination in her eyes.
“Get the keys. If we’re both going out, we’ll lock the front,” he said.
She picked up the keys sitting on the buffet near the front door and frowned. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at his backpack.
“Supplies,” he said.
She arched her brows.
“You’ll see.”
She followed him out. A look at the front door yielded nothing, of course. Digging into the backpack, he came out with his fingerprinting kit, quickly dusted the door and searched for prints.
“Well?” she asked him.
“Smudges.”
“What does that mean?”
“There should’ve been prints. Your prints and other prints, all on top of one another. I think someone had gloves on and made a point of smudging the surface, as well.”
Resealing the container of fingerprint powder, he searched the porch. There’d been no dust on it and no snow, and there wasn’t the faintest sign of a footprint. As he walked slowly down the porch steps, he continued to search, playing his flashlight over the dark grass and nearby shrubs.
He wondered if his movements were being observed.
He paused when he reached the ground.
Olivia Gordon plowed into his back, she was so close behind him. She still held the waffle iron in a death grip.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s all right.”
And it was. He’d rather liked the feel of her—vividly warm, sweet-smelling, seductively shaped—crushed momentarily against him.
Suddenly aware of what he was doing—and feeling—he stepped forward. An expanse of clear rolling ground lay to the front, rear and sides of her house. The front yard stretched out to the road, and there was forest on either side of the cleared land. He could see trails, some more established than others, leading through the trees. He made a mental picture of the area; he already knew the way to Willis House through the woods. If he moved to the rear, he could take the trail that led over the hills to the pastureland and then on to more trees, more rolling hills and the Horse Farm. The stream that went through the area for several miles could probably be reached through the rear of the property, as well. Anyone who’d been here could have gone anywhere, in any direction. Her nearest neighbor was down the hill a few acres away; trees separated them.
He’d need an army to find someone out there.
He walked around the house with Olivia at his heels. Sammy trailed along, wagging his tail. The dog was a perfect monitor, and his actions certainly didn’t signal that anyone else was present. Whoever had been there was definitely gone.
There was no indication that anyone had tried to break window locks, although he could well imagine the route someone might have taken to do so.
When he’d completed a circuit around the house, Dustin inspected the ground as best he could in the dark, with only his flashlight to provide illumination. He headed toward the trail that wound through the trees and led to Willis House, but there was no sign that someone had come through. It might not have meant much in any case, since there was national parkland that wove in and out around them. People could easily wander off government land and onto private property without ever knowing it.
At last, he stopped and turned to look at her.
“I’m sorry. There’s no way for me to find anything now.”
“That’s okay,” Olivia said. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“It’s what I do, ma’am,” he said lightly.
She turned and walked back to the house. He followed her thoughtfully.
“We’ll have coffee,” she said. Then she stopped and looked back at him. “Well, I guess that was presumptuous. I’m going to make coffee. It’s past five and I don’t see any reason to go back to sleep. But, of course, you might want to. Anyway, Sammy and I are fine now. Really.”
He could tell that she wasn’t fine; she was afraid. But she was going to try hard not to show it.
“Coffee would be great, and you’re right. It’s morning. It’ll be light soon. No sense going back to bed.”
She unlocked the door and walked inside, flipping on lights. She paused for a minute, as if trying to sense something.
“He isn’t here, is he?” Dustin asked.
“Marcus, you mean?”
“Right.”
“The bastard said he was coming back. To watch over me. He didn’t.”
“In all seriousness—although I suppose he could warn you if there’s trouble—I’m not sure what he could do. You made the right call. The pun’s accidental, but it’s still true.”
“You’re better than 9-1-1?”
“You tell me.”
She didn’t answer, but moved on into the kitchen. There were old attractively refurbished stable stools in front of the counter. Dustin sat on one of them, watching as she returned the waffle iron to a lower cabinet and set about making coffee.
“I don’t understand,” she mused. “Why would someone come to my house like that? It would be hard to break in during the middle of the night and make it look as if I had a terrible accident.”
“When someone with the right agenda wants in, they’ll get in,” Dustin said. “But no one tried to break a window or shoot up a door. My guess is that this was just a trial run, a way of testing the waters.”
“So someone’s out to get me—because of what I’ve been saying?” she asked.
Sammy whined and settled at his feet. Dustin leaned down for a moment to pat the dog. When he looked up, she was at the counter, waiting for him to face her, waiting for his reply.
“I would guess that’s it, yes,” he told her. “Here’s the good thing. Whoever’s doing this hasn’t gotten to a point where they’re desperate. This person is just...researching the situation right now.”
“What should I do?”
“Tell everyone you’re getting an alarm system.”
“And then?”
“Get an alarm system.”
“Oh!”
“Listen, no one else believes that Marcus met with foul play. Well, other people might suspect it, but the police found nothing that would lend to more of an investigation than the one that’s been done. You can’t blame them. They found you with a man who was already dead. Thankfully, he’d been dead for hours, or you
might’ve
ended up as a suspect. But they found a man who’d been an addict dead with heroin in his system. There was no one around and no sign that anyone had been. There were no obvious marks on his body, other than those attributed to the fall.”
“There were also no needles or drug paraphernalia,” she reminded him sharply.
“True, but no addict keeps his stash where it can easily be discovered.”
The coffee gurgled its last and she poured them both cups.
“The attorney’s coming to the Horse Farm today to explain the will and dole out the individual bequests Marcus left.”
“Just go, listen, watch other people. And as soon as possible, call an alarm system company.”
“You don’t think that’s kind of paranoid?”
“Paranoid is better than—” He broke off. He’d been about to say
dead.
“You’ve heard the old adage a thousand times. Better safe than sorry.”
She smiled at that. She’d known what he’d been about to say. “Would you hang around down here for a few minutes while I go up and get ready for the day?”
“Of course.”
She’d drunk half her coffee. Leaving it, she turned around and dashed up the stairs.
He was going to be sorry to see the beautiful robe go, he thought.
Restlessly, he walked the ground floor of the house, checking windows as he went. The place was sealed tight. He sat in the parlor, thinking about the psychology of what had happened. Whoever had done this wasn’t a serial killer with a penchant for a certain physical type; this was a person or persons with an agenda.
Dustin knew he should be looking for someone who was after something that wasn’t obvious. Or maybe Marcus’s killer had been seeking revenge for some reason. But if revenge was the only agenda, why come after anyone else?
No, fear of discovery had to be the motive for targeting Olivia Gordon. What did she know that she didn’t even realize she knew?
And how far was the killer willing to go to safeguard a secret?
Olivia came down the stairs, Sammy at her heels. It was barely seven and beginning to get light outside.
He rose. “I have an idea. Go to the café in your car. I’ll get my own car and follow you. You
are
allowed to dine with ‘guests’ if you happen to arrive at a restaurant at the same time?”
“Yes, we always run into people at the café and there’s never been any kind of policy against sharing a meal. After all, we do the camping trips, Mariah runs her ghost tours... I’m sure that ‘running into you’ will be fine.”
She seemed grateful for the suggestion.
He collected his backpack; she picked up a shoulder bag.
“All right, Olivia, I know I already mentioned this, but it’s important. You need to make it known that you’re hiring an alarm company.”
“What reason would I give for suddenly doing that?”
“You say you heard noises—and that you’re far away from anyone else. You’re just feeling nervous, that’s all.”
“Okay,” she said.
They headed out.
At the door, Sammy whined. “You need to protect the homefront,” Olivia told him, then locked the door, checking it a couple of times.
She got in her car; he waited until she was safe inside, backing out onto the drive. Then he followed. As they approached the café, he slowed his car. He wanted her to be there for a few minutes before he joined her.
And yet, he wondered if whoever had attempted entry at her house had been there all the while, hidden somewhere in the trees.
Watching him watch Olivia.
* * *
Olivia was the first customer to arrive at the café that morning. Behind the counter, still setting up, Delilah looked at her with surprise. “Liv, honey! What are you doing here so early?”
“Oh, I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and I didn’t feel like my own company,” Olivia explained.
Delilah nodded as if she understood. “I hear ya, honey. I know you people at the Horse Farm have to meet up with Marcus’s attorney this morning. That’s going to be hard for you.”
“I’m okay, Delilah,” Olivia said. And she was, although she felt angry with Marcus. Not the anger that typically came with grief, in which a person was angry about being abandoned by a loved one; she would have recognized such an emotion. No, she was angry with Marcus’s spirit—a spirit who showed up to shock her and then disappeared just when he was needed. A ghost who didn’t bother to return when he’d promised he would.
“I’ve just gotten this new-fangled machine in here.” Delilah pointed at a shiny silver contraption. “Makes a perfect espresso every time, according to the box. You want to try one?”
“Hmm. I’d love a cup of regular coffee—with a shot of espresso,” Olivia said.
“Hey, great idea. Maybe I should try one of those myself. I’ve been working long hours lately. My waitress—you remember that sweet young thing, Genie?—she took off for Nashville last week. Decided she was going to get a job in the city. Can’t say as I blame her. I mean, folks out here like country and the city is close enough...but a young girl? She needed more. So, anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve been filling in mornings
and
nights. But I own the place and Steve back there has been my cook for the past twenty years. Reckon we’ll make it till we get some help.” Delilah grinned wickedly. Steve was her husband as well as her chief cook and bottle washer.
“If I hear of anyone looking for work, I’ll send them your way,” Olivia said. She pulled out her smartphone and started looking for area alarm companies.
“What ya doin’, honey? Can I help?” Delilah asked.
“Oh, I’m going to get an alarm system installed,” Olivia replied.
“Out here? We never have trouble out here. Of course, I’ve got my man and a shotgun if anyone’s going to give me trouble!”
Olivia shook her head. “I don’t have a man or a shotgun.”
Delilah wagged a finger at her. “You should get yourself a man, Liv. Pretty little thing like you. Just ’cause that ornery Bill Preston decided to up and head on out of your life... And that was more than a year ago!”
Olivia sighed. She’d been in an almost-live-in relationship with a music promoter. After a trip to Austin, he’d discovered some great opportunities there. It had come time for her to weigh the importance of the relationship. She hadn’t been in love. Not enough to leave.
“Bill’s a good guy—we were just going different places, Delilah.”
Delilah tsked at her, then selected a little pod for her new machine; her frown became a smile of pleasure when her espresso machine instantly began to steam up and pour out dark brown liquid. She prepared the coffee, added the espresso and set it before Olivia. “I should name this concoction after you!” she said proudly.