When The Rooster Kills (A Rainy Day Mystery Book 2) Page 13

  The irritated side wasn’t sure what to do with this latest development in the love life department. It had been years—decades, even—since I’d been the object of anyone’s affection. (My ex-husband didn’t count). And two guys at the same time? Unheard of. And one guy showing a little possessiveness? Not ever. So I didn’t know how to handle Gunnar’s feelings, or how he was choosing to demonstrate them. The liberated woman in me was rankled; I wasn’t a possession to be fought over, and I didn’t have to explain how I spent my time with other men.

  But the Rainy who wouldn’t mind being swept off her feet didn’t seem to mind.

  “Rainy?” he said, his eyes clouding with concern. “Is everything okay?”

  I closed my eyes and the headache behind my temple responded by pulsing even harder. I winced against the needle-like pressure stabbing at me.

  “I…I have a headache.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say that later?” he quipped.

  And then, when I didn’t respond, when I leaned against the doorframe and let my purse slip from my shoulder to my forearm, he moved closer. I didn’t see him because my eyes were still squeezed shut but I heard his heavy footsteps cross the floorboards and I smelled his aftershave, a hint of it blowing on the breeze created by his movement, and I felt his arms as they circled around me, steadying me.

  “You need to sit,” he said.

  Before I could protest, he scooped me up in his arms and carried me across the threshold, kicking the door closed behind him. I didn’t cling to him, but I wrapped my arms around his neck to steady myself and even through the pain pounding my head I couldn’t help but notice the thick, strong muscles in his shoulders and his back.

  He lowered me on to the couch, then crouched down next to me, his knees on the floor.

  “I’m okay,” I told him. “Just a bad headache.”

  “You get them often?”

  I tried to shake my head, but it hurt so I stopped. “No. A couple times a year.”

  “Anything in particular bring them on?”

  “I don’t know.” But I did. Weather could sometimes be a trigger, but more often than not, it was mental stress. And I’d seen enough of that over the last few days to usher one in. Especially the awkward stand-off on my doorstep.

  He let out a deep breath. “Suppose it doesn’t help, having me show up like a caveman on your doorstep.”

  “You’re not a caveman,” I murmured.

  “Doesn’t stop me from acting like one sometimes.” His hand found mine, and he squeezed. “So this is what I’m gonna do.”

  I looked at him, waiting.

  “I’m gonna let you make the next move,” he said. His hazel eyes were locked on mine, his jaw set in determination. “You tell me what you want from me. When you want it.”

  “But—”

  He shook his head. “No buts, Rainy. It’s your move.”

  TWENTY SEVEN

  I was pretty sure I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  It was the next morning and with my headache abated by a generous dose of ibuprofen, an enormous glass of water, and an early bedtime, I’d woken up with renewed energy. I’d spent a good portion of the early morning hours, coffee in hand, mulling over Gunnar’s statement from the previous day.

  My head had been pounding, my eyesight blurry, but I knew what I’d seen and what I’d heard. He had told me that the ball was in my court.

  The only problem was, I didn’t know how to play. It had been years since I’d dipped my toes in the dating pool. Charlie and I had been together since college, and even then, we’d sort of fallen into our relationship. It had been easy—not the relationship itself, but following the path we were expected to take. So having someone I was interested in—yes, I could admit that—tell me he was going to let me make the first move sent all kinds of unfamiliar feelings coursing through me.

  I tried to push it out of my mind. If Gunnar was going to put me in charge of making the next move, then I could take my time. I didn’t have to address it then. Or ever, if I didn’t want to.

  I forced myself to shift gears, focusing instead on everything I’d learned over the past twenty-four hours about Leslie’s disappearance.

  I thought about Mikey’s connection to her, apparently unknown in Latney, and his confrontation with Shawn. I also thought about Shawn's odd statements and the sudden appearance of his other girlfriend. There was also Vivian’s own reaction to her stepsister’s disappearance.

  There were a lot of pieces there, pieces that I wasn’t sure how to connect. I didn’t think the person I was about to visit would know what to do with them, but it was weighing on me that I should at least share what I knew.

  Because I didn’t want to be responsible for the potential end results of keeping the information to myself.

  I glanced out the window, focusing on the place where I was convinced I was about to make a huge mistake.

  The Bueller County sheriff’s office.

  It occupied the back half of a small brick building in Winslow, the town closest to Latney, which was also the county seat.

  It was my first visit to Winslow, a town that wasn’t much bigger than Latney. Although its population only beat ours by a few hundred, their town housed the middle and high schools, the hospital, the library, and the sheriff’s department. The downtown was a few blocks longer than Latney’s, with several restaurants and boutiques, a Laundromat, two auto mechanics, a nationally known bank—as well as a satellite branch of The Bank of Latney—and a movie theater that apparently also housed a bowling alley.

  I sat in the parking lot and stared at the sheriff’s office. The front half of the brick building was some kind of medical supply company; at least that’s what the sign outside proclaimed. And then, on a smaller wooden sign, with letters that had been burned into the wood, a statement that the Bueller County sheriff’s office was also housed there.

  I took a deep breath.

  I did not want to see Sheriff Lewis.

  I was pretty sure he would not want to see me.

  But I needed to tell him what I knew.

  I grabbed my purse and stepped out of my car and into the morning sun. It was still early, not quite ten o’clock, and the rain from the previous day was long gone, replaced by ample sunshine and surprisingly dry air. The sheriff’s office was located on the northern edge of Winslow, right next to Al’s Auto and a sandwich shop simply called The Deli. The smell of fresh baked bread assaulted my nostrils and my stomach immediately responded. I’d eaten breakfast—yogurt with some granola and copious amounts of coffee—but apparently that hadn’t been enough.

  I walked around to the back of the building, sidestepping the potholes that peppered the parking lot. The sheriff’s squad car was parked next to the back door, almost at a diagonal, as if he’d pulled in at top speed and hastily parked. Considering what I knew about the sheriff, and how slowly he seemed to do anything, this seemed highly unlikely.

  I pulled open the wooden door and a bell jingled, signaling my arrival. A woman in a bright pink sweater sat behind a metal desk, telephone to her ear. She looked up at me, surprised, then held her finger out, signaling for me to wait.

  “Why, yes, Constance,” she said into the mouthpiece. “Yes, I understand. No, I wouldn’t want goats wandering my property, either.” A pause. “All of your roses? Oh, dear.” She scribbled something on a notepad in front of her. “Yes, yes, I’ll be sure to let the sheriff know. He’ll be out soon.” Another pause. “Sometime today, I’m sure.”

  She replaced the receiver and looked up at me, a curious smile on her face. Her short brown curly hair fanned out around her round face like a halo, and her large, wide-set eyes were made even more prominent by the blue eye shadow and matching eyeliner she wore.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m here to see Sheriff Lewis.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “An appointment?” I asked. “Well, no, I—�
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  “The sheriff is a very busy man,” she said.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I wanted to come by and share some potentially new information about a missing persons case he’s working on.”

  If she was impressed by my reason for being there, she didn’t show it. She tapped her pencil on the desk, which I noticed had an oversized desk calendar on it. “He prefers for people to make appointments.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” I said, frowning. This was the first I’d ever heard of needing to make an appointment to report information that might be useful in solving a time-sensitive case. “So are you telling me he isn’t available?”

  The woman glanced at the calendar. Her finger found the correct date and she ran down the scribbled writing in the box.

  “The sheriff is a busy man,” she informed me. “I’ll have to see if he’s available. May I tell him who’s calling?”

  For one brief moment, I thought about giving a fake name. Because I wasn’t sure he’d agree to see me if he knew who was standing outside of his office.

  I didn’t have to answer, though.

  The door directly behind the receptionist opened, and Sheriff Donny Lewis stepped out, coffee cup in hand. “Ruthie, sweetheart, I’m needing more coff—”

  He stopped when he saw me. “What are you doing here?”

  I forced a smile. “Good morning, Sheriff,” I said. “I came by to see you.”

  He grunted and walked past me, toward a far wall where a table housed the office coffeemaker. He grabbed the carafe and refilled his mug.

  “I’m busy,” he said as he made his way back to his office.

  “I have information about Leslie,” I announced.

  He slowed.

  “New information,” I added.

  He turned.

  The receptionist behind the desk watched with unbridled interest.

  “New, you say?” he asked. He kept his voice noncommittal, disinterested.

  “Well, it was new to me,” I said. “I guess I’ll need to tell you what I’ve learned so you can determine whether it’s pertinent to your investigation.”

  He lifted the mug to his lips and drank. He wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand, brushing his thick white mustache as he did.

  “Hmmph.” Another grunt.

  I watched him as he walked through the open office door.

  He turned to look at me. “Well, are you coming or not? I don’t got all day.”

  I followed him.

  Sheriff Lewis’s office was as nondescript as the front room and the building itself. He had a desk similar to the receptionist’s: metal, with a monitor and desktop computer that had probably been top of the line back in the early 90s. There was an actual Rolodex on his desk, along with a corded telephone that had multiple lines available. A box of donuts sat next to the phone, a half dozen pastries covered in powdered sugar, glaze, and chocolate frosting. The cinderblock walls were painted industrial gray, and the carpet was also industrial-grade, a grayish-black carpet that felt as though it had been laid directly on the concrete floor.

  The sheriff plopped his mug down on his desk and sank into his office chair. It was also gray, and by the looks of it, had seen better days.

  “Well,” he said, raising a bushy eyebrow. “What do you wanna tell me?”

  I sat down across from him, in a vinyl covered chair that looked like it belonged in a banquet hall, and set my purse in my lap.

  “I’m not sure if what I know will help,” I began. “But I thought I ought to share what I’ve learned.”

  “So get on with it.”

  I swallowed my irritation. “I’ve had some conversations with people who know Leslie. Including her ex-boyfriend.”

  The sheriff made a noise. “I already know about him.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, nodding. The fact that Leslie and Shawn had dated was old news, as was the fact that he was in town. I had no idea if the sheriff had questioned him already, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t know about Tori.

  “I’m keeping an eye on him,” the sheriff said. “Got his house under surveillance. Well, when Teddy’s available, that is. Been hard with the squad car being on the fritz.”

  “Surveillance?”

  He stared at me. “Yes. It’s what we do when someone is under suspicion of committing a crime.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m aware. I just…how can you put him under surveillance when his tent blew away? Has he set up a new camp?”

  The sheriff’s eyebrows drew together. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”

  “Shawn,” I said. “He was living in a tent on some abandoned property out by my house. It blew away in the storm yesterday and—”

  “Who on earth is Shawn?”

  I pressed my lips together, trying to figure out how we weren’t on the same page. “Um…her ex-boyfriend? The one who showed up here in town shortly after she did?”

  The sheriff reached for his pipe. It was on his desk, not in his shirt pocket. “Oh,” he said, not meeting my eyes. He coughed. “Yes, right. I know about him. He is not the person we are surveilling.”

  “You said you had her boyfriend under surveillance. When Teddy was available,” I added, wondering who Teddy was and why his squad car was “on the fritz” and why it wasn’t being repaired.

  “We do,” he confirmed.

  “Look, Sheriff, I don’t know who you might be watching, but I can assure you that Shawn is her ex-boyfriend. According to him, he still is her boyfriend. And he most definitely is not living in a house in Latney. So whoever you’re watching…” I paused, trying to choose my words carefully. “I think you might have the wrong person.”

  He set his pipe down. “Are you trying to do my job for me, Missy?”

  This was not going how I’d wanted our conversation to go. It was, however, going pretty much how I’d predicted it would.

  “No, sir,” I said. “I’m just telling you that you might be watching the wrong person.”

  “We are keeping tabs on her lover,” the sheriff thundered.

  “Her…lover?” I almost choked on the word. Was that even a word people used anymore? “And who might that be?”

  He grabbed a donut, a powdered sugar one, leaving a trail of white dust on his desk as he brought it to his lips. “I’m not at liberty to discuss an open case with you,” he said, his mouth full of doughnut.

  “Sheriff, there was a man at my house the other morning, slinking around my property, who has connections to the missing person. I ran into him again yesterday afternoon, chasing a tent through the storm. A tent he was living in. He also got in a fight with Mikey, the cook at—”

  The sheriff perked up. “A fight with Mikey?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Mikey is an old friend of Leslie’s and he’s concerned about her whereabouts.” I didn’t want to tell the sheriff what Mikey had admitted to me. It didn’t feel relevant to the case, and the poor kid had gone through enough with his mom dying, and religious promises he’d broken, and caring for his frail, elderly grandmother.

  The sheriff grunted again. “I’ll bet he is.”

  I frowned. “Excuse me?”

  He picked up the pipe and shoved it in his mouth. He spoke with it between his lips. “Well, being her lover and all…”

  My mouth dropped open. “Mikey isn’t her lov—isn’t seeing Leslie.”

  “You’re darn tootin’, he is.”

  I shook my head. “No, you have it all wrong. He knows her and they’re friends, but he’s not involved with her.”

  The sheriff narrowed his eyes and moved his pipe from side to side, sliding it between his chapped, beefy lips. “How would you know?”

  I hesitated.

  How did I know? I knew because Mikey told me. Because I’d sat in his living room and listened to him pour out his heart to me. Because I’d watched him disappear down the hall to take care of his sick grandmother.

  “Because he told me,” I said, voicing
what I was thinking, but even as I said the words and even before I saw the amused smile light the corners of Sheriff Lewis’s lips, I knew.

  Mikey might have told me all of those things.

  But how did I really know he was telling me the truth?

  TWENTY EIGHT

  I left the sheriff’s office, defeated.

  I’d gone to share the things I knew, to get them off of my chest and on to someone else’s, and I’d managed to do neither of those things.

  Sheriff Lewis hadn’t been interested in what I had to say. He was convinced that Mikey was suspect number one, and didn’t want to listen to anything that might refute his suspicions.

  Our conversation hadn’t gone much further after I’d tried to talk to him about Mikey. He dismissed Shawn’s connection, and when I tried to mention Vivian’s animosity toward her stepsister, he looked as though I was besmirching the name of his own mother.

  “So now you’re accusing the sister?” he’d asked incredulously.

  “Not accusing,” I’d responded, feeling my cheeks go red. “Just pointing out that there seems to be some issues between the two of them.”

  The sheriff stroked his mustache. “I have my suspect,” he said, with finality.

  And that was that.

  I drove back to Latney, past the ten miles of fields and pastures that separated it from Winslow. Cows grazed on the lush green grass as I sped by and occasionally a truck or a car drove past, but otherwise I was alone.

  And I felt it.

  Toby’s Market was bustling as I pulled into town, the lot nearly full of cars. Further down the road, the bank also had its fair share of customers going in and out of its doors. I spied a couple of people I’d seen around town, locals I recognized even though I didn’t know their names.

  I stopped at the stop sign and glanced down the side road. St. Simon’s steeple was stark white against the soft blue sky. I don’t know why, but it beckoned to me. It was almost as if the cross was leaning in my direction, motioning for me to come over.

  So I did.

  I turned at the stop sign and before I could stop myself, pulled into the church parking lot. Declan’s Prius wasn’t parked there, but I knew he sometimes walked to work.