Blood on Copperhead Trail (12 page)

“That’s him,” Janelle repeated through the phone, her voice strangled. “That’s the man who shot Missy.”

Chapter Twelve

“Richard Beller, age fifty-eight. Formerly of Melchior, Kentucky. His priors include stalking, animal cruelty, assault and gun charges.” Doyle stuck an enlargement of Beller’s driver’s license photo on the bulletin board in the small detectives’ bull-pen area, where all his investigators, along with several county lawmen and even a pair of detectives from Knoxville, had congregated to hear what he’d come up with over the past thirty-six hours.

One of the county representatives was Laney, who sat near the back, her arms folded and her brow furrowed. He hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her since he’d dropped her off at the hospital Wednesday evening so she could comfort her distraught sister.

He’d arranged with a private security firm out of nearby Purgatory—the same one Sutton Calhoun worked for—to provide guards for Janelle Hanvey at the hospital and, since her release yesterday, at her mother’s home on Smoky Ridge. He wasn’t quite sure how he was going to explain the expenditure to the people who paid the department’s bills, but he’d figure that out later. Janelle’s safety was a top priority, and he couldn’t spare any of his own officers.

He needed all his people on deck, because this murder case had just taken a drastically unexpected turn.

“He was shot in the back of the head, execution style. The coroner’s initial report states that he was probably killed sometime Monday morning and dumped in the large trash container outside Mama Nellie’s BarBQ within a few hours after. His body remained there until Wednesday morning, when the proprietor showed up to ready the restaurant for its grand reopening on Thursday.”

“Which means he was killed shortly after he killed Missy Adderly and shot Janelle Hanvey,” Antoine drawled.

“Looks that way.”

“So where is Joy Adderly?” Delilah Hammond asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He picked up a stack of paper and gave it to Ivy to hand out to the rest of the people in the room. “These are copies of a map of Copperhead Ridge, supplied by the Copperhead Trail Association. It shows the major and minor hiking trails as well as the general terrain of the mountain. The last map we gave searchers only showed the trails because that’s what we asked the Brandywines to supply. Much of the area off trail is largely overgrown, but clearly, we’re going to have to push our search boundaries outward to include these areas, as well.”

Ivy finished handing out the maps, keeping one for herself and handing the leftovers to Doyle. He took one for himself and put the rest on the table next to him. He looked out over the small crowd.

“Other than the Adderly sisters and Janelle Hanvey, we know of only one other person who might have been on the mountain besides Richard Beller the weekend of the attacks. We think it was this man.” He picked up the photograph of the man with the mustache and glasses, the man Janelle had called Ray. “A man who looked like this met the girls on Sunday. Janelle said he seemed friendly enough but didn’t linger. However, this same man showed up on surveillance video at the Knoxville hospital where Janelle Hanvey was being treated until yesterday.”

Most of the people in the room turned to look at Laney. She went a little pink at the scrutiny but kept her eyes on Doyle. He smiled at her, earning a slight curve of her otherwise solemn mouth.

“We don’t know the connection, if any, between this man and Richard Beller. Nor do we know if he had any hand in the attacks on the girls. But he’s a material witness in the Copperhead Trail shootings. So keep a lookout for this man as you’re searching. Any more questions?”

The lawmen in the room with him shook their heads.

“Your search assignments are on the back of the maps. Contact headquarters as soon as you find anything of interest. And assume that anyone you meet on the trail could be armed and dangerous. Be safe out there.”

While everyone else departed for their search assignments, Laney remained, rising from the table where she’d perched at the back of the room and walking slowly to where he stood at the front. “My name isn’t on any of the search lists.”

“I know. I have a different assignment for you.” He nodded his head toward the door to his office, not waiting for her to follow. He entered the room and smiled at the two women sitting there, bracing himself for Laney’s reaction.

“Mom,” she said, her voice rising with surprise. “Jannie?”

Her mother crossed to give Laney a hug, while Janelle remained seated in the chair across from Doyle’s desk.

“What’s going on?” Laney directed the question to Doyle.

“I had a talk with Janelle last night. She’s ready to help with the investigation.”

Laney’s eyes narrowed. “Help you how?”

Janelle stood and caught her sister’s hands in her own. “Laney, I think I may be able to remember more about what happened to me if I go back up the mountain and try to retrace my steps.”

Laney looked horrified. “Jannie, you just got out of the hospital. You’re in no shape to climb a mountain.”

“The Brandywines agreed to let us take three of their horses up the trail,” Doyle said.

Her blue eyes met his sharply. “I’d like to speak to you alone.”

He’d expected her rebellion. He was ready for it. Mostly. “If you’ll excuse us,” he murmured to Alice and Janelle, escorting Laney through the door into the now-empty detectives’ bull pen.

“Have you lost your mind?” she asked, blue eyes blazing. “Jannie’s recovering from a gunshot to the head! She still has stitches and a doctor’s excuse to keep her out of school another week.”

“She wants to do it, Laney.”

“I don’t care!”

He reached out to touch her arm, hoping to soothe her, but she jerked her arm away and glared at him, her sharp little chin stabbing the air in front of him.

“We’re not taking her up the mountain,” she said.

“That’s my decision.” Janelle’s voice was soft but firm behind Doyle. He turned to find her standing in the open doorway, her squared shoulders and stubbornly jutted chin a mirror image of her sister’s. “I want to do this, Laney. I
need
to do it. I have to remember so we can find out what happened to Joy.”

Laney crossed to stand in front of her sister, her expression full of equal parts love and fear. “Are you sure you’re up to it?”

Janelle nodded. “I can do this.”

Behind Janelle, Alice looked both terrified and proud. “I’ll take Janelle home to get ready for the ride. Give us about an hour.”

Laney watched them go, her heart shining in her eyes. Doyle felt a coiling sensation in the center of his chest, as if someone had taken his heart and given it a painful twist. Taking Janelle up the mountain had been his idea, and he’d known that Laney probably wouldn’t like it. But he hadn’t realized until this moment just how deep her fear for her sister went.

If something happened to Janelle because he’d convinced her she needed to take this ride up the mountain—

The door closed behind Alice and Janelle, and Laney whirled around to face him, her blue eyes wide with anxiety. “Tell me this isn’t a mistake.”

His answer stuck in his throat.

She stared at him a long moment, then looked down at her feet, slumping into a nearby chair. “We’ve spent the past couple of days with an armed guard protecting her, and now we’re taking her up the mountain on a horse to the place where she damned near died. Have we all lost our minds?”

He sat in the chair beside her, reaching across to take her hand. “I thought it was a good idea. Janelle seemed eager for it, but—”

To his surprise, she squeezed his hand and slanted a quick smile at him. “You can’t talk Jannie into something she doesn’t want to do.”

“You and I will be there with her. We’ll both be armed, right?”

She nodded quickly. “Damned straight.”

He smiled at that. “How much do you hate me right now?”

Her blue eyes lifted, a hint of humor in their depths. “Enough to want to smack you upside the head, but not enough to actually do it.”

Putting his hand over his chest in mock relief, he smiled at her. “Maybe this’ll give us a good excuse to kiss and make up.”

She tried to look stern, but the curve at the corner of her lips gave her away. “That is not what my boss sent me here to do, Chief Massey.”

He leaned closer, lifting his hand to her cheek to brush aside the wisp of hair that had fallen out of her neat ponytail. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

She caught his hand and pulled it away from her face. “Don’t make this harder, Doyle. You know it’s a conflict of interest for me.”

Clearly, he realized, the time they’d spent apart had given her the chance to shore up her crumbling defenses against him. Gone was the sweet and willing temptress he’d tangled with on her sofa the other night. She was fully armed this morning and showed no signs of melting again.

That wasn’t to say, however, that he couldn’t give it a go anyway.

“Technically, since I’m brand-new on the job, anything you find of any interest to you or your boss really can’t be held against me. I wasn’t here for it.” He ran his thumb over the back of her hand and lowered his voice. “And in case you’ve forgotten, we crossed that line by a mile the other night.”

She gave him a look full of exasperation. “Doyle, is this just a game to you? It’s not a game to me. I take my job seriously.”

He stopped grinning. “I take my job seriously, too. But I’ve learned the hard way that if you don’t laugh now and then, you go crazy. And believe me, a crazy cop is not someone anyone around here wants to deal with.”

She stared at him for a long, silent moment, consternation vibrating in her expression, as if she were trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that didn’t have all its pieces. Other people had told him, over the years, that he was a hard guy to figure out. He’d never thought of himself that way, but maybe there was some truth to what those other people had said.

He supposed he had a tendency to keep his real feelings, the hard-to-deal-with feelings, buried under the smiles and laid-back charm he doled out with abandon. Apparently, in the middle of that very serious attempt at seduction the other night, he hadn’t made his intentions clear enough. Maybe because he was still trying to figure out those intentions himself.

Did he want something long-term with Laney? Or, more to the point, perhaps, did he really intend to let Laney Hanvey drift out of his life without his putting in the effort to keep her?

As she turned toward the door, he caught her hand, pulling her back into his orbit. Her eyes blazed up at him, setting fire to his blood.

“I’ll tell you what I don’t care about,” he said in a gravelly growl. “I don’t care what the county commission thinks about what you and I do in our private lives. I don’t believe for a second that your boss would accuse you of looking the other way just because you and I happen to find each other attractive, because if he’s spent ten minutes with you, he knows integrity is your most enduring and incorruptible quality.”

Her eyes softened at his words, melting into warm, blue pools. “Doyle.” Her voice came out soft and almost pleading.

He bent his head slowly, taking his time as he kissed her, giving her room to run if she wanted. But she lifted her face to his, drinking in his kiss and giving it back with a fierce passion that rocked him off his internal axis. He tugged her with him into his office and closed the door, pressing her up against it as he deepened the kiss. Her arms snaked around his neck, her breasts flattening against his chest, and he found himself suddenly light-headed, dizzy from the burst of passion she’d kept in check since that night at her house.

Laney finally pushed him back from her, gazing up at him with midnight eyes as she let out a soft
whoosh
of breath.

He grinned at her soft exhalation. “Am I still a puzzle to you?”

She cocked her head slightly, one corner of her kiss-stung lips curving upward. “Yes. But I must admit, I’m a little more invested in solving you now.”

“We’d better get changed for our trek up the mountain.” He’d dressed for the office today, complete with tie, because of the bull-pen meeting. Laney’s suit was business-casual, better for the office than a search party. “I have a change of clothes here.”

“I have clothes in my car,” she said, her gaze dipping briefly to run the length of his body before rising again to meet his eyes. He stifled a grin—and the urge to ask her if she liked what she saw—and nodded for her to get moving. She dragged her gaze away and headed out his door, closing it behind her.

He dressed quickly, exchanging the suit for jeans, a sweater and a thick leather jacket. His dress shoes went in his office closet, replaced by sturdy Timberland boots. The pistol and holster stayed, of course, hidden beneath his jacket. He considered adding a second weapon in an ankle holster but decided having a pistol there might interfere with the stirrups on the saddle.

He ran into Laney near the front desk, on her way out to the parking lot. She’d dressed in slim-fitting, faded jeans, a heather-brown sweater and a brown leather jacket. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back into a tuft of a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she hadn’t bothered reapplying any of the lipstick he’d kissed off of her in his office.

He was tempted to grab her and get rid of what little remained.

“Want to drive up together?” she asked.

“You mean, you don’t trust me driving in the mountains.”

“Well, you
are
a beach boy.” She shot him a sparkling grin that suggested she’d given some thought to his earlier arguments against keeping their distance from each other and was beginning to lean in his favor again.

Her smile faded when they reached her small black Mustang, her gaze flicking his way. “This may not be car enough for all three of us.”

He sighed, knowing he’d been bumped in favor of sisterly devotion. “I’ll meet y’all on the mountain.”

She caught his hand as he started to walk away, her eyes shining with delicious promise. “See you soon.”

He grinned as he headed for his truck, feeling like a teenage kid in the throes of his first crush.

* * *

“D
OES
HE
KNOW
how to ride?” Janelle asked doubtfully as she and Laney watched Doyle unfold himself from the front seat of his truck.