Rose Hill (27 page)

Sarah arrived at the station soon after Hannah left. She shut the door behind her after she entered Scott’s office and declined his invitation to sit.

“I had a couple guys go out to Theo’s and they found the room, but there was nothing in it.”

“Oh my,” Scott said.

“The house had been ransacked. You know anything about that?”

“Hannah was just in here, and she said she saw a government SUV out there this morning when she was feeding Theo’s dogs. Maybe it was them.”

“I need to make some calls,” she said, and hurried out to her car.

She came back scowling, and slammed the door to his office after she entered.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re trying to play, Chief Gordon, but if you know anything about that room or its contents,” she said, “you better tell me now.”

Scott felt sick.

“What did they find?” he asked, stalling.

Sarah looked at him hard for several seconds, and Scott felt as if her eyes were boring into his brain, scouring it for what he was hiding.

“Did you call the FBI?” she asked, in a tone that could best be described as armed and dangerous.

“I didn’t,” he said, relieved to be able to answer honestly. “I told you about it, and you said you’d look into it.”

She stared at him a few seconds longer, as if deliberating, before she spoke.

“I called someone I know at the bureau, and he said they received a tip about the safe and its contents, that it contained evidence pertinent to an ongoing federal investigation.”

Scott laughed, “You’re kidding me, right?”

“This is not funny, Scott,” she said. “They’re going to request all the information and evidence in this murder investigation be turned over to them. I could be taken off this case any minute.”

“Okay,” he said. “Got it.”

It was probably not the right time to let her know her “confidential” cell phone call had most likely been listened to by somebody’s great-grandmother, who would in turn alert the other members of the scanner granny network, and then Hannah.

Scott thought he had a pretty good idea who called the F.B.I., and although he wished he’d been forewarned, he was mostly relieved to have the responsibility for the contents of the safe transferred into their hands, out of his own.

After Sarah left in a huff, a tall, slim, striking young woman entered the station. Dressed in a ski parka and skintight ski pants, she had dark, almond shaped eyes and a complexion the color of cocoa. Skip fell all over himself to get to the desk to see if she needed help, but she asked for Scott.

“Yvonne?” he guessed and her brilliant smile rewarded him for being correct. He could easily see why Mitchell was drowning his sorrows and singing outside her building.

Once seated in the break room, Yvonne flipped her silky dark hair over her shoulders, crossed her long legs and smiled again, revealing straight white teeth.

“Bethany said you were looking for someone who saw anything unusual the night Mitchell got arrested,” she said. “I didn’t see anything, but my boyfriend Price may have seen something.”

“Go on,” Scott said, reminding himself he should be taking notes instead of wondering if he was old enough to be her father.

“Price goes to George Mason, so he’s back in Georgetown now, but he did mention something he saw on the street a little while before Mitchell showed up.”

“Tell me more.”

“We had friends over, and Price went out for more beer around midnight. The only thing open that late is the Quickie Mart by the interstate, and it was really foggy. I noticed the time because it was taking so long, and I was worried about him. I called him on his cell and we talked most of his way back. When he got back it was just after 1:00, and he said there was an old beat-up truck parked in his spot, in front of the antique store. He said there was a guy sitting in it. He waited a minute to see if the guy was leaving so he could take the space, but the guy just sat there. He said the windows were steamed up so he couldn’t see him real well, but there was definitely someone in there. Price drove around the block, but the guy just stayed there, so he got fed up with waiting, parked down the street, and walked back up.”

“He didn’t hear or see anything else?”

“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t have noticed the guy except you know how hard it is to find a parking space on a weekend in this town, especially with the snowplows piling up snow in them. You really should do something about that.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Scott told her, and was rewarded once again with a beautiful smile.

Scott took her boyfriend’s name and number and thanked her for coming in. Skip had combed his hair and put on some potent aftershave while they were in the break room, and Yvonne made his day by telling him he “sure smelled good” and winking at him as she left.

“That, my friend,” Scott told the younger man, “is what a heartbreaker looks like.”

Skip just looked dreamily after her, and waved enthusiastically when she waggled her fingers good-bye outside the door. He ran to the front and smashed the side of his face up against the window, so he could watch her walk away.

“Ge
t back to work,” Scott told him, “and wash that stink off. You know I don’t allow that in here.”

“Sure
, boss,” Skip said, but he wasn’t listening.

Scott gave Skip the assignment to call the boyfriend to follow up, and hoped that would help break the spell.

As soon as he could get Skip peeled off the front window and back to work, Scott jogged down the street to the bookstore. Mitchell was working. He said he didn’t remember seeing a truck parked in front of the antique store when he started his serenade, and Scott knew there hadn’t been one when he arrived, because it was where he had parked the squad car. So now, Scott thought, he had Willy Neff near the scene of the crime at just after 1:00, but gone by 3:00. Willy had to have seen something. He needed to talk this through with someone.

“Where’s Maggie?” Scott asked Mitchell.

“She had some errands to run and then she and the vet are going out to Hannah’s for dinner,” Mitchell told him.

“Maggie and Drew?” Scott said. “What the hell?”

“Remember the bridge,” Mitchell told him. “Don’t burn your bridge.”

“I’m an idiot,” Scott told Mitchell. “Never take advice from an idiot.”

Sam Campbell checked his e-mail and voice mail one last time before disconnecting from the outside world. If one of his clients had an emergency, or if one of the sophisticated and hacker-proof firewall systems he created for them was breached, he would receive an automatic text message on his satellite cell phone, which he kept clipped to his belt.

His wife had invited some people over for dinner, and even though he dreaded what always felt like an intrusion on his privacy, he usually had a good time when all was said and done. The new vet, whom he hadn’t met yet, but had heard good things about, was coming with Maggie, whom he was fond of and comfortable with.

He locked up his office and went out to the kitchen, where Hannah was cooking something that smelled wonderful. She had the phone stuck between her shoulder and ear and was saying, “uh huh, uh huh,” at intervals as she tended to several pans on the stove. She acknowledged his presence with a wave of a potholder.

“I’m talking to Claire,” she said.

“Tell her to come home,” Sam said. “We miss her.”

“She’s going to Prague,” Hannah said. “Where’s Prague?”

“Czech Republic,” Sam said.

“Where’
s the Czech Republic?” Hannah asked, but Sam just smiled and shook his head.

Sam retrieved
a couple of bottles of wine out of the pantry and put them on the table. The dogs were whining at the door, so he put on a jacket and took them out, letting in a cold blast of air and some snow during the process. Even though it was not yet six o’clock it was dark. The sky was dotted with thousands of bright stars and the sliver of a new moon was visible in the east. The wind was sharp and shot right down the neck of his coat, so he tightened the collar and flipped up the hood.

He wheeled his chair the length of the walkway to the “dock” by the barn, and threw a tennis ball across the meadow. Wally got to it before Jax
, and trotted back, tail high and wagging. In the barn, the strays barked and whined. The meadow was white with a heavy buildup of snow, the pond was still and shining where it wasn’t frozen, and he could see a cat or a fox, he couldn't tell which, darting across the lower end of the fence line near a copse of trees. The mountains surrounding their little valley looked like a dark, undulating wall, encircling their land like a fortress.

Sam threw the ball in the opposite direction and the dogs shot past him in pursuit. A pain shot through a left foot and ankle he no longer had, but instead of having an emotional reaction, like he once would have, he mentally detached himself and observed it dispassionately, thinking, ‘that feels like a cramp in my Achilles tendon.’ He
didn't judge the feeling, try to argue with it, or deny it was happening. Instead he stayed with it, and let it be whatever it was.

The feeling faded, and he was able to return his attention to playing with the dogs. It was in this way, this detached, observing, accepting mode that he was able to get through each experience of phantom pain. He used to let them haunt a
nd torment him, but now he just let them be. He was still learning to observe and let go, to think ‘that's interesting,’ as a way to keep moving forward. It worked most of the time.

He did a quick emotional check, like his counselor taught him, and identified he was worried about how this new person might react to his physical appearance. He reminded himself
that whatever happened he could deal with it, and his wife would not invite someone into their home who would offend him. He reminded himself that Hannah needed more people in her life than just him, for her emotional wellbeing, whereas he believed he only needed her.

Sam loved his best friend Patrick, good friends Ed and Scott, and Hannah's family and friends, but unless they reached out to him, he never sought their company. His autonomy and independence meant everything to him, and he meant to
preserve both for as long as he could. If he let them, his wife, her extended family, and their well-meaning friends would do everything for him, and as much as he appreciated their devotion, Sam saw their willingness to take over as a deadly trap to be avoided at all costs.

He heard the sound of Maggie's VW bug coming over the hill towards the farm
, and turned around, calling the dogs back. They ran barking past him, up the drive to meet her car, tails wagging in a happy greeting.

Maggie had picked up Drew at his house, and tried to avoid looking at the property she owned where her house had burned down. She didn't go out there much, as there was no reason to. Theo offered to buy it many times, and although she had no plans for it, she always told him she would be damned if she let him get his filthy hands on it.

She beeped the horn instead of going to his door, as it was just too cold to do the reverse chivalry thing, and he ran out almost immediately. She quickly cleaned off the passenger seat and threw everything in the back. He got in and Maggie could smell his particular personal smell, a mixture of disinfectant from the veterinary clinic, soap, and laundry detergent. It didn’t have anything like the effect Scott’s smell had on her. Primarily, Drew smelled clean.

Maggie liked the look of him, though. Hannah described him as “crunchy granola,” due to the longish brown hair and sideburns, and the mountain hiker/biker outfits he wore. Tonight he had on a heavy wool sweater,
a denim shirt, and faded olive-colored pants. Maggie thought his face looked open and honest, with grayish green eyes and a goofy smile, and she also noticed he had a crooked eyetooth when he smiled. He seemed a little shy, but earnest somehow. He had, as Hannah liked to refer to the qualities of honesty, integrity, and helpfulness, “that boy scout thing.”

“How do you like your house?” she asked, as she turned her car around in her old driveway.

“It's pretty crappy,” he said. “I don't guess Theo's likely to do anything about it now.”

“Maybe we can find you something better.”

There was not much real estate available in Rose Hill, and students snapped up the year ‘round rentals, subletting to tourists each summer. There were slumlords like Theo who charged exorbitant rental rates to students and tourists for falling down firetraps, and there were occasionally houses for sale, but someone usually had to die for property to come available for sale.

Due to Rose Hill’s proximity to the ski resorts
, more and more people from outside were buying up houses in the area to use as vacation homes. This drove the housing prices up, which drove the property taxes up, which would eventually make Rose Hill too expensive for local people. They had watched this happen in Glencora, then the towns surrounding it, and now the “rich tourist effect” was rolling down the mountain toward smaller towns, like a slow motion avalanche.

Maggie thought about the empty space on the second floor of her own building, which held overstock and junk. She had considered renovating and renting it out, but she wasn't sure she wanted anyone in her building with her. What if they had loud sex every night, or partied every weekend, or worst of all, wanted to hang out with her all the time? She shuddered at the thought.