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Natalie whipped her head around to look at the doctor. “So this is about taking away my weapon, not my badge. You think I’m either going to go on a shooting spree down at Gray Industries or I’m going to eat my gun?”
“Natalie,” Tatum warned.
She looked at the sheriff. “I have another gun. I have a license to carry it. And as far as I know, we still have a Second Amendment in this country. You solve nothing by doing this.”
The fire in Tatum’s eyes told her she’d pushed the sheriff too far. “If you plan to ever step foot back in this department again, you will give me your weapon and your shield and keep the lip to yourself, Deputy.”
She tamped down a retort and handed her duty weapon and her badge to the sheriff, slanting a look at Dr. Sprayberry. The therapist met her gaze, unflinching. Natalie headed for the door.
“And stay the hell away from Hamilton Gray,” the sheriff added as a parting shot.
Natalie closed the door behind her and paused there for a moment, acutely aware of the curious gazes of her fellow deputies. She doubted any of them gave a damn whether or not she was suspended. Well, maybe Travis Rayburn, the rookie cop who seemed to have a little crush on her. And Lieutenant Barrow was always pretty nice to her.
But the attitudes of the rest of her fellow deputies matched those of her parents: what on God’s green earth was Natalie Becker of the Bayside Oil Beckers doing working as a deputy sheriff?
She didn’t care. She hadn’t taken this job to make friends with her fellow deputies.
She kept her head high as she walked out, ignoring the stares following her out. She trudged to her Lexus and found, to her dismay, that she’d been in the sheriff’s office just long enough for the brutal sun to heat the car’s interior to a toasty 140 degrees. She lowered the windows to let out the hot, stale air and cranked the air conditioner up to high.
As she drove south, heading toward her house on the bay, the neon-studded facade of Millie’s Pub visible in the distance drew her into a quick detour east. Millie’s was a small place, little more than a hole in the wall, but the local law enforcement loved the place. For Natalie, the bar was more a curiosity than a home away from home, but she’d become accustomed to going there after work with the other deputies—her attempt, she supposed, to fit in with the others.
Why she was stopping here now, of all days—when she could call herself a deputy only on the technicality that Roy Tatum had suspended her, not fired her—she wasn’t sure. God knew, it was too early in the day to drink.
But compelled by an emotion she couldn’t define, she parked her car in a spot near the end of the building, stepped back into the fiery afternoon heat and went inside the bar.
J. D. COOPER SAW THE redhead from the cemetery enter the pub and stride straight to the bar, her long legs eating up real estate like a pissed-off thoroughbred. She bellied up to the bar and ordered a shot of Tennessee whiskey, downing it in one gulp. J.D. watched in fascination, wondering if she’d tell the bartender to hit her again, like a cowboy in one of those old Westerns his son, Mike, liked to watch on the classic movies channel.
She ruined the effect by taking a napkin from the metal holder and delicately blotting leftover drops of whiskey from her pink lips. She ordered a ginger ale chaser and settled onto a bar stool, drinking the soda from a straw and scanning the bar’s murky interior with the eyes of a woman who knew she was completely out of place, which she was.
A woman like Natalie Becker didn’t walk into a place like Millie’s every day.
She was a deputy sheriff. Sister of the deceased. Daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the South. That much information had been easy to glean, even for a stranger in town.
Although technically, he wasn’t a stranger. His connection to Brenda had opened a few mouths; all he’d had to do was mention his wife’s name to some of Millie’s customers to find out what he’d needed to know. Of course, he’d also had to suffer through the looks of pain and pity at the mention of her name. Brenda had been as well loved here, in her hometown of Terrebonne, as she’d been back home in Gossamer Ridge.
Stopping at Millie’s had been a pure guess. At the cemetery, he’d seen the bulge of a weapon hidden beneath the lightweight jacket of the redhead’s summer suit. Yes, this was Alabama, and a lot of women in the state carried concealed weapon licenses, but damned few of them wore lightweight summer suits in this unholy heat. That left law enforcement. Cops got used to wearing uniforms of one sort or another, regardless of the weather.
J.D. had considered going straight to the Ridley County Sheriff’s Department and asking if they employed any redheads, but that was a little too direct for his purposes. So he’d done the next best thing—he’d found the only bar in town that looked like a place where cops would hang out.
“Another Sprite? Or would you like something stronger now?” The ponytailed waitress stopped at J.D.’s table, her tone a little more friendly than it had been earlier, when he’d ordered a soda instead of liquor.
“I’m good,” he said, earning a frown. The waitress drifted off toward more lucrative tables.
For a Wednesday mid-afternoon, the place was doing decent business. Some of the customers were farmers taking a beer break during the heat of the day, while others were workers coming off a seven-to-three shift at the chicken-processing plant a couple of miles away. No police had dropped by yet.
None but Natalie Becker.
Her wandering gaze finally drifted J.D.’s way. Her clear green eyes met his and she gave a start of surprise.
What would she do? he wondered, seeing a flicker of indecision in those pretty eyes. Pretend she hadn’t seen him before? Come over and ask him his business?
Since he was trying to keep a low profile while he was here in Terrebonne, he should be hoping for the former. But Natalie Becker had information he needed—more information, probably, than anyone else on the police force—given her relationship to Carrie Gray. So he felt a thrill of satisfaction when she got up from her stool at the bar and walked slowly in his direction.
He stood as she came near, his sudden movement catching her off guard, halting her forward movement. Her watchful gaze made J.D. reconsider his earlier comparison to a thoroughbred. This Natalie Becker was a feral cat, all wary green eyes and sinewy-muscles bunched, ready for flight.
“Who are you?” Her low, cultured voice rose over the twang of a George Strait ballad on the corner jukebox.
“J. D. Cooper.” He extended his hand politely.
She ignored his outstretched hand, moving forward slowly until she was even with his table. “You were at the cemetery.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Visiting a grave.”
“Mary Beth Geddie?”
He frowned, confused. “Who?”
“That’s the name on the gravestone where you were standing.”
“Oh.”
“You weren’t visiting her grave?”
“No. I was visiting your sister’s.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who the hell are you?”
“J. D. Cooper.”
She winced with frustration. “Is that supposed to mean something to me? What did you want? Why were you visiting my sister’s grave?”
He cocked his head, wondering why she hadn’t jumped to the obvious conclusion. “You aren’t wondering if I’m the one who killed her?”
Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’t speak for a moment as if he’d rendered her speechless. Finally, she asked in a strangled voice, “Did you kill my sister?”
“No,” J.D. answered. “But I think I know who did.”
Natalie closed her hand over the back of an empty chair nearby and pulled it around so she could sit down.
J.D. scooted his chair closer to her and sat as well. Reaching across, he placed his hand over hers where it lay on the table. “Are you okay?”
She jerked her hand from beneath his. “I’m fine.”
He raised both hands to reassure her he meant no harm. “I could get you some water—”
“I said I’m fine.” The words came out in a sharp snap. She flushed, looking embarrassed. He guessed Beckers didn’t make scenes in bars. “Thank you,” she added.
He saw her studying him closely, as if trying to take his measure. He wondered what she saw. At a distance, he knew he looked younger than his forty-four years, thanks to keeping up with his Navy fitness regime even after he retired. But up close, the years of grief and obsession showed around his eyes and mouth. Someone had once told him he had old eyes.
“What do you know about my sister’s murder?” she asked. “How do you even know about it? Where are you from?”
He reached into his pocket. She tensed immediately, her hand automatically sliding down to her waist, as if she expected to find a weapon there. Her lips flattened with anger.
J. D. Cooper finished pulling out his wallet to give her his Cooper Cove Marina business card.
“You work as a boat mechanic?” she asked.
“My folks own a marina up in Gossamer Ridge,” he said. “It’s a little place in the northeastern part of the state. When I got out of the Navy, I went to work for them doing boat repair and maintenance.”
She flashed a quick smile. He wondered why.
She laid the card in the middle of the table between them. “That doesn’t explain how you know about Carrie’s murder. Did it make the news up there or something?”
“You’re from a rich, influential family. One of you gets murdered, it makes news everywhere in the state.” He folded his wallet shut and put it back into his pocket. “The Gossamer Ridge paper didn’t give many details about the murder. Neither did The Birmingham News. But I know some folks around here, so I did a little digging.”
“Why?”
“Because I think the man who killed your sister is the same man who killed my wife.”
Chapter Two
Natalie sat back in her chair, watching him through narrowed eyes. “Your wife?”
He nodded. “She was murdered twelve-and-a-half years ago. Late at night while working alone at a secluded office building. Nothing else around for at least a half mile.”
The air in the bar seemed to grow chill. Natalie hugged her jacket more tightly around her. “Late at night—”
“Just like your sister.”
She swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“Do you know anyone named Alex?”
The question threw her. “Alex?”
“That’s the name he uses. I don’t think it’s his real name, but it could be a nickname.”
“You know his name but you don’t know what he looks like?”
J. D. Cooper’s only answer was to pick up the business card and pull a pen from his shirt pocket. He wrote something on the back of the card and shoved it back toward her. “I’m going to be hanging around town a few days. Here’s where I’m staying. My cell number’s on the front of the card. I figure you’ll want to look into what I’m telling you, so I’ll leave you to do that.”
He unfolded his long legs until he towered over her like a giant tree, casting a shadow across the table. “I’m going to keep looking into your sister’s murder, whatever you decide. I just think it’ll be easier if we didn’t butt heads about it.”
He pulled out his wallet, laid a ten dollar bill on the table for the waitress and walked out of the bar.
It took a couple of seconds for Natalie’s legs to cooperate enough to go after him. By the time she burst outside the bar, he was driving away in the same black truck she’d seen at the cemetery earlier in the day. She noted the make and model—a Ford F-250—but couldn’t make out the license plate.
Torn between irritation and curiosity, she returned to the bar and retrieved his business card from the table.
J. D. Cooper, she read silently, her fingers tingling with the memory of his big, warm hand closing over hers.
She had a feeling he was going to be a boatload of trouble.
J.D. CALLED THE MARINA as soon as he reached the blessed coolness of his motel room. The place was cheap but clean, and the bed was big enough to look inviting to a man his size.
Waiting for someone to answer, he picked up the files he’d brought with him. It was twelve years’ worth of notes, police files and newspaper clippings he’d compiled since Brenda’s murder. Most of the pages were dog-eared and fading, while others were fresh photocopies of papers that had already started to fall apart.
He’d handled them all, at least once a day, for over a decade. An obsession, he supposed, but he couldn’t stop now. He was closer than he’d ever been, thanks to his brother Gabe’s recent trip to a college town three hours north of Terrebonne.
Ironic, that. Gabe being the one to blow the case wide open, since he was the one who blamed himself most for letting Brenda down the one night she really needed him.
His brother Luke answered the marina’s office phone, catching J.D. by surprise. Luke ran a riding stable and wouldn’t usually be there at this hour. “What are you doing there?” J.D. asked.
“I turned the stable over to Trevor and Kenny, and I’m meeting Abby here for dinner with the folks.”
God, he sounded happy, even though he had plenty of reasons not to be. Eladio Cordero, the South American drug lord who’d put a price on Luke’s life—and the life of anyone he loved—was still out there, biding his time. But at least Luke was home with his family now. The Coopers were pretty tough, always ready to guard each other’s backs. And Luke had that beautiful wife and kid of his to come home to every night.
J.D. tried not to envy his brother—all his brothers, really, who’d now found the kind of happiness J.D. hadn’t known in over twelve years. Even Gabe and Aaron had been bitten in the backside by the love bug. Aaron and Melissa were getting married in a couple of weeks, and Gabe had come home from his trip last month to Millbridge with a cute little college professor named Alicia Solano in tow. She still hadn’t said she’d marry him, but anyone could see she was crazy about him, too. And Gabe could be a bloody damned nuisance when he wanted something. J.D.’s money was on him.
“Have you picked up Mike yet?” Luke asked.
“No, not yet.” His thirteen-year-old son, Mike, had spent the last couple of weeks with his grandparents, right after his graduation from eighth grade. Brenda’s parents had come up to Chickasaw County to see their only grandson’s graduation and ended up taking Mike back with them to spend a few weeks.
J.D. had used Mike as an excuse to head south to Terrebonne, but Mike wasn’t due to come back home until just before Aaron’s wedding. J.D. hadn’t wanted his family to know his real reason for coming here until he found out more about Carrie Gray’s murder. They’d worry about him, and J.D. was tired of being the object of everyone’s concern.
“How’s Stevie?” he asked aloud to change the subject.
“He’s great!” Luke answered. “Abby’s been teaching him to speak Spanish, and he’s starting to get better at it than I am.”
J.D. laughed. “Well, tell him hola from his Tio J.D. I’m going to hang down here a little longer. Tell Dad he can get Jasper Noble to take care of any boat maintenance issues that come up while I’m gone. Jasper loves being useful since he retired—”
“How much longer?” Luke couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. Though Luke had been away from the family for ten years before his recent return to the fold, he’d apparently heard enough family gossip to know J.D. rarely visited Terrebonne anymore.
“A few days. No more than a week.” He hoped.
“Okay. I’ll tell everyone.”
“Thanks. Hey, is Gabe anywhere around?”
“He’s out unloading his boat. Just came in from a guiding job. You want me to have him call you?”
“Yeah, do that.” J.D. might not want the rest of his family to worry about him, but he wanted Gabe to know what he was really up to. After all, Gabe had put his life on the line to solve Brenda’s murder just a few weeks earlier, taking on a psychopath who’d been holding Alicia hostage.
A psychopath J.D. intended to visit in the Okaloosa County Jail up in Millbridge as soon as the visit could be arranged. Because Marlon Dyson wasn’t just a crazy stalker. He’d been partners with the man J.D. believed had killed his wife.
