Hometown Detective

He should have left hours ago. He should be deep into investigating a real murder. Like a magnet, Kendra had kept him right here.

“My sister was murdered,” she’d written. “I’m going to talk to Kaelyn’s best friend in two hours. With or without you.”

Then she’d signed her name, a pretty scrawl.

Since that’s where he now stood outside waiting for her, he must have already given in. She’d baited him with that note, probably even planned a visit with the best friend on purpose, to draw him in. He felt the resolve settle in and take hold. Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere. Even if he proved her wrong and Kaelyn’s death was suicide, he’d stay until the end. He’d investigate her case.

And yeah, he’d even started thinking of this as a case—but only because of what she’d brought to light about being in contact with her long-lost sister. Why had Kaelyn kept her reuniting with Kendra a secret? He had to find out.

He wished he could smoke.

Really. Why was he doing this?

Because she’d go forward without him. Her note told him that much.

Because in the off chance her sister had been murdered, she’d put herself in danger.

Because...

Because he cared.

A few minutes later, Kendra drove up and parked. She saw him before she got out, shock registering before she smiled. She smiled a lot. Her sunny disposition had infected him for sure.

He headed across the street.

“You’re going to scare her standing out here like a stalker,” she said.

“At least she’ll be expecting us.”

He experienced a flare of attraction when he noticed she wore another sexy pantsuit.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look mad.”

Mad? Hungry might be a better word. “Don’t make me start smoking again.” Passing her, he walked to the house.

“How would I make you smoke again? You smoked?” She eyed him as though he didn’t fit the stereotype. “When did you quit?”

“Six months ago. I only want to smoke when I get agitated. You made me stay and take your case.”

“At least you’re calling it a case now.” She winked at him, infecting him more.

Stopping at the door, he rang the bell as he absorbed her beautiful profile, lips still curved smugly.

Blaire Bancroft answered the door. “Kendra.” She turned curious eyes to Roman.

“Hi, Blaire. This is Roman Cooper. He’s the private detective I hired to look into Kaelyn’s death. Would you mind telling him everything you told me?”

So Kendra had planned to trick him into coming here. Of course she would have already talked to her.

“Oh.” Her frown told Roman she didn’t understand the need. “Sure. Come in.”

Before arriving here, Roman had asked an analyst at DAI to look into everyone close to Kaelyn. Blaire and Kaelyn had gone to school together and had both married out of high school. Blaire had stayed in Chesterville. Her husband worked as a mechanic at a local garage and she stayed home with their kids. They’d waited and had them later in their thirties. Kaelyn had left town when her winner of a man dragged her to another town.

Roman entered behind Kendra, and then stood beside her in the small foyer. Blaire’s toddler played on an old, faded rug in front of a television in the small living room. The scuffed wood floor needed refinishing. Through a wide archway, the kitchen looked messy. Breakfast dishes remained on the table and the counters needed a scrubbing. Busy mom.

“How are you?” Blaire asked Kendra. “I hear your shop is doing amazing. I’ve been meaning to stop in.” She glanced at the toddler, who threw a stuffed monkey in the air and then sat transfixed by the Sesame Street episode. “I hate taking him in public, though.”

Kendra laughed a little. “I can see you have your hands full. We won’t take up much of your time. Roman just has a few questions for you.”

Roman loved how she unabashedly volunteered him.

“All right. Sorry for the mess. I was just about to start cleaning the kitchen. It took me a while to get him to settle down.” She thumbed over toward her child.

“How close were you with Kaelyn?” Roman asked, a standard first question.

Blaire glanced at Kendra as though surprised she hadn’t told him. “Very. We were best friends through school and after.”

“You remained close after school? After you were both married?” That would be important if Kaelyn revealed something no one singled out as significant.

“Yes. We talked on the phone a lot and I saw her when she came back to Chesterville, which she did quite often. Her husband only trusted her to go see her mom.” She shook her head with a slight roll to her eyes. “Weird that he’d let her do that but not go out with friends when she was home. Kaelyn must have been able to snow him for once. He must have believed her.”

“Tell Roman about how you suspected Kaelyn was having another affair aside from the one she had with Jasper,” Kendra said.

Blaire looked from him to her, taking some time to think. “I wasn’t really suspicious. One time, she came over and had to leave early. I noticed she seemed anxious. I thought she must have had another fight with her husband, but she said she had another stop to make before she had to get back to her mother’s. I asked her where she was going and she wouldn’t say. She just changed the subject.”

Kaelyn must not have shared the part about the second lover with anyone. Roman supposed he should have sat down with Kendra before coming here and allowed her to explain all she knew so far. Or make sure she did. She’d held out on him, probably for this reason, to get him here and to get him much more curious about the case.

What about Jasper? Kaelyn must have known Jasper could take care of himself. But then, she must have been having this affair here in Chesterville at the same time, so why tell him? And if her husband didn’t trust her with anyone but her mother, she must have been very sneaky to avoid detection.

“When did you last see her?” Roman asked.

“Oh, about two weeks before she died. I spoke with her the day before, though. She told me Jasper broke things off and she was pretty upset over that.”

“Did she talk about her husband?” Roman asked.

“No, not that time.”

“But she did previously,” Kendra said, guiding the direction of the questioning.

“The time before that, when she came to Chesterville, we met for lunch and she had a bruise on her lip,” Blaire said. “I had already suspected her husband was knocking her around. She tried to cover the bruise with makeup but I noticed. I’ve never seen her so low as she was then. She talked about wanting to close her eyes and not wake up so she wouldn’t have to go home to him. She scared me. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but she insisted.”

“Don’t you think it’s possible her husband killed her?” Kendra asked.

“Oh, I’m sure he would have, eventually.”

“Did she ever talk about leaving him?” Roman asked.

“Well, sure. All the time. But it was more like a daydream. I think she was too scared to try.”

“Jasper told her he’d help,” Kendra said.

“And he also told her he wouldn’t be with her. If she was having an affair with someone else who frightened her as much or more than her husband, she didn’t have much to look forward to.”

Roman agreed that only supported her suicide. “You think she killed herself?”

“It’s what the police think. She wasn’t happy. She never talked to me about killing herself but I can see how she’d be driven to that point.” She looked harder at Kendra. “Do you really think she was murdered?”

“I think it’s a definite possibility,” she said. “Whenever I talked to her or when I saw her, she didn’t seem like someone who was about to off herself.”

“Maybe she didn’t want you to worry,” Roman said.

He earned a glower from her.

“Thanks for talking to us, Blaire,” Kendra said, then turned to him again. “Let’s go.”

“Did Kaelyn ever mention she was talking with her twin sister?” Roman asked Blaire.

Blaire shook her head. “I was as shocked as everyone else when Kendra came to town.”

He could tell his question irritated Kendra. He’d had to ask to confirm what she’d told him.

Out on the street, Kendra headed for her car. “Don’t say it.”

Roman walked beside her. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

She eyed him as he walked next to her.

“I wasn’t,” he repeated. “In fact, I was going to suggest we call her coworkers.”

“What about her sleazy husband?”

“He’s in jail. Just found that out this morning. Arrested for embezzlement.”

“The streets are cleaner.” She reached her car. “Where’s your car?”

“I left the rental at the hotel. Took a cab here.”

“Get in.”

He did. “The husband has a tight alibi the day Kaelyn killed herself.”

“Stop saying that. Kaelyn was murdered.”

Roman sighed. This was going to be a long day.

“I didn’t tell you this yet, but Kaelyn slipped once when we were talking on the phone. She said she met someone in Chesterville and she called him Bear.”

“So you knew she was seeing someone.”

“No. She said she met someone and she called him Bear. She backpedaled when I questioned her and wouldn’t say more.”

* * *

Kendra contained her frustration after talking with a few of Kaelyn’s coworkers. All of them corroborated what the police had surmised. Kaelyn had been unhappy and depressed before her death. Having Roman with her to do the questioning hadn’t gotten her anywhere. She felt his doubt oozing through the air between them. The only reason he’d stayed was because of her secret relationship with Kaelyn, and maybe their night together. Would he ever be swayed?

Now they walked along Main Street not far from her shop and the pub. Ahead, a throng of people caught her eye. They’d have to cross the street to get around them. A camera crew lingered among them in front of the courthouse.

“What’s going on there?” Roman asked.

“I don’t know.” Kendra was active in her community but wouldn’t call herself up-to-date on everything going on in town.

People had gathered on the steps of the courthouse. What they hoped to see, Kendra couldn’t be sure. But then a couple stepped out of the building. The man, tall and muscular with slightly graying dark hair, wore slacks and a vest over a white dress shirt. Not much shorter, with blond hair and a black dress, the woman wore expensive jewels, like Christmas ornaments, and a fitted black business dress with black high heels. Her blond hair was shoulder-length and styled in a perfect, swooping bob.

She stopped with Roman at the crowd of onlookers.

“Who are they?” Kendra asked.

A woman next to her said, “That’s Hudson Franklin and his wife, Melody. Hudson is the county prosecutor. He’s prosecuting a new case.”

Melody waved to the crowd as though acting. Her husband kissed her cheek and she smiled at him, much more genuinely. The two seemed to have real feelings for each other.

Someone broke from the crowd, rushing for Melody and Hudson.

“You sent an innocent man to jail!” the man hollered, feverish to reach them. “All you care about is winning trials!”

Melody’s smile vanished and she shrieked, startled and frightened.

Two beefy security guards blocked the stranger just in time and Hudson swept Melody away, letting the guards flatten the man onto the concrete sidewalk.

From behind the couple, a big, dark blond–haired man rushed forward. “Mother! Are you all right?”

Shaken but safe now that the man had been subdued, the blonde faced the man. “Thank you, Bear. Yes, I’m all right.”

As she watched Melody lean away from the man’s embrace, Kendra felt a cold chill race through her, prickling her scalp and arms. When Kaelyn had slipped when talking about her second lover, she’d called him Bear.

Chapter 4

Raelyn Johnston checked out a customer in line at the gas station counter. This was the only job she could find after college. She didn’t want to leave Chesterville. Her grandparents lived here and that was really all she had left of family. Kendra came to mind then. She didn’t like thinking about her. Mom hadn’t told her a thing about her. Why not? The only explanation was that her mom hadn’t been close to her and maybe hadn’t wanted to bring her into their lives.

It didn’t matter anyway. Raelyn didn’t want her aunt in her life. She looked like her mom the way other sisters did but not in a twin way, and just reminded her of the hellhole her mother had left her in when she killed herself.

Raelyn slammed the cash register shut with a fresh wave of anger. She still got so mad over that. How could her mother have done that to her? Living with Dad had been horrible but at least they had had each other. How could her mom have left her in that situation?

The last year living with Dad had been a nightmare. She’d come home from school to cops swarming her house and her mother’s body being wheeled out in a black bag. Her dad hadn’t even called the school.

A cop had told her that her mother died and the coroner would be in touch to explain how.

After they’d all left, her dad had started drinking and only told her Kaelyn had killed herself by hanging. No hug. No talk over how she’d deal with such a huge loss. He seemed to not care at all. Looking back, she realized he’d drowned whatever sentiment he’d had for her mom in alcohol.

Another patron showed up at the counter. She looked up and saw a tall, beautiful blonde she recognized from the news. It was the prosecutor’s wife, Melody Franklin. She put a cold bottle of iced tea on the counter.

Raelyn began checking her out and Melody inserted her credit card into the machine, eyeing Raelyn.

“You’re Kaelyn Johnston’s daughter, aren’t you?” Melody asked.

She recognized her? “Yes.”

“I was real sorry when we heard about her death all those years ago.”

What was this, Hash Over Her Mom’s Suicide Day? She didn’t respond.

“She was so well liked in town. No one ever really got to know your dad. He never came with her when she visited.”

“My dad was and still is a first-class loser.”

“You seem to have turned out all right despite that fact. You’re quite lovely.”

Raelyn grew uncomfortable with the compliment. She thought she looked okay, but what did lovely mean?

“I heard your aunt hired an impressive private investigations firm to look into your mother’s death.”

What? Raelyn handed Melody her receipt. “What detective agency? Why is she looking into her death?”

Raelyn felt a surge of multiple feelings assail her. Rage. Pain. The sting of tears. She couldn’t take this.

“As a possible homicide. You didn’t know?”

“My aunt and I haven’t spoken much.”

“Doesn’t she keep in touch with you? I would think she’d want nothing more than to be in touch with her twin sister’s daughter.”

That was getting too personal. “She does, but I’ve been too busy.”

Melody glanced over the cash register and counter as though she found that difficult to believe. Raelyn only worked at a gas station. How could she possibly be too busy to be in touch with her aunt? Clearly she didn’t want to be in touch with her aunt.

“I’m sorry,” Melody said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“What agency?” Raelyn asked, borderline snapping.

“It’s fairly well-known. Dark Alley Investigations.”

“Why does Aunt Kendra think my mother may have been murdered?”

“Good question. That’s why I brought it up.”

Raelyn would not entertain any thoughts on the matter. She’d had it rough enough without her mother around. She didn’t need to start feeding the notion that her mother hadn’t abandoned her. Kendra was just reaching. Her mother wasn’t murdered. Period. End of story. Time to move on with her life.

Melody took her tea and started to turn. “Have a good day now.”

“You, too.”

Raelyn saw the next clerk who’d take over at the counter. Her shift was over.

Good. She needed to get out of here and get her mind off Mom. Adam texted her, saying he’d meet her at a local bar near where she worked.

Perfect.

She didn’t drink like her dad had, and never would. He’d set a fine example of what not to become. Try as she might not to think about that last year living with him, the memories filled her anyway. Whenever he got drunk, which was every night, he got angry. At first, she’d tolerated it. Without her mom, she’d been so lost and sad. The awfulness had consumed her. She’d come home from school and go to her room and cry every night. Her grades had slumped. Luckily, summer had arrived and she’d had a few months to get past the worst of it.

Dealing with her dad hadn’t helped. He yelled at her all the time and made her basically take care of him, cooking and cleaning. She’d hated him for that. She lost her friends because he demanded she be home. Then one night, he’d gotten so mad that she hadn’t made dinner yet, she’d lashed out at him and yelled back. He’d smacked her like he had her mom so many times.

She’d packed a bag and left. She went to one of her friends’ house. But she couldn’t live there for a year so she’d had to go back home.

Her dad had apologized but the violence had returned. She’d barely graduated from high school but made sure she had scholarships for college. Between that and two jobs, she’d paid her own way through school.

She hadn’t really had a chance to grieve the loss of her mother. In college she had. But the one thing she never lost was that deep, aching resentment over her mother taking the coward’s way and killing herself. Hadn’t she thought of her daughter? Why couldn’t she have just taken her and left her dad? That had gnawed at her ever since the day her dad emotionlessly told her of the suicide.

For the longest time, she couldn’t believe it. She refused. Her mother would never leave her that way. But she had. The coroner had sealed the truth of it when he’d stopped by to tell them. While Raelyn had broken down in tears, her dad had gone to a bottle of whiskey.

Leaving home for college had been one of the happiest days of her life. Now she never wanted to see him again.

Aunt Kendra? She didn’t know if she could see her, get to know her. It was just too painful. Now a woman she only knew through the news had told her Aunt Kendra had hired a detective to look into her mother’s death.

Raelyn did not welcome the ray of hope trying to butt its way past her control. If her mother had been murdered, that would mean she hadn’t intended to abandon her. But what did that really change? Nothing. She’d still lost her mom and that still made her really, really angry.

Chapter 5

“What, exactly, did Kaelyn say to you when she mentioned another lover?” Roman asked Kendra as they headed up to his room at Chesterville’s boutique hotel. She still couldn’t explain to herself why she’d agreed to come here. Maybe distraction over connecting the prosecutor’s son to her sister’s mysterious second lover. Yes, that’d do it. She didn’t want to be curious about what made Roman avoid his parents. He had such an idyllic childhood from all he’d told her. Was he aloof? Kendra had trouble with secretive people. If anyone had reason to keep secrets, that usually meant they were not very genuine.

The plush elevator stopped at the fourth floor and she walked down the hall with him. “She asked me to meet her here, in Chesterville, on one of her many trips to see her adoptive mother.” This town seemed more home to Kaelyn than with her husband, which was probably why Raelyn moved here after her death. Her sister had a much different experience with her family than Kendra had. “I thought it was odd she wanted to meet here. She explained she’d have more time to spend with me in Chesterville. We spent five days here. First we met for lunch, then went shopping, and then I met her mother and father. I stayed there the last three nights and it was like being kids again.” She smiled as she felt the same joy she had felt back then.

As Roman opened his hotel room, Kendra recalled playing dolls with her twin. Kaelyn had always been the doer, the one to start things going and to lead the way. Kendra had been more leisurely. She took more time before delving into projects. Not Kaelyn. She dived right in.

“You do have a strong connection to her,” Roman said as Kendra passed him on her way into his room. “Even separated all those years, you were still close.”

Kendra took in the gray-and-blue decorated living room and small kitchenette. “Yes.” She wouldn’t try to explain what it was like between her and Kaelyn. Being born at the same time as a sister, growing up with them—even if for a short time offered the ingredients for closeness, but there was more of a connection, an inexplicable one. Had she and Kaelyn bonded in the womb? Had they bonded as babies and toddlers? Who knew?

She put her purse on one of the two chairs in the kitchenette. Through a door she could see a king bed and a bathroom. She faced Roman, who’d gone into the kitchenette to find some glasses.

“When I first met her,” Kendra went on, “one of the things I noticed was her somberness. Kaelyn was not a quiet girl. Everyone grows up but it just seemed a light had been doused in her. She seemed...sad.” She hated that memory and threw it off her conscience, watching Roman pour two glasses of red wine. “The last couple of days, she started to perk up and I started to see the old Kaelyn. She laughed loud and talked excitedly about the two of us living in the same town, having families and always being together.”

He left the kitchenette and handed her a glass. “Did you ask her about her life in Toledo?”

She met his glowing wolf eyes, momentarily lulled by the ruggedness of his facial features. “Yes. I asked about her husband. What he did. How they met. She answered almost mechanically. She smiled but her eyes didn’t sparkle. Then she made a comment that he was a little insecure and he had to approve her friends at home. She said she came to Chesterville a lot because she could be herself here.”

“That must have raised some red flags for you.”

She nodded, not liking that memory, either. Turning, she walked to the window with a view of a strip mall. There was a nice restaurant there and people had gathered on a latticed patio full of trees and flowers. Early summer in West Virginia. The humidity was most bearable at night. She sipped some wine, hearing Roman sit on the gray sofa. She liked how he didn’t invade her space.

“I finally came right out and said to her, You aren’t happy with your husband, are you?” Kendra faced Roman, not feeling like sitting. “I watched her close her eyes, and then open them with such anguish and despair. She wasn’t happy. That’s when she told me about Jasper. The transformation in her was amazing. She said that even though she didn’t think he was the right man for her, he gave her an idea of the kind of man who was. She loved him for that, for giving her that insight. She told him she wanted to leave her husband. When I asked her why she hadn’t already, she wouldn’t answer. She kept changing the subject.”

“When did she tell you about Bear?” Roman asked, putting his glass of wine onto the coffee table.

Although all of the furniture in the hotel room were probably constructed of inexpensive materials, they made the room look expensive with artful, coordinated colors and textures. Kendra had always been the artsy one compared to Kaelyn.

“Shortly before she died, when I pressed her once more about her husband. I suspected he might be mistreating her. After telling me not to worry, that she planned to move back to Chesterville and I should plan to do the same, she said she thought she already met the man for her, one like Jasper. When I asked her who he was, she got this dreamy look and said, Bear. Then she seemed to realize what she’d said and wouldn’t tell me more.” Kendra had thought Bear a strange name and asked if that was a nickname. Kaelyn had only said yes. “All she said was that she had to be careful and he had to be kept a secret for now.”