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He focused on Aunt Suke. Her white hair spread out over her shoulders like a wide fan, and her blue eyes flared with the fire of a mother bear protecting her cub. “You shouldn’t be here, Daniel. You can’t make me believe Ray wants you working on this.”
A spear of annoyance shot through Daniel, but she was right. Daniel had spent more than twenty years trying to figure out how Aunt Suke knew everything about everybody in town. Then, about ten years ago, he’d given up and accepted it as a fact of life in Caralinda.
Ray would have a fit if he knew Daniel had stopped at Aunt Suke’s. Ray’s strict instructions to stay away from the case and the scene had sound reasoning behind them. Not only would Daniel have no objectivity about the murder, but his involvement would be a perfect target for a defense attorney. Ray had told him to go home and start making calls to his family.
Except that he couldn’t. He had to do something, and he knew that he could interrogate April with an experience almost everyone on the force except Ray lacked. Only, he hadn’t exactly gotten off to a professional start. He should be asking questions. Instead, he wanted to hold her close and make the pain go away.
Daniel closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to shove down the grief roiling inside. Letting the breath out slowly, he slid his hat off his head and ran one hand through his black hair.
“Sorry, Aunt Suke.” He looked at the woman standing behind her. “My apologies, April. It’s just that…well, Dad, he…” He stopped, trying to gather thoughts scattered to the winds by grief. “I knew you were here and that you saw…”
As his voice trailed off, Aunt Suke softened and reached for his arm. Polly, sensing the change in mood, relaxed and slowly wagged her tail. “Well, you’re here now. Get out of the door and stop letting all my cold air out. Sit down in the front parlor and get yourself together.” With small, affectionate prods, she ushered them all into the only room in a fifty-mile radius that could legitimately be called a “front parlor” and opened thick damask drapes to let in the bright sun.
Obviously a room for entertaining ladies, the elegant, spotless parlor had tall windows, a tasteful selection of Queen Anne furnishings and a soft, Oriental rug over a polished hardwood floor. The graceful, feminine room made Daniel a little nervous, and he immediately checked his shoes to see if he’d tracked anything in.
Aunt Suke caught the move, smiled and patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it, honey. Today is not a day to worry about a little dirt. Sit.”
He did, on a sofa that looked too fragile to hold his weight. But it felt solid beneath him, and he relaxed a little, watching as April perched uneasily on a small chair on the other side of a low coffee table, her tall, slender frame making the slightest of depressions on the cushion. She was avoiding eye contact. Was she embarrassed at the way she’d cried on his shoulder? He hoped not. He was glad that she’d felt she could turn to him for comfort. The only part that bothered him was how she’d pulled away when the tears finally stopped. He wouldn’t have minded holding her a little longer.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to fall apart like that. I’m sure this must be hard enough for you without me making it worse. I’m just…I’m sorry about your dad.” Her tight voice held a slight tremor. “He was a good man. A good friend. I wish I could help you find the man responsible. But I didn’t really see…just the gun…and then I ran and hid in the corn.”
As April’s words faded, Aunt Suke sat next to Daniel and spoke softly to April. “You’ve been shook to the core, and who can blame you? There’s no call to be apologizing for that.”
Daniel looked down at the rug, sorrow and frustration tearing a hole in his entire being over his own loss, and what all of this was doing to April. He knew this was exactly why Ray had told him to go home; he had to get control of his feelings or he wouldn’t be of any use to anyone.
He looked up again, this time meeting the uncertain look in April’s bright green eyes dead-on. “I can help you with that.”
“What?”
“I can help,” he repeated to April. “I know how rough it is to see someone get shot. I know it disrupts everything you thought right and good. That anyone could turn a gun on another person just doesn’t register with most of us, and that’s the way it should be. And I know you’re terrified.”
“Not exactly.”
He stopped, waiting for her to go on, watching as she took a deep breath and sat a bit straighter in the chair.
“I mean, I was with that man shoving his way through the corn, firing shots in the air, threatening me in the cellar—”
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Did he call you by name or were the threats just wild?”
April looked very small and still in her chair. “He called my name. Said he would kill me.” She swallowed hard. “Kill us. Said the cops couldn’t protect us.”
“He’s wrong.” Daniel leaned forward on his seat. “We can help you. I can help you. I know it’s hard right now, with the shock and horror blurring your memories, but if we work together, I think I can help you identify the killer.”
Silence covered the room a moment, then Aunt Suke spoke softly. “You mean this is someone we all know.”
Slowly Daniel nodded. “This wasn’t a robbery or a carjacking. The killer didn’t take anything but my father’s life. This was someone with a personal grudge, not to mention someone who knew Levon well enough to know where to find him. There’s not a doubt in my mind—the killer’s a local.”
April took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve not been here long enough to make many friends. Aside from my sister, I barely know anyone but Levon, and the people he’d introduced me to.”
All her muscles seemed to tighten. “But Levon didn’t have enemies, did he? He was a great man. Everyone loved him. How could anyone want or have a reason to do this?”
Good question. One Daniel had already been turning over in his mind a hundred times. Levon Rivers was not only a good man, he was a beloved man. Daniel had never heard an ill word against his father the entire time he was growing up, and when he’d thrown a sixtieth birthday barbecue for Levon four years ago, the entirety of Caralinda showed up.
Whoever the shooter was, he’d managed to keep his grudge against Levon well-hidden. Would he be as successful at hiding his guilt now that the crime was done? Daniel was afraid so, which made April’s blocked memories even more important.
He had to try a different tactic.
Daniel put his hat on the sofa beside him and leaned farther forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he focused on her eyes. “I know that you took him lemonade every morning he worked in the fields. He told me. He loved that about you, said it made him feel remembered, especially when he was doing something on his own, no hired folks about.”
Her eyes glistened a bit at this, and she nodded.
“So you were on the way this morning, walking through the field.”
She nodded again. “Through the corn.”
“He planted it pretty dense this year.”
Again, she agreed. “A different hybrid he was trying. Harder walking than last year, but he said it would make the harvest easier, with the way the combines worked. But it allowed a lot of weeds to grow up in some places.” She smiled slightly, as if remembering something. “Levon encouraged me to walk around the fields, to use the field road to make it easier, but it was still quicker to go through. I told him that the harder hiking was good for me, that I needed the exercise. He laughed.”
I’m sure he did, thought Daniel. April stood almost as tall as his own six-foot height, and her lean, muscular frame reminded him of an Olympic athlete. She had been softer, less muscular when she’d arrived in Caralinda a year ago, a beautiful, vibrant woman he’d wanted very much to spend more time with.
He’d even asked her out, but she’d told him that her divorce still stung and she couldn’t manage anything but friendship. He’d understood, sort of. He’d been through breakups, but nothing as serious as a divorce.
April had obviously been healed by Caralinda, however. The days in the sun, walking the fields with his father, and the work in her own garden had slimmed her down even more and made her skin glow. Her emerald-green eyes had always been bright against her reddish-brown hair and the freckles that splattered across her face, but now they gleamed as they met his focused gaze without flinching.
She knows what I’m doing, he realized. Good. He cleared his throat.
“Did you hear anything before you stepped out of the corn?”
April thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“What did you see first?”
She closed those emerald eyes, and her brow furrowed. “His back. The shooter’s. Then your dad.”
“Was he taller than Dad?”
April hesitated a moment, trying to remember. “N-no. I could still see the top of your dad’s head.” She held her hands about two feet apart. “But broader. I think.”
“What was the shooter wearing?”
She hesitated. “Jeans. Dirty. Beat-up jeans. A light shirt. White…or pale blue. Maybe.”
“Anything on his head?”
“A ball cap.”
“What color?”
Another pause, then she shook her head.
“What did you see next?”
The furrows deepened. “I saw…” Her eyes, still shut, clenched tighter. “Levon stepped back so I saw his face, then there was the shot….” She stopped, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
April opened her eyes. “I can’t remember anything after that. I just…ran.”
Daniel pressed down hard on the frustration, the grief that threatened to boil over in him once more, and his already taut muscles clenched harder from the effort. She’d been doing so well, was clearly trying so hard. He’d gotten his hopes up that the memories were returning on their own by sheer force of will. But now she looked crushed all over again, even the little bit that she’d remembered hurting her all over again.
Daniel turned to Aunt Suke. “You called 911. You saw it?”
Aunt Suke shook her head. “I heard the first shot. By the time I got to one of the windows, all I could see was Levon on the ground, and two people tearing through the cornfield. When I realized one of them was April, I knew she’d probably seen what went down. I told the operator, then went after her.”
“Could you see the shooter?”
Aunt Suke wagged a hand toward the cornfield. “Nothing. By the time I got to the window, he was crashing around in the corn. All I could see was the barrel of the shotgun as he used it to push back the stalks.”
“Did either of you see a vehicle on either of the side roads? A car or a—”
The gongs of Aunt Suke’s doorbell, followed by a determined pounding on the door, interrupted him. Polly bolted for the door with a series of sharp barks.
“That’s probably Ray,” Aunt Suke said softly.
Daniel stood, nodding almost to himself. “I’ll get it. Take whatever he has to say.” He hoped Ray would understand why he had to do this.
The pounding sounded again, and Polly’s barks increased in volume. Daniel headed for the door, hat in hand. He herded Polly aside and pulled open the ancient door, faced Ray and waited.
Ray Taylor stared at him, his jaw clamped so tight that the muscles in his cheeks twitched. He stared at Daniel a moment, glanced briefly at Aunt Suke and then looked at April, who had taken up a position just to Daniel’s right. After a moment, Ray let out a long exhale, as much a snarl as a sigh, and looked back to Daniel. “Boy, if you don’t beat all. I will deal with you later.”
Ray’s gaze turned again to April. “Right now, Ms. Presley, you need to come with us.”
Alarm surged through Daniel at the sheriff’s statement. “What’s happened?”
Ray glared at him. “You need to go home.”
April stepped forward and placed a firm hand on Daniel’s arm. Whether she needed support or offered it, he wasn’t quite sure. “Please, Sheriff. What’s happened?”
Ray hesitated, obviously still perturbed with his disobedient deputy. He looked from her, to Daniel, then back, as if he’d made up his mind about something. “I sent an officer to secure your house, Ms. Presley. He just radioed to say there are signs that someone has broken in.”
April’s fingers closed viselike on Daniel’s arm, and he felt her body sway toward him, once again needing the support he was more than happy to give.
FOUR
“I want him to come. Please.” April hated the pleading sound in her voice, but she had to make the sheriff understand.
They stood in Aunt Suke’s driveway, Ray Taylor’s hand still on the top of his cruiser’s door, which he had opened for April. He had just ordered Daniel to go home. Again.
Ray growled under his breath. “Ms. Presley—” He stopped and took a deep breath as if to calm himself. “April. Listen, it’s bad policy to have family involved in these things, even if he’s a trained officer of the law. Bad for the case and good for any defense attorney.”
April glanced quickly at Daniel, who waited silently, his body tense but still, his ebony eyes focused on her. April knew he had to be a little wary of what she would say. Which was understandable, since she’d held him at bay since her arrival in Caralinda. But he’d asked her out so soon after her divorce that she’d had no choice but to turn him down. At that point she would have been skittish around almost any man.
They had not been around each other much since, even though Levon had clearly been on a campaign to get them together. He’d frequently given her updates about events in Daniel’s life, and suggested that Daniel would make an excellent husband. At first Levon’s matchmaking had been awkward, but after a bit, April had found it almost charming that he cared so deeply for his only son.
Daniel was a good man, and it had felt beautifully natural to lean on him, to cry on his shoulders. But she didn’t want to appear false or cloying at a time like this. April took a deep breath, searching for the words that would tell Ray how much she needed Daniel to be involved without sounding disingenuous. After all, Daniel wasn’t just a deputy sheriff in those moments; he also was a man devastated by his father’s murder, the son of the only real friend she’d made in Caralinda over the past year. And right now they both needed a friend.
“I understand that, Sheriff, but your deputy is also my friend. And right now I could use one with me.”
Daniel’s left eyebrow twitched, but he otherwise showed no reaction.
Ray Taylor snarled and turned his back as he returned to the driver’s side of the cruiser. “All right, get in, the both of you. You in front, April.”
Daniel held the door for her, then shut it as she buckled the seat belt. He got in behind her, and Ray turned the car out of Aunt Suke’s driveway and headed toward April’s house.
“What did Gage find?” Daniel asked.
Ray glanced in the rearview mirror. “When he found the front door open, he called for backup, and I sent two more officers over. The suspect has apparently been in the house, but it’s clear now.”
April clutched her hands together in her lap, suddenly aware of how cold they were. “Did he say how bad it was?”
Ray hesitated, then shook his head once.
He knows. It must be awful. April straightened in the seat, trying to steel herself to see what had happened to her beloved cottage. They drove the rest of the short distance in silence, and as the cruiser bumped and rolled slowly up April’s rough gravel driveway, she tried not to hyperventilate. She focused on Jeff Gage, noticing that he seemed anxious. She exhaled slowly, making herself sit still a moment. This, after all, was not her first break-in. Her parents’ house had been burglarized when she was a teenager, and her first home had been broken into not long after her wedding. In both cases, the thefts had been quick and dirty, removing electronics, guns and, in the second robbery, all her wedding gifts. You’ve been through this before. You know what it’s like. You’ll get through it again. Stay calm.
Ray parked the car, and they got out, walking slowly toward the steps leading up to the porch. April stood at the foot of them, staring at the open door of her home, an odd hollow feeling growing in her chest. Her breaths came faster, and a slight dizziness settled over her.
Daniel stepped closer to her back, his warm presence reassuring her, as if she could lean back against him and never fall. “Are you okay?”
“Not yet,” she whispered, and she knew they all watched her, waiting for her to react to the violation of her home.
Levon Rivers had built the small Cape Cod-style cottage for his mother’s sister, carving the plot from one corner of his expansive fields. When his aunt died, he’d rented it to a niece, who eventually decided to return to college. At that point, Levon had put the charming cottage on the market.
April, desperate to get out of Nashville and away from her hostile in-laws and bitter ex-husband, fell in love with it instantly and made an offer the first time she saw it. In the year since then, she’d polished the hardwood floors and painted everything in her beloved earth tones. She’d even picked out a new door made from heavy oak and featuring three long panes of beveled glass. All of her work had made it truly hers, secluded and cozy and loved.
Now someone had smashed open the door, shattering the glass and splintering the door frame.
Ray Taylor touched her arm. “I just want you to look around inside the door. Gage has already been in, so he’s the only one I want moving around in the house. We will dust for prints later, so try not to touch anything. We need to know if you can tell if anything is missing.”
April nodded, took a deep breath and climbed the steps. Stepping over the threshold, she braced herself for what she would see.
As she moved past the splintered front door, however, April saw that this was not just a burglary—this was a personal, vicious attack. As she scanned the room, her knees weakened, and she swayed, suddenly grateful for the firm strength of Daniel, who still stood close behind her.
His hand closed on her arm, steadying her. “You okay?” he asked again.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“You don’t have to do this now.”
She wrapped her fingers around his hand. “Yes, I do.” The house held an echoing stillness that made her own home feel unfamiliar, as if she’d walked into the abode of a stranger. Forgetting Ray’s instructions, she moved forward, her toes crunching down on a shattered cup.
