Allie Graham is back, and the bullets are about to start flying again.
Sheriff Cord Aubutten's wife is found dead, an apparent suicide, but the Sheriff's son is convinced that the Sheriff killed her and staged it to look like she killed herself. Allie is roped into helping find out the truth by her best friend, Sheryl Levine, a Sheriff's deputy. Sheryl is certain the Sheriff is innocent. Allie isn’t quite as convinced, but she’s willing to keep an open mind as she searches for the truth. Then she realizes she’s being followed. When stalking becomes shooting, Allie has to wonder who has the most to lose if the truth comes out.
Prologue
Butch and Jose hunkered over the pile of twigs at the curb, while Kyle kept look out. The boys were seven years old, classmates, neighbors, and partners in crime. Jose and Kyle were dark headed, their skin tanned to a golden copper by the Florida summer sun. Butch, with his sweaty mop of blonde hair and liberal sprinkling of freckles, was the unofficial leader of the pack. The asphalt street was hot enough to fry eggs, but the boys didn’t notice the heat.
Butch pulled the box of matches out of the pocket of his shorts. His serious expression turned into one of smug satisfaction when the other boys gasped.
“Where’d you get em?” Jose asked, impressed.
“My mom.” Butch opened the box and extracted a single wooden match.
Kyle forgot his role as lookout, squatting down beside the others. “Won’t she miss ‘em?”
“Nah. She has a drawer full of ‘em in the kitchen. She gets them everywhere she goes.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?” Jose asked, his eyes riveted on the match in Butch’s hand as if it might self-combust at any second.
“Nah. She lets me do what I want.”
That ushered in a moment of respectful silence from the others.
Butch waited until they were twitching with impatience. Then he held the match and box out in front of him, his brow wrinkled in concentration. The first time he struck the match against the side of the box, nothing happened. His tongue came out of his mouth and looped over his upper lip as he focused on the task at hand. Another strike, and the match flared brightly. Butch jumped back, and it fell from his hand, extinguishing on the pavement.
Cheeks crimson with embarrassment, he extracted another match. “That one was too hot,” he told the others. As his hand neared the striking surface, Jose gasped.
Butch’s head swiveled in the direction Jose was looking, and he saw a man moving along the strip of grass near the canal that ran behind the houses. The boys were poised for flight, but the man gave them no more than a cursory glance before he moved on.
Butch blew out a breath of relief. As leader, it was his responsibility to see they didn’t get busted. He waited another minute to make sure the coast was clear. Just as he lifted the match to the box, a car rounded the corner.
This time he didn’t wait to see what was going to happen. He knew that car. “Run,” he shouted at the others, scrambling to his feet. No time to grab the wood. He raced between two houses and slid down the shallow grass embankment on the near side of the canal. He looked around, but the others were nowhere to be seen. After a minute, curiosity overrode caution, and he inched back up the rise.
The Sheriff stopped and got out of his car. He walked over to the pile of kindling and stood staring down at it for a long moment. Butch was too far away to make out the look on his face, but he was pretty sure it would be a mean one. They’d lived next door to the Sheriff for a long time. He always looked mean when Butch was bad.
As Butch peered over the grassy rise, the Sheriff leaned over and picked something up. Shaking his head, he stuck it in his shirt pocked and gathered up the little pile wood. A minute later, he climbed back in his car and idled down to his own driveway. Butch heard the Sheriff’s garage door slide open, then the grinding noise of it closing.
Butch scrubbed his eyes with his clenched fists. He was cooked. The Sheriff would tell his mother. He knew he would. Not only that, but now the Sheriff had Butch’s fingerprints. They’d probably arrest him and put him in jail. He’d never see his mom again, or his sister, Missy. Tears pricked his eyes, but he didn’t give in. He was the man of the house now―that’s what his mom told him when his dad left―and men didn’t cry. Not real men.
He got to his feet, knowing he had to go and face his crime. As he trudged behind the houses toward his own yard, he saw the man who’d walked past right before the Sheriff came. He was slipping around the corner real sneaky like. Maybe he was a burglar. If Butch could stop him, maybe the Sheriff would forget all about the matches.
By the time Butch got to the corner of the Sheriff’s house, the man was disappearing from view. Butch looked around for a weapon. Nothing. He raced into his garage and grabbed a shovel, holding it like a baseball bat. Then there was a loud explosion. People started yelling, and Butch’s mother raced out of the house. She grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar.
“Get inside, Butch! Run inside and lock the door. Hurry!”
Butch dropped the shovel, staring at her open-mouthed. She snatched him up and ran, holding him under her arm like a football. She tossed him on the couch and ran around, checking to see if the doors and windows were locked. After a few minutes, Butch heard a siren screaming in the distance. Then another.
Excerpt
Allie Grainger glanced up at her Jeep’s console as she signaled a turn off Highway A1A. Five o’clock in the afternoon, and the thermometer still registered ninety-seven degrees. She took a right on Madison. The neighborhood looked desolate, with yards seared by the summer sun, and even the hardiest Florida vegetation sagging lifelessly from the month-long drought. People hid indoors, their faces lifted reverently to air conditioning vents. Once she got home, the breeze off the ocean might make it feel cooler. If there was a breeze.
As she turned left on Ridgewood, she saw her friend Sheryl Levine stretched out on a lawn chair in the middle of her front yard. Was she crazy? Even the birds had the good sense to get in out of this heat. She tapped her horn in greeting as she passed. Without raising her head, Sheryl lazily lifted one hand, her middle finger extended skyward.
Allie laughed and pulled into her driveway. The sight of her little beach house filled her with a mixture of joy and sorrow. It and a pile of money were legacies from her Aunt Lou, dead at fifty-eight of Hodgkin’s disease. Allie would gladly have given it all up for just one more week with her aunt. A day.
She grabbed the grocery bags off the passenger seat. Slinging her handbag on her shoulder, she closed the car door with her hip and headed up the front walk. Here she could smell the salt air, the fish and seaweed, especially since there was no breeze to blow it away. A lot of people considered it a stench. To Allie it smelled like home.
She kicked off her heels just inside the door and made her way to the kitchen, dropping the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and heading to the bedroom, where she changed into shorts and an oversized t-shirt and let out a sigh of relief. Much better. Padding barefoot back into the kitchen, she began putting away her groceries. She had bought double everything, knowing her friend Sheryl would share most of her meals. Sheryl didn’t cook. Nor did she clean house, other than the bare basics, or sew or grow plants. What Sheryl did was enforce the law. Funny how many of Allie’s friends were in law enforcement now. All except Joe. The thought brought with it a sharp pang of sorrow. Joe was dead, and in a way, it was Allie’s fault. She swallowed hard as she put the milk in the refrigerator.
“It wasn’t your fault,” said her aunt’s voice in her head.
Allie ignored her. They had these talks from time to time, but Allie was still furious at her for not telling her Joe was going to die. Maybe she could have prevented it. Somehow. If only she’d known…
“Stop that this minute, Allison Grainger. Joe was a grown man. He made his choices, just as you made yours. His were the wrong ones.”
“That’s cold.”
“It’s not cold. It’s realistic. You can’t save the whole world, Allie. You have enough to do just saving yourself.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Less than six months ago, a madman had held her at gunpoint in her living room. She had lived—and Joe had died.
She was pulling out a pot to make iced tea when her front door slammed open. Allie flattened herself against the kitchen cabinets as visions of madmen with guns filled her head.
“Oh shit! Damn!” came the voice from the living room.
She breathed out a sigh of relief and shook her head. “Hello, Sheryl. I didn’t hear you knock.”
Sheryl rounded the doorway into the kitchen. “Why the hell did you leave your shoes in the middle of the floor?”
“Because it’s my floor?” Allie said with a glance over her shoulder. She filled the pot halfway with water from a jug on the counter. The Cape Canaveral tap water was vile, reeking of sulfur with undertones of who knew what. It was suitable only for—well, nothing.
Sheryl snorted. “You ought to put them away. Someone could get killed. And I did knock. Sort of. Or I would have if your door had been locked.”
It was an old battle. “A little hard with my hands full. So, what’s up?”
Sheryl was still standing in the kitchen doorway dressed in a tiny bikini and nothing else. Somehow, even with her hair piled carelessly on top her head and sweat dripping down the sides of her face, she looked good. She had a body that made grown men stammer, even when it was clothed, the face of an angel, and the mouth of—well, a cop. Sort of Barbie meets Rambo. “You aren’t going to believe what happened.”
“Try me.”
“The Sheriff’s wife blew her brains out.”
Allie froze with the pot halfway to the burner as the words echoed through her head. “That’s not funny.”
“I didn’t say it was funny. Happened about three this afternoon.”
Allie put the pot on the stove and leaned weakly against the counter. “How did you hear about it?”
“I heard it come over the radio.”
Allie looked at Sheryl’s bikini. “Where did you have the radio?”
Sheryl made a rude sound. “On the chair beside me. Jeez, you want to hear this or not?”
Allie led the way into what served as the dining room, a little nook off the kitchen big enough for a small table and two chairs. Sheryl plopped in her usual chair.
“Tell me,” Allie said, sinking down across from her.
“Call came out for the wagon. I called Sidney. Figured he’d know what was happening if anyone would, the way he always has his nose up the Sheriff’s butt.”
Sidney Finch was an old playmate of theirs from childhood. Allie hadn’t seen him since her return, but she knew he was another of their crowd who’d gone to work for the Sheriff’s Department. In their younger days, Allie would have guessed Sidney would land in jail before he reached the age of majority. He had a mother who was convinced her son could do no wrong and a father who seemed willing to go along with that fiction as long as he didn’t have to put down the remote and get out of his recliner, but Sheryl said the Sheriff had taken an interest in Sidney and had turned him around. The “interest” had involved a week-long camping trip in the Everglades without benefit of any of those little niceties that might have made the trip easier—like food and water. They had the clothes on their backs and a knife each. Rumor had it that Sidney came back a changed boy with a serious case of hero worship for the Sheriff. As some kind of badge of honor, the Sheriff had given Sidney a silver ID bracelet, which Sidney still wore. All Allie’s information was second hand and furnished with a snigger by Sheryl.
“Sidney said the call came in right after four o’clock,” Sheryl was saying. “The Sheriff had just gotten home from the firing range. Heard a gunshot as he got out of the car. Found his wife on the floor.”
“How do they know she shot herself?”
Sheryl stared at her. "Beats me. That's what Sidney said. He said there was no one else in the house.”
“My God,” Allie said, closing her eyes.
“That’s not the best of it,” Sheryl said.
Allie’s eyes flew open. “There is no best of it,” she said.
“Okay. Juicy, then. God, you’re prickly. Must be the heat.”
Allie regarded her levelly. She could tell Sheryl was trying to resist telling her the rest, but it was beyond her capabilities.
“Seems the son ran in the door just seconds after the shot was fired and started yelling his head off that the Sheriff had killed her. Attacked him. Got in a couple of good punches before the Sheriff could restrain him.”
Allie’s mind was humming. She hadn’t even known Cord Arbutten had a son. “Maybe he meant the Sheriff drove her to it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think so. I think he meant he killed her killed her.”
Allie chewed her lip. “What about the son? Could he have killed her?”
Sheryl sat back. “Wow. I don’t know. I don’t think they’re even looking at him. Maybe the Sheriff said no. Personally, I think the Sheriff should have pointed his finger at the kid. Even if it didn’t pan out, it could cause him some serious grief.”
Allie tuned her out. That’s how it was. If the Sheriff said it, it was so. Her aunt had felt the same way. Now his wife was dead. And what about this mystery son? How old was this kid? Did he live with the Sheriff? She couldn’t remember her aunt mentioning anything about a child. The Sheriff was—what—in his late fifties? That would make his kid twenty or thirty something. Her age. Unless he was a change of life baby. Then he’d be young. Old enough to fire a gun? Could the Sheriff be protecting him? It wouldn’t be the first time Allie had suspected Cord Arbutten of covering up a murder.
Sheryl jumped up from the chair. “I’m going over there. Thought you might want to ride along.”
Allie looked at her in surprise. “Me? Why me?”
“You’re a reporter, aren’t you? This is news. Probably the biggest news in this county in years.” She stopped, remembering big news not too many months ago. When she continued, her voice was more sober. “Anyhow, you want to come?”
Allie actually considered it for a moment. She might get answers to some of her questions. Even more than that, this was news, and she was a reporter. On the other hand, she’d only been with the Brevard Sun for a few weeks and had spent almost no time in the field. The paper would have dispatched someone over there by now. And it meant going to a crime scene. She’d seen enough violence six months ago to last her a lifetime. She shook her head. “No. You go.”
Sheryl hesitated, and then gave a nod. “Okay. I’ll let you know what I find out.” She glanced into the kitchen at a grocery bag on the counter where the corner of a meat package was sticking out. “Steaks?”
It took Allie a minute to follow her train of thought. She looked over. “Yes.”
“For us?”
Allie nodded.
“Shit.” Sheryl started from the room. “Don’t hold dinner for me. I don’t know when I’m going to get back.”
“Yes, dear,” Allie said with a wry smile.
Sheryl stopped and stared at Allie. "You look beat. Hard day at the office?"
Allie blew her bangs out of her eyes. "Hard week at the office, and it's only Tuesday."
When Sheryl was gone, Allie glanced in the mirror. Sheryl was right. She looked beat. Of course, even at her best, she couldn't compete with Sheryl looks-wise. She was attractive enough. She'd finally come to believe that despite her ex-husband's best efforts to convince her otherwise. During their years of marriage, Allie had tried hard to please Garrison. She starved herself because he made remarks about her being fat. She lightened her already blonde hair when he said it lacked luster. She even briefly considered the colored contacts he suggested to make her eyes look greener. None of it seemed to matter. She never measured up. Now she couldn’t look in a mirror without finding fault. She was too thin, or too this or too that. Oh, yes. Garrison had a lot to answer for, and she had the perfect blackmail material if she ever decided to use it. The thought made her smile. Then the smile faltered and died.
Flipping the deadbolt on the front door, she went back into the kitchen. The steaks went in the refrigerator and she dumped the water out of the pot, opting instead for a diet soda. Then she scooped up Spook and let herself out the back door, climbing the wrought iron stairs to the rooftop deck.
Her aunt had installed the deck when Allie was just a kid, saying if she was going to have ocean-front property, she was “by God going to be able to see the ocean.” From the ground level, the dunes and sea grasses blocked the view of the water except way out toward the horizon, but it was the breakers that soothed, Lou had said. If she’d wanted to see a strip of blue, she could have painted it on her window glass and saved herself a lot of money, which Allie now realized was a joke. Louise Smith had inherited money from her grandparents, Allie’s great-grandparents, and even more from her parents, as had Allie’s own father. Lou had apparently invested it well, living off the meager salary from her twenty-plus-year job as dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Department. No one except Lou herself—and presumably her accountant—had known about her investments. As they grew, she could easily have afforded a mansion down in Vero or Palm Beach, but she had stayed here in this house in Cape Canaveral. Not because she was cheap, but because she loved her tiny house and her life. So did Allie.
She smiled and picked up the sunglasses her aunt had left sitting on the table by her usual chair almost a year ago, putting them on. They immediately slid down on her nose. Allie pushed them up on her head. She should have thrown them away long ago, but she couldn’t bear to do it. They made her feel like her aunt had just run downstairs for a minute and would be right back.
“Throw the old things away.”
Allie ignored the voice in her head. Imagination, she had believed at the beginning. Now she knew better.
“They’re just sunglasses, Allie.”
“No, they’re not. They’re your sunglasses.”
“Oh, honey.”
The hollow ache grew inside her. Louise Smith had been more than an aunt. She’d been Allie’s best friend, her hero, her mother of choice, although she would never tell her real mother that. Not that Allie believed Vivian Grainger would care, but it wasn’t in Allie’s nature to be unkind. Her parents had never liked her aunt, mainly because Lou went her own way without permission or apology. They had shipped Allie off to stay with her in Florida every summer because it was convenient for them. Allie couldn’t remember any of them ever saying one kind thing about her. It hadn’t bothered Lou, but even as a child, Allie had felt the slight.
Louise Smith had been an amazing woman, taking what life tossed at her with a philosophical shrug and a laugh. She had been loving and fun and giving.
And she had been Sheriff Cord Arbutten’s lover.
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