Jo looked thoughtful. “But we never did find out what that key locks.”
They’d found a key taped under Tyler’s desk after his death. They’d suspected Tyler had been up to something, though they thought he was conducting some sort of investigation on his own, never realizing that the investigation included spying on them for his father. They’d looked at all the safety deposit boxes and gym lockers in the area to see if the key fit but never found a match. Back then, they were hoping to get evidence on Thorne. Now, they needed to find what the key unlocked for another reason: whatever it was might contain evidence on them.
But what evidence? They hadn’t really done anything wrong. Cut a few corners here and there. Sam didn’t trust Thorne, though. For all he knew, Thorne had Tyler set things up so it looked as if they’d been doing something wrong.
“Yeah. We need to keep looking even more now. I always thought it was odd that Tyler wouldn’t have included us in any off-the-book investigating he was doing. Now we know why.”
“There’s another wrinkle that we need to watch out for,” Jo said. “Mick was at the crime scene that night. What if someone saw him leaving?”
“I thought about that. Let’s hope no one saw him. If it comes up, we’ll have to handle it.”
Mick Gervasi was Sam’s best friend, his buddy since grade school, and a private investigator that he often hired to look into things when Sam couldn’t do it officially. They’d had Mick investigating Tyler when they’d been told it was a conflict for them to investigate. He’d made little headway other than to discover that the car that had been left at the crime scene had been stolen. Mick suspected the grandson of the car’s owner had something to do with that theft.
Sam drained his beer. “You want another?”
Jo held hers up to the light, barely a half inch of liquid swirling in the bottom of the bottle. “Why not? It’s not like I’ll get pulled over on the way home.”
Sam got up to grab the beer from the refrigerator. Jo walked around the cabin, stopping in front of a birch-framed photo of Sam’s twin daughters, Hayley and Marla. Sam remembered taking that photo on a ski trip a few years ago.
“How are the girls?”
Sam’s heart swelled with thoughts of his daughters. They were the only good things that had come of his first marriage. They were both in college, pursuing careers in Massachusetts. Sam missed them. He wanted them to come back to White Rock, but they claimed there were no opportunities up here near the Canadian border for ambitious young women.
Still, he harbored a glimmer of hope that someday, when they were older, they’d realize nothing compared to the beauty of the mountains and the laid-back lifestyle. If Thorne didn’t ruin it before then.
“They’re doing pretty well.” Sam popped the tops off both beers and handed one to Jo. “Marla is doing an internship at Woods Hole, and Hayley is taking some summer classes to try to speed up that pharmacology degree.”
“Nice girls,” Jo said. When Jo had first come on board, the girls had been in high school. Sam was under no illusions that his girls were angels. He knew they got into the same sort of trouble he had as a teen. Nothing big. Drinking. Boys. He also knew that Jo had cut them some slack on a few occasions, even though she and the twins thought they were keeping it from him.
Jo sipped her beer and looked at him hesitantly. Sam wondered why. She could tell him anything. “Something on your mind?”
“The knife. We never found it.”
Sam sighed. The knife had been on his mind too. It all went back to Sam’s cousin, Gracie. She’d been raped in Boston decades ago. Sam and Mick had been young then, Sam just starting out in law enforcement. The rapists were from wealthy families, and not all of them got the punishment they deserved. Sam and Mick had taken matters into their own hands to try to force the truth to come out so there could be justice for Gracie. Things hadn’t worked out exactly as they’d planned.
Somehow, Dupont knew something about what had happened back then. He hadn’t been involved in the rape, but he must have known the players. And Dupont had never been one to pass up an opportunity to get something to hold over someone else’s head. He’d come into possession of Mick’s pocketknife, which had been left in a place it shouldn’t have. He’d passed it along to Thorne. And now Thorne was using it to threaten Sam. If that knife made its way to the police, things might not look too good for Mick.
Sam and Mick had shared some of this with Jo the night they’d found Dupont. In a way, it had felt good telling her. Keeping the secret had weighed heavily on Sam, as if it were something between them. But now it burdened Jo just as much. He almost wished he’d never told her.
“Let’s not worry about that now. That problem will be solved once we prove that Thorne is behind this murder and we put him away.”
“I guess you’re right.” Jo didn’t seem convinced, and Sam had the feeling there was something more she wanted to say. He could see indecision in her face, but then she smiled, and Sam thought maybe he’d imagined it. “Don’t worry. We’ll nail him, and everything will work out, especially now that we have another cop to help out.”
“What do you think of the new guy?” Sam asked. They stood in the kitchen now. Sam glanced out at the backyard and the cedar doghouse he’d built for Lucy a few weeks ago. She never used it because she was always by his side, but he felt better knowing she had shelter if she wanted to go outside. Sam leaned his hip against the counter, and Jo leaned her shoulder against the large cedar log that anchored the built-in bookshelves between the kitchen and the living room.
Her forehead creased slightly. “I’m not sure what to make of him yet. I haven’t worked with him very much. He seems a little cautious.”
Sam nodded. He hadn’t really formed an opinion of Wyatt yet, either, but he sensed there was more to the guy. He had the disconcerting feeling that Wyatt was watching him, as if waiting for something to happen. Maybe he was only trying to figure out where he stood in the department and what Sam was about. It would take a while for him to get a good bead on Wyatt.
“So, what do we do next?” Jo asked.
Sam swigged his beer. “Run it like any other homicide. This one’s actually easier. We already know who’s at the bottom of it. We just need to get the facts to prove it.”
Chapter Six
The stress rolled off of Jo’s shoulders as soon as she pulled up in front of the small cottage in the woods that she called home. She loved the remote location, away from the hustle and bustle—not that White Rock had much hustle or bustle, for that matter. Jo liked the seclusion, liked not being able to see her neighbors, the serenity of being in the woods with nothing but birds and the brook beyond the cottage to interrupt her thoughts.
The sun had set, and she could hear the cicadas buzzing as she headed up the steps of the front porch. Beyond the cottage, the flickering of fireflies at the edge of the dark woods gave the scene a magical feel.
On the porch, she stuck her finger into one of the railing boxes overflowing with bright-red petunias. They were looking a little wilted. Yep, the soil was dry. She’d been putting in so many hours on the Dupont case and the stakeout she’d neglected her flowers. She made a mental note to water them early the next morning.
She glanced down at the empty bowl beside the door. She’d seen an orange cat out back a few times and had been putting food out for him. She didn’t know if he had a home or not, but he looked pretty thin. Maybe eventually she’d make friends with him. Maybe even adopt him. Was she ready for that kind of commitment?