All the Way Home (19 page)

“Am I late? Have you been here long?” he asks, checking his watch.

“No, I just got here a few minutes ago. And you’re not late.”

“Good. I thought I was early.”

Actually, he is. She had intentionally arrived before Barrett, needing to be used to the territory and settled in before he showed up and churned up all her emotions with his probe into her sister’s disappearance.

Not that she plans to tell him anything about that.

“Did you already order?”

Rory nods.

“But I wanted to treat you.”

“It’s no big deal.” Besides, she thinks, if she pays her own way, this isn’t a date.

Not that he ever called it one. They’re simply meeting so that she can ostensibly help him with his research for his book. The fact that she’s attracted to him doesn’t automatically transform it into a date.

“Grande skim iced cappuccino, no cinnamon?”

“Right here,” Rory tells the
barista,
grabbing the tall cup from her outstretched hand.

“I take it you’re a woman who knows exactly what she wants, and likes things a certain way,” Barrett comments
.

“Why is that?” She knows what he’s getting at, and she doesn’t intend to flirt with him
.
This isn’t a date
.

“Your drink sounds pretty complicated
.
”

She shrugs, telling herself it’s corny of him to use her beverage order to interpret her personality. “Aren’t you going to order?”

“Sure.” He turns to the girl waiting behind the register. “I’ll have a coffee.”

“What kind?”

“Just plain old coffee.”

“Iced?”

“Nope.”

“What size?”

“Regular
.
”

“You mean tall?”

“Whatever
.
” He grins and turns to Rory, saying in a low voice, “I think she’s thrown by that. Maybe I should have made it a skim decaf with extra cinnamon
.
”

She can’t help smiling
.
He’s so laid-back, it’s hard not to let go of some of her tension around him
.
Still, she can’t help wondering if his relaxed demeanor is just an act—if he’s acting so easygoing in an attempt to get her to put her guard down, so she’ll spill some family dirt he can use for his book
.

“I thought you were going to have an espresso,” she tells him while they wait
.

“Why is that?”

“When you asked if I wanted to meet you here, that’s what you said
.
”

“That’s because I figured you for an espresso-type woman and I wanted to lure you here. Me, I happen to be a plain old coffee kind of guy.”

She bristles at his blatant use of the word “lure,” though he used it in a teasing tone. She isn’t the kind of woman who allows herself to be
lured
by anyone, particularly a nosy true-crime writer.

The tables are all filled when they turn to find a place to sit. The only available spot appears to be an overstuffed maroon velvet couch in a nook by the plate-glass window overlooking the street. It’s too intimate as far as Rory is concerned, but what can she do except follow Barrett over and sit beside him?

“So what have you been doing with yourself since you got to town?” Barrett asks after dumping three packages of sugar into his cup and stirring it. “Besides painting the kitchen, I mean.”

“Not a whole lot. Mostly just catching up on family stuff.”

Where did that come from?
she wonders. It sounds so
normal
. . . and what she’s been going through with her family is anything but.

“Your mother must be glad to have you home.”

“Mmm,” Rory says noncommittally, wondering how much he knows about her mother.

“What about your sister? Molly, isn’t it?”

“Right.” She volunteers nothing more.

“How old is she?”

“Thirteen.”

Under any other circumstances, she’d find his questions harmless. They could be likened to the usual first-date chitchat, getting to know someone. But Rory can’t help but balk when it’s this particular man asking these particular questions.

“Look,” she says directly, “I shouldn’t have come here tonight.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Because I’m just not comfortable with some . . . stranger prying into my family. We’ve been through enough already. All we want is to be left alone.” She plunks her untouched foamy drink onto the low, magazine-covered coffee table in front of them and starts to rise.

“Wait, Rory, please. We don’t have to talk about what happened to Carleen if you don’t want to.”

She stops, surprised. “We don’t?”

“Not if it bothers you.”

“But . . . I thought that’s why we were here.”

“It was supposed to be. But after a week with no one to keep me company but Mrs. Shilling, I’m glad just to be here with someone like you.”

“I know what you mean,” she hears herself say.

“Family stuff getting to you?”

“Not really.” She knows she shouldn’t tell him anything.
Anything.
She should stand up and walk out, as she’d been about to do.

Instead, she finds herself saying, “It’s only been a week since I’ve been here, too, but I really miss . . . doing things. Talking to people who aren’t . . . related to me.”

There, that’s harmless enough,
she tells herself, realizing she’s been clenching her jaw, and letting it relax.
You can chat a little with him, and it doesn’t have to be disastrous. Just because you blurted the truth to Molly last night doesn’t mean you’re going to get yourself into trouble talking to this man for a short while.

“Where do you live . . . when you’re not here, I mean?” Barrett asks
.

“Miami
.
I mean, that’s where all my stuff is
.
”

“But it isn’t home?”

“Nah
.
Too hot and humid
.
”

“Just like here,” he says, with a nod at the sunny sidewalk beyond the comfortable air-conditioned climate of the cafe.

“Yeah, but this weather is unusual for Lake Charlotte
.
In Miami it’s steamy all the time.”

“So you’re planning to move back up North?”

“Maybe,” she surprises herself by saying
.
Until this moment, she didn’t realize she’d ever consider it, but now that she’s said it, she realizes she kind of likes the idea
.

“Where? Here?”

“No,” she says quickly. “Not here.”

“Too small-town?”

“I don’t mind small towns. I grew up here, remember? And I like small towns.” That, too, is news to her. But as she hears herself talking, she realizes that there’s something to it. She just never stopped to think about it before
.
About finding a place to belong. “I like the laid-back people in small towns,” she muses. “I like the slow pace.”

“So do I.”

She glances at him. “You do? Then why do you live in New York City?”

“I’m a writer,” he says, as though that explains everything
.

“And . . . ?” Rory prods. “I mean, you can write anywhere
.
”

“Nah. Writers belong in New York. That’s what I always thought, anyway
.
I figured, if I wanted to make it big in this business, I should move to the place that’s the center of the publishing industry. I came to the city ten years ago this fall, when I graduated from college—”

“Where’d you go?”

“Bennington. You?”

“Berkeley.”

“Actually, I already knew that,” Barrett tells her. “Mrs. Shilling mentioned it. She said you’re an artist.”

“I wanted to be. But it’s not like I’m doing masterpieces or having gallery showings or anything like that. When it comes to a career, I’m still trying to get my act together, I guess.”

Let’s face it. I have no ambition. I’ve spent my whole life doing my best not to settle down.

“So am I.”

“You? Trying to get your act together? But you write books.”

“I’ve published exactly two. This will be my third.”

“What were the others about?”

“Remember that prostitute in Philadelphia who was killing johns and stuffing their bodies into Dumpsters a few summers ago?”

Rory nods. That case was all over the papers. “The Spanish Rose?”

“That was her street name. She was the subject of my first book,
Deadly Spanish Rose
. I know, I know—cheesy title
.
”

She laughs
.
“I didn’t say that. How did you happen to write about her?”

“I don’t know . . . it hit the papers right around the time I got interested in doing a true-crime novel. Plus, my college roommate happens to live in Philly, so I had a free place to stay while I was doing research.”

That makes sense, Rory thinks. Everyone knows writers are always broke. Although now that Barrett Maitland has had some success, he clearly isn’t having money problems. That shirt he has on looks pretty basic, but she knows it must have cost at least a hundred bucks.

“What was your second book?” she asks him.

“It was called
Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
.”

“Catchy title.”

“Especially since it was about that cult of Satanists on Fire Island—the ones who were making human sacrifices on the beach and letting the tide wash the body parts away.”

“Nice. Very uplifting.” Rory shakes her head, sipping her drink through the straw and adding, “How can you write about such gory stuff?”

“Hey, don’t blame me. I’m not responsible. I mean, I don’t dream this stuff up, or participate. I just tell what happened.”

“Both of those cases were solved,” Rory points out, putting down her cup and looking him in the eye. “Why do you want to write about what happened in Lake Charlotte? That’s still a mystery.”

“Maybe that’s why,” he says, not wavering under her gaze, though she senses that he wants to look away. “I’ve always been drawn to mysteries. I’m a big Amelia Earhart buff, you know? Maybe I’ll write about her next. About how she started out to fly around the globe and vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Just like my sister did,” Rory comments flatly.

Now he does break the eye contact, lowering his gaze to the almost-empty cup of coffee in his hand.

“Why did you choose this particular case? Why Lake Charlotte?” Rory asks, deliberately adding, “I mean . . . have you ever been here before? Did you want to come back? Is that it?”

“No, that’s not it. I told you, I’m always intrigued by mysteries. And this was a mystery. My editor suggested it, so I followed up.”

“Oh.” She notices that he managed to sidestep her question about whether he’s been here before.

There’s definitely something suspicious about Barrett Maitland.

“Listen,” she says, standing and facing him. “I have to go now. It was nice talking with you—”

“Rory—”

“I really have to get home. My mother—”

She breaks off, realizes there’s nothing she can say about her mother without giving away that Maura Connolly isn’t exactly
normal
.

“Your mother . . . ?” he prods, when she doesn’t finish the sentence.

“She’s expecting company. An old family friend. And I promised I’d be there to say hello.”

“Okay,” he says, not bothering to keep the disappointment from his voice. “Maybe we can get together again?”

“I told you, I’d really rather not discuss my sister with you.”

“And that’s okay with me . . . although, I’m hoping you’ll change your mind about that. What I mean, though, is maybe we can get together again just to . . . hang out.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you,” she says evenly. “You might say you want to see me just for casual conversation, but you have a job to do. You’re here to snoop into the past, and that’s someplace I just don’t want to go, ever again.”