Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (16 page)

He looked at her strangely but after a moment nodded.  “All
right.  Let me haul one of those tubs over here.”

A minute later, she’d left the dirty dishes in the sink and
opened her laptop on the table.  Daniel had placed a plastic tub right beside
her chair and even removed the top for her.  She reached inside, blindly, for
the first smaller box, knowing it would be a miracle if she accomplished
anything at all.

And wondering if she really could resist him if he insisted
on staying.

Daniel didn’t know if he could take another evening like the
last one.  Damn, he wanted that woman.

Over dinner, there’d been a couple of moments when he would
swear he saw longing to match his own on her face.  But either he’d been
imagining things, or she’d decided hell no, because she’d shut him down so
decisively, he wasn’t even sure she’d remembered he was still there for the
rest of the evening.

But, damn it, he had no choice but to endure as many
evenings of frustration as it took.  While Sophie ignored him, he’d watched her
last night, working like a woman possessed, doing internet searches, scribbling
notes to herself, entering items and writing descriptions.  He knew how very
far she had to go, and how little time she had to finish.  She was right; she
did have to work more hours than she could get in during the day.  Daniel
couldn’t imagine that rescheduling the auction was an option, given how quickly
it was coming up.  Hotels would be booked way out in advance; there’d probably
be financial penalties for a cancellation.  And he didn’t know how long
Billington was willing to wait for his money.

After meeting Sophie at storage first thing this morning to
hand over the stuff he’d taken home last night, Daniel had made the impulsive
decision to drive over to the old resort.  He had seen Benjamin Billington
around town a couple of times, but hadn’t met him.

If not for Billington’s willingness to accept substantially
less money than he could otherwise have gotten, and to wait for it, too, the
auction would never have been conceived.  It would be interesting to know why
he was being so altruistic.  Sure, he’d spent vacations as a boy and young man
here with his uncle, but if he had such fond memories, wouldn’t you think he’d
have visited more in the years since?  From what people said, he hadn’t been in
residence long enough in fifteen years or more to so much as have to buy
groceries at the local Safeway.  So why would he feel so strongly about keeping
this stretch of coastline pristine?  Yeah, and what kind of relationship had he
had with Doreen?  Who’d made the original approach, Benjamin or Doreen?  Why
was he so eager for this deal, he had not only donated items to the auction,
he’d repeatedly offered his assistance to Sophie?

Daniel got stuck momentarily on that question.  What if the
offers from big resort chains were fictitious?  Could the land have a problem
that made development unlikely to impossible, and no one knew about it?

He grunted.  Get real.  This was Cape Trouble.  Nobody could
keep a secret like that.

Moving on to the question that most preoccupied him…

Where had
Billington
been when the sound of that
gunshot boomed out, the foggy morning Michelle Thomsen died?  Elias had made it
sound as if he’d just appeared from nowhere.

Not that Daniel was ready to take Elias Burton’s word as
gospel.

No, there was no justification for starting an investigation
into the death of Sophie’s mother, but that didn’t mean he could quit thinking
about it.  These past few days, he had been shuffling the few facts he’d
learned from the inexcusably skimpy police records, adding in what Sophie had
told him, notching into place the additions he’d gleaned from their confrontation
with Elias Burton and his more recent conversation with Abbot Grissom, the one
member of the Cape Trouble P.D. who had been on the force twenty years ago.

“That was a shocker,” he’d agreed, when Daniel asked him
about it.  “I wasn’t first responder, but I saw the little girl…  I mean, Ms.
Thomsen.  They drove her over to Mrs. Wallace’s house.  Nice lady.  Died, I
don’t know, five years ago?  Stroke, I understand.”  He focused on Daniel’s
face and said hastily, “Sorry.  Knowing everybody, the way I do, it’s hard not
to—”  He stopped.  “Uh, sorry.”

Daniel had only nodded, hiding his impatience.

“It sticks with you, when you see a kid looking like that.”

Daniel had seen them, children with eyes so blank you
wondered if part of them hadn’t died, too.  Losing his own father had hit him
hard enough without the additional trauma of finding his body or, worse, seeing
the death.  Even so, he understood real personally the devastation in those
children’s eyes.

“Chief took over the investigation right away.”  Grissom
unwrapped a stick of gum without seeming to notice what he was doing.  “I don’t
think Mr. Thomsen was very satisfied, but he gave up and went away.”

“He insisted his wife wasn’t depressed.”

Grissom popped the gum in, gave it a couple of chomps and
shifted it to his cheek.  He’d quit smoking a couple of months back, and still
reached for a stick of gum when what he really wanted was a cigarette.

“He went on and on about that necklace she always wore, too,
even though he claimed it wasn’t that valuable.  Wanted to know where it was. 
Chief didn’t see what that had to do with anything.”

Daniel made a sound Grissom would be able to interpret. 
When you investigated a death,
everything
was relevant.  Any fool who
watched TV or who had ever read a murder mystery knew killers sometimes took
souvenirs.  In the chief’s place, Daniel wouldn’t have been satisfied until he
found that necklace.

“You remember what it looked like?” he asked.

His officer blinked at him in surprise.  “The necklace? 
Well, I must have heard, but I can’t say I do remember.  Why do you want to
know?”

Daniel shook his head.  “Just curious.”

“It all happened during tourist season, you know, which made
the chief antsy.  People were real nervous until he made it known that the poor
woman had killed herself.  Then, well, there were a lot of people sneaking over
there trying to find the exact spot and taking pictures, until old man
Billington got out a shotgun and threatened a bunch of them.  Ghouls, he called
them.”

Damn.  Daniel hoped Sophie had never heard this appendage to
the tragedy of her mother’s death.

“The chief never considered bringing in an investigator from
the county or state?”

Grissom snorted.  “Wouldn’t have crossed his mind.  Far as I
know, he never did anything like that.  Didn’t think he needed help.”

One of those people who snapped pictures of the place a
woman had blown her brains out might have been the killer revisiting the scene
of his triumph.  That happened.  It was also conceivable that some ghoul – and
yeah, that was the right word – had spotted a glint of something shiny in the
sand and found Michelle Thomsen’s necklace, keeping it as a souvenir for some
of the same, sick reasons a murderer might.

His thoughts had carried him all the way to the old Misty Beach
resort.  This time Daniel parked right in front of the lodge.  Like the cabins,
it was built of logs.  The porch steps were raw wood, meaning they’d just been
replaced.  However brief their stay was to be, Benjamin probably hadn’t liked
the idea of his wife crashing through a rotting step.

No doorbell beside the massive door.  Daniel knocked hard
and waited long enough that he was trying to decide whether he ought to just
try the door when it opened.  It was Billington himself who appeared, looking
surprised to see Daniel.  Dark-haired and beefy, he had a shadowy jaw even
though he’d likely just shaved, and a widow’s peak punctuating his forehead.

“Aren’t you the police chief?”

“Yes, sir.  Daniel Colburn.”  He held out a hand.

Billington shook, taking it for granted Daniel knew who he
was.  “What can I do for you?”

“I’m investigating Ms. Stedmann’s death and had a few
questions for you.”

The guy shook his head.  “Awful thing.  I don’t know what I
can tell you, but I’m happy to try.  Do you mind if we sit out on the porch? 
The wife has a migraine and is lying down.”

“No problem.”

The aging Adirondack chairs out here proved to be solid
enough.  The view from the porch was indeed fine.  There wasn’t a soul on the
beach that Daniel could see.  The only vehicle in sight was the Dodge Durango
he’d seen the Billingtons drive.

Benjamin talked willingly about Doreen, who he said had
approached him with her proposal right after his uncle’s funeral.  “I guess she
knew Uncle Harlow had been turning down offers for this place for years.  Said
over his dead body.  I admitted I planned to sell.  What else was I supposed to
do?  I had some good times here, but I own a business in Beaverton and don’t
have any desire to live here.  If it were just a weekend home, something like
that, we might have thought about keeping it, but fifty acres?  And all those
old cabins that are going to fall down on some stupid kid if they don’t get
dismantled?”  He shook his head.  “Can’t deny the money will be nice.  On the
other hand, I’m doing all right for myself, and it sits better with me to make
good money and still know I’m doing what Uncle Harlow would have wanted than it
would to make better money and imagine him rolling over in his grave.”  He
chuckled.

“Ms. Thomsen mentioned that you’d stopped by to extend your
condolences.”

“And tell her I’d keep my end of the bargain if the
committee planned to go on.  Sounds like she’s the reason they are.”

“Somebody else might have stepped in,” Daniel murmured,
although he doubted it.  No one else had the expertise to take over.  For all
Doreen’s passion, Daniel couldn’t see how the auction would have come off
successfully without her bringing in someone like Sophie.

“Could be.”  Billington sounded doubtful.

“Did you remember her?” Daniel asked, as if the possibility
had just come to him.

“Sophie?”  Billington laced thick fingers over a still flat
belly.  “Sure.  I worked for my uncle summers in those days.  Sophie and her
mother were here for three months every year.  She was a cute kid.”

“I hear she looks a little like her mother.”

The guy sat quiet for a moment.  “More than a little.  Kinda
startled me when I saw her.”

“Mother must have been a pretty woman.”  Daniel kept his
tone relaxed.  Just making conversation.

“Oh, yeah.  All the young guys working here talked about
her, wondered if her husband knew what he was doing, leaving her by herself so
much.”

“But she wasn’t by herself, was she?”

“What?”  Those dark eyes cut his way.  “Oh.  You mean the
kid.  No, you’re right.”

“Did she seem like a woman who was looking around for
diversion?”

He shrugged.  “There were a few times I wondered, but it was
probably wishful thinking.  Truth is, she was a little bit of a snob.  Running
a resort, you get a lot of those.  Guys like me, we were supposed to be grateful
because she smiled nicely when she said thank you for the clean towels.”

He was speaking easily, as if he didn’t mind, but a man
didn’t say something like that without meaning it.  Daniel hid what he was
thinking, but the hair on the back of his neck prickled.  This man still nursed
some bitterness, Daniel felt sure.  Like Elias Burton, Benjamin had imagined
himself in love or at least lust with Michelle Thomsen that summer, if not
before.  Wanting her, and unhappy because she didn’t see him that way.

“Wonder what she’d think if she knew this was all mine
now,”  he mused.

“I imagine she’d be pleased with what you’re doing to save a
place she must have loved,” Daniel suggested.

“I’d like to think so.”  He gazed out at the ocean, his eyes
unfocused.  “Interesting her daughter is back here at the same time I am.”

Daniel wanted nothing so much as to stand up and leave. 
Call it an over-reaction, but he didn’t like the way Billington talked about
Michelle, and he hated the thought of Sophie having any dealings with him.  If
she did, by God he’d be at her side, he resolved.

Long practice allowed him to stay relaxed, expressing only
mild curious.  “You must have been here when her mother was killed?”

The guy turned his head sharply enough to give himself whiplash. 
“Was killed?  What’s that supposed to mean?  The sheriff said she killed
herself.”

“Right.”  Daniel allowed an eyebrow to arch.  “Sorry.  I
didn’t mean to suggest anything.”

“I was here,” he said tersely, then seemed to realize
something more was called for.  “One of the other guys who worked here and I
were the first people to get to Sophie.”

“Would that be the artist?”

“Burton?  Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Somebody told me the other day that he’d worked here that
summer.  He must have just been a kid.”

“Old enough to pant after Michelle,” Benjamin said with
disgust, before giving Daniel a swift glance.  “She told us to call her that. 
Summers aren’t for missus, she said.”

They talked some more, but confidences seemed to be at an
end.  Daniel was very aware that Billington stayed on the front porch watching
as he went to his squad car, got in and drove away.  Mrs. Billington never had
made an appearance.

Summers aren’t for missus.
 What had Benjamin meant
to imply by that? Daniel wondered.  Only that she had laughingly told the
resort employees to call her by her first name?  Or had she been hinting at
something more?

It was also possible that Billington had wanted to think
that’s what she was doing.  And then what?  Had he felt thwarted because she
didn’t get any friendlier?  Angry, if he thought she was getting friendlier
with someone else?  Say, Elias Burton? Daniel speculated.  Burton was a far
more striking man, and had probably been a good looking boy.

That was assuming a thirty-two year old woman would have
looked twice at a seventeen-year-old boy.  Hell, Billington hadn’t been that
much older – certainly ten years younger than Michelle Thomsen.  If she’d been
looking, there had to have been plenty of men in town who would have been
interested.

Daniel wondered how he could find out who else had worked at
Misty River Resort that summer.