Shroud of Fog: (A Cape Trouble Romantic Suspense Novel) (22 page)

Daniel’s mouth twisted.  “Or someone else gave it away
without asking him first.”

“Was there anything else with the shoebox that might have
come from the same source?”

Daniel explained about the miscellaneous contents of the
larger box.    “I’m assuming all the things in that box were given more or less
at the same time.  I’ll start by contacting the people whose donations were
identified.  Sophie’s got an uneasy feeling about a quilt that was in there. 
She says it’s a beauty, easily a hundred years ago, hand-stitched.  The kind of
thing people usually keep in the family.”

“None of the victims would have had anything like that with
them,” Mackay said thoughtfully.

“No, but what if someone was clearing out a deceased
relative’s house to put it on the market?  Or had just moved Mom or Dad to a
nursing home?  Hell, we could even be talking about a landlord who discovered a
stash in the attic of a rental and was getting rid of it.”

“Would the killer have left his souvenirs behind?”

“Not unless he thought the hidey-hole was secure.  Or died.”

“Or was just moved to a nursing home,” Mackay mused.  “That
age isn’t unheard of for a serial killer.  A guy who is in his late seventies
now, say, would have only been in his fifties twenty years ago.”

“There are a couple of ladies in Cape Trouble who know
everything about everyone.  I can find out quick enough if there’s anyone like
that in town.  But there’s no saying this donation came from someone in Cape Trouble. 
Could be anywhere in the county.  Probably not farther away although I know
some of the donations did.  In that case, there should be a mailing label,
anyway.”

“Locals much outside your city limits are a lot less
interested in the saving Misty Beach thing.  Unless they’re ardent
environmentalists, why would they care?  I’m betting most of the stuff that was
locally given is from your own residents.”

“I’ll start there,” Daniel agreed.  He nodded at the
shoebox.  “We both know it’ll be a miracle if we get lucky with fingerprints.”

“Yeah, this isn’t the kind of guy who is usually in the
system.”  Mackay stood and stretched.  “But if we can get even a clear partial,
we’ll have something to match up to any solid suspects.”  He raised his
eyebrows.  “If you’ve got time to recap what you know, I need to assign a
detective to work our end of this.”

Having expected that, Daniel agreed.  Mackay produced a guy
named Sean Holbeck who was somewhere around Daniel’s age and both listened well
and asked the right questions.  He’d grown up in Cannon Beach, his father
managing one of the big hotels, and actually remembered the disappearance of
the women.

“I have a sister,” he said.  He scrubbed a hand over his own
brown hair, further dishevelling it.  “A couple of years older than me.  She’s
blonde.  Our parents suddenly wouldn’t let her go anywhere.  Man, was she
pissed.”  Expression grim, he stood looking at the tangle of jewelry.  “Maybe
it was thanks to them that she lived to get married and have kids.”

On that bleak note, they parted, Daniel still feeling the
rush of energy that told him he was closing in on answers.  He even had some
places to start, although he was reluctant to consider the first one.

Cape Trouble P.D. officer Abbot Grissom had recently helped
his father move into a small apartment in an assisted living place.  Twenty
years ago, Grissom might have still been living at home, or at least stashing
some of his belongings there.  Abbot Grissom, who hadn’t been first responder
but who had undeniably lived in Cape Trouble at the time, who would have
regularly patrolled through the Misty Beach Resort and maybe spotted an
exceptionally pretty woman who spent summers there.  Grissom was married, and
Daniel was betting his wife had been doing a lot of the work of clearing Dad’s
place.

Abbot Grissom, who Daniel had trusted to watch the video at
the storage facility and who claimed not to recognize anyone even conceivably
connected to Doreen Stedmann.

And then there was Benjamin Billington, who was emptying out
the lodge in preparation for seeing it razed once Misty Beach was sold.  He
hadn’t been sentimental enough to want to hold onto furniture that even Sophie
still remembered as special.  If he didn’t like antiques, likely he wouldn’t
have had any interest in an old quilt, either.  Daniel thought Harlow
Billington had been too old to be a likely candidate for a sexual predator –
plus, if he’d been a killer, why would the disappearances have stopped? 
Benjamin, now, would have been just about the right age, and here on the coast
only for summers.  What’s more, those visits had ended at some point.  Daniel
fully intended to find out when.

During the drive back, he dredged up the memory of gossip
he’d heard regarding a couple of other residents who had recently died.  There
were almost always ten or twelve houses in town for sale.  It would be worth
looking into who was selling those houses.

He knew one thing – he wasn’t going to risk the chance of
Sophie being left alone for a single minute until this killer was behind bars.

*****

“But we’ve found the jewelry,” she argued.  “How am I a
threat to anyone now?”

Daniel reached for another slice of pizza from the box that
sat open on his dining room table.  “For one thing, unless we want to take out
an ad, he won’t know you did find the jewelry.”

“You could just tell Louella Shoop,” she muttered.

He raised his eyebrows.  “You’ve met her?”

“No, but I had two separate people today say something about
me having moved in with you.”  Her indignation was plain.  “Apparently it was
Louella who mentioned as much to someone who, of course, passed it on to a
friend, who…”

He grimaced.  “I picture Louella as one of those air raid
wardens in London during the bombing.  Patrolling from dusk ’til dawn.  In her
case, substitute night vision goggles for old style binoculars.”

Sophie giggled.  “Oh, dear.  The poor woman.”

He laughed, too, if ruefully.  “Louella is nosy as hell and
has a big mouth, but she’s okay.  The nastiest gossip in town is Joyce Ervin.”

“Oh, I’ve met her!  Aunt Doreen despised her.”  Sophie made
a face.  “I probably shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?  I’ve already been indiscreet enough.”  He pushed
his chair back.  “You need another beer?”

“No, one is enough for me.  I get giggly if I have any
more.”

He raised an eyebrow, and she rolled her eyes.  “I haven’t
even drank half of a bottle yet.”

He was still grinning when he returned a moment later with a
cold one for himself.

Sophie had been thinking while he was in the kitchen.  “I
met Joyce’s husband, too.  Um, Morris, is that right?”  She didn’t wait for his
confirmation.  “Doreen liked him.  She felt sorry for him.  She said he was a
smart, interesting man who felt obligated to stay with his wife.”

Daniel paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth.  “Did
she?”  He sounded way too thoughtful.

“Okay, what’s that about?”  Suspicion transformed into
understanding, Sophie felt her mouth fall open before she snapped it shut. 
“You’re not thinking Aunt Doreen and
Morris
—?”

“It crossed my mind,” he said apologetically.  “She’d lived
here a lot of years.  Seems logical she might have had someone.  And knowing
Joyce, who could blame him if he had a long-standing relationship with someone
else?”

Sophie was embarrassed to be so stunned at the very idea. 
Doreen, having an affair?

Yes, but why not?  Sophie was pretty she wasn’t a lesbian;
Doreen had enjoyed romantic movies and claimed to be in love with Brian
Dennehy, although she was fond of Scott Glenn, too.  She had Silverado in her
small collection of DVDs because both actors were in it.

“You should see your face,” Daniel said in amusement. 
“Don’t like imagining Doreen romping in bed?”

Sophie gave him a look.  “Would you like imagining your
mother romping in bed with some guy?”

“Thanks for the image.  No.”

“Does she?  Date, I mean?”

“She didn’t when I was growing up.  She started seeing a guy
a year or two ago, though.  I think they might be getting serious.”

Sophie wondered if he knew how ambivalent he sounded about
the idea.

“Did you want her to remarry when you were a kid?” she
asked.  “So you’d have a dad, like your friends?”

“That never crossed my mind.  A lot of the guys I knew had
divorced parents.  Stepfathers who were abusive or just ignored them.  Fathers
who made promises they didn’t keep.”  He shook his head.  “No.  In my mind, my
father was perfect.  I’d have resented any man my mother brought home.  How
could he have measured up?”

“I thought you said you don’t remember him that well.”

He gave an odd grunt.  “I’ve been giving this a lot of
thought lately.  Wondering if my idea of what makes a man a man wasn’t skewed
some by Mom.  Maybe he was as great as she said he was, but I don’t see how he
could have been.”

“After someone dies, people do tend to remember the good
things about them and forget the bad.”

His eyes were unfocused, in the way of someone contemplating
the past.  “I know she was trying to keep him alive for me.  That meant she
talked about him all the time.  Told me stories.  He was a firefighter, a hero,
according to her.  The bravest man in the world.  So brave, he scared her
sometimes.  Even his hobbies were high adrenaline.  He’d built himself an
ultralight from a kit and insisted it was safe, but she knew better.”  His
shoulders moved.  “Then there was the Harley.”

The Harley, she knew, that had killed his father.

“As if his job wasn’t dangerous enough.”

He shot her a look.  “Yeah.  Then there was his job.”

“So why have you been thinking about this?” she asked,
hoping he wouldn’t close down.  He knew so much about her, and in comparison
she knew hardly anything about him.  He’d been young when his Dad had died; he
was a burned-out homicide cop who’d come to Cape Trouble to rethink his career
path.  That was about it.

Fingering the neck of the beer bottle, he was quiet long
enough she began to think he wouldn’t answer.  He might regret having said as
much as he had.  She hardly breathed as she waited.  Just about the moment when
the silence grew uncomfortable, he started to talk.

“I grew up thinking the only way I’d ever measure up to Dad
was to be tough.  I drove too fast, I got in fights.  God forbid I ever back
down.  To please Mom, I went to college, but the minute I graduated I walked
into a Marine Corps enlistment office.  I came this close to signing up.”  He
held up his hand, fingers nearly pinched together.  “But I’d taken some
criminology courses in college, and at the last minute I decided to go to the
police academy instead.”

“Instead of becoming a firefighter like he was?”

“Oh, I thought about it, but maybe I’d watched too many cop
shows on TV.  I figured cops had to be smart and courageous.  And, hey, I’d get
to carry a gun.”

“Good to know you started out burning with the ideal of
service,” she said lightly.

He laughed, but with a darkness underlying his amusement. 
“I had that, too.  It was part of being a hero, you know?”

“So…what happened?”

“Some of it was what I told you.  I had this stupid idea I’d
be fighting evil to protect the innocents, only as it turned out ninety percent
of the time the victims are scum just like the perpetrators.  Gang turf wars,
drug wars, you name it.  You find out that everyone lies.  One day I realized I
saw nothing but gray.  Early on, I tried being a hero a couple of times when a
truly smart cop would have taken a different tactic.  Instead of being lauded,
I was written up.  I got to wondering if Dad had always used his head, or if he
hadn’t been just plain reckless.  Look at the way he’d died.”

It was easy to hear in his voice that, while Daniel had
looked up to his reckless, larger-than-life father, he’d also felt a lot of
anger.  Even as a boy, he’d known that his father hadn’t had to die.  If he
hadn’t taken unnecessary risks, he’d have been around when his son needed him.

 “I’m sorry,” Sophie said uselessly.  “Did you ever talk to
your mother about this?”

“Are you kidding?” Daniel scoffed.  “As far as she was
concerned, he just got better and better as the years past.  He damn near
walked on water.  No wonder she never dated.”

“What about this guy she’s seeing now?”

He relaxed, his grin crooked but amused.  “He’s an insurance
agent.  Balding, near-sighted.  His idea of a thrill is a Sunday drive up to
Lake Berryessa.  There was a time I couldn’t have said this, but…he’s good for
Mom.  Better than Dad was.”

“Have you reached any conclusions for yourself?” she asked
tentatively.

“Only that losing him and the way Mom encouraged me to join
her in worshipping at his altar screwed me up for a long time.”

“You seem pretty together to me,” she said honestly.  “Um,
this may not mean anything, but…”  She was probably going to make a fool of
herself, but okay.  “I don’t think you need to worry a lot about what kind of
man you are and how you measure up to your father.  You’ve supported me in some
pretty unbelievable ways.  I suspect you’re plenty brave, but you’re also smart
and kind and patient.”

Her cheeks were so hot by the time she finished, Sophie knew
they had to be glowing.  She couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all, except
that something serious was going on in his head.

He studied her for a long time.  Finally one corner of his
mouth kicked up.  “Thank you.”

Sophie ducked her head, pretending to be interested in the
remnants of a slice of pizza on her plate.  Probably stone cold.  God, she’d
probably embarrassed him even more than she had herself.

He cleared his throat.  “Getting back to Joyce,” he said, in
a tone that suggested he was definitely done with the personal stuff.  “I got
the feeling she really disliked your aunt.  If she suspected anything, uh,
personal was going on, it would explain the edge I heard in her voice. 
Although—”  He stopped.