Sound of Secrets (25 page)

"This has nothing to do with Suzy." Gray's voice was tight. "The person who tried to run Cara down drove a big, dark car. Isn’t Karen’s Lincoln Continental black?"

A picture of the jet-black luxury car he had driven the night before flashed before Tyler’s eyes. He extinguished it. Karen hadn’t done anything more harmful than make an ill-advised phone call. That knowledge went as deep as the marrow of his bones.

"Plenty of people in Secret Sound drive big, dark cars," he bit out.

Gray slowly unfolded his long length from the ground and scratched his head. "How many of them called Cara and threatened her?"

Tyler looked heavenward for help. The lights of the basketball court shone in his eyes until he saw spots. He brought both hands to his suddenly spinning head. "I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Karen didn’t do this, Gray. You can’t honestly believe she did."

"A cop is trained not to reach a conclusion until he has all the facts."

"For Christ’s sake, if that isn’t a bunch of shit, I don’t know what is! What is this Cara to you, huh, Gray? How can you side with her against someone we’ve known all our lives?"

"I’m not siding with anyone. I have to check out what you told me. I have to question Karen. Surely you can see that."

"You son of a bitch." Tyler couldn’t hold back the curse. "Damnit, Gray. I told you that in confidence. I thought you were my fucking friend."

Gray recoiled as if he'd been struck. "Being your friend doesn’t excuse me from doing my duty as the police chief of Secret Sound."

Tyler crossed to where Gray stood and shoved him hard. Gray stumbled and almost fell. Gray had been a brawler once, ready to fight at the slightest provocation. He did nothing to protect himself. His eyes looked stunned. Tyler balled his right hand into a fist and stared at his friend for long, tense moments before uncurling his fingers.

"What’s she gonna think when you come asking about something you have no right knowing about, huh?" he asked bitterly. "What’s Karen gonna think of me then?"

"Cara’s life is more important than what Karen thinks of you," Gray said softly and, Tyler thought, defiantly. Then he turned and walked away.
 

Tyler stood alone in the middle of the spanking-new basketball court, looking about wildly for something to hit. The nearest solid surface, the pole holding up the basketball hoop, was too far away. So he swung at the air.

The rain fell like a fine mist while Cara descended the stairs of the garage apartment. She looked up at the early morning sky and tried not to indulge the notion that Skippy Rhett was crying because she hadn’t yet figured out what happened to him.

She paused at her car, conflicting emotions tugging at her. She wasn't in the mood for a babysitter. Neither was she stupid.

Following one slim lead after another, she'd tracked down former Secret Sound police chief Bob McKay to a central Florida town about two hours away. She’d been able to convince his caretaker to give her an appointment.

If Cara left now, she could get to Sunnyvale by nine. Except it would be childish and counterproductive to go alone. Gray had an acquaintance with the former police chief and she didn't.

She started up the walk toward the DeBerg house, determined not only to swallow her pride and ask for Gray's help but to keep him from guessing that her heart ached.

It wasn't as though he'd led her on. He'd told her upfront he couldn't promise her forever, and she'd claimed to be fine with that. She couldn't really blame him for not wanting to get serious. She was a woman who saw ghosts, and he didn't believe in them. He hadn't said as much. She knew it all the same.

Still, her hopes had been high the day before. It had become clear that Gray had enlisted his father to watch over her while Gray tackled mounds of neglected paperwork. Bergie had not only taken her to church services and brunch, he’d given her a tour of the newspaper and a sail on his boat.
 

Gray's show of concern for her welfare had touched her. At first. As day blended into night and night into morning without any sign of Gray, reality had set in: Gray might want a lover; he didn’t want to love.

That should be okay with Cara. She'd leave Secret Sound behind when all this was over, and Gray would stay. They led lives hundreds of miles apart that had intersected only by chance. Thoughts of forever were ludicrous, especially because she was the only one having them.

The rain made the keys slick, and they slipped from her hands onto the wet pavement before she reached the back door of the DeBerg house. When she straightened from picking them up, the door banged open.

A coffee mug in one hand, Gray hurried toward her, his uniform unbuttoned and flapping open in the wind, his hair mussed. She glimpsed hard pectorals and tried to shut her mind to the night they'd shared.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Why are you up and about so early?"

His strong-jawed, puzzled face filled her vision. She could smell the rich aroma of coffee and see the burnished hair on his muscular chest.

"I have an appointment to see Chief McKay at nine. He's in Sunnyvale. I hoped you'd come with me."

"You found the chief?" He sounded flabbergasted.

She nodded and concentrated on his question rather than the fact that he hadn't swept her in his arms and kissed her. She was a fool to have hoped he would just because this was the first time they'd seen each other since he spent the night.

"Your father gave me an address and phone number. They were out of date. I worked the phones until I found him."

"I'm impressed," he said.

"Don't be. I caught a lucky break at the nursing home where he'd been a patient. The nurse who answered my call was the same one who referred the chief to a private caretaker. She gave me the caretaker's number."

"And the caretaker gave you an appointment?"

She nodded, her eyes falling to his bare chest. She looked quickly away before the urge to touch him became irresistible. She didn’t want to find him irresistible.

"Why didn't you tell me this last night?"

She'd planned to tell him when he came to her. Instead she’d fallen asleep waiting for the knock on the door that never came.

"I fell asleep." She didn't bother to add that had been well past midnight, after she'd finally accepted he wouldn't knock. "So, will you come?"

He frowned. The rain was coming down harder now and ran in rivulets down his face. The drops striking the roof awning over the back porch made a violent, angry sound. "Is something wrong? Look, if it's about us—"

"Nothing's wrong," she interrupted, disgusted at herself for giving him reason to ask. If he could be blasé about them sleeping together, so could she.

He cocked his dark head and didn't move. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm sure," she said, then figured she had to say something to explain her shortness. "It's just that I'm getting wet and I need to know whether you're coming with me."

The rain fell in fat drops now. In another few minutes they’d be seriously drenched. He continued staring at her, as though that fact hadn't registered. "I need a minute to call the office and get my stuff together," he finally said.

"I'll wait in the car," she said abruptly and turned away to dash to the Mazda.

"I'll bring you coffee," he called after her.

If the wind and the rain hadn't swirled together to make further conversation difficult, she might have replied that she didn't want anything from him.

In her heart, she knew that wasn't true.

She wanted a hell of a lot more from Gray DeBerg than he was prepared to give.

Gray let his head drop back against the car's head rest as rain pounded the windshield and Cara silently navigated the wet highway leading to Sunnyvale.

Things weren’t going his way.

After his fight with Tyler last night, he’d driven straight to Karen Rhett’s house to question her but learned she was out of town for a two-day conference in St. Petersburg.

By the time Gray arrived home, it had been eleven o’clock. His desire to pour out his problems and then lose himself in Cara had been so sharp his whole body had ached with the wanting.

He hadn’t gone to her even though the bedroom light in the garage apartment had still been on.

Cara seemed to accept their relationship couldn't go much deeper than the physical, and he had to leave it at that.

"How well do you know Chief McKay?" she asked into the silence.

Glad for something to talk about that would help pass the hours-long drive to Sunnyvale, he started at the beginning, telling her about his childhood before the chief had come into his life. He gave her a rundown of his childhood sins, which included truancy, assault and battery, public drunkenness and theft.

"If Chief McKay hadn’t caught me at the high school after hours with a can of red spray paint, who knows where I would have ended up,” Gray said. “Jail, probably."

She glanced away from the road, meeting his eyes for just an instant. "What were you doing with the paint?"

"Defacing the property, what else?” he said. “The chief should have sent me to juvenile hall. Instead he made me do community service. I picked up trash along the roadside, served food to the homeless, pulled weeds at the police station and decided I wanted to become a cop."

"He sounds like somebody worth driving two hours to see," she said.

What seemed like a short time later, she pulled her car to a stop in front of a small white house with powder-blue awnings. Once they'd started talking, the time had flown.

The rain had temporarily stopped. Even though heavy gray clouds cluttered the sky, the flower beds rimming Bob McKay’s house and circling his trees brightened the day with splashes of red, pink and yellow.
 

"Why didn’t you just get the chief to talk to you over the phone?” Gray asked a question that should have occurred to him before now.

"Ruth, that’s the name of his caretaker, said Mr. McKay doesn't like talking on the phone,” she said.

Gray remembered the aborted conversations he’d had with the chief when the other man had first left Secret Sound.

"Besides,” she continued, “all the reporters I’ve ever known say a face-to-face interview yields better results.”

She got out of the car and he followed suit, automatically reaching for her elbow when she joined him on the sidewalk. His fingers clung for a moment. She shrugged off his touch and walked ahead of him.

Gray tried not to let the snub bother him as they walked past a row of red and pink impatiens to the front door. If there were distance between them, he'd put it there.

"What I can’t figure out is how I lost touch with the old man," he said. "I wrote to him for years before the post office started returning the letters."

She didn’t respond. She was probably anxious, and rightly so. Chief McKay might very well unlock the mystery tethering her to Secret Sound and a boy who had been dead for longer than she’d been alive.

He reached across her and rang the doorbell. A small, dark-haired woman with watchful eyes and stooped shoulders opened the door, introduced herself as Ruth and ushered them into the modest house. Gray had an impression of well-used furniture and well-worn rugs as she directed them to a sun room at the back of the house.

Bob McKay looked up from the newspaper he was reading. A smile split a face that was still unlined and his sky-blue eyes danced with pleasure. Emotion choked off Gray’s vocal chords as the chief dropped the paper and got up.

McKay enfolded him in a hearty embrace when they met in the center of the room, reminding Gray that the chief had never done anything halfway.

"Gray DeBerg," he said when he drew back. He still held Gray by the shoulders and he smelled of soap and coffee. He gave him an affectionate shake. "Why the hell didn't you visit me sooner?"

Gray grinned. He’d feared the old man had cut off contact because he was too proud to let an old friend see him in ill health. The chief’s complexion was ruddy, his eyes clear. His hair was graying but still thick. Time had been so good to him that the muscles on his compact, burly physique hadn’t turned to fat.

"It’s been too long, chief," Gray said. "Way too long. Is this where you’ve been hiding yourself?"

"I haven’t been hiding, son. You haven’t been visiting." Before Gray could dispute that, the chief spotted the badge on his chest. His eyes widened. "You son of a gun. You got my old job, and you didn’t tell me."

"I would have if—."

"Imagine that," the chief interrupted, clapped him one more time on the shoulder and released him. "I always knew you had it in you, son. You were a good boy even when you weren’t."

"Thanks," Gray said. "I think."

The chief’s gaze shifted to where Cara stood a couple of paces behind them. "Isn’t this my day for surprises," he exclaimed. "Is this the latest lady in your life?"

"This is Cara Donnelly." Gray turned to include her in their circle. "She’s, uh, a friend."

Cara glanced at him before offering her hand to the chief, but he couldn't read her eyes. "I hope Ruth told you that I want to ask about one of your old cases," she said as the chief clasped her hand. "I didn’t know until the last minute that Gray was coming with me."

The chief’s smile turned uncertain. Gray wondered if Ruth had failed to pass on the message. From what Gray could see, the chief didn’t need a caretaker, let alone an incompetent one. Perhaps Cara had been mistaken. Maybe Ruth was his housekeeper.

"I’m glad you’re here, both of you. Why don’t you young people join me in the sun room, and I’ll tell you what I can." He called past them to Ruth, who hovered in the doorway, that he wouldn't need her while he visited with his friends. After a long pause, Ruth disappeared into another part of the house.

Since the chief wanted to be updated on what was happening in Secret Sound, fifteen minutes passed before Cara had an opening to bring up Skippy Rhett’s death. When she did, the chief looked at her blankly until Gray reminded him of the details of the case.

Gray had checked the case file himself before the trip but thought it unnecessary to ask the chief why the information was so sketchy. Chief McKay had abhorred paperwork, preferring to keep most details in his head.