Virtue Falls (43 page)

Everyone within earshot nodded.

Elizabeth continued, “I keep reaching for my hairbrush, or my bra, or thinking that I want my good running shoes, and everything I’ve got is someone else’s. I’m grateful to have anything. Really, I am. But it’s very odd to have lost almost everything. You know?”

Mrs. Ubach stared at her. “You’re a nice girl for a geologist.”

The line shuffled forward.

When Elizabeth got to the front, Bradley Hoff smiled with perfunctory interest and passed her a paper bag full of supplies. His blue eyes expressed the proper consideration as he said, “I hope this helps ease your difficulties in these tough times.”

“Thank you—this is very generous of you,” Elizabeth said.

“She’s perfect,” the photographer called and lifted her camera. “Good profile, and she’s pretty. Let’s take some pictures.”

“Good choice, Loring.” Bradley’s smile became more personal, and he scrutinized Elizabeth. He looked startled. “Wait. You’re Misty’s daughter. I knew your mother.”

“I know. You … you’ve told me.” Several times over the last few months, once he managed to figure out who she was.

“Yes. Of course. We’ve talked before.” He frowned as he searched his mind for information. “You’re here working on the Banner geological project. I imagine the earthquake was everything you’d ever hoped for.”

“It was great.”

The photographer clicked a few shots, then pulled out her video camera.

Vivian stepped between Loring and Elizabeth. “Bradley brings up a point. Elizabeth Banner’s got a background. If we do that,
she’ll
become the story, rather than the story being our generosity. Eye on the prize, ladies and gentlemen. Eye on the prize.” Turning to Elizabeth, she said, “Sorry, dear.”

Elizabeth caught a glimpse of the photographer, who looked disgusted and put the lens cover back on the camera.

But Bradley easily yielded to his wife’s dictates. He shook Elizabeth’s hand again, then turned his attention to the next guy in line. To Garik. “Good to see you. Local boy, right? Garik, isn’t it? You’re back in town? Visiting and got caught by the earthquake?”

“Something like that.” Garik took his bag of supplies and pushed Elizabeth forward, into the middle of the square.

Next in line was an eight-year-old boy.

Bradley’s eyes lit up.

The camera started clicking.

“We have a very special package for youngsters.” He reached behind him into the helicopter and brought out a colorful bag. “Here you go. Inside, there’s Hobbit LEGOs.”

“Cool,” the boy said.

As Garik and Elizabeth moved away from the helicopter, she said, “Bradley Hoff has met me four times, and doesn’t ever remember me. I look enough like my mother that you’d think that if he was her lover, he’d get a clue.”

“Could be an act.”

“Could be that he meets so many people on his art tours he doesn’t remember anybody.”

“Sure. Anything’s possible. Certainly he’s vastly interested in his image, and so’s his wife.” Garik looked over her shoulder to someone behind her. “Hello, Foster, you’re looking a little worn around the edges.”

Elizabeth turned to see the sheriff.

Weariness had worn grooves into the sides of Foster’s mouth and put bags under his eyes. His hair was greasy. His hat was dirty. His tan uniform showed grime at the collar and cuffs, and what looked like soot dusted his shoulders.

Elizabeth didn’t stop to think; she leaned into him and took a breath. “You smell like smoke,” she said.

“In case you didn’t hear, the Suns’ house burned last night,” Foster said. “I was there with the fire department trying to put it out.”

“You also smell a little like gasoline. Or something.” The memory of Yvonne’s words sprang into Elizabeth’s mind.
He smelled clean, like soap. Maybe a little smoky … Smoky, and like some kind of fuel.
Elizabeth started to blurt out an accusation.

Garik’s hand clamped onto her shoulder, and he spoke before she could. “Go home and take a shower, Foster.”

Garik was right. She couldn’t accuse Sheriff Foster of setting fire to the Suns’ house. Not here and now, with outside communication so limited and the sheriff so hostile to them both. But what a coincidence that Yvonne’s description also noted that smell …

“I’m clean. I took a shower at the jail,” Foster snapped. “It’s my uniform that’s dirty. One of my deputies is fetching a fresh one from my house.”

“Good planning,” Garik said. “Try and get some rest.”

Foster looked down at the street, then back up at Garik and Elizabeth, and his eyes burned. “Sure. Like that’s going to happen with a drug addict attacking nurses, houses burning down, and our coroner vanished. You wouldn’t happen to know where Mike went, do you, Garik?”

“No … are you sure he’s gone? Because if he is, that’s a lucky break for him and Courtney. If they’d been in the house, they might have been overcome by smoke before they could escape, and that would be a tragedy that would haunt us all.” Garik didn’t soften his tone. He stood unsmiling, stern. He was harassing Sheriff Foster, snapping at his heels.

Foster put his hand on his pistol, took audible breaths, and looked as if he was inches away from pulling his weapon.

So Elizabeth said, “I liked Mike and Courtney very much.” She thought that would cool the heated emotions.

Instead Foster bent those red-rimmed manic eyes on her. “When did
you
meet them?”

She knew Garik would not want her to say Mike and Courtney had visited the inn the day before. So she said, “I’ve met a lot of people in Virtue Falls. Soon I’ll have lived here a year.”

“Right.” Sheriff Foster dropped his hand away from his gun.

He looked so belligerent and exuded such waves of misery, and seemed so in conflict with himself, she was abruptly convinced that Garik was right; Sheriff Foster was the man who had been her mother’s lover. He’d killed her, and now he suffered for his crime. Suffered, and struck out again and again in violence and destruction. That would certainly explain his belligerence toward her.

Yet for all the thoughts tumbling through her head, she still felt sorry for him. Gently she put her hand on his sleeve. “If you don’t have time to go home, perhaps you could get some sleep on a cot at the jail. You deserve to rest.”

He made to strike her hand away, then stopped himself.

Garik said, “We were sorry to hear about the loss of your mother.”

“My
mother
,” Sheriff Foster repeated. Lifting his hands, he looked at them as if he’d never seen them before. Then he strode toward the courthouse.

Once again, his grip rested on his weapon.

Elizabeth and Garik watched him disappear into the crowd.

“He burned down the Suns’ home.” A dreadful thought, but one Elizabeth was convinced was true.

“I think so, yes.” Taking her arm, Garik walked her toward his truck. Catching sight of Rainbow loitering by the front bumper, he swerved toward the huge chunk of the courthouse’s fallen granite façade. He dusted off a flat spot, sat down, then reached for Elizabeth’s hand and pulled her down to sit beside him.

“But why?” Elizabeth asked.

“Mike got me some information I was looking for.”

“Sheriff Foster could easily have killed them. Over information?”

“He’s a man out of control.”

“Yet … yet Yvonne said she would recognize her attacker’s eyes anywhere. Sheriff Foster questioned her, and she didn’t say anything about it being him.”

“It was dark. She saw his eyes behind a ski mask. Witnesses are mistaken about this stuff all the time. They think they know—and they don’t.” Garik spoke with assurance. “The good thing is—once that story comes out about her recognizing him by his eyes, if it is Foster, he’ll know it’s not true.”

“So she won’t be in danger,” Elizabeth said hopefully.

“I didn’t say that. He
is
a man out of control.” Garik took her hand. “Promise me you will be careful not to be alone with him.”

“I promise. I’m not going to be alone at all.” She looked Garik right in the eyes. “I’m going to go to work in Virtue Falls Canyon, and I’m never going to let Ben, Luke, and Joe out of my sight.”

“Why do you need to go to work?” Garik leaned close and murmured in her ear. “Why not take some time off and relax while I get this all cleared up?”

He was trying to seduce her out of a job. “Work is what people do,” she informed him. “They get up in the morning. They go to work. They work until it’s time to quit. They go home.”

Garik leaned back, and his tone had a bite to it. “Not everybody has a family history that could get them killed.”

“You have a theory that there’s someone out there who wants to kill me. You have no conclusive proof. No one has tried to harm me. I can’t hide from a theory.” She understood logic, and here she was on solid ground.

He switched gears. “You could
not
talk to reporters.”

“You heard Noah Griffin. He said if I didn’t answer the questions, he’d make something up.”

Garik showed his teeth like a junkyard dog. “Let him make it up!”

“At least this way, I’m controlling what gets printed.”

“I don’t want anything printed about you and the Banner murder case.”

“I don’t, either. But don’t you get it? That’s what he’s going to write. In his book, in his articles. After all these years, the Banner case is still good press. It’s dramatic. It’s bloody. There’s a love affair. A beautiful woman is murdered. Her husband is convicted. Maybe there’s a grieving lover out there.” She cupped her forehead with her hand. “Noah’s going to write it anyway. At least this way I can make it clear I don’t remember anything. And if your theory is right, that’s better than speculation that I do.”

“You’re right.” Garik wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “I know you’re right. I’m … I just got you back, and I’m scared I’m going to lose you again. I’m afraid history is going to somehow repeat itself.”

She sighed, and relaxed into his embrace. “You just got me back?”

He swallowed as if he hadn’t meant to say that. “For one night, I got to hold you in my arms, and make love to you, and pretend you would be mine forever. I … liked that. I would like that to be true.”

She took pleasure in what he said. She took pleasure in how he said it. And the memory of the pain that had separated them was fading … “I would, too. I would like my father not to have murdered my mother. I would like her killer to confess and be arrested, and to never worry about this again. I would like a lot of things.” She cupped his face. “Right now, most of all, I would like to go to work.”

He surrendered. “So there’s one thing we can get right, right now.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll let me drive you to the canyon?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“And pick you up when you’re done?” He pulled out his keys.

“Today.”

“One day at a time, then.” He stood and offered his hand.

She allowed him to pull her to her feet.

They faced the square.

Everyone was watching them.
Everyone.

“To hell with flushing toilets and electric lights,” Elizabeth said. “I want the TV to come back on so this town will have something to watch besides us.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Elizabeth stormed up the slope of the canyon to the place where Garik paced. “Okay, look. You can’t do this. You’re making the team nervous. Marrero is snapping at everyone. And you’re driving me crazy!”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re pacing.”

“I can stop.” Garik halted in his tracks.

“I can hear you breathing.”

“Sorry. I can’t stop that.”

“I can hear you wondering what I’m doing, and why. I can feel you watching Ben, Luke, and Joe, assessing them as potential dangers. You have … to go … away.” She was railing at him. She knew she was. But he acted like he was her only shield against an army of attackers. Imaginary attackers.

“I’ll go away tomorrow.” Garik looked at his watch. “Right now, it’s five o’clock. Time to quit.”

“I don’t want to … Wait.” She could make a deal. “If I quit now, will you stay away tomorrow?”

“How far away?”

“Far. At the resort. At least.”

He rearranged his face to look pitiful. “I’d be bored. I don’t have anything to do at the resort.”

“You don’t have anything to do here.”

“Marrero could put me to work.” Garik’s puppy face looked hopeful.

“No. Because you’d still be breathing and thinking, and all of it would be too loud.”

He took her arm. “Let’s go home and we’ll talk about it.”

Impatient and distraught, she pulled herself out of his grasp. “You’re not going to work here, and I am. So get used to it.”

He crossed his arms. Stared at her forbiddingly. When that didn’t impress her, he said with apparent amiability, “Okay. Do you need to get your stuff and say good-bye?”

“Okay, what?” she asked suspiciously.

“Okay, I’m not going to work here. Or breathe or think here. Come on. Get your stuff and say good-bye.”

She didn’t budge. “And I am going to work and breathe and think here.”

“I would suppose you are. I don’t know how to stop you.”

She did not trust him. “You’re giving in too easily.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I have the greatest respect for your intelligence and your integrity. You know there’s a chance that my theory is right and your mother’s killer is abroad in this town, and you promised to never let Ben, Luke, and Joe out of your sight. I depend on those two things—your intelligence and your integrity—to keep you safe.”

“Hm. Right.” She still didn’t quite believe him, but what was she supposed to say? He appeared to be yielding, and he appeared to be sincere. “I’ll go say good-bye and get my stuff.”

“Want some help?”

“No!” When she told the team she was leaving, the guys never said a word. They left that to Andrew Marrero, whose scathing comments about their newfound tsunami video prima donna made her wonder why she had ever hoped to please him about anything.

So when she came back up the slope, she was in a dangerous mood.