Where Angels Rest (11 page)

They both leaned back while Rebecca piled food on the table. When she was gone, Nick went on. “Why are you so convinced Lauren’s lover was John Huggins?”

She reached into her purse, handed a page across the table. Nick set down his fork and unfolded it.

“Holy shit,” he said. It was a pencil sketch of a male figure, all angles and planes and broken lines, with the distinct feeling of angst. Disjointed arms and legs, an oversized penis, eyes contorted and angry. The only hints of color in the picture were two dabs of watercolor bleeding over the lines around the irises: one blue, one green.

“Did you give this to the police?”

“Yes. And to the DA and to Justin’s attorney. But there were dozens of other pictures. Lauren was an aspiring artist and these were all products of an artist’s imagination. They said that even if this
was
John Huggins, she could have just known him from his wife’s art studio, and that even if she’d had an affair with him, it didn’t mean he’d shot her.”

“All good points.” Nick gestured for her to eat. “Did you ever consider that Justin could have done it?”

“He didn’t.”

“That’s not what I asked. I asked if you ever, just for one minute, thought he
could
have done it.”

“Of course not. Never. I’m his sister. Why would I think that?”

Nick eyed her over his food and Shakespeare came to mind.
The lady doth protest too much.
He took another stab at it. “In the trial transcripts, there’s reference to testimony from a court-appointed counselor, but the judge ordered it suppressed. What was that?”

Sims bristled and a flicker of emotion crossed her features. “It was irrelevant. That’s why it was suppressed.”

Nick watched her eyes, trying to put a name on what he saw there. It was the same expression she’d smothered at his cabin when they talked about the car that had tried to run her down. The same look he’d seen in the doorway of her motel room an hour ago.

Fear. She may have tried to disguise it with something bolder, but it was fear, nonetheless. And it was justified. Some son of a bitch had threatened her. Not just in Florida but in Hopewell.

Nick rubbed a hand over his face, forcing himself to take a step back. Dangerous waters, here. Erin Sims was earnestness and fire, but the hint of vulnerability that whispered above it all caught him off guard. She was probably wrong about her brother’s innocence, but she wasn’t lying: She believed everything she said. And no matter how much Nick would have liked to pin the motel room vandalism on her and send her back to Miami, every instinct told him she’d had nothing to do with that. The cold fear in her eyes couldn’t be faked.

Not here. Not on my watch.

A wave of protectiveness washed over him. And another wave of something not nearly so noble. His blood altered its course and against all sane judgment, he tapped her naked ring finger. “What happened to the husband?”

She blinked. “David? He had dreams of a political career. He was hobnobbing with bigwigs, eating caviar…” She pulled a face. “Having a wife out leading an ugly public crusade against a senator was bad for his image.”

“You mean he didn’t stay around to support you and Justin.”

She winced and something tugged in Nick’s chest. A man was supposed to be there when his wife needed him, not leave her to handle things herself. God knows, he’d made that mistake once, too, but it wasn’t because he’d been promoting his career.

Well, yes. It was exactly that.

The taste of tequila rose in his throat. Christ, he was just getting ready to make crazy promises to Erin Sims,
and yet he was the last person she should depend on. Just ask Allison.

That thought was the one that cleared his brain. He had enough responsibility. He had Hannah to think about, not to mention a town counting on him. Erin Sims was trouble, and she’d be even more trouble if Nick let his libido enter the picture or let things get personal. He’d send the required information to Florida; he’d find out who vandalized her motel room. He’d confirm for himself what everyone else already knew—that Jack Calloway was innocent—and then he’d send Erin Sims home to Florida and get back to busting town drunks and shoplifters.

They finished their food and Nick tossed down a tip. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand to help her slide from the booth.

“Where to?” she asked.

“Somewhere out of the way, where I don’t have to worry about you.”

“You can’t push me aside just so you don’t have to deal with me. This is my brother we’re talking ab—”

“I meant where I don’t have to worry that someone’s going to break into your motel room or try to run you down in a car.”

Her face lost its color. “Oh, that.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That.”

O
UT OF THE WAY
was a private motel outside of Hopewell but still in the county, where Nick knew the manager and would have a deputy passing by every thirty minutes. He checked her in, moved her bags, and while he made a couple calls to touch base with Quentin and the office, she unpacked her computer bag. Laptop, portable printer, and bright yellow paper.

Damn her. This was her MO. The minute he walked out of this room, she was going to launch a full-blown assault on Jack. She’d print fliers, start crusading, and the hounds of paranoia and sensationalism would take over Hopewell, just like they had in L.A.

Detective Mann, is it true that you became acquainted with Bertrand Yost two years ago when you arrested him for possession?

Detective Mann, what about reports that an LAPD psychologist has recommended your dismissal?

“Have you got a picture of John Huggins on that thing?” he asked, pointing at the laptop.

A lie stirred behind her eyes. “Of course,” she said, and Nick was surprised how relieved he felt that she chose the truth.

“And you brought your printer with you from Florida and a whole ream of bright paper.”

She shrugged and Nick closed the distance between them. Close enough to catch a whiff of spearmint on her breath.

“Let me give you a little warning about an ordinance in Hopewell that prohibits posters from being placed on public property.”

She grew an inch. “You mean like ‘Found: black Labrador’ or ‘Ice Cream Social, 3:00 Saturday’—you mean posters like that?”

“And things like ‘Jack Calloway is a murderer’ and ‘Save my brother’—posters like that.”

Her chin jutted out. “You said your parents lived here. Does that mean you’ve been here all your life?”

He almost chuckled. “You mean, have I spent my career breaking up barroom brawls and making sure the town’s dogs are on a leash, or have I ever dealt with
real
crimes?”

She had the grace to look embarrassed, even as she crossed her arms again.

“I grew up here,” he answered. “But you’ll be relieved to know I went to college in California and spent seventeen years on the LAPD.”

She looked impressed; he liked that.

“What brought you back?” she asked. “I mean, it seems like this is a totally different life than in L.A.”

Oh, yes. “You want the gory details, try Google. You won’t have any trouble finding dirt about me.” She looked surprised, but said nothing. “Suffice it to say Hopewell
isn’t
like L.A. and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you make it that way.”

The threat hit its mark. “I didn’t come here to ruin your paradise,” she said. “I came here to free my brother.”

Nick’s heart took a twist. She tried to sound harsh but her eyes glittered with tears and dragged his mind places it didn’t often go. He didn’t mean to sex—like men everywhere, Nick’s mind wandered to sex about every six seconds. This was a different place. A place of compassion, admiration. For her chutzpah and doggedness and passion.

For the fact that she was alone and frightened and counting on him.

He stood thinking about that for five seconds. On the sixth, he thought about sex.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said. Christ, there was no time for an affair with this woman. “I’ll have someone driving by here this afternoon, keeping an eye out for our vandal.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Wait. Just for a little while until I can get some traction on the case. I’ll call you.”

She scoffed, a bitter sound. “I’ve heard that before.” She started to turn, and Nick snagged her arm.

“Not from me, you haven’t.”

She searched his eyes, probing them, he thought, for something she could dare to believe.

“I’ll call you,” Nick promised. “Be here when I do.”

Maggie Huggins had never gotten used to being called Margaret Calloway. She had accepted the change of names as a necessary fact of life, but never liked it. Calloway was nothing more than a dart thrown at a list of names in a phone book, and Margaret was the name her father had called her. It always sounded full of derision.

The names wouldn’t matter anymore, of course: No more secrets. Everybody knew about their former names and former lives. It had been on the local noon news and
trailers were already running for more stories on the six o’clock news. Tonight, it would headline the eleven o’clock news and start again on the morning shows, then spread to regional news at noon and six and eleven, day after day until the public grew bored with it.

Or until Erin Sims was gone. Maggie slapped a brick of clay onto the work table, scooped it up and slammed it down again, working out the air bubbles and digging the backs of her knuckles into the cold lump. Just when their lives had seemed almost serene, Erin Sims was back, spreading her lies and—

Spreading some truths, too.

“Maggie.” A knock pounded on the door. “Margaret?”

Rodney. Maggie started to slip from her stool to let him in, then stopped herself. Thirty years old, a grown man.

“Come in,” she said. He did and she got up and pushed a stray chair under the ledge of a table. “Okay. Coast is clear. I’m at the back table.”

Rodney drew a finger along the tabletops, feeling his way through the room. He’d been born with an illness that affected his corneas, and transplants when he was eighteen had been a heartbreaking failure. But his blindness wasn’t the greatest loss he’d suffered. His mother, Maggie’s twin sister, Claire, had been mercilessly scarred in a car accident when he was nine. A year later, unable to cope with the reality of what had once been striking beauty, Claire had committed suicide. Ten-year-old Rodney found her lifeless body, sat with it for two days, then finally wandered down the block in New Orleans to a cathedral.

Since then, he’d been Maggie’s. Much to her father’s chagrin. As far as Rodney’s grandfather was concerned, Claire had been the angel of the family—and Maggie mortally flawed. From the moment he learned that Maggie
had filed for custody, he’d waged war against her. He took everything Claire and Rodney had owned, right down to the angel collection that had meant so much to Claire, and went to his grave trying to keep his precious, blind grandson from Maggie’s depravity.

Bastard.

She threw the clay against the table to give Rodney sound to follow, an old habit he didn’t really need. He was nearly as independent as any sighted man. He lived in what had once been a hunting cabin about a mile from Hilltop and during daylight could drive his three-wheeler on a paved path between the inn and the cabin, and around town. He worked in the office at Hilltop, attended concerts and theater and baseball games, and occasionally even dated. More than once over the years, Maggie had envisioned her sister looking down on them from the heavens, and hoped she was pleased.

“Simpson?” Rodney’s voice snapped her back.

Simpson. Oh, yes. Maggie had been commissioned to make a pair of masks for a Connecticut collector, Elijah Simpson. In the art world, he was big enough that his interest in her masks would be a boon to Maggie’s career.

“Work, as usual, huh?” he asked.

She gave a little snort. “What else should I do? Go after Erin Sims with a shotgun?” She pressed the heels of her hands into the clay, spread it and rolled it onto itself, then tossed it onto the table again.

“Be careful what you say. Sheriff Mann’s got her back.”

Maggie put her shoulders into the work. He was right: Be careful. More than once, a stray comment had, rightly or wrongly, led a man to prison.

She muscled the brick of clay into a ball, worked it with her fingers until it warmed and came alive.

“Have you got a form?” Rodney asked.

“They’re on the counter to your left. I haven’t picked one yet.”

He felt his way to the counter and fingered a few clay facial forms, molded on wig blocks or mannequin heads to become the bases for her masks. He turned a couple of them over in his hands, studying the contours with his fingers.

“This one feels nice,” he said, and brought one over to her. “Where’s Jack?”

“I don’t know. He went to see Nick Mann this morning, and Dorian, then came home and went out again. I don’t know where.”

“Church?”

“Maybe.” Maggie frowned.
Church.
Probably. Unburdening his soul to Reverend Whitmore? Oh, dear. She’d have to think about that.

Rodney felt for a stool and pulled it beneath him. “Mann was with Erin Sims a little while ago. At Engel’s.”

Maggie stopped working and looked at him. “Did she talk to you?”

“No. And even if she had, I’m not that fragile. I can handle it.”

“She has no right to ruin us just because your uncle—”

“Fucks everything in a skirt?”

“Stop it,” she snapped. Rodney didn’t understand. As perceptive as he was, there were some things he couldn’t see.

“Look at you, Maggie,” he said. “You’re talented, you’re successful, you’re still beautif—” He stopped, his eyes aimed in her general direction. “Aren’t you?”

Maggie’s heart melted. He remembered how she and Claire had been, though he’d never seen it with his own
eyes. They’d been blessed by some quirk of genetics that combined with the laws of symmetry and societal standards and made them breathtakingly beautiful in the eyes of the world. When he was little, he used to play a game—climb onto her lap and explore the contours of her face with his fingers, then pop over to Claire’s lap to try to find a difference. There was none, not until after Claire’s accident.