Deadly Reunion

“So I don’t need you to watch my back any longer.”

“I think you do.” She had tunnel vision where Detry was concerned and would never accept that he was innocent, and she could still be in danger from sources unknown. Not good. She needed him and couldn’t even see it. Or refused to, because he’d hurt her.

Whatever she said, he wasn’t leaving her there alone. He was finally there for her, one hundred percent there, but he feared it was too late.

“Don’t risk your life just because you’re angry with me,” he said. “I think someone else wrote the note for some other reason, and you’re still in immediate danger—maybe more than you think.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, her eyes flashing furiously.

“I am?”

“You’ve been wrong before.”

In court, about her, she meant. Boone knew she was right. He considered apologizing, not for choosing to defend his client over her, but for thinking there were no other possibilities for the evidence having disappeared beyond her being negligent.

That the gun could have been purposely hidden had never occurred to him. Cliff Haggis, the first responder the night of the murder from the small, understaffed, Copper City PD, was a decorated, well-respected police detective. He’d testified he had not seen the weapon Angie had described. Likewise, there was no reason to believe the crime-scene investigation team, called in from nearby Cincinnati, would have any reason to thwart the murder investigation. The only possibility he’d come up with was that Angie had somehow missed the real perp inside the mansion, who had taken the weapon at some point and fled unnoticed before the rest had shown up.

He’d played the case the way he needed to in order to free an innocent man, and he couldn’t apologize for that.

“Okay, so I was wrong—once,” he admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong now. Making faulty assumptions about someone’s guilt could get you killed.”

“There’s steam coming out of my ears, Boone.”

As determined as she was not to listen to him, he was just as determined to protect her. “How about if I keep my opinions to myself and tag along with you anyway?” he asked.

“Why would you want to?”

Boone considered his answer carefully. Because he owed her. Because he thought she was wrong about the threat to her life and didn’t want her to be dead wrong. Because…

“Because I missed you.”

Her cheeks flushed pink. “Quit saying that!”

He shrugged. “Can’t help it.”

“And don’t be charming.”

“Me? I don’t know the meaning of the word.” He grinned, because he was getting through to her. He could tell. “I’m just trying to make you happy.”

Angie, exasperated, waved her hand in the air. “Never mind. Tag along if you want to, while I dig up the gun, but don’t talk to me.”

“Even if I see danger?”

“You’re causing me to have premature aging lines,” she told him.

“See? Even when I’m the exact way you want me to be, you’re not happy.”

He might be right about that, and what did that say about her?

“I’m not talking to you anymore.” Leaving Boone behind, Angie walked up the concrete sidewalk to the cottage, where she rapped once on the door to announce her arrival and entered.

A woman in her late sixties with frosted, dark blond hair and weathered skin sat behind the desk inside reading a bestseller Angie recognized based on a real serial killer. In a cemetery. Gutsy.

The woman met her eyes with some emotion in hers that came and went quickly, spooking Angie. Then her face took on a world-weariness that held a hint of amusement.

“Took you long enough to get in here,” the woman said, laying her novel carefully on the side of her desk and joining Angie at the counter. “I watched you two for a while, but then I got bored. Too much conflict, not enough resolution.”

Uncanny how that about nailed down her entire life, Angie thought.

“You and that fella married?”

“No,” Angie said firmly, ignoring the giant moth trying to take off in the pit of her stomach. “Never.”

“Good thing. You’d be a divorce waiting to happen.”

Wow, if outsiders could tell, she’d done the right thing disengaging herself from Boone. Or trying to, anyway. The door shut behind her and she sensed Boone right back at her side. Close. Very close.

She elbowed him. It was like hitting concrete. He backed off, and she turned her attention to the cemetery’s caretaker. The nameplate on the front counter said she was Ida Zlotsky.

“Ida, I have a problem.” Leaving out as much information as she could, Angie explained who she was and what she wanted to do, including the part about digging up possible evidence. Ida gazed unabashedly at Boone the whole time. Angie wondered if she’d even listened, but then Ida spoke without looking at her.

“Whose grave?”

“Laurie Detry’s.”

With a hard blink, Ida turned her attention from Boone to her—another strange reaction, Angie thought. But since the woman wasn’t saying no, she didn’t challenge her on it, just presented her ID and badge.

Ida checked both with half an eye, then returned her attention to Boone. “He a cop, too?” she asked with a wide smile at him.

“No,” Angie and Boone both said together, only Boone’s “no” sounded more like “no way, never.” Angie gave him a long-suffering look and put her identification away in her bag.

“That was too quick,” Ida said. “What, is he undercover or something? A rogue cop? ’Cause you look just like that rogue cop on that forensics show a couple seasons ago, the one who got killed—”

The very thought of Boone dying hit too close to home and made Angie cringe. Apparently some part of her wasn’t that mad at him. Go figure.

“I’m a criminal-defense lawyer,” Boone said. “I’m here to keep her out of jail.”

Angie thrust her thumb backward toward Boone. “And I’m pretending he’s not here.”

Ida’s pale green eyes lit up. Good thing someone was finding the whole situation funny, Angie thought, because she was nearing the edge of her patience.

“Now, Ida, have you noticed anything happening around here lately you might consider weird?”

“Yeah.” Ida nodded seriously. “You two.”

“You walked right into that one, Angie.” Boone chuckled.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Angie said to the woman. She threw a steely-eyed, “please be quiet” expression over her shoulder at Boone, then turned back to the caretaker. “So would it be all right if we looked for that evidence at the gravesite?”

Ida pushed back wayward bangs from her eyes and grinned from ear to ear. “Have at it. I’ll even look it up on our map and save you the trouble of finding it.”

“Excellent.”

“As long as I can watch what you’re doing.”

Angie sighed. This was just not her day. Not her week. If her sister’s life wasn’t hanging by a thread, she would cash in her metal detector and go home. “It’s police business,” she said, trying to dissuade the clerk and hoping the woman didn’t decide to call the precinct. “Could be dangerous.”

“Honey, I used to work in a biker bar. I can handle danger.”

“I might need Ida’s help,” Boone said. Angie shot him with her eyes, but he chose not to shut up. “She probably has self-defense tricks up her sleeve I never thought of.”

“You betcha,” Ida said, winking at him. “Honey, if you don’t want this eye magnet, I’d like a crack at him.”

“Have at it,” Angie said, rolling her eyes at Boone’s grin. Ida didn’t notice—she was too busy gazing at Boone.

“You sure you’re a lawyer?” she asked him. “’Cause I think you look like one of those handsome mobsters in the movies.”

Lawyer or mobster? Too good to resist, even considering she had taken a vow of silence where Boone was concerned. Turning, Angie opened her mouth, but Boone’s fingers suddenly covered her lips to shush her.

“Don’t even start,” he warned, his dark eyebrows slanting.

She couldn’t speak anyway. The last thing she’d expected was his touching her—or the joy flooding her from the contact.

She stared up at him, confused, and to her amazement, he looked just as startled as she did. But she wasn’t the reason. Turning, she followed his gaze.

Ida stood there, holding a gun in her hand.

Splitting apart to opposite sides of the room like they had been working together for years, Angie and Boone simultaneously drew their own weapons, ready for a stand-off.

THREE

“Relax. I was just holding it up to show you two I had it. I wasn’t going to shoot the thing.” Ida’s wrinkles grew even deeper as she gingerly put the gun down on the counter. “If you two don’t beat all. Saying how dangerous what you’re here to do is, and then spending time making goo-goo eyes at each other so you don’t even notice someone has a gun until they could have shot you.”

“She has a point, Angie,” Boone said, moving his jacket to holster his Glock. “Better stop making goo-goo eyes at me. You’re too distracting.”

Like she needed this? Angie scowled at the other woman. “I did not make goo-goo eyes at Boone.”

Ida just smiled at Boone, who gave her that boyish grin Angie thought he kept reserved for her. So much for thinking she was special. With a fast sigh, Angie reholstered her own weapon at her ankle and checked Ida’s. “It’s loaded.”

“Of course it is. What good would an empty gun be?”

She liked the logic. The woman reminded her a lot of herself, and Angie wasn’t sure if she liked that or not. She returned the weapon to Ida. “Better put it back wherever you keep it.”

“Sure,” Ida said. A few seconds later, the firearm was safely locked inside a steel counter drawer. “I only got it out because you said digging up what you’re after could be dangerous. But I should have figured you’d both be carrying already. I’ll be safe enough, I guess.”

Angie bit her tongue to keep from asking Ida if she had a permit for the weapon, because if the caretaker didn’t, then she would have to do something about it, and she didn’t need further delays. She could also have asked Ida what could go on at a cemetery that would require protection, but truly, she didn’t want to know.

Striding over to the door, she moved her arm in a windmill motion, gesturing for them to follow her. Outside, she took in the surrounding area, suddenly edgy again. What she was looking for, she wasn’t certain. She still didn’t believe Detry was coming after her right now, but Ida’s suddenly brandishing a firearm had made her anxious.

As had Boone’s touching her. She was still vulnerable to him, no matter how much she thought otherwise. But Boone was as much a threat to her sister’s life as Detry was in a way, because Boone refused to believe her. If she fell for him all over again, she might get goo-goo-eyed for real, and let him convince her he was right, and then she would give up her mission. Chloe could end up dead.

She had to remain strong and get this done.

First things first. She needed her metal detector and shovel, but she didn’t want to ask Boone for any favors. So she merely pointed to his trunk.

“Aren’t you being just a bit childish with this ‘no talk’ thing?” Boone asked, getting his keys out.

Probably, but she didn’t care. The less contact she had with him, the less she would think about him. But she wasn’t telling him that. Retrieving her tools, she saw Ida smile from ear to ear, and she lifted her eyebrows at her in question. “Something amusing you?”

“You two. You’re more fun than a soap opera.” Ida waved her hand in a northerly direction and set the pace, telling them Laurie Detry’s grave was a thousand feet or so from the office building.

“So, Ida, what was it like working in a biker bar?” Boone asked.

That was all the encouragement the older woman needed. In the next five minutes, Angie learned more about Ida Zlotsky than she’d ever imagined possible. Years ago, her husband had walked out on her, she’d had two babies to support, and no car, and waitressing at the biker bar was the only work within walking distance.

“I thought I was going to die when he left,” Ida said. “But I got my act together, and I made it.”

“I understand that,” Boone said. “My mom was in about the same situation when I was a kid. When she got married, she thought she would be able to stay home and raise me, but it didn’t happen that way, and she wound up working two jobs. It was rough.”

He asked Ida another question, but Angie stopped listening. Boone had gone through a really bad childhood, just like her? He’d never told her. And this caring side of him where Ida was concerned—she’d never seen it with anyone other than herself. He seemed genuinely interested in the caretaker as a person and not just in passing time till they got to the grave.

Her eyes sweeping the area, Angie listened to Ida talking about how she’d learned to make a mean tequila sunrise at the bar, and also how to swing a baseball bat effectively—at two bikers who just wouldn’t stop fighting. She’d also never gotten held up.

“The bikers watched over me.”

God had watched over her, Angie immediately thought. She knew she ought to tell Ida that, and would have before Cliff’s death. But now, doubt held her tongue captive. If God was watching over believers, He had to have been watching over Cliff. So what had happened? Cliff had told her many times he had great faith in God’s seeing him through his problems. So how did he get to the point of suicide?

No, she couldn’t say a thing to Ida. She still believed in God, but she was no longer so certain of the answers that she wanted to jump into leading people like Ida to Him—if Ida indeed was an unbeliever. What if the cemetery caretaker had questions that she just couldn’t answer—like she herself had about Cliff? Anything she might say, including doubts, might turn the woman away from God. So Angie kept quiet, feeling guilty for doing so.

“When he was young, my son didn’t like his mother working in a bar. He was gonna be somebody, and he didn’t want people thinking he came from the wrong side of the tracks.”

“Boy, do I understand that.”

Boone’s simple, earnest words got to Angie, and her heart went out to him.

“My daughter complained people at school called her trash because I worked there. But I stayed, because it brought in good money and kept a roof over their heads. In the long run, it didn’t matter anyway. My son ended up in jail, and my daughter—she died. I’m all alone.”

Angie’s heart clenched again, this time for Ida. She met the other woman’s eyes. Really looked at her—and saw the same pain she’d seen reflected in her own many times. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it is to not have anyone.”

Ida nodded.

“Belonging to a church helped me. It’s like having family around.” The next closest thing, especially when the family you’d been born into hated you. “We’re having a bring-a-dish lunch after services Sunday. Lots of ladies your age to talk to, if you’re interested.”

Ida waved her hand through the air. “I’d never fit in with church people. I’m not that good.”

“Don’t worry, neither am I,” Angie assured her.

“I actually loved church when I was a kid,” Boone said out of the blue.

Angie turned to look at him, frowning. The eccentric caretaker was getting more information out of Boone about his childhood than she’d ever managed to. Had she really been the right person for him, or had she just been fooling herself?

Boone added, “But I’ll never go back.”

“Why not?” Ida asked.

At first, Boone hesitated, but then he shrugged as they followed the access road past a couple of rows of gravesites. “Unfortunately, those nice, friendly church people soured when my dad got falsely accused of a crime and went away, and my mother couldn’t afford to meet her tithe. They asked her if she’d like to be taken off the membership rolls, and she accepted. We never went back.”

“That’s why I don’t go.” Ida sniffed. “Hypocrisy.”

“I agree—except for Angie,” Boone said. “You can trust her totally.”

“Oh, no, Ida, now I’m going to have to like the guy again,” Angie joked to cover up the flood of compassion Boone’s story had started in her. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she sensed his gaze on her again, and she sucked in her breath to stop herself from telling him how sorry she was about his childhood and his father, and the church people. How she wished she could change his life for him. How she wished she could make everything right between them and overlook their differences because she needed to love and be loved.

Just like her sister was overlooking everything scary about Detry because of her needs. The realization brought Angie up short, but before she could explore it further, Ida stopped and pointed down a long row of graves.

“The Detry one is at the end.”

Boone followed Ida down the wide path, his dark blue gaze constantly watching everything around them, and Angie followed him. Ida stopped at a lavish gravestone with the engraving “To My Darling Wife. I never stopped loving you.”

Love as in two holes in his wife’s forehead. Angie’s skin crawled. Detry terrified her. That could be dangerous, because she needed to keep her wits about her. Lord, help me not to be afraid.

This is not about you, she thought.

Lord, please help me save my sister from him.

That was better—she felt a peace about that. Scanning the ground in the front and rear of the stone for signs of recent digging, she ended up disappointed. Nothing but nicely trimmed grass that colored the ground a rich green everywhere. Upkeep charges on the grave must run a fortune. What a man, that Warren Detry.

“At least we know where some of the insurance money went.” A lavish gravesite and romancing her sister, who liked nice, expensive things after growing up poor. Angie’s thoughts went back to her earlier realization about Chloe’s overlooking Detry’s past and that he was almost old enough to be her father. Her sister had always had a passion for money, which apparently Detry had, in spades. Detry could take care of her.

Yeah, like he took care of Laurie Detry.

Not that she was harping on Chloe. Angie rotated the power knob on the metal detector to On and swept it over the ground around the grave. She understood her sister’s need for money. It represented security. Her own passion had been finding love—that was her form of security. Love was something she’d sorely missed growing up and meant everything to her. Used to be, she’d do anything to get love.

But now, her focus was turned to Christ, and she was pursuing a relationship with Him and letting God supply the love and security. Only with Boone so close, her inclination was to forget all that and fall into his arms. It would be so easy.

Trying to forget what she wanted to do, she concentrated on what she needed to do and frowned at the expanse of grass around the gravestone. The gauge hadn’t budged. A wave of disappointment hit her. Maybe Cliff’s words about letting the dead rest in peace hadn’t been a word puzzle, but rather, an instruction to her, and he’d hidden the evidence somewhere else. If only there was some way of knowing for sure that he hadn’t buried it somewhere around the cemetery…

Her eyes darted up, surveyed the area, and she spotted a camera in a nearby oak. She was right. Spycams.

“Ida, do you have access to the surveillance footage?” she asked, pointing toward the tree.

Ida shifted position, as she took in the camera, and she shook her head. “Those are only up for show to scare off the juvenile delinquents.”

Disappointed, Angie turned toward Boone. He had walked from the graves to the chain-link fence that bordered the east side of the cemetery, his dark gaze studying everything but her. She’d have to break her vow of silence to him after all.

“Apparently, I was wrong,” she said in his general direction. He still didn’t look at her.

She carried the metal detector the dozen or so yards to where he was, and repeated, with a spread of her arms to emphasize she was speaking, “Apparently, I was wrong, Boone.”

A light squeal erupted from the detector, and startled, Angie almost dropped it. She stared down at the search coil at the bottom of the rod, and the cluster of marigolds near it.

Boone did likewise. She stepped closer to him. Right over the single cluster of candy-orange marigolds in the line of yellow ones, the squeal became louder and the gauge stick shot up.

“That’s either your evidence, or you’ve found buried treasure,” Ida said from behind them.

“In this case, maybe both,” Angie said.

Boone saw the light in Angie’s eyes. If she’d found the missing murder weapon and by some remote possibility Detry’s prints were on it in a manner that proved murder, that meant he had been wrong and had been directly responsible for a murderer going free. A mistake like that was inexcusable—not to mention what he’d done to Angie in court.

On the other hand, he was not looking forward to what was more likely to happen—someone else’s prints being found on the gun—maybe even Cliff’s. That would take all the light right back out of Angie’s eyes.

Either way, he almost wished the evidence could stay buried. He simply could not be wrong, and he didn’t want Angie hurt all over again.

The squeal was maxed out, so Angie turned off the metal detector. The sudden silence was velvet to her ears.

“Cliff must have picked those flowers specifically so you would notice them,” Boone said. He turned to Ida and explained in a manner that fully invited her sympathizing with him, “She has a car painted the same orange that’s on candy corn.”

For a change, instead of agreeing with Boone, Ida smiled at Angie. “Nice choice. At least other drivers can’t claim they didn’t see you coming.”

“Ida, I’m beginning to like you a lot,” Angie said. Boone shook his head in mock disgust, and she went back to looking at the flowers. The candy-orange flowers were smaller than the others, another tip-off they’d been planted later. Cliff had to have purposely dug up the site and replanted with those to get her attention. It was time to dig.

Pulling a camera from her purse, Angie checked the film and snapped a couple of pictures, then placed everything she carried except the shovel on the ground, making sure the camera was accessible.

With latex gloves ready nearby from the supply she brought with her, just in case she was successful today, she dug, stopping from time to time to document the uncovering of evidence with her camera. The wind that was supposed to bring in forecasted thunderstorms picked up, cooling her off some as she worked her muscles.

After a while, she glanced up at Boone. His eyes were sweeping the perimeter of the cemetery as he continued to protect her from an enemy he still considered unknown. As irritating as it was that he wouldn’t believe her about the danger being nil right then, that Boone cared enough to still be there no matter what kind of fire she set at his feet took just a bit of the hurt in her heart away.

A few minutes later, she unearthed the weapon, a Colt Model 1911, .45 caliber, semi-automatic pistol, a match to the bullets recovered and to the antique gun she’d seen near the body. It was in a sealed evidence bag along with the chain of custody form, which had only one name written on it—Cliff’s.

The murder weapon.

Ida’s whole face was puckered up, reflecting the “eeew” factor of reality murder that never could quite come through in suspense novels. “There’s dried blood on that thing, isn’t there?”

Blood, and Angie didn’t want to think about what else as she put on her gloves.

“Don’t detectives use evidence boxes for weapons now?” Boone asked her.

She started to speculate that maybe the bag was all Cliff had handy when he stole it from the scene, but Ida was right there, watching both of them like she was getting paid to do so, so Angie only shrugged, not wanting to give away too much information. Holding the bag by one corner, she carefully placed it into an empty compartment in her oversized purse, specks of dirt and all, and started to push the soil back into the hole with her shovel.