Nighttime Guardian

The partnership with his uncle was Nathan’s last chance to prove his journalistic worth, to redeem not just his career and reputation, but his self-respect.

But working at the Argus was proving to be more of a challenge than Nathan had anticipated. For one thing, he’d been astounded to learn how poorly managed the paper had been in the last few years as Virgil’s age and flagging health had taken a toll. Circulation and ad sales were at an all-time low, and the paper relied much too heavily on filler—stories picked up from news services—with no real reporting. If the trend couldn’t be reversed, the Argus was destined to go the way of so many small-town newspapers. First, they would have to cut back from a daily circulation to weekly, and then perhaps fold altogether.

Nathan couldn’t allow that to happen. He’d poured every last cent he had into the partnership, but it was more than just financial ruin he had at stake here.

He stuck his head inside his uncle’s office. “You wanted to see me?”

“Close the door.” Virgil leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as Nathan took a seat across from his desk.

At sixty, his uncle was still an impressive-looking man. Tall and muscular, with keen eyes and a thoughtful, if sometimes mulish, disposition, he had the same world-weary air Nathan had seen on editors and publishers of much larger publications. His hair was completely gray and his face heavily lined by a lifetime of deadlines, pressure and—Nathan suspected—hard drinking. He wouldn’t be the first Dallas to succumb to the temptation of the bottle.

“I heard about Danny Weathers at the diner this morning,” Virgil said grimly.

Nathan nodded. “I was with the Buford boys last night when they found the body.”

His uncle unfolded his hands and placed them on the desk, leaning toward Nathan intently. “I heard that, too. What were you thinking, son? What in the holy hell were you doing out on the river with that pair of lowlifes?”

As always, Nathan grew a little defensive. “I had my reasons. Besides, I’m a grown man. You don’t have to worry about bad influences anymore.”

“Hell, it’s too late to worry about that,” Virgil blurted.

“Yeah, I’m a lost cause,” Nathan agreed.

As if regretting his harsh words, Virgil’s expression softened. “If I thought you were a lost cause, you wouldn’t be here, son.”

“I appreciate that.” Nathan paused, then prompted, “So, is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“Partly. I wanted to find out what you knew about the accident.”

“Not much. Only that I seem to be the only one who isn’t convinced it was an accident. I hope Sheriff McCaid has the good sense to treat this case as a homicide.”

“Homicide?” Virgil looked as if the word were almost foreign to him. “Why would he do that?”

“It’s standard procedure. Evidence could be destroyed or lost if he waits for the autopsy results.” Nathan glanced at his uncle. “Of course, maybe that’s the whole point.”

Virgil gave him a long, worried appraisal. “This isn’t Washington, D.C., son. There’s not some ‘vast conspiracy’ behind every accident.” He put quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “You’ve got to learn to think like a small-town newspaperman, not like some hotshot city reporter. If you don’t, you’re apt to make yourself some real enemies around here.”

“Isn’t that the purpose of the fourth estate?” Nathan argued. “To be cynical? To question motives? We’re supposed to be the public’s watchdog, not some cuddly pet who rolls over and plays dead.” He leaned forward in his chair, as if to stress his point. “You can bet I’m going to be all over this story, no matter who I tick off. If Danny Weathers was murdered, I won’t rest until his killer is exposed.”

Virgil sighed, running a hand through his gray hair. “Look, son, you’re the editor now, and far be it for me to tell you how to do your job. But if you ask me, there’s another story right in your own backyard you ought to be focusing on.”

Nathan lifted a brow. “Which is?”

“Shelby Westmoreland. I hear she’s back.”

That tingle again at the very mention of her name. Nathan said carefully, “Yeah, she’s back. I saw her last night. But her name’s August now. She’s married.”

“No, she’s widowed.”

“She is?” Nathan tried to keep his tone neutral, but the truth was he still hadn’t gotten over the shock of seeing her last night. She’d been sixteen when she’d left Arcadia for the last time. Her parents had come for her after yet another reconciliation, but Nathan had consoled himself with a certainty that she’d soon return. Her parents would split up again, as they always did, and Shelby would be shipped back to her grandmother.

But months had passed, and then a year. Eventually, even her letters had stopped. Nathan had finally become convinced that he would never see her again.

But there she’d stood last night, looking a little too much like the girl he’d never been able to forget.

And now his uncle had informed him that she was a widow. What kind of person would feel happy about that?

“How long has her husband been dead?” he heard himself ask.

“Just over a year. He was murdered.”

A shock wave rolled through Nathan. “My God, what happened?”

Virgil shrugged. “Best I recollect, he owned some kind of restoration business. Antiques, I think. He was working alone in his office when a gunman walked in, made him open the safe and then shot him dead. Shelby was the one who found the body.”

“Damn.” No wonder she’d seemed so fragile last night. So frightened.

Virgil nodded, his expression sober. “That was bad enough, but it got worse. Turned out she’d seen the killer driving away when she pulled into the parking lot. She was able to give the police a description. Even remembered part of the license plate under hypnosis. There was an all-out manhunt for a man named Albert Lunt, but he managed to elude the police for weeks. Then Lunt started making threats toward Shelby.”

“What kind of threats?”

“You name it. He made phone calls. Stalked her. The police even suspected he killed her dog, maybe as a warning, maybe because he was just one sick S.O.B. She was assigned protection, but eventually Lunt made his move. He broke into her house one night and waited for her with a knife. The police officer outside heard her scream and came running, but not before Lunt attacked her. Cut her pretty badly from what I heard, but she must have fought him like a demon, or he would have killed her. The cop shot him, but the wound was superficial. Lunt stood trial a few months later and was convicted of first-degree murder.”

“And Shelby?”

“She was in the hospital for a while. Annabel went out to California to be with her. She told her neighbor, Aline Henley, the girl was a mess, more so emotionally than physically.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nathan muttered. He didn’t want to think about Shelby in the hospital, fighting for her life. He didn’t want to think of her terrified, at the mercy of a brutal killer. He liked to remember her in that pink dress, sitting on her grandmother’s front porch.

He glanced at his uncle. “As fascinating as all this is, I don’t see what difference it makes. You said it happened over a year ago. It’s not news. Where’s the story?”

“The story is not what happened to Shelby out in L.A.,” Virgil said impatiently. “It’s what happened to her here.”

“You mean the monster sighting? Come on. That isn’t news, either. Besides, James Westmoreland said he concocted the whole thing for profit. You printed his confession yourself.”

Virgil shook his finger at Nathan, a habit he had when he wanted to drive home a point—or browbeat Nathan into doing something he didn’t want to. “Listen to me, son. It doesn’t matter if she saw a monster that night or not. It doesn’t matter if she saw anything. What matters is that she became a celebrity. Her story was carried by major newspapers all over the country. She was even on the ‘Tonight’ show. You don’t think people would be interested in finding out what happened to the little girl who cried monster?”

Something stirred in the pit of Nathan’s stomach. Revulsion mixed with anger. “Are you suggesting we exploit Shelby’s personal tragedy for the sake of some human-interest piece? That isn’t reporting. It’s gossip. Tabloid journalism.”

“With which you aren’t unfamiliar,” Virgil was quick to point out.

Nathan counted to ten, reminding himself that he owed his uncle more than he could ever repay him. If he had to take a little ego-bashing once in a while, so be it.

Virgil eyed him sagely. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re chasing a pipe dream when you go after Takamura. You think you’re going to uncover some big exposé out there on the river that will put you back where you were three years ago, but that’s not going to happen. That part of your life is over.”

“I realize that,” Nathan said through gritted teeth.

Virgil stared at him for a moment. “I’m not sure you do. The Argus is a chance for you to start over, rebuild your life. But you have to realize, things are different down here. Priorities are different. Takamura Industries helps put food on the table for a lot of folks in this town, so they don’t much care what’s going on inside that lab. But Shelby Westmoreland…Why, hell, son. She once claimed she saw the Pearl River Monster.”

Thinking of the Argus as his last chance rather than as a stepping-stone had been a bitter pill for Nathan to swallow. He still had a hard time imagining himself covering weddings and funerals and family reunions for the rest of his life. He couldn’t help wanting back what he’d once had. The excitement, the drama, the accolades from his peers. Everything that he’d so carelessly and shamelessly tossed away three years ago.

But his uncle was right. That part of his life was over, and things were different down here. As editor of the town’s only newspaper, Nathan had a duty and a responsibility to the community that he couldn’t afford to take lightly. He couldn’t just go after the stories that suited his purposes, the ones he deemed newsworthy. Building the Argus into a paper he could be proud of couldn’t come at the expense of his readers. He had to give them what they wanted.

And whether he liked it or not, in Arcadia, Shelby Westmoreland’s return was news.

LIKE FAIRY DUST, the treasures inside the Pearl Cove had always cast a spell on Shelby. Made from the finest gold and silver, her grandmother’s creations were truly breathtaking, but the focal point of each piece, the absolute stars of the shop were the magnificent freshwater pearls that came in shapes and sizes as varied as their delicate colors—cream, peach, pink, lavender, gold, and more rarely, blue.

Each piece and each pearl was an exquisite work of art, but the blue gems had always been Shelby’s favorite, perhaps because they were so rare and so highly coveted.

With a sigh, she tried to rein in her fascination. There was a lot of work to do in the office, and very little time in which to do it. Shelby had come in early to try and reacquaint herself with the shop’s operating procedures and accounting methods before the start of business at ten o’clock. As much as she would like to examine leisurely each enticing piece in the display cases, there were more pressing concerns at the moment.

Annabel’s faith in Shelby had touched her deeply, but she also had her misgivings about running the shop. She hadn’t worked in retail in a long time. But with her previous experience at the Pearl Cove and her accounting knowledge in general, she felt fairly confident she would be able to hold down the fort, at least until her grandmother could return to work.

If she returned, Shelby thought with a pang. The injury, sustained from a fall down the porch steps, had taken a toll. It had been over a year since she’d seen her grandmother, and Shelby had been shocked yesterday to find how much Annabel had aged in that time, how frail she now seemed. What would happen if she could never return to work, if she would always need someone to look after her?

Was Shelby prepared to move back to Arcadia permanently?

It wouldn’t be easy. She no longer had a job to worry about since she’d resigned her position at a small, independent film studio, but her home was still in L.A. Michael was buried there. How could she not go back? How could she move thousands of miles away without feeling as though she’d somehow betrayed him? Abandoned him?

Rationally, she knew that wouldn’t be the case, but her emotions were a different matter. She wasn’t ready to let go yet. She couldn’t.

Concentrate! she chided herself. With an effort, Shelby put her mind back to the task at hand, scanning the numbers on the computer screen. Recent natural disasters befalling the Japanese cultured-pearl farms had enhanced the desirability of American freshwater pearls, and it appeared that her grandmother had utilized this demand to great advantage. Not only had she increased the size and distribution of her catalogue, she had also added online shopping to the Pearl Cove’s web site. The supply of gems on hand, many of them worth several thousand dollars, would allow the shop to maintain the same level of prosperity for years to come, even with the growing scarcity of mussels.

The inventory alone would be worth a small fortune on the current market. Shelby couldn’t help but admire her grandmother’s keen business acumen. No wonder the shop rested on such a secure financial foundation.

“I see you’re wasting no time.”

The deep voice startled Shelby. She jumped slightly as her gaze shot up to meet her uncle’s. He stood in the doorway, arms folded, impeccably dressed in an expensive gray suit as he glared across the office at her.

The front door was still locked. How had he got in? Shelby wondered. Had her grandmother given him a key, even though she’d admitted to Shelby that she no longer trusted him?

Shelby wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t trusted her uncle James since his lie had made her a laughingstock in this town. She’d learned only to well what he was capable of, especially where she was concerned.

She hadn’t seen him in more than five years, and the fact that he didn’t appear to have aged a day was a startling and disturbing contrast to the deterioration Shelby had seen in her grandmother.

Tall, slender, with sun-kissed hair and piercing blue eyes, James, at forty-one, was a striking-looking man who’d left in his wake a long line of soured business deals as he’d drifted carelessly through life, looking for easy money. He wasn’t all that different from his older brother, Richard. Shelby’s father was a successful stockbroker in California, but after the final breakup with her mother, he’d gravitated from one marriage to another, searching, it seemed, for something that always eluded him.

Shelby’s grandmother was the very salt of the earth, kind and generous to a fault. How her two sons could have turned out the way they had was a puzzle to Shelby.

With pantherlike grace, James moved across the room toward her. He stopped at the desk, placing his hands on the glossy surface as he leaned toward her. “Look at you, already settled in Mother’s office.”

“I’m here because she asked me to come.” Shelby refused to let her uncle intimidate her. After all she’d been through, a small-time hustler like James hardly seemed a threat.

Still, there was something about the way he stared at her, the way his lips curled upward in the softest of sneers that chilled her blood. His hatred for her was almost a tangible thing, and such a powerful emotion couldn’t be ignored. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, her uncle frightened her. He always had.

“Oh, I don’t doubt she asked you to come,” he said coolly. “You were always her favorite. You made certain of that.”

Shelby frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Always the innocent. Poor little Shelby, all alone because her parents didn’t want her. Poor little Shelby, moping around the house, playing on sympathies, worming her way into a lonely widow’s good graces.”

“For God’s sake, I was nine years old!” Shelby said in astonishment. “You can’t honestly think I was that devious.”

“Oh, I never underestimated you.” He straightened from the desk as she rose to face him. “I still don’t.”

“Why?” Shelby forced herself to walk around the desk, challenging him on his own turf. “Why do you hate me?”

“Because you’re Shelby,” he said with a casual shrug.

She lifted her chin, gazing up at him. “I never did anything to you.”

He gave a low, bitter laugh. “You did plenty, by God. But if you think I’m going to let you waltz in here and take what’s rightfully mine, you’re in for a very nasty surprise.”

Her initial impression of him had been wrong, Shelby realized. He had changed. He was even more dangerous than she remembered, and she would be a fool to underestimate him.

“I’m here because Grandmother wants me here,” she said with an edge of defiance. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh, no?” He grabbed her suddenly, and Shelby gasped, more in surprise than pain. “You’ve seen Mother recently. She’s old and frail, and I don’t just mean physically. Her mind’s going. With the right incentive, I think the courts could be persuaded to find her incompetent.”

“You wouldn’t,” Shelby said in horror. “Even you couldn’t be that cruel. There’s nothing wrong with Grandmother’s mind, and you know it.”

“Then how come she put a nutcase like you in charge of her business?”

Shelby’s heart thudded against her chest. What did he mean? What did he know?

He grinned, as if reading her mind. “I know your dirty little secret, Shelby. You had to be hospitalized after you were attacked by your husband’s killer. You were sent to the psychiatric ward, weren’t you?”

Shelby gasped. “How did you know that?”

“I have my ways. I know a lot of things about you, Shelby. You’d be surprised. You went a little crazy, the way I heard it. Saw monsters everywhere.” He paused, smiling, enjoying himself. “They still talk about you at that hospital, you know. The nurses still remember your screams, your little sleepwalking excursions.”

So he’d been to the hospital. He’d talked to the people who had cared for her. But why? To use the information against her somehow?

Shelby closed her eyes briefly. She had no wish to be reminded of that time, to revisit the terror of those nightmares, but James’s taunts had already opened the wounds.

She tried to struggle away from him, but his grasp tightened. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement in the doorway. A man’s voice said sharply, “What’s going on in here?”

James released her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, and Shelby staggered back a step. Nathan was instantly by her side, steadying her. He towered over them both. James had once seemed enormous to Shelby, but now she realized that he was only an average-sized man. A bully who was suddenly dwarfed in Nathan’s powerful presence.

“The front door was open. When I came in I heard voices back here. Are you okay?” Nathan asked Shelby. He held her arm gently, but Shelby winced at the tenderness of her skin.

He turned slowly back to James. “I’ll ask you again. What’s going on?”

James shrugged, his expression suddenly benign. He smoothed his hand down his silk tie. “A little family powwow. Nothing for you to be concerned about. Unless, of course, you’re looking to turn a family squabble into front-page news.”

“Shelby?”

Nathan was looking to her for confirmation of James’s explanation. All she had to do was say the word and he would take care of her uncle. He would defend her just as ferociously as he had when they were children. Shelby didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.

She also knew that she couldn’t draw Nathan into her personal problems. She had to find a way to deal with James on her own.

“He’s right,” she said, glancing up in time to see her uncle’s smirk. “We were having a business discussion.”

Nathan didn’t look as if he bought it for a second, but there was very little he could do under the circumstances. “Well,” he said, his gaze troubled, “if you’re finished, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, too.”

“We aren’t finished,” James said smoothly. “Not by a long shot. But the rest can wait. I’ve always been a patient man.”

His smile didn’t fool Shelby one bit. Nor did it deceive Nathan. His eyes narrowed as James walked over and patted Shelby’s shoulder.

“We’ll talk again real soon, Shelby, honey. In the meantime, you take care. I worry about you out there on the river, all by your lonesome. You always were scared of your own shadow.” His laughter was soft and mocking as he turned and headed for the door. He said over his shoulder, “Now, you call me if you see that monster again, you hear?”

Chapter Four

“What the hell was that all about?” Nathan demanded before James barely had time to get through the door.

“He’s just upset that Grandmother put me in charge.” Shelby tried to shrug off the incident, but Nathan could see she was still shaken. Her face was pale, and her eyes glittered just a little too brightly. She walked out to the showroom, as if to assure herself that James had really left. Nathan followed her. “He’s worried about the business, I guess.”

“Worried about getting his hands on Miss Annabel’s money, you mean.” Nathan had never liked James Westmoreland, and after that summer when he’d made Shelby’s life a living hell, Nathan had hated him even more.

He’d never known the full truth of what happened down by the river that night—what Shelby had actually witnessed—though he’d never doubted for a minute that she’d seen something. But after James had claimed that he’d made the whole thing up and gotten Shelby to go along with him, everyone in town—the whole country, it seemed—had ended up laughing at her.

Nathan would have taken great pleasure in pounding James Westmoreland into a bloody pulp, but he’d only been a kid and James had been a grown man. He would have throttled Nathan if given half a chance, but things were different now. If James ever so much as laid a hand on Shelby again…

Nathan drew a deep breath, trying to quell the gnawing urge to go track James down right now and settle that old score. But he didn’t think Shelby would welcome his interference. She didn’t seem too happy about his presence in general.

He thought about what he’d overheard James say to her—that she’d been hospitalized after her attack. That the nurses still remembered her screams. Those bleak images ate at Nathan. He hated to think of Shelby so vulnerable, alone and frightened.

She’d been through something pretty horrible, and yet here she was, a survivor, a woman with more inner strength than probably even she knew.

Virgil was right. Her story would make a hell of a human-interest piece.

“So what brings you by so early?” She toyed with the filmy scarf tied at her neck. The blue floral pattern brought out the azure of her eyes and the creamy quality of the pearls in her lobes. Her hair was cut in a short, choppy style that looked as if she’d taken the shears to it in desperation, but that had, in reality, probably cost a fortune at some exclusive Beverly Hills salon. She looked both elegant and sophisticated standing behind a display case, and it struck Nathan anew how many years had come and gone since he’d last seen her.

He moved around to the other side, so they were standing face-to-face, with only the expanse of the glass case between them. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, and we didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night.”

“No, I guess we didn’t.” She paused, her gaze anxious. “Have you heard anything more about the body they found in the river?”

“Not much. His name was Danny Weathers.”

She nodded. “Yes, Dewayne told me last night. The name sounds familiar.”

“He was my age. We used to hang out sometimes.” Nathan frowned, remembering Danny Weathers as a boy, the times they’d gone fishing together, camped out on the river together. Nathan had used their childhood friendship as a way to reconnect with Danny once he’d found out Danny worked for Takamura. Now Danny was dead, and Nathan had a bad feeling—a very bad feeling—that it might be because Danny had talked to him. If that was the case, it was as Nathan had told his uncle—he wouldn’t rest until the truth came out.