She went back five years, flipped through issue upon issue of small-town ordinary stuff from recitals to bake sales, but when she went back further, she stumbled upon a notable difference.
“Looking for anything in particular?” A voice beside her caused her to jump and nearly fall from the stool. An officer, blond and attractive, helped her regain her seat, a look of concern on his handsome face. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ll have to watch my stealth skills,” he said with a slight tilt of his mouth, which was borderline flirty. “Officer Ford McCall at your service.”
Darcy smiled back, not quite sure what to think of the man. Everyone here was automatically filed away in the
sheep
column, until proven otherwise, and that included overly friendly cops who popped out of nowhere to scare the bejesus out of her. “Darcy Craven,” she said, extending her hand, which he accepted with a good-natured grin. She wondered at the sudden solicitousness, hating that she couldn’t trust a single soul in this town. He didn’t seem much older than she, maybe by a few years, and although he was good-looking, he didn’t hold a candle to Rafe, not that she needed to compare. “I’m new to Cold Plains and I’m just trying to get a feel for the town. I like to read the old archived newspapers.”
“Well, you’re in luck. I’m a Cold Plains native,” he said.
She regarded him with new interest. “Really? Born and raised?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“No, I guess not,” she allowed with a small smile. If he was from here, maybe he wasn’t completely on board with all the crazy, Samuel-Grayson-groupie, fan-club stuff. “So, can you tell me why Cold Plains went from a rough-and-tumble town to the next Park City? I mean you must’ve seen some pretty big changes since you were a kid growing up here.”
“Yeah, big changes. Mostly good,” he said. “Crime is down and the streets are cleaner.”
“I would imagine a crime-free town isn’t good for business if you’re a cop,” she teased to gauge where his sense of humor landed. To her relief, he offered a chagrined chuckle.
“Yeah, well, it’s not completely crime free, so there’s always a need for law enforcement.”
“So what kind of crime are we talking?” she asked, politely fishing.
“The usual, petty theft, vandalism, the occasional burglary.”
“Hard to believe from what I’ve seen so far,” she murmured.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.
“So what was Cold Plains like before…?”
“Before Samuel Grayson?” he finished for her. She nodded. He paused as if considering his answer. Then, just when she thought he might deflect her question, he answered with a definitive edge to his tone. “Different.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant that in a good or bad way. Before she could ask for clarification, he stopped to regard her with something akin to recognition. “I know we don’t know each other, but…there’s something about your eyes that seems familiar.... Crazy, I know.”
Darcy froze the smile on her face. He’d noticed the similarity between her features and Samuel’s. She cocked her head to the side and gave a little shrug. “Hmm, my Victoria’s Secret catalog isn’t set to come out until Christmas.... Not sure where you might’ve seen me before that,” she said, relieved when he laughed.
“Ah, a girl with a sense of humor. I like that. Well, I better get back to patrol or else Chief Fargo will have my hide. I couldn’t resist saying hello to the newest pretty girl in town.”
She swiveled to face him, her elbows resting casually on the counter. “Yeah, about that. Why is everyone here so good-looking? Hard to stand out when everyone’s a looker, you know?”
“Good genes?” he supposed, then said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Well, we keep the ugly ones locked away. We’re trying to build a reputation as the prettiest town in America.”
She was fairly certain he was joking, but an odd chill raced down her spine just the same. “Well, I haven’t been carted off for the ugly camp yet, so that must mean I passed the test.”
Ford gave her an obvious once-over. “Oh yeah…you passed. With flying colors.”
She actually blushed, which was odd because Darcy hadn’t blushed since she was a preteen and went bra shopping with her mom and happened to run into a boy she was crushing on at the mall. It’d been completely awful, actually. Darcy had been horrified, thinking the boy had somehow known that inside that JCPenney bag was her first training bra. Of course he’d had no way of knowing, but Darcy had blushed from the roots of her scalp to the ends of her hair. “Thanks,” she said, wondering if the charm he poured so easily was part of an act or who he really was as a person. “I guess I’ll see you at the meeting?”
“No, I don’t much like sitting still to listen to someone yammer on for an hour. Just not my thing. I’d rather be doing something.”
Interesting. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around.”
“It’s a small town. It’s likely I’ll run into you again within the hour,” he joked, waving as he headed for the door. “Well, welcome to Cold Plains and I’ll catch you later.”
She nodded and waited a minute to return to her research. Where did Officer McCall fall into the Grayson groupie files? Something told her he wasn’t exactly a follower like everyone else. That alone was a point in his favor. But appearances were deceiving. She wasn’t about to trust anyone on first impressions alone. Maybe she’d casually mention McCall’s visit to Rafe, see what his reaction was.
Darcy lowered her head and focused on the newsprint, reading how at one time Cold Plains had been like any other small, economically depressed town, with more bars than churches and definitely less of the upwardly mobile set. A shot of downtown showed old junkers parked on the side instead of the high-end models zipping around today.
Yeah…a lot had changed. On the surface, it seemed like nothing but positive changes had been made, but at what cost? There was something weird about a town filled with pretty people. It just wasn’t right.
And she knew it had to do with Samuel Grayson. The question was…what did it have to do with her mother?
Ford McCall lost the easygoing smile the minute he was clear of the woman’s vision. Something about her begged another look—and it had nothing to do with her pretty face. She seemed familiar, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Ford hated the unknown. There was too much weird stuff going on in his hometown to discount any gut feeling.
His private cell went off and he checked the caller ID. FBI agent Hawk Bledsoe. He switched off the radio in his Escalade, so he didn’t inadvertently broadcast his conversation over the airwaves, and answered.
“McCall here.”
“Agent Bledsoe.”
“What’s up?” he asked, scanning the street as he pulled away from Main and toward the station.
“Just checking in. Any leads on the Johanna Tate case?” he asked.
Johanna Tate—Samuel Grayson’s main girlfriend up until she was found dead two months ago, eighty miles away outside Eden—was a case Ford couldn’t let go of, in spite of his boss’s less-than-supportive stance on the subject.
“No,” he answered darkly, hating that justice was being thwarted. “Nothing so far, especially when I’ve got Fargo blocking me at every turn. He doesn’t want me poking around, which tells me that’s exactly why I need to keep at it. Anything from the lab?”
The forensic evidence from beneath Johanna’s nails had been sent for testing to the FBI lab. They had far more resources, and if anything was going to show up, the FBI labs would find it.
“Not yet. These things move slow,” Hawk said. “Everyone knows Johanna was Samuel’s girl. There has to be someone who knows what happened to her. Keep asking around.”
“Why won’t you let me put some pressure on Samuel himself? He seems the most logical suspect,” Ford groused. “We need to lean on him, let him know that he’s not untouchable.”
“Not yet,” Hawk warned, pissing off Ford even more. He felt collared and neutered, tiptoeing around Samuel Grayson just because the FBI wanted to nail him with a bigger case than one murder. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Besides, you start poking at Grayson and you’ll end up with a bullet sandwich for breakfast. Trust me in this. We’ll get him, but we have to do it right. We’ve only got one shot. We can’t blow it going off half-cocked just because we’re itching to nail the guy. Promise me you’ll keep a low profile.”
“Yeah,” Ford grumbled, pulling into the station. “I’m at the station. I’ll check in if I hear anything new.”
“Good man,” Hawk said and clicked off.
Ford returned the radio to its preset and shut down his cruiser to stalk inside.
His boss, Police Chief Bo Fargo, looked up from his desk with a scowl. Fresh scratches marred his face, which only made the ornery cuss uglier. He was probably the only unattractive man allowed in Grayson’s little cluster of goons. Ford wondered at the scratches but didn’t care enough to ask, not that Fargo would’ve shared; the boss wasn’t exactly a touchy-feely, hug-your-neighbor type of guy.
“Where you been?” Fargo barked. “Couldn’t raise you on the radio.”
“On patrol,” he answered, going straight to his desk. “Radio got switched off by accident. It was only off for a minute, though.”
“That seems to happen a lot,” Fargo said, narrowing his gaze. “Got a problem with your equipment?”
“No, sir. Just an accident.”
“See that you get a handle on it, Officer,” Fargo warned.
Ford gave a curt nod and focused on his notes about Johanna Tate.
The coroner had concluded that she’d been strangled due to the ugly bruising around her larynx that was consistent with finger placement around the neck. But there were other bruises, too, that suggested a struggle, which was why Ford had made the inroads with Hawk to have the fingernail scrapings sent to the FBI lab. She’d been clothed and the sexual-assault exam had revealed no findings. And when Ford had read Fargo’s report about his interview with Grayson when they’d discovered Johanna’s body, Ford had been incensed at the piss-poor quality of the report.
“Grayson doesn’t have an alibi,” Ford had pointed out, dropping the report on Fargo’s desk once Fargo had released his supplemental information. “We need to question him again. Why isn’t Eden pushing this?”
Fargo had leveled his watery stare at Ford and said, “
We?
I don’t recall there being a
we
on this case.
I
interviewed him and the man didn’t kill his favorite girl. Eden investigators agreed. Case closed.”
Ford longed to contradict his boss, but he kept his tongue in his head. “Anyone else gave us this kind of answer and we’d be digging for more information. Why not with him?”
“Samuel Grayson is a good man and he’s broken up about Johanna. Have some respect, McCall. Mr. Grayson is grieving. I’m not about to hound him during his time of mourning.”
Yeah, Ford could see how deeply Grayson was grieving—by screwing every woman who would lift their skirts for him. “No one says you can’t be respectful in your questioning. I’d think that Grayson would want to answer our questions so we can satisfy our concerns about his involvement and move on to the next suspect. An innocent man has nothing to hide, right?”
“I cleared him. He is an innocent man.”
“What about Johanna? Doesn’t she deserve our full attention to her case?”
“Johanna, rest her soul, is gone. She doesn’t care what happens now. The fact of the matter is, we may never know what happened to her. You know that there are millions of unsolved cases in the world. Sad but true.”
“Not in Cold Plains,” Ford countered with a thread of steel.
“She didn’t die in Cold Plains, now, did she? My notes say she was found in Eden. That’s eighty miles away. And frankly, not our case. Johanna Tate’s case is Eden’s responsibility, not ours. The only reason we were brought in at all was because she was a Cold Plains resident. But as far as I’m concerned, Samuel Grayson isn’t a suspect and I’d better not find out that you’ve been harassing the man or I’ll have your badge.”
Ford had startled at the threat. Without ample cause, Fargo couldn’t strip him of his badge, but the very fact that he’d make the threat gave Ford pause. “You’re right. It’s in Eden’s court now,” Ford conceded, adding, “which is why I suggested that the FBI take a look at the forensics. They happily agreed. Whatever was under Johanna’s nails is now being tested with state-of-the-art technology. Something is bound to show up.”
Fargo stilled, his stare sharpening to a razor edge. Ford held his ground. If Grayson had nothing to hide, he’d come out smelling like a rose. “My, my…you’re a helpful guy, aren’t you?” Fargo nearly sneered.
“Just doing my job,” Ford stated evenly, refusing to let Fargo intimidate him like he bullied everyone else in this town. “I’m sure you can appreciate that, being an officer of the law yourself.”
They stared each other down, a standoff of sorts, but finally Fargo looked away first, but not before saying with a shrug, “Try to remember who you’re working for, son. You could go far if you do.”
“I know who I work for, Chief. The community of Cold Plains.”
Not Samuel Grayson.
Finished, Ford returned to his desk, his temper spiked but under control. He had to keep a cool head, or like Hawk said, he’d be munching on lead, and his case would be filed alongside Johanna’s as
unsolved.