Feeding the Fire (17 page)

“You need protein and you need to rest. Milk gives you the protein. Drink up.”

Her tone was very final, so he stopped arguing. He couldn’t complain about her being a strict nurse when he’d demanded she be the one to care for him. Besides, he’d never had a woman stay the night and cook for him before. He needed to take full advantage of it. Instead of complaining, he took a large sip of his milk and dove into his breakfast. He was starving, for some reason.

“Did we eat dinner last night?”

“Yep. I picked up a Five Guys bacon cheeseburger for you on the way home. You devoured it.”

He had no recollection. That medicine they gave him was so strong that the entire evening was like a fuzzy dream he couldn’t quite remember. That whack on his head probably hadn’t helped. Pieces came to him in short flashes he wasn’t able to put together. For some reason, thoughts of his old scout meetings came to mind although that made no sense at all. He hadn’t had anything to do with all that since he was in the seventh grade.

Pepper sat down opposite him after a few minutes with her own plate and a handful of medicine bottles. She dosed out a couple of pills and handed them to him. “Take these.”

He did as he was told, chasing the medicine with more milk and some bacon. About ten minutes later, as he scooped the last bite of eggs into his mouth, he noticed his limbs felt heavier, like his bones had been filled with lead instead of marrow. The aches and pains had faded to a dull annoyance in the back of his mind, but the medication seemed to muffle everything along with the pain.

“Is your medicine kicking in?”

Grant looked over at her with eyes that could barely stay open. “I think so. Holy crap, that stuff is strong. How am I supposed to get anything done when they make me feel like this? I can barely hold my fork, much less a fire hose.”

“You’re not supposed to get anything done. And you’re certainly not hauling around a fire hose anytime soon. You’re supposed to rest and heal. That’s it.”

That sounded like Grant’s version of hell. He hated just sitting around being idle, but with the way he felt, he had no choice. At least for a day or two. Then, maybe the pain would subside enough that he could cut back on the pain medication and feel normal again.

“Do you want to lie down?” she asked.

“I just got up. How about you help me to my recliner?”

“Sure.” Pepper smiled and helped him up out of his chair. They moved together to the area of the loft where he had his big-screen television, leather couch, and strategically placed love seat with dual recliners. He sat down in his favorite seat and pulled the tab on the side to raise his legs. He watched as Pepper moved around, fussing over him. She scooped up a blanket from the couch and threw it over his legs and propped a pillow behind his head. “Do you want me to turn on the television?” she asked.

“Not right now. Just come sit with me for a while before I fall asleep again.”

Pepper nodded and walked around the love seat to sit on the other side. She raised the legs on her side, creating a cozy recliner for two.

“Did you sleep with me last night?” He had the faint recollection of them lying side by side, but that side of the bed was still neatly made when he got up this morning.

“No. After you finally fell asleep, I came out here and slept on the couch. I was afraid I’d bump into one of your injuries in the night.”

“You’re not going to hurt me,” he insisted. “And if you did, it’s a small price to pay for having you snuggled up beside me all night. Although, this isn’t so bad, either.” Grant lifted his right arm up so Pepper could rest her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “This medicine makes me fuzzy,” he complained.

“You’re not supposed to be concentrating; you’re supposed to be healing. And it’s not nearly as strong as whatever they gave you last night, trust me.”

“Uh-oh. Did I do something?”

“You were certainly mouthy.”

Grant groaned. “Ugh. What did I say?” He tried to remember the conversation from the night before, but it was even harder now that he had the pain medication pumping through his veins. “Was I rude? Did I insult a doctor? Fondle a nurse?”

“No, no. You were your ever-charming self at the hospital. When we got home, we talked some. Mainly about your dad.”

That was even worse. Was that why he had fuzzy images of scout patches and ice cream in his head? Had the drugs really caused him to spill his most painful memory without him even realizing it? “I probably said too much, then.”

“No. You said what you needed to say. And I think getting that off your chest was healthy. That had to be a hard thing to carry around all those years. Like you said the other night, that’s what we’re here for. I’m glad to be someone you can share it with. Your secrets are safe with me. I have relationship privilege, after all.”

That was a relief. He wasn’t happy about what he might’ve said, but at least he didn’t have the immediate worry of her spreading the tale of his father’s infidelity all over town. “And what about your secret, Pepper? I bared my soul. I think it’s your turn.”

He felt Pepper stiffen in his arms for a moment. “I told you that I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t want to, or that it’s uncomfortable to talk about. I just can’t.”

“Not even when I’m on drugs and will forget it all tomorrow?”

“Not even then. It’s not my secret to tell, Grant.”

Grant sighed, the medication luring him even deeper into oblivion. “You know what sucks?”

“What?” she asked, snuggling against his chest.

“We’re not even keeping our own secrets. We’re living with these burdens and suffering from the weight of them because of other people’s shit. It just seems to spill over into our lives.”

Pepper had no response to that, but even if she had, he wouldn’t have heard her. As he drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that their relationship was slowly falling apart and there was nothing they could do about it.

Chapter Sixteen

Monday morning, Logan entered the Rosewood Sheriff’s Department for the first time. He’d anticipated a quiet morning, but then he’d received a frantic call from Jeanette Kincaid. The police had taken her husband in for questioning.

This was the first he’d heard from the Kincaids since she’d come by the office the week before. Pat never showed to speak with him, but Logan had expected that, since her husband didn’t seem to think there was a problem. When nothing happened, part of him had decided Jeanette was paranoid and they weren’t going to arrest Pat. Then again, he figured it was inevitable that he would end up down here to get one of his clients out of jail sooner or later.

He stopped at the front desk and spoke to the receptionist there. “I’m Logan Anthony, attorney at law. I’m here to see my client, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Go through those doors,” she said.

As he approached, a loud buzzing sound unlocked the door and Logan went through it and down the corridor. At the end, a deputy was sitting behind a plexiglass window. The officer had to walk him through the process of signing in, turning over any sharp or hazardous objects, and getting buzzed through the next door.

Simon Chamberlain greeted him on the other side. “Mr. Anthony,” he said curtly. “We’ve got your client in our interrogation room.” He turned and Logan fell in step beside him down the corridor.

“Has he been arrested?” Logan asked.

“No, sir. He’s just here for official questioning.”

Official questioning.
That translated to: they wanted to arrest him but didn’t have enough information yet. Hauling him down here and making him sweat would loosen his tongue and hopefully give them enough rope to hang him with it. “Does he know he can leave at any time? That he doesn’t have to talk to you?”

Simon shrugged. “He hasn’t asked to leave or hesitated at all to answer questions. He didn’t even ask for an attorney until his wife insisted on it. You’re his lawyer, you can tell him he can leave. But we do have some questions we’d like answered and we’d rather not arrest him and make a mess of this until we’re certain. This is a delicate case.”

“And a high-pressure one to solve,” Logan noted.

“Yes, it is. We don’t get a lot of stuff like this in Rosewood. But we’ve got a good case against Mr. Kincaid.” Simon stopped outside a door that read
INTERROGATION ROOM 1
. “Before you haul your client out of here and clam up, you might want to see what we have to say first.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Officer Chamberlain.”

Simon nodded and opened the door. Inside, Pat Kincaid was sitting at an aluminum table across from Sheriff Todd.

“Sheriff, can I have a few moments with my client?”

Sheriff Todd sighed and pushed back his chair. “Would either of you like some coffee?”

“Sure, black please.” Pat said with an upbeat smile. The tall, lean man with the dark mustache didn’t seem at all concerned that he was one wrong answer away from being arrested.

Once the door shut behind them, Logan slipped into Sheriff Todd’s chair and frowned at Pat. “My name is Logan Anthony, I’m a local attorney. Your wife hired me to represent you.”

Pat shrugged. “I know. She mentioned that, but you’re just wasting your time, Mr. Anthony. This is all a big misunderstanding. That’s why I didn’t bother with coming to see you earlier.”

“You’re in the police interrogation room. I think it’s gone past a simple misunderstanding. Why didn’t you call me the minute they showed up at your house?”

He shrugged. “They said they just wanted to ask me a couple questions. No big deal.”

“ ‘No big deal’? Pat, they’re trying to nail about fifteen counts of aggravated criminal surveillance on you. That’s a Class A misdemeanor and
each count
can earn you up to a two-thousand-dollar fine and a year in jail. Never mind that it could land you on the sex offender list for the rest of your life.”

“They’re not going to convict me. I’m sorry Jeanette even dragged you into this thing, but I’m not the peeper.”

“As your attorney, I’m glad to hear that. But what I need is something to prove to the police that you’re not. I wish you’d come to see me before now so we could have this discussion without police swarming all around us. Tell me you have an alibi.”

“I do,” Pat said brightly.

Logan breathed a sigh of relief. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

The relief immediately faded away and tension crept back into Logan’s shoulders. “Yes, you can. I’m your attorney. We have attorney-client privilege. You can tell me anything.”

Pat wrinkled his large nose and made a sucking sound with his teeth and tongue. “I don’t know. I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”

“Were you doing something illegal on the nights the peeper was reported?”

“Technically, yes.”

Logan had apparently picked a winner when he chose this case. “
More
illegal than peeping in women’s windows?”

“I don’t know the law, Mr. Anthony. I’m less worried about myself than I am about my friend. He’s doing me a favor, trying to help me out. I’d rather not get him in trouble if I don’t have to. I’m not the peeper. I’m not going to confess to a crime I did commit to avoid being prosecuted for one I didn’t. There’s got to be a way to prove my innocence without bringing my arrangement with Boyd into this.”

“There might be, but you’ve got to tell me the truth. It may not have to go beyond these walls, but I need to know where you were on all the nights in question.”

Pat sighed and sat back in his chair. “I’ve been working evenings at Boyd Foley’s chicken houses for extra money.”

That was the problem. “Under the table?”

Pat nodded. “I needed some extra cash and he offered to let me come work in the evenings after my shift at the Piggly Wiggly. I couldn’t be peeking in women’s windows because I was out at Boyd’s farm shoveling chicken shit.”

“Boyd wouldn’t have any record of you being out there, would he?”

“I don’t reckon so. He wouldn’t write it down if he wasn’t putting it on the books. It was a cash transaction and no one knew about it but the two of us.”

Logan’s forehead planted into the palm of his hand. Of course. “Let me ask you one more question then, Pat. If you were out at Boyd’s farm working, why did they find your boot print at one of the crime scenes?”

At that, Pat could only shake his head. “I have no idea. That’s the part that gets me. When the cops asked me about the boots, they were in my closet just where I’d left them. I don’t even know the young lady whose window had my shoeprints. I wasn’t anywhere near that place that night. I was out at Boyd’s.”

“You weren’t wearing those boots out at the farm?”

“No. Those are my good boots. I wear my old, worn-out pair for mucking. Those boots should’ve been in my closet all the nights in question.”

That bothered Logan. The cops were after Pat because of that boot print and that meant they had a pretty good match on the tread pattern. If Pat wasn’t outside that window, how could his boots have gotten there? Could someone be trying to set him up by deliberately planting his footprint there?

“You’re not going to tell my wife, are you, Mr. Anthony? I don’t want her to know what I’ve been doing. She thinks I’ve been working late at the grocery store.”

He gathered from his meeting with Jeanette that she didn’t believe his lie, but couldn’t surmise what she thought he was doing instead. Either way, it wasn’t helping things when the suspect’s wife didn’t know where her husband was. “No, I’m not going to tell her, but you need to be honest with your wife. If you were honest about what was going on, you might not be here with the police breathing down your neck.”

Pat nodded and winced, reaching under the table to rub his leg.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked.

“My knee is just acting up. It’s an old track injury from high school. It put an end to my running career and now it just aches from time to time.”

Logan stored that information away. He knew at least one of the police reports involved seeing the peeper run from the scene. If Pat couldn’t run, he couldn’t be the peeper.

“So what do we tell Sheriff Todd when he comes back?”

“We’re going to tell him you’ve been helping your buddy Boyd out on evenings and leave it at that. The rest of the story is the IRS’s concern.”

“And what about my boots?”

Logan shook his head. That was a good damn question. “I have no idea.”

“Hey, Logan.” Pepper stepped out of the salon onto the sidewalk and noticed her brother standing outside. Sarah was still inside closing up.

“Hey, Pepper. Are you free for dinner tonight? I’ve had a pretty wild day.”

“A day you can’t talk about,” she noted. She had no doubt her brother was filled with interesting information, but lawyer-client privilege kept most of it under wraps.

He nodded in dismay. “That’s true. We don’t have much of an outlet in the legal world. That’s why we drink.”

“Are you really wanting dinner, or do you want to just skip the pretense and head straight to Woody’s?”

“I should eat,” Logan admitted. “I was at the police station for so long, I missed lunch.”

Pepper nodded. Although he couldn’t officially talk about what happened today, she already knew all about it. Someone saw Sheriff Todd escort Pat Kincaid into the police station and Logan go in sometime after that. It didn’t take long for the information to spread to the salon.

“That’s okay, we can get dinner. I know the general idea, anyway. I heard they hauled Pat Kincaid into the police station today. I figure he’s a suspect in the peeper case.”

“They did bring him in, but thankfully they’re not charging him,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“Really?” She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. Pepper didn’t like to think that someone like Mr. Kincaid was a pervert, but he
was
one of the people she told about her new window the night the peeper struck her house again. If it wasn’t him, then who was it?

“He has an alibi and a bad knee. There’s no way he could run from Grant the way the peeper did that second time at your place. I’m not sure where the police are going to go next with it. I don’t think they have much evidence to point to anyone else. I hate that, especially considering you’re one of the victims.” Logan got a distant look on his face as he stared off in the direction of the shoe store around the square.

“What’s the matter?” Pepper asked.

“Nothing. There’s just some stuff about the case that doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe someday we’ll—”

The sound of two people arguing drew their attention and Logan let his sentence hang, unfinished. Turning their heads, they noticed Pat Kincaid and his wife, Jeanette, standing on the corner near Jeanette’s car. She must have driven down to pick him up from the police station.

Pepper was glad to see the police had released him, but she couldn’t say the same for his wife. Jeanette looked fit to be tied. Her face was flushed red and she was clutching the strap of her purse like she might whip it off and swing it at her husband’s head at any moment.

“You thought I would be happy?” she snapped. “Yes, of course, I’m glad to know my husband isn’t the town creep. That might answer Sheriff Todd’s questions, but it still doesn’t answer mine.”

They both paused right in front of their car to continue arguing. They didn’t seem to care much that they were right on the square, where anyone could see and hear them.

“What are you talking about?” Pat asked. He looked tired, like he’d put in too many hours at the police station to have his wife grate at him.

“Where were you all those nights?” Jeanette asked. “The cops asked if we were together and I had to tell them no. Do you know how embarrassing that is? That I can’t even tell the cops where you are at night? All you do is lie to me and I know it. I’ve called the store looking for you when you have to
work late
”—she gestured with air quotes—“and you haven’t been there. Where have you been?”

Pat rubbed his hand over his mustache and sighed. “You know, you’re going to regret all of this later,” he said.

“Oh, shut up, Patrick! The only thing I regret is how stupid I must seem to you. Just because I haven’t caught you yet doesn’t mean you’re not cheating on me. I’m not a fool. You’ve been secretive, taking calls and making plans that you’re hiding from me. You work late all the time . . . you jump right into the shower without even speaking a word to me. Washing off the evidence of your infidelity, no doubt!”

“Jeanette . . .” Pat spoke softly in comparison to her loud shrieks, but she paid no attention to him.

“Twenty-five years, Pat. I’ve given you twenty-five years of my life. I’ve loved you, cared for you, fed you, made you a nice home. I just can’t believe you would do this to me.”

“That’s because I didn’t!” Pat snapped at last. “I’m not cheating on you, Jeanette. And I’m not the damn peeper!”

“I know you’re not the peeper, Pat,” she barked.

A sudden dawning of understanding came over his face. “Why are you so certain of that?” Pat asked.

Jeanette’s eyes widened for a moment as she stuttered over her words. “Well, I-I’ve kn-nown you for nearly thirty years. You might be a cheating bastard, but you’re not a pervert.”