The Buried (The Apostles) (14 page)

But the M.E. was right. He cared about Grandpa and Grandma Doe. Tucker slipped into his cruiser and looked at the splintered photo frame he’d clipped to the visor. And he cared about his kids, a daughter who thought he could fix anything and a son who believed he was a hero.

So far, this case had a whole lot of
nos
, but as of fifteen minutes ago, he had something besides a
no
.

He had pie.

Back at the station Tucker tied ten equidistant knots in a string, each knot representing ten miles. Then he tied the string to a pencil. He placed the knotted end of the string on the bright red dot that represented Collier’s Holler on the map on his desk. There was probably some computer app that could do this for him, but he needed to keep his hands busy. Busy hands were less likely to grab the whiskey behind desk drawer number two.

Given the M.E.’s report, Grandma and Grandpa Doe ate between two and three hours before they were murdered, and chances were they ate in a restaurant. His job was to find a restaurant that served huckleberry pie and white chocolate mousse pie. He’d start with a hundred-mile radius.

Tucker eyed the circle, which encompassed cities in Northeastern Kentucky, Southern Ohio, and Western West Virginia. He poked his head into the squad room. “Hey Carl, get in here.” Carl was one of the greenhorns. Plenty of enthusiasm and a good head on his shoulders. The kid seemed keen on making detective one day, so Tucker threw him an occasional bone.

“Got something new on Grandma and Grandpa?” Carl asked.

Tucker tore the map in half. “Not yet. But I want you to get on the computer and find out if there are any diners, restaurants, or roadside stands in the towns within this half circle that sell huckleberry pie and white chocolate mousse pie.”

“White chocolate mousse?”

“With pomegranates.”

Grace dropped her phone onto the beachside picnic table and raised both hands. “Ronnie Alderman.”

Hatch took a bite of his grilled shrimp po’ boy. He and Grace had spent the past two hours using their respective sources to glean information on individuals who had access to the security equipment in the phone store. He’d joked with Grace that this was some kind of race, which it was, because with Grace everything was a competition.

By the smile on her face, looked like she’d won.

He recognized the name Ronnie Alderman from the store manager’s list of people who had access to the office where the store kept its security equipment. “He was a member of the store’s cleaning crew, right?”

“Yes and no.” The green in Grace’s eyes brightened.

“I sense a story.” He took another bite of sandwich. He could spend hours watching Grace smile and listening to her talk. She had a strong, confident jaw softened by full lips, chiseled cheeks flushed by an inner fire, and those eyes…

“Ronnie was listed as a member of the cleaning crew.” She brought her fingertips together under her chin, then pointed them at him. “He’s dead.”

Hatch dropped the sandwich into the basket, shrimp scattering across the table. One landed on his whirring laptop. “He got another—”

“It’s not what you think.” Grace scrolled through a message on her phone. “He died eight years ago. Coronary failure. He’s buried in the Twin Buttes cemetery in Southern Utah. Son of Ronald and Ruth Alderman of Salt Lake City. He went to BYU where he studied English Literature. He taught high school English for forty-two years and is survived by nine children and forty-one grandchildren. At the time of his death he was eighty-five.”

Eighty-five-year-old grandfathers, especially those who’ve been dead eight years, don’t work nights on cleaning crews. “Most likely a classic case of stolen identity,” Hatch said.

“That’s what I was thinking. Someone manipulated something somewhere and used Ronnie’s name and social security number to get a part-time job on the cleaning crew. It’s a serious red flag.”

“One worth looking into. This person stealing a dead man’s identity could be an accomplice or even the killer. We may have a fake name, but we also have a—”

“—face,” Grace finished for him. “The other cleaning crew members must have seen this version of Ronnie Alderman.” She dangled her phone before him, a smile lighting her face. “We’re getting closer, Hatch. We’re going to catch this sick killer before he strikes again. Whoever started this game is going down.”

If Hatch could have any superpower, he’d have the ability to stop time. That way he could hold onto those moments in his life that left him awed.

A perfect day of sailing.

A night of love and laughter with a woman dressed only in moonlight and pearls.

And moments like this when the criminals of this world, the men and women who perpetrated wrongs against humanity, had no chance of winning, not when people like Grace Courtemanche were on the other side.

H
atch pulled a pan of golden biscuits from Grace’s oven and fanned the steam her way. “What do you think?”

Grace breathed in the buttery air and sighed. “Perfect.”

He set the pan on the counter. “Let’s hope Lou Poole thinks so.”

She shook her head, not in disagreement, but in amusement and with a touch of admiration. She’d finally accepted this new version of Hatch. He was a successful, creative crisis negotiator, a master of building bridges, as he called it. This evening he planned on constructing bridges with biscuits. “So you’re just going to show up at Lou’s place bearing biscuits and a smile?”

“Yep. Then she will do her neighborly part, haul out a jar of honey, and invite me onto her porch, where she’ll tell me the latest bee gossip and I’ll give her great aunt Piper Jane’s recipe for exploded biscuits with eggs and sausage gravy.” He dug around the drawer and pulled out a spatula. “Then she’ll tell me more about the flesh-and-blood person she saw with Lia Grant. And then we’ll catch a killer.”

“And all this starts with biscuits.”

“Food is universal. It hits a primal chord with most people. Some foods invite closeness.” He slid the steamy, golden circles of bread onto a tea towel. “Like biscuits.”

She laughed at him and herself, because she actually thought this plan could work. “They taught you this kind of stuff at Quantico?”

“My hostage negotiation and crisis training instructors taught me about connections. It’s all about connecting in ways people in crisis can understand and deal with, like Big Willie Walberg.”

“Big Willie? That name rings a bell.”

“He’s the disgruntled warehouse worker in Galveston who stormed into his former place of employment and held his boss and five co-workers at gunpoint two years ago. He claimed he wanted to get media and government attention on alleged safety violations at the warehouse, but in the end all it took to establish a connection with him was a donut.” Hatch grinned and handed her a biscuit.

With the tips of her fingers, she split the biscuit in two and watched as steam rose in gauzy curls. “I’m sure there’s a point to this.”

“Big Willie was mad at his supervisor at the warehouse for firing him, the electric company for turning off his power, and his girlfriend for leaving him. Big Willie got slammed with some big stuff in a small amount of time. He decided to take punches at the people who started the downhill slide, his former employers. Parker sent me over, and in less than two hours Big Willie and I were sharing a dozen chocolate-glazed donuts—mind you, with a parking lot separating us. Over coffee and donuts, Big Willie told me his troubles, and I listened. And that was the key. All he wanted was for someone to hear his story, to commiserate with him, and in the end to help him find a way out of that misery.”

“He surrendered with no injuries to anyone, right?”

Hatch grinned. “Before the last donut was gone.”

She took a bite of the biscuit. “Amazing.”

“I do have my moments.” Hatch knotted the ends of the towel. “Now I’m heading to the Poole place. You stay here. And you,” he pointed to Blue, “don’t leave her side.”

“Don’t encourage him, Hatch. He’s annoying enough as it is.”

“I’m serious, Grace.” He placed a hand on either side of her face and forced her to look into his eyes. The blue was warm and steamy, like the air in her kitchen, and it left her more than a little breathy. “There’s a killer out there.”

Which was why Hatch was here, to catch a killer.

“I know, and Lou Poole may have seen him.” She placed both hands on his shoulders and pushed him away, acutely aware of the retreating heat. “So go. Go and build your biscuit bridge.”

With Hatch gone, she cleaned the kitchen, washing a sink full of dishes and sweeping spilled flour from the floor. In Blue’s dog dish she found a bone-shaped biscuit. Grace laughed. Vintage Hatch. Blow in, make a mess, but leave her smiling.

After cleaning the kitchen, she checked her phone and e-mail. No news from Lieutenant Lang. No calls from the cleaning company that employed the long-dead Ronnie Alderman. She changed Blue’s water and re-applied the bear grease ointment.

As she slipped a new anklet on Blue’s front paw, something splashed in the creek winding along the back side of her property. Could be a gator, an osprey catching his dinner, or a killer. She taped the anklet in place.

Hatch had been confident the killer traveled to and from the crime scene in a fourteen-foot aluminum skiff, propelled by hand or an electric motor, and he suggested the killer had been relatively close to the burial site. It was also likely the person with the ringing phone came by water in a silent boat. So far, the sheriff’s investigators had drummed up no leads on the boat.

She eyed the path leading down to the creek where Lamar Giroux’s boat was tethered to an old, splintered dock.

She flexed her fingers and rolled her wrists. She knew this area. She knew of dozens of nooks and crannies around Cypress Point, perfect places to hide a boat. Hatch would have a fit if she went out on her own, but she’d be safe. She had no plans to gun down a killer, and at this point in the game, she was certain the killer wasn’t gunning for her. He was too busy playing games and keeping score.

Me: 1

You: 0

Grace didn’t fear for her own life, only the lives of two others.

And Hatch was right, she sorely lacked patience.

With Blue at her side, she hurried to her bedroom, slid open her nightstand drawer, and took out her mother’s gun, a Smith & Wesson Airweight. She opened the chamber. Loaded. She couldn’t remember a time when this gun hadn’t been loaded.

One of her earliest memories came from her preschool days. She’d been looking through her mother’s nightstand drawer for paper to color on and found the gun.

“Don’t touch, Gracie, it’s baaaaaad,” her mother had warned.

“If it’s bad, Momma, why do you have it?”

“For when the bad people come.” Her mother’s face, pale and creamy as a proper southern woman’s face should be, turned a sickly shade of gray.

Her mother always believed people were following her, tiptoeing through the house, and taking her things. She’d point out a fruit bowl with a pear missing or an empty hook in the garage where her mother had supposedly hung her gardening hat. Neither Grace nor her father noticed anything missing, but her mother insisted someone slipped in and out of the house, and she always had the gun close by. Grace’s mother was terrified the bad person who took her things would hurt her family, and she needed to protect them.

In the end, a fully loaded .38 Special would not have prevented her mother’s death. Her mother’s own body had turned on her. Stomach cancer—the family euphemism for liver cancer caused by her mother’s excessive drinking—took her life.

“A couple drinks a night relaxes her,” her dad had said. “Takes off the edge.”

Grace didn’t understand that thinking as a child, nor did it make sense when at age thirteen she stood at her mother’s grave. On the day they laid her mother to rest, Grace planned to take a hammer to every last bottle of Scotch in the house. But as she and her father pulled into the drive, she swore she’d seen the curtains in her mother’s room move. Maybe it was her mother’s ghost. Maybe it was a bad guy. Or maybe her mother’s paranoia had rubbed off on her. Whatever the reason, when Grace ran to her mother’s room, she took out the gun and slipped it into her own nightstand. Then she smashed every bottle of Scotch.

Tucking her mother’s gun in her purse, she grabbed an old set of keys from a nail in the kitchen. Even though a damp mustiness still clung to her shack, she locked up tightly. As she made her way to the creek, Allegheny Blue followed, like she knew he would. This time, she didn’t force him to stay home. After all, she’d promised Hatch she’d keep him at her side.

Grace and Blue reached the creek and the rickety dock where Lamar Giroux kept his fishing boat, a sixteen-foot aluminum dory with more dents than Blue had speckles. But it was water-worthy, and it had a relatively new motor.

Blue hopped in and clomped his way to the bow, his nose in the air. She yanked the motor string, and a belch of gray, gassy air sent her reeling backward. She grabbed the string and yanked again. On the sixth tug, the motor roared and she sunk onto the back bench.

Blue thumped his tail.

“So glad you approve.” She tossed off the tether rope and aimed the boat down river.

Mosquitoes heading out for their pre-dusk meanderings dove at her head as she aimed the boat in and out of brackish creeks, looking for a fourteen-foot skiff with an electric motor. Lieutenant Lang was correct in pointing out they didn’t have many electric motors in this neck of the woods. Fishermen and people who lived along the river needed the power of big motors, and many tourists preferred big, noisy fan boats that flew across the watery marshes.

Sweat trickled down her back, and low-hanging branches scraped at the sides of the boat, sending out banshee-like wails that made her cringe. At a bend in the river, she spotted a flash of something at the end of a long but shallow inlet. Ducking the oak branches lacing above her head, she aimed the boat along the narrow waterway. She squinted through the tangled branches. Metal, definitely a curving piece of silver. Her hand tightened around the throttle, and she inched forward. A branch scraped at her shoulder, another at her hair. This was a private place, a good place to hide something.

A tremor that had nothing to do with the vibrating motor raced through her hand.

She pushed aside an oak branch and frowned at the metal bobbing in the water. Not a boat, but an old oil drum. She plunked onto the bench and raised her face to the sky.

Her blood froze.

Above her two slitted eyes bore into hers. Curled in a slice of sunlight cutting through the branches was a water moccasin. Six inches above her nose.

A scream lodged in her throat. Blue growled. The snake blinked then uncoiled and headed up the tree branch.

She settled a hand on her racing heart.

Breathe in, two, three. Breathe out, two, three.

She settled her other hand on the throttle and backed far, far away from the snake.

Once out of the inlet and once she caught her breath, she checked her watch. Hatch should be heading back to her house soon. On the way to her shack, she took a shortcut through a tiny creek cutting through Brittlebush Island. As she came out the back side, Blue jabbed his nose in the air. She darted a glance to the leafy trees, searching for water moccasins but seeing none. They passed an inlet with cypress knobs poking out of the water like tiny brown headstones.

The dog’s ears perked, and his nose quivered.

“You smell something, Blue?”

She spotted no boats, no structures, and thankfully, no snakes, but as she poked the nose of the boat around a bend in the inlet, she spotted a small houseboat.

Blue heaved himself to his feet.

“Don’t even think about chasing garbage-picking bears.” She cranked the throttle and backed away from the floating house. Blue lunged onto the houseboat deck. “Get back here!”

The dog scrambled across the deck and pawed at the door until it swung open. Grace growled and grabbed a pole on the deck, steadying the little dory. “Blue!”

He feigned deafness. And dumbness. No. The latter wasn’t fake.

She tied off the boat. Taking out her mother’s gun, she climbed onto the deck and craned her neck to see in the door. Streaks of light slipped through the dirty windows, illuminating a broken rocking chair, a three-legged table, and Blue, who was nosing around a corner piled with wooden crates partially-covered with a tarp. “Come. Now!”

He continued to sniff.

Stepping gingerly on the rotting floorboards, she crossed the tiny hut and reached for his collar. The dog stopped sniffing and stiffened. The scruff of hair on the back of his neck bristled like a saw blade. The boat dipped and swayed as if weighted at the far end. Steps sounded on the deck. Grace ducked behind a stack of crates, her mother’s gun still held tightly in her hand.

A shadow crossed the doorway. Blue howled and lunged.

Alex pulled the blanket over the two pillows he’d centered lengthwise on his bed. It didn’t look like a sleeping body. It looked like two stupid pillows, but his Granny was watching that TV show about the old fart private detectives. She wouldn’t know he was gone, which was good, because if she did she’d probably call that asshole Hatch again.

He climbed out the window and inched along the side of the house. A pain shot along his back and his shoulder. Doing community service hours at the cemetery was killing him, and it pissed him off that Hatch arranged the whole thing, like that loser was the boss of him. When he reached the twins’ bedroom window, he ducked. Ricky and Raymond regularly snuck out their bedroom window at night to go chase fireflies, and he didn’t need the little brats tagging along. He forced his aching body to move faster, and he finally reached the mini-mart where he spotted Gabe and Linc leaning on a blue convertible and drinking Cokes.

After Alex had given their names to the cops for the shrimp shack robbery, he’d thought his friends would dis him, but Gabe had called tonight wanting to hang out.

“Hey, great wheels,” Alex said. “Where’d you get them?”

“Granddaddy over in Panama City,” Gabe said. “He’s on vacation for a few weeks. Didn’t think he’d mind if I borrowed it.”

Linc snickered.

“No one knows you took it?” Alex asked.

“Of course not, dumb shit,” Linc said. “Gabe doesn’t have a license.”

They piled into the convertible and cruised through the downtown area, all ten blocks of it. Alex couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Maybe he’d get a hot set of wheels like this or better yet, a sweet boat, something like Hatch’s.

On the second loop, Gabe slowed the car in front of a haircut place—not a barbershop, but one of them old lady shops like his granny went to. The big sign read
CLIP & CURL
. Gabe stopped the car at the corner and took a right, making a quick turn into the alley. “The old lady who runs this place doesn’t go to the bank on Saturday because she has a bowling league. Should be a couple hundred in the till. Tonight we’re going to hit it.”