US Marshall 01 - Cold Ridge (16 page)

"Did Sanborn say anything?"

Ty shook his head. "And Manny was pretty sure Jodie Rancourt introduced Sanborn under a different name. Tony something. Italian."

"Jesus-so she knew he was using an alias? Then why hire Manny? If he'd already met Louis under a different name why take the chance? Unless there's an innocent explanation for the alias and no one was worried about it."

"Manny couldn't swear to what Jodie told him in September, at least according to the log." Ty sighed, leaning back in his chair. "You should see this thing. He's not a talker on a good day, but there are places he's downright cryptic. A lot of it's in military lingo. No wonder Val couldn't make much sense of it."

"He must have told the police all this."

"I'm not making any assumptions at this point. He decided something wasn't on the level and started digging into Sanborn's background. Nothing added up. He already knew the guy sure as hell wasn't southern-"

"That was an act?"

"According to Manny. He's a Texan. He thinks he can smell a Yankee at a thousand yards."

Carine smiled. "Why isn't the reverse true?"

"Because we Yankees don't give a rat's ass." But Ty's humor was strained, and he leaned over and, without getting up, grabbed a log and pitched it one-handed onto the fire. It landed hard, the sparks just missing Carine's toes. He went on, settling back in his chair. "Manny thought Sanborn might have a Cold Ridge connection."

She shook her head. "I'd have recognized him if he did, wouldn't you think? The way he acted, I'd be surprised if it had occurred to him I might recognize him- I'm sure it didn't. He played the southern guy who thinks fifty degrees is cold. How far did Manny get in his background research before he went up to Boston?"

"Not far enough."

Ty was silent, and the fire hissed, one of Carine's logs breaking up into red-hot chunks. She watched it, trying to piece together different conversations she'd had with the Rancourts in the weeks since she'd started working for them, with Louis-or whoever he was-before he was killed. But there was nothing. She'd had no idea anything was going on beneath the surface until she walked into the library on Wednesday afternoon and found Louis dead. And even then…

But she realized Ty had drifted into silence. "What else?" she asked quietly, knowing there was more.

"Speculation."

"What kind of speculation?"

"Carine-it could all be nonsense. We don't know."

"Okay, with that caveat, what kind of speculation?"

"If Manny's right…" Ty sank back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his head, then sighed, plunging on. "He made a note in his log about the weapons the Ran-courts have up here. Expensive rifles. Bolt action and semiautomatic. Scoped. Jodie Rancourt had them out, showing them to Louis the day Manny met them up here. Sterling told him about the guns when he discussed what training he wanted Manny to do."

"A lot of people up here have guns, but I had no idea the Rancourts did."

Ty rose, his back to the fire as he started unloading the day pack. "Manny intended to get to the bottom of whatever was going on with these people. Nothing was going to stop him."

"It makes sense if it was his job-"

"Not because of his job. He has a kid up here. And there's you."

She took her wilderness medical kit off the table where Ty had laid it and slipped it into her coat pocket. "Because I worked for the Rancourts?"

But she knew that wasn't the whole answer, even before Ty spoke. "And because you're from Cold Ridge, and because of last November."

The shooting. The burned-down shack, the missing smugglers. "Manny can't think the Rancourts had anything to do with that smuggling operation. Louis? Could he have been-" She stopped herself, not wanting to phrase the question. Could Louis have been involved? Was that why he came up with an alias? "The police don't have any suspects."

"Not that we know of."

"Nate-he'd know."

Ty shook his head. "He won't tell you even if he does know. Neither would you in his place." He lifted a water bottle out of the pack and set it on the table. "I won't be going to Boston. I see now why Manny put me on Carine Winter duty. You're not on the sidelines, babe. Whatever's going on, you're right in the thick of it."

North split wood until he'd worked up a blister on one hand. He thought about letting Carine treat it. But he was sweating, irritable, ready to jump out of his damn skin. He'd decided to give Val ninety minutes before calling her back. It seemed like enough time for the cops to execute their search warrant and clear out of the Carreras'apartment.

He'd debated heading back up the notch road to ask the Rancourts to explain their relationship with Louis Sanborn,
aka
whoever, but he'd had a good dose of the Rancourts yesterday. And there was Carine.

There was always Carine.

She sat on the back steps, bundled up in a moth-eaten wool blanket she'd dug out of a hall closet, so old it might have been left behind by one of her ancestors.

"Doesn't the wool scratch?" he asked her.

"Not that much. It reminds me of being a kid."

"I think that's the same blanket Nate and I used when we rolled you and Antonia up and sent you down the hill over by the road."

"I remember that. We almost got run over."

He sat next to her, smelling the damn blanket. Mothballs, dust, that musty wool smell. "You didn't almost get run over. Gus just said that when he yelled at us, and it stuck in your mind.You were, what, six or seven?You didn't know enough not to believe everything your uncle said."

Even then, there'd been an unspoken rule in his life.
Never get involved with the little sister.
Nate was his friend. The Winters, in many ways, were his family. Ty had violated the bond between them by falling for Carine-never mind that she hadn't exactly been dragged kicking and screaming into bed with him. He'd still made the first move. It was his doing more than hers.

And there was no undoing it. He'd learned that in the last few days. Even now, it wouldn't take much for him to carry her and her moth-eaten blanket upstairs for the rest of the afternoon.

Maybe Gus was right, and he needed to sell the house. If not for the damn trust fund, he would have had to by now, anyway.

He could sell the house, quit the air force, buy a boat and sail away.

Or go find other mountains to live in.

Carine had placed his cell phone on the steps. He grabbed it and clicked onto his phone book, found Val's number and hit the button for an automatic dial. She answered almost before it rang, static making her hard to understand. "Ty? They're gone. They took the computer, a bunch of folders he had-he doesn't have an office yet, so he's been working out of here."

"You okay?"

"I just wolfed down cold pepperoni pizza, right out of the refrigerator. You'd have thought I was starving. It was disgusting. All that coagulated grease."

Ty smiled. "Val, you're a trip and a half. Anything out of Manny?"

"Are you kidding? He's lucky I don't drive up to Boston and shoot him myself."

She was handy with a gun. Ty wouldn't put it past her, except he'd never seen a couple more committed to each other than Manny and Val Carrera. "He must be cooperating with the police. He has nothing to hide. If it turns out Louis Sanborn traces back to the shooting here last year, we'll know it. Law enforcement will put the pieces together."

She sighed, deflating. "This past year-it hasn't been easy. He did good work as a PJ, you know? He loved it. Then Eric got sick, and I went kerplooey on him-"

"Kerplooey?"

"Yeah." He could almost feel her smile. "It sums up what happened to me rather nicely, a very nasty mix of clinical depression, burn-out, stupidity and guilt."

"Manny says you just need a job."

"He does better with other kinds of head injuries than the kind I had. He got sucked into this Rancourt mess, Ty. He's not going to let go until he's got it sorted it. That's the way he is."

North nodded. "I know."

"This business thing wasn't a great idea. I saw that crap in the file about doing it for me. Bullshit. I think- " She swallowed, no hint of any good humor coming through from her end now. "I'm not sure he likes the idea of being alone with me for the rest of his days. With Eric away at school-"

"Val, don't do this to yourself, okay? You two are going to the home together. You know that."

"I keep thinking-" Her voice quavered. "I don't know, if I could just do something to bring order back to the universe."

Ty tried to smile. "It's not your job to bring order to the universe, Val. Jesus. Some days it's enough just to get in three meals and eight hours of sleep."

But she didn't relent. "Haven't there been times in your life when you've felt as if you're under siege and nothing's ever going to go right again?"

"You bet, Val," Ty said gently. "We've all had those times."

When he hung up, Carine eyed him, obviously curious about what Val had said, but he put her off and dialed Hank's cell phone, remembering the Pave Hawk pilot he'd flown combat missions with just a few years ago was a senator now. But his voice-mail message was unchanged-
"Hi, it's Hank. Leave a message…"

"Check on Val Carrera if you can," Ty said. "She's had a bad day. The cops searched-ah, hell, Hank. You're a senator. You can't get mixed up in this mess. Forget it. Val will be fine. So will Manny." He clicked off and tossed the phone onto the steps. "Gus and I agree on one thing. Cell phones should be banned."

Carine slipped her hand out of her blanket and placed it on his thigh. "Val knows she has to hang in there. She will."

He covered her hand with his, noticed that even without the blanket, his was warmer. "You do realize your brother-in-law is a senator?"

"It's sinking in. I'm not registered to vote in Massachusetts -isn't that awful? I didn't even vote for him." She lifted Ty's hand and examined his blister. "I've still got my first-aid kit. I can treat it."

"It hardly even counts as a blister. Share a corner of your blanket with me?"

She tossed a section of it over his shoulder, and he scooted in closer to her. But the thing didn't make him feel nostalgic at all. It stunk, and it scratched. He put a finger through one of the holes. She smiled. "Waste not, want not. Saskia got that part of living up here. I tried to explain to Louis that we Yankees are frugal, not cheap. There's a difference." She took a breath, her voice cracking almost imperceptibly. "Except he wasn't southern after all."

"We don't know that for a fact. We just have Manny's notes."

She shook her head. "Ty, I never would have guessed he wasn't on the level. Never. He was funny, irreverent,
nice.
Jodie-she lied, too. I never would have guessed they were having an affair. I must not be a very good judge of character."

"Louis could have been funny, irreverent and nice and still not be on the level."

"Not nice. That's what Manny said to me on Wednesday before the police got there.
Louis Sanborn wasn't a nice man.
I guess he was trying to warn me."

Ty said nothing, just leaned back against the step, taking Carine with him in the blanket. She laid her head against his shoulder, the smell and the roughness of the old blanket apparently not fazing her. He kissed her hair, which was soft and smelled of some citrusy shampoo, not mothballs, and if he smelled like sweat and sawdust, she didn't seem to mind.

Carine tried to go for her run on her own, but Ty put on running shorts and a ragged shirt and joined her, saying he could provide motivation for her to get her speed up.

Just what she needed.

At some point, he'd mapped out the same mile-anda-half route she had. He also had the same three-mile, five-mile and ten-mile routes. Ten miles was as far as she'd ever run. Any farther, she was in hiking boots and packing food and a tent.

But her morning hike and the tension of the past few days affected the muscles in her legs, her stamina, her breathing. She couldn't get a rhythm going in her stride. She had on close-fitting leggings, a moisture-repelling running shirt, special running socks and her expensive running shoes, but they weren't doing her any good.

"I'm dying here," she said after they'd made the turn and were on their way back. "I feel like I'm sprinting."

Ty trotted alongside her with little apparent effort. "Push harder. You can make it."

"You should see me do five miles. It's this damn speed-"

"Carine, you're not running that fast."

"Easy for you to say." They turned into her driveway, and she glowered at him when she saw that he wasn't even breathing hard. "North-I hate you. I've always hated you."

"The refrain." He grinned at her, the run obviously not fazing him. "No, you have not always hated me. That's what kills you."

Her knees were wobbling, and she was sweating and gasping for air, her chest aching, when just a week ago she'd have been fine-not breaking any records, but not ready to drop, either. Ty looked as if he'd just done a warm-up. Plus, he'd chopped wood.
And
he'd gone on the hike with her.

"Couldn't you at least cough and spit?" she asked him. "Get a stitch in your side?"

"Can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

She scowled at him. "My body must have been possessed by aliens when we were engaged."

"Well, maybe your mind was. I know your body wasn't." He swatted her on the rear end. "Now, come on. Hoof it the last few yards. Sprint. Go all out."

She tried to kick him, but he was ready for her and bobbed out of her reach. The hell with it. She dove for his midsection. Headfirst, the way she always had. But he grabbed her by the hips, flipped her over, and before she knew what was happening, she was upside down, looking at the ground. "Hey!" she yelled. "You're going to step on my hair."

Her running shirt dropped down to her chin, and she felt the cool air on her overheated skin-and his hands. "Christ, you have been doing your ab work."

She did her level best to kick him in the jaw.

He laughed and swooped her back over and onto her feet. The blood that had rushed to her face while she was upside down rushed back out again, and she felt herself get dizzy and almost tripped. He caught her by both shoulders, steadying her. "You okay?"

She blinked at him. "I should have thrown up on your shoes."

"Yeah, probably."

"The idea was for me to think twice before I attack you again?"

"No, the idea was for me to feel your abs."

"You felt my abs the other day."

"I wasn't paying attention. I was more interested in other parts of your body."

"Ty." She put her hands on her hips, breathing hard. "Damn, you're not cutting me any slack, are you?"

He shrugged. "Who just plowed into who?"

"I'm standing here having this wonderful fantasy of hanging
you
upside down by your toes. But it'll probably never happen, will it?"

"Not literally. Figuratively-" Something changed in his eyes. "One way or another, babe, you've got me hanging by my toes every damn day."

His comment, his delivery, unsettled her enough to give her the spurt of energy she needed to sprint the rest of the way to her back deck.

"I'll have to remember that," he said, walking to the deck."Nice way to get you moving. You showering here?"

"Damn straight," she muttered, scooting inside before he could get to her even more.

She skipped her post-run stretches and climbed up the ladder to her loft, and when she opened a dresser drawer, she heard a distinctive squeaking inside the slanted ceiling. Damn. More bats. And mice droppings in her underwear drawer.

She had visions of scurrying rodents and bats swooping up in the rafters while she slept. Her loft-her bedroom-was in the rafters.

Not
a good development.

Ty wandered into the great room below her, and she leaned over the rail. "I'm going to have to sleep up here with a baseball bat."

"Hey-"

"Not because of you. I've got bats and mice. Your house has been empty even longer than mine. Why don't you have rodents?"

"I pay people to take care of the place. You've got Gus." He smiled up at her. "I also have ultrasonic pest-chasers. I think I have a few extra if you'd like me to fetch them."

"Sure. Run there and back so you can work up a sweat. By the way," she said, rising up off the rail, "your abs aren't so bad, either. I could feel them when you had me upside down."

"Watch it, toots. If you think I can run fast, you should see how fast I can climb a ladder."

It felt good to laugh, but after she got out fresh clothes and slipped back down the ladder to shower and change, she found herself making a detour into her studio. She wiped her palm over her dusty filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer, squatting down to flip through the files, until she came to one labeled simply Hunting Shack, because she needed no further prompting to remember what was inside.

She laid the photos one by one on the floor, on the rug Saskia North had designed and hooked for her one winter.

The police had the memory disk. She'd printed out copies of the photos before it had occurred to anyone to ask her for it. She hadn't touched them in a year. In hindsight now, as she looked at the pictures, she realized the photo of the shack never would have worked as a Christmas card or anything else. The lighting was off, the building itself more an eyesore than a quaint relic of rural New England. There were no vehicles, no people, no snow or footprints-yet minutes after taking the pictures, someone shot at her. Then blew up the shack and let it burn to the ground before the police could get there.

One of the best shots was of the front porch. She'd had to get down low for it. A pair of antique cross-country skis was tacked above the door, and she'd captured about a dozen old-fashioned signs mounted on the outside wall. She took the photograph to her worktable and turned her lamp on it, then got out her magnifying glass for a closer look.

Was someone in the window?

No. And surely the police would have noticed if there were.

She smiled at the moose-crossing sign. There were also cow-crossing signs, but most of the signs were of stores and dairies long out of business-including the Sanborn Dairy. It had gone out of business in the early 1960s. Its old glass bottles were a collectors' item. Carine thought she had a couple in the cellar. They had black lettering, with a line drawing of the heads of two happy-looking cows. The last of the Sanborns had sold off their acreage to the local paper mill that owned the land on which the shack was located. But they owned hundreds of acres, and Sanborn wasn't an uncommon name.

When Ty returned with the pest-chasers, Carine brought him back to her studio and showed him what she'd been up to. "Kind of an odd coincidence, huh?" She handed him her magnifying glass, noticing he'd showered and changed into jeans and a sweater, the ends of his hair still damp. "You've heard of the San-born Dairy."

"They delivered pint bottles of milk to school when Gus was a kid."

"Suppose that's where Louis got his alias? He could have grown up in the valley and picked Sanborn because it was convenient, or maybe he's a distant Sanborn cousin or something."

"That doesn't make him one of the smugglers."

She shrugged. "It doesn't
not
make him one of the smugglers."

Ty peered through the magnifying glass. "Did you ever steal a deer-crossing sign?"

"That's not a deer, that's a cow and a moose-"

He glanced at her. "I know it's a cow and a moose. Jesus."

"
You
stole a deer-crossing sign? Ty, that's low."

"Nate helped."

"How come I never knew?"

"You and Antonia would've ratted us out."

"We were not tattletales!"

He rolled his eyes and handed her back her magnifying glass. "I think I used a Sanborn Dairy bottle for target practice once. How's that for a coincidence?"

"All right, so it's a weak theory, but it's something, anyway. A nibble. Maybe Louis was one of the smugglers and saw the sign, and when it came to pick an alias, he chose Sanborn, not realizing where he got it. Manny was looking for a connection between the smugglers and Louis."

"Good. You can tell him it's a defunct dairy."

"If Louis and Jodie met up here-" She sighed, knowing she wasn't going to get anywhere with him. "Oh, never mind. We're just chasing our tails. The police are probably way ahead of us."

"We? Us?"

She smiled. "Go install your pest-chasers. How many did you scare up?"

"Three. They should help."

Carine quickly put the pictures away and headed for the shower, not wasting any time rinsing off, toweling herself dry and jumping into fresh clothes. Ty had her on edge, no question about it. Val Carrera's call and Manny's computer log didn't help, but they weren't the main cause. The teasing, the sexy comments and looks, the easy manner he had with her all reminded her of their first days together last fall, before they'd tried to commit to something deeper. Marriage. A life together.

Don't think.

Yes. Much better that way. She'd learned her lesson. She wasn't going to get ahead of herself with him again.

She combed her damp hair, not bothering to pull it back, and returned to the kitchen. Gus had called before her run to say he was bringing dinner. She slipped out onto the back deck, shivering, the air chilly against her shower-warmed skin. She noticed Gary Turner's midnight blue car in her driveway. He waved to her over its roof and joined her on the deck, his all-black attire and the fading light emphasizing the whiteness of his hair, the blandness of his eyes and skin.

"Sorry to bother you," he said.

"You're not bothering me. I'm just getting a breath of air."

"Your hair's wet-don't catch cold." He cocked his head, smiling at her. "Have I ever seen you with your hair down?" But he didn't wait for an answer, straightening, his manner becoming more formal. "I assume you've heard the latest."

"That Louis Sanborn is an alias?" Carine nodded. "I heard yesterday. After my last visit with the Rancourts, I didn't think it appropriate to go up there and chat with them about it."

"Understandable. They're furious with me now, too."

"Because you didn't know?"

He shrugged, not really answering.

She was aware she hadn't invited him inside and wondered where Ty was with his pest-chasers. "Did you hire him?" she asked.

Turner narrowed his colorless eyes on her. "He came well recommended-"

"By Jodie Rancourt?"

He sighed. "Then you know."

"I don't know anything, but they were having an affair."

"She told her husband it was just that one time in the library. It's none of my business. I've tried not to interfere in their relationship. Of course, if anyone believed her affair with Louis had anything to do with his murder, I'd speak up."

"Have you told the police-no, never mind. That's not fair of me to ask. You must be in an incredibly difficult situation."

He paused a moment, his expression unreadable. "Regardless of the circumstances of how Louis came to me, I should have gone deeper into his background. I liked him, and I figured I'd keep an eye on him, see how he worked out."

She decided not to tell him about Manny's log, how sure he was that it was Louis he'd run into with Jodie Rancourt in Cold Ridge in September-under a different name. Maybe Turner knew, maybe he didn't. It wasn't for her to discuss the contents of a computer file that the police, after all, also had.

"I think we were all taken in," she said. "Gary-do you know who took the pictures in the library? It couldn't have been Jodie or Louis, but I suppose one or the other could have persuaded someone-"

"The pictures are irrelevant. I'm history with the Rancourts. I guess I don't blame them. "He seemed genuinely unconcerned. "After this week, they're skittish about the whole idea of hiring their own security experts. They'll probably contract out with an established firm."

"What will you do?"

"I have options." He tilted his head back, the fading light darkening his eyes just a notch. "What about you? Does the big city still beckon?"

"I like my apartment. No one else seems to."

He smiled gently. "That's because they've seen this place."

"I have great neighbors in the city. I don't have any neighbors here-"

"Tyler North."

She swallowed. "He's active-duty military. He's not aroundmuch.Itjustsohappensthathe'sherethisweek." Up in her loft, as a matter of fact, she thought, installing pest-chasers. "I had a lot of projects in the works before the Rancourts lured me with easy money and a kind of sexy job, taking pictures of a historic mansion."

"But you don't have that anymore."

"There's a shop on Newbury Street that's after me to do a brochure for them. I did some work for another shop a couple of months ago-haven't done much commercial work, but it could be fun."

He seemed amused, but not in a patronizing way. "Keeping your overhead low preserves your options, so you can pick and choose what jobs you take."

"It hasn't been easy keeping this place here and renting an apartment in the city, but I've managed. Louis- whoever he was-teased me about being a tight-fisted Yankee."

Turner laughed, but his heart obviously wasn't in it, the stress of the past few days taking their toll on him, too. "I wonder if the southern act was real. I wonder if anything we knew about him was real."

"He's dead. There's no question of that."