Whisper of Revenge (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 4) (18 page)

“No.”  Her gaze slid away.  “I like myself fine.  I’m
just…realistic.”

His eyes narrowed.  “You didn’t believe I could possibly
think you’re beautiful.”

“It’s not…”

“It is.”  He waited until her gaze reluctantly returned to
his.  “Who did this to you, Hannah?  Was it Grady?”

She nibbled on her lip, seemingly debating how much to tell
him.  Outwardly patient, he simmered.

He’d feel bad about pushing her if he didn’t feel sure
anything was better than leaving her sunken in grief and fear for Ian.

“I’m not exactly your average high school boy’s dream.”

Would she have been his if he’d never set eyes on Michelle
Thomsen?  No way to know.

“I had a couple relationships in college, but still.  Men
might like big breasts, but they want them on a slender frame.  If a woman is
tall, she’d supposed to be shaped like a super model.”

“So it’s not your ex,” Elias said thoughtfully.

“No, it is.”  Her shoulders sagged.  “We’d been seeing each
other for a while before he told me he’d been engaged before we met.  She took
a really great job and moved to Atlanta.  Told him she had realized she wasn’t
ready to tie herself down so he shouldn’t follow her.  It was something like
eight or ten months later when we met.  I thought we were really in love.”

Until she found out she was only a sub.  Knowing how much
he’d screwed up himself didn’t lessen Elias’s desire to punch the creep.

“I was eager to start a family.  He was more hesitant, but
finally said, ‘Might as well.’  Should have been my first – or maybe the
twentieth or hundredth – clue.  Another big one was the expression on his face
at the hospital when he saw that Ian’s hair was red.  Oh, and later when he
sounded so disappointed that he couldn’t see himself in Ian.  Seeing me in our
son obviously didn’t inspire any joy.”  Hannah bent her head so she was
addressing the tabletop.  “Then his former fianceé moved back to Portland. 
I…didn’t know for a couple of months.  Until he told me he’d never quit loving
her.  She knew she’d made a mistake and had begged his forgiveness.  He wanted
a divorce.  Just like that.”

“She’s his current wife.  The one you spoke to on the
phone.”

“That would be Nicole.”  Hannah lifted her head, trying for
a wry smile that didn’t come off.  “She’s five foot three.  Probably doesn’t
weigh a hundred and ten pounds.  Pretty, not a single freckle.”  She tilted her
chin in a way that served as warning.  “And, of course, blonde.”

Oh, hell, was all he could think.  The portrait had been,
for Hannah, the equivalent of a trip wire that set off a land mine.

She kept talking.  “Second place – and trailing so far back
I have to squint to see the leader – is not an experience I want to repeat. 
I’m sure you understand.”

“You’re not second best, not for me.”  Her expression told
him he was wasting his breath, but he had to say this anyway.  “The other women
I’ve been involved with,
they
were second best even though I didn’t let
myself realize it.  I hope none of them ever guessed.”

“If they saw the portrait…”

Elias shook his head.  “I had a bunch of sketches and some
amateurish paintings of Michelle I’d done that summer, but it was about ten
years ago I painted the one you saw.  Imbued it with a lot that probably was
never true.  You may not believe me, but I didn’t hang that portrait only
because Michelle was the subject.  It was partly satisfaction.  I have a way of
deciding something I’ve spent days on is crap.  Most portraits aren’t of
interest to anyone who doesn’t know the subject.  I think that painting would
be an exception.”

There was his arrogance again, but he genuinely thought the
portrait was among his best work.  However things turned out with Hannah, he
would never look at it with any pleasure again, however.

Sophie had only been ten when she lost her mother.  Soon,
there would be a grandson or granddaughter, too.  Elias liked the idea that he
had created an heirloom to be treasured by her family.  Why had he even
hesitated?

Hannah was shaking her head.  She’d come to her own
conclusions.  “I don’t know how old you are…”

His shoulders tightened.  “Thirty-nine in May.”

“Really?  After all these years, you suddenly find me
irresistible when I am nothing like your ideal?”  She shook her head.

“Did it ever occur to you,” he said harshly, “that you’re
the first woman I’ve been
honestly
attracted to since Michelle?”

She stared at him with those wounded eyes.  “No.  No.”  Her
voice lowered to a whisper.  “How can I?”

He might have given in to frustration had it not been
tempered with determination and understanding of how much she hurt right now. 
There was time.  Once Ian was home, safe, Elias would go back to being a
regular customer at Sweet Ideas, if that’s what it took.  Knocking lightly on the
glass door in the early morning, anticipating the moment when Hannah saw him
and her face lit with the smile that warmed him for hours.

He’d do whatever he had to.

*****

“Sophie mentioned her husband is a cop,” said the man who’d
just taken Daniel’s call.  “Police chief?”

“I am.  Cape Trouble P.D.”

“Right.  Pretty little town,” Brian Almgren said, with the
air of a man who had his finger on the pulse of a larger, more important
place.  Lincoln City, to be exact.

Sophie had suggested Daniel call Almgren.  She’d gotten to
know him in her part-time work facilitating charity auctions and other events. 
She had gained a reputation here on the coast from her success at raising huge
amounts of money to save Misty Beach.  Since then, she’d selectively taken jobs
up and down the coast, choosing which causes to support.  Almgren was a
contractor whose daughter had Type 1 diabetes.  Apparently, he was involved in
a huge, annual online auction to raise money in search of a cure.  The event
Sophie had helped with was to fund a new wing on the hospital in Lincoln City.

“What can I do for you?” the man asked now.

“Sophie says you know everyone in town.”  He hesitated. 
“That if a business is near to going under, you’d have likely heard.”

“This to do with an investigation?”  Almgren sounded
cautious now.

“It is.”  No point in not being frank.  “I think it’s
unlikely the man in question is involved – obviously, I’m nowhere close to
being able to get a warrant – but his name came up and I have to look into his
circumstances.  Nobody will know where I got the information.”

“Okay.”

“Campbell’s Hardware.”

“Ah.”  There was a little silence.  “Yeah, it’s struggling. 
I think the guy got cocky, thought he could take on the big boys.  He should
have stuck to the smaller towns where he wouldn’t face any competition.  First
his prices were too high.  Now he’s trying to undercut the others, but he has
to be losing money hand over fist.”

“You think the store will go out of business?”

“I’m giving it another month.”

Daniel thanked him.  Call ended, he sat at his desk in the
police station and reflected on what was really nothing but confirmation of
what other people had suggested.  How much had Campbell sunk into launching the
latest store?

There was no denying that $250,000 would come in handy right
now for a man who had also clearly had his eye on Hannah for some time.  If she
hadn’t put him on her list, Daniel could have.  He’d seen the guy watching her
often enough. 

He struggled with his own prejudice against Campbell, the
city council member who was his biggest aggravation.  This was one of the
pitfalls he’d discovered in small town law enforcement.  The longer Daniel
stayed, the better he got to know people.  That gave him a starting point in an
investigation – but he was also forced to try to block out his own emotional
reaction to those same people.  Unlikeable didn’t mean guilty of an extra dose
of meanness or greed.  Friendly and outgoing could be a façade.

In Daniel’s opinion, Campbell was self-righteous and smug,
neither an attractive quality.  He loudly opposed any social service that would
take money from his wallet.  He didn’t care if the land got bulldozed and paved
over if he believed that would boost business.  An internal snapshot of himself
cuffing Ron Campbell gave Daniel a wistful moment he wouldn’t share with anyone
but Sophie.  But setting that aside…

Campbell kidnapping a young boy?  Daniel stumbled there. 
And, while he could believe the hardware store owner disliked Elias, Daniel
found it hard to see how he would have found the time to pursue such a
single-minded vendetta.  Campbell had been married for a lot of those years,
his divorce having happened only four years ago.  His hardware stores ranged up
and down the coast, which meant a lot of driving.  Aside from the city council,
he was active in the Chamber of Commerce.

And, damn it, he had been married.  Surely he asked the
woman out to dinner sometime before she accepted his proposal.  Unless she’d
been so dazzled by having a secret admirer, he had somehow made the bizarre
method of courting work?

Daniel groaned.  He could track down the ex-wife and ask
her.  Wouldn’t that be fun.

But first he’d make some easier calls, tapping easily
accessible sources to learn more about Patrick Fletcher’s finances.  Even
though Daniel liked the man, the fact that Elias had had a buzz of uneasiness
boosted Fletch on the list of suspects.  A connection had formed in Daniel’s
mind, too.  Lori Dressler had worked in escrow, Beth Stanford for a pest
control company.  Shepherding real estate deals through, Fletch had almost
certainly encountered both women.

A minute later he was listening to Detective Rey Mendoza at
North Fork P.D. tell him an apartment building Fletcher owned had become a
headache for police in his jurisdiction.

“I remember it as a decent place when I was still on
patrol,” Mendoza said.  “But it hasn’t been well-managed.  Too many renters are
low-lifes involved in drug dealing, domestic violence, other assaults, even
prostitution.  Units can’t possibly be renting for what they are in similar
apartment houses in town.  And you know how much physical damage that kind of
renter tends to do.  There’s a note that Sergeant Hite spoke with the owner,
urging him to work at cleaning the place up.”

“How did Mr. Fletcher respond?”

“Don’t know, but I can ask the sergeant when he comes in
tomorrow.”

“Do that.”  Daniel knew this tingle.  He’d felt it and been
wrong, but not often.  “Thanks, Rey.”

“Any time,” the detective said.

When Daniel had taken the job in Cape Trouble, each police
agency in the county worked in almost complete isolation.  Daniel and Alex
Mackay, the county sheriff, had built a bridge and now the two agencies often
worked major crimes together.  Howard Lundy, the North Fork police chief, was
an ass who wouldn’t admit he needed help if a bomb took out half his town.  Rey
had risked his job by working cooperatively on an investigation this spring
that led to the arrest of a sheriff’s deputy who’d killed half a dozen people. 
Daniel liked Rey and respected him as a cop.  He hoped he wouldn’t quit for a
less aggravating job somewhere else.

So…had the apartment building become a sinkhole for Fletch,
the way the newest store had for Ron Campbell?  Was he just delaying upgrades
until the real estate market surged?  Or did his financial problems go deeper
yet?

Fletcher Realty dominated the listings in Burris County. 
But when looking into Patrick Fletcher’s background after Hannah first came to
him, Daniel had learned he’d recently let some agents go.  Daniel’s real estate
contact had printed out both listings and sales for the past year.  What he’d
seen had made him wince.  The houses and property that did sell was going for
well under asking prices.  Sales were down overall from the previous year. 
And, while Fletcher still planted more signs in front of houses than any other
agency in this area, the opening of a Windermere office in North Fork had cut
into business.

Daniel reminded himself that real estate was about as stable
as nitroglycerin, and Fletch had been riding the ups and downs since he came
home a few years after college and went to work for a now-defunct agency.  Ten
years ago, he’d gone out on his own and succeeded in a big way, at least by
local standards.  This latest downturn was lingering, but it hadn’t been
cataclysmic.  Fletcher had to know the economy here on the coast could pick up
anytime and he’d be having to put in a new order for ‘Sold’ signs.

Plenty of people hit hard times and didn’t resort to taking
a hostage, for God’s sake.

Daniel didn’t like what he’d learned about his current two
leading suspects, but, tingle or no, his bigger worry was that the kidnapper
was someone they hadn’t considered at all.  If he’d never expressed his
interest directly to Hannah…shit.  It could be any man in town.

His cell phone rang.  Sean Holbeck.

“Got anything?” he asked.

“Nada.”  Sean sounded as tense as Daniel felt.  “Samantha
Mays – nice woman, by the way – showed me six houses, Rebecca Walker another
five or six, and Charlie Groendyke some more.  She left her card at each house,
so we gave her multiple clients in case Fletch calls.  Which she says he’s
bound to do, after such a flurry of showings.  We skipped the houses that are
occupied, although I’ve driven by them all now to be sure they really are.”

“So this is a dead end.”

“That’s my take.”

Daniel swore, thinking of too many possibilities where a
young boy could be held captive.  Deserted old cabins out in the woods, rarely
used garages and sheds, storage units at the several facilities here in the
county.  An RV or camper parked with apparent innocence in a driveway or under
cover next to a house.  Rental homes, apartment houses where residents neither
knew nor cared who the neighbors were or what they were up to.