Her Grave Secrets (Rogue River #3)(5)

“You think he was doing something dirty? Like what?” she whispered.

“We’ve suddenly had a drug problem here in Solitude the last few months. I don’t need to remind you of that. We’ve had a few people die from that C-22 street drug, whose manufacturing source we can’t locate.” Zane waved a hand at the contents of the large shed. “Roy came into some money somehow.”

“No!” Stevie didn’t believe it. “He wasn’t that type of man. He’d never stoop to doing something illegal like that. He hated that sort of thing.”

We don’t have a drug problem.

Roy’s words from the night the teen died at O’Rourke’s Lake echoed in her brain. The boy had clearly died from something he’d ingested or injected, but Roy had been absolute in his insistence that Solitude didn’t have a drug problem. Even while the evidence lay dead at his feet.

And he’d abruptly retired that night.

“No,” she repeated.

“You don’t sound as certain now,” Zane stated.

“Roy left the force the night Hunter Brandt died. The first teen to die from the C-22. Did Roy know what was happening?” Stevie’s brain spun in a dozen directions. Did Roy leave because the drugs got too close?

“He told me the boy’s death had made him take another look at his life.”

“Did it seem like he was running away from something?” Stevie asked. “I never saw him again after the investigation that night.”

“No. He seemed like a man who’d had a change of heart and a revelation about his life.”

“Maybe he did,” Stevie said softly as a piece of her world broke away. She couldn’t ignore the identical timing of the drug death and Roy’s departure. “Maybe he saw the results of something he’d had a hand in and the guilt got to him. We need to look at his bank and credit card records and see if there are any unexplained deposits.” She paused. “I have a feeling we’re not going to like what we find.”





CHAPTER THREE





The next morning Stevie jogged up the stairs to her mother’s wide wraparound porch, her work boots clomping in an unfeminine way. Her mother had the door open before Stevie could touch the handle. Patsy smiled, but Stevie could see the puffiness around her eyes and the strain in her face. Her mother had lost her husband and now one of her closest friends in fewer than ten weeks.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Patsy opened her arms for a hug, and Stevie stepped into her petite mother’s embrace, feeling the stress melt away. She felt her mother quiver slightly, and Stevie squeezed tighter.

“I’m sorry, Mom. He was one of a kind.”

Patsy stepped back, her eyes damp. “What happened?”

“What have you heard?” Stevie wanted to know what had traveled through town on the local gossip train. She kept an arm around her mother’s shoulders as they moved through the big house to her sun-filled kitchen. Stevie took a stool at the kitchen island while Patsy set a fresh cup of coffee in front of her and slid over a plate of powdered-sugar heaven.

“Ohhh. You didn’t.”

“Brianna can’t get enough of my beignets.”

“What’s Carly say about that?”

“Usually ‘Keep them away from me.’?”

Good point. Stevie had been slightly jealous that her sister currently lived a few steps from her mother, but constantly being in the presence of her mother’s incredible baking and cooking would take a truckload of willpower. Stevie’s tiny apartment in town, with its half-size refrigerator, suited her just fine.

“I’ve had four phone calls since yesterday afternoon,” said Patsy, sipping at her coffee. “The first told me she’d heard it might be Roy’s body that was found down by the river, and the other three let me know it’s confirmed.”

Small Town Rule #6: Skip Western Union; the neighbors are faster.

“What are they saying is the cause of death?” Stevie licked the sugar off her thumb.

Patsy shrugged and brushed her long curly hair over one shoulder.

“Tell me. I need to know what misconceptions to correct.”

Her mother stared into her coffee. “One person said it was suicide. That he’d shot himself in the head. Another said he’d been fishing and was hit by a falling tree.” She glanced up at Stevie with questions in her eyes. “Which one is right?”

“Neither,” answered Stevie, silently fuming at the gossipmongers in town. Everyone knew her parents and Roy had been tight. What made these people want to call and discuss the gory details when they knew they hadn’t been confirmed? “Roy didn’t commit suicide. He did have two bullet holes in his skull. It’s a bit difficult to shoot yourself twice in the back of the head.”

“Stevie!” Her mother looked away.

“Sorry.” She bit her tongue for being so matter-of-fact with the details. “I have to consider those things when studying a crime scene. He was hit by a tree, but the medical examiner says that happened after he was dead.”

“So he was murdered?” Patsy whispered, her eyes wide. “Who would hurt him? I don’t understand. And when do they think this happened?” She took a deep breath. “I knew he wouldn’t leave town without saying goodbye. I’d known all along that something was very wrong.”