Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(67)

She looked carefully. The light itself was not moving, only the trees. Despite the fact that the rain pattered down when she emerged from cover, she crossed the grassy field and stood on the gravel driveway. The light was closer than she thought.

Darting from tree to tree, she approached the derelict house. The outside had been marred with graffiti. She wasn’t sure, but the style looked similar to the graffiti that had defaced the rock wall at the falls. That was only about a mile away. Maybe whoever was inside was putting their handiwork there too or just getting out of the rain.

She stopped by a leafless bush near the front porch. The windows were boarded up. She’d have to go around to the side or the back of the house to try to see in. She looked at the floor of the porch. It would probably creak or cave in if she stepped on it. Even with the steady, muted roar of the falls, she couldn’t risk that.

Her heart beat faster and faster. The run-down house looked like a decrepit face with blank eyes and tattoos. She tried to picture how it must have looked years ago. Did it seem familiar? She knew Gabe had checked the place more than once and found nothing. But she knew someone was here and now she could hear voices—up this close, she heard at least one man’s and one was high pitched like a girl’s.

Her gut instinct was to back off and phone Gabe. But if someone had Sandy, Jill or Amanda here, she wanted to know for sure.

*

It was bad enough that Tess still wasn’t taking his phone calls, Gabe thought as he pulled into her place. He saw there were no lights on in the house, though the outside safety lights were on. Her car was gone and it was getting dark and raining. Could she have driven to see her family at the Hear Ye compound? It seemed unlikely. Maybe she’d gone over to his house. He’d given her a key.

He drove past the cornfield and into his own driveway. The house was dark. There was no car outside. Vic wasn’t even back yet.

What if Tess had decided to head for Michigan? If so, he’d call the State Highway Patrol, have her arrested for disobeying their order to stay in the area. He knew she’d been through a lot, but he’d been impressed at how she’d stood up to Vic’s accusations. Gabe knew Vic had agreed to let her go home mostly because of her sticking to her story—and the fact that they both had soft spots for her. He didn’t really believe she would take off.

He drove right back out of his driveway, turned on his bar light but not the siren and headed toward town. He auto-dialed Tess again and got her voice mail. He swore and pulled into his parking spot at the station. Vic’s car was here; Ann’s too.

Inside, he found both of his 911 dispatchers chatting over fast food at the front desk. Maybe Ann just didn’t want to go home in the rain. With Dane’s death, they’d had a lot to handle, especially with him and Vic out in the field. No doubt, the media mavens had sniffed the news out already.

“Too bad about Dane,” Ann said. “Oh, the mayor called about five times and insisted he talk to you ASAP.” She handed him a call slip. The neat way she’d cut it off across the bottom made him think of Dane’s so-called suicide note. “I guess you left him a message you wanted to see him, but he’s really upset about Dane’s death. A couple of newspapers and TV stations called, so they may be back in town tomorrow. Agent Reingold’s in your office. We’ve got an extra cheeseburger here if you’re hungry.”

“Yeah, thanks. I promised Vic I’d eat and rest. I appreciate both of you working overtime through all this.”

In a way he thought he shouldn’t take the burger from Ann—take anything from her right now—but he suddenly realized he was starving. He’d last eaten at breakfast, hadn’t thought of food when it was all around him at the farmers’ market. Ann handed him the wrapped burger; it was still warm. He started to unwrap it and headed to talk to Vic.

“I told Agent Reingold the person in town to see about that antique pistol is the librarian, and not just because she knows everything,” Ann said. “Just a couple of months ago, she had a small display in the library that had some of Dane’s old pistols and some of hers. Hers, I’ll bet, are ones her family owned—pioneer relics. Sometimes I think she’s a relic. Ebook is a dirty word to her.”

“I remember all that stuff about her pioneer family,” Peggy said. “Sheriff, did you ever take that field trip to her place when you were in elementary school?”

“I must have missed that day.” He took a big bite of the burger.

“Well, I didn’t miss it,” Peggy went on. “She talked about her ancestors knowing Daniel Boone or something like that. You know, ‘Kilt him a bar when he was only three.’”

“You sure that wasn’t Davy Crockett, that Disney show?” Ann said, dipping her French fries in ketchup that reminded him of the crime scene. He quit chewing the burger. Couldn’t they cut the chatter? A man had been killed today.

“Okay, thanks again for the food,” Gabe said. “I’ll talk to Miss Etta about that and get back to the mayor. And before I head home tonight, I’m going to drive out to Blackberry Road to take a look at Marva Green’s old place.”

Vic had evidently heard their voices and walked in from his lair down the hall. “So far, all I have on the gun is that it’s an 1842 lock pistol by Derringer, no less. Made in Philadelphia, curved wooden handle, the whole nine yards—except who owned it and who fired it. Mike’s driven back to BCI to use the lab facilities there instead of the ones in the truck, so I’m waiting until tomorrow to go back to Dane’s house.”