Cranberry Point (Cedar Cove #4)(19)

From the first, something about their guest had disturbed Beldon. Bob had experienced a recurring nightmare ever since his return from Vietnam. On occasion, he'd been known to sleepwalk.

Roy stopped reading and leaned back in his chair, recalling his initial thoughts when Beldon had asked him for help. Davis had questioned Beldon for the second or third time and Bob had considered contacting an attorney, but hadn't. Instead he'd come to Roy. Not too far into the conversation, Roy had realized that the other man was afraid he might have been responsible for the stranger's death.

Roy was quick to assure him otherwise, although he'd wondered the same thing in the beginning. But Maxwell's door had been locked from the inside and there'd been no sign of a struggle. The fact of the matter was that until recently, they couldn't be sure what had caused the other man's death. The autopsy had shown that his vital organs were in fine shape.

Not long before Bob's appointment with Roy, Grace Sherman had come to him. A year earlier, her husband, Dan, had gone missing. When Dan didn't return, Grace had sought out Roy to help locate her husband. But every lead had been a dead end.

Unanswered questions didn't sit well with him, although he'd shocked Grace with the few things he'd unearthed. One of them was the matter of thirteen thousand dollars Dan had somehow managed to keep from her. Grace had no idea where Dan could've found that kind of cash, which he'd apparently used to buy a trailer. He'd handed over his paycheck every Friday, regular as clockwork. Like most couples, they'd apparently lived month to month.

Then Dan's body had been discovered and with it a suicide note he'd left for Grace. In his last letter to his wife, Dan had described an incident that had taken place during the Vietnam war. He and three others had been separated from their squadron, and they'd stumbled into a village, which they feared was Viet-Cong controlled. Something had hap-. pened, and they'd started firing and before the smoke cleared they'd wiped out the entire village, according to Dan. They'd massacred men, women and children. The event had forever marked him. He couldn't live with himself any longer. Or so the letter had indicated.

Grace had been beside herself, not knowing what to do with the information. Roy was afraid he hadn't been much help. He couldn't really advise her; whatever became of these facts was her decision and hers alone.

Shortly afterward, Beldon had repeated the story Dan had written about in his suicide note. He'd mentioned Dan— they'd been two of the four men wandering through that jungle. He'd told Roy that afterward he and Dan hadn't seen each other for almost thirty years. When Bob had come home to Cedar Cove, they'd completely avoided each other.

It seemed too much of a coincidence that Roy would hear this grisly tale from two different people within such a short period of time. On a hunch, he'd gone to Troy Davis and suggested the sheriff check out the other two men who'd been with Dan and Beldon that day.

Sure enough, one of the men—Maxwell Russell—had been reported missing. The unidentified body had turned out to be his. Why he'd come to Cedar Cove and why he'd carried false identification couldn't be explained, though, any more than his death.

Not until later was it discovered that Max Russell had actually been murdered. Poisoned. There'd been evidence in the water bottle found in Russell's rented vehicle.

Once Russell had been identified, his daughter had visited Cedar Cove to collect her father's ashes. Davis had set up a meeting between Hannah and the Beldons, and as a favor to Bob, Roy had been at the house when she came by with the sheriff. Roy learned then that Hannah's mother had died in a car accident, the same one that had badly burned her father. The burns were the reason for Max's plastic surgery and quite possibly why Bob hadn't recognized his old friend.

The circumstances surrounding the car crash led Roy to believe it hadn't been an accident. He'd probably never be able to prove that. The accident report blamed Russell, but Hannah's father had insisted the steering had disconnected. There was nothing to verify his account.

The door to Roy's office opened and his wife walked in with a tray of coffee and freshly baked cookies. Corrie seemed intent on fattening him up, not that he was making much of a fuss. He certainly wasn't turning down homemade cookies.

"Let me guess what you're reading." That know-it-all glint shone in her eyes. "Could it possibly have something to do with the Beldon case?"

"Smarty pants," he said, grinning up at his wife.

"You're going to solve this if it takes the rest of your life, aren't you?"

Roy was close to the answer; he could feel it. He didn't know what he'd missed, if anything, but eventually his instincts would lead him where he had to go. All he needed was patience but that, unfortunately, seemed to be in short supply.

Corrie poured coffee into the mug, added cream and gave it to him. "I get suspicious when you're this quiet."

Roy leaned back in his chair, the mug in his hand. "I'm sifting all the facts through my brain."

"Do you still think the Beldons might be in some kind of danger?"

Roy didn't know how to answer. He shrugged. "Two of the four men are dead. One was murdered and the other committed suicide."

"What about the fourth man?"

"Apparently Davis has talked to Colonel Stewart Samuels. He told me he didn't think Samuels is involved—but who knows?"