Sandpiper Way (Cedar Cove #8)(86)

“You actually saw the letter?” Roy asked.

“Yes. Martha showed it to me. Her attorney was coming by later that afternoon and she said she’d give it to him.”

“Did he?”

Dave hadn’t followed up on that. “I…I don’t know. I assume he didn’t, because when Emily went to the attorney’s office to check the file, the letter wasn’t there.”

That instigated another series of questions, which Dave did his best to answer. He told Roy that Emily had visited Allan Harris’s office and been able to look at the file, thanks to Geoff Duncan, Allan’s legal assistant. Dave stressed that Geoff’s action had to remain confidential and that he’d done it as a favor.

“Emily was upset,” Dave said. But not nearly as upset as he was when he’d learned that Martha’s letter had never been received.

Roy tapped his pencil against the pad. “I can well imagine.”

“I thought,” Dave said, gazing down at the gold watch on Roy’s desk, “that I was free to wear it.”

Roy made another notation on his pad; Dave wished he could read upside down.

Roy looked up. “You want me to return the watch to Martha’s family?”

“Yes.” Dave met his eyes. “With my sincere apologies for the misunderstanding. I feel sick about this.”

Roy didn’t say anything for what seemed like hours but was probably only a few seconds. “I’m afraid this looks…incriminating.”

Dave was all too aware of that.

“You were probably the last person to see Martha Evans alive,” Roy reminded him.

“Yes.”

“You’re one of a handful of people who knew where she hid her valuables.”

He swallowed uncomfortably. “That seems to be the case.”

“You were seen wearing a valuable gold watch that belonged to Martha’s husband.”

Dave nodded slowly.

“Is there anything else? Anything you haven’t told me?”

He might as well be speaking to the sheriff. Roy’s questions and his own answers made him look—and feel—guilty. Only he wasn’t.

“Dave?”

Unable to remain seated, Dave stood up and walked to the far side of the office. “Yes.” His heart was hammering so wildly, it hurt to breathe. Turning around again, he reached into his pocket and removed the plastic bag that held the diamond earrings. He put it on the desk next to the watch.

Roy gestured at the earrings. “These were Martha’s, too?”

“I believe so…Emily s-saw a picture of them in…in Martha’s file.” He couldn’t keep the stammer out of his voice.

“You’d better explain.”

Dave went on to tell him about Emily’s discovery of the earrings. As hard as he tried to work out how they’d gotten into his pockets, he couldn’t. Roy was very quiet when Dave finished describing what he knew.

“Do you want me to return these to the family, as well?” he asked.

Dave shrugged helplessly. “I…don’t know what to do. The thing is, I don’t want them in my possession. Anyone who saw them might assume…They’d believe I was guilty, and nothing I said would make a bit of difference.”

Dave collapsed into the chair and covered his face with both hands. “That’s not all.”

“You mean there’s more?” Roy asked, lowering his voice.

Dave lowered his hands. “It happened a long time ago.”

Roy waited, and when Dave didn’t immediately speak, he said, “Okay. Tell me what it is.”

Dave felt his chest tighten with dread.

“Come on,” Roy said, not unkindly. “Might as well spill it.”

Dave would rather leave the past buried. But he no longer had a choice. He got to his feet and moved over to the window, turning his back on the detective. He closed his eyes.

“Dave,” Roy said, “it’ll come out sooner or later. You can tell me or not. Up to you. But I suspect that whatever it is, you can bet Sheriff Davis will find out.”

Dave agreed. It would be pointless to even try to keep this a secret. “A month after my eighteenth birthday I was arrested.”

“So you have a police record?”

This nightmare never seemed to end; it only got worse. “I’m…not sure. It was my first offense and I was given a light sentence—three months of community service.” He turned around. “The judge said if I kept out of trouble, my record would be wiped clean.”

“And was it?”

“I think so, but I can’t say for sure.” He obviously had a habit of making assumptions. He did his part and it seemed reasonable to take for granted that others had done theirs. All too often, it seemed, that turned out not to be true.

“You never checked?”

“No.” He’d been too humiliated, too embarrassed. As much as possible, he’d wanted to put that part of his life behind him. “But I assume so because I work part-time at the bank, and they must’ve done a security check when they hired me.”

Roy wrote down something else. Apparently this latest revelation wasn’t welcome news.

“Other than my parents, no one knows about this,” Dave said in a low voice.