She glanced at Nick. “I thought Scott was in California with Beth Harper.”
“He came home early.”
“When?”
“Monday night. He only stayed the weekend.”
Rose frowned. Why hadn’t Beth told her? But that was her friend Beth, a paramedic who was closemouthed about her love life if about nothing else.
Then again, Rose thought, she was standing next to a man she’d made love to on one wild night, and another man who hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer was likely dead a few yards from her—and almost no one knew about her association with either of them.
She watched Scott walk up the driveway, grim and ramrod straight in his trooper’s uniform. He was a fair, strongly built man with little sense of humor. Rose hated to see him and Beth go their separate ways, but the violence of the past months had been hard on everyone.
She wondered if the FBI and the ATF would be next to descend on the scene, perhaps even the Secret Service. Vice President Preston Neal and his wife and five children had visited Black Falls in early February and planned to come for the winter festival at the lodge in a couple of weeks. It was meant to celebrate the last days of winter and to put the violence of the past months behind them.
Everyone believed Lowell Whittaker’s arrest had put his killer network out of business.
Rose felt Nick standing close to her. Did
The friend, Jasper Vanderhorn, had been an arson investigator obsessed with a serial arsonist.
She turned, facing Nick. “Are you in Vermont because of Jasper? Do you think his serial arsonist followed you and killed Derek?”
Scott Thorne was within a few yards of reaching them. More police cars and fire trucks arrived. Nick’s expression didn’t change. “Not now,” he said.
“We’re not done yet, Nick.”
He fixed his gaze on her. “That’s right. We’re not.”
Three
R ose welcomed the cold air as she let Ranger out of the back of her Jeep. She’d parked in front of Three Sisters Cafe on Main Street, across from the common in the middle of the village of Black Falls. She wondered if Sean had ever tried to explain their hometown to Nick over mojitos by the pool, or looking out at the view of Beverly Hills from their Wilshire Boulevard offices.
She’d left Nick with two state detectives.
She snapped a leash on Ranger and, bypassing the cafe’s main entrance, went into the 1835 brick house through its center-hall door. Sean owned the building. Three of Rose’s friends—“sisters” in spirit—had converted the corner rooms into a breakfast-and-lunch enterprise that few in town had believed would survive six months. Almost two years later, it was thriving.
Without waiting to be told, Ranger lay down in the hall. He looked tired. Rose had given him a treat and water in the Jeep, but he wasn’t as resilient as he’d been even just a year ago. She suspected he was reacting to her stress as much as his own at the unexpected scene on the river. A body burned beyond recognition. The likelihood that the victim was a man she knew and had hoped was long out of her life.
Nick’s presence.
She took off Ranger’s leash, hung it on a peg on the wall and entered the cafe. The early-morning rush was over, the only customers three middle-aged women fresh from their yoga class up the street. They’d leaned their rolled-up mats against the wall and were enjoying house-made yogurt, fresh fruit and muffins at a table overlooking Elm Street.
Dominique Belair, one of the cafe’s three owners, was behind the glass case, her fine dark hair pulled back neatly but her face pale, her brown eyes wide, shining with worry. “I heard about the fire,” she said as she reached for a mug in the cafe’s evergreen signature color. “Is it true the man who died is Derek Cutshaw?”
“There hasn’t been a positive ID,” Rose said, pulling off her coat. She’d left her hat and gloves in her Jeep. “His car’s at the guesthouse and footprints lead to the shed where the body was found.”
“So yes, it’s Derek. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you to go out there expecting a beautiful morning with Ranger and finding…” Dominique shuddered and pointed the mug at the glass case. “You should eat something. Coffee and a scone?”
Rose had brought a breakfast bar with her to the Whittaker place but hadn’t touched it. Now it was almost lunchtime. She couldn’t imagine eating and yet knew she had to. She nodded and attempted a smile. “That’d be great.”
Dominique filled the mug from a coffee urn on a counter behind her, then pulled a cinnamon scone off a stack on a tray and set it on a small plate. She handed both the mug and plate to Rose. “Anything else I can get you?”
“No, thanks,” Rose said. “This is perfect.”
Dominique started to say something, but another customer entered the cafe and Rose took her coffee and scone to a table overlooking the river that ran behind the cafe. She wasn’t sure why she’d come here. To have a few moments to herself, or to be among friends? Or just to avoid being alone at her house, or going up to the lodge and talking to her brother A.J. about what had happened—about Nick Martini and Derek Cutshaw?
She noticed Myrtle Smith come through the kitchen door behind the glass case. At fifty-four, Myrtle was tiny, with dyed black hair, lavender eyes and bright red nails. She’d been helping out at the cafe since January, when Hannah Shay, another of the three “sisters,” had departed for Southern California with her two younger brothers, not to mention, Rose thought, one Sean Cameron. He and Hannah, a recent law school graduate, had exposed Lowell Whittaker as a killer.
Myrtle was an experienced Washington reporter who’d been touched by Lowell’s violence herself when he’d arranged for the poisoning murder of a Russian diplomat she’d been involved with. Her investigation into his death ultimately had led her to Black Falls.
She headed straight for Rose’s riverside table. “I hate to speak ill of the dead,” Myrtle said, dropping into a chair across from Rose, “but Derek Cutshaw could be one unpleasant human being.”
Rose didn’t comment. “When did you see him last?”
“About two weeks ago. I haven’t seen him since. Dom, either. I don’t know about Beth.”
Beth Harper was the third “sister” who co-owned the cafe. She was in Beverly Hills visiting Sean and Hannah. Beth, her brother and Scott Thorne had flown back to California with them last Friday. Zack had always planned to stay just through the weekend. Not Scott.
“What about Hannah?” Rose asked. “Have you or Dom been in touch with her?”
“Dom said she’d call both Beth and Hannah when she knew more. They’re supposed to be having fun— swimming in Sean’s pool, shopping on Rodeo Drive, watching for Hollywood stars.”
“Scott Thorne’s back. Did you know that?”
“I’d heard,” Myrtle said but didn’t elaborate.
Rose decided not to try to figure out Beth’s love life. Her own was complicated enough, or at least had been. Nowadays it was downright simple: no love life.
“What about your brothers?” Myrtle asked. “Have you talked to them?”
“No, not yet.”
A.J. would be at the lodge. Elijah, her middle brother, a Special Forces soldier, was in Washington, D.C., with Jo Harper, Zack and Beth’s older sister, a Secret Service agent. Sean, the youngest of the three Cameron brothers, was home in Beverly Hills with Hannah, who was still figuring out her life. Rose had no doubt they were as in love as they had been in January. Their feelings weren’t rooted in the adrenaline of their encounter with the Whittakers. They’d been destined for each other since high school.
They were soul mates, if one believed in such things.
The yoga group departed, and the cafe was quiet. Rose stared down at the ice jams on the river, vaguely aware of Dominique setting a plate of quiche and fresh fruit in front of her.
She thanked Dominique before realizing her friend had already gone.
