She shook her head. “He more or less left me alone after that,” she said.
“What does ‘more or less’ mean?”
“It means he didn’t do anything that would have made me go to the police.”
“Or tell your family and friends,” Nick said.
She didn’t answer.
He didn’t back off. “Bowie knew?”
Snow blew off the shed roof into her face. “He ran into Derek when he was still raging about my having stood up to him at the falls. Derek bragged about things that never happened between us. He wanted to get under Bowie’s skin because he knew we were friends.”
“So Bowie was ready for a fight that night at O’Rourke’s.”
“He thinks his presence provoked Derek to start in on Hannah in the first place. Derek was spoiling for a fight.” Rose signaled Ranger to come to her side. “It’s complicated.”
“Not that complicated,” Nick said. “It’s a small town. Your brothers were there. Cutshaw wanted to hurt you. You’re a trusted canine search-and-rescue expert. All he had to do was lie or exaggerate, and you’d be hurt.”
“What happened between Derek and me was bad enough without him making up stuff.” She glanced back at the ell of the shed where he’d died, smelled the burned wood. “I told the police everything.”
“Was Cutshaw interested in search-and-rescue work?”
“He wanted to get into mountain rescue, but he wanted it for his ego, which is exactly the wrong reason.”
Nick studied her a moment. “Did your father know what went on between you two?”
“I don’t know. He asked me if I was okay not long after Derek came after me at the falls. It wasn’t like Pop. I said yes, and that was the end of it.”
Her throat tight with emotion, Rose signaled to Ranger to heel and headed briskly with him around to the front of the shed.
Nick kept up with them and eased in next to her behind the farmhouse. He nodded to the boarded-up back door. “Did Sean run in through the back when he saved Bowie from the fire?”
“Yes.” Rose crossed her arms against the cold. “Bowie grabbed Vivian Whittaker after Lowell set off a bomb on the second floor and ran downstairs with her. She thanked him by tripping him and leaving him to burn to death. Who’d ever know? She wanted him to take the fall for Lowell.”
“Sean got Bowie out of there,” Nick said, pensive. “That’s not as easy to do as it looks in the movies. It’s an older house. Always a nightmare for firefighters.”
“It was built by a wealthy New York couple who loved Black Falls and were nothing like the Whittakers. It’s always been owned by people from out-of-state. Not many people here could afford it.”
“The Camerons?”
“Not unless we turned it into something that could produce an income. It’d be a risky investment.”
“A challenge.”
Rose smiled, her tension lessening. “Maybe that’s why you’re a multimillionaire. Do you love any of the buildings you and Sean have bought?”
“We don’t invest in a property we don’t love. We’ve refurbished some historic beauties. We’re looking into a grande dame of an old hotel in Beverly Hills right now. Hannah loves it.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But it’s still business,” Nick said.
“It has to be. You and Sean had a fire in a building last winter. I hadn’t thought about that. Did Jasper investigate?’
“Not at the time. Afterward.”
“Because of his serial arsonist?”
A strong gust of wind howled and whistled in the trees. “It’s cold,” Nick said, heading back onto the walk. “Let’s go.”
They returned to her Jeep. Ranger hopped in the back, agile and eager, no sign of stiffness.
A mile down the riverside road, Nick settled back in his seat. “What’s on your mind, Rose?”
“Nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically.
She gripped the wheel. “I was thinking about driving up to Killington to check out the house Robert and Derek rented together.”
“Bad idea.”
She sighed, the emotion of being back at the scene of Derek’s death—reliving the weeks they’d seen each other—still weighing on her. “I have some work to do at my house. I’ll drop you off at the lodge.”
“I can keep myself busy at your place. I’ll chop wood.”
“When’s the last time you chopped wood?”
He grinned at her. “You just forgot I’m a rugged smoke jumper, didn’t you? I can wield an ax. You insist on always imagining me in a tux at a five-star Beverly Hills hotel.”
“Wrong, Nick.”
“Ah. So you also imagine me in the shower.”
She felt a jolt of pure sexual awareness. The shower. Great. Just what she needed. If she hadn’t been imagining him naked thirty seconds ago, she was now, which, she suspected, had been his goal.
Was he imagining
She ground the gears turning onto the main road into the village and tried not to look at him. So much for being a private person. Now Nick knew about Derek, and Sean, Hannah and everyone else knew about Nick. She had no secrets left.
Maybe it was just as well, she thought. Maybe now she could put the pain and mistakes of the past year behind her.
She glanced at Nick, saw the scrape and bruise on the side of his head and realized that nothing would be behind her, nothing would be over, until he had his answers. Until he was satisfied that Jasper Vanderhorn’s serial arsonist—his killer—wasn’t in Vermont.
Fourteen
G rit woke up and checked his BlackBerry. He didn’t have any emails, text messages or voice mails from anyone but Admiral Jenkins, his boss, who’d left one of each at around one in the morning East Coast time. Grit eyed the email subject heading: Los Angeles?
Apparently the admiral didn’t like Grit’s choice of airport.
Nothing anyone could do about it now. Grit deleted all three messages.
He went through his routine to put on his prosthesis and headed down the hall to the kitchen. It was a bright, beautiful morning in Beverly Hills. No one was around. He figured Sean was off making money or putting out fires, but he noticed Hannah and Beth were out by the pool. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after ten. Later than he thought.
He ventured outside for coffee, fruit, cheese and cute mini-muffins at a sunny table by the pool. While he was listening to Beth describe a discussion back in Black Falls between foodie Dominique Belair and Washington reporter Myrtle Smith over the virtues of different varieties of peaches, Grit received a series of text messages—one after another—from Charlie Neal. They came through under an obvious alias, but Grit wasn’t even curious how Charlie had pulled them off.
Each message included a piece of the address for his sister Marissa’s actor ex-boyfriend, Trent Stevens.
Grit didn’t text Charlie back.
Hannah and Beth were dressed in shorts and T-shirts, Hannah’s legs slightly less pale than Beth’s. Both had obviously slathered on sunscreen. Grit, who was in civilian cargo pants and a polo shirt, didn’t bother. He wasn’t spending the day by the pool.
“It was cool last week,” Hannah said.
“It’s cool this week,” he said. “You two just think it’s warm because you’re used to it being four degrees.”
