She pushed back her questions and circled around the common—the children and their teachers still hard at work on their snowmen—and drove out toward the lake and Bowie O’Rourke, hoping this time Nick Martini wouldn’t follow her.
Four
R ose navigated the dirt road—now covered in snow and ice—along the shore of a spring-fed glacial lake a few miles outside the village and pulled in behind Bowie O’Rourke’s mud-and-salt-encrusted van. He’d parked in front of the dozen small, run-down cabins on twenty acres that her father had left to Jo Harper, a shock to everyone in Black Falls, including Rose. She sometimes wondered if he’d suspected, at least intuitively, that his end was near and had deliberately put Jo into close proximity to Elijah, his second-born son, who had built a house just through the woods while on visits home from the army.
Leaving Ranger cozy in the back of her Jeep, Rose picked her way along an icy path to the cabin where Jo and Elijah had holed up when they ran off together as teenagers. An angry, frustrated Drew Cameron had discovered them. Jo, the daughter of the Black Falls police chief, had just graduated from high school. Elijah, a year older, had been knocking around town, aimless. After their three days on the lake had been disrupted, Elijah left Black Falls for boot camp and a career in the Special Forces, Jo for college and the Secret Service.
The cabin door was open, and Rose found Bowie inside, wearing his usual bright orange sweatshirt, complete with stains and tears, and baggy work pants. His black lab, Poe, was curled up on the sagging floor. Bowie was as tall and broad-shouldered as his cousin Liam, although their similarities ended there. Bowie had grown up in tougher circumstances, and his ready fists and impatience with bullies had put him on the wrong side of the law, as recently as last March when he’d stood up for Hannah in his cousin’s bar.
And for me, Rose thought.
Another of her secrets.
“Hey, Rose,” Bowie said, standing up from an open metal toolbox. “Where’s Ranger?”
“Asleep in my Jeep.”
“Afraid Poe would corrupt him?”
She reached down and rubbed the lab’s stomach, then stood up straight again. “Poe’s a great dog. He misbehaves from time to time, but that’s not his fault.”
“It’s because I haven’t trained him.”
She smiled. “Exactly. You haven’t trained him because you don’t care if he misbehaves.”
“True, provided he doesn’t bite small children, which he doesn’t.” Bowie shook his head, taking in the one- room cabin and its old, musty furnishings. “Jo’s crazy. She should bulldoze all these cabins and sell the land to you Camerons. The lodge could use some lakefront.”
Black Falls Lodge was straight up the wooded hill behind the cabins. “Maybe she’s nostalgic.”
“Nostalgic? Jo?”
Rose ran her fingertips over the red-and-white-checked vinyl cloth that covered a rickety square table under the front window. “You know why I’m here, Bowie.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. A couple of state troopers just left. They can’t say for sure it was Cutshaw you found, but they know.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “I answered their questions. I have nothing to hide. I’m not going to pretend I like Cutshaw any better now than I did this morning before I knew he was dead.”
“When did you see him last?”
“The fight at Liam’s place last year, at least as far as I know.” Bowie placed a measuring tape encased in yellow plastic in his toolbox. “I’m on probation. I’m supposed to avoid alcohol, trouble and troublemakers.”
Rose looked out at the lake, still and frozen in the winter sun. She could feel Bowie’s eyes on her and turned to him.
“You have to back off and let the police do their job,” he said, shutting his toolbox with the toe of his boot. “I have to check the rest of the cabins. Jo wants an idea of what she’s up against. She knows. She just needs to hear it from someone else. Then Elijah’s got some stonework for me to look at over at his place.”
“Do you think Jo and Elijah will come back to Black Falls to live?”
“Eventually.” He lifted his toolbox as if it weighed nothing. “Rose—”
“I’m okay, Bowie. I have some work I can do at home, and Lauren and I are planning winter fest weekend at the lodge. Have you heard from Hannah lately?”
“Emails once in a while. None today.” He jerked at thumb at Poe, who eagerly jumped up next to him. “Does she know about the fire yet?”
“I haven’t talked to her.”
Nick could have called Sean by now and he could have told Hannah. Rose was aware of Bowie watching her in silence. He knew about her brief, troubled relationship last winter with Derek Cutshaw but nothing about Nick.
“Rose?”
“I’m on my way to the lodge,” she said. “A.J. will have heard about the fire and likely have told Sean and Elijah. I don’t need those three worrying about me.”
“Not much you can do to stop them. Why’s it so bad to have your big brothers worry about you?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Who said you couldn’t?” With his free hand, Bowie scratched Poe’s head. “How’d Ranger do with the fire?”
“He was confused at first, but he figured it out. He wasn’t expecting to find a body. Neither was I.”
“You two make a good team.”
“I think so.”
“But he’s a dog,” Bowie said with just the slightest hint of a smile.
Rose forced herself to smile back at him. “A dog is the best friend a woman could have, short of a stonemason willing to go to prison to save her reputation—”
“I wasn’t willing. It just worked out that way. I didn’t have to take the fight with Cutshaw as far as I did.”
“You kept him from blurting out about my past with him.” She watched a small clump of snow fall off the toe of her right boot and melt onto the cabin’s worn floor. “Derek was a huge mistake on my part, but he also exaggerated and outright made things up about us. You stopped him from telling lies about me that I’d never have lived down—that would have hurt me professionally.”
“It’s okay, Rose,” Bowie said gently. “I don’t need to know the details. I didn’t last year, and I don’t now.”
She looked up at him. He’d been Hannah’s friend and defender since childhood, and now he was hers. He’d seen her and Derek together at Killington and had warned her to steer clear of him. By then, she’d already broken off with him. Derek had been volatile, possessive and verbally abusive, turning a few dates into far more than they’d ever been. Embarrassed by her bad judgment, determined to get on with her life, she hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Bowie had kept her secret.
Then came the fight at O’Rourke’s and Bowie’s arrest, and her father’s death a few weeks later. She’d retreated into silence and solitude, focusing on her work.
Except for that night last June in Beverly Hills with Nick Martini.
“I would have told the police about Derek and me after your arrest last year,” she said.
Bowie shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“You don’t have to hide anything on my account.”
“I know that, Rose. Go on. Go see A.J. Better he hears the full story about this morning from you than from someone else.”
She grinned suddenly. “Just what I need, another big-brother type trying to boss me around.”
“Like anyone can boss you around. And I’m no Cameron. Not a chance. Call me if you need me.” He opened the cabin door, the sunlight catching the ends of his dark curly hair as he gave her a serious look. “I didn’t have anything to do with Cutshaw’s death. I’m sorry it happened. I really am. I didn’t like him and didn’t want anything to do with him, but he should have had a chance to mellow.”
Rose placed a hand on Bowie’s muscular upper arm. “We don’t know what happened today. Be careful, okay?”
